Archive of Our Own

Their life in South Downs was only two months new. Aziraphale had spent much of this time arranging and rearranging his books. Crowley had tended to weeding out the garden area and planting spring vegetation. Crowley would sleep every few days out of habit and they’d share tea in the mornings while Crowley watched Aziraphale shove more than one’s fair share of crumpets into his mouth. 

Aziraphale had sighed longingly out the window one morning about poached eggs and Crowley disappeared for an entire afternoon at that. He’d returned with a chicken that Aziraphale named Bertha. She pecked at the both of them, not seeming to like either of them much, but also dutifully ate the invasive bugs in the garden. Caring for Bertha became another part of his morning routine and then he’d take a walk along the beach, losing himself there for several hours. 

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t tell his seemingly listless wanderings worried Aziraphale. Words never passed between them on it, but more often in the past weeks the angel would be waiting on the back porch. Aziraphale would scan the beach for the familiar cut of a lanky figure with fire touched hair, a balled up fist lowering from his chest only when he became visible again. Aziraphale would then disappear into the cottage before Crowley made it up the trail from the beach. 

Crowley didn’t need to see Aziraphale’s expressions in these moments with perfect clarity to know how it was crinkled. How those teeth fussed at a lower lip. Crowley didn’t need to see anything to feel the discourse he was causing between them by straying too far. By disappearing from sight for even such a short expanse of time. Aziraphale would say nothing when Crowley stepped in besides, “Mind the sand - use the rug, please.” and Crowley would nod, scrape his feet clean. 

There’d be no talk of his time away. Instead they’d drink some wine, maybe go out on the town for a proper meal. There was never any talk about all of this . 

Each day without word, Crowley would return to the ocean. He would ask it questions. The ocean never answered, of course, but sometimes it's waves would lick at his toes - at his ankles - in just such a way that it felt like acknowledgement, if not an answer. She’d created the oceans before anything else of this Earth, these waters as ancient as he was. 

He liked to think, a little more now than before, that he could still feel Her in these waters. 

He could no longer pray, could no longer call upon that power to talk to Her and to try was agony beyond anything Hell could come up with. He knew, he’d tried - just once. That never stopped him from talking to Her, but the things he told Her were always private. Many damning because too often he questioned Her. Too often he doubted Her. 

And still too much he loved Her all the same. 

Why had She put them here? Why had She splintered them? Why had She created his very soul with this emptiness that could never be filled? Why had She instead attempted to cover these open wounds, these raw nerves, with human substance so that they never felt right with themselves? Without themselves. 

He closes his eyes, tilts his head back into the gentle brush of wind about him, and wonders when it was he’d realized why this empty place within him yawns open as wide as the ocean. Had he known it then? Even on the wall of Eden? Known it and told himself it wasn’t true. Filed it away to only be thought of centuries upon centuries later? After they crossed paths again and again. After their courses always pointed due toward one another. 

After he’d already been swept away by this very human type of love. 

A love, he knew, that ruined any chance of being what they’d once been. If that was at all even possible. So he lived with this crippling ache and didn’t say a word. Not of what they were, what they’d once been, or how he felt. 

But as their lives lined up, as their spaces grew closer, there was a torrent building in him as surely as a storm at sea. He disappeared to let it all out. Best not to drown them both in this mess of him. In this shipwreck he’d made of himself by wanting what was his , by making, but in a way he couldn’t have. In corrupt ways. Consuming ways. 

“I wish you’d laid out a plan for what I do from here! How I’m supposed to tell him! You’re such a damn child sometimes!” He shouts, demanding to be heard over the ocean and the wind. 

The clouds rolling in from the East are dark, full of storm, and the boom of thunder answers him. As if She is saying don’t talk back to me . Or maybe it’s just her saying I’m here . He doesn’t know. He’ll never again know what it is She’s saying and so he can only speculate. 

He can only hope and dream . Things no other demon can do because there is no other demon like him. Just as there is no other angel like Aziraphale. There’s a reason for that, and while he’s long since sussed out the answer in his head, he’s never had the courage to say it out loud. 

There is the clearing of someone’s throat to his left. It is loud and purposeful, meant to be heard, and it makes Crowley startle visibly. When he turns to blink at the angel standing several feet away he feels the change in the atmosphere before the first, fat drops of rain hit his face. Aziraphale is holding a towel, those seawater eyes full of worry, that lower lip chewed red. Still there is a stubborn question in the very look the other wears. 

Crowley swallows and works on constructing a lie in his head. Something he can use to save face. Instead all he can think about is the rain, the wall, a wing. A moment of kindness millennia ago. A moment when two halves had found each other and said, without realizing a thing, I will stand beside you. I will shelter you. We are the same . Crowley tries to pull up a lopsided grin. One of those sorts he’s long since perfected to hide a moment of weakness. 

“Hey. Was about to head back. Lost track of time a bit. Dinner again at that little hole in the wall we found sound good, angel?” 

Deflect, don’t let him see you shaken. Don’t let him see you lost and needy. Don’t fuck this all up.

The towel in Aziraphale’s hand flicks to an umbrella following a short snap, and the angel raises it over Crowley’s head. 

“That sounds lovely, Crowley. I’d like very much to try their canapes this time. What was that about needing to tell me something, my dear?” Aziraphale asks, his voice soft beneath the patter of rain against canvas. 

Plague rot eyes flick up and that sensation of creeping into the past nestles in more soundly. An angel’s nervous smile, feathers barely touching his hair. It had been quite long then, his hair, and he’s begun to let it grow again now. Barely there curls brushing at his shoulders. It has been nearly a full year’s time since the end of the world that wasn’t. 

Crowley’s lungs have constricted, maybe his heart too. The casual tone Aziraphale wears now is deceptive - Crowley knows better - and yet he feeds into it like a starving man anyway. He shrugs a shoulder, all bone and sharp angles, his mouth twitching. 

His fingers reach up, search for the line of his sunglasses and he remembers belatedly they aren’t there. He has left his greatest defense back home, on the coffee table beside a tea stained, angel-winged cup. Crowley swallows and makes himself speak. 

“I..” He pauses, casts a glance out at the ocean as if it might give him an answer for once. 

There is nothing there but steadily churning waves and storm clouds. 

“ ..ducks.” He says, stupidly, his own expression giving away his confusion on his choice of topic. Still he presses on, this the only aid he has to him now for a diversion. 

“Saw a duck, earlier, taking a dip. Strange thing to be mucking about here, ducks.” He keeps his tone conversational, still looking out at the ocean. Next, the sand beneath his feet, the little bubbles there that are crabs settling in. 

Anywhere but Aziraphale’s face as they share the space beneath that umbrella. Crowley wishes it was a heavenly wing. 

“Ducks?” Aziraphale questions, confusion mirrored on that face, tone flat. 

“So, canape, is it? I heard they make their puff from scratch.” Crowley presses on. 

He rather hopes these won’t prove as good as the sweetbread Aziraphale had tried the last time or they’d be finding a repeat performance of the angel buying out the whole lot for a week and taking it home. He supposes the ingredients for canapes, at least, are easier to replenish than those of Aziraphale’s previous fancy at the little French cafe. Food, he knows, is usually a perfect deterrent from any deeper and potentially dangerous conversation. 

Aziraphale sighs, reaches up and touches one of Crowley’s curls so gently. “Dearest, if you can’t tell me yet, I can wait. I just worry for you, coming down here like you do every day.” 

That voice is as soft as his touch, a smile in those eyes. It’s almost too much. This gentle touch, this gentle allowance. This clear we can let it go for now . It’s not that he expects Aziraphale to be combative. It’s rare that the angel is when it’s not matters of the literary sense - or food. Aziraphale can be down right touchy where good food is involved. That isn’t the point here. 

The point is… he’s being allowed that escape and the guilt mounts higher. 

“I’ve heard wonderful things about their canapes, and I checked last time we went - they have that red we like in.” Aziraphale adds, a genuine look of pleasure breaking through that concern. “Why don’t we go have lunch, and then after we can have a bottle or two. You can tell me all about these… ducks .” 

Crowley wants to fling this guilt he feels at Her. Why had She made him with this capability? Why had She decided it was him to harbor this feeling? Along with so many others no demon should know. 

Before he’s realized they’d even been walking his step has slowed, stopped, left Aziraphale a mere two paces ahead of him. The rain picks up, easily gathering in his hair, yet it’s his expression that looks weather worn. 

“Are you happy? I mean - here. With me? Erk, with the place.” Crowley waves a hand toward the beach then up the way toward the cottage. Not at himself. 

He casts his eyes down at the sand again, but without his glasses nothing of his crippling worry is hidden in the space between them. The space that he has created just by trying to get himself sorted. 

