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Falling isn't a one-time event. It's an ongoing process—Crowley Falls, every day, every hour, every second, and he has been Falling for six thousand years. He's used to it by now; Falling is second nature to him. Same as Existing.
It started simply enough: With a Question.
He thinks, sometimes, that Aziraphale understands what Falling is like; Crowley sees in him many of the same things that led to his own Fall. When Aziraphale adopts the surname Fell, however, it carries with it a bitter taste. Aziraphale isn't done Falling, he hasn't even started—how does he deserve the word in simple past tense? There's nothing simple about it, and yet. All it took was one question for Crowley.
If it's a joke, it's a cruel one, Crowley thinks, as he continues Falling.
Sometimes, Falling isn't so bad. Sometimes it's all Crowley knows—who would he be, if he were not Falling? He's a demon, but what are demons if not Falling angels? Nobody considers him still an angel, and everyone considers him a demon, but there's an entire middle part there that everyone's overlooking, figures missing from an equation that starts with angels and possibly ends with demons but there's also coefficients and fractions and matrices of probabilities. God is probably a coefficient in this equation. To fall is an active verb, and to be a demon is to be an active participant in Falling.
Crowley has never stopped asking questions.
He'd turned to philosophers with his questions, and then theologians, and none of them had had answers.
The thing is, his therapist had said (yes, that too was a thing, moving on), good and bad are concepts constructed and defined by humans and human rules. You're not a bad person, she'd said, you're just a person. Asking questions isn't a bad thing. Being critical isn't a bad thing.
Except that's not true, is it? God's definitions of good and bad don't match human definitions of good and bad, and God made them in her image.
So he'd taken his therapist's advice and acquired plants. Take up a hobby, she'd said. Gardening, perhaps?
Crowley's collection of plants doesn't look anything like the Garden, but he is just self-aware enough, has enough critical thinking skills, has asked enough questions, that he knows—he knows what he's doing. He knows what it means when terror and anger bubble up in him when one of his plants fails to thrive, he knows what it means when he excommunicates the failing plant, he knows what it means every time he shouts at the plants, demanding them to be better, to grow, to thrive, to be good.
(Maybe he should've continued the therapy sessions, but that's neither here nor there.)
Falling isn't all bad. It's a liberation. It's enabling. It's the entire reason why he could avert the apocalypse to begin with, and screw the Ineffable Plan or the Great Plan or whatever Fucking Plan the Almighty or Whoever The Fuck had cooked up.
He is already Falling, so he can have any and all opinions he likes about the Plan and there is nothing anyone can do about it—what are they gonna do, make him Fall again? As far as Crowley knows, you can't Fall twice.
Not when you haven't even stopped Falling. There's no simple past tense verb for him yet.
There's something else going on. Aziraphale isn't going to Fall, Crowley knows that now. Things have changed—Aziraphale has gotten away with far more infractions (uncountable) than Crowley ever did (zero), and he's still an angel. He's still UnFallen, he's still Good, he's still—he's still everything that Crowley wants to be, or thought he wanted to be.
It's not possible to Fall upwards, but here's the thing: Crowley doesn't want to Fall upwards. Things have changed, and what he used to want, what Heaven used to be and what Heaven is now—it doesn't hold the same appeal anymore.
Maybe that's what it means to be a demon?
(What does it mean to be an angel, these days? Crowley looks at Aziraphale, and doesn't know.)
"I brought you a plant," Aziraphale says, and he's got a little pot with a wilting little plant in it. "I saw this little bugger outside on my way here, and thought it needed a little tender care. You're just the right person for the job, I believe."
Before Crowley can stop him, Aziraphale has placed the offending plant within Crowley's Collection (not a garden, never a garden). The terror rises up within him, undulating under his skin, and with it the anger, but Aziraphale is smiling. He's chattering to the plant and it's all nonsense, something about Crowley making it all healthy again.
"You could've just miracled it better," Crowley says, casual as you'd like. The terror almost chokes him. He can't have this plant here, he can't have Aziraphale suggest anything as ridiculous as that—
"Oh, I know." Aziraphale is still smiling. He casts an admiring look at Crowley's other plants, which are actually at their best today: green and lush and beautiful. "Only, I thought you'd be able to do it better." He lightly touches a broad leafed fern. "It'll thrive here."
Crowley changes the topic.
Later, after a dinner at Aziraphale's favourite Tuesday restaurant, Crowley stands before his plants, glaring at the one Aziraphale brought him.
He could excommunicate it, but Aziraphale would know. He could miracle it better, but Crowley has never miracled any of his plants better before. He waters them and fertilises them and he talks to them, and he does everything he can to make his plants thrive through natural means (and shouting). This plant isn't special, just because Aziraphale gave it to him.
But it's there, so Crowley grudgingly gives it water and fertiliser. "Do not think this means anything," he snarls at the other plants. "Don't think for a second I'm going soft on you. The very moment any of you lot dare to wilt, you're out."
Aziraphale comes by the flat a lot more often these days. They talk about getting a cottage in the countryside. Or travelling. Seeing more of the planet—they've been on it six thousand years, but as it turns out, not even six thousand years is enough time to see everything.
"We don't have need for the arrangement anymore," Aziraphale says. "No more thwarting and suchlike. I quite like the idea of a cottage."
"What, like retirement?" The idea is amusing. An angel and a demon, retiring? Well, it's true. Aziraphale is no longer doing Heaven's bidding, and yet he's here. Alive and holy and Good.
And Crowley, well. He's no longer required to do little bits (or big bits) of evil here and there and all over. It strikes him that maybe that counts as Falling once more. First from Heaven, then from Hell—which begs the question: towards what?
"How lovely," Aziraphale is saying from behind Crowley somewhere. When Crowley looks, he sees that Aziraphale is admiring the plants. No, one plant. The plant. "Looking all peachy and happy. That's admirable work, Crowley."
Crowley doesn't answer, because if he does, there's a very real chance that the feelings crawling under his skin will slither out. He tries anyway. "All I did was threaten them." It's a lie. He hasn't threatened Aziraphale's plant, not even once.
"That's not very nice."
"I'm not very nice." Crowley shrugs. Looks away, pretending that anything but his Collection is more important right now.
"Well, I think they're lovely all the same," Aziraphale says, and comes back to sit.
It ends simply enough: With an Answer.
"Exactly like retirement."