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The plants shivered.
Of course, shivered was an awfully mild word for what they did: they shook, rocked back and forth and, had they had mouths with which to do it, screamed a tiny chorus of terrified cries.
But yes, they shivered.
Crowley liked it, usually. They were scared (downright terrified, really, petrified) of him, and this meant he was doing his job well. This meant there would be no relaxation in the quality of their growth. Really, lower your expectations one bit and they’d start spotting.
Right now, however, their incessant rattling simply made his head hurt more than it already did.
“Shut up, all of you,” he growled. The noise didn't completely end, but it did quiet down somewhat. He released a long, slow breath. And then, without warning, he grabbed the nearest plant and left with it, leaving its fellows to breathe a sigh of relief that it hadn't been them this time, at least.
He slammed the plant down on the kitchen table, dragging a chair out to sit on. He was facing the massive, floor-to-ceiling window that occupied an entire section of his apartment. He could see row upon row of neat little housing blocks stretching out into the foreseeable distance, interrupted by the occasional busy street. He steepled his fingers and surveyed the plant. It was a calathea, with glossy green leaves and a rather fearful disposition, though this was to be expected.
“So,” he said, reaching out for another bottle of wine. “You’re probably wondering why I've brought you here today.”
If the plant could have, it would have nodded shakily. In truth, it was deathly terrified of what would next happen and wasn't very optimistic about the probability of its continued survival. Crowley tipped back his head and drained half the bottle.
“Well,” he went on, slurring his words slightly. “You aren’t in trouble just yet.”
Here, he gave a meaningful glare in the direction of a minuscule leaf at the bottom of the stalk. There was a tiny hole in it. The plant very nearly curled in on itself out of sheer terror.
“But, well, you see—” He emptied the rest of the bottle and miracled forth another, blinking lazily behind his shaded glasses. “You see, I have a problem.”
The calathea tentatively leaned forwards as if to show Crowley that it was, to use the very human expression, all ears.
“And this problem shows itself in the form of a certain somebody. No, it’s not that money plant you dislike so much, though I can get on board with that. The bastard’s beginning to get a bit too cozy with the ledge I gave it. Seems to think it’s preferential treatment.”
He gave a clumsily conspiratorial wink, strongly suggesting that the Chinese money plant would not be having a very long week.
“But anyway, back to the problem. It’s that angel that’s always over, you know the one. The one that’s always blessing you lot, as if you need blessing! Bugging Principality. Ridiculous.”
He scowled and reached for the wine again, only this time he miracled over a glass as well.
“So you see, the problem is that I have a problem at all. Understood?” He looked at the calathea with an air of someone who has just finished a very important speech. The plant had completely missed the point but didn’t want to upset, so it shook a leaf in an acknowledging sort of way anyway.
“Good.” Crowley leaned back in the chair and sighed, swilling the liquid around in the glass and looking very sullen indeed. The plant began to loosen up a bit and was just about to consider whether telling its imperial green philodendron neighbour about this most peculiar conversation would be worth it when Crowley began to talk again.
“It’s just,” he said, “I’ve known him for so long, you know? Six thousand years is hardly a walk in the park. But he doesn’t realize—how can he not realize?”
The plant was starting to catch on.
“He’s not an idiot, I know that. But he’s being pretty stupid right now if you ask me. I mean, come on, I walked across consecrated ground for him! And you want to know what I get for that, for thousands of years of dropped hints and risking my neck and stopping the End Times at his side? I get a bloody—” He slammed back the entire glass in one go. “You go too fast for me, Crowley. That’s what I get.”
He ached with the bitter unfairness of it, could feel the cold rolling off of him in chilly waves. What had he not done, he thought miserably, what had he not done right?
The plant really felt it should reach out and give the demon a consoling sort of pat on the back, but found its plans set back by its distressing lack of arms. It instead gave what it hoped to be a comforting sort of bristle.
Groaning, he laid his head on his arms, crossed atop the gleaming marble. The plant had never really realized just how cold it was in the apartment, despite its luxury.
“I don’t know,” he said, voice muffled through his arms and sounding far more defeated than he’d ever let any of them hear. “What I’ve got to do to just get him to realize.”
. . .
The thing about most non-sentient living beings was, once they’d spent enough time around an ethereal—or, in this case, occult—being, this failed to remain the case any longer.
For example, if you’d looked at the calathea when it had still resided upon the shelf of a cramped flower shop by the name of Lizzie’s, it wouldn’t have given a damn about what you did to it. It didn’t and couldn’t and wouldn’t care if you neglected it, or yelled at it, or killed it outright. It was only occupied with its own day-to-day survival, and if it died—well, it wasn’t ideal, but it couldn’t care about its sudden lack of life, now could it?
But then Crowley had come along, and he’d perched the calathea upon a shelf alongside a drooping spider plant (this arrangement in placing had a tendency to change very often, given the sudden departures of many of the plants in the room) and slowly but surely, it had begun to care. The inklings of conscious thought had begun to worm their way into it and, by the end of a month, it had been—to use Crowley’s term—properly broken in.
And this meant that it cared very much if it got yelled at or neglected, and it had a healthy capacity for fear of its own death.
This process was helped along greatly by the frequent visitings of an angel by the name of Aziraphale, who enjoyed surreptitiously blowing blessings into their leaves whenever he was quite sure Crowley wasn’t looking.
. . .
“Really, my dear, the poor things look absolutely terrified.”
“Not as terrified as they should be.”
A renewed wave of shudders circled the room at Crowley’s glower. Aziraphale frowned disapprovingly at him. He gently lifted a verdant and violently trembling leaf belonging to a certain calathea plant.
“This one seems to be having a worse time of things than all the rest,” he said sadly.
Crowley narrowed his eyes at the plant. He’d had a very strict conversation with it the previous day, concerning its fate if Aziraphale caught onto even the barest hint of what he’d told it. It was not at all pleasant.
The calathea shuddered harder still. Crowley drew a slow finger across his throat in warning.
“Did you know,” he said, desperately trying to pry the angel’s attention away from the treacherous plant, “that a new sushi place has opened up a few streets away?”
Aziraphale perked up considerably at this, though his hand did not leave the calathea. The tip of his finger had begun to glow just slightly, the beginnings of a blessing trailing lazily along in what he hoped was an inconspicuous manner.
“Oh, really?” he asked.
“Delightful place, from the looks of it. We should check in for a bit, see for ourselves. What do you think?”
“I think,” Aziraphale said, dissolving the blessing into the plant’s being as gently as he could; it stopped shivering altogether and nearly slumped, relieved, onto the ground. “That that would be just lovely.”
They left after that, the plant silently thanking whatever powers may be for distraction-worthy sushi shops.
. . .
Three days after their first little meeting, Crowley dragged the calathea into the kitchen once more. He did not have any wine, or any other sort of intoxicating drink for that matter, on hand this time.
They sat in uneasy silence for a few minutes, Crowley worrying his lower lip and the plant trying to keep the Pure Terror to a bare minimum. Finally, Crowley began to speak.
“It’s been a long time.”
This puzzled the plant—it had only been three days.
“Since the End Times,” he clarified, and the plant understood. “Two years, really. Not exactly a long amount of time by my standards, but...I wish I could have more of it with him, you know? More time? ‘Course we see each other almost every other day for some reason or the other, but that’s not what I mean, you know?”
The plant did, in fact, know.
. . .
The phone was ringing.
Groaning, Crowley buried his face deeper into his pillow and did not move. He could have miracled the phone over, or into silence, but he couldn’t find the energy in him to bother. For a being that didn’t need to sleep, he’d gotten awfully attached to the habit. The sheets were tangled around him, almost serpentine in shape, evidence of his restlessness even in sleep, beams of sunlight filtering through the exorbitantly priced curtains and casting themselves onto his prone form.
The phone carried on ringing until finally, it did not.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he had just about begun to drift back into the soft lull of unconsciousness when it started up once more.
Cursing, he slid out of bed and shuffled over to the wall where the corded phone was fixed.