How can he tell Aziraphale he comes here to… cry . Well, cry out , at the very least, when the space between them - this little space remaining - feels insurmountable. When this want of himself threatens to spill out between them and he needs a place to throw the excess. These leaking parts. The problem with the sea is he never throws it far enough. The surf always brings it back to pile over his feet like a tangle of kelp. 

Aziraphale has turned back toward him, that perfect brow creased again. 

“I’ve never been happier, Crowley.” There’s a simple sincerity to those words, and Crowley ignores the way Aziraphale’s knuckles are white around the umbrella handle. 

If Aziraphale is happy, if this is enough, he can keep these awful parts hidden. He’s done it for six thousand years, he should be able to do it now - but they’ve never been this close. Never shared their spaces so soundly. The ache he’d once stomached his way through just keeps rising. 

“I love the cottage. I love the village. I love you .” Aziraphale stresses. 

There is a visible release of air from Crowley’s lungs. A drainage, in a way, as his shoulders relax and his spine dips. All he wants is for his angel to be happy. With him, of course, but he’ll take that happiness in whatever way he can get. This feeling doesn’t have to be the same. They don’t have to be the same on everything, even if at their cores they fundamentally are. Or were. He’s not sure anymore, though he is sure he’s fucked that all up somewhere. He’s good at that, buggering everything off to hell. 

Crowley takes a step forward, lets those words wash over him, casting some of those doubts out into the ocean. He knows it won’t be so kind to him, the debris will rush back soon enough - his attempts ever futile. Their love is not the same, can’t be.

“I thought you were happy as well, but perhaps I was wrong?” Aziraphale asks next, fusses, and Crowley feels everything get further lost. “If - if it’s something I’ve done, Crowley, please tell me. I’ll work on being less selfish - and stop scolding you for getting dirt on the floors…” 

Now he’s scrambling to pick up the pieces of this shipwreck he’s created, but he thinks he’s missing the treasure for the broken bits of hull. He closes the distance and grips onto the part of the umbrella just below Aziraphale’s hand. His eyes have gone wild, more yellow than white, and he sputters over his words before he can make sense of them in his head. 

“Aziraph - angel , no. You haven’t - it’s not… wrong. There’s nothing wrong. You don’t have to change, not ever . Not you. It’s.. it’s just.. Me. It’s me. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to say… anything. Nothing . I’m happy , angel, I swear. I’m always happy when I’m with you - I just.. My head’s a mess, sometimes. I don’t want you to have to..” 

Deal with it. Drown in it. Don’t look too close at it. Don’t start questioning, angel. You’ll leave if you question too much. If you dig too deep into this black hole of me . 

Crowley swallows and looks away again, face contorted in stress and too many things held down on a burning tongue. 

“Just thought maybe I’d find some answers out here, that’s all.” 

But of course there were none. Not for him. No matter how long or how loud he cried for them. She’d always been silent to his questions. 

Aziraphale steps in closer again, reaches up to touch Crowley’s cheek. “My dear boy. Crowley, your head has always been a mess, darling. I’ve known this for quite some time now, but you do still do the most clever, wonderful things despite that. You put up with me and my needs. How could I ever back away from caring for you and yours? Now, I know I’ve done some things that weren’t right by you, and I do intend to make up for them, Crowley - so please. Please , my dear, don’t feel the need to hide anymore. Not from me.” 

Crowley focuses on your head has always been a mess and well, if that isn’t the stark truth of things. He knows Aziraphale doesn’t mean it in any sense of scolding, or even ill will. It’s just how things are. The two of them are, in so many ways, a mess by design. Yet he always feels most centered when their paths intersect. 

It is only this quiet life, side by side, that has him truly crawling out of his skin in ways he just isn’t ready to show yet. In ways he fears might prove too much . Aziraphale puts up with much from him, forgives so many things, and Crowley doesn’t want to ever find the edge where that all buckles in. 

For a second he closes his eyes, just lets himself enjoy the touch of Aziraphale’s hand, cants his head into it a fraction. He won’t sink into that hold like he wants to, however. He doesn’t dare show how this love between them is different. 

“Alright.” Crowley agrees, too easily. 

He’ll just have to come up with some new way to cast off the weight when it becomes too much. He’s clever, if nothing else. He’s certain he can suss this out too. Whatever Aziraphale needs to feel at ease, he’ll figure this out. 

