Work Text:
Aziraphale keeps experiencing these overwhelming sensations of love, and he cannot, for the immortal life of him, figure out the source.
It’s been three weeks since the un-apocalypse, and at first Aziraphale thought his powers were a bit screwy, what with confronting Satan and the anti-Christ and severing ties with heaven and all. But they’ve spent the last few weeks restoring his bookshop and performing cozy, comfortable little miracles to bask in their success of saving everything (well, Crowley’s been making corrupt policemen get caught and starting new fashion magazines, but it comes to much of the same thing, really, the wonderful mess of the world). All his other powers seem to be in order. He feels appropriate bursts of love when he reunites an elderly man with his lost cat, when he gives two best friends the nudge they needed to admit they’re in love with each other, when he grants an empowering dream to a depressed teenager. Yet it’s like he’s surrounded by this low-grade aura of it these days, punctuated by massive, nearly overwhelming bursts — usually when he’s not around any people at all, when it’s just him and Crowley hunkering down among plants or books for the evening or dining at a little hole in the wall establishment.
Aziraphale simply can’t understand it.
“It’s the oddest thing!” he says to Crowley, shaking his head. He’s poring over an old book of etherea, trying to find a precedent. Crowey’s draped over an armchair, drinking his way through a pot of Aziraphale’s favorite herbal tea (he says he’s spiking it, but he hasn’t touched the whiskey in hours. It is very good tea, after all), and decidedly not reading the YA rom com novel lying open in front of him, though the pages keep turning. “I mean, it’s happened before,” Aziraphale muses pensively, “over the years and such. Flares of love with no humans around, you remember, like when I became quite overwhelmed with it on the Greek isles at sunset in the 6th or so century? There was no one around but the sheep and the sky, and I nearly fell right down from it! You caught me, didn’t you? But then I went on feeling it for quite some time after that...”
“I remember, angel.”
There’s something oddly strained about his voice, something beyond just the alcohol tightening it.
“I’m sorry, is this boring you?” Aziraphale looks up at him. “I know I’ve been rather focused on it lately, it’s just very bizarre and can’t ask anyone in Heaven obviously, and I just want to make sure there’s nothing wrong — “
“It’s not boring me, Aziraphale.” Crowley is staring very pointedly at the book through his glasses, though he doesn’t seem to be reading it anymore. “I’m sorry. I just...” Here Crowley drags out the word, then pauses, as if there’s something else he’s fighting to keep out of his mouth.
“It’s all right,” Aziraphale says kindly, he knows Crowley has trouble getting words out sometimes, at least when he’s not spitting them at someone. And he probably is bored anyway. “Just let me peruse one more chapter in this next volume here and then we can go for a walk, get some fresh air, all right?” Crowley gives a noncommittal grunt, which is a good a yes as any, coming from him.
Aziraphale reaches over the desk to grab the heavy tome, and as he brings it in front of him, he knocks over his own cup of tea in the process, spilling it all over the open book in front of him and half a decade of notes.
“Oh no!” he exclaims, distraught. But before he’s even gotten the second word out, before the tea sinks into the pages, it’s already zipping back into the cup and Aziraphale is nearly bowled over by another wave of love.
He turns to thank Crowley, who’s sat up suddenly with his hand out, tidily miracling the tea, when it hits him.
It happens quickly, though of course it took millennia: it hits him over and over again, the realization and the great warm waves of love, quite like being in a sun of it. It’s unbridled, exquisitely beautiful, and disarmingly familiar.
He stares at Crowley in disbelief, his mouth a perfect o, his heart pounding like a storm in his body.
“Ah fuck,” says the demon.
“Crowley.”
Crowley removes his glasses. His snake eyes stare deep into Aziraphale’s holy ones, and he doesn’t flinch.
“It’s not like I tried to hide it. Not my fault you didn’t pick up on it.”
You could have said something! Aziraphale wanted to say, but he couldn’t’ve, really, and hadn’t he proved it in action a thousand times over, and a thousand times again?
“Well, yes, but I thought it was you becoming a bit more of a decent person, not because — !” Aziraphale is horrified to find that his face is turning alarmingly pink. He tries to push the flush down, but his powers are somewhat flummoxed at the moment. “I really am quite stupid, aren’t I?” he says softly.
“Not at all,” Crowley says at once. “And damn that all to Heaven, because it would’ve been a whole lot easier not to fall for you if you were.” He gives a small smile. “Made me fall again, you bastard. This time in an entirely different direction. You’re not stupid, you just didn’t want to trust me, and I hadn’t given you a reason to.”
“Well, you certainly have by now!” Aziraphale is entirely flustered, made more so by the fact that Crowley isn’t at all. The demon doesn’t seem remotely embarrassed, though perhaps his biggest secret is out in the open — likely because he’s resigned himself to it.
Or, Aziraphale thinks to himself in wonder, because he’s been waiting for me to figure it out and come around.
“So...what are you going to do about it, angel?” Crowley’s voice is low enough to be dangerous, but Aziraphale knows him better — it’s not his dangerous voice at all, in fact, it’s...soft...
