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Aziraphale steps into the lift.
He is going back to heaven. Good. Heaven is where angels are supposed to be. Obviously, taken all together, he’s spent, well – perhaps, a little more time on Earth? Give or take a few thousand years. Still. Over now. And these last few years particularly, shut out, excluded from his true home, have been a kind of madness, a delusion. Aziraphale knows what he is; when all is said and done, heaven is where he belongs.
The ride takes a long time.
‘Going up,’ says Metatron, to fill the silence, and smiles.
Aziraphale’s hands are shaking, but he holds them close against his sides to hide it, and smiles back. This is what he remembers: the birth of constellations. The infinite majesty of God’s works. He remembers when the morning stars sang, and all the angels shouted for joy with one voice. And he had been there! He had been part of that chorus, voices ringing throughout the ether as pure and clear as a hundred struck bells, a perfect harmony of praise and joy.
Order. Goodness. He is to be welcomed home.
+
For a whole forty-three minutes and fifteen seconds, Aziraphale does not think about Crowley. Not that they have a concept of linear time in heaven, really, but Aziraphale has lived so long bounded by earthly constraints, by gravity and sunsets, that it’s hard to conceive of himself without them. Perhaps this is why his watch is still running its own old clock.
Forty-three minutes and fifteen seconds have passed in the bookshop since he left it, filled with new-job admin in heaven: getting his pass, re-orientation. Now he’s been left at a desk to peruse the updated handbook. Yes, things have changed over the last four years but, really, not very much. Some exit and entry-ways are different, but the handbook is probably overkill. Still, he’s happy to be left alone to read.
In the echoing vastness of his empty office, sitting at his new white desk, Aziraphale touches his fingers to his lips and shudders. He lets the waves of it pass over him for a few moments: the joy he’d felt at coming to Crowley with his gift of justice; the slow, dawning horror of seeing it rejected. Rage and shock and, yes, hurt pride.
He tries not to imagine the other world, and fails. The one where Crowley said yes. For a moment, he sees how Crowley would look, sitting across the desk from him, here, now, in white, with starlight from the vault of heaven caught in his hair. After all this time, to see Crowley with all that was taken restored to him. But Aziraphale shakes his head: that is not the world he’s living in, and it does no good to dwell.
But he longs. Oh, how stupidly, how utterly he longs, with all the false humanity that 6000 years with humans has given him. Aziraphale was built for worship, but Earth has taught him this instead: this bitter fruit, yearning, a pain in his chest. This useless fluttering. Well, he doesn’t want it. Not anymore.
Aziraphale is a very old being, and if age grants one nothing else, it does at least generally provide the capacity for some mastery over oneself. So, he lets himself feel all his useless longing for three and a half little human minutes, exactly. He times it on his watch. Then he shuts his eyes, and pushes all of it away.
When he opens them again, the handbook is still there. So You’ve Been Promoted! it says, large letters, sensible font. Aziraphale sighs and goes back to his reading.
+
He was always taught that demons couldn’t love. That was what they said.
But Aziraphale isn’t thinking about any of that, of course.
+
Metatron takes him for a walk in the gardens of heaven. The grass is springy underneath their feet, and the weather is Aziraphale’s favourite kind: sunny, but mild enough for a jacket, with a little bit of breeze. Spring weather. It makes him feel – for one brief, terrible moment – homesick. Then he thinks: oh, you silly goose, you are home.
‘Well,’ says Metatron. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Aziraphale. It has been many hours since he left the bookshop, and he’s already had his first meeting, with Michael, Uriel and Saraqael. It did not go particularly well.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ Aziraphale repeats. ‘Absolutely.’
Metatron is the carrier of God’s word. Aziraphale was made the Chief of Heaven’s Forces expressly at Metatron’s bidding, making this, essentially, the first act of God’s Will to be seen in Heaven for – oh. A long time. That would make it pretty hard for any of the other high-ranking angels to countermand. But apparently nothing in God’s will implied that they should make an effort to be nice.
