Crowley sags - visibly sags - with relief, raising a hand to his hair again.

(It stays there a little longer, this time.)

"That's all you had to fucking say."

He hadn't meant it to sound so harsh. But he'd thought -

Well. He'd thought. He's tired, and not at his best, and he'd thought of bedsheets and central heating and spending week after week scraping up time that wasn't there to fly home and find an empty bookshop and never once the notes Aziraphael had promised.

I didn't say because it wasn't even on my radar as a possibility. The winter trip wasn't my choice to make.

That's all Aziraphael had to fucking say.