Work Text:
"I forgive you."
"Don't bother."
Two weeks later
Aziraphale was done. He couldn't take this anymore. He was going to go insane if he spent another moment in this awful place. He got up from his desk and stormed to Michael's office. "I can't do this anymore! I quit! I don't care who takes over, I don't care what happens next—the whole place can burn down in hellfire for all I care!" He shouted with all of his might.
Then in a much softer tone he added "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a demon to find."
And before Michael could get a word in edgewise, he was gone. Marching to the elevator to Earth as quick as his feet could take him.
As soon as it arrived he rushed in and pressed the button impatiently. The doors closed with a thud and he stood as close to them as he deemed safe and tapped his foot as if it would speed things up.
Upon reaching his destination and stepping out onto the corner across from his bookshop he realized that in all his haste he had entirely forgotten that he didn't know where Crowley would be found.
Right. I'll just pop into the bookshop and ask Muriel if she's seen him and go from there.
With a plan formulated, Aziraphale walked as quickly as he felt was appropriate for public spaces toward the shop and slammed the door open with much more force that he might have in the past.
"Muriel! I need your—!"
And there he was, slouched in Aziraphale's reading chair with a bottle of cheap gin dangling from his hand and three more scattered about the floor.
Crowley looked shocked for only a moment before he carefully schooled his expression to something much more blank with just an edge of animosity.
"Ruling in heaven wasn't all it was cracked up to be then?" He asked in a tone dripping with sarcasm and vitriol.
"No! It wasn't at all! It was all just bureaucracy and endless paperwork! Not to mention how dull the place is. And everyone still hates me—I can see it in their expressions. Oh, and the meetings! Nonstop! There was no sushi or the good wine we like—not a single book in sight! Oh it was dreadful!" He shouted in a rush.
"Right? That it then?" Crowley asked in a monotone.
"No, no! Of course not!" he said in that panicked way he had where the words fell out before he had even had time to plan them. He paused and took a deep breath as though to gather his courage (he didn't need to breathe as such but he found the process calming). "It's just that—well—you! You weren't there! Everything was so dreadfully dull without you..."
Crowley just stared at him, expression completely impassive.
"I'm afraid I've messed up the greatest thing I'd ever had in all my existence. And now I don't know how to fix it."
"Well, you could start with an apology." Crowley said in a monotone with just the barest hint of something which Aziraphale could only wish was hope.
"Oh. Yes! Quite right! I was in such a hurry to explain everything that had happened that I quite forgot that part." Aziraphale said sheepishly.
"Crowley, my dear, I am so very, very sorry. I thought I had found the perfect way for us to be together—to be us!—...to be happy. But I really just cocked the whole thing up, didn't I?"
"Well, you got that part right, angel." Crowley drawled sarcastically.
"When the Metatron offered me the position I just got so excited! Here!—I thought—is the answer to all of our problems. We can be together. We can create together. And no one could question any longer if I was doing the right thing. How could they object to my fraternizing with another angel?"
"I didn't want to create! I just wanted you! You made me happier than all of the stars and galaxies in the universe combined." Crowley shouted. And then, in almost a whisper—"I would've fallen again and again just to be with you."
"Oh, my dear." Aziraphale gasped, tears coming to his eyes. "I was so blinded by my excitement that I forgot in that moment that there was no longer your side and my side. No good side and bad side. Just our side that we'd built together."
"Crowley, darling, I love you dearly. I'm so very sorry I made you believe that you were ever anything less than perfect for me exactly as you are. Can you ever forgive—mmph?"
It was at this point that Crowley shut Aziraphale up with his new favorite move: a tongue down his throat. He broke the kiss after a moment and sighed into the scant space between their lips "Angel, you have a lot to make up for. And don't think this is the last we've talked about this. But—I love you too. And right now I just need to hold you for a while and let my mind make sense of this. To believe it's real. That you're real."
Aziraphale just pulled Crowley closer and tucked his head into the crook of his neck.
They had a lot left to fix. He didn't think he would ever be able to fully atone for what he'd done.
But, in this moment, he felt that everything would be, somehow, just fine.