Chapter Text
They get away with it for very nearly a decade, in the end. Heaven and Hell are both cold and silent, and Aziraphael finds it rather a strange relief: somehow it’s easier, to be cut off entirely from Heaven’s strange half-love than to be tugged back infrequently, as if one were on a very long leash held in a petulant hand. Better not to be loved at all than to be loved conditionally, perhaps.
He and Crowley stay in London, Crowley in his high-rise flat and Aziraphael in his cluttered, almost subterranean bookshop, and orbit each other in wide, slow, dinners-at-the-Ritz circles as they try to understand what to do next. What they are meant for, and what they mean to each other now - what they can mean to each other, rather, now that they’ve already seen what the worst possibilities looked like and survived them together.
It’s been so long, after all. Six thousand years of… well, friendship, yes, but of wanting. Of knowing that any kind of - of acknowledgement of how he feels about Crowley (and of how Crowley, he’s fairly certain, feels about him) would bring both Heaven and Hell down on Crowley in a torrent of holy water and blood. Of living in a world where the only thing worse than feeling like this as an angel was to feel like this and be damned: a world, in fact, of binary choices.
He’s not sure - even now, a decade on - how to negotiate a world in which they suddenly seem to have been given a third option. And it appears that Crowley isn’t sure either, though their long slow six-thousand-year orbit of each other is becoming increasingly concentric of late: more meals at intriguing little out-of-the-way restaurants, more lazy afternoons drinking at Aziraphael’s bookshop, more of those strange delicate moments when they’re alone together and the puppet-strings that have held them for so long are strained almost to breaking.
Unusually, today, they’re meeting at Crowley’s home and not at his: Aziraphael has long found the aggressively minimalist decor of Crowley’s chosen abodes rather intimidating, and though he’s always tried to politely pretend otherwise the demon is not such a fool as to miss his discomfort.
(He’d feel even more intimidated at being so easily known, were it anyone else but Crowley; but it isn’t anyone else but Crowley. It never has been.)
On this occasion, however, a new and promising Indian restaurant has opened just around the corner from the Mayfair high-rise Crowley has long called home, and so it only makes sense to meet there for once. It’s a bright, sunshiny day of the kind that even London can’t quite manage to spoil and so Aziraphael makes it his business, on the short walk across town from Soho, to keep it that way: a credit card bill turns into a surprise bequest from a rich relation; a small child finds their dropped ice cream to be miraculously twice the size and safely (cleanly) back in its cone; two lovers suddenly realise, mid-argument, that they understand each other after all; a cancer patient finds her tumours unexpectedly shrinking. He’s so busy and amused by all the opportunities to make the world a little better - so delighted by London, in fact, and all the flavours and joy of life in it - that he accidentally finds himself taking almost twice as long as he’d budgeted for reaching Crowley’s flat, and is half expecting to find him already lurking impatiently outside the lobby.
What he finds, instead, is a door blown straight off its hinges and the concierge dead at her desk.
The world goes both icy cold and sharply colour-contrast; he snaps his fingers desperately, but the concierge is long beyond even his help as he bolts for the stairs. He’s entirely the wrong shape for climbing ten floors, but the lift is out of the question and after all he’s an angel: flight is only a minor miracle. Once on Crowley’s floor, though, he winches his wings back in; they’re bulky and in any case he needs a moment to regain some kind of composure, not least when all his fears are confirmed at the sight of Crowley’s front door blown to smithereens.
It’s a trap; of course it’s a trap, and so Aziraphael pauses only long enough to yank his coat off and leave it outside the door, not from vanity (well, almost entirely not from vanity) but from a sudden conviction that he’s going to need his arms free, before stepping warily through the open doorway.
Crowley’s beloved flat is a mess: Aziraphael can’t believe it’s because he has anything Heaven or Hell might want any more so it’s clearly just for pleasure in the cruelty of it, a kind of pleasure so obscene he’d attribute it to humans if that were remotely plausible in this case. Worse, though, is the fact that the demon is nowhere to be seen…
Something goes crash through the doorway to the room where Crowley keeps all his plants, and Aziraphael might not be built for speed but some things are more important than biology.
"Awright, Aziraphael?" says a very different demon. "We'd bin wonderin' when you'd show up."
"Duke Hastur," Aziraphael says icily, longing for that flaming sword he'd once given away. "Terribly sorry to have kept you waiting."
As well as Hastur, he can see two - no, three: one is lurking ominously behind a potted fern - other demons in the room. The one nearest to him he knows is called Amon; another he's never seen before, but judging from the ominous buzzing is from Beelzebub's personal staff; the third he hasn't seen since Creation but thinks might be a Duke of Hell called Orias. The person he most wants to see is nowhere to be found, and the icy fist clenched around Aziraphael’s heart gives another sharp squeeze.
He forces himself to step further into the room, and improbably remembers to breathe when he finally sees the one being in Heaven, Hell or Earth who really means anything to him.
Crowley is sprawled on the floor amongst the fallen plantpots, a cut bleeding jaggedly on his forehead, his glasses fallen some feet away and Hastur’s foot - Aziraphael swallows hard - pinning him by his throat. He looks improbably young, and absurdly vulnerable, and desperately scared. But he is, at least, alive, and his golden eyes widen with horror when he sees Aziraphael.
“Well,” Aziraphael says stiffly, forcing himself to look away from Crowley before he can lose control of himself entirely, “You’ve clearly got what you wanted. What can I do for you, ah… gentlemen?”
Hastur laughs nastily - not, frankly, that he probably has any other way of laughing. “This? This is just payback, your Angelship. A party, you might say.”
Crowley says, “Ngk,” and Hastur’s boot presses down again, cutting off the air. For the first time in millennia Aziraphael feels his hands curl reflexively into fists, manicured nails hard against his palms.
“Ah. Right. Of course.”
He wonders what on Earth to do; should have thought about that before, of course, but he’d been far too concerned with finding Crowley for that. He could probably take Hastur in a fight, if it came to it: he had after all been a soldier of Heaven, back in the good - well, back in the old days, and though he was rather out of practice he’d done quite a lot of smiting back then, as he recalled. In a pinch, he could probably even take on two of the demons at once and at least not be too embarrassed, but three? Four?
And, he realises, even on his best day he certainly could not take on four demons and keep Crowley alive at the same time.
Perhaps he could ask Heaven for back-up? He could quite possibly even get it - quite possibly even in enough time; Gabriel has always so loved an opportunity to play Saviour - but bringing Heaven down on the flat would only be throwing Crowley out of the frying pan and into the proverbial fire (or, more likely, Holy Water). Is this what the world is like, for those who have no help ever forthcoming? Is this what it is, to be faced with being truly alone in Her universe? He has never felt this way before, not in six thousand years - not because he has always known that Heaven would be there, he suddenly realises, but because he has always known that Crowley would be.
...Very well, then.
Aziraphael clears his throat, putting a hand to the wall. Crowley, he’s aware, has recently had a sprinkler system put in to keep the plants watered while they went to Edinburgh for the Festival… His eyes briefly flicker closed, as if in prayer; when he opens them, he looks directly at Crowley, trying to convey some kind of reassurance. Crowley can only half-close his eyes in mute acceptance of his fate.
“Tell me, Duke Hastur,” Aziraphael asks politely, “Do you know how Holy Water is made?”
Amon reaches out a hand, but it’s too late; Aziraphael snaps his fingers… and the sprinklers turn on.
In the resulting panic, he opens his wings and hurls himself full force at Hastur, knocking him off his feet - and, more to the point, off Crowley. Crowley instinctively attempts to rise but Aziraphael pushes him back down instead, mantling over him and using both his body and his wings to shield him from the Holy Water now pouring out of every one of the ceiling sprinklers.
(He’s never really cared particularly for having wings: they’re unwieldy, and besides, they’re rather too… cliché. But on this occasion, he must admit that they have their uses.)
“It’s all right, my dear,” he says, gently; they are face to face, eye to eye, closer than they have dared to be in a very long time. Crowley’s eyes are as wide as he has ever seen them and his face is bone-white as he tries to curl up as far as possible under the protection of Aziraphael’s wings; Aziraphael aches to touch the cut on his forehead but doesn’t dare risk losing his balance, not now.
Around them, the screaming is very loud, and it doesn’t stop for quite some time.
They stare into each other’s eyes for as long as it lasts.
“Four demons at once,” Crowley croaks, in the final ringing silence. “Must be some kind of record.”
“Perhaps they’ll make me Employee of the Month.” Aziraphael’s voice is very dry; he snaps his fingers again, and the sprinklers cut out with a hiss. “I’m only grateful it wasn’t five.”
“You and me both,” Crowley admits, and attempts an extremely wry, rather wobbly smile. He licks his dry lips, and Aziraphael is filled with a sudden wild need to kiss them.
Instead they both sit up, now that the worst of the water has gone, though Aziraphael keeps his wings curled protectively over Crowley in case of any drips from the pipework. He knows that the demon feels vulnerable without his sunglasses, so rather than risk reaching for them he miracles a new pair from thin air and offers them. Crowley takes them from him with long fingers that are trembling slightly from the effort of not trembling, and though he holds them halfway to his face he looks up at Aziraphael snake-eyed before he actually puts them on.
“...Were you, uh. Were you sure that would work?”
No, Aziraphael thinks, I wasn’t. But I didn’t know what I’d do if it didn’t. He cups Crowley’s face in his hands, ostensibly to check for any more injuries; Crowley goes absolutely still, sunglasses frozen in his hands. “I… had faith.”
Crowley arches a brow, voice effortfully casual. “Oh, really. In what, exactly?"
Aziraphael thinks, Is it now? After all this time, is it now? Please, can it be now?
“You,” Aziraphael says, and kisses him.