Still, despite his four years in the wilderness, Aziraphale was in post long enough to know that you bring solutions, rather than problems, to your boss. Tempting as it is to run crying to Metatron and ask him to make the other angels at least try to hide their dislike, he knows he is not going to do that. He has enough self-respect not to ask – and anyway, it wouldn’t work.
‘Good, then,’ says Metatron. ‘That’s good.’
They walk in silence for a while. The breeze on Aziraphale’s face is so like earth’s that it is dizzying. He can’t believe how long he spent hiding from weather in doors and in books, and how beautiful it was, all this time. He hadn’t known how much he’d miss it. How he’d love to be able to open a window in his airless office, and hear a breeze like this one moving through the treetops.
Metatron is watching him. For the first time, it occurs to Aziraphale to worry that he should be guarding his thoughts. He’d thought perhaps – his new position – a gesture of respect –
‘I wonder,’ Metatron says slowly. ‘I wonder if perhaps – a more closely tailored suit? Rather closer to the general style. I wonder if it wouldn’t help them to respect you more.’
Aziraphale had said nothing about the other angels not respecting him. He ducks his head. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Yes. Of course.’
+
If you believe in good and evil, in ineffability and the Plan – which Aziraphale does, of course, as he is bound by his very nature to do – then you have to believe that there is order in the universe. You have to believe it possible for justice to be done. It is this, perhaps, that is most galling: Crowley’s failure to understand his need for justice.
Because Crowley had only asked questions. That was all. And hasn’t Aziraphale done the same thing, in his own way? He went against God’s will – he saved Job’s children, and lied about it. Terrified as he has been to admit this even to himself, Aziraphale has quietly felt for some years that the only real difference between himself and Crowley was Crowley’s having been caught. They had seen him asking questions, and punished him for it – so that Aziraphale, cautious, in comparison a coward, had been able to benefit from Crowley’s guidance when his own questions arose. Crowley helped him toe the line. Seen from a distance, it seems to Aziraphale that, far from being a source of temptation, it may only have been Crowley’s interventions that kept Aziraphale from falling himself.
And was that justice in the universe? Was it right? That all Aziraphale’s questioning should be rewarded, now, while Crowley continues to be punished. In an ordered universe, wasn’t it only fair that he should be forgiven? The thought that Aziraphale could live not only to see justice done, but to do it – to be the one to get it back for him, Crowley’s grace and everything else that he was owed, forgiveness, to have him unpunished, unfallen – it was a greater gift than Aziraphale ever could have hoped for. So why hadn’t Crowley wanted it?
If he slept, these would be the thoughts that kept Aziraphale awake at night. Sometimes he wonders if it’s different for him – he’s noticed sometimes that humans forget things, bad things, that they allow themselves to forget; he’s seen women in the agonies of childbirth, biting out their never never never agains go on to bear another eight children. Could it be the same for fallen angels? A kind of forgetting. Could it be that Crowley doesn’t know all that was taken from him; doesn’t feel it keenly, as Aziraphale does, as a kind of theft? Because Aziraphale remembers all that light and joy of him, but maybe Crowley doesn’t.
There was a night, sometime in the eighteenth century, when Crowley, drunk, casual, had said, Remember when we met the first time, on the wall, some stupid story that Aziraphale could barely hear the end of, because he had been busy thinking: but. But that wasn’t the first time.
He didn’t correct him. Maybe if he had, all this would have been different.
+
‘So!’ says Michael. ‘The Second Coming. Don’t you think it’s time we got started? Lots of plans. So much to do.’
Childishly, Aziraphale had been rather hoping this might not come up again. His heart sinks.
When he agreed to take the job, he’d sort of thought it would all be – business as usual sounds reductive, especially given the grand plans he’d had for reordering, for changing, for – for the work he and Crowley could have done together. But essentially, yes, business as usual. Metatron’s reference to the Second Coming had wrongfooted him. He’s been dreading this conversation ever since.
‘Yes, and we know you’ll be raring to go, Aziraphale,’ Uriel adds, smiling nastily.
