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“Would you care to do the honors?” the Metatron asks.
“Oh yes,” says Aziraphale. His whole body feels fizzy, like his corporation’s heart is pumping champagne instead of blood. Reverently, he takes the halo the Metatron passes him, that shining precious impossible thing. “Are you ready, my dear?” he asks Crowley.
“Yeah. Sure.” The words scrape roughly out of the demon’s throat. This must be a strange moment for him. Weighty and perhaps a little too intimate for the bright halls of Heaven. Crowley, a stark line of black, a flare of shining red, sticks out like a sore thumb.
“Er…” says Aziraphale, turning back to the Metatron, eyes flicking over the assembled Archangels. The halo buzzes in his hands, as if it too is eager. “Perhaps we could have…”
“Such a thing should be witnessed, don’t you think?” says the Metatron.
“Oh. Of course.”
He faces Crowley again. Crowley’s head is already bowed. The fizzing in Aziraphale’s blood becomes a weird buzzing in his belly. He really wishes they could have a moment alone. Crowley had agreed to this; it had taken more persuading than Aziraphale expected—quite a bit more—but he had said yes. He has to want this; see the logic in it, the divine rightness. Only, Aziraphale wishes he had but a moment to make sure—
“What are you waiting for, Supreme Archangel Aziraphale?” asks Michael.
“Maybe he’s worried that it won’t take,” suggests Uriel. “That his pet demon is beyond saving.”
There’s a flash of yellow then, and Aziraphale is relieved, even as he says, “No, no—” and the Metatron speaks over them all, with gravity: “Nonsense. The demon’s redemption is divine will.”
“Jusssst do it, angel,” Crowley hisses, and Aziraphale wants to put a hand on his shoulder, offer him comfort and assurance, but he is holding the halo. The halo is buzzing and crackling in his hand, saturating the air around them with the scent of copper and ozone. Its light seems almost to be reaching toward Crowley, tendrilling.
Aziraphale raises the halo above Crowley’s head. He takes a deep breath.
“Crowley,” he says, feeling his heart leap. The moment is here; the answer to his most secret prayer, his most gently nurtured wish. “I forgive you.”
The instant the halo crowns him, Crowley’s eyes roll back. Light engulfs his skull, engulfs Aziraphale’s hands where they frame his now upturned face. Aziraphale is an angel, has never been anything but an angel, and he trembles at the force of it.
Then the light extinguishes like a snuffed candle. Crowley’s eyes blink open brown.
“Oh!” Aziraphale’s hands flutter uselessly beside Crowley’s cheekbones, resisting the urge to cradle his dear familiar face. “Crowley. How do you feel?”
Crowley blinks at him. Aziraphale wishes again for a moment of privacy—ethereal realignment must be a lot to take in, especially in front of an audience.
“He is forgiven,” the Metatron intones.
“Yes,” says Aziraphale eagerly. His twitching hand alights finally on Crowley’s sleeve, slides down the fabric of the black jacket and fumbles awkwardly for Crowley’s hand. Those bright brown eyes—the eyes that he last saw shining with the newformed glory of the Horsehead Nebula—follow the motion quizzically, not quite focusing. “Crowley?” Aziraphale tries again, heart stuttering in a way it really shouldn’t when he isn’t on Earth, not properly in a human body.
“Heyyyy,” says Crowley, finally, staring down at Aziraphale’s fingers clutching his. He looks up, blinking rapidly. “Hi?”
“Crowley?”
Recognition comes pouring into Crowley’s face. He smiles—broadly, openly. Beautifully. “Oh, I remember you! Horsehead Nebula, yeah? Thanks again for the assist. That was a good one.” His gaze slides off Aziraphale easily as he peers around at the others. “What are you all working on here?”
Aziraphale drops Crowley’s hand.
“What…” He feels like he can barely find the breath to speak. “What did you do to him?”
The Metatron smiles at him passively. “You forgave him on behalf of Heaven. All his dark demonic deeds are stricken.”
Crowley has spotted the Earth in the center of the room and is walking around it, face alight with shining wonder.