“Listen,” he growled into the speaker, not knowing or caring who was listening, “you’d better have a good reason for waking me up at the bloody crack of dawn, or else you might be regretting it very soon—”
“Crowley, my dear, it’s me!” came Aziraphale’s voice from the other end.
This didn’t make the situation as a whole any better, but it did raise his spirits slightly. He was careful not to show it.
“Angel. I’ve told you time and time again that, while you may not sleep, I sure as Hell- Heav- bloody someplace do.”
He could very nearly hear Aziraphale’s disapprobation through the receiver.
“I just thought,” he said, perhaps more stiffly than he would have under regular circumstances, “that we could take advantage of the lovely morning and use the opportunity to, oh, I don’t know, go somewhere.”
“And where would that be?”
“Somewhere!”
Crowley considered. It didn’t take him very long.
“Fine. Because I can’t take the morning to sleep in a bit as any sensible person would—” Aziraphale let out a little ha! at his end. “I might as well.”
“Marvelous! Shall I come over to yours, then? I can manage it in a pinch.”
He wrapped the cord around his index finger. “Sure.”
“Marvelous,” he repeated. “Well, I’ll be over there sooner rather than later, so be ready, okay? I won’t wait for you for too long.”
(He would wait for as long as he had to, but he said that he wouldn’t all the same.)
“Whatever you say. See you in a bit?”
“See me in a bit. Oh, can you—”
“I know.” He hung up. Aziraphale, for some odd reason, had an intense dislike for hanging up after phone conversations. It was just one of those little habits of his, really, that he’d picked up on over the centuries, the millennia; he didn’t like days that were too sunny because they reminded him of the bleached-white halls of Heaven, and he didn’t like notebooks with dots in them, and he didn’t take his tea with any sugar at all. He had an affinity for mice anywhere but in his shop, because they’ll destroy the books, Crowley dear! and his favourite flowers were pale blue periwinkles, and he always smelled of old paper, vanilla, and faintly, just faintly, of caramels. Homely.
He was happy now, he could tell—he radiated the stuff, so much of it that it sometimes hurt to look at him. He literally and figuratively glowed like the golden sunbeams that had had such a great hand in waking him up this morning. He could tell because the receiver of his phone was suddenly glowing, too, faint pinpricks of light shooting out of the holes as if a tiny star had been nestled somewhere amidst the wires and plastic. Smiling sadly, he settled it back into its holder and got ready.
. . .
After what was approximately their fifth meeting, Crowley stopped taking the plant back to the plant room, instead leaving it exactly where it usually sat when they conferred.
“He asked me to help him clean up his shop a bit today. It went about as well as you’d expect, really—we didn’t end up doing anything at all of worth. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was just looking for excuses to see me now.”
The plant had begun to understand far more, it seemed, than Crowley now. It had begun to see the faintly glowing threads of fate tying the two beings together, wrapping around them tighter and tighter still. It could see that it certainly wasn't a matter of pure coincidence that Aziraphale kept asking Crowley out on little, trivial excursions or to help with small and menial tasks he could easily accomplish on his own. It didn’t know how to explain this to Crowley, however, so it kept its faithful silence and it listened.
. . .
The phone was ringing.
Crowley was talking to the plant again, lazily laying out his syllables on the table for the both of them. The plant had mostly stopped quaking with fear whenever he drew near, resorting instead to a sort of apprehensive shudder. It was a definite improvement.
That was when the tone cleaved into the conversation, emanating its harsh chimes before working itself into a two-beat silence and then starting up again. Crowley miracled the handset and base over.
“‘Lo,” he drawled.
“Crowley, my dear,” came Aziraphale’s warm voice from the other end. “Lovely to hear your voice again.”
“Angel,” he said, the beginnings of a grin working their way onto his face. “What business?”
He huffed. “What, I can’t just call to check up?”
“No.”
“Fine. There’s a new little plant market opened up a little ways away from my shop, and I thought you might want to look around for a bit? I went to check it out this morning, so to speak, and it seemed quite alright.”
