let's say this is a celebration between Crowley Angst Day and the beginning of the pride month.
As is of the cannon, Crowley is 7 years older than Halt. And in medieval times, lives were much more fragile, life spans shorter.
—
Halt doesn’t look like much at first. skinny, half-feral, beard already coming in despite being barely into adulthood. Crowley teases him from the start, and Halt bites back every time. It's immediate, electric, dangerous. They're on missions together and they’re bickering like an old married couple after a week.
Neither of them is thinking about the far future. Why would they? They’ve got blades on their hips, arrows at the ready, and the certainty that they might not make it until tomorrow.
Crowley becomes commandant at 27. Too young, too burdened. Halt never says it, but he sees how the role chews at him. And even in their earlier years, before the burden, Crowley was always up before dawn, reading dispatches, writing reports, worrying about everything. It was natural for him to take this role, despite how much weight it was for one man.
Halt started going grey before he hit 30, which was ironic because Crowley, despite the years separating them, still had all his damn hair and it hadn’t gone even a bit silver yet. Halt grumbled about it but honestly? it suited him.
“You looked forty when you were twenty,” Crowley would tease him.
But then Crowley starts aging for real, and it wasn't so funny anymore.
Crowley turns 45, and for the first time, he needs help up from the ground after sparring. It’s subtle, blink and you’d miss it. Halt didn’t.
Crowley started to age hard and fast after 50. The job wore him down. Constant travel, constant conflict, constant stress. His mind remained as sharp as ever but his body started failing him, slowly, creeping in. His joints hated the cold, he got tired faster. Halt noticed him rubbing his knees after a longer travel.
The jokes completely stopped by then. They only serve now as a cruel reminder. They were no longer funny. Not when Halt began to feel the time speed up. The years slipping like sand between his fingers. It was watching the person you loved age faster than you. It was knowing the ending long before you were ready to see it, and you were helpless to stop it.
The years passed and Halt was still strong. Still deadly. The grey in his beard might've been white now, sure, but his hands were steady, his aim as flawless as ever.
And Crowley? Crowley was tired.
When Crowley turned 60, Halt brought him a bottle of something sharp and expensive, and they sat by the fire in silence for hours. That uncharacteristical, unsettling silence from Crowly. They didn’t toast. They didn’t make speeches. Just at one point, Crowley said, almost offhand,
“Never thought I’d get this far.”
Halt didn’t answer. He just reached over, poured them both another glass.
—
After everything. The wars, the battles, the betrayals, the years of danger, it doesn't happen with a sword, not a fight, not even a fall. It happened quietly.
Crowley, in bed, blanket pulled up. eyes open. a faint smile on his face.
Like he just remembered something funny and was about to tell Halt.
He just... stopped breathing. Gone. Just like that.
The man Halt had loved for over forty years - forty, they’d marked that milestone just last year, sitting beside a fire, when for one brief moment Halt had dared to whisper, “I’m glad we made it.”
The man he’d fought beside, lived for, bled for, let himself need, was gone.
And all Halt could think was: he didn’t say goodbye. There was no hand squeeze, no final word, no look. Suddenly they ran out of time.
Halt sat beside him for hours, didn’t touch the body. Just stared at him, because part of him, some stubborn, foolish, childish part, was still waiting.
Waiting for Crowley to blink, to twitch, to laugh and say, “I got you, didn’t I?”
But he didn't. He never would again.
Halt just sat there for hours. Hands still. heart pounding in his ears like war drums.
And the only thing, the only damn thought he had left in his mind was:
