Chapter Text
I better do something, move earth and sky
And patiently, sweetly, with all of my mind
I sing only for you
To the beat of my footsteps in the night
Close your eyes and dream me home
Forever mine, I’ll be forever yours
Always, evermore, and on and on
Always, evermore, and on and on
Always, evermore, and on and on
Always, evermore
The bright red numbers of the analog clock in his car blink. 10:42.
Shit. It’s getting late. Aziraphale never gave an exact time for when he’d be home, just “rather late, my dear,” but 10:42 is definitely pushing it. He jerks the steering wheel to the right. The Bentley fishtails into an impossibly tight u-turn, leaving tire marks as it speeds down the road.
The sounds of night fade into silence. Most light had long since gone, the trees towering like tall, dark monsters. It’s just him and the car, the song gently swelling into the chorus and the starlight as his guide.
He’d seen so much of the world, experienced so many things, and the memories had nowhere to go. They just swirl around his head attempting to come into some sort of epiphanic crescendo, only to be stopped dead by the next war, the next invention, the next thing.
Life is good, but it gets exhausting.
The silence is exceptional. Accompanied only by unfamiliar music, he’d finished a thought for the first time in a thousand years.
It also helped that the music was strangely relevant.
The Bentley totally set him up, didn’t she?
(When the thoughts finished and pivotal moments were had, it all coalesced into one singular idea:
Get home. )
<3<3<3
The cottage comes within sight. The rich, hand-painted red of the wooden siding gleams like the skin of a fresh-picked apple under the gaze of his headlights. A few moths meander in the warm glow of the porchlight.
Still no sign of Aziraphale, though.
The car lumbers into their gravel driveway. Crowley always liked that sound. It felt like home.
She shuts off just as she had come on – automatically. He climbs out of the driver’s seat and
purposely avoids the sidewalk to step on the grass.
Keys jangle in his hand as he fiddles with the lock.
(His inner humanity wouldn’t dare touch the Bentley, but there was something to it in other aspects of life. That’s one of them.)
The door creaks open and Crowley finds his way to the living room, where he sprawls himself over the couch.
Still nothing. No steaming cups of cocoa or half-read books in bizarre places or earth-shattering declarations of love.
This was the cleanest the house had been since they moved in though. He loved Aziraphale, but bless was he a packrat.
<3<3<3
A black cab slows to a stop beside the picket fence. Crowley perks out of half-consciousness, stretching to peek out the window. He can just make out the silhouette of Aziraphale stepping out of the cab. Even from afar, there’s an olden sort of poise to his movements that’s unmistakable. He lingers by the driver’s side window. Knowing him, likely to give the driver an exorbitant, albeit well-needed tip. The angel waves the cab driver off, doing that little thing where he goes on his tiptoes for a brief moment and beams at the recipient, before starting towards the door.
Crowley pounces to the door. He tips it open just as Aziraphale steps on the porch. A rather frazzled angel stands before him with a soft smile.
“Well, hello, my dear,” Aziraphale says.
Crowley grasps both of Aziraphale’s hands, hoping to channel every bit of pent-up adoration he’s accrued in his solitude into the touch.
“Hey.”
And then his arms are filled with angel, fingers tightly gripping the back of his turtleneck sweater. His hands waver by his side for a moment, unsure of what to do before reciprocating the embrace. Something in him melts. Days worth of tension leaving his body in one collected sigh. He’s held and warm and a little bit frail, and extraordinarily happy.
“I rather missed you,” Azirphale says, though the sound is somewhat dampened by the fact that he’s speaking into Crowley’s chest.
Crowley softens. “I missed you too, angel.”
Aziraphale glances up at him. “I do believe I missed you more.”
“Not. A. Chance.”
Both tighten their grip. There’s the silence again. The house doesn’t tempt fate by settling and the air is still. The only sound is them breathing in sync. He can faintly make out the beat of Aziraphale’s unnecessary heart if he strains his ears.
They linger for a short while. His arms fall by his side and they break apart.
He takes Aziraphale’s hand and guides him to the couch. Crowley sits and Aziraphale follows, instantly settling beside him. The book bag sits atop the coffee table. Aziraphale’s drooping eyelids suggest that he’ll nod off before he gets going on them.
His weight presses a bit further into Crowley’s side. Case in point.
“You know how much I love you, right?” He cards his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair. “I mean, you know how much I fucking love you ?”
Aziraphale shuffled until they’re pressed chest to chest.
“You know, I really think I do.”
Crowley cradles his jaw and pulls him in for a kiss, soft and slow and sanguine, tasting like a cup of tea with a few too many sugar cubes in it.
“I love you too, my dear boy.” His hand traces Crowley’s cheek. “My treasure. ”
Their lips meet again, softly colliding in the dull, grey light of the living room.
“I’m just glad I have you,” Crowley says.
“It certainly took a while.” Aziraphale kisses his cheeks. “Thank you for being patient.”
“Thank you for not smiting me.”
“Don’t be lulled into safety quite yet. I still have my days.”
A brief hush coats the room.
“I bought you a little something while I was away.”
“Mmm?”
“Let me get the bag. I’ll be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Crowley sits on their overstuffed couch, limbs spread further than socially acceptable. His averts his eyes from Aziraphale’s puttering – he knows from a few too many untimely magic tricks that he loves a well-executed surprise.
“Alright.” There’s a noticeable dip beside him. “You can look now.”
Crowley glances over. Aziraphale’s holding something red.
“I found this at a secondhand book store on the way back.” He hands him the thing. Upon further inspection, it’s a CD. “I know it’s not much, but I found this right next to that one band you like so much. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it’s you-coloured and it had a pitchfork on the front, so I thought you might like it. Angelic intuition, if you will.”
He knows he’s valued. Aziraphale has made that clear over years of compromises and little touches and gifts. And yet every time he does something to remind him of that fact, his heart starts pounding and his cheeks start flushing and a bunch of other weird corporeal things happen. Simultaneously embarrassed, shocked, and filled with joy.
It’s out of character, but some things are just like that. The bastard had turned him into a sap.
“Thank you.” He rotates the CD in his hand. “I appreciate it. Appreciate you .”
Crowley meets Aziraphale’s eyes. The room seems brighter, somehow.
“Come along, dear.” Aziraphale rises from the couch. “Let’s get to bed.”
They stumble towards the bedroom, stopping every few steps to share a few chaste kisses, before falling onto the duvet. Their legs hook around each other.
“I’ll make you french toast in the morning,” Crowley says.
The only reply is a muffled snore.
<3<3<3
It’s been a good day. Sunlight filters through the leaves, decorating the road ahead in lace-like patterns of light and shadow. He hadn’t run into any idiots on the road. He’d only had to use four miracles to get to the restaurant, which may be a new record. There’s a bag full of sushi rolls in the backseat, and he’s driving home.
After so long of floating from place to place as they rise and fall, sometimes being shunned but almost never being welcomed, home is a beautiful thing.
The CD Aziraphale got him was great. It was big and sexy and loud and everything he’d hoped it would be. He wouldn’t tell Aziraphale that his perception of what “bebop” Crowley liked were correct as he would literally never hear the end of it, but he’d drum his fingers to the beat in isolation.
A song about the apocalypse fades out. Fitting.
A new song starts.
An incessantly repeated piano note.
E, to be exact.
A pedestrian idly wonders why that man’s very nice car is smoking.
She also wonders why he’s yelling about “ineffability,” “stupid nice gestures,” and “life being too fucking full circle.”