Chapter Text
Aziraphale turned his head back to the lift and boarded with a forced, courteous smile toward the Metatron. Now in close proximity to the newly-embodied Celestial Authority, he felt a nearly impalpable chill as they stood in silence. The rise of the elevator turned his stomach queasy and caused his face to blanch to a ghostly opalescent shade, paled further by the harsh lights of the lift.
Face twisting almost imperceptibly, the angel considered the Decision he had just made. Considered Crowley. The pain and resignation in the demon’s face when Aziraphale delivered those three little words, the altogether incorrect ones.
Why had he said it? He was flabbergasted in the moment, he knew that much. Surely that must have contributed. Angry too, oh he was most definitely angry. Angry that he had offered the world, and had been denied all the same. Frustrated that Crowley couldn’t see how things could be for them in Heaven.
And gravely disappointed that neither of them had chosen a more opportune moment to put it all on the line.
But more than that, he was afraid. Afraid he was being tempted. Afraid that he was falling for the temptation. Afraid the Metatron was watching. And afraid it might never happen again.
The angel had never indulged in sins of the flesh before. There certainly wasn’t anyone in Heaven with whom he would have been the least bit interested in having a tryst. Obviously it was inconceivable to consider carnal relations with a human, the balance of power would always necessarily be skewed in such a scenario. Demons were out as well, of course… save, perhaps, for one.
After all of the years spent stealing glances, patting shoulders, linking arms, and (on a few lucky occasions) grasping one another around the waist, Aziraphale had an idea of how physical affection with Crowley made him feel. But this had been something entirely different.
This had been desperate, passionate, new. Novelty is a boon for the immortal; after being anywhere for 6000 years, not much of anything ever truly feels new.
Aziraphale had imagined what the sensation of kissing Crowley would feel like innumerable times, but the real thing was vastly different than any scenario he had played through. It was an awful and painful kiss, and yet he had never felt such a thirst as in that moment. The angel had been metaphorically wandering in the desert for forty years; crawling on his hands and knees for endless ages toward a shaded oasis. He lay patiently in wait by its waters for the right moment to take his first sip. When the moment finally came, the water flash-evaporated in a roar of steam, scorching him on the way up.
And now the only thing that could quench his thirst was lost to the desert wind.
As he began to seriously consider stopping the elevator and returning to Earth to finish what he’d started, a frigid grey energy pulsed from his gut outward, sending a piercing sensation with every cell it invaded, enveloping him completely.
And then it was gone just as quickly as it began.
It was no more than a fraction of a millisecond, but Aziraphale felt it, and he knew from whence it came. Realisation dawning on him, he rearranged his face into a faux-assured grin.
The Metatron had sensed his doubt, and he had shocked the angel like a barking dog.
Aziraphale might have stopped to ponder it a moment longer if he weren’t so terrified of experiencing whatever that was again. Was that what it felt like to fall? The despair? The torment? In the split second it had happened, the sheer agony of it had almost made his knees buckle.
If it were, those who had fallen had experienced that sensation for a million lightyear drop. Crowley had experienced that sensation for a million lightyear drop.
Aziraphale made a note to set aside a large block of time to beat himself up about that later.
Right now he needed the Metatron to believe he was fully committed, and, more importantly, that he didn’t know Aziraphale knew.
So he pasted on a smile.
Aziraphale had learned some time ago that the human body releases endorphins simply through the act of smiling alone. He could force it until he was finally away from the Metatron. He was, after all, the angel who was to usher in The Second Coming. Whatever that happened to be. Surely it must be “The Big One”; the destruction of Earth serving as the catalyst for the final pointless war between Heaven and Hell. A war in which Crowley and he would truly be on opposite sides.
In a bid to disabuse himself of any notion of bounding further down that rabbit hole, Aziraphale turned to the Metatron.
“So…” he said almost manically, clasping his hands together, “this… Second Coming… What is it exactly?”