He lets go of the umbrella, his fingers twitching only once. He wants to keep clinging on, but he instead shoves both hands into his pockets and starts them down the winding trail of beach toward the cottage. There’s no way they’ll escape the heavier rain if they don’t miracle themselves forward, but he doesn’t make the effort. Instead he presses on, thinking he likely looks a bit like a sodden, sulking rat. 

Still he wonders - how long until the largest pieces of this shipwreck come to shore? How long until the dead hopes, like bodies, come floating along behind them? He’s made this love an ocean inside him and unruly water always has been impossible to contain. 

Aziraphale sighs when they finally step up under the porch, closing the umbrella and giving it a light shake. “We ought to wait for the rain to pass, hadn’t we? Come inside and dry up, Crowley. No sense in half drowning yourself.”

Crowley pauses on the last step and speaks before he’s thought anything through. 

“What would you do… if I was drowning?” The question passes, unwanted from his mouth before he can stop it. 

He blames the weather, blames the atmosphere, blames his own infernal mind never knowing when to stop. When to put on the brakes - hey, don’t say that, you’ll spill too much. You’ll break things . 

Crowley’s expression twists, it’s far too open after his slip up, and how much he wants to take that question back. He rights his features on his face, and steps forward like it never happened. Like he hasn’t just ripped himself open. Taken the scalpel to his chest and pulled back the layers to where it’s written I’m not put together right, don’t you see? Don’t you see where you fit? Right here, beneath my ribs, that’s your place. He’ll never let these words out. Some things are better left unknown, even if they’re too big to contain. 

He sets a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder as he passes, comfort there but also a request. Don’t say anything. Let that sweep away with the tide of everything else. Let it go. The touch is there and gone quickly, Crowley sliding along into the front room, dripping on the rug. He is dripping and shivering, unaware because he can make his voice do things - make his shoulders sit certain ways that create an illusion. Especially for those who want to believe it. See me here? I can look put together. I can look centered. I can handle this so that you never have to. So that you never have to experience this wreck of me.

“Imagine it will pass soon, the storm. Let me get changed. I’ll get the car.” Crowley says as he snaps his fingers and Aziraphale is dry again. 

Not a bit of the angel is out of place, and yet Crowley is still a wet, sopping thing. Not a bit of it gets on the floor as he steps off the rug. He’ll keep this storm on him, every drop of it contained. Mind the sand , Aziraphale liked to say, use the rug . And Crowley needs Aziraphale to feel peace in knowing he can do this. He can leave his mess at the door. He won’t track it in here - not a speck, not a grain, not a drop. 

“Very well then.” Aziraphale says behind him, and a hand reaches out to stop Crowley from getting much further. “For the record, my dear - I would, of course, help you. In any and every way that I can.” 

Crowley realizes in this answer he’d been a fool to think Aziraphale might be too meek to pick at him on it. Often Aziraphale is too afraid of causing ripples to speak so loudly. More often now, after the end that wasn’t. There’s so much still up in the air, too many uncertain things, and he thinks Aziraphale has been trying extra hard to not ruffle any feathers . It was this behavior he’d banked on, and now he’s floundering. He first stares down at those fingers, watching well trimmed nails hold tight to his coat. 

“What if… there is no way to help me?” Crowley finds himself asking, his voice too quiet, unnaturally lacking confidence. 

What if helping me breaks you? He doesn’t dare vocalize this because he thinks he already knows the answer. It’s the same he would give. I would still do everything in my power. Break every part of me to save you . He would, he has. This is the already broken mess of them standing here. 

Crowley sighs and shakes his head before Aziraphale can even work out a response. Carefully he raises his hand, first to squeeze over the tops of Aziraphale’s own, and then to gently dislodge those fingers. 

“Nothing to help, nothing to worry about, angel. Sorry I worried you. I’ll try not to do that.” And he would try. He was swearing it to himself here and now that he would try harder. 

Aziraphale didn’t deserve to feel even a single ounce of loss. He’d keep all that in himself, locked tight. He could shoulder this - or else he’d just make himself be able to. 

“If you say so, my dear. Just.. do be careful.” Aziraphale settles on, that familiar touch of concern to his words as Crowley ascends the stairs and disappears around the corner. 

• - 

Stricken . Adjective. 

To be seriously affected by an undesirable condition or unpleasant feeling. 

Stricken seems an appropriate word for what he is feeling as he watches Aziraphale storm from the car after carefully - too carefully - closing the door of the Bentley. Aziraphale then disappearing into the cottage without a word. 