‘Oh,’ he mumbles. ‘Well, yes, of course, I do – I do see that it – that it’s terribly important--’
‘Let the boy get his feet under the table first!’ Metatron laughs. He’s come to all their meetings recently. He slaps Aziraphale on the back, and winks at him.
The new suit is uncomfortable. It fits like a glove, but it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t smell right either. These suits never went to the bookshop, and now he can barely even remember how the bookshop smelled; he hadn’t realised how completely he’d been carrying his own air about with him until it was gone. Aziraphale’s trying not to think of it this way, but it feels like losing the last piece of something important.
‘Hmm,’ says Michael, watching him with narrowed eyes. Aziraphale smiles sweetly back.
+
Sometimes he sits at his desk for hours at a stretch, doing nothing. Achieving nothing at all. And this is what he remembers: a hundred sunsets. A thousand quiet drinks. The sound of red wine being poured from carafes, jugs, bottles, wine from beautiful French vineyards, war-time wine that wasn’t half as good, corner shop plonk on late Soho nights when everything else had shut; bottles Aziraphale had oh-so-politely requested to be just a little nicer, and whose molecules had been only too happy to oblige.
He remembers sunlight: the way it caught in Crowley’s eyes, the handful of times he saw him outside without sunglasses. The strange shame Crowley had about those eyes for so long, even when they were alone. But Aziraphale has always had a fondness for yellow: melting butter, honeybees, daffodils in spring. It seemed to him that all life’s very nicest things were yellow. He never even wondered why he thought that.
He remembers the first time he felt the strands of Crowley’s love pulling about him, so long ago. Because of course he’d noticed. He remembers how he’d told himself that what Crowley loved was nothing but his grace: a chance to be close to all the majesty that Crowley had had stolen from him, a chance no other angel but Aziraphale would dream of giving him. Because they’d told him that demons could not love, and so he’d looked for – reasons. Stupid, the things he’d allowed himself to see and not see, the lies he’d told himself to make it all seem fair.
It’s too late, he knows, to fix the things he’s broken. But if nothing else, perhaps he can try to stop lying to himself. He owes them both that, at least.
Aziraphale puts his head in his hands. ‘Fuck,’ he mutters, feelingly. Swearing in heaven; he half expects an alarm to go off. Is half disappointed when one doesn’t. How easy and straightforward it would be, to be thrown out on a technicality.
+
‘A baby will be born on Earth,’ says Michael. ‘And its Coming shall be accompanied by many terrible signs.’
‘Great storms,’ says Saraqael. ‘Thunder and lightning.’
‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ says Aziraphale.
‘Earthquakes, disease, famine,’ Saraqael goes on.
‘Ah.’
‘And the dead shall rise, and--’
‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale wearily. ‘Yes, yes. I get the idea.’
‘It will be the beginning of the end of all things,’ says Michael.
‘Right. Or perhaps,’ Aziraphale clears his throat gently, and smiles. ‘Perhaps it could – not be?’
Silence. All of them turn to look at him. ‘Not be?’ says Metatron at length.
Aziraphale feels something very like sweat on his brow. Funny, how these little sympathetic tricks of a human nervous system still recur, even though he has no nervous system to speak of, and he’s been away from Earth for – how long now? He’s rather lost track of time. It’s four o’clock in the bookshop, but he has no way of knowing whether that’s morning or afternoon.
‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, trying for cheerful. ‘I just sort of thought, you know, all things considered – maybe we shouldn’t.’
He’d like this to sound convincing without being bossy. Persuasive. The angels look at one another. ‘It isn’t really up to you,’ says Uriel.
‘It’s written,’ says Saraqael.
‘Ye-es,’ Aziraphale says slowly. ‘But aren’t I sort of... in charge, now?’
It seems to Aziraphale that the long, quiet, terrible moment that follows is one in which something ought to happen in the room: some change, some terrible darkening. But there isn’t any sunlight here to pass behind a cloud, or roads on which cars can backfire, or windows that rain can start to run down. The lights go on shining as brightly and confidently as they always have. After a moment, Michael laughs. Then they are all laughing. Michael, Saraqael, Uriel, Metatron. All except Aziraphale.
