I absolutely cannot stop thinking about the version of Crowley we get to see from before the Fall. He smiles differently, he speaks differently. There's so much oppenness in his expression. He loves what he does! Is genuinly mournful when he learns it will be destroyed.
Compared to the Crowley we see after years of solitude, abuse and treading on eggshells around his bosses. Closed off, furious, suspicious. I do truly believe that after he was called back to Hell in the graveyard that the next time Aziraphale saw him was in 1862, when he asked, in that feeble, broken down voice, for Holy Water. He has spent so much of his existence in survival mode, is desperate to cling to the peace he's found.
Nina describes him as the "hard bitten one" who can't trust anyone ever again, and it sort of gobsmacked me that she could see that!!! that Neil Gaiman would have someone say that!!!!! But, of course, she is in many ways the same.
Whatever happened to Crowley after the Laudanum incident certainly wasn't a one-off. He was certainly punished again and again for deeds seen as too good. Enough so that when he is called kind, when he is called good, when he is thanked, his response is violent panic.
It's easy for us to believe that maybe he's always been like that. But no. Gaiman gave us incontestable proof that there was a time where Crowley smiled freely, where he looked with wide and joyful eyes at the parts of the world he created. The difference from that, to the numb and deeply lonely Crowley that we see with Job, the anxious, repressed and angry Crowley that we see in the present day, is one of the biggest tragedies of all.