Aziraphale stands, adjusting his shirt and jacket, heart thumping louder than before.
“What would you like me to do about it, Crowley? There’s — there’s no precedent for this, nothing in any of the books, in all of history —“
“No, Aziraphale, there isn’t.” Crowley stands too, now, and takes a step closer. “We’d have to figure it out ourselves. Write our own story, as it were.” There’s something like hope hidden behind the mask of his calm, collected face, and Aziraphale can see right through to it.
“You mean — exactly what you’ve been asking me to do for — for quite a few years now.”
“Yes, angel.” They’re less than a meter apart now, only a few steps between them. “But I couldn’t push it. Didn’t want to pressure you into it, that’s not what this is. I wanted you to arrive at it on your own, because I need you to be sure.” His voice is hoarse now. “Like I’m sure.”
They’ve been this close a thousand times before, but this is different, because Aziraphale isn’t holding onto what he thought he should be, anymore. He is finally realizing that to be good doesn’t mean blindly following authority, but being kind and actually doing good, and setting things right and...being soft...
“I wasn’t ready,” he says, his voice just above a whisper, inviting Crowley to step closer, and he does, “then.”
Crowley’s eyebrow arches ever so slightly, he’s close enough now that Aziraphale can see the lines of his mouth, the pores of his cheek, the shimmering truth behind his skin. His wings flare, and even in the dim light of the shop they seem pale, nearly gray. Not altogether dissimilar from Aziraphale’s own these days. It’s a lovely, silvery color, the one the stars gleam with from Earth. His favorite stars had been, in fact, that night in Greece. Every time he’s ever really been himself, his whole self, everything he’s ever truly loved, it’s when he’s with —
“And now?”
Aziraphale takes one more moment, bouncing on his toes, before he sheds the final vestige of who he thought he needed to be and lets himself take what he wants. He flings his arms around Crowley with such force he’s sure Crowley miracles them upright, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re entwined, entangled, Crowley’s mouth is on his and they’re holding each other up and Aziraphale is dizzy from the love of it.
Thank goodness and evil and humanity itself that they’re immortal, because they don’t give each other time to catch their breath. It’s a swooping, powerful thing. A reckoning. A revelation. All wrapped up in the very human experience of a kiss.
And yet, Aziraphale thinks to himself, either moments or hours into it, time wonderfully not applying itself properly anymore, with Crowley’s hands on him, his hands on the demon, their bodies and wings and souls tangled together, it’s like he finally knows what it feels like to exhale.
“Crowley?” He says it through bitten lips, Crowley’s teeth still around his lower one. Crowley’s hand tugging at his hair, sharp enough to focus him, gentle enough not to hurt, Crowley always knows just how hard is hard enough, never ever pushing him too far. A thrill runs through him, his hand on Crowley’s bare chest where he’s fumbled the buttons undone (it doesn’t feel right to miracle them, and it feels better, choosing to undo them this way instead), as he wonders what other ways Crowley might put that knowledge of balance to use.
“Aziraphale?” With the word murmured into his mouth, all wet breath and no pretense, it sounds entirely different from every other time the demon has said his name, and also, exactly the same.
It takes a significant amount of willpower, but Aziraphale wrenches his mouth away. The look on Crowley’s face, wanting and worried, is so absolutely goddamn precious Aziraphale plants another quick kiss on his lips before pulling back again, staring straight into the demon’s eyes and saying,
“I love you too.”
The waves of love that came from Crowley just then would actually have knocked Aziraphale over, had Crowley not been holding him up. The look in the demon’s eyes was a beautiful thing, Aziraphale thought, and he has another thought, then. He almost keeps it to himself, as he’s done with other thoughts of this ilk in the past, but he’s done keeping anything at all from Crowley.
“If anything is truly holy,” he says to the demon, soft as a prayer, “it’s this, God, it’s this.”
Crowley blinks at him, eyes bright, and if he didn’t know better, Aziraphale would think there were something like tears starting there.
“I love you, Crowley, all of you, I accept you and I’m with you, and I’m here, and I’ll stay with you, if you want me to.”
“I want you to,” replies the demon, without a trace of hesitation.
Crowley pulls them into the armchair and settles Aziraphale into his lap comfortably.
“I love you, angel,” Crowley says, his face buried in Aziraphale’s throat now.
“I know, you silly thing, that’s how we got here.” Aziraphale is marveling at how lovely it is to feel Crowley’s body beneath him, not going anywhere, safe and warm and present.
“Yeah, well, I can say it now, so I’m bloody well going to as much as I please.”
“Good,” Aziraphale says happily, pressing their bodies together, loving the strange new sensations burgeoning within him and the glee of not having to wonder whether or not this is right. There is no doubt in his mind anymore that it is.
“I love you,” Crowley growls, biting the angel’s lip. “I love you,” he murmurs, tracing his mouth along Aziraphale’s collarbone, “I love you,” he says, pulling Aziraphale deeper into his lap, and Aziraphale can’t help but say, for the second time ever in his long life,
“Fuck.”
Crowley grins.
“One thing at a time, angel.”