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Published:
2019-06-12
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2019-06-14
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2/2
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And The Violins Played On

Summary:

Mathew 5:28-
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman demon to lust (and love) after her him hath committed adultery (and fucked up royally,) with her him already in his heart.

Notes:

Thank you so dearly for reading! I hope you enjoy!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The Waves

Chapter Text

Mathew 5:28

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman demon to lust (and love) after her him hath committed adultery (and fucked up royally,) with her him already in his heart.

Mathew Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Eight. That was Aziraphale’s least favorite scripture. Was it a sin to have a least favorite scripture? Probably. He imagined that Gabriel, when asked, would claim to love all of the scriptures equally. But Aziraphale just simply didn’t.

This was for a multitude of reasons. (Really only two reasons, but they felt like a lot). Firstly, his cursed mind took it upon itself to edit the Divine Text. The word ‘demon’ does not appear in the original text. The words ‘and love’ do not appear after the word ‘lust’. But his mind deemed it appropriate, and so they did.

The second reason that Aziraphale hated Mathew Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Eight, was because he understood it just a little too well.

The first time it happened, well - Aziraphale couldn’t be sure it was the first time it happened. It was the first time he recognized what was happening, that was for sure. Regardless, it happened in 1941.

There was a church, there were Nazis, there was Crowley – hot stepping down the aisle in the most ridiculous hat Aziraphale had ever seen. There was even a bomb. But all of that simply paled in comparison to the moments that came next.

“Oh, the books!” Aziraphale breathed out, standing in the wreckage of a bombed-out church. “Oh, I forgot all the books!” He was heartbroken. Those were his first editions, put in the line of fire for what he thought was the greater good. And they were gone. “They’ll all be blown to-”

His head turned to the side as he heard Crowley strain to pry something from the wreckage.

“-ash,” he whispered as the demon handed him a bag. An unscathed bag. A perfectly preserved bag, containing perfectly preserved books.

“A little demonic miracle of my own”, Crowley drawled, and Aziraphale swore he heard violins over the bomb sirens in the background. “Lift home?”

With that, Crowley walked away. But the violins didn’t stop, and Aziraphale couldn’t move. He stood in the midst of smoldering alters and pews, and stared at the retreating form of the demon. Of his demon. He felt the smallest smile crawl on to his face. He could barely breathe.

And he finally understood what it meant to look at somebody with love.

And the scripture was right. That was the awful part. It didn’t matter that Aziraphale was too much of a coward to act on it. It didn’t matter that he never touched Crowley, outside of letting their fingertips brush when passing a bottle back and forth late at night. (Or when yanking the other (literally) out of danger. Or when they sat too close on the couch after too many passes of a bottle late at night.)

It didn’t matter that Aziraphale never gave voice to what he felt. He never grabbed Crowley by his unkept collar, ripped off the glasses that hid his delightfully Crowley-esque eyes and whispered ‘Do you know how much you mean to me? Do you know how much you are loved? How much I love you? I could tell you every day and every night from now until the end of millennia and I still don’t think it would get through your idiotic, beautiful, sinful, blessed head. Would you like a glass of tea? Please can I kiss you?’ He never told him any of that. But he thought it, every single day.

He looked at Crowley with love when he sat on his couch, rambling about his plan to stop the end of the world. The topic was important, true, but the way Crowley reclined on the chair like he was comfortable and safe was much, much more important to Aziraphale.

He looked at his demon with love even when he was breaking his heart, promising to run to Alpha Centuri and forget about him. He watched Crowley leave, and the violins were playing a sad melody, but they were still there.

He watched the love of his life through a fog as they sat across from him at a restaurant they both used to love. Well, Crowley loved it. And Aziraphale loved Crowley, so he supposed he loved the restaurant too.

“Did you go to Alpha Centuri?”

“No,” Crowley shook out, as he put down the bottle. “Changed my mind. Stuff happened.” His face crumpled, as if he had been trying to hold it all in but failed at that very moment. The overflowing wetness in his eyes was visible even through the dark of his glasses. “I lost my best friend,” his whispered as his voice shattered.

Aziraphale’s heart shattered right along with it. His hands twitched, desperate to comfort a man he could not touch for multiple reasons, the foremost being that he didn’t have a body.

“I’m so sorry to hear it.”

“Wherever you are – I’ll come to you,” Crowley promised, a little bit further into the conversation. He peered over his glasses, and Aziraphale could have sworn that, for a moment, he saw his own eyes reflected right back.

They were together. And for the time being, they were safe. Crowley’s apartment was minimal, dark, and would be seen as cold to anyone who didn’t love everything about Crowley like Aziraphale did. They sat together, on Crowley’s couch that felt more like a bench, passing a bottle of red wine back and forth. They barely talked, but tonight, they didn’t need to. Whenever their fingers brushed, it felt like an eternity of conversation passed between them.

“I don’t know about you, Angel,” Crowley murmured, “But I really need to rest.”

Aziraphale was about to reply, but Crowley took that moment to stretch. He extended both of his arms upwards, lacing his fingers together as he strained. And maybe it was the way Crowley’s face scrunched up, or maybe it was the way the minimal lighting lit up his hair, or maybe it was because 6000 years of pining was an awful lot to keep buried, but Aziraphale just couldn’t do it anymore. He had been loving Crowley in the very depths of his heart for oh so very long, and he couldn’t keep it in any longer.

Before his mind caught up, Aziraphale’s heart took the reins, and reached out to cup Crowley’s face and pull him in. Their first kiss was quite awkward, as Aziraphale was already gasping and Crowley’s hands were still above his head.

But slowly, Crowley lowered them to rest on the back of Azriaphale’s neck. He tilted his head, and Aziraphale did his best to pour every bit of love that he felt into that one kiss.

He would tell Crowley he loved him later, after this kiss. After these many kisses.

He felt Crowley’s lips curl into a smile, and the violins reached a crescendo.

Chapter 2: The Shore

Summary:

An explanation, leading to a tender moment.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Now, The Divine Text did not discriminate. The words on its pages applied to humans, and they applied to angels as well. They even applied to fallen angels, no matter how demonic they chose to be.

Whether or not the fallen angel wanted to read the Divine Word was not really important in the grand scheme of things.

But Crowley had read it. It was for work purposes, originally. How better to tempt man than to find out what God wants and stir up the exact opposite? So Crowley had read the Good Work in its entirety. That meant, of course, that he knew what Mathew Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Eight had said.  He knew what it meant too. Lusting in your heart was the same as lusting with your body. Simple as that.

He should have known that his angel would derive a different meaning from it.

The first time Aziraphale had explained it to him was exactly a week after what was supposed to be the end of the world. They were back in Aziraphale’s bookstore, sprawled out on his worn, yet loved, couch. Crowley was taking his time with a glass of an exquisite red wine that he had pulled from his own stash earlier that day. Aziraphale, on the other hand, had finished the rest of that exquisite red. And he was currently explaining what Mathew Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Eight meant to him.

“I couldn’t hold it in, you see,” he gestured towards his chest, almost spilling wine on his chest as did so. “It was all sort of, right here, where my heart should be, where my heart is.”

Crowley tilted his head as we waited for the angel to continue. He did, after another long sip from the glass.

“I just loved you,” he sighed, drawing in a breath in the way that only people who have had too much drink do, “so much, my dear. Every moment I looked at you, I thought it was all just going to come spilling out of my mouth and of my eyes and of my ears and out of everything.”

He sat up straight, looking at Crowley intently. “I suppose I shouldn’t say ‘loved’. I still do love you like that, you know? Just a reminder. That I do.”

And Crowley did know, in fact.

Ever since that evening on Crowley’s couch, when Aziraphale decided that kissing Crowley while he was trying to stretch out the knot in his lower back was a great idea, Crowley knew that Aziraphale loved him.

This was not due only to that kiss. That kiss was like a dam breaking. Everything Aziraphale had felt for the past 6000 years came tumbling out. He told Crowley he loved him every morning, and every night. He told Crowley he loved him at the end of every phone call, and at the beginning of every meal. He would sometimes drop that fact in the middle of conversations.

This would, without fail, have one of two effects.

The first, and by far the most common, was Crowley either hanging up the phone out of panic, or stuffing his hands in his pockets and making weird non-committal grunts and noises until the blush on his cheeks receded.

The second, and by far Aziraphale’s favorite, was Crowley grabbing him by the shirt collar and pulling him in to kiss him silent.

Tonight was no exception. Crowley turned his head away from the inebriated angel sitting next to him and said something along the lines of ‘Well, I, ah, sure”, in a very quick succession.

This wasn’t because he didn’t love the angel back. He definitely did. Unlike Aziraphale, however, he wasn’t able to pinpoint the exact moment it happened. Loving Aziraphale was a fact of life, one of the few constants that he had.

And he wasn’t exactly comfortable expressing that very idea. The last time he had attempted it, his guard was down. He had thought his best friend dead, and he was more than a little drunk. That’s why he ended up only choking out “I lost my best friend” before his throat closed up entirely. Trapped inside were the words ‘But seeing you across from me is the closest I’ve felt to a blessing in the longest time’. Now that the moment has passed, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to get it out.

But he trusted that his angel knew how he felt anyway.

 

The next morning rolled around, exactly on schedule. Crowley woke up, finding himself stretched across the expanse of Azriaphale’s couch. His feet were on one end, and his head was on the other, resting on top of Azriaphale’s lap. His eyes were still closed, but he heard the sound of pages being gently turned above him. It was a soothing sort of noise, and Crowley found himself drifting towards sleep once more. But Aziraphale must have sensed that Crowley was awake, because he felt the angel’s fingers slowly start to card through his hair.  He sighed, pushing back up against the pressure, and heard Aziraphale huff out a laugh in response. Against his better judgement (his defenses were down, he had just woken up,) he tilted his head to look up at his angel and smile.

The smile he got back was blinding in return. Aziraphale smiled with his whole face, and it was all aimed directly at him. It was overpowering at any given moment, but waking up to it was almost unbearable. His only form of defense was to roll over completely to push his face into the offending angel’s stomach.

“Good morning, my dear.”

“Hmmmmmmm,” Crowley sighed, closing his eyes tightly again.

“The brunch place that I like is still open. If we hurry, we might be able to grab the table for two that, coincidently, just opened up.”

“Of course, Angel.” His voice was slightly muffled, but the angel understood him. He made no effort to move.

“Crowley?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. Do get up now, yes?”

Crowley rolled back into his previous position, slowly opening his eyes. He felt his vision soften as he gazed upon Aziraphale.

“Just one moment more.”

 

Halfway through brunch, Crowley heard Aziraphale start to hum. It was a simple melody, a sweet one. When he asked for the name of the tune, Aziraphale blushed, and mumbled something about violins.

Notes:

This work wasn't supposed to have two chapters, but I really wanted to try writing from the perspective of Crowley!
Thank you so much for all of your support on the first chapter. I would LOVE to hear about what you thought of this one. Your comments mean the world to me.
Thank you again!

Notes:

Thank you so, so much for reading! I really hoped you liked it. Your comments mean the world to me, I would love, love, love to know what you thought!!
Find me on tumblr at spockazilla.tumblr.com
Thank you again!!!