‘I really don’t know what’s so funny,’ he says lightly. Sweat on his palms, and something is happening to the back of his neck.
‘No, no,’ Metatron says expansively. ‘Let’s not laugh. Perhaps Aziraphale has a point. Perhaps we should think about it.’
The other angels look between him and Aziraphale. ‘Right,’ says Michael, slowly. ‘We should – think about it.’
+
Of course they wanted another apocalypse. How could he have expected anything else? Did he really believe that he and Crowley had put it off forever? What a fool he’s been, over and over again. He thought he could change heaven, but it will be harder to resist letting it change him. Perhaps, if Crowley had come – perhaps together – he never was very brave by himself, after all –
But it’s not fair to blame Crowley for that. And if Aziraphale can’t make things right, at least he can protect him: at least Crowley can have the world he loves so well. Aziraphale will stand for as long as possible between heaven and the apocalypse, and in the meantime, Crowley will have his car, and his plants, and Soho in the rain. He will have his six shots of espresso at Give Me Coffee…, and old films at the Prince Charles Cinema, and the bus to Battersea Park. Crowley will have London – and not only London. He will have the Yorkshire moors to walk on, if he chooses, and the fens in the East, the way the light gets, flat countryside stretching for miles. He will have rain-washed heather in Scotland and the shingle beach at Dungeness and the wind-blown coastline in Northumberland, all the holy places where the Vikings came up onto the beach; the fields they’ve both known washed with blood, Civil War battlegrounds in the midlands, places they’ve seen loud and bloody grown quiet and still; the still places that they’ve watched grow loud. He will have the island they’ve called home, and not only that – the world they’ve walked, whole and beautiful and entire. Aziraphale will keep it safe for him.
How long ago did he come here? How long since he came, thinking he could fix it all? Even after Crowley refused, he’d still thought: well, I can do it and show him. Not like that, not the last word in an argument, but to give it to him as a gift. It had been a kind of waking dream, to stand with Crowley before his remade heaven and say: I did this for you. I made it right. I told you it could be done.
He no longer believes it can be done. Not by him alone, anyway. He can’t make things better, or even good; he can’t give Crowley back the things they stole from him. Crowley is braver, he wouldn’t stay to suffer these pointless indignities, stay here losing little pieces of himself each day, achieving nothing. But there is a kind of bravery in staying too, Aziraphale knows. While he stays, he can stay their hand. And Crowley can have the world.
+
‘We’ve thought about it,’ says Michael, smiling very nicely. ‘And it’s four to one for the Second Coming, so we’re going to press on. But thank you so much for reaching out.’
‘Ah,’ says Aziraphale, panicking. ‘Well, no, because – because--’
‘So, moving forward, we’re looking at a project timeline of three to four weeks on this. We’ve got a lot of wheels ready to be put into motion--’
‘No!’ shrieks Aziraphale. It echoes. Everybody looks away from Michael’s presentation, and their faces are very still.
‘I wouldn’t, Aziraphael,’ Metatron says quietly. He’s pronounced Aziraphale’s name the old-fashioned way; it feels like being told off at school. Or how he imagines that would feel, anyway.
‘But,’ he blusters. ‘I am – my position here--’
‘I really would stop,’ Saraqael interrupts. ‘After all, your position is at our discretion.’
Aziraphale blinks. ‘What do you mean?’
They look at one another. ‘Well,’ Uriel says, slowly but with menace. ‘Gabriel wasn’t too interested in having another apocalypse, and you saw what happened to him.’
Something catches in Aziraphale’s throat. How nice it must be, for the other angels, not to react like this. He wonders if they can feel his pointless heart beating in his chest from where they’re sitting, a habit he’s found impossible to break, even here. ‘What happened to him?’ he manages to say.
Saraqael laughs. Uriel rolls their eyes.
‘Gabriel was fired,’ Michael says, speaking slowly, as if to someone very, very stupid. ‘You remember.’
‘Yes, but that was about…’ Aziraphale’s mind is whirring. ‘I mean to say – wasn’t that the fraternising?’
‘Fraternising?’
‘Him and - Beelzebub.’
Michael makes a face like there’s something highly distasteful in their mouth. ‘Well, that was disgusting, obviously,’ they say. ‘But, no. We didn’t know about it. That wasn’t why.’
Could it be true? That Gabriel, with his edges knocked off by love, hadn’t wanted another apocalypse - he had wanted there to be pubs, and jukeboxes, somewhere he and Beelzebub could meet. Aziraphale covers his chest with the palm of his hand, pained. So then, why on earth him? Why choose him to follow Gabriel, when he had been so famously un-keen on the last apocalypse that they'd literally tried to throw him into hell-fire. Presumably, with the threat of firing hanging ever over him, the role was partly decorative. So was it a keep your enemies close thing? Would they even have let Crowley come, if he’d said yes? Why, if they were planning on ripping it all up, all of everything, everything he's ever loved –
‘Aziraphale?’ says Michael.
‘Yes. Sorry.’ His voice high and tight and strange in his ears.
Crowley in his place would no doubt kick the door down right away. Leave and not look back. Who is Aziraphale kidding? He did it millennia ago with far less reason; he wouldn’t be here in the first place, wouldn’t have fallen for their – cheap flattery. Oh Aziraphale. You’re the only angel for the job. God, he’s weak. He feels trapped, a caged animal - and he walked right back into it himself. He chose this.
Aziraphale's colleagues are smiling at him, but the smiles don’t reach their eyes. ‘Can I go back to my presentation now?’ says Michael.
‘Oh,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Yes. Of course. So sorry.’
+
This is what he remembers: missed opportunities. Too many of them to count. When the rain came down and they were under awnings together, all those rainshowers, all those afternoons where it felt like there would always be another and another and another. The handful of times late at night and drunk when Crowley took his hand, just soft enough to be deniable, and neither of them mentioned it; and all the times that Crowley looked at him laughing on a park bench in the winter, breath fogging in the air and close enough to kiss, while Aziraphale, coward, did nothing.
Sometimes, alone at the hated desk of his hated office in his hated suit, Aziraphale presses his fingers to his lips and thinks of Crowley’s mouth on his. The first and only time. Crowley’s breath, desperate, and the way Aziraphale’s body had worked for and against itself at the same time. Pulling forward. Pulling back. The force of his own wanting had terrified him. He remembers trying food for the first time: repulsion giving way to curiosity, to a night spent sitting on the floor, pulling apart the oxen ribs one by one. The feeling of a hunger that could never be sated. And this was worse, something running all the way to the bottom of himself like words through seaside rock.
Has he been waiting for it to become less frightening? If so, time is running out. The end of the world might come first. Again.
+
‘Where are you going?’ Uriel asks. They’ve found Aziraphale waiting for the lift.
Ready for the question, he smiles, easy, almost commanding. ‘I’m going to visit Muriel,’ he says. ‘In the shop.’
Uriel’s eyes narrow. ‘Why?’
‘Guidance,’ Aziraphale says, light but emphatic. ‘An angel left alone, for so long, without the light of heaven’s guidance – well. They can become a little, shall we say, wayward? I should know that better than anyone.’ He winks, and immediately hopes this isn’t over-egging the proverbial pudding.
Uriel claps him on the shoulder. ‘Good,’ they say, smiling in a way that makes it clear how much they hate Aziraphale’s guts, that they’re just waiting for the first sign of a slip-up to take his job.
Aziraphale smiles back. Then he steps into the lift.
+
The shop’s open. It looks just the same as when he left. ‘Hello?’ he calls.
‘Hello?’ says a small voice from the back. ‘Just coming!’
Muriel skids round the corner, wearing his old clothes. And Aziraphale is wearing Gabriel’s. If he wasn’t already fairly sure he’d made some quite large mistakes, this would certainly be a clue.
‘Oh my gosh,’ says Muriel, seeing who it is. Then they rush up to Aziraphale and throw their arms around him. ‘HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!’
‘Wow,’ Aziraphale manages to say, half-crushed. He wonders who's taught Muriel that this is a normal human greeting, and what is wrong with them.
‘Are you visiting me?’ says Muriel, still holding him tightly, pinning Aziraphale’s arms to his sides. ‘Is this a visit? Like in books?’ Then Muriel lets go, adjusting their waistcoat, and looks at him. Uncanny feeling of seeing oneself from the outside. Did he ever look this hopeful? This young?
‘Yes,’ Aziraphale says slowly. ‘A visit. Just like in books.’
‘Oh wow,’ says Muriel, wide-eyed. Then something lights in their face. ‘In that case – “would you like a cup of tea?”’ This last said rather decorously, like something quoted.
Aziraphale smiles. ‘I would like that more than anything,’ he says.
+
They sit together, two angels in a bookshop, and drink their tea. Aziraphale notes that Muriel is actually drinking now, not just holding the mug. And when he asks how they’re finding life on earth, they wax lyrical for fourteen minutes without pause. Aziraphale times it on his watch.
‘And people get so so angry with you on the tube if you aren’t completely 100% ready to go through the barriers,’ Muriel says. ‘But now that I know about it, I’m always ready, and the other day I got stuck behind somebody who was slow and I got kind of angry myself???
It’s all very much that sort of thing. Aziraphale is happy for them, genuinely. ‘What about the bookshop?’ he asks, when he manages to get a word in. ‘It looks wonderful,’ he adds, kind. ‘I can see you’re taking very great care of it.’
Muriel glows. ‘I haven’t sold almost anything, just like Mr Crowley said.’ Then they clap both hands over their mouth, looking horrified.
Everything is very still. Light at the window. Beyond it, Soho is still Soho. Even if for just a little while longer, the world is turning as it always has. Something is caught in Aziraphale's throat.
‘Has Crowley been here?’ he manages to ask, false-casual. ‘Spoken to you?’
Muriel nods, looking terrified, hands still covering their mouth. It would be funny if Aziraphale weren’t so absolutely at war with himself to keep a hundred desperate questions down. Anyway, Muriel is too sweet to push.
‘If he told you not to tell me, that’s okay,’ Aziraphale says gently. ‘I won’t make you.’
Muriel takes their hands away. ‘I don’t want to lie though,’ they say softly. ‘Not to you. And he’s only come a few times, really just once or twice, and not for very long. Just to check on things and tell me about the rules.’
Aziraphale blinks. ‘Rules?’
‘Oh yes. Like don’t sell anything unless it’s absolutely unavoidable, and if anyone in a suit comes in with a big piece of paper who wants to buy the land you say no thank you even if they’re very polite, and no candles allowed, because the whole place burned down once, and he brought some fire extinguishers, because apparently they all got used up…’
Muriel keeps talking, but Aziraphale can’t hear it. He’s light-headed. All this time. He doesn’t even know how long it’s been. Thinking of Crowley, thinking he must be – hurt. Beyond forgiveness, gone forever. And he’s been coming in here, checking on the bookshop. Keeping it all in one piece. Their lives. Their life. His body is suffused with warmth.
‘Muriel,’ he says carefully. Little tremor in his voice. ‘Do you perhaps know where I might be able to find him?’
‘No,’ says Muriel, ‘sorry,’ and Aziraphale’s heart sinks because in a city, a world so wide, if Crowley doesn’t want to be found, what hope is there? And then they say, ‘But he did leave a number, in case of emergencies. Would you like it?’
Aziraphale nearly says yes. He knows he should be brave and call himself. But he can’t. He just – can’t. What if Crowley hangs up? What if, what if, what if. And then Aziraphale says, ‘Muriel, have you ever heard of a favour?’
Muriel smiles. They’ve read about them, it transpires, in books, and been waiting for a good opportunity to do one in real life. ‘A real favour,’ they say. ‘Wow.’
+
Aziraphale is alone in the bookshop. The sun is setting, Muriel is three streets away with a Penelope Fitzgerald and a camomile tea, and Crowley has promised them over the phone to be there soon.
Somehow it is all just – here. Exactly as he left it. Home.
While Aziraphale is waiting, he changes into his old clothes. He has spares, upstairs in the wardrobe, clean and pressed. Everything smells exactly right. He’s tying his bow tie when he hears the door open downstairs in the shop.
‘Hello?’ Crowley’s voice, the same, somehow exactly the same. ‘Muriel? Everything all right?’
It hurts, a little, to hear him walk in here and call for somebody else. But Aziraphale supposes it’s about what he deserves. He should have telephoned himself; given Crowley the opportunity to run, refuse to see him. But he didn’t. If rejection is coming, it will come directly to his face. For whatever reason, Aziraphale has created this terrifying situation and put himself into it. There's nothing left to do now but put one foot in front of the other, and see what happens.
At the bottom of the spiral staircase, he says, ‘Crowley.’
Crowley turns from the shelf he’d been examining, and looks at him. He’s wearing his dark glasses, eyes unreadable, but his mouth is hanging open in shock. He says nothing.
‘Please don’t run away,’ Aziraphale says quickly.
Crowley puts a hand on the shelf to steady himself. ‘I wasn’t going to do that,’ he says, voice hoarse.
Aziraphale nods. It’s one of those moments where it feels like something ought to happen in the room, some change of light, and perhaps it does. Perhaps the rain starts coming down. Perhaps the sun comes out from behind a cloud. Who knows. Aziraphale can’t take his eyes off Crowley. The line of his body, dark jacket, the curve of his chest, inside which his heart is beating, just like humans’ do. It doesn’t have to. But it is. Aziraphale can feel it, feel his own heart beating back.
‘Crowley,’ he says softly. He wants to say: I’ve been so stupid. Blind. He wants to say the world is ending again and he thinks they have to try and stop it. He wants to ask how long he was away, explain about the shingle beaches and the fens and the buses, he wants to explain that he thought he could stop them, for a while he really did. He thought he could keep the world turning for Crowley. And he wants to explain about justice, and getting things right, and why it matters – mattered – matters – who knows, now – or throw himself at Crowley’s feet and just – apologise. Nothing comes out. Not a word. Then he crosses the bookshop floor, strange echo of the last time, their last moments together, and lifts a hand to Crowley’s cheek. Crowley shudders, looking at Aziraphale with something like horror and something like hope as Aziraphale steps closer, closer still, and lifts his mouth to Crowley’s own.
Crowley doesn’t move a muscle. Aziraphale presses a kiss to the corner of his lips, thumb on Crowley’s cheekbone. Then he stops.
They look at one another.
‘You can’t just,’ Crowley says, quiet, ‘make it all – not have happened. You can’t just – swan back in, and--’
‘I know,’ Aziraphale says quietly.
‘I mean, I was,’ is he crying? How unbearable, ‘and then you, you just,’ but he’s got both hands fisted in Aziraphale’s jacket, stepping towards him, and Aziraphale says, ‘I know,’ again, which means I’m sorry, which means I understand, which means we have a lot of clearing up to do, but then Crowley just says, ‘Oh, hell,’ and kisses him.
This time it is a proper kiss. Aziraphale has one hand on Crowley’s jaw, the other pressed against his lower back, holding their bodies together, every inch of them flush against each other as Crowley’s tongue slides hot, insistent his own. It’s dizzying. It goes on for a very long time. Possibly. Aziraphale isn’t sure. He doesn’t time it. But then, neither of them really need, as such, to breathe.
When they finally break apart, Crowley’s glasses are wonky. Aziraphale lifts them off with one hand. Yellow as sunflowers. Something very loud is happening behind Aziraphale's back, and he turns to see rain falling hard against the windows, while at the exact same time, the sun is shining. There are so many things they need to say. But what he says is, ‘Crowley, I think I’ve run away.’
He turns back to see Crowley leaning against the bookshelf. It would look more casual and cool if Aziraphale couldn’t tell from where he’s standing how much Crowley is shaking. ‘Ah,’ says Crowley, folding his arms. ‘We should probably work out what to do about that.’ And then he smiles.