Chapter Text
The night he and Crowley prepared for the body-swap, Aziraphale had not a care in the world. He hadn’t been convinced that the plan they’d devised based on Agnes’s final prophecy would work, but he had readily trusted the process. Failing hadn’t been an option, so considering it would’ve been an utter waste of time.
That optimistic attitude had developed throughout the best and worst of humanity’s history – and the countless times he’d dodged discorporation after Heaven failed to warn him of brooding conflicts. Ordinarily, things worked in his favor – which meant that for the two weeks following Maggie’s and Nina’s intervention, Aziraphale had been in a tizzy of preparatory joy.
He cleaned up the shop, bought essentials, and daydreamt until the anticipation became unbearable. Dozens of potential late night conversations had been on the forefront of his mind, the worst of which would have had them critically discussing the idea of living together. Settling down in the bookshop – in the most literal sense of the phrase – would’ve been a huge step for anyone, but most especially for Crowley. His tendency to get agitated when he felt crowded might have been enough reason for him to deny, and it would neither have surprised, nor aggrieved Aziraphale in any way. Quite the contrary, actually. He would’ve appreciated the effort that went into being so straightforward, considering that communicating was neither his nor Crowley’s strong suit.
During the course of his existence, Crowley had picked up the habit of ignoring his emotions, which occasionally resulted in rushes of heated – and from time to time rather vicious – slips of the tongue. According to one of the more substantial ones, Aziraphale had equally irritating habits – becoming so self-absorbed in social interactions that he forgot that his thoughts on any matter of choice weren’t the only ones worth considering.
In combination, both of those traits had acted like a combustive agent to any conversation they’d started after the first thwarted apocalypse. He and Crowley had been forced to come to another agreement, each promising to tackle their respective issues head on.
A brilliant plan – except for the fact that Gabriel’s dilemma had inadvertently put a hold on it. The constant apprehension had started to ruin Aziraphale’s comfort with being both rational and soft, similarly reawakening Crowley’s snarky, sarcastic dispiritedness.
Fully aware that he had yet to recover from the adverse effects himself, Aziraphale had expected to see some reflected in Crowley’s behavior. The return of semi-regular comments about his demonic nature had been a surprise, but none Aziraphale hadn’t seen himself unequipped to handle. He shrugged them off, assuming that the grief he’d heard reflected in each of those heavy-handed remarks was destined to vanish as soon as they’d settled back into a life outside the influences of Heaven and Hell.
Maybe it would have, if they had been fueled by grief rather than a long-festering bitter resentment.
Uncontrolled fury, Aziraphale could’ve dealt with. It was something he had been prepared for after that godawful misunderstanding they had in the Bentley. Unbridled anguish, on the other hand – one that had Crowley revealing secrets he’d safeguarded since the beginning of time – caught Aziraphale off guard.
"Just… Forget it," Crowley mumbled, his skin now almost ghostly pale. "I‘m going home."
Without wasting a second thought – pleased to find that he wasn’t entirely lost to despair yet – Aziraphale took a step to the left, intercepting his most direct path out of the shop.
Letting Crowley leave wouldn’t only ruin whatever was left standing between them – it would be grossly negligent. In this state, he’d probably fall apart behind the steering wheel as soon as he scrambled back into his car.
As calmly as possible given the circumstance, Aziraphale attempted to get past the wall of denial Crowley was starting to build around himself, looking at him as though he’d lost his mind.
"I know you’re quite upset with me at the moment," Aziraphale started, ignoring the sting that accompanied the acknowledgement. "But I’m also painfully aware that you’ve always made a conscious effort to safekeep your past from me. If you were in your right mind right now, you wouldn’t have –"
"‘S nothing."
"It’s not nothing ," Aziraphale protested, already aware that the argument was bound to fail. "I suppose it hasn’t been nothing for a long time."
A sense of mindless panic began to nibble at his insides, forcing a countenanced smile onto his lips. Another practiced habit, drilled into him after one too many times of being rebuked for looking miserable when reporting to his superiors. Good angels had no reason to be miserable – even if the urge to be a good angel was the sole cause of their misery.
Denying that he remembered Jophiel fondly to ease Crowley’s fears would be insincere. She wasn’t someone he could possibly forget. Her lighthearted demeanor, her ecstaticness – the enchantment she’d embodied with every fiber of her being – had followed Aziraphale like a shadow all throughout his friendship with Crowley. Not because he wanted to change him into her, but because she represented every bit of jauntiness Hell had robbed from Crowley when he fell. Jophiel’s demise was a monument to the fate of angels that weren’t the ‘proper’ kind of good. Aziraphale’s fate, if he as much as dared to act against the will of a celestial entity that eluded understanding.
A being who, deep inside, Aziraphale still ached to be accepted by. Heaven’s disdain was one thing – and working side by side with the archangels had proven that he didn’t care much about their opinion after all. Being abandoned and disregarded by the Almighty, on the other hand, would mean losing his sole connection to the purpose of existence.
A loss he didn’t dare fathom, so he typically avoided thinking about it.
Over the years, Aziraphale had learned to tame the sense of existential threat, usually quieting it with sinful but irresistible indulgences in human pleasures. He’d grown accustomed to its presence, and had been shocked to discover that silencing it entirely was actually possible. That he could erase those worries completely.
All it would’ve taken was for Crowley to agree to coming with him. Not only would it have kept them both safe – which was a need Aziraphale happily admitted to – it would’ve also allowed him to stop worrying about how much he desired a life with Crowley regardless of anyone’s approval.
How desperately he needed being with Crowley to be the ineffable thing to do.
Loving Crowley was so easy when it was loving as little signs of affection. When it was loving Crowley rather than loving the demon Crowley, both of which Aziraphale had separated in the same fashion he distanced himself from his angelic nature. If he were to dismantle that system, he would put himself into an impossible position. Pitting two equally strong aspirations against each other.
Neither loss would be blitheful. Both left him almost paralyzed with fear.
But if he had to choose – if he was forced to choose –
Aziraphale barely recognized the weight on his shoulders until the grip tightened just enough to break his concentration on not hyperventilating.
"Angel. Hey. ‘S okay. ‘S fine." Crowley still sounded shell-shocked, voice bereft of most of its usual energetic spirit, but the worry that had crept into it gave it a new sense of liveliness. "It’s okay. It’ll be okay."
Struggling to mitigate the panic, Aziraphale only managed a garble of words that luckily formed half of a stringent sentence. "I’m not quite sure how that would –"
"Time," Crowley loosened his grip, taking a cautious step away from him. "Just… give me a little more time. I will be back eventually. ‘N then we can do whatever you feel up to. I’ll take you out, anywhere you wanna go."
I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you wanna go.
Crowley had said it so gently back in 1967 that the implications behind his offer had hit Aziraphale square. He could’ve asked for a ride to that fancy liquor store near Piccadilly circus, where he restocked his collection of alcoholic beverages later that night, but he had known even then that it was an opportunity wasted. It would’ve closed a door that Crowley had opened against his better judgment.
Now that Aziraphale was willing to actually go through , the phrase was reiterated, yet filled with nothing but nostalgia. Uttered in the same fashion as one might finish a fairytale with ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ by reflex rather than true appreciation of the character’s joyful fate. The current offer wasn’t any less kind – but it only went as far as Crowley searching for ways to accept that Aziraphale had somehow managed to make him feel the worst kind of unloved. The one they’d been running away from since they’d first turned their backs on their respectives sides.
If Crowley ever came back to him, then either because he’d soft-petaled his self-worth enough to downplay what had happened, or because he’d found a way to fall out of love enough to stand being near him again.
Struggling to keep his tears in check, Aziraphale rubbed his fingers across his sweating palms.
"I was trying to read Wuthering Heights after the… the Holy Water fight."
"Wot?"
"I – I came back here, sat in this chair," he waved loosely towards his armchair, "and tried to read Wuthering Heights . It didn’t work, so I picked up Gulliver’s Travels . When that didn’t work, I started Burney’s Camilla for the third time that year."
Among other books, all of which Aziraphale could’ve listed without effort. Everything he’d done on that day had become permanently ingrained into his consciousness – kept alive by the sheer force of terror that had been Crowley’s desire for a deadly insurance.
Walking past him, Aziraphale absentmindedly patted the backrest off his chair, pretending not to notice that Crowley watched his every move. "Reading didn’t seem to help with the… the agitation, so I made tea. Got stressed making tea and went for a walk instead. A lot of walks, later on. Might have given Gabriel a run for his money at the time."
Eyebrows raising over the frame of his glasses, Crowley rightfully pointed out, "That doesn’t sound like you."
"It wasn’t like me," Aziraphale acceded. "By 1870, I had started piano lessons. Revived my interest in sewing and knitting under the tutelage of my lovely neighbor Lydia Belrose – who, ironically, is related to Mrs. Sandwich. Learned the gavotte, was taught how to properly play cricket – although that was more of a theoretical than a practical endeavor –"
Silenced by Crowley's growing irritation and slowly dwindling patience, Aziraphale hurried to wrap up the speech, making one last-ditch effort to blink away the tears that threatened to spill over. "I did everything I could to avoid being here, and I didn’t figure out why for almost two centuries. Not until I stumbled upon the letters I exchanged with the chief architect in the few months before we opened the shop."
"Hnngh," Crowley grumbled. "Didn’t like him. He always acted like he was a spiv proper."
"However that may be, he was a rather talented and pragmatic man when it came to his business. Whereas I, arguably, wasn’t among his easiest clients."
One of the worst, if Aziraphale trusted the petty remarks made behind his back – ones that typically passed by him because they were no match to Heaven’s. At least the craftsmen had a good reason to act morosely towards him.
"I was very specific in my requests for the interior design. The layout and the furniture were no problem, but we argued almost daily about the paint. He applauded my visions on it, but kept telling me that they wouldn’t have to make a dozen samples for me to critique and reject if I could give them at least a swatch of the color I wanted."
Aziraphale waited for a spark of recognition to appear on Crowley’s face, his fingers reflexively curling to dig into the fabric beneath them. "I made this shop look like the most comforting thing I know. And it’s… it’s you . The one part of yourself that you like least is –"
Among the only things that calm me down when the world is falling apart around me.
"Something I hold more dearly than you could possibly imagine," he finished ineptly. "And for much longer than you might think."
Weeks after the fact, Aziraphale was still baffled that it hadn’t occurred to him before. He always thought he’d made the decision based solely on his love for heleniums and scotch brooms. That was the description he’d given the painters, who had spent more time trying to find the precise kind of yellow Aziraphale had dreamed of than they had actually painting the bookshop. The color of Crowley’s eyes was hard to match without a reference, and even harder to describe in words.
By the time Crowley’s gaze trailed back to his face, his expression was tainted – if that was at all possible – with infinitely more sadness than before.
Helplessly trying to think of other ways to emphasize his point, Aziraphale watched as he picked up his jacket from the backrest of the sofa, folded it in half again, and then set it aside once more.
"I meant the ‘forget it,’ you know? I understand that you don’t – I know that’s not what you actually think."
"Really?" Aziraphale asked, then recalled the conversation he had with Maggie about the urge to say things for the sake of simplicity rather than sincerity. "It sounded like a genuine concern to me."
The throaty sound that left Crowley’s mouth sounded almost like a chuckle, and he finally slumped back onto the sofa like a puppet with its strings cut.
"You nearly just had a panic attack trying to figure out whether you could disagree with me without losing the Almighty’s approval."
Grimacing, Aziraphale stared down at his signet ring. "Well, it’s… ah – it’s not like I haven’t risked it before." He attempted to make it sound lighthearted, failing miserably.
"That was a long time ago."
"I’d argue that the latest instance of it has occurred rather recently."
Crowley sighed wearily. "Look. The flaming sword was not knowing the rules. Saving Job's kids was… ngk, ‘m still convinced She couldn’t lose face losing that bet, and we all know Satan’s not the loophole kind of person. With the first end of the world, you had the prophecies to cling to, and with the second, you rallied a good portion of Heaven and Her Son behind you." Shrugging, Crowley added, "Our friendship was something that happened. Something to easily cut in and out of, if necessary."
A series of blissful coincidences, each increasing their confidence in hiding their mutual appreciation from their head offices enough to eventually abandon most measures of caution.
As if following his line of thought, Crowley slightly tilted his head to the side, a plaintive smile gracing his lips. "Everything that could ‘just happen’ solely because we wanted it to has done so at some point during the past six thousand years already."
Like going out for oysters at Rome because Crowley never had any. Arguing that ‘sharing a meal’ technically didn’t count as coming to an enemy’s aid. Aid that was also very different to help , which was always appropriate to offer. Especially if your dinner suggestions left someone with symptoms akin to food poisoning. Staying the night in Crowley’s small tavern room had only rightened an unjust wronging…
"I won’t make you choose. It’s – hnngh," Crowley bared his teeth, the snarl pronouncing the emotional strain of finishing that particular sentence. "Not a jolly decision. Worse when it’s made for you." He turned to face the window, clearly struggling to remain in control of his emotions. "That’s why I need to go. Okay? ‘s not about you, or something I hold against you. Not really, anyway."
"That’s not as reassuring as you might think it is," Aziraphale muttered quietly.
"It’s the best we can do," Crowley countered. "You probably deserve more of that than I do, but – gah." Another growl, clearly another desperate attempt to vent without walking off immediately. "I – I desperately need time to sulk over this. Let me… let me grieve this for a couple of years."
"I –" Aziraphale’s throat constricted, a persistent ringing filling in his ears. This was what they’d worked on, wasn’t it? Expressing their needs as openly and directly as possible. Except that those needs typically encompassed where they were supposed to go for dinner, or whether Crowley necessarily had to break all applicable traffic laws on the ten minute drive from the bookshop to Aziraphale’s favorite bakery. Discussing those things hadn’t been nearly as daunting as watching every fiber of Crowley’s being aching to get away from him.
"When I’m back, I promise, I’ll be in for whatever you want," Crowley emphasized. "Just not right now. I can’t do this right now."
You can't leave this bookshop.
The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and Aziraphale winced. Crowley hadn’t been talking about the bookshop during their last argument. He’d been talking about himself , in the only way he knew how.
The only way Aziraphale knew, too.
"But you can’t…" his voice nearly cracked before he could finish the sentence. "You can’t leave."
He shook his head, finally gathering enough strength to trail around the chair, minimizing as much of the physical distance between him and Crowley as possible.
"Angel –"
"You can’t leave," he repeated, "because if I let you walk out of here right now," I can’t pretend I had no idea why you were upset. Can’t pretend you just asked for Holy Water cause you woke up tired of existing that particular morning. Can’t pretend that the fear of something like this happening hasn’t kept me on edge decades before it actually did. Can’t send you off because it’s easier to imagine us not being friends than dealing with the pain of losing one.
If not for the continuous ticking of the grandfather clock behind him, Aziraphale would’ve assumed Crowley stopped time – slowed his heartbeat until it wasn’t racing away from him anymore.
"If I let you walk out of here right now, you’re gonna trail back to your flat and, ah," Aziraphale chuckled alongside the silent sob, thinking of the dozens of times he laughed about bad jokes to avoid nasty letters. "You’ll patch up the broken pieces, ready to bring them back to the person that broke them in the first place."
Crowley leaned forward in his seat, shoulders tense. "You didn’t –"
"I can’t let you do that, because I’m terrified we’ll never be the same after that," Aziraphale continued, undeterred. "Which would be quite unfortunate, seeing as I’ve never been too fond of change. Or lies. And letting you leave thinking I don’t love you enough to…" Would be letting you walk off believing in a lie.
That was the angelic way to think. That was what a Principality would think – what they were supposed to frown in disdain upon. But it wasn’t how he should be thinking. Not how he could afford to be thinking.
Not anymore.
"I hate to see you leaving because I love you, and I plainly just don’t want you to leave."
***
Authors tended to describe momentous life events like this one as ones of ‘utmost clarity.’ Aziraphale had stumbled over the description each time he encountered it, struggling to imagine the scope of that particular feeling. For all he knew, anything memorable conjured anxiety whenever it was enjoyable, and an odd sense of calm whenever it wasn’t.
Whilst revealing his own-well guarded secret, Aziraphale had been as far from clarity as one could be. A helpless victim to the tornado of existential threat that stormed around him.
