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Crowley knew, with him, it had never been an all at once sort of thing. He did have a proclivity towards charging in, towards diving in without a thought, towards gunning it with his foot pressed to the floor, but only towards the things that were his and his alone.
Everything else took careful time, he knew, even if he had that in spades and then some. Well, until he didn’t, but that was neither here nor there.
Aziraphale had never been an all at once impulsivity. To rush everything that the angel was would have been a grand disservice far greater than words would ever explain. Not to say that when the angel had winced and looked away while explaining he’d given away his very prestigious responsibility to the humans because he’d felt badly for them, that it hadn’t made a jump twitch spark alight in the darker portions of his shadowed heart. Not to say that the easy way Aziraphale had stretched his wing over to block the rain, thoughtless except for his easy instinctive kindness, hadn’t been an exercise in undeserved compassion that Crowley, until this point, had not found in any other angel. Not to say that their shared last day in Eden, the last day of Eden, hadn’t been irrevocably the pin point moment Crowley fell again. Far nicer, this time around. Less capitals. Still full of painful burning, but one he’d have gladly accepted twice over, thousands over.
It was only that, looking out at the storm clouds, Aziraphale worrying beside him, feeling for all the world like his northern magnetic pole had been finally balanced out by another, had been a long time coming for Crowley.
Every demon had once been an angel, or so the story goes. That much was true, it was in the fine print and the labels and the ingredients list on every full tin of demonically insipid greyed out temptation since day one. And hell forbid any of them ever forgot as much. Stood to reason that Crowley had once held the fluffy harp holding stature as boringly as the rest of them, logically. There’d been an awful lot less of empty space, back then, what with all the angels all packed in tight before the Earth had even been thought up. Not much space for self reflection, and even less for humility.
It also stood to reason that they’d have encountered each other, all the goody two shoes lined up for weekly updates and announcements from the Almighty, brushing shoulders by the watercoolers and all. Lots of names and faces, couldn’t be blamed if one was forgotten, really. Couldn’t blame Aziraphale, a full Principality, with all the fancy paperwork and job titles and lots of tasks to complete, for forgetting a face or two of the lower down ranks. Couldn’t really be helped. He’d had a different name then, less of the whole yellow eyes bit, too.
Crowley had always had an impeccable memory, though, something Falling hadn’t been able to burn out of him for all their trying.
A secret, something tucked so far away, Crowley figured it was possible the Almighty Herself hadn’t even realized, was that when Crowley had been out in the nothing, out there Creating, he’d had some inspiration. A little piece of light, he’d thought, before light had truly settled in as a concept, something to twinkle back at you from the ink above. Something a little like the way a smile hit the eyes, something to echo the feeling racing against the fabric of his soul. A quiet hello decorated in a sea of refractions and clouds, a coded message in case someone thought to look up and notice.
They hadn’t been friends, back then. Not in the way that led to long conversations over wine, to casual stretches of limbs over couch arms, or the sort of Knowing that made him take two steps faster, pull demonic interventions, conjure up miracles. Aziraphale had been very focused, no humanity to lead him towards dining or impulsive empathy, but still every bit the Good heaven had tried to bottle up. Crowley had been a Someone, a Something who had shuffled his way into eye rolls and frowns, towards catching phrases and conversations and just a little bit farther off the fluffier clouds. Didn’t quite fit in with all the holier-than-thou speeches, which left only questions. Doubts. Dangerous things, with the Upstairs crowd.
Aziraphale probably hadn’t noticed him, then. Heaven’s and Hell’s damn him, but Crowley hadn’t been able to stop noticing.
It was something in the way Aziraphale muttered to himself, in the fussing over details, the wide-eyed nods and careful side stepping of personal conversations. In the way he held himself as though he’d never stopped being sure, but the concern was in the how. Of course, his tasks were important, of course, but Aziraphale never seemed to be able to pull off the callous indifference. It was in the fact that when Crowley tossed out a ‘h’llo’, the other angel would blink up and nod at him, none of the worry about influences or Importance Politics, just plain and clear polite etiquette for the sake of it. “Oh, hello there,” he’d say, with a tight smile, and follow it with a “sorry, but I must be going. Take care.” Never hanging around other angels for too long, always off to somewhere or someplace, always finding nooks and crannies to sit alone. Crowley was fascinated by all of it, endlessly wanted more. Greed, he supposed, was something he was wont to be afflicted by. He craved a real smile, the spark that would no doubt light up his eyes, a twinkle in the distance.
It was in the fact, most thoroughly and painfully, that when the others had started diving off the clouds from their precarious footing, or otherwise being shoved wings burning aside, Aziraphale had been there.
Not to watch with displeased disappointment like his colleagues, to give speeches about rights and wrongs, about how they’d really brought this upon themselves when you thought about it. As if anyone had asked for torn wings and freefalling for asking why’s. Aziraphale hovered nearby, with that little divot of a frown between his brows, with his eyes all rounded out and worried. Empathetic to a fault before it had even been invented, but not quite enough to intervene. With a flinch or a wince as the yells trailed cruelly back up to him, but not sure how to be anything other than the good little angel, the cog in the ineffable plan.
And when Crowley himself had decided he’d take the back door out, find his own way down without all the fuss and the speeches, Aziraphale had found him, and held the door open himself.
“If you really must,” he’d said, looking right at Crowley for the first time, eyes wrought with so many bright and dull emotions it nearly stole the doubts from Crowley’s chest clean from him. “Do be careful. And, er, quick. I dare say Michael is rather unpleased with events as of late. Shouldn’t wait for her to find you, one would think.”
Crowley nodded. “And what would you think?”
Aziraphale glanced away. “I…. well. I would think this whole business has been a bit too… fire and brimstone for my taste. However, if the Almighty wills ah, divine punishments? Then I would suppose there is not much left for me to think on.”
Fascinating, Crowley had thought then. That an angel, so utterly tied up in the rigamarole of paper work and following task lists to a T should have the modicum of pseudo-doubt this one possesses, and yet radiate more Good than anything. On anyone else it might seem condescending, on anyone else it might have made him smile.
“Careful, that nearly sounded like a doubt.” He arched a brow, with no emotion left behind it to really pull it off. Things were tetchy, people too willing to throw down banishments, too hysterical. Wouldn’t be suited to Aziraphale, wouldn’t be manageable.
“Oh, no. No, of course not.” Aziraphale looked thoroughly torn, then. He bit his lip and glanced back over. “I would ensure the least painful way, that is, if I could. That’s all. No sense with all this shoving and everything, they could at least throw in some ‘please’s, I should think. Although…” He hesitated. “Is it. Must you? I mean, the others decided on some choice words and a lot of glaring, so I assumed they’d been quite set. You’re. That is…. I can’t say there’s anything particularly evil that I can feel with you, and I understand there’s been a lot of talk, but I can’t see why God wouldn’t be able to let a few actions slip through? Surely, if you talked to Her-“
Crowley’s not-heart, because humans hadn’t been invented yet and hearts were altogether still the germinating concept of an idea in the ineffability diagram, was a burning, melting thing. He stepped forward, nearly moving past Aziraphale all together. “Nah, not much one for grovelling, me. Hold on to that whole faith deal, though. Maybe I’ll pop in for a chat and see how it’s held out for you.”
A hand fell on his shoulder, hesitatingly, light. “Be safe, if you must go. I daresay they could use someone like you, down there. Maybe... Maybe this is all part of it. The Plan, and such.”
Crowley hadn’t known what to say to that. It felt nearly like belief, nearly like hope. Like even if She had given up on him, that someone hadn’t quite managed to yet.
Aziraphale’s sad gaze followed him all the way through to the walls of Eden, and further. The only angel in the whole Heavenly Host to feel anything for the Fallen ones. It made sense that someone up there had decided he should forget that whole thing.
Maybe the debacle with the sword had cinched it, what with the angel’s easy conversation, thoughtful polite-ness as always, but the burgeoning ache in Crowley had been punched through far earlier. The rainclouds only made him accept it for what it was, whether a temptation that of purgatory itself, or one last gift from a God that had still closed the doors on him anyways.
He’d loved Aziraphale from the moment he’d Fallen, he next seven thousand years was a lesson in falling in smaller ways, continuously, and never hitting the ground.
If God had made anything perfectly, She’d really hit the mark with the whole concept of love, he thought. There was nothing more utterly destructive and healing as it, the most perfectly Human thing, the most imperfectly unattainable thing for anyone else.
It hadn’t mattered much to him; over the years and years the brighter the stars. Unforgivable, and all. It wasn’t as if he expected anything at all in return, or really had ever allowed himself to name the thing that made him carve out the skies in constellations of sonnets, that led him to nudge Shakespeare in certain directions, or the artists perfect renditions of emotions that would only be named later with two parts desolate empty rooms and one part never deciding that was good and fine but it’s time to be popping along, thanks for the view. He couldn’t leave without a place to go, not really. He always ended up back where he’d meant to walk away from.
Imagine, he’d think, just how more wholly terrible it would be, if Aziraphale ever felt it back.
Better to have loved and lost, that had not been one of his influences, obviously. His whole thing was centered around a whole lot more catching the light of a star beam thousands of years after it had already gone out.
Aziraphale had always been one for predictability in the most unpredictable of ways. He liked knowing there was tea to be put on, that there’d always invariably be another good book to read or re-read, that there were flavors and delicacies to be tasted, should he get the inkling. The order of events mattered less than knowing they would happen, as was ineffability.
Being around Crowley was like driving in a tunnel, with only enough light to see the lines as they already met you, knowing there would be sky again eventually, but not knowing if they’d crash before making it there.
Loving Crowley was like the crash.
For all his narrow focus, the way he tended to appear cold if not for anything than for not recognizing contexts, he’d been experiencing the last few millennium as a short burst of flash fires and cut breaks on speeding cars. A scrapbook of snapshots into a life he was at full tilt towards, that he could recognize and see, but never tried to pull together on the whole front. A puzzle left half made on a table, not because it was impossible, but because the final picture was too high definition, too close and too loud to handle.
There was Crowley, appearing beside him with that funny eyebrow raise and upturned lips, every long stretch of limb telegraphing a casual nonchalance that seeped no farther than the clothes on him. There he was, pulling the fabric of the world around them into place like it meant nothing, as if it were a fun experiment, and conveniently wiping the rough edges and ripples away before Aziraphale could be troubled by them.
But he’d noticed, of course he’d noticed. The demon was waving neon in the air, a tidal wave of emotions with every encounter, not even closing his eyes would have prevented them from splashing across his mind in a firework display. He’d only, somewhere between the years, forgotten to look at where this was all heading, whether there was still road beneath them, whether there ever had been. He’d forgotten to let himself see the picture on the puzzle box, to take that thought down from the shelf and really look at it.
It was one thing to know what love was, as a concept, as a feeling in the most general sense, as a dictionary definition.
To adore, to feel affection towards, to rewrite as though tracing letters on a forgotten page, to pull close and hold tight and never allow oneself to name, to be afraid, to be helpless, to never want anything other than.
It was years and lightyears and mountains apart to know one was in love.
Perhaps that wasn’t quite right; Aziraphale had spent a long lifetime accompanied by humans of all manners of perceiving and thinking. Those who wrote the most beautiful descriptions of sunsets and rose petals, as though picturing some sight far beyond anything Upstairs could ever hope to understand. As though they’d been with the Almighty, holding the paintbrush when She’d decided on constants like trust and hope. Wilde had told him what love was, in spiralling and simple nuances that seemed to obvious to be possible. T.S. Eliot had described poetry once as an escape from emotion, but that doing so meant inevitably, unfailingly, that you’d still feel it when you returned. Shakespeare had it acted into several parts, with actors spreading their arms wide as if to say that their love had no room left within them; Aziraphale knew the exact coordinates of the edges of the universe, but these humans had a propensity for seeing farther.
Maybe it had never been so much a quandary of recognizing love when one was in the midst of it, but allowing oneself to understand that same ‘beyond’ humanity spent so many words outlining. Allowing oneself to stop running, to finish with the whole escaping business and embrace the emotion you’d been pretending not to have. Realizing the kind of love he’d always felt had its own peaks and valleys, its own consistency, but that Crowley meant something more inevitable. That the warm vulnerability in his eyes during quiet moments meant something grander than tomorrow, something an Apocalypse would never touch, was not meant to. That the unfathomable ache, the skip-beat in him that always led them both back to London no matter where they strayed, was perhaps outside of their normal ineffability, that it wrote its own rules and threw those out too.
Maybe Aziraphale had always been a bit afraid of knowing there was no destination, that the hurtling within the nothing he felt every time Crowley swaggered across his doorway, met him for lunch and spent the whole encounter fondly leaning in, the ringing we could run off together! Had always been the sum of everything. Entirely predictable in its impossible unpredictability.
There were the inevitabilities, packaged up in rows he kept like his favorite books, the fact that no one had ever spoken to him like they heard him, the way Crowley had breathed purpose into his motions as simply as existing, everything. The mere bolded and underlined fact that by all accounts, Aziraphale had in fact lost his faith shortly before their Apocalypse averting, that he’d watched everything he understood about why and who burn up like so much parchment, and held onto his wings nonetheless. He’d heard of many who’d Fallen for less. Surely, Crowley with all his saving birds and children must have been within those in the ‘less’. That in itself was a doubt wrapped in a hope and set to sinking. Or flying, maybe it wasn’t for him to say.
Silly, he’d admit, but there needn’t be more of an All Purpose ‘why’ than he’d had, presently. And the who had nearly always been obvious.
None of this could help being more than good, more than bad, more than human. It was ineffable in its non-ineffability, and frankly, he didn’t much care to question it any longer. He supposed even dithering had its finish, when dithering became too much like a choice.
Loving Crowley was never meant to be a choice. He’d never had brakes to begin with, and he could no longer remember where he’d intended for them to be going.
The whole of it, the realization and the unrealizing, had been a large swell of panic to battle down in the end. Aziraphale was an angel of habit, he’d kept the same jacket for nearly two eras, after all. Between the ice-cold horror of seeing the cruel similarities of Upstairs and Downstairs firsthand, the sudden meshing of sides that invariably produced another, all their own, the loss and renew that Adam created with a thought, all of it found wanting of a hard reset.
Wrapping his mind around the fact he was fully and entirely in love with Crowley would be its own pot of tea. Realizing he had been for decades upon decades, that Crowley, with all his arching eyebrows and intense gazes, with all the ‘I’ll give you a lifts’ and ‘anywhere you want to go’s, all the ‘you can stay at my place’, had arrived far before, that Aziraphale had kept him wondering and doubting all these years. That, required some pondering. The poor, dear heart, his beloved, his friend. Tied up in cinders and damp crowded spaces, bursting to the brim with more kindness than could possibly fit anywhere Down below, feeling once again as though he’d not been worth even mentioning. That his feelings could ever just be locked up and forgotten, that Aziraphale ever could.
How could he have? How had he? Now that his eyes were opened, with all the doors swung wide, it was so clear. That thrum of love following everything. How bright and orange it was, how it hung at the corners, not hurried with being noticed? That had Crowley all over, so innately it stung. And Crowley, with his sunglasses and his words like bullet proof glass that one could easily see right through if they tried, he’d been set to believe the worst of himself. Would he still…? Did Aziraphale even deserve to try?
He let his tea grow cold three times over, still reading the same page of a book without absorbing anything. He was afraid, honestly. Aziraphale was comfortable without change, without the possibility of it as daunting as it was. Yet, he’d almost lost everything, even more than a favorite mug or spot on the couch. He’d almost lost all the dinners and the crepes and the benches in parks, almost Crowley. It was impossible, the thought of risking that once more.
But then, didn’t Crowley at least deserve to know? Now, without the eyes of the Upstairs and without any threat of notes or demotions, where they could just breathe, weren’t they both granted a moment of impulsivity?
