Chapter Text
Crowley could feel the first pinpricks of it, like a wayward angler’s hook catching against his skin. Bloody heaven, he thought. What time was this now? The hundredth? The thousandth? Who even cares. In the cycles of falling in love with Aziraphale, immersing himself completely unto the point of drowning, and then consciously and painstakingly climbing back out of love with him, Crowley was a worn veteran.
This time it started again at Warlock’s eleventh birthday, with the affable magic act. He was never able to resist Aziraphale’s sheer enthusiasm for life, his willingness to play the fool in front of an audience simply for his own enjoyment. In Crowley’s world being cool was part of the job description. He was supposed to be tough, and punish anyone daring to paint him as ridiculous. The sorts of jokes he specialised in were the private kind, the ones that could make you sneer appreciatively, but never quite crack.
So sitting beside the angel in the car in the warm sunlight of the afternoon and feeling the buzz of his excitement, he had let his guard down for a moment. Just one. I wish I could kiss you, surfaced unbiddenly. I wish I could feel how soft and warm your skin is, and what it feels like when you smile. And that was it, the gargantuan slumbering creature that was his love for Aziraphale had woken up yet again, hooked and barrelling towards the surface.
He had spent the rest of the party distracting himself by looking at his watch, counting the seconds – this will not happen again, not happen, not-happen, tick-tock – and then doggedly (hah!) turned his focus exclusively on finding the Boy.
He was pathetic, this time more so than ever, he had asked Aziraphale to come away with him to the stars for crying out loud! He had done everything but beg on his knees, and been rejected, forcefully – there was never our side – and left to catch his breath again, stranded.
– –
Aziraphale thought he was getting rather good at this being-in-love stuff really. He was a connoisseur, refined, bottling up vintages of intimacy and enjoying them slowly and selectively. Ever since he had realised he was in love with Crowley in the 40’s, he had felt the slow burn of it smouldering under his skin.
From then on, certain moments between them had been miraculously well-preserved in his memory, allowing him to revisit them over and over. He would sit in the back of the bookshop, savouring the memories like slivers of a delicacy, huddling closer and closer to that fire within him until burnished with it. Aziraphale could live for days on one meeting, one phone call. Analysing it, looking for flickers of affection in his wily counterpart, and reliving them.
The latest one was that moment at the Ritz, – to the world, they had said. Had there been a look in Crowley’s eye then? Hard to tell, a softening of his countenance, perhaps, a certain emotion in his gaze, perhaps? Ah, this was getting ridiculous, he really had let himself go. In the emotional aftermath of the end of the world that wasn’t, his feelings had gone from a friendly hearth fire to something that ought to be contained, really, for propriety’s sake if nothing else.
You better think of something right now or I’ll never speak to you again. That had been a tad too trite, maybe? He winced when thinking of it, and how he had worn his heart on his sleeve, and whether Crowley had caught on. That Crowley would be up for exploring something of a, ahem, carnal variety was something he had suspected for a while, the man was after all a demon. Yet, for Aziraphale, his feelings regarding Crowley were inextricably and gloriously complicated and wound up in layers and ribbons of love and affection – and there was no way that was reciprocated.
Which was why he needed to practice self-control, stomp out some of the brighter burning flames, and learn to rejoice in the embers. If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me, and all that angelic nonsense.
– –
It is in these rather ironically aligned states of mind that the two beings in question now find themselves driving along a country lane. Aziraphale is on map reading duty, a rather pastorally human habit that the angel wishes to do more of in his life, and Crowley is trying to convince him to use Apple maps (one of his better additions to hell’s score card). So far, he has been unsuccessful.
“Come on, angel you can’t possibly be granddad for the rest of eternity.”
“Thanks to you, dear, I can do precisely that, and I intend to enjoy it all the more.” Aziraphale says batting away Crowley’s hand with the map with frustrating amounts of (if you are Crowley) precision. He is having trouble schooling his features, however, and his small smile threatens to spread wider.
“Unless you want me to pester you every day, you better adopt some technical know-how, you luddite.” Crowley decides to divide his attention in two, one half of him commanding his car to keep driving, and the other redoubling his attempts to yank the map out of Aziraphale’s hands.
The angel is starting to giggle now, squirming out of Crowley’s grasp. “You say that as though it’s not exactly what I’d want!” With that statement comes a meaningful glance, maybe a bit too meaningful.
They both pause, and Crowley knows he is supposed to quip something in return, something to diffuse the tension and return them to where they’d always been.
But he can’t think of anything. It’s like he’s a bottle full of feelings, and if he cracks the lid even just a little to respond the whole cork will come off and he’ll end up spilling his guts all over Aziraphale and his tartan bow-tie.
So he just stares. And his up until know immaculate sense of control flounders.
A shadow in his peripheral catches his eye. It’s a deer who, doing a spot of evening grazing, is caught unawares and bolts across the lane. Crowley stomps on the brakes. His hands grab for the steering wheel. He tries to swerve, Oh shit oh no, and for one moment he entirely forgets he is an infernal being, forgets he has supernatural powers, forgets he can intervene in the fabric of reality and in a split-second becomes just a person in a car looking on in horror at the world. The last thing he notices before the thud is the look of fear in the doe’s face – she is golden in the sunlight.
