-

Crowley wakes up, and he's not entirely sure where-when-why he is. He feels groggy and confused and aching and alone, and, for a second, he wonders where Aziraphale is. At the bookshop, probably, or maybe -- out there getting himself into trouble somewhere. He thinks that he should probably get up and check.
And then -- Oh, right. Aurum.
It's like a hollow ache. He abandoned Aziraphale, he can't check, and he left Aurum hanging and -- Crowley doesn't need to breathe, probably, maybe, but he breathes in and out and it hurts. He feels too light and too heavy and like the heavenly light had sunk into his very being.
He's a coward. How long had he been sleeping? Weeks, months? He can't tell, he doesn't know. Gaze unfocused, and he just wants to sleep. Sleep, and sleep, and never wake up.
He doesn't. He stares into the middle distance, heavy-light and gaze unfocused, and thinks getupgetup, get up you stupid fucking snake.
He's tired of sleeping. He'd slept a century away, once, and the look on Aziraphale's face had been terrible, and he thinks of Aurum and wants to die (but that's not new).
So he does. He groans, and forces himself to his feet. It's as hard as the last times he'd woken up. But he does, and, blearily, his gaze travels around the room, the room where he'd slept surrounded by plants and flora and, oh -- they've all wilted.
Logically, he knows that plants die and wilt and he'd left them unattended for .. just a few months, it looks like.
There's no miracles that can fix this. He regards them with a dead eye, and he's so tired. Like he's been hollowed out with a rusty scooper. His breaths are shaky.
He has a front to put on later, people to talk to. But right now, at this moment -- he squeezes his eye shut, and he wants to topple them to the ground. Maybe it'd be his natural element, that way -- soil and shattered pottery and death.
He doesn't. He's excruciatingly gentle as he drags them out and he thinks fuck, shit, he's so fucking stupid, and he's being so fucking emo right now what the fuck.
Crowley drops the pot onto the ground, and he has to blink against the first rays of sunlight he's seen in a month and he just wants to leave. He's in the public eye now, and he should be perking up and at least pretending to be the snarky asshole, but he's ... tired.
He sighs, flicks his tail. And then, with the utmost reluctance, turns his attention to the long-dead houseplant. He needs to .. get rid of it, and then he can start again. All over again. And again, and again, because as much attention as he put into them, he never thought about it. He never thought about it before he went on his ridiculous fucking naps.
He refuses to even start, at this point.
Crowley flexes stiff claws, remembers the last time he did something like this. Around winter, maybe? When he'd needed to bring them inside. He hooks his claws into the soil, and, with a contradicting sense of reluctance and .. brutality, he tears the plant out.
And so, rinse and repeat. He's not careful, doesn't care about his image, and it's not long before he's covered with dirt. It's not like it was any worse than the swamp mud, in any case.
God, fuck. He'd gone through quite a bit of effort to get these kinds of plants in this god-forbidden* wasteland, with animals and a complete lack of convenient plant shops. He doesn't know if he can bring himself to bother with going through it again, but, well -- he'll probably have to.
Fuck.
*almost quite literally,

-

Aurum couldn't remember the last time that he had seen Crowley.

Once, the other had been practically everywhere, and the two of them had seemed attached at the hip with how often you could see them together at events. Then, one day passed, and suddenly that was just... over. Crowley wasn't around anymore. Aurum blamed himself. Blamed his stupid feelings and his stupid drunkenness and his stupid clumsy confession to the demon who would never love him back because why would Crowley love him back? They were just friends, and that was all they were ever supposed to be, and that's why Crowley never thought about it beyond that. Aurum was just the fucking idiot who had to go and ruin all of that, and he ended up losing one of his best friends because of it. He'd tried, several times, to go to Crowley's house. He'd sit outside the door, waiting and wondering why no one ever answered when he knocked on the door. It made his chest ache, even before he had ended up fucking stabbed. For the first few weeks after Crowley had seemingly disappeared from all their lives, this had been a near daily occurrence. Aurum would go to Crowley's house, knock on the demon's door, and just ramble out apologies. But as the weeks had gone on and had turned to so long it felt like ages, it had become less and less common for Aurum to be waiting outside the other's house.

He tried to focus on himself. He tried to focus on his own house, and his own friends, and his fucking son. He didn't need Crowley, no matter how much it hurt to not see the other's smirking face around anymore. He was... he was fine. He was fine, even after he had ended up with a lance sticking out of his chest and death reaching for his body, trying to pry his soul down to the depths. He was fine, even when he was forced to stay around his house, his chest bound up in bandages as he slowly healed, everything aching, but his heart aching worst of all. He was fine, goddamn it. He wasn't pining. He wasn't crying over a coward who was too scared to actually confront him or the emotions that were killing Aurum's insides. The angel refused to think about it. He refused to let the fucking snake worm his way into his head and into his heart, even when he was laying in his new big bed, wishing that the other was in bed with him. Every night he prayed that he could just stop thinking of burying his nose in Crowley's fur, stop thinking of rambling his daily nonsenses to the other. It was torture, but he knew it was torture of his own design.

When Aurum passed by Crowley's home that morning, he expected nothing. He expected the usual cold front, with no open doors and no noise and just... nothingness. Instead, he was face to face with both his greatest wish and his worst nightmare. Crowley was awake. He was dragging plants out of his home, looking exhausted and utterly drained amd ripping them free of their pots, possibly as a form of therapy. The proxy found himself staring for a moment, not sure whether he wanted to scream in rage or shout in happiness. His claws dug deeply down into the soft earth for a moment before he finally forced his legs to move him forward. Once he was a few paces away from Crowley, he sat down, and he finally spoke, his voice sounding weak despite his usual rumble, "...Hey, Crowley. Where've you been?" He couldn't think of anything better to say than just that. Than just where've you been? However, there were many questions left unsaid, all wrapped up in that one simple question. Where've you been, while I was being stabbed? Where've you been, while I struggled to hold it together? Where've you been, while I pined for you, and loved you, and was such a fucking idiot?