For all his indecision, however, Aziraphale was not Crowley. A hundred years of avoidance was ultimately not in the cards. He’d managed to put on a pot of tea, open the shoppe only to shortly close it, stumble through a full page, before the immensity of everything became plainly insurmountable. Which was to say, perfectly surmountable, should one simply set about acting.
The switching point had been a note scrawled among the margins, one from Wilde himself. He recalled a late-night chat, several over the years, but one that had resulted in the man describing the lengths many would go to for anything within the semblance of love.
“Many a fool believe a mere skip is the full fall,” he’d said, tipsy to a front, of course. Aziraphale could hardly dare to talk so deeply with humans otherwise without them noticing things.
“Oh, my dear, would you have known the latter?” Aziraphale had teased.
Wilde had looked at him then, a strange glance of some fond confusion. He often nearly appeared to see Aziraphale, an unsettling clarity all around. “Yesterday, I overheard a conversation, a young man, quite over dressed for this part of town. I think… I think perhaps I heard the clearest glimpse of a love beyond love just then, from that man. Discussing an old friend over a meal.”
Aziraphale leaned in, eager and awed pre-emptively. “Do write it down, my boy. If it was enough to inspire you so, I would be honored to keep it.” And he’d found a scrap alongside a pen for the occasion with a simple thought, and placed the words in the first copy of his published work he’d been able to.
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” A classic quote now, oft framed in coffee shops and the like. Overheard in a hole in the wall, from a young man out of dress for the time, who’d understood love in the simplest terms. Funny, the ways humans acted so thoroughly bad and good, how they understood so much and yet so little, and how clearly.
“Oh,” Aziraphale found himself saying, now and then. Wilde of course, a thoroughly human blend of the most beautiful words and the worst ideas, had pointed him towards the obvious without intending so. Once again, he owed humanity an incredible debt.
There’s something truly calculated in the ways that the Great Plan fell apart, only to reveal the intentions behind it all along. A son of a fallen angel who’d asked questions, millennium later, unfailingly choosing the unexpected, breaking the rules. Children, standing down the forces that plague their parents, the grievances of a world they have not known yet, and winning. An angel, and a demon. A witch, and a witch finder.
He'd been falling for long enough now, he supposed. The polite thing to do would be to allow them both somewhere to land.
The knock wasn’t wholly unexpected, Crowley had a built-in knack for the angel’s whereabouts these days. In case of danger, he’d assured himself, nothing else.
Aziraphale wasn’t prone to dropping in, however, let alone at his flat. In all the years Crowley’d owned this particular stretch of corridors and windows, Aziraphale had stopped by a grand total of once. To drop off a rather sad looking cactus he’d bemoaned would positively suffer in the purposefully damp air he’d cultivated at his shop. He’d wrinkled his nose the entire time and left as soon as the plant had left his hands. They only met at the bookshop, since.
“Hello, my dear,” Aziraphale greeted, less of the put together grace Crowley’d come to expect.
“Uh, hi,” Crowley nodded back, less of the confidence he’d come to expect from himself.
Aziraphale pushed a manicured hand through his messy curls, and Crowley distantly noticed the flush around the angel’s cheeks, along with the fact it appeared Aziraphale had been habitually ruining his hair for hours now. He looked, for lack of a less human word, utterly shattered. Stressed, even. Nearly as put out as he’d been during their spat via Alpha Centauri or otherwise. The idea didn’t sit well with him.
“Crowley, my dear boy, I thought. Well. It might be prudent if we had a chat. I’ve been, thinking. Far too much I’m afraid.”
Crowley hated the way the scrabbled together world he’d made fell entirely out and into nothing at the words. What power he’d given his angel, able to bring him to silence with barely anything. If Hastur could see him now.
“Sure?” He stepped out of the way, allowing the angel to shuffle inside and stand in the midst of the broad blank expanse beyond, looking rather small.
Aziraphale sucked in a sharp breathe, the exhale was far shakier. Crowley frowned. “Angel? Everything alright?”