It had been like this since he’d asked for the check. Since they’d risen to leave the quaint - Aziraphale’s words, not his - restaurant the town over. It had then been a drive full of short, testy replies before silence had settled in. It had nipped at his patience when Aziraphale insisted nothing was the matter and then had become downright troubling. 

He sits in the car for longer than he cares to think on, gripping the steering wheel as he tries to figure out where he’d gone wrong. What he could have done, or said, but he’s been so lost in himself the past month since the incident on the beach that he can’t even remember what all today even entailed. He’s been so on edge recently, but also still so listless and out of place. Without Someone to shout at he doesn’t know how to keep hold of this giant mess inside him. How can he hold onto these secrets? 

On the end of an exhale that bursts through his teeth, he smacks the steering wheel and finally exits the car. He’s allowed discourse into their sanctuary, into this place of peace , and now he has to either find a way to fix it, or live with it. Everything he touches breaks eventually. 

When he finally enters the cottage there is no immediate sign of his angel. Aziraphale is not in the front room, nor the sitting room. Instead Crowley can hear the creaking sound of wood being trod on and he follows it toward the back of the cottage. Aziraphale has near endless shelves and spaces for books about the whole cottage, but there is one room that is meant for his rarer finds. It is in here that he finds Aziraphale, teetering on a rolling ladder and… dusting . 

Crowley walks right into a great cloud of dust and coughs, waving a hand furiously in front of his face. “ Angel - what in the name of - what in the hel - Aziraphale watch the -” 

He stumbles forward to catch a book as it careens off the shelf as Aziraphale turns to look at him. Crowley can see the clear signs of a scoff and maybe even fury in that face. Aziraphale who isn’t talking to him. Who isn’t even looking at him, merely in his general direction. 

Aziraphale who is cleaning . 

Crowley can’t keep the distress from his own face - a broken thing trying so hard to pretend like he is a whole piece but never can be. 

“ Angel, what did I do? Tell me, whatever it was, I .. I apologize? I’ll fix it? Would you get down from there? You’ll fall.” 

Aziraphale, who had been wrist deep in his anthologies brandishes an old-fashioned feather duster in his direction. Crowley notes the coat is gone, Aziraphale’s sleeves rolled up, but that furious look has at least faded a little. 

“I will not fall. I am perfectly capable of dusting my books without incident, Crowley. And what would you care if I did, anyway, hm? After all, were not together.” Aziraphale snaps, waspish, allowing the true heart of the matter to show. 

Crowley now understands his slip up from dinner. “That’s not my husband. We’re not together.” It had seemed a simple phrase at the time, casual and careless as he responded to their waiter’s nosiness. 

“It isn’t as if you’re my husband , so you’ve no reason to be so concerned over me, have you? You’ve made that quite clear this evening, thank you.” Aziraphale doesn’t miss a beat, turning to face the bookshelf again. 

Crowley is, to the best of his ability, trying to hold onto the ladder, attempting to make certain this exhausting angel doesn’t actually lose his footing - and if he does, Crowley can be there to catch him. He sets the book he’d caught aside with one hand, the other still on the ladder, and tries not to let the whip Aziraphale has just lashed him with split his throat wide. His eyes have gone round, too expressive where he knows Aziraphale can see them from his current perch. There is an incredible amount of hurt there. 

What would he care? What would he not care about when it came to Aziraphale? What of him would not be so wrapped up in caring for this angel that there was anything else left of him? Crowley works his jaw and then takes a pointed step back. A particular shift happens in his limbs, closing himself off visibly, because he can’t grasp the concept of why Aziraphale is so upset over this. Gritting his teeth, his shoulders set in taunt lines, Crowley purposely pushes his glasses further up his nose so he can hide behind them. 

“ Marriage is for humans, angel. I can’t marry you. I can’t even walk into a bloody church for more than five minutes to begin exchanging vows - let alone survive a holy union. What do you want me to do, Aziraphale? You want me to lie then? Want to play pretend ? This is ssstupid. ” He spits, anger slicing off his tongue, turning his words from hiss to snarl and back again. 

Aziraphale splutters, seemingly incised beyond words at Crowley’s response. This has never stopped Aziraphale from pressing forward. “You - you idiot, Crowley. This isn’t about us being married. It’s the twenty first century, for goodness sake. Marriage is hardly the be-all, end-all.” 

Crowley attempts to knock these words from the air with a wave, wants to send them down - down to hell where they belong because the whole of this argument is bullshit. He focuses on the part that matters to him. “ Don’t tell me when and how I can care about you. That isn’t for you to decide.” He snaps, turning on his heel with full intent to leave the room now. 

