Chapter Text
Crowley blinked awake slowly, warm enough he could melt with it. He flexed his wings, giving languid muscles a good solid stretch, and then froze at the muffled gasp that sounded from behind him. He turned, his mouth dry as dust, and looked over his shoulder to find Aziraphale sitting at the table. The angel had started half out of his seat, eyes wide and glued to Crowley’s wings.
“Erm.” He could explain. He could explain, he could still salvage it, he could come up with something that would make Aziraphale forget all about it. He just had to make his jaw and his tongue and his larynx work together to make words come out of his stupid fucking mouth. What had he been thinking, taking a nap like this with Aziraphale liable to come back at any time? “Uh.”
“Your wings are so lovely, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice as fragile as the pink tinge starting on his cheeks. “I really… I’ve missed seeing them.”
“Ah.” Crowley tried again, around that completely nonsensical statement. Aziraphale hadn’t spent three thousand years turning his nose up at Crowley’s color palette and lecturing him about temptation and pointing out that he deserved it when his plans went completely to shit and calling him foul and meaning it a full ten percent of the time to turn around and find his singed feathers acceptable now. Crowley furled his wings, the angel’s gaze starting an itch he couldn’t scratch right between his shoulder blades. “You what?”
“You’ve hardly shown them at all since, well, Eden.” Aziraphale’s expression turned decidedly disappointed when Crowley pulled his wings in tight and tucked them flat against his back. “And they really are so pretty, especially in the sun. You know, there was a moment when you stretched just now that they looked properly midnight blue?” Aziraphale twisted his hands together in his lap and gave Crowley a small, shy smile. “But I couldn’t help notice that a few of the secondaries were a bit out of order. I could straighten them for you, if you like?”
He sounded so hopeful, and so uncertain, that Crowley couldn’t do anything more than blink stupidly at him for several long moments. Aziraphale was offering to touch his wings. Crowley hadn’t thought they were out of order, but then again it had been a few days since he’d combed through them. Was Aziraphale looking for an excuse to touch his wings? Of course not. But Aziraphale had said he liked them. He was just being kind--
Crowley stopped at that. Aziraphale was, generally speaking, as kind as he could get away with being in any given situation. That had never, not once, led to Aziraphale lying to him about whether or not the angel approved of some bit of demonic handiwork. Crowley couldn’t think of a single, solitary time Aziraphale had ever praised him when Aziraphale would clearly have much rather shouted at him or ignored the situation.
Crowley swallowed around the painful lump in his throat, took a deep breath around the thumping in his chest, and spread his wings again. Aziraphale perked up immediately, beaming at him, and Crowley’s heart somehow found a way to go even harder. There was nothing but a roaring in his ears and a heaviness in his belly and a courtyard gone utterly and unbearably still around the slow, cautious advance of a grateful principality.
Aziraphale sat down on the edge of the chaise, and Crowley budged over to give him more room. He could practically see the outline of Aziraphale’s halo like this, that barely-banked fire of an angel’s joy spilling out over the edges of his corporation. Aziraphale reached out, then hesitated, and Crowley hadn’t seen him give that look to anything but long-lost manuscripts and gourmet dinners since the Great Schism.
“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured, finally burying his fingers in Crowley’s feathers.
His touch was electric, measured and careful and thorough, and it was all Crowley could do to remember how to keep having limbs. And then Aziraphale was making that pleased little humming noise, that tiny, satisfied hmm that Crowley hadn’t heard from him in centuries, and moving on to the adjacent coverts and primaries as well. There was no rushing the angel, not in this.
Crowley could feel the blood rising in his face, that unbearable focus of Aziraphale’s attention and affection and gentleness burning him from the inside. He’d combust from it--he knew he would.
“You’ve done such a wonderful job so far,” Aziraphale said quietly, running his fingertips over the barbs. “The flowers seem happier already, even though I imagine it couldn’t have been pleasant, getting transplanted like that.”
Crowley gave a noncommittal grunt, not trusting his voice if he spoke. Aziraphale’s hip pressed into Crowley’s waist as the angel leaned across him to straighten the non-existent rumpling on his other side, and Crowley couldn’t help but gasp when Aziraphale’s free hand settled lightly on his back, just below his floating ribs.
“Too much, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, not moving his hand but taking even the faintest trace of weight off it.
“Ngh.” Crowley shook his head. “Just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”
“Ah.” Aziraphale let his hand rest over Crowley’s spine, still not pressing but just… holding. Touching, as if he wanted to. Crowley shivered at it. “You know, someday soon you really must show me how you’ve managed to keep your tertiaries so tidy. I can never quite reach, and it’s always such a bother.”
Crowley caught the thread of want in that and pounced on it. Finally, something made sense. Aziraphale wanted him to reciprocate, wanted a favor for a favor--
The hand on his back went firm.
“Not now, Crowley,” Aziraphale laughed, voice pitched low but inarguable all the same. “I’m otherwise engaged, at the moment.”
Aziraphale traced the rachis of a primary, and Crowley shivered again, a heat that had nothing to do with the sun or the closeness of the day coiling down his spine to settle in his belly. His whole corporation throbbed with it when Aziraphale moved on to the next feather. Eventually, Aziraphale sighed and straightened up.
“There we are, my dear,” he said, all but purring with it. “All perfectly in order and lovely.”
He lifted Crowley’s hand to his lips and kissed it, and Crowley couldn’t breathe for the light absolutely pouring from the angel. Aziraphale’s aura was so bright that it took Crowley a moment to realize that the sun was sinking, the shade of the walls surrounding them throwing the courtyard into a lovely lavender haze. He’d slept so much longer than he’d meant to, and Aziraphale had sat there, watching him, for hours.
“Thank you, for letting me,” Aziraphale said, lowering Crowley’s hand to his lap. “Thank you, for all of this.”
“’m not finished,” Crowley managed, sparing a glance around for the sparse pavement with its scattering of pots and few bits of furniture.
“I know,” Aziraphale told him, clasping his hand. “But it’s such a wonderful beginning, and I… I appreciate that you’re willing to try, Crowley. I haven’t always made it easy, especially in the last few years. I don’t know that I’ve ever made it easy on you, specifically. No one in all of creation could blame you for chucking it in, as it were.”
Crowley rolled onto his side and glanced from his hand, neatly ensconced in Aziraphale’s grasp, to the diffuse glow of Aziraphale’s face. The angel’s tousled silver curls framed his round cheeks perfectly, and Crowley had never wanted to kiss those pink lips more.
“No one in all of creation’s a fucking idiot, then,” he said firmly. “Easy, hard, wherever in between, I lo--”
Crowley broke off, brain kicking out of gear even as the seconds ticked by and the opportunity to offer some other word and keep himself from ruining everything slipped through his fingers. He managed to open his mouth soundlessly a few times, everything he could say to cover that fatal slip sticking firmly in his craw.
“I love you, too, Crowley.” Aziraphale kissed his hand again. “Come inside, won’t you? We could open a bottle of wine and go through that phone of yours and figure out what to put the flowers in, once they’re settled.”
“You love me.” Crowley tried to process the rest of it--come inside, plan for the future, relax as if everything was completely normal--around the earthquake of that casual declaration.
“I risked everything, for a thousand years, just to spend a little more time in your company,” Aziraphale told him, letting those tender fingertips tuck against Crowley’s palm, pressing the softness of his own palm against the back of Crowley’s hand. It was kindling and a box of matches, all Crowley needed to start a fire he could scorch himself with if he wasn’t careful. “Yes, I love you. Selfishly, for a great deal of our time together--it was you I was risking, for most of it--but still.” He managed a wan smile. “It was love. I hope, going forward, that I might… that you’d give me a chance to… to do it better.”
“Heaven’s sake, angel,” Crowley breathed.
Aziraphale shook his head. “Just our sake, my dear.”
“You love me.” Crowley scrambled up, shoving himself half upright and taking Aziraphale’s downy face in his hands. All the shouting about them not being friends and Heaven being destined to win the Final Battle and calling him a foul fiend, and the bastard had loved him all this time?
“Are you going to kiss me?” Aziraphale asked, hope coloring his voice.
“It’s that or throttle you,” Crowley said, leaning forward and pressing his mouth to those plush lips. Aziraphale loved him.
The angel’s arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him half into that generously-cushioned lap, and Crowley couldn’t remember what bitterness was when Aziraphale’s sweet mouth parted under his. He buried his fingers in Aziraphale’s hair and broke the kiss, laughing when Aziraphale chased his mouth.
“A thousand years?” Crowley asked. A thousand years, and they could have been doing this. He swayed back against Aziraphale, kissing him firmly.
This time, Aziraphale’s arms wrapped around his ribs, forestalling any future thought of retreat.
“You love me,” Crowley said again, voice muffled by Aziraphale’s lips, and the angel sighed and leaned his cheek against Crowley’s shoulder.
“I haven’t broken you, have I, my dear?” he asked.
Crowley turned and looked into those placid eyes, the blue darkening into something to rival a cornflower, and he couldn’t help kissing Aziraphale again, slow and soft and how he’d imagined doing it every time the angel had smiled at some clever thing over dinner. He’d wondered so often what it would be like to cuddle the principality, and now here he was, discovering just what he’d been missing.
“Whyever would you think that?” Crowley asked, once they’d both gotten their breath back. “I mean, it’s only been a thousand blessed years.”
Aziraphale wound Crowley’s hair around holy fingers and tugged lightly. “Surely you can forgive me for trying to keep you out of trouble?”
“Keep me out of…?” Crowley snorted. “Half the trouble I got into was your fault.”
More than half, if Crowley sat down and tallied it up. Hard to do around the plump corporation filling his arms, around Aziraphale’s fingers idly carding through his hair, around his skin about to split and go all over with scales at the pleasure of it. Aziraphale loved him. All the ways he’d tried to talk himself out of loving the angel over the centuries, all the agonies he’d suffered at the thought of Aziraphale finding out, and Aziraphale loved him.
“You could’ve said, you know,” Crowley grumbled, once the sun had set properly and they still hadn’t made it off the chaise or out of each other’s arms. “I mean, you had to’ve known, if you loved me.”
“Oh, yes. I could have just said.” Aziraphale toyed with a stray lock of Crowley’s hair, looking half-distracted by the red curl twisting loose around his finger. “I could have just said, and then just watched you go even more reckless and sulk twice as hard whenever I had to send you away for safety’s sake.”
“A-ha! So you did know,” Crowley said, straightening up.
“Mmm.” Aziraphale sighed and let his hands fall to the front of Crowley’s shirt, fingers digging into the fabric as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I spent such a long time hoping you did. The party line was that demons couldn’t, and even if they somehow could, they wouldn’t. But you kept coming back, even after I disappointed you, and you were willing to accept it when I apologized, and to apologize when it was you doing the disappointing. And I thought it would be so lovely, if that was why. You know, I almost did tell you, when I first realized? I was so happy. I got quite ahead of myself, really. I wanted to make a night of it, stage some grand romantic affair.”
“What happened?” Crowley asked, not liking the sadness lurking in the angel’s tone. “Archangels give you a talking-to? Remind you how short your leash was?”
“I realized what would happen to you, if it was true. If Hell found out.” Aziraphale managed a wan smile. “It didn’t seem quite the sort of thing one throws a party for, after that.”
“I was careful, angel,” Crowley told him, kissing his brow. “You know I was.”
“You got yourself discorporated every time I took my eye off you for more than a few years, you lied your way into a small mountain of commendations for things you had no Earthly way of being responsible for, and you were never handed an assignment you didn’t immediately try to find some clever way out of actually doing.” Aziraphale’s grip on his shirt went tight. “And that was without you thinking that you could just wile your way out of me being cross with you over any of it.”
“Only got caught the once, though,” Crowley reminded him. “And by then it’s not like it really mattered.”
He let his face drop until he could kiss the grimness and regret off Aziraphale’s features. It didn’t belong there, had never belonged there. Aziraphale had been meant for a better world than he’d been given. There was a hunger in it when Aziraphale kissed him back, this time.
“Besides, you’re one to talk about wiling your way out of someone being cross with you,” Crowley murmured. “That outfit you were wearing when you got busted by la Garde nationale was put together with the primary aim of making you too pretty to shout at, and don’t pretend it wasn’t.”
“You liked that one, did you?” Aziraphale asked, sitting back and giving Crowley a searching look.
“It was awful,” Crowley said, smirking. “Worst thing I’ve ever seen you in. All I could do not to tell you to take it off, immediately.”
Aziraphale flushed to his roots, and Crowley blinked at that, delight following quickly on the heels of surprise.
“Oh,” Crowley chuckled, nuzzling at Aziraphale’s ear when the principality covered his face with his hands, “you didn’t think I’d noticed, did you?”
“Well, it’s not like you’ve ever let on!” Aziraphale cried, dropping his hands. “Not about that, at any rate.”
“Didn’t want to upset you with it, what with all your not letting on,” Crowley told him, kissing his way back to Aziraphale’s mouth. “Figured you’d about have a fit, if I said you were like an eclair that I couldn’t wait to drizzle in chocolate and suck perfectly hollow.”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale’s face was scarlet now, but his eyes were dazzling. His hands wrapped around Crowley’s hips, and his lips pursed. “If I asked you to come upstairs with me--”
“Yes,” Crowley told him, punctuating it with a kiss. Even if he did combust with it, it’d be worth it. Centuries piled on centuries, and Aziraphale loved him. Aziraphale wanted him, was sitting here kissing him and then being pleased and surprised at there being more that they could have.
“I didn’t even finish the question,” Aziraphale protested, fingers tightening, digging into the fabric. Crowley almost miracled his jeans off right then, the heaven with going upstairs. They could make love under the stars, fuck on the pavement, whatever it was Aziraphale wanted. Whatever it was Aziraphale would let him do, whatever pleasure Aziraphale was willing to have from him. Aziraphale loved him.
“Doesn’t matter,” Crowley said, kissing him again, “answer’s yes.”
Aziraphale sighed and melted against him, arms winding around Crowley’s chest and tightening with all the subtle care of a boa constrictor. It felt like the angel never intended to let go again, which was just fine by Crowley. “Then, my dear, please--won’t you come upstairs with me?”
Crowley grinned, then kissed him gently until Aziraphale was all but squirming against him. He dipped his mouth to Aziraphale’s ear and flicked out his tongue. “Yes.”