Aziraphale turned towards him, something decided in the depths of his forever blue eyes. “I fear I’ve. Crowley, you must know…” the angel trailed closer, almost in a sleepwalk, his hand twitched at his side. He sighed. “What are your thoughts on Wilde?”
Well, that was certainly a pitch out of tune, Crowley blinked. “Er. Fine? Think he’d have been one of yours, right?”
Aziraphale huffed a laugh, a hollow and quiet sort. “No, I think not, far too perceptive for the Upstairs group I should think.” His voice was impossibly tender, and he glanced up through his eyelashes then, like he was waiting for Crowley to catch the thread.
Crowley was making a valiant effort not to let this string float by, but he felt as though he were missing a fundamental clue. Aziraphale moved closer, lifting his hand to trace Crowley’s chin almost absently. Crowley noticed painfully, a whole cascading of earthquakes against his heart, that it was trembling.
“Aziraphale, what’s the matter? Reading too many sad books?” he tried again, levity failing him, immensely certain for the moment that this was it, the end of the world just fast forwarded. Directly mailed instead of public broadcast.
Aziraphale shook his head, lips pursed. “Nothing, nothing dear boy. I…. I worry, my penchant for indecision may have come across as a lack of care, is all.”
Crowley gestured to his study, thoughtlessly drawing up two chairs in the space where only one had sat moments earlier. “Maybe you should sit, angel. Tell me from the beginning, we can sort it out over a glass of champagne.”
The angel looked at him, long and somehow wounded. Desperately sad and fond all at once, Crowley was breathless in the face of it. Forgotten in the thousands of impossible words that could not come close to touching how the complicated ache in Crowley’s chest grew only stronger. He felt his palms go clammy and willed it away. Whatever the angel had come to say, he owed him the time to hear it all out, his own stupid feelings be damned.
“Or, er. No champagne? Not that sort of evening, ey? Well, it’s late but I could drive us down for a dessert before close-“
Aziraphale’s lips twitched into a watery smile that ripped out everything in Crowley’s chest, made him want desperately selfish things, made him crave even more.
“You old serpent,” Aziraphale breathed, all fond and cobblestone patched with wonder Crowley was sure he was wholly undeserving of. “You know, patience is a virtue. Frightfully kind of you, I should think. You’ve been gifting me so much of yours.”
Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s hand around the wrist, suddenly, wholeheartedly terrified. “What do you-“ His protests felt weak, a thin veneer over a crack in the foundations he’d set his contentment on.
Aziraphale stepped impossibly closer, free hand moving to brush Crowley’s cheek. “I owe you more apologies than I can voice, I’m afraid.” Crowley could look nowhere else but the unfathomable depth of the angel’s gaze. All of creation fell away, not earth or hell or heaven only those eyes, that voice, that press of trembling fingers against his. “My dearest, my Crowley. Have I been too long?”
“A-Aziraphale, I….”
There was nothing that could have broken him more fully than the soft and sweet sparkle in Aziraphale’s eyes, as he looked at him. Only at him, like he’d always been. Like he knew that he’d stolen the memory of it for the nebulas and the galaxies. Like for all the unanswered star songs, all their silent travels to Paris, to Greece, to parks and dinners, for all the years he’d been content with knowing they’d shone for just a moment, Aziraphale had finally looked up.
Aziraphale’s gaze tracked over his expression, like he was starving for it, and seemed to find it reassuring. He leaned in, and pressed his lips just to the side of Crowley’s own. Just against the corner. It was the sweetest touch Crowley had ever felt, Fallen or not.
“Never,” Crowley shook, pressed his forehead against Aziraphale’s, held his hand even tighter, pressed his own lips to Aziraphale’s forehead, frantically, feverishly. “Angel, Aziraphale. All my life. And beyond that. Every life, I’m yours. I’ve been nothing else.”
Aziraphale was so beautiful, in the fond creases around his eyes, the gentle squeeze of his hands. He was beautiful in existence, in how he’d always taught Crowley what love was, how to be it so effortlessly, without ever hesitating. “My love,” Aziraphale pressed his smile against Crowley’s awed mouth, and there were more stars than space, more luminous, more beautiful than ever.
“You’re everything.”