Maybe even leave the cottage entirely. He’ll leave Aziraphale to his books and go for a walk down the beach. He promised he wouldn’t, that he wouldn’t stray too far away, but he thinks shoving his head under the waves and screaming for a while is better than dealing with whatever the fuck this is. 

“I’m not telling you how you can care about me, you silly demon, but you likewise aren’t allowed to be irritated that I’m upset when I feel as if my own care for you is being… degraded .” Aziraphale settles on, turning to rest his head against the spines of some particularly old poetry collections. 

“If you have no intentions of being - being with me, I’d like to know now, please. I’d thought, well, I’d rather thought we already were together - but you made it quite clear we weren’t on the same page with that today. I’d like to know where you stand on things, before I go and… and let myself think.” Aziraphale falters, daring a glance up at him now. “Oh, you can go scream at the ocean after you answer me, Crowley. Please. Just - tell me what you want from me so I can set my expectations where they ought to be.” 

Crowley pauses in the doorway, Aziraphale’s words stripping away any possibility of his escape. Making certain his back is firmly facing the other he works his jaw, then his face into a firm line of contained emotion. What does that even mean? What does any of this even mean? Crowley moves to smack a hand against the door frame but stops, lets it hang there before the whole of him visibly deflates. How can he possibly hold this all in? He balls his hand instead into a fist and just sets it there against the door frame, letting his head hang forward. 

“I am with you, angel. I’m not anywhere else, am I? What isn’t clear, Aziraphale? What page am I missing?” He asks, suddenly so tired. 

What is it Aziraphale is letting himself think? What is it that Aziraphale has spun of them in that head of his? That fanciful, daydreaming mind that liked to forget they were other far too often and only seemed to remember when it was painful for all involved. 

Finally Crowley turns, slowly, looking across the room at the other. Still he doesn’t remove his glasses and doesn’t unclench his fist. He is tense and unhappy, every line of his body displaying this, but when he finally speaks there is a heartbreaking honesty to his words. 

“All I’ve ever needed is for you to be happy, Aziraphale.” He doesn’t say want . 

He will never say want when it comes to this angel, because that word is far too dangerous. There are too many ways he wants and he knows, likely, most of them are vile. At least for how deeply, how all consuming those wants are. Still, they are only wants and not needs. Needs are different and he stands by what he’s said here. The only thing he has ever needed and will ever need is Aziraphale’s happiness. No matter what he has to do to inspire it. 

 “Telling humans that their assumptions aren’t welcome isn’t degrading you.” He adds, mutters out, his voice too small. He’s become a petulant child now, his eyes on the floor beneath him. 

“No, my dear, you’re quite right. It was a poor choice of words on my part. It just felt.. Very much like my feelings for you were being forcibly thrust back into my face, I’m afraid. Though I’m sure you didn’t intend it.”  

Aziraphale sighs then in a way that Crowley has long since come to understand means a monologue is following. He wants to run for what feels like his own damn life , but he stays rooted to the spot so he can listen. 

“Certainly we live together, and spend most of our time together - but I thought it was something more than just… going through the motions, Crowley. I thought we were more than that. I don’t know how you wish to define it, if the human ideology of love is too mundane for you and the matter of divine love too… archaic, or perhaps painful .” Aziraphale falters again, as if trying to piecemeal his thoughts into coherency. 

“I, well, I rather thought we were together. ” Aziraphale pauses, steps down the ladder a few rungs until his feet find the ground, his knuckles white against the wood. “We bought a cottage together and moved to the countryside. For heaven’s - for pity’s sake. I am happy, Crowley. I’ve never been happier than living here, with you.” Aziraphale reminds him, but the wringing of his hands tells Crowley he’s not yet done having his say.

“I just - I don’t wish to continue forward with incorrect expectations of our relationship. If we are to be nothing more than we currently are, then I - well, I will be happy with that, just as I am now. But if we were to be something more … if there is even the slightest chance of us becoming something more… then I’d like to know if I can keep holding on to these feelings, or if perhaps I should take a turn screaming at the ocean.” 

Every word Aziraphale is saying brings him pain and the minute expressions on his face give it away. Each way Aziraphale clearly wishes for them to be makes this ache - this rising storm - thrash him apart. He’d asked Aziraphale what he would do if he admitted he was drowning and Crowley doesn’t want to test it. He’s been trying to keep a lid on this expansive feeling, these secrets wrapped within it. 

Expression twisting Crowley moves forward, snatching Aziraphale’s wrist and dragging him along behind him out of the room. Down the hall and out the front door onto the porch that is lit only by a small light. Without a word, not budging an inch with his hold, he pulls Aziraphale down the cobbled walkway and onto the sandy trail down toward the beach. He says nothing, but his face is contorted in concentration as well as anger and hurt. There is also determination in the way it’s set. 

He feels Aziraphale let go of their joined hands only when Crowley has loped several steps into the gentle waves. Aziraphale’s silent refusal to get his clothing waterlogged, but Crowley keeps on until he is waist deep. The night around them as barely settled in, only just enough light left to see the shadow of him there. Crowley’s voice, when it breaks the calm, is loud and clear. His shouts not ever meant for the ocean. 

“Do you see what you’ve made of us? Do you see what happens when you make games of creation?! You left us here, like this, and look how we’ve tried to fill in the gaps! I’ll tell him.” He threatens, pulling his glasses from his face and tossing them into the water. 

He has more pairs, this is a statement. 

He’ll make Her see him. Make Her look at all he’s become wherever She is. He knows he looks crazy, but what Aziraphale has told him sounds so much like what he’s been desperate to say but held back for so long. He feels both lost and emboldened. 

“I’ll tell him right now, just like this, if you’re not going to give me any answers!” Crowley quiets, waits, and watches the sky. 

He holds himself up as the ocean rolls gentle still. Nothing comes. Not a cloud, not a streak of lightning, or a boom of thunder. Not even a change in the water’s motion. There is just the soft sounds of a quiet evening, a crazed demon screaming blasphemy, and a confused angel on the shore. Crowley turns around, eyes glowing yellow as full moons in the dark and throws his arms out wide. 

“Crowley, please - what are you on about?” Aziraphale half pleads, frustrated. 

If She won’t provide the answers, he will. 

“We’re more than a four letter word, angel. Don’t you understand that? But if that’s what you need to hear, fine. I love you. I love you , Aziraphale. I’ve been telling myself from the moment we met I couldn’t love you like this - more than anything else - but I do. Human language, angelic language - fuck , every language doesn’t have a word for how big this feeling is I have for you. I… I’ve been drowning in it, angel… but I didn’t want you to drown with me.” He admits, arms lowering back to the water. 

He rather wishes a strong tide would come and wash him away for how raw he feels now. 

Aziraphale’s cheeks have flushed, those ever wringing hands falling to his sides. For a heartbeat there is no motion - no sound between them - before Aziraphale rushes forward into the water. 

“For goodness sake, Crowley. You really must learn to use your words every once and a while.” The space between them lessens, Crowley pushing forward to meet his angel. 

Crowley isn’t sure what’s to come of his outburst. Part of him still wonders if She’ll smite him again, but he recognizes the backwards hope in that. Still craving any acknowledgement. As he and Aziraphale close the space between them, he reminds himself of what really matters. The two of them, together . He knows he’s done wrong by Aziraphale for what he’d said in the restaurant. Knows that he’ll be making up for it for weeks - maybe months. He’ll do so without an ounce of fuss. 

Aziraphale raises a hand to his cheek and unwarranted tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He raises a hand to cup it tight around Aziraphale’s own and holds back his snark on how Aziraphale ought to know he’s not any good with words. It’s why he’s made the rest of himself so expressive - like his eyes are now. Soft and wondering, but still so scared. 

“My darling, don’t you know I already was ? Am?” Aziraphale asks, smiling, and it’s that smile he remembers from a church. A smile from a park, from the Ritz. A smile that means everything. 

Crowley curls his other hand around the both of theirs and brings the lot of it to his mouth, kisses at the angel’s knuckles and lets a breath out over their skin. How does he use his words here? How can he lift the lid on these secrets carefully? He continues to kiss Aziraphale’s fingers for a moment before murmuring quietly into the scant space between them. 

“Together these hands have made stars.” He informs Aziraphale, working more of these gentle kisses into the pads of each finger. These forms they use now haven’t precisely done such things, but he’s not interested in arguing semantics. 

A thumb brushes over the sharp line of Crowley’s cheekbone and Aziraphale’s smile is blinding in its intensity. 

“Together?” Aziraphale repeats, mild and curious, but not doubting. 

“It’s alright if you don’t remember.” Crowley murmurs back, lifting his head to press a kiss this time to Aziraphale’s temple. 

He lets his lips linger there, waits for any sign around them that they’ll be punished for being this way. There is still nothing and the urge to kiss Aziraphale in the way he’s always wanted to becomes harder to ignore, bordering now on impossible. 

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice is soft again as he leans into him, closes his eyes and enjoys this tender moment between them. “What do I not remember, my dear?” 

“ Us .” Crowley whispers, his voice barely audible over the gentle crest of waves around them. 

He’s still afraid to say it out loud for all his bluster a moment ago. He has memories of before . Memories beyond the garden wall. Of when he’d been an angel and it’s wholly unfair of Her to make him the bearer of them only. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe this too is his punishment. He is not wrong, at least, in his understanding that the two of them had - once - been the same. He doesn’t know how to broach it or if he should. 

Crowley pulls Aziraphale’s other hand up next, laces their fingers together and holds on - not quite for dear life. He presses his forehead there into the angel’s hair and thinks. He’s not great with words but maybe he can pull up a bit more honesty. 

“Do you ever… feel like part of you is missing? Like you’re not.. Made right? Do you ever wonder why we’re different ?” 

Why they behaved unlike their own. Why they melded in with humanity so seamlessly at times. Why they’d even been able to survive in one another’s corporeal forms. Aziraphale is clever, when he wants to be, but Crowley isn’t sure the angel has ever truly pondered what it all means. He can only hope the answer won’t be too much for Aziraphale to handle. 

“Well - yes, I suppose. I always assumed that was simply, well, where you belonged.” Aziraphale informs him, so matter-of-fact about it. “That  - we fit together, somehow. Because of that. Because we’re - different than the others. ” 

Crowley feels his throat constrict and tears he’d thought he’d beaten back well in the corners of his eyes again. 

Where you belonged . Aziraphale says it so easily, all these things he’s known for eons . Says them into the air as if they are as easy as breathing. Without hesitation as though Aziraphale hasn’t ever needed to think about them. Crowley presses his face more firmly there against the angel’s temple and ignores the way a few tears smear into those curls - against soft skin. 

“There’s no one - nothing in all of existence that fits me like you do, angel. We’re made -” He hesitates on this. 

He can’t say made for each other , or even made of each other . He swallows and tries again. 

“She made us to fit just like this.” He decides instead, first squeezing Aziraphale’s hands and then dropping them so he can wrap his arms tight around the other. 

He pulls Aziraphale in until as much of them is touching as possible. He buries his face then into the angel’s shoulder to hide any more stray tears and thinks he does like the sound of what he’s just said. Their idea of love has become, perhaps, jumbled - too human - but he thinks it’s also made them stronger. They still fit and that’s all that matters to him. 

Aziraphale leans in closer to him and returns the hug and Crowley can feel the other’s smile against his hair. 

“You know, my dear, that’s quite possibly the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” Aziraphale sighs in a way Crowley recognizes only books of fanficul poetry tend to get. “I do believe you’re right. That’s quite a lovely thought, isn’t it?” 

Aziraphale presses a kiss to the top of his head, attempts to bury his face there in his hair, but Crowley raises his head before he can. Just enough to press his nose against the patch of skin beside Aziraphale’s ear, hissing there. 

“Ssshut it. I’m not romantic.” 

He refuses to be branded as such. Demons aren’t for romance, he’s just stating the facts. Aziraphale laughs. 

Crowley catches himself inhaling deep, taking in the scent of the ocean, but Aziraphale also. It’s intoxicating being this close and he squeezes Aziraphale tightly, maybe too tight, soaking in what little body heat is between them. The contact still doesn’t stop the shiver from racing down his spine and he lets out a sigh, tugging gently on Aziraphale’s arm. 

“S’cold. Let’s go home.” Crowley mumbles, giving into the desire to rub his nose where it is against the angel’s skin. 

All these new ways he can touch Aziraphale now. They can have this, can’t they? He knows they aren’t done talking, but at least they are - finally - a bit more on the same page. He thinks he has a whole lot of apologizing to do. 

Aziraphale’s hands curl into his jacket, not unlike a needy child. The two of them helpless to resist the comfort of one another. Aziraphale nods but doesn’t move an inch beyond how the ocean pushes at their bodies. They are flotsam and jetsam, the both of them. 

“Of course, dear. Let’s go home.” 

Ah , Crowley thinks - there’s what he’s been searching for among all this wreckage. 

Home .