ANALOG BOY ➵ waking up

[arcy]

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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,

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