Each gust of wind came to represent his worst fears. Hands that reached out to rip the Almighty’s grace from him – plucking his pristine white feathers in order to prepare his downfall from the divine realms. Not to become one of the Fallen, but to be abandoned, nonetheless .
Aziraphale allowed it to rage, bracing himself for the destruction of half of his very being. This time, ‘nobody has to know’ wouldn’t save him. His actions hadn’t protected God’s favorite human from an unjust fate. He’d only opened up about his deepest, most selfish desires.
Desires that made it easy to start slipping – to take a look beyond the fear, where the irony of ‘I won’t make you choose’ painted a wholly different picture.
At first instinct, the notion appeared to be a blatant lie. Crowley was strangely good at setting ultimatums, although he typically weaved them into a conversation without knowing what he was doing. Like when he was walking away from the bandstand after offering Aziraphale to run away together, or storming out of the bookshop after he’d inevitably been rejected again. As far as ‘all or nothing’ offers went, Crowley was no different to Heaven.
The consequences of turning his back on the propositions, however, weren’t comparable.
Being a traitor would’ve gotten Aziraphale destroyed, if Heaven had their way after the first Armageddon. Denying Crowley on multiple occasions, on the other hand, had done little to no damage to their shared life so far. Crowley still showed up halfway across the world to save him from living in a psychiatric ward, even when he assumed that Aziraphale didn’t really care for what he did or who he was. The week after that, he’d drowned his pain in work, a willing confidant in Aziraphale’s mission to thwart the Second Coming.
No matter how many times he was turned down, Crowley kept searching for ways to fold himself in half so that they could keep coexisting happily. Making himself smaller and smaller to avoid imposing a decision on him.
It wasn’t the confession that brought Aziraphale clarity. It was imagining the strength that must’ve taken Crowley – and what it would do to him if he wasn’t being stopped.
"I love you," Aziraphale repeated, wiping his eyes. "Which means I won’t tackle you if you need to walk out on me for a while. I just needed you to know that what I’m in for – as you phrased it – is you. All parts of you."
He flexed his shaking fingers uneasily, praying that movement would let the time pass quicker. Hoping that Crowley would respond to the revelation eventually.
The book-lover in him expected the confession to solve all their problems at once. It allowed him to imagine Crowley sweeping him up his feet physically the way he always had emotionally – whether by rescuing valuable books or dropping a bunch of sweets at his doorstep every other week during the lockdown.
Only his rational side recognized the wish for what it was.
A flipped switch.
Crowley had once used that metaphor to describe the speed at which Aziraphale went from one topic to the other – flicking between emotional states like he would through a pile of records. It had also come up as one of the reasons swallowing his own feelings was a lot simpler than dealing with them. If he tried processing them, he’d have to do so in Aziraphale’s pace, which he deemed impossible.
Their current situation put Crowley in a position where avoiding his feelings simply wasn’t an option. As much as he might want to, he couldn’t walk out of here without acknowledging what Aziraphale had just said. He needed time – and Aziraphale could do nothing but offer it.
Unsure of what else to do – only convinced that pacing the room wouldn’t help – Aziraphale settled on the outer edge of the sofa, folding his hands in his lap. Sitting here – rather than on his chair as usual – would allow Crowley to keep his back turned for as long as necessary, watching the passersby without feeling pressured into talking before he was ready.
Technically, at least. Practically, Crowley seemed inclined to say the first utter nonsense that came to his mind.
"I didn’t mean to manipulate you into –"
"Manipulate me?" Aziraphale echoed incredulously, struggling to control the urge to shake some sense into him. Out of all the possible things to say, this was by far the most irrational. "How is telling me not to say anything – not to choose between acknowledging my affections for you and… and –" He bit his lip. "You most literally told me not to ."
There was a slight twitch of Crowley’s shoulders, which Aziraphale interpreted as a half-hearted shrug. "But you did."
"I don’t regret that."
Some other day – as soon as he’d start noticing any consequences of his actions – he would mourn not having had more time to enjoy things as they were. Guilt, on the other hand, for telling the truth… that would be unangelic and affront Aziraphale , who’d taken the brunt of keeping his feelings a secret in favor of being a good angel for far too long.
"Still."
Exerting all the patience of a bookseller whose life’s work was scaring off noisy antiquaries, Aziraphale stretched out his hand, then stopped himself before he actually touched Crowley’s shoulder. "Crowley, can you look at me?"
The reluctance with which he complied nearly broke Aziraphale all over again, but he put up a smile, nonetheless. He simply had to believe that their relationship was still fixable. If he could only make Crowley understand…
"I know you were doing all this because you didn’t want me to lose something that’s so important to me," he said, allowing the warm fuzziness that accompanied the notion to spread through his stomach. Nothing akin to butterflies, just a comforting sense of being accepted without question. "You don’t want me to change for you. But I don’t want you to change for me, either."
"‘M not," Crowley argued. "I told you ‘m not going to."
"You were about to." And if Maggie and Nina hadn’t intervened, I might only have ran into you after the damage was done. I might never even have realized what happened. " You would’ve gritted your teeth through a relationship in which you obviously would’ve felt unloved – and worse yet, I believe at some point you would’ve convinced yourself that it’s all you deserve. Which it isn’t."
Suddenly focusing all his attention on the broken lightbulb on Aziraphale’s desk, Crowley muttered, "‘S not like that."
Aziraphale sighed, pursing his lips. "Do you know what I have always appreciated most about you?" he prompted quietly, with no intention of waiting for a response. "You’re moody and – quite frankly – grumpier than any other person I’ve ever met. You love complaining, whether it’s about me, the universe, or any old gent that forces you to wait at a red light. But despite all that, I never had an ounce of doubt that you take me for who I am. That you enjoy even those parts of me that irritate you."
"I do," Crowley said promptly, as if to vindicate himself.
"That’s precisely my point. But I thought we had a system that worked in that regard. Not a perfect one, mind you, but… a system where I managed to return the favor."
Crowley merely gave another shrug. "We do."
"No we don’t," Aziraphale shook his head, wiping away a tear that had slipped past his control. "Because if we did, we never would’ve had to have this conversation in the first place. You never would’ve thought for a second that I care more about a person you never were than I care for you."
"Angel –"
"I can’t undo that. What I can do, though, is apologize. A little belatedly, perhaps, but no less sincerely. If that happens to coincide with a decision I should’ve made several years ago, it’s all the more fortunate."
"You wouldn’t have had to. You shouldn’t have –"
"Yes I should!" Aziraphale argued, struggling to keep the exasperation from his voice. "You might not force me to choose, but everyone else will. Heaven will, some day." Even if there would be more than one angel protesting against such measures. "Once that happens, I could choose to be righteous and proper but miserable – or to be with you, which would be the option that would make me happiest. Except that if I hadn’t told you today, it would’ve always been too late. I could never have proven that I love you, rather than the person you think you need to be to please me."
Which was nonsensical at best, considering that the best part about being friends with Crowley had always been that he didn’t intend to please him. His authenticity augmented the sense of safety Aziraphale felt in his presence. "I don’t want to lose you. I can’t – I can be separated from you, but I can’t lose you ."
By the time his breaths had calmed, heart racing as though his body had only just caught up to reality, he realized that Crowley had taken off his glasses sometime during his speech, gazing at him with a mixture of confusion and utter astonishment. There were tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, bringing a golden shimmer to the vivid yellow of his sclerae.
"Okay," he said simply, lips twitching as though he’d failed at an attempt to smile. "Okay."
"Okay?" Aziraphale echoed, too enraptured by the return of something he’d spent the past few years dreaming off to second-guess the importance of the little word he’d just been given.
"Okay."
To others, those four letters would’ve signified a plain agreement to ordinary, everyday plans. Thrown around without hesitations or second thoughts.
To him and Crowley – individuals that had thousands of years to practice meaningful simplicity in the way they spoke with one another – it meant everything from ‘I hear you’ to ‘Don’t worry’ to ‘We’ll figure this out’. Most importantly, though –
"You’ll stay?" As who you are, with me, the way I am?
"Yeah," Crowley nodded, sounding breathless, "Yeah, I’ll stay."