Aziraphale is trembling. Metatron, bodied, has a collar he could grab; Aziraphale, suddenly, is quaking with the need to dig his nails in and shake God’s Voice until he stutters. His hands clench into useless fists.
“But—his memories—You took—”
The Metatron shakes his head at Aziraphale like he’s a particularly slow pupil. “There is nothing to remember. The record is stricken. Agreement should reach us shortly.”
“What—”
Aziraphale sees Michael, who’s been trailing after Crowley with a creased brow, stop short. “Raphael,” she says, sounding surprised but not perturbed. “I haven’t seen you since…”
“Been off building nebulae. Gorgeous things, you’ll love ‘em. Is this that Earth project I’ve been hearing so much about? Wowzers!”
Aziraphale feels a shadow whisper against the back of his mind. “But—you can’t. The causality alone—”
“We’re not changing anything, dear boy,” the Metatron says, and Aziraphale can’t control himself, can’t stop himself from flinching away from his avuncular hand. “We’re simply wiping his slate clean. It would hardly be conducive to good business if your second in command has a reputation so stained. You’ll understand shortly.” Aziraphale flinches again, but the Metatron’s fingers still find his forehead. “And you’ll be better off without so much clutter up here, Supreme Archangel. More equipped to run your own upgrade.”
“Up—” But before he can utter his protest the Metatron’s fingers slip beneath Aziraphale’s own halo and press in—
“Hey, sorry I asked you to hold my scroll, I had no idea you were the Grand Poobah.”
“Oh, that’s entirely all right. Let us not stand on ceremony,” says the Supreme Archangel Aziraphale.
His second, Raphael, gives him an eager and attentive smile. He has such a lovely smile. It’s an odd thing for Aziraphale to notice.
“You have big plans, I hear,” Raphael says. “And I have a lot of catching up to do. Totally lost track of time out there among the cosmos, apparently.”
Aziraphale chuckles forgivingly. “Forget your own head next,” he says.
“Nah, don’t think so,” says Raphael, grinning. “It’s attached.”
He indicates the long line of his neck. There’s a spot just below his right ear that Aziraphale has the strangest urge to stoke. Goodness. Must be the overwork.
“Well, I, for one, am so glad you’ve agreed to help me.” He must focus. Raphael had been recommended to him especially, by the Metatron himself—which means practically by Her. Aziraphale wants, more than anything, to do Her proud. To prove himself worthy of this great gift he’s been given.
“‘Course,” says Raphael, but he’s looking past Aziraphale’s shoulder, staring at the slowly spinning Earth. “I hear you’ve been down there.”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale, drawing his shoulders back. “I’m something of an expert, in fact—hence my promotion.”
“Promotion, right,” says Raphael, absently. His curls bounce as he tilts his head to the side, studying the globe. “You replaced, um.” He snaps his fingers absently.
Aziraphale feels an uneasy prickle at the back of his neck. “It doesn’t matter,” he says hastily. “What matters is that we have important work to do. We must ready Heaven for its—”
“Oh—oh—oh—would you look at that, angel! You can zoom in! Did you know you could zoom in?”
Raphael is staring at him with a look of giddy wonder. His corporation may have an irregular number of teeth. Not an imperfect number, obviously—nothing designed by Her hand could be imperfect—and anyway, the result certainly is not displeasing—
Aziraphale catches himself, frowns. “What did you call me?”
Raphael blinks. Aziraphale can see him mentally rewind. “Oh, I’m sorry. It just slipped out. Didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Aziraphale waves a hand. “I don’t mind that. Only—”
He stops. Stares at Raphael’s face and the Earth spinning slowly behind him. He’s zoomed in on England. On London.
“—Only it doesn’t even make sense as a nickname, does it? Seeing as…” For some reason, he laughs. “As we are both angels.”
“Archangels, even,” says Raphael, with a wink. “But that’s a bit pretentious, and we’re not standing on ceremony.”
“Yes. Right.” Aziraphale feels himself flush. Maybe Michael and Uriel are right in their whisperings—maybe in his time on Earth, he did let himself get tied too tightly to his corporation. Even here in Heaven it still gets the strangest urges.
