Chapter Text
How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?
— Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light
Aziraphale had three concerns. First was Adam. Second was Crowley. Third was himself, although selfishly, that one wasn’t far behind. He wanted to find Adam, and he wanted to wipe away the fear in Crowley’s eyes as they searched. And he really really really didn’t want Crowley to leave — that one was for himself.
Adam couldn’t have gone far on foot, so they set out in different directions, agreeing to turn around at a reasonable distance to try the car. Aziraphale took the turn that went back into town. The rooftops framed the sky as he went, whistling carefully for Lucy.
Crowley hadn’t said that he wanted to leave, Aziraphale knew that. But clearly he and Adam both had harbored the same insecurity. Crowley had fought so hard to have it all, and for a moment in London, he had. Now that he’d completed his flagellations, there was nothing stopping him from returning like a rightful potentate. He could return to big apartments and the flash suits he must have looked so good in. He probably had friends left, friends who could help get him comfortable jobs that didn’t require a medical license. All that was holding him back was a troubled kid and a middle-aged baker, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure yet how much he was worth.
Things had been good, of course, clothing him in a self-satisfaction borne of the absolute and undeniable truth in Crowley’s affection for him. It was a connection he’d never known before, and at first he’d buzzed with the guilty memory of Mary, but now he’d been healing with every sunny morning spent in bed, beams of light falling in from Crowley’s windowed walls. He’d been growing bolder with each new foray into touching Crowley that made him feel confident, reckless. There were so many ways that he worshipped, now, and every moment spent side by side and skin to skin felt more right than those increasingly infrequent moments apart.
But sore spots remained, hidden away though they had become. That much was clear now, as Aziraphale looked behind a stone bus shelter, and hoped he hadn’t been too distracted by his own growing feelings to take proper stock of Crowley’s potentially diminishing ones.
He straightened up and looked around. The road behind him was empty, and he’d gone farther than Adam could have run. He turned back, scanning for signs of Crowley as he started in the other direction.
He passed the animal shelter, the Bentley still sitting quietly in its lot. The road ended beyond, in a bridge that was too small for cars, a path that carried volunteer dog-walkers to the pasture and woods beyond.
“Angel,” he heard, and followed the voice off the road. Adam was curled into Crowley’s arms under the bridge, Lucy whining softly at their side. They were nestled into a slope of grass that looked wet and soft, just like the knit of Crowley’s tear-darkened shoulder.
“Aziraphale,” Adam said plaintively, and that was all he had to say before Aziraphale was picking his way ungracefully over.
Framed by Crowley’s lean limbs, Adam looked every inch a child. He was crying, furious, clearly embarrassed and ashamed and uncertain. He lifted his head up, though, and Aziraphale slid in to offer what love he could.
They embraced, the three of them, Aziraphale calming as his body acknowledged the closeness of priorities one and two. It was chilly where they sat, and the dew that the shadows had protected soaked into Aziraphale’s practical trousers, but he didn’t think to mind. Lucy, whining slightly, was curled somewhere into the tangle of them. Her warm body was like an anchor to reality until they calmed, sitting quietly in the face of the unvarnished.
“I’m sorry I ran,” Adam said finally. Crowley’s mouth twitched up, and Aziraphale knew what he would say before he said it.
“Look who you’re talking to.” Crowley meant himself, but Aziraphale nodded along. They’d both run here, out to the nothingness of nobody knowing them, to a blank slate where they could try to redo or undo their past lives. And it had worked, mostly, with Aziraphale’s bakery and Crowley’s place in the fabric of every town event and institution. But Adam had been brought to Tadfield against his will, had a harder time making it into a home. And all of them still lacked that final sense of love, of family.
Or did they? Crowley and Adam got up, with face-wiping and teasing, but Aziraphale followed a few paces behind as the rag-tag crew went back to the car, Lucy underfoot. If the feeling in his chest wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was.
You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.
seaside improvisation - richard siken
“Shall we talk about it?”
Days later, Aziraphale held his book aloft, carefully aiming the square of resulting shade into Crowley’s face as he stooped to address a cluster of weeds. The homeowners were coming to check on the land soon, and Aziraphale was still terrified that some handover of the keys was imminent. That Crowley was preparing his departure.
They’d been too focused on Adam to bring it up amongst themselves in the days interceding, but a little devil on Aziraphale’s shoulder whispered that Crowley could just have said, right then, that he wasn’t leaving. That he hadn’t almost felt ominous, portentous.
And yet Crowley was no longer a mystery to him. Somehow Aziraphale couldn’t believe that he was being strung along, lied to by omission only to be left behind. Not when Crowley curled into him at night, his angular body seeking heat. Not when Crowley looked at him, like he did now, squinting up like the sight of Aziraphale hovering over him was as extraordinary as an army of angels. Behind him, Lucy napped in the pile of pulled weeds.
“We can talk about anything you’d like.” Crowley tossed his handful of weeds at Lucy and stood, dusting his hands off. There was a trace of some kind of glitter nailpolish underneath the dirt. “These are coming along nicely.”
“What are they?” Aziriaphale cast an eye over the row they stood in. Crowley’s garden was a mystery to outsiders, the owner’s plants side-by-side with Crowley’s neat sustenance garden and strange, jumbled experiments.
“Oh!” Crowley brightened and darkened at once. For all that he loved his plants, he regarded them with an iron fist and would speak in grim tones about even the best growers. “It’s fennel, of course. Some chives. Thyme over there, and I managed to fit some rosemary about the shed. One of the biddies at the farmer’s market gave me a bunch of herb seeds, and she reckons she can get weed, too.”
“Rosemary?” Aziraphale ignored the latter half of what Crowley had said and shifted his weight, interested despite himself. He was always having to invent his bread specials based on what the market offered: rosemary loaves were always popular when he could manage to find it fresh, but he couldn’t abide by dried herbs in the interim.
“For your bread specials,” Crowley supplied, as if reading his mind. As if seeing Aziraphale’s wishes as needs, and satisfying them more than ever his needs had been.
“My bread specials?” He knew he was just repeating Crowley’s words back to him; he couldn’t help it. “You’re growing rosemary for my bread specials,” he tried, but that wasn’t much better.
Crowley took a breath. He was sweaty, wearing sunglasses but no shoes, his eyes darting around like an evasive reptile. “I figure I should stick around to harvest… and after that, you know, Adam might have. Girl trouble. Boy trouble. Both. Neither. But either way…”
“You should probably stick around,” Aziraphale supplied. He thought his voice sounded stronger now, less unsure. He didn't know why he’d been unsure. Something in his chest was swelling, glowing.
Crowley stopped glancing everywhere but Aziraphale and met his eyes, a smile tugging one side of his crooked mouth all the way up. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Good thinking.” Aziraphale took a step, and then looped his hand into Crowley’s back pocket, pulling their bodies close. Crowley smelled like clean dirt and sweat and Aziraphale wanted him so much. Pleased with his own daring, he gave Crowley’s small bum a squeeze.
Crowley seemed as pleased as he was. “And there’s this bloke.”
Aziraphale ducked his head, delighted. The glow in his chest had leaked out into the rest of his body, and was buzzing up his spine. He eyed Crowley’s neck, the shine there, the salt it would taste like. It wasn’t a sin. It was the most natural thing in the world. Sweet dirt, honest work, Crowley Crowley Crowley.”
“I love you,” he told Crowley’s neck, and then his eyes, when they caught again on his, and then he mumbled it into that crooked mouth when it came down to his. “—mmf. I do, my dear.”
“Yes,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale knew he meant me too, and then Crowley said “Me too,” and maybe he’d been saying it, been saying those unsaid words, all along.
“Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.”
litany in which certain things are crossed out — richard siken
“That you, angel?”
Crowley’s head poked out from behind an enormous fern. Azraphale took off his sweater, hung it up, and huffed a sigh at the green fronds that blocked out most of Crowley’s body. “Another plant, my dear?”
“This one is very rare,” Crowley told him, too pleased with himself to acknowledge Aziraphale’s exasperated expression. “Do you see the variegation on the leaves? It needs to be kept moist, though, so I was thinking about putting misters up in the second bathroom—”
“That’s my bathroom!” Adam hollered from his bedroom, punctuating his point with a loud crashing sound.
“No drumming until Aziraphale’s shut the bakery!” Crowley yelled back, and set about finding a spot to put his plant down.
Aziraphale hurried over to help before the plant that he was swinging around could take out the ceiling fan. “I’ve shut it, actually. You’re welcome to come help me clean.”
Crowley straightened up once the planter was on the ground and smirked at him. “Oh yeah?”
Aziraphale remembered the last time they’d snuck into the bakery’s back room while Adam rehearsed his drum solo and flushed. “I actually meant to clean, sorry. I—”
Adam started up again. Without speaking, they moved into the kitchen to continue their conversation. Lucy, who had been asleep on the cool tiles, wagged her tail at the sight of them. Aziraphale dug through his waistcoat until he found one of the biscuits he’d begun baking and dropped it in front of her nose. She ate it while laying down, wagging all the while. She’d begun to take a bit after Aziraphale, midsection-wise, but he’d needed a taste tester while developing the dog biscuits. Maybe Adam could take her skateboarding with him; Aziraphale made a mental note to ask when the drumming ceased.
He emptied the rest of his pockets on the table that sat beside their overstuffed bookshelf, which held an odd assortment of drumsticks, bookstore receipts, and order forms from Tracy and Shadwell. A photo of Mary smiled at him from the wall over the sofa, and Aziraphale smiled back out of habit.
“He’s getting good, I think,” Crowley said. “Listen, do you think it’s too early for him to start a band? I'd be a good tour manager, don’t you reckon? I know it’s a lot of time on the road, and he’s a bit young for it, but I really think I’d look good in the clothes.”
Aziraphale hid his smile in Crowley’s neck, drawing him closer and giving him a good squeeze. He’d come down for a cup of coffee mid-morning, but he’d spent the rest of the day on a writing deadline and had been stuck upstairs working until Adam came home from school — and clearly, at that point, he’d been busy doing secret plant things and plotting to become a stage dad. Not that Adam called them his dads, yet, and maybe he would never — but he was there to stay, and that was what mattered.
“What about your clothes would you even change?” Aziraphale murmured, and plucked at the skinny tie that Crowley was inexplicably wearing to do his writing. Lately he’d been minimizing his medical columns to work on something personal, and Aziraphale couldn’t wait to read it, maybe even from Anathema’s coziest chair. He hoped it was Crowley’s story. It was a good story, and it was Aziriaphale’s joy to be a part of it now. Maybe they could be Crowley's happy ending, him and Crowley and Lucy and Adam all together. It certainly felt like his happy ending.
Downstairs, floors to sweep. From the other room, cymbals. In his arms, an impossible man. It wasn’t simple or perfect or easy to come by, but it had been worth every painful step along the path toward this beautiful mess. To have a heart and head as full as his now-cramped flat. To have a family that he would hold onto with both of his hands, for as long as they let him not let go.