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“It’s really not that tragic,” Crowley says, looking out into space as though he were seeing the consequences of their actions playing out into the distant future. “Don’t sweat over it.”
“I’m an angel: angels don’t sweat,” Aziraphale replies indignantly.
“Angels don’t, but their bodies do,” Crowley shrugs. He peers over at Aziraphale through the corner of his eye and gets a little smirk on his face. “Don’t act like I haven’t seen you sweat, Angel. Have you forgotten that night in Mumbai, with the fire and the drinking and the temptation -“
“Stop it, Crowley!” Aziraphale demands in a rattled tone. Crowley can almost see a shade of pink settling onto the tips of Azirphale’s ears. “I said it that night, and it’s still true today: we cannot fraternize.”
“But you want to, though.”
Crowley says it in a low voice, a temptation all by itself. Crowley doesn’t even look over, he doesn’t have to; he can hear Aziraphale swallow thickly from beside him on the bench. He can feel the way he tenses his muscles, can feel the scrambling urgency of the thoughts in his head, trying to figure out what he could possibly say that would be both true and righteous.
Aziraphale cant think of anything to say that remotely meets both of those qualifications. He could say, you’re right, and it would be true, but not righteous. He could say, you’re wrong, and it would be righteous, but ever so false.
So he says, “You’re a demon.”
It doesn’t answer the unspoken question, but it is both true and righteous, for the most part.
“Yes, you keep reminding me,” Crowley grumbles, thought not in bad nature, which should be concerning.
Neither angel nor demon says anything for a good, long minute. Crowley is thinking about their relationship, how impossible it seems at first glance and how it somehow still seems as if it never could have happened any way else. Aziraphale is trying very hard to not think about that at all.
After another too-long moment of quiet, Crowley asks, “Just how ineffable is that Ineffable Plan, again?”
Aziraphale raises one eyebrow. “Utterly.”
Crowley puckers his lips and nods once or twice, relaxing into the bench. “Well, then, that means that there’s nothing we could ever possibly do to stop it.”
Aziraphale looks over at Crowley with furrowed eyebrows. “Your point, Crowley?”
Crowley sits up straighter, still not looking over at Aziraphale. His eyes are focused on a duck, swimming around and bobbing its head underwater. Crowley says with a little shrug, “Everything we do is part of the Ineffable Plan. Everything we do, say, want, or need is all what She wants.”
Aziraphale keeps his eyes trained on Crowley’s profile.
“Stopping Armageddon,” Crowley continues, “our arrangement, angering our superiors - even the Fall itself. It’s all part of the Plan. So, say, if we were to fraternize -“
“It would be in the Plan,” Aziraphale finishes, still staring at Crowley, but this time, with more wonder than anything else. “It wouldn’t be breaking the rules - it would be following them.”
“Exactly,” Crowley says with a decidedly evil smirk, finally looking over at Aziraphale and getting a true shock through his body at the look he’s receiving. Aziraphale looks . . . relieved, maybe. But excited. And something else, something tender, and it hits Crowley hard: love. Aziraphale is looking at him with so much love, and he honestly never thought he was capable of being the object of that type of heavenly emotion.
Aziraphale slowly reaches his hand across the space between them. His fingers hover in the space just above Crowley’s hand, which is resting on his thigh. He feels the heat coming off Aziraphale’s hand, and his fingers twitch.
Aziraphale suddenly gets a burst of bravery and takes Crowley’s hand. “Take off those blasted sunglasses, demon.”
Crowley does. As soon as they’re removed, Aziraphale meets his eyes and smiles, wide and glorious.
Aziraphale’s eyes widen with excitement. “Let’s fraternize.”
And Crowley can’t help but laugh out loud at the outrageousness of that phrase. Aziraphale frowns at him.
“What?” he asks, clasping onto Crowley’s hand even tighter. “Is that not what you wanted?”
Crowley shifts his hand in Aziraphale’s so that he can hold it tighter. Without a word, he leans over, placing his other hand on Aziraphale’s jaw, and kisses him.
It’s sweet and gentle, and Aziraphale gasps into it, tensing beneath Crowley’s lips, until he finally settles, breathing out heavily through his nose and kissing back. His free hand comes up to cover Crowley’s, still holding his face.
When they break apart, Aziraphale still has his eyes closed, as if scared that when he opens them, none of this will have happened.
But Crowley has a smile in his voice when he says, “Let’s fraternize, Angel,” and so Aziraphale opens his eyes then and smiles back.
***
Hours later, they sit atop a building overlooking the beautifully lit city of Paris, France, holding glass flutes of bubbling champagne and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder.
Aziraphale takes a little sip and glances at Crowley over the rim of his glass. “Sorry your Eiffel Tower bit didn’t work out.”
Crowley rolls his eyes and shrugs. “Ah, you were right, the romantic bit is seeing it, and you can’t very well see it from on top.”
Aziraphale chuckles a little and looks out at the Eiffel Tower.
“It really is quite extraordinary,” he comments. “Was that one yours?”
“Don’t recall,” Crowley says. “Weren’t we distracted during the whole Eiffel Tower business?”
“Ah, yes,” Aziraphale nods, “Vienna.”
“Why were we there again?”
“Some fabricated excuse, I presume.”
“I just wanted to see you, I think,” Crowley admits, taking a sip of his champagne and looking over at Aziraphale, who has begun smiling bright as the sun.
“I wanted to see you, too,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley kisses him for it, briefly.
The breeze blows gently, and the sound of Paris nightlife rings out below them. The lights shine orange and yellow, and the Eiffel Tower is bright as ever. Crowley tops off their glasses with more champagne.
“Do you think this Ineffable Plan idea of ours is just another excuse?” Aziraphale says worriedly. “Just another reason we made up, in order to do whatever we want?”
Crowley looks at him, his snake-like eyes nearly impossible to read. He says, “I don’t need an excuse to love you.”
Aziraphale’s heart nearly stops, breath empty in his lungs. He feels something in himself soar, and he can’t contain his outrageous smile. “Crowley, you awful, despicable romantic,” he admonishes, but he loves Crowley, too, and he isn’t afraid to admit it anymore.
Crowley grins and lifts his glass. “To the Ineffable Plan.”
Aziraphale lifts his glass, too. “To an angel and a demon, foolish enough to question it.”
Their glasses clink.
If this truly is defiance against the Plan, well, Crowley thinks, he never wanted the Plan anyway.