“Anyway—” Aziraphale reminds himself that he is In Charge. He rubs his palms together; they’re feeling rather itchy. “We should—”
“Gosh, look at those!” Raphael has zoomed in even further—is staring at a small body of water. The Serpentine in Hyde Park, Aziraphale thinks. “Funny little fellows with the feathers—they look like the flying ones, but they’re swimming. What are these ones called again?”
“Uh, ducks,” says Aziraphale.
“Ducks!” declares Raphael, delightedly. “And they do. Look at those heads go. Fabulous. Just fantastic. And they’ll eat what the humans throw them. That’s nice, that’s a real nice bit of—cross-species cooperation, that is. Wow. What a planet.”
Aziraphale feels like a duck who’s swallowed too much bread. (They’re not supposed to eat bread, he remembers. Someone—someone used to say that all the—) “Yes,” he says, choked.
“So,” says Raphael, looking back at him over his shoulder, bright-eyed. “What’s our big assignment?”
“Um,” says Aziraphale.
“You can’t want to do that,” Raphael says.
“How do you know?” Aziraphale demands, undercutting the point a bit by wringing his hands. As the Supreme Archangel, it wasn’t difficult for him to carve them out a private corner of Heaven in which to talk; for some reason, Aziraphale felt an urge to create a bench for it, and for some reason, he succumbed. “You don’t know me. We only just met.”
Raphael waves one of his own slim, graceful hands. “Nah. We go way back. All the way to the Horsehead Nebula, remember?”
Aziraphale flushes and looks away.
“And I told you then,” Raphael continues, “I don’t see any point in making all this stuff and then just packing it in when it’s only starting to get good. I mean, I haven’t even fed a duck yet.”
Raphael, Aziraphale feels with sudden certainty, should get to feed a duck. Ducks should continue to exist to be fed, in general and by Raphael most particularly.
“So did She ever add that suggestion box I mentioned?” Raphael asks, looking around like he might see it perched on a convenient pillar.
“Er,” says Aziraphale. “There—there were perhaps, I suppose you could say, some suggestions broached, and, um—”
Fortunately, Raphael catches on. “Went down like a lead balloon, did it?”
Aziraphale’s hands drop into his lap. “Yes. Quite.”
“Hmm.” Raphael’s frown twists his broad toothy mouth in a way that takes Aziraphale aback. His fingers drum on his ivory clad knee. He leans back against the bench, hips canting at an odd angle.
“This special assignment. It came direct from Her?”
“Well, no,” Aziraphale says. “But the Metatron is the Voice of God.”
“Yeah, but not like—Her voice voice. Like, She has Her own—” He taps his own throat, and Aziraphale is reminded again of that spot— “She can speak for Herself.”
“Yes, but. Well.” Aziraphale looks down at their feet. Raphael has contorted himself in such a way that only one of his is currently on the floor. “She hasn’t exactly been around much lately…”
“Ah-ha!” says Raphael, fingers clicking. “So we don’t know your orders really came from Her!”
Aziraphale knows he’s made it so that no one can listen in; still he looks around anxiously. “What you’re suggesting—”
“Suggesting?” says Raphael. “Who’s suggesting?” He spreads his hands, palms open, innocent. “I’m merely asking a perfectly reasonable question. Can’t get in trouble just asking questions.”
“I believe you’ll find that you can,” sniffs Aziraphale. “I know you missed a lot when you were busy in—in space…”
“Yeah,” says Raphael, frowning again.
“But the casting down to Hell of half the heavenly host was a fairly significant thing that happened…”
“Mm, don’t love the sound of that,” agrees Raphael. “And I don’t see why—”
“Stop,” Aziraphale says, and he is so desperate to stop him—this dangerous, unceasing stream of questions—that he reaches out a hand and presses his fingers to Raphael’s lips.
In fairness, this does, indeed, make him stop talking.
