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From time to time, Crowley had to meet with Others. It was not something he enjoyed doing in the slightest, especially since for the vast majority of the time, those Others were Hastur and Ligur. So it was tonight as well, and Crowley really wished it could be anyone else. Because tonight, he had his own goal. He needed an answer to the question that had been burning in his mind ever since he had started covering his left arm consistently. And there were few creatures he’d dislike more to wring answers out of than Hastur and Ligur.
They met on a craggy plateau a short flight away from Gomorrah. Crowley’s wings flared as he alighted on the rock, then folded, and kept folding, tighter and tighter, until they vanished from existence against his newly smooth back. He was, as usual, fashionably late; and his companions were, as usual, visibly put off by this.
“Crawly,” They acknowledged, incorrectly, with displeasure.
“Crowley,” He corrected nonchalantly before continuing.
“Always a pleasure. How’s Earth been treating you since the last time we caught up?”
“It is decent,” Said Hastur, his patience already worn thin, “Unlike you, we do not linger here long enough to notice. We come, we do what is asked of us, and then we return.”
His empty glare could have boiled ice. Crowley swallowed thickly, hoping neither would notice.
“Really? You look a bit the worse for wear to me,” He pressed on, “Not that I’d blame you. What is it, the people, the location?” He paused, just long enough.
“And how have those human bodies been working out? They come with a lot of... unpleasant surprises, don’t they?”
His mouth was dry. Two pairs of eyes were boring into him now. Crowley, for one, was very glad Hastur and Ligur were indeed in human form. It was a marked improvement from how they usually looked. But neither of them betrayed any reaction to Crowley’s question, aside from their usual irritation.
“They are sufficient for the purpose they serve,” Hastur growled.
Crowley could see that he was about to say something else that would change the subject and get the conversation back on track, and he had no choice but to jump back in, impulsively, before he could do so.
“What about those marks they have?”, He interjected; then noticing the looks he received in response, he quickly added, “The humans.”
A small portion of Hastur and Ligur’s annoyance melted into confusion, but this did not make Crowley feel any better. He was still very much, and perhaps even more so, under pinpoint scrutiny from both of them.
“What are you on about, Crowley?”, Ligur demanded, apparently so utterly befuddled and taken aback that he had forgotten to say the wrong name.
“Yes,” Hastur insisted with a slimy insidiousness, “Please do elaborate.”
“What I mean is,” Said Crowley, with no idea how he would finish that sentence. He looked from Hastur to Ligur, trying and failing to glean even a hint of information from either of them. He had no choice. He would have to guess what the right answer was, and find out the truth afterwards by confirmation or denial. He hated that. It was a precarious position to be in, but, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he thought he knew what the safest choice was.
“What I mean is, how do you hide the fact that you’re not marked like the rest of them?” Crowley bluffed, his mouth painfully dry, “Seems they always want to see mine, I get asked about it constantly. It’s like small talk to them. I don’t think they believe for a second that I’m just shy about it.”
He waited with bated breath for what felt like hours. His full focus was dedicated to suppressing his right arm from reaching out to his left. The appalled confusion on Hastur and Ligur’s faces had dissipated, but Crowley did not, and would not, feel better until he got a verbal response.
“They do not ask us, Crawly,” Hastur grunted with derision, “We do not get close enough for them to do so.”
“Unlike you, we keep our distance,” Ligur seconded.
Crowley felt a weight lift from his shoulders, and another one, twice as heavy, clamp down on them. Hastur and Ligur were talking now, each giving their detailed report of every human they had managed to tempt into sin. Crowley couldn’t parse a single word of it. His ears were ringing, his palms were hot, his heartbeat was a hard, incessant hammer in his ears, ceaselessly pounding. It was as he had suspected, and everything he feared. They didn’t have them. They didn’t have them. They didn’t have them.
It was a memory Crowley did not like to revisit, but he had been plunged headfirst into it. Now, the merciful present was bleeding back into his vision, and a voice broke him out of his trance.
“My dear?” It asked with concern, “Did you hear what I said?”
“I did,” Crowley admitted, dropping jarringly back into his body in the way of waking up from a dream in which one is falling. He was in the car. His left hand was on the stick. Armageddon had been set in motion, he had met Aziraphale at the park to tell him, they were heading out now. They hadn’t yet decided, or even discussed, where to. Crowley cleared his throat.
“I said,” Aziraphale continued unbidden, “It’ll be rather a shock for them, won’t it? If they come to get us personally. If they see the marks, like we did.”
Crowley swallowed. Behind his glasses, his eyes dropped. He was frozen in place, unable to even put the Bentley in gear.
“You don’t know,” He murmured, the words thick and strangled, “Oh, angel, I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” Aziraphale asked. Genuine. Innocent.
Crowley couldn’t turn, couldn’t even look in his direction.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and at the invocation of his name Aziraphale was made suddenly and startlingly aware of the gravity of the situation.
“They won’t,” Crowley croaked, “Angel, you and I-“ He licked his lips; it didn’t help, “-We’re the only ones.”
He waited for it to sink in.
“I’ve talked to my people. The ones who come to Earth. I’ve seen them. I know. Trust me. No one else of our stock has...”
He trailed off as his right hand released stiffly from the steering wheel and tapped its index finger on his left forearm. He never said “soul mate”, Aziraphale noticed. To be fair, he himself still avoided the term most of the time as well.
“The only ones,” Aziraphale repeated softly. His eyes strayed to his own right arm, and remained there. For a long moment, there was silence in the Bentley.
Eventually, Crowley broke it.
“Lunch?” He asked. His body sprung back into action, finally syncing back up with his mind. He put the Bentley in gear. Then he remembered something. He snapped his fingers.
The wheel clamps disappeared.
“I owe you one from, when was it...”
“Last month,” Aziraphale assisted, his voice crackling as he broke from his trance and tried to come back into himself.
Crowley drove past an astonished traffic warden whose notebook spontaneously combusted. He cast a sidelong glance at Aziraphale with a crooked, knowing grin. Aziraphale smiled sheepishly.
“The Ritz,” Crowley suggested, “And then we can go back to my place and-“
His lower lip curled under his upper front teeth, forming the first letter of the word he was about to say before he stopped himself. Aziraphale had made a lot of progress the past few hundred years, but profanity still made him uncomfortable.
“And forget this whole unfortunate mess,” He corrected himself.
In his periphery, he saw Aziraphale furrow his brow.
“Do you mean by drinking,” He asked, “Or by-“
“By going to bed, angel,” Crowley clarified so that Aziraphale didn’t have to. It was the gentlest term he could think of, and its meaning was clear. Aziraphale didn’t sleep, after all.
There was another reason why he had interrupted. It was because he was afraid that, if Aziraphale put a name to what he had in mind, the phrase would have started with “making” and ended with a four-letter word that Crowley didn’t care to say or to hear.
Aziraphale was pursing his lips pensively.
“I would,” He said, “But...” And from his lap, one hand pointed subtly upward.
“Think we’re under surveillance?” Crowley asked with a grimace.
“The Antichrist is on Earth, my dear,” Said Aziraphale apologetically, “I rather think they’ll be watching quite closely. And an angel committing that sort of act might catch their attention.”
“Hm,” Crowley grunted, “In that case, I’ll settle for drinking.”
He didn’t. And it was by design.
Aziraphale did, and this was also by design.
It might have been a bit of a low trick, and one Crowley had not engaged in with Aziraphale in a long time, but he was desperate. He needed the angel to be open to suggestion, or at the very least as open as possible. He needed it, more than he needed anything on this Earth, anymore.
As far as he could tell, Aziraphale was about as receptive as he would ever be.
“And what if they do see us, hm?” Crowley asked, faking a slight slur to his voice imitating drunkenness, “Would it be so bad? I mean. I mean, what I mean is, we both know you don’t want to go back Up There, don’t we?”
There was a pained look on Aziraphale’s face. Crowley pressed on, hiding the pang of guilt that wrung his chest.
“There’s no theatres in Heaven,” he persisted, “And very few films.”
“Dearest, please,” Aziraphale begged. Again the tight squeeze of guilt upon Crowley’s heart, again his desperate denial of it.
“And not one single sushi restaurant.”
“I know you, you old serpent. I know you,” Aziraphale insisted, with a threatening undercurrent of confidence in his passive voice, “Don’t try to tempt me.”
“Why not?” Crowley demanded, “I’ve done it before. Countless times. With countless things, angel, and every time you give in you like it.”
“This is different,” said Aziraphale pleadingly. Then, in an urgent whisper, “This is damnation.”
“Yes,” Crowley said bitterly, “What of it?”
“It’s Hell.”
“It’s the end of the world,” Crowley reminded him, “And if we can’t stop it-“
He cut himself off. The way he might have ended that sentence, if he had allowed himself to, would have sounded much too desperate. We’ll never see each other again.
He tried again, approaching from a different angle.
“It’s not all bad, angel. The scenery is hardly pleasant, but you could do whatever you please down there. We could.”
“I can’t cope with this while ‘m drunk,” Aziraphale said, “I’m going to sober up.”
And so he did.
Oh bugger, Crowley thought, knowing it was for the better even as he felt his heart drop like a stone in his chest.
Aziraphale cleared his throat.
“Now, my dear,” he said calmly and civilly, “You very nearly had the better of me. Would you allow me to have a go at it?”
Crowley was still as a statue, but his mind reeled backwards. Aziraphale gave him a knowing smile.
“We’ve known each other too long, love,” he said, making a muscle in Crowley’s face flinch involuntarily at the last word, “I should hope I know all your tricks by now. I’m only curious why you felt the need to use them.”