– –
Aziraphale is a bit miffed at the rude interruption to a conversation that’s taken a curious turn, and at the thought of having to commit a revivifying miracle on what was supposed to be a lazy afternoon. He expects to have to convince Crowley to stop the car, and expects him to begrudgingly do so (“circle of life, angel”), and expects him to stomp his feet as the angel gently breathes life back into the beautiful creature on the side of the road.
What he doesn’t expect is for Crowley to freak out.
“Shit! Oh shit oh fuck oh no what have I done what have I done” Crowley is spilling a litany of curses and worry as he brings the Bentley to a screeching, stuttering, halt. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel and before Aziraphale can ask what the dickens is going on he has opened the door and is running back towards the lifeless deer.
For a couple of beats Aziraphale sits there in shock, not quite processing what has happened. That is until he realises he can hear something that sounds like, well, wailing? Surely it can’t be, he thinks, but is nonetheless pulled out of the car by his heartstrings.
Crowley is kneeling next to the doe, and his breaths are doing that funny thing where they sound so forced that they’re making a whistling sound. “What do I do? What do I do?” He keeps saying, rocking back and forth, shaking the poor creature as though she’ll stop this playing-dead thing she’s doing any moment now and burst back into life.
Aziraphale approaches gently, slowly, scared to startle his friend any more than necessary.
“Crowley?” No reaction. “Crowley, everything’s all right.” He reaches out to place a hand on Crowley’s arm. This seems to pop the strange bubble he’s in, and Crowley avoids the touch and instead stands up with a nervous, ferocious, energy.
“No! Nothing is all right!” He says, and Aziraphale notices his sunglasses have come off, and his eyes are blown wide. Crowley looks like he’s gone mad.
“You need to get away from me, angel.” At this Aziraphale tries to cut in because come on now, that’s a leap, but he is cut off before he can even begin. “This is what I do! I’m reckless, I lose control, and I get things killed. I got you killed, and you have no idea what they were going to do to you.” Crowley’s voice is faltering, he looks unhooked, as if some great tethering thing has let go of him and he’s free falling, a feather against a great gale force of wind. “You should go… You. I – What do I do? This beautiful thing, I killed it! I killed it.”
Aziraphale is beginning to feel like something else is going on here (he can be a very emotionally dense creature), but knows that there will be no figuring out of things whilst Crowley is panicking. So he, an angel of action, walks straight towards the sagging corpse lying in the ditch in the middle of Oxfordshire and gently bends down and places his hands on her. A moment or two later, and the doe is twitching back to life. “I’m so sorry love, we won’t do it again.” He says, and the doe holds his gaze remonstratively for a beat, before leaping with great power and force into the underbrush.
That’s one down, he thinks.
He turns towards Crowley, who is looking confusedly into the woods where the doe can no longer be seen. He looks a bit crumpled, as though all the air has gone out of him. Aziraphale thinks he is utterly, heartbreakingly, vulnerable.
“What was that all about?” Aziraphale inches closer, holding his hands out again. This time there is no resistance as he places his hands on both arms of his best friend, in a not-quite embrace.
Crowley inhales and stutters. Is that a sob? What is happening? But the demon’s eyes are shuttered, he is distancing himself, already drifting away, his mind somewhere out to sea. “I just... lost control I guess. I’m sorry.”
“Dearest, you don’t need to be in control around me, you know that right?” Aziraphale is trying to make eye contact, and Crowley is avoiding it. He’s gone firm yet limp in his grasp, as though Aziraphale could be holding onto anything, a piece of furniture, or a stone.
It hits him, then, that Crowley is ashamed. Crowley thinks he is a bad person, and not in the oh-I’m-a-demon tongue-in-cheek kind of way that he uses to tease. This runs much deeper. Crowley sees himself as the cause of the kind of bad that intrudes into their world, their bubble. As though he is tainted or cursed, bringing the wrath of the fates with him wherever he goes.
“…no? But when I’m not, I don’t know angel, when I’m not, bad things happen. To us. To you. I don’t know if I’m, you know, safe.”
Aziraphale sighs. Oh dear. This will involve a bit more convincing. But he cannot let Crowley see the world this way. It cannot stand. Crowley is the most wonderful, loyal, idealistic, dare-he-say-it, loving person Aziraphale has ever known. He makes a show of weighing his options for a moment, but deep-down he knows what he needs to do. To say. It feels a bit too much like jumping off a cliff.
“Darling,” Crowley looks up, the new endearment taking him by surprise. Their eyes meet. There’s a moment of dawning understanding on Crowley’s face. He’s catching on to where this is going, and looks maybe a bit frightened, Aziraphale thinks. (What Crowley is actually thinking is an entirely different matter, it’s something more along the lines of holy crap – where is this going?).