“You—” Aziraphale is trembling again, the whorls of his fingertips vibrating against the soft skin of Raphael’s mouth. Aziraphale can feel every molecule. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
Raphael stares at him for a long moment, unblinking. “I am as She made me,” he says finally, breath warm against Aziraphale’s skin.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale, lungs giving a vestigial twitch. He feels so very in his body, of his body. Even in all those millennia on Earth, he can’t remember ever—
His halo feels like it’s squeezing his skull. Aziraphale lets his eyes flutter shut. His hand has dropped from Raphael’s face; Raphael is holding it loosely in his own hand.
“Give—give me a moment, please.”
“Take your time, angel.”
His voice wraps around Aziraphale like a warm blanket, like a favorite jacket. Aziraphale sees a flash of yellow behind his eyelids and thinks, pretty.
He opens his eyes and Raphael is watching him with warm brown concern. Aziraphale knows he shouldn’t trust him—and what an odd thought, that he can’t wisely trust any representative of Heaven, but he knows with sudden surety that it’s true…and that Raphael is the exception.
“I suppose,” he says, “that there might be a way to appear to begin our assignment, but in fact stall its progress while seeking to discover if the Earth’s destruction is in fact Her true plan.”
Raphael grins that stunningly beautiful grin. “Hard to tell with Her sometimes, isn’t it? Plenty of room for interpretation, what with her plans being so…what’s the word…”
“Ineffable,” says Aziraphale.
“Precisely,” says Raphael. “Ineffable.”
He leans forward, a red curl spilling down onto his forehead. Aziraphale wants to do him the courtesy of fixing it. Aziraphale wants to dig his fingers into his hair and—
“And maybe in the course of our investigations,” Raphael says, “we might need to go down to the Earth…for Reasons?”
“Reasons, yes,” says Aziraphale. The mutable shape of Raphael’s mouth is such a puzzle, a distraction. “Food, for example,” Aziraphale continues, associating. “You simply must try food.”
“What’s food?”
“You eat it,” Aziraphale says. Raphael’s face still looks pleasantly blank and Aziraphale shivers. “You, you—you put it in your mouth—”
“In your mouth?” Unlike other angels who have expressed disgust at the thought of consuming something, he doesn’t sound horrified; he is fascinated.
“Yes,” Aziraphale says. “The, the tongue, you see, has all these little buds, and they can sense—oh, flavor, and texture, and—and heat—”
“I think you’ll have to show me,” Raphael says. “I think you’ll have so much to show me, all the things I’ve missed…”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale again. “There’s so much that I’ve always wanted to share with someone, but—"
Another squeeze, a twinge of pain radiating out not from his corporation (which he doesn’t need to feel so much from anyway) but from his ethereal form. He drops Raphael’s hand, wincing as his fingers fly involuntarily to his body’s temples.
“Angel? Aziraphale?”
“I—I seem to have a headache.”
“That’s a thing?” Raphael sounds, reasonably, horrified.
“Not typically,” Aziraphale says. “Not for us.”
“Can I—” Raphael reaches out, surprisingly tentative considering he just held Aziraphale’s hand through several minutes’ discussion of rebellion and how tongues work. “Can I see? Healing’s one of my functions, though I’ve never gotten to see what it’s all about, really.”
“Reassuring,” says Aziraphale, tightly. But he leans toward Raphael. “Go ahead.”
Raphael touches his temple. Gently, carefully, he presses in—
“Oh God, Crowley.”
“Hmm?” says the angel sitting next to him on the bench.
Says the Archangel Raphael, his second-in-command for the orchestration of the Second Coming, who is sitting next to him on a bench in Heaven, and who is Crowley.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Aziraphale says.
“That is very much the opposite of what I was going for!” says Crowley, looking at him with worried brown eyes.
Aziraphale peels Crowley’s fingers away from his skull with gentle hands and doesn’t try to hide his tears.
“Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry. I’ve been so—” He is not his body, his corporation, but that doesn’t stop him from sensing it shuddering all around him in guilt and shame. “Oh, oh, Crowley, can you ever forgive me?”
“Who’s Crowley?” Crowley asks.
The way Aziraphale feels in that moment is, frankly, nothing less than he deserves.
“A demon?” says Crowley, looking skeptical and possibly not entirely clear on the concept.