“Ah, so that’s how you use your turn, is it?” Crowley asked, bitter but resigned, “Trying to squeeze some honesty out of me?”
“I don’t wish to do anything of the sort,” said Aziraphale, “But it seems you won’t give it to me willingly.”
Crowley rose to his feet in frustration, his hands lifting to his face and clutching tight into his hair. He grunted his helpless anger as he began to pace, trying and failing to work free the pull on his heartstrings that Aziraphale held so tightly in his grasp.
“Angel,” he choked out, the sound barely more than a growl, “Do you want to lose this? Lose me?”
There was no response. At least, there was no verbal one, and Crowley couldn’t bear to turn and look for a different sort.
“I don’t,” he hissed violently, “Are you happy? Is that what you want to hear? I want, Aziraphale, more than- more than-"
He threw his hands up in exasperation.
“I want more. More time. Time we don’t have, if at the end of it you get called back up there and I get dragged back down there! Do you understand that? Do you understand that I- hng!”
Words escaped him, and a strangled roar of punctuation was all he could produce. There was deafening, agonising silence.
“That you feel, Crowley?” Aziraphale suggested, gently but firmly. An accusation.
“Bugger you,” Crowley snarled defensively in crude response.
“I hope I don’t need to remind you that you have.” said Aziraphale, mellow as an autumn breeze, but a hundred times colder.
Crowley made a sound in his throat that more closely resembled that of an animal whose leg was suddenly caught in a trap than anything a human could make. His back collided with the nearest wall, slid down, his head cradled in the vice of his hands again. Across the room, he heard Aziraphale sigh, gathering himself together more effectively than Crowley had.
“I was not aware that you wanted our... situation... to be more than temporary.” said the angel.
“Which one?” Crowley grumbled.
“Everything,” Aziraphale said, “Everything that’s happened between us, here on Earth.”
“Angel, don’t be thick,” Crowley groaned, “Six thousand years it’s been. We’ve been friends for very near that, and - and more - for a few hundred now. I wouldn’t, I... I can’t let that go. Not willingly.”
Aziraphale was silent again.
“And where you go, I can’t follow.” Crowley concluded lamely.
There was more silence.
Then:
“Crowley. If I say I love you, will you flinch again, as you always do?”
“Very likely, yes.” Crowley croaked.
“I do,” Aziraphale confessed anyway.
“I know it,” said Crowley, “Aziraphale, if there were anything that could save my soul, I’d do it. I’m sorry I have to ask a sacrifice of you instead.”
“You didn’t exactly ask, my dear,” Aziraphale corrected.
“Right. Sorry for trying to tempt you into it, then.”
He rose from the floor, defeated yet released, and sat next to the angel once again.
“If you did ask,” Aziraphale whispered then, “Honestly.”
“What?” Crowley chuckled, “You’d do it? You’d Fall for me?”
“My dear,” Aziraphale began, a hesitant finger brushing softly against his jawline. Crowley yielded to it, allowing his face to turn towards his companion’s at last.
“I already have fallen for you. I’m sure to do it literally can’t be any worse.”
Crowley’s hand found Aziraphale’s lap, at the knees.
“Oh, but it can,” he said regrettably, with the tone of one who had felt the pain and would never forget.
“Ask me,” Aziraphale insisted anyway.
“Join me in Hell, angel.”
“Yes.”
And it was very nearly that simple.
“On one condition,” He continued.
Crowley’s eyebrows lifted in devilish curiosity.
“We try to save the world, first.”
“Oh, naturally,” Crowley quickly acquiesced, “I’d much rather stay here than the alternative.”
Aziraphale looked almost surprised, then suddenly realised that he shouldn’t be. Still, since the first one had gone so well, he couldn’t help but try to slide something else under the table.
“Two conditions,” He altered with a faint, lopsided smile.
Crowley thought he knew what it was. He first removed his sunglasses as a courtesy, and fixed his unfiltered gaze on Aziraphale. And then, as he so often did, he jumped the gun just slightly.
“I love you.”
To Crowley’s credit, his voice trembled only slightly. And to Aziraphale’s, he managed to wait a very long fraction of a second before snatching the demon into his tight and unforgiving embrace. It was yet another beat before the tears welled into his eyes. Crowley’s arms found their way around him.
“I think,” he spoke into Aziraphale’s shoulder, “I think we’d better start planning how it is we’re going to save the world then, shouldn’t we?”
“I expect we should,” Aziraphale agreed with a huff of contented relief.
But they didn’t.
Not right away.
First, they held each other for a very long time. And Aziraphale cried, and Crowley almost wished that he could too. And when the tempest was calm, they held each other even closer.
And then they found a way to be closer still.
It started with the word “making”, and ended with a four-letter word that, with some coaxing, Crowley would now consent to add to his repertoire.