The angel steels himself. Oh, heck. Aziraphale thinks, come hell or high water (or both!).
“I love you unconditionally, you know that right?” He shakes Crowley gently, he wants to get it into his head, if nothing else. If the demon never speaks to him again, he at least wants him to know. He wants to take that look of burning shame in Crowley’s eyes and slake it, whatever that means.
He has enough good memories to live on anyway, enough vintages to last him for whatever time there’s left before the next Armageddon. To make his intentions absolutely clear, he slides his hand down to catch Crowley’s. Their fingers intertwine.
Crowley is quiet, processing. He looks down at their hands. For a breath nothing happens, and then Crowley’s thumb starts to stroke Aziraphale’s hand. The corner of his mouth turns up the slightest bit, and he looks up “You sure you don’t t just mean it in an angelic I-love-everyone sort of way?” And then, a bit more solemnly: “You sure you want to take the risk?”
Aziraphale finds breathing becomes noticeably easier. This is already going much better than the many disaster scenarios he has imagined in the past. He feels the need to make things absolutely clear.
“I mean it in an I only-love-one-being-in-this-way, way.” His voice is quieter, gone gentle with emotion. “And that makes it worth more than anything. Plus it’s not like I haven’t put you in danger, you know. It was equally dangerous for you.” He squeezes Crowley’s hand. It had been its own brand of terror, nearly losing his best friend. “So you see I’ve thought it through a great deal.”
Crowley’s sort-of smile grows. “You better.” he says. “And you better mean it.” He knows he’s fishing a bit now. But reality seems to have warped into perfection for a moment, and Crowley wants to make the most of it. Luckily for him, angels don’t really get embarrassed when it comes to talking about their feelings. Or at least when they finally get going.
“Oh but I do.” Aziraphale nods fervently. “Very much.” He then adds, rather mischievously: “I can prove it if you’d like.”
Crowley is a bit startled. “Uhm, sure. How- oh God.”
Aziraphale’s hands are cupping Crowley’s face. He thinks things through, tries to remember how does one do this again? And then goes for it, placing his lips on Crowley slow enough that the demon could pull away if he wanted to. But Crowley stays put.
And then they kiss. Rather awkwardly at first, but with increasing enthusiasm. It’s a bit like riding a bike after a long time of not doing it: one’s trepidation steadily blurring into enchantment with one’s ability.
Was it really this easy? Crowley thinks. All I had to do was cry?
But neither can deny it feels right. Like the world has finally matured enough in the past mad days to set stage for the next phase of their relationship. Like something slow-moving and old woke up briefly and turned in its sleep, changing the world for ever. Like a gentle but firm hand said now, you fools, and flung them into a ditch by a quiet country lane, with the sun hanging low and full in the sky. In the stillness of the afternoon Crowley thinks they could be anywhere, in any time. Birds sing and chatter in the trees, bees hum in the hedgerows, and the breeze gently moves through the leaves as the last bells of summer ring out over Oxfordshire.
It could be the dawn of the world, he thinks.
– –
Four months later
For the first time in the many cycles of falling-in-love and then un-falling-in-love with Aziraphale, Crowley is hopeful. By now he would normally be in full self-preservation mode, untangling his feelings about the angel and rolling them up neatly like a great spool of yarn.
Instead, he is plotting. It is an anniversary, after all, of sorts. Crowley has never found himself more obsessed with time. Each day feels like they’ve stolen it, as though they pinched it from an unsuspecting god when it wasn’t looking, and ran off to enjoy it away from prying eyes.
So far Aziraphale had beat him to the punch, sneaking in little ways to commemorate the passing of another month together. Pancakes, a tour of the zoo (featuring miraculously black and red coloured butterflies), and cactus that flowers every week-end. This time Crowley is determined to get there first, and he’s been hard at work.
Stealing away to his flat (they spend most of their time at Aziraphale’s nowadays), Crowley has been growing flowers. It has begun as an obsession with camellias of all colours, but had then grown to include a red rose (yes, he knows it’s cheesy, thank you), baby’s breath, some daisies, and a single sprig of rosemary as a casual nod to Shakespeare. They have grown spectacularly (almost suspiciously) quickly, and are ready to be put into a bouquet.
It’s not his finest work, he will admit, the finished product looking a bit, uh, bohemian. The huge red and pink blossoms of rose and camellia completely overshadow the brush of baby’s breath and the long-stalked simplicity of the daisies. But Aziraphale will know the meaning of each flower, and that should make up for its rather rustic overall impression.
Walking towards the bookshop, flowers in hand, Crowley feels himself filled with a certain buoyancy. It’s like a bubble of wayward helium has centred itself in his chest, keeping him light on his feet. For the first time in a long time he isn’t walking around bracing for a dragging, anchoring pull down to the bottom of a pit of unacknowledged feelings. Crowley is happy. To the casual observer, he looks like he could float.
He turns the handle to the bookshop. The bell rings.
Crowley and Aziraphale’s voices can be heard simultaneously calling out: “Surprise!”