“The most glorious, wonderful demon,” Aziraphale says tenderly. “The finest creature in all creation.”
“I don’t really have much to scale that against,” Crowley says. “You rather have the advantage of me.”
Aziraphale sighs. “I know, and it’s dreadfully unfair, and it’s my fault.” He gestures toward Crowley’s forehead. As an angel, his skin is smoother, entirely without line or imperfection; he radiates soft light. He is, of course, very beautiful, and Aziraphale is the lowest imp of the Pit, to have done this to him. “Can you—what you did to me, can you fix yourself?”
“I don’t think it works like that, angel,” Crowley says. He freezes. “Oh. That’s why I call you that.”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale excitedly. “You’re still in there, my dear. You’re irrepressible.” He sucks in a shaky breath. “Given a new assignment with the Supreme Archangel, and within minutes you’re fomenting rebellion.”
“I only asked—”
Aziraphale takes his hand, because that seems to be what they do now. They hold hands. They—Aziraphale remembers that they danced. They danced, and they were happy, and then when Aziraphale fell to the Metatron’s temptation, and Crowley didn’t leap at the opportunity to allow Heaven to fix him, Aziraphale had begged him. He’d told Crowley he needed him, told him he—
Oh fuck. He had told Crowley that he loved him.
And so Crowley came with him to Heaven. He let Aziraphale crown him with Forgiveness, and now Crowley is—
—not himself.
Aziraphale thinks of him smiling down at the Earth, naked joy on his face, the echo of exploding nebulae in his eyes. Aziraphale had wanted that for him—that burdenless pleasure, the innocence of an angel who had never known betrayal, or abandonment, or pain. But it was never his to take. What a fool he had been, to think that either of them could go back to the beginning without unmaking themselves. Without unmaking them.
“I’ll do my best to answer every question you might have,” Aziraphale says, trying to take on the mien of his adopted homeland. “And we’ll fix this. I’ll fix it. I promise.”
“Love being a problem to be fixed,” Crowley says, and with the way his lip curls, he looks and sounds almost like himself.
“You are not the problem,” Aziraphale says. “The problem is—it’s always been me.”
Crowley makes a heartbreakingly familiar sound deep in his throat. “I doubt that’s entirely true. Not entirely. I have a feeling it’s more of a two-way street.”
Aziraphale can’t hold back a sniffle. “You’re only being generous with me because you have amnesia. You were practically created yesterday!”
“Well then get my memory back so I can be properly mad at you!”
“I’m trying!” Aziraphale says. “I’m very mad at myself and it’s making it hard to think.”
“All right, so quit being mad and try being angry. Sounds like this was the Metatron’s fault, really. Let’s go find him, then—rough him up a little.”
“‘Rough him up’?”
“I don’t know, it sounded demonic! Is that not what demons do?”
“Not your sort!” Crowley, he feels strongly, has always represented a higher class of demon.
Crowley rolls his eyes expansively. “Fine. What would your sort do, then?”
“Mine?” Even after everything, Aziraphale cannot keep the maidenly shock out of his voice.
“Yeah. Put yourself in my shoes, since I can’t get my feet into them anymore. What would I do to force the Metatron to put things right?”
Aziraphale stares at Crowley. “You—you want me…to rescue you.”
Crowley’s eyes go around again. “I mean, if it’s convenient.”
Aziraphale lets out a long, shaky breath. “I know it’s not the appropriate time to say, but I do love you, Crowley.”
The angel on the bench beside him sighs. “Lucky guy.”
Aziraphale telephones his bookshop.
“Hello! You’ve reached A.Z. Fell & Co. This is Muriel, human bookseller, speaking.”
“Ah, Muriel. Congratulations on the…excellent phone manner.”
“Oh, thank you! I’ve been practicing. I found a phone book, which is a book that is entirely numbers you can call using the phone.”
Well, Aziraphale doesn’t have time to worry about that. Though the store is probably going to end up on a List of some sort. “Muriel, you were in Records, weren’t you? Perhaps you can answer some questions for me…”
Muriel is, of course, extremely happy to help, and most helpful indeed.