A pleasant sort of warmth had begun to grow in his chest at these words, but he did his best to carry on as though it didn’t feel like something roughly the temperature—and size—of the sun had settled in between his lungs.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Perfect! Are you coming here? I suppose you will be, and in that infernal car no less.”
“How dare you,” he said languidly. “That car’s about as infernal as I am.”
“So, dreadfully so?”
“Oh, shut up. I’ll be there in a bit, angel.”
“Alright, then. Be good.”
“Raise some Hell.”
He hung up. There was, he realized, something very nice about the angel’s proposition. It didn’t just have to do with the plants; more with the thought that his mind had gone to Crowley when he’d seen them. He pulled on his coat, brushing an invisible speck of dust from the lapels.
. . .
Crowley was contemplating the plant, and the plant was contemplating Crowley.
“Is it lying, if I don’t tell him?”
The calathea didn’t quite understand how it could be lying. It had never quite been able to correctly grasp a concept as abstract as romantic relationships, finding the very best it could do was just to listen to Crowley whenever the mood to talk overtook him.
“I mean,” he continued, fidgeting with the ends of his tie, “he has a right to know, doesn’t he? And if I’m keeping it from him, it technically counts as lying, I think. I mean, not that I could be particularly bothered with that, what with the whole—” He gestured vaguely at himself. “Demon thing. But I’ve never lied to him, not about anything big. Not expressly.”
He laid his head in his arms again, looking tired and confused. “I’m a bloody idiot, I am.”
The plant was unsure if it should agree or not.
He gave a tetchy, hollow sort of laugh. “The demon that let himself fall in love with a bleeding angel.”
As if summoned by their conversation, the doorbell rang. Crowley shot to his feet, smoothing his clothes and his hair over with swift hands. He fixed his glasses firmly back into place and had begun to leave to answer when he came back, picked up the calathea, and hid it hastily behind the expensive and unused mixer.
He knew who it would be before he’d even opened the door. It wasn’t as if there were really many people who came ringing at his door, after all.
“Aziraphale,” he said, swinging it open. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Just thought I’d stop by!” His smile was mischievous, eyes twinkling. He was very obviously hiding something. Crowley stepped aside wearily; surprises and Aziraphale did not usually mix, and tended to have rather disastrous outcomes when they did. The Nazis and the books were more than ample reminders of this.
“Lovely weather we’re having,” he said vaguely.
“Indeed.”
At a complete loss for something to say, he said the first thing that came to mind. “Want some cake?”
Aziraphale arched an eyebrow.
“I have some in the fridge,” he blabbered on, a bit ruffled and definitely not his usual suave self. “Was just, you know, walking around yesterday and came across this little bakery and thought, why not? So now I have some cake and I haven’t had any just yet and I thought...”
“I think,” he said, voice soothing, “that some cake would be just lovely.”
It was, in fact, a delicious cake. Probably better than Aziraphale was expecting, because he finished his entire slice, and then some of Crowley’s. It was evening by the time they were done, a bottle of merlot open and already leaning towards the empty side between them. The sky was mostly cloudless, brushed with a beautiful amalgamation of hues; magenta and violet and palest pink, all visible through Crowley’s massive window. Aziraphale leaned back in his chair, dabbing away the last splotches of cream from the corner of his mouth. Crowley had the insane desire to lean over and kiss him, then, unbidden and unbound from somewhere deep in the recesses of his being. He shook himself slightly; he could handle himself, he could plough through just as he always had. There was no need to get irrational.
“I have something for you,” he said, smiling softly. His voice lilted. He looked, for lack of a better word, simply angelic sitting there in Crowley’s kitchen, the last beams of the sunset touching him gold. He looked positively ethereal, ephemeral, effervescent. Like a painting that had come to life and began to intermingle with the rest of them. If he could have, Crowley would gladly have kept on looking for all eternity, drinking it in, but he managed to pull his reluctant eyes away.
“Really? I had no idea.”
Aziraphale frowned. “Now, there’s no need to get like that.”
Crowley grinned wickedly, leaning forward, hands supporting his face. “Well, what’s the big surprise then, angel?” he purred.
Flustered by the tone, Aziraphale looked away. His grin widened.
“Well,” he began, “I know how much you love plants—though I daresay I cannot approve of the way you treat yours!” He glared pointedly.
“I keep them in line, angel, we’ve had this conversation before.”
He sniffed haughtily but continued all the same. “There’s been a plant in my bookshop for a good long while now, you know, remarkably resilient, that one is.” He coughed, and Crowley took this to mean that the plant had simply died and been miracled back to life so many times under Aziraphale’s care that resilient was the only acceptable adjective left for it. “It’s miserable, though. I can’t help but feel bad for it every time it catches my eye, poor thing. So I just thought that the only reasonable thing left to do was to bring it over to you. For you. Um.”
It was Crowley’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Whatever he’d been expecting, it certainly wasn’t this. Aziraphale was blushing furiously now, though he couldn’t fathom why. He reached up into nothing, and then into something—a soft, glowing patch of air right where his hands were, and now they were disappearing into it. They came out holding a small terracotta pot in which resided a eucalyptus plant. He placed it primly down upon the table, where they both stared at it.
“I, um, I understand if you don’t want it—” he began to say.
“It’s wonderful.”
They stared at each other. And then a soft smile began to spread across Aziraphale’s face, a smile that held all the good things in the knowable universe within it. He seemed to almost glow with it, with pure, undiluted happiness—a gently pulsating halo of brilliant light was exuding out of him, illuminating the rapidly darkening room.
“If I needed a new nightlight, angel,” he teased, trying to look away because he couldn’t deal with this, he couldn’t deal with his feelings, not without a significantly greater amount of alcohol in his system. “I’d go out and buy one.”
Flushing, Aziraphale looked down at his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly, but neither the glow nor the smile receded, so he figured he couldn’t control it any more than Crowley could. “And don’t you dare yell at this one, Crowley, it’s very emotionally fragile!”
He leaned back, arms crossed. “It’ll go through the initiation process just like the rest of them. I don’t do preferential treatment.”
. . .
In truth, he did not do anything of the sort with this plant.
I’m going soft, he thought to himself, but that didn’t stop him from cooing over it like a doting grandmother. He kept it on a small shelf in front of the massive window and didn’t dare yell at it.
He did, of course, continue his reign of terror over all the rest. He couldn’t be expected to go completely daft that quickly, after all.
. . .
The phone was ringing.
Because it was a Wednesday, Crowley was currently attempting—and failing—to reorganize his music library. This time, it was backwards, alphabetically by album title, and he all but lunged for the distraction, letting an ancient Pathé Lemezek record fall to the floor with a muffled thump of annoyance.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Crowley, my dear, it's me,” came Aziraphale's voice from the speaker.
“Really? Because I was expecting a call from the Queen, you know, so not the best time—”
“Crowley, I'm being serious,” he huffed.
“Well then,” he said, softening somewhat. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you could meet me in St. James’s Park?”
Crowley frowned. While nighttime strolls were nothing uncommon for the two of them, Aziraphale usually didn’t call ahead to invite him; most of the time, he just showed up at the Mayfair apartment’s door, rosy-cheeked and ready.
“Sure,” he said anyway.
“Thank you, Crowley. Oh, and can you—?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. See you in a bit.” He hung up.
. . .
Aziraphale was waiting for him in their usual seat by the pond. The water looked like a mirror, embedded in the ground. The sky was beautiful above St. James’s, inky blue, the occasional star visible through the light of the city beyond, the moon the bloody print of a nail peeking out from behind a meager cloud.
“Hey,” The angel looked up, blinking owlishly in the half-dark, face splitting into a smile at the sight of the demon looming over him with hands shoved firmly in his pockets and his tie loose as ever.
“Crowley,” he said, shuffling over to make room on the bench.
He fell onto the vacated space, arranging his limbs into the usual sprawling disaster. They sat in silence for a few comfortable moments, the silence of two people who have spoken and moved for all their lives and now just wish to sit still with naught but each other’s company. They’d spent six-thousand years orbiting around one another, two stars, two supernovas waiting to happen. It was only a matter of time.