“Well, my boy, I will spare you the greater details until you have settled into your new post, but, in short, we will be sending to Earth a new incarnation of the Son of God to carry the devoted and virtuous to their rightful place in Heaven. Meanwhile, the riffraff will be left on Earth to suffer and perish at the hands of demons until all are destroyed, at which point we will mount our final campaign against the forces of Hell.” the Metatron replied in a lilty voice that Aziraphale felt was rather ill-suited to the severity of what he was disclosing.
Aziraphale turned his head to face the door again, wringing his hands. “Ah. Well that sounds perfectly appropriate. I dare say it will be nice to finally be rid of Hell’s wretched denizens and their incessant boorish antics.” he said half truthfully, mirroring the lilt in the Metatron’s voice.
“Indeed!” the Metatron chuckled heartily.
“So….. the child. Or I suppose they might just as easily be an adult? It can be difficult to predict the, er… strategic choices that the Almighty intends to make, so the child may just as well be a baby, or an adult, perhaps even an octogenarian!” he said, throwing his hands up excitedly in an exaggerated show of surrender to the ineffability of the divine will of God. In reality, it reeked more of desperation than surrender. Realising he was rambling, he steered himself back to the point:
“When exactly will the Second Incarnation arrive on Earth?”
“Now, now, what's your hurry, Aziraphale? We haven’t even arrived in Heaven yet. All in good time, my boy, all in good time.”
The Bentley rumbled along at a dismal pace, unable to summon the horsepower necessary to get Crowley to his apartment by the time he could no longer survive without a drink in hand. To be fair, there is currently no vehicle in all of existence that could have filled that order. He might have miracled himself a bottle were they not moving so slowly that the local constabulary could have followed them on foot to issue a citation.
Crowley needed a drink from the moment Aziraphale told him he had accepted an offer to go back to Heaven. An offer he had received mere moments earlier, and yet the urgency of which had seemed paramount? What could have been so pressing? Why did the decision have to be made so hastily?
Crowley huffed. Untangling the answer to that question and the myriad of others regarding this new development would be no small task with his one and only not-quite-direct line to Heaven gone, presumably forever. He sneered at the thought of having to gather information through Hell. Crowley could certainly convince a few incompetent demons that nothing had transpired and the angel was still commuting home on the weekends or something. All he would have to do is pretend he had intel and Shax would give him everything he needed; he didn’t have to enjoy it. They might even offer him a job as a laugh.
Aziraphale had offered him Second-in-Command. Second-in-Command?! What in the whole of creation had that been about? The angel had always been very clear about who was the more righteous of the pair, but Second-in-Command? It put language to a cruel truth that had run like a poisoned undercurrent through their entire relationship. It demonstrated, unequivocally, that Crowley was lesser-than in Aziraphale’s eyes, or that, at the very least, Aziraphale wanted to save face with the heavenly host so badly that he would allow them to think he felt himself superior to Crowley. He had offered Second-in-Command, but what Crowley had heard was:
We can be together forever, but you will never be equal to me. I know better than you. I always have, and I always will. You have input, but *my* word is final.
Deliver him from torment. This was what it was always going to come down to wasn’t it? This whole time, they were just delaying the inevitable.
He exerted a Herculean effort in an attempt to transmute his despair into anger, but alas, it was effort in vain. Too many other emotions were churning for him to properly bask in his ire.
He hadn’t done enough. He hadn’t said enough. He ran away. He was the worst kind of coward, and he had fallen in love with an even bigger coward, and they had cowarded themselves into the most embarrassingly cowardly breakup of all time.
He shuddered at the thought of the word “breakup”.
His self-pitying reverie was interrupted as he felt the Bentley roll to a stop in front of his new-old apartment. Old-new apartment? Reclaimed abode? Whatever the title, Crowley was looking forward to entering it and getting down to the crucial work of drinking away his memory of Aziraphale.
He balled his hands into tight fists, stuffed them in his pockets, and began the laborious process of dragging himself up to his apartment, with a scowl on his face. He suspected everything was going to feel laborious moving forward.
What was the Metatron playing at?
Whatever it was required him and Aziraphale to be separated, and that scathing look he’d briefly shot suggested it hadn’t been negotiable.
Stairway to Heaven trickled through his mind as he imagined what it may have looked like had he followed Aziraphale to Heaven.
There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven
The angel beaming with pride in sterile white clothes, the demon doing his damnedest to stand out amongst the sea of busybodies clad in boring greyscale and chintzy glitter makeup.
Would he even have made it to Heaven? It didn’t seem likely that the Metatron would ever have allowed him to be reinstated, and he certainly wouldn’t have received a warm welcome if he were.
Aziraphale was too infatuated with heaven to see that a more obvious trap had never been set. Even without the disdainful glare, Crowley knew the Metatron was up to something from the moment he entered the bookshop. It had been palpable in the air. Crowley was the only one who recognized him because the demon was the only one who had borne his full wrath. While he had very little conscious memory of the Metatron’s role in his fall, his subconscious remembered, and he had found himself stricken with abject terror when that disembodied head had walked in standing 5’10” with an aura that permeated, choked, and turned his vision grey.
There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
Coffee or death, indeed. The Metatron would never have let Aziraphale stay, and he certainly would never have let Crowley go. No matter which way you cut it, one or both of them would have been in mortal er.. celestial??… Metatronic danger? Some kind of danger, they would have been in some kind of danger for certain. And they still were.
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
He was sure there must have been a secret combination of words that would have done the trick, something that would have brought the angel into his arms with no further discussion, but he hadn’t found them in time. Aziraphale had interrupted him and the demon’s whole script had flown out of his head. And instead of making the slightest modicum of sense, he had babbled and rambled, and hadn’t managed to fully spit out anything new .
So he had done the only thing he could think to do. If he couldn’t say anything to get the angel’s attention, then he had to do something. That was how humans did things after all, and they were more human than angel or demon at this point.
They had never kissed before. Crowley was reasonably assured that the angel had never kissed anybody before, because, well… neither had he, as such. There was no way in a million years he would have put his mouth anywhere near the filthy demons that shambled through the halls of Hell, and the bellends in Heaven were certainly not going to put their mouths anywhere near him . Kissing humans, or doing anything of that ilk with them, didn’t seem very sporting to him - too big an advantage. So that only left one.
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, makes me wonder
Crowley hadn’t said much about it specifically, but he would have had to have been an idiot not to notice how often the angel had begun touching him in the last few years. He had nearly passed out that day at the pub when Aziraphale had put his hand against his chest. Surely the angel must have been wanting the same thing. Or perhaps Crowley had just been presumptuous, and the angel really was as horrified as he looked when Crowley released him.
He had looked so scared. And then oh so angry.
I forgive you.
The words mocked him.
I forgive you.
I forgive you for telling me how you feel.
I forgive you for kissing me.
I forgive you for *loving* me.
Maybe the angel had just been trying to shock Crowley as much as the demon had shocked him with the kiss. But those words were full of a kind of vitriol that Crowley’s kiss had not been. The demon hadn’t meant to hurt the angel, but it seemed like Aziraphale had meant to hurt him .
Then again, the angel had kissed him back for the briefest moment. He would probably maintain that he had simply been knocked off balance and clutched onto Crowley to catch himself, but surely there was no need to run his hand up and down the length of the demon’s shoulder blade if he were merely catching his balance.
Whatever.
Aziraphale would have to learn his lesson the hard way, just as Crowley had done those many years ago. Or he wouldn’t, and he would never see him again.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on
He unlocked the apartment and crossed the threshold, miracling a bottle of whiskey into his hand. He would allow himself, at maximum, two months to wallow in self-pity, but then he was going to get down to business. He was either going to get his angel back, or he was going to exact the most brutal revenge he had ever wrought upon Aziraphale and the whole insipid Heavenly host.