“So, forgiveness,” Crowley says. Or perhaps Raphael, to be fair. Aziraphale is still not being very fair to him—any version of him. “It looks an awfully lot like a black pen.”
The long, long scroll that is, essentially, The Book of Crowley has been redacted almost in its entirety by Heaven’s divinely forgiving Sharpie. Everything he did still happened—he still introduced Aziraphale to ox ribs and dined with him at the Ritz; he still saved goats and children and the world—it’s just been blotted out in obscuring black ink. Covered over so Heaven can make use of a more palatable Raphael. Can better control him and Aziraphale both.
Thank—well, thank Her, genuinely, that Crowley has hardly allowed himself to be controlled a day in his life.
Except by Aziraphale.
He really is such an idiot.
Raphael kneels and picks at the edge of a black line. “I’m not sure there’s an eraser that will work on this,” he says. “You don’t happen to have a cosmic rubber lying around, do you?”
“Be serious,” Aziraphale chides, mostly out of habit.
“This is me being deadly serious,” Raphael says, drawing himself up again. “I’m actively conspiring in my own erasure, how serious is that?”
Aziraphale feels the expected chill. “You—you don’t have to,” he says. “I didn’t give you a proper choice before.” He swallows heavily. “You deserve one now.”
Raphael looks at him for a long moment. “Pish,” he says finally. “We both know I’ll do it out of sheer curiosity eventually. If we know me at all.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale admits, ashamed that he wasn’t really that worried. Because he does know Crowley. Crowley would choose knowledge, choose answers, every time.
“So how do we uncensor me?” Raphael asks.
“How do we make Heaven un-forgive you?” Aziraphale agrees, musing aloud. Would you care to do the honors? he remembers the Metatron asking. He’d made Aziraphale do it. Does that mean Aziraphale can undo it? It can’t be that simple, can it?
“Crowley, you’re not forgiven at all, actually,” he tries declaring, with some conviction.
“Wow. Fun,” says Raphael, after a moment in which nothing else happens. “Do you want to do a full Friars Club Roast, while you’re at it?”
“How do you remember what the Friars Club is but not food?” Aziraphale demands, exasperated.
Raphael flails his arms. “I don’t know! I didn’t determine the rules of my punishment amnesia!”
“It wasn’t meant to be a punishment!” Aziraphale says. “It was meant to be a reward—because you were so good, so kind in every way that mattered. You’ve always been better than any old ang—oh.” Aziraphale clasps his hands together. “Oh. Raphael, are you sure?”
“I told you I was, angel. I can’t spend centuries asking you the name of every rock and plant and what nose hairs are for and what an Effort is and whether I should make one—see, you’re already blushing. It’s too embarrassing. I may not have my memory, but I sense I’m supposed to be the cool one.”
“You are,” Aziraphale says, only a little choked. “And—and Crowley. There’s nothing you’ve done for which you require forgiveness. In my eyes you have always been perfect.”
Raphael blinks.
“Perfect?” Crowley somehow manages to hiss, despite the lack of sibilants. “You remember that the next time you sssscold me for ssspeeding.”
“Crowley.” Aziraphale flings his arms around him, and to his very great relief, Crowley lets him.
“Wait, something’s wrong,” Crowley says, after a moment. He’s rolling his tongue against his teeth. “Feels weird.”
Though reluctant to let go, Aziraphale steps back to regard him. “Oh.”
“‘Oh’?” repeats Crowley, anxiously. “What oh?”
“Well…it seems…it looks like you may still be an angel. Somewhat.” Some Supreme Archangel Aziraphale is; he can’t even cast down a demon properly.
“Well, fuck me,” says Crowley, conjuring a mirror and wincing at the sight of his stunningly beautiful face. Another gesture and his suit, at least, returns to something more his style. “Another fine mess,” he snips in Aziraphale’s direction.
Aziraphale manfully…angelically resists bursting into tears.
“No, don’t—” Crowley’s resolve crumbles within seconds. “Angel, this isn’t— Well, actually, this is entirely your fault, but, well. I was wrong too.”
“How?” Aziraphale asks, trembling; he wants to throw himself at Crowley’s newly snakeskin shod feet. “Per heavenly record you are now, in fact, perfect.”
They look down at the scroll, at the Book of Crowley. The Metatron’s retractions are still there, only now Aziraphale feels that he can read through the black as well as the white. Also the margins contain a number of revealing—and for Aziraphale, likely highly personal and deeply embarrassing—annotations and illuminations.
“Well, I’m not actually Mary fucking Poppins, am I?” Crowley says, leaning back against Muriel’s old desk. He folds his arms. “And I was wrong, all right? We can’t just—run away like—what’s their buckets, my old boss and your old boss—”
“I think the Metatron—or Michael or Uriel or somebody—tried to erase them too,” Aziraphale says. “Their names are right on the tip of my tongue—”
“Oh,” says Crowley, “with all the little buds?”
His eyebrow does something distinctly unangelic.
Aziraphale has not been making a particular Effort, but he suddenly feels present in his body in an equally unheavenly way.
That certainly begs further…exploration. Later. Aziraphale has perhaps a bit more control over his curiosity than Crowley, but it is feeling a bit strained as of late.
“Running away would have been better than what I did to you,” Aziraphale says, guilt being an effective deterrent from other, temporarily inconvenient, emotions.
“Nah,” says Crowley. “I mean, yeah, in the short term, would love to have not been publicly collared by the Metatron, but in the long run—if we run away, they’ll destroy the Earth. All the ducks and plants and music and books and interesting little restaurants, et cetera. And the people.”
“The people,” Aziraphale agrees.
“If we don’t save it, who will?”
Perfect, Aziraphale thinks. To me.
“So,” says Crowley, clapping his hands together briskly and launching himself up to pace. “You may be a very clever, very stupid secret genius, because now you’ve placed us perfectly as men on the inside. Beings. Inside beings.”
“Are you suggesting…espionage?” Aziraphale can’t help a small grin.
Crowley adjusts his shirt cuffs. “Just call me Crowley… Anthony Crowley.”
“You’ll have to turn that suit back, I’m afraid.”
“Ugh.”
Crowley returns himself to all white, frowning.
“You make it look good,” says Aziraphale. “Stylish.”
“You think tartan is stylish,” Crowley grumbles.
“It is,” Aziraphale says. Then, “Do you want me to do the dance?”
Crowley raises an eyebrow. “For crimes against fashion? Please.”
“No,” says Aziraphale. “Not for that.”
Crowley glances to the side. Aziraphale can see the muscles in his jaw jump. “I’m not really in the mood for dancing,” he says.
Aziraphale looks down at the shining white floor. “All right.”
There is a pause.
“Angel.” Another pause. “Did you mean it? Either time you said it?”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale. “Very much.”
“That’s, uh.” Crowley’s voice catches. “That’s good, because uh. You know. That’s what I’ve been trying to say too.”
“You don’t have to say it,” says Aziraphale. Especially not now, he thinks. After everything.
“I want to, though,” says Crowley, roughly. And Aziraphale finally looks up at him. The warm brown of his eyes is newly jarring, looking at Aziraphale like he knows him. Like he could have known all of him for six thousand years and still…love him, somehow.
“Or I— Or I want to show you,” Crowley says. “The way humans do. They make it look so simple, humans. They just—”
Aziraphale wraps a hand around the cream curl of Crowley’s tie and tugs him down.
It takes a couple tries to get it right. Their noses bump. Aziraphale giggles nervously, and Crowley tries to push up a pair of sunglasses he is not wearing. It’s dry and then a bit too wet and Crowley murmurs “buds” and Aziraphale laughs, not from nerves but out of love, a ridiculous outpouring of love, one that is messy and imperfect and very, very human.
“If the Metatron catches us having ssssex,” Crowley says, drawing out the word with a flourish, “do you think it’ll blow our cover?”
“Our partnership is officially sanctioned,” says Aziraphale, primly.
Crowley shakes his head. “Heaven’s got rubbish HR. Lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Better take it all the way to the top, darling,” Aziraphale says.
Crowley favors him with a brilliant grin before, as is his wont, sauntering downwards instead.