“What’s up?” he asked. The city beyond was alive and crawling with humans, but their little corner of the park was completely empty. It wasn’t eerie; just nice. You got tired of all the movement, sometimes. Absence of it was a rare comfort.
Aziraphale didn’t answer right away. He seemed a bit lost, his expression vaguely bewildered. He was nothing but sticks and moss and bird-bones, the fragile shift of his shoulders and the butterfly-flutter of his eyelashes a testimony to his fragility, even in immortality.
“I just—wanted to see you,” he said, voice halting and unsure. Crowley looked at him, really looked. He saw the minute freckle in the corner of his eye, took in the gentle curve of his lips and the steady rise and fall of his chest as he took in breath after breath, amaranthine and imperfect.
Here we are, he thought, here we are at the end of it all. Any witty remarks died in his throat. He felt suddenly jittery, consumed with an intense desire to move. He didn’t want to think about things. He wanted, suddenly, to punch someone. Or maybe for someone to punch him, nice and hard on the jaw, he wasn’t quite sure. He considered, briefly, just getting up and leaving. He considered getting blackout-drunk in some dingy bar somewhere, anywhere, but the impulse died when Aziraphale lay his head on his shoulder.
He froze. His heart was beating very fast, crowded as it was in his chest. He could only feel Aziraphale, and the solid presence of him; for as long as they’d known one another, Aziraphale had always been present, had always been reliably, perceptibly present, had always been comfortingly there. He could feel every bit of it now, could feel the solid bones of his being rattling with the realization. He wanted this. He wanted this to last, and it hurt to admit, hurt like a knife to the gut.
They were still, the angel and the demon, together and closer than they’d ever been, not just in a spatial sense.
“I’ve missed you, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice was soft, and he wanted to answer, wanted to say I’m here, angel, I am here with you, but he couldn’t. I’m always right here.
Look at me.
I promise I’m here, but I need you to look.
And then: I’m the one who hasn’t been looking.
The words had gotten stuck in his chest, caught up in the flowers that curled around his ribs, holding him together. He swallowed. Aziraphale’s hand was right next to his own. Crowley made his decision, final and complete. Their fingers intertwined. He looked and he looked, looked at their fingers together, looked at them, together, and for the first time he saw.
They stayed like that for a long, long time, just the two of them and the vast, unbearable expanse of the universe.
. . .
“Crowley. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Haven’t,” he mumbled, but he was lying. He’d holed himself up in his apartment and had not set a single foot outside ever since the night in St. James’s Park. He wrapped the phone cord tighter around his finger, watching it grow darker with a detached sort of interest.
“Can you at least let me in for a moment? It’s very uncomfortable out here, and the janitor keeps looking at me funny.”
Crowley frowned. “I can’t let you in, you’re all the way over wherever you are and I’m here.”
“No,” came Aziraphale’s patient voice. “I’m standing in the hallway just outside your door.”
Crowley swore. He looked a mess and he knew it, but he couldn’t leave Aziraphale out there, could he?
“Language,” he chided.
He snapped his fingers and the flat reorganized itself somewhat. Checking to see that there was nothing too out of place in the hall mirror, he ran a hand through his hair and opened the door.
And there he was.
Aziraphale was wearing the same coat as always, cheeks flushed from the fiercely cold wind, biting his lip anxiously. His face lit up when he saw Crowley, tucking his phone away into a pocket.
“Crowley, my dear,” he greeted warmly. “May I come in?”
“Don’t see why not.” He stepped aside, motioning for him to enter, letting the door swing shut behind him. Aziraphale stood in the entry hall for a moment, watching him and looking so out of place that it made Crowley want to cry.
“I brought cake,” he announced, finally. This was so absurdly Aziraphale that he had to laugh, a strangled sort of gasping sound. The last dregs of laughter from the torn throat of a dead man walking.
Grinning almost shyly, lips twitching upwards in a way that was entirely too enticing, he reached into nowhere and drew out a quaint little cream-coloured box, wrapped up with silky red ribbon. Crowley stared at it for a moment, and then at the remarkable angel standing across from him, and he thought, why the Hell not?
They sat at the table, the calathea mostly still, watching them stoically from its position near the blender. Aziraphale cut out slices for the both of them, and for a long while there was nothing but the clink of fork against porcelain plate and the sound of slow chewing. It was Aziraphale who broke the silence.
“Crowley,” he began. Crowley looked up. He looked hauntingly beautiful in the half-light, so beautiful it hurt to look at, like a twisting stab to the heart. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You’re an angel, angel. You can’t do anything wrong.”
Aziraphale’s eyes were fathoms-deep pools, wonderful and terrifying all at once. They seemed to bore into him. “That’s not true, and we both know it.”
He chose not to answer, instead picking at the maraschino cherry he’d yet to eat.
“Crowley,” he repeated. “If I did something to upset you, please tell me. If—if you want me to leave, I’ll do that, too—”
“I don’t want you to leave,” he snapped. The fork fell with a clatter. He swallowed down the fear that had settled in his throat, acrid and bitter, continuing. “I’ve never wanted you to leave. It’s only ever been the opposite, really.”
He smiled. It was a sad smile. “I’d hope so, or else all these centuries have been a waste.”
“They weren’t. They aren’t.” The confessions were dragging themselves out of him, slowly, painstakingly. “They were never a waste, and I’d do it all over again if I had the choice.”
“Would you?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Why would you do it, Crowley? So you could carry on as you do, pretending not to know, keeping me bound to this savage minuet alongside you? So you could carry on ignoring and spewing your silver-tongued lies to yourself and I? Is that why, Crowley?” He towered in his pleading almost-anger, begging him to understand, but he did, he did understand—
“No, Aziraphale, I—”
“What do you want from me, Crowley?” His eyes were fathoms-deep pools, wonderful and terrifying all at once, and he was drowning in them. His voice was trembling with a six-thousand-year-old hurt and fury and longing and lust, a horrendous and beautiful, ineffable thunderstorm that would drown them all. “What do you want from me?”
What did Crowley want? The answer was quite simple, and he knew he was a coward for not being able to just spit it out, had been branded one on that fateful day in Eden and had been forced to contend with that fact ever since. The answer was shameful and dark, and he was a coward, a coward for not telling him, a coward for refusing to give it up. What did Crowley want from Aziraphale? What did he want?
“You,” he breathed, and the storm quieted, questioning, freezing around them. The air was deathly still. “I want you. I want you. I want you and your books and your laugh and your bravery, oh, Aziraphale, I want you.”
Everything stopped in the magnitude of this admittance. He had opened himself up, he had shown the angel this deepest part of himself. He had stood in front of the firing squad knowing full well what was to come and said, damn the blindfolds.
“And,” he continued, because now that he’d started he just couldn’t stop, “I know you’ll hate me for it, Aziraphale, I’ve always known you would, you will, and I’ve kept it down but you’ve dragged it out of me. You’ve always been able to do that, you’ve always forced me to look at the worst parts of myself, forced me to look at everything I loathe about myself right in the eye, and I hate it, angel, I hate it but I love you and I—”
He froze. He thought maybe the storm had manifested itself right over them because he could feel something wet on his cheek, but he quickly realized with a vague sort of horror that he was crying.
Aziraphale shook his head slightly. His expression was melancholic, eyes bittersweet and full of unsaid things. He took Crowley’s face in his hand, wiping away the tears with a gentle thumb. He was beautiful and radiant and terrible, and Crowley loved him, had loved him for so very, unbearably long.
“Then, my dear,” he said softly, “we feel the same way.” And he leaned in kissed him.
There were fireworks in his head, he could see nothing but phosphenes because this, oh, this was a kiss, this was a kiss six-thousand years in the making. This was a kiss that said so many, many things, it was every unspoken thing suspended between them, it was every moment of terror and anger and despair, every moment of wonder and laughter and hope strong and simple, it was everything. It was the sight of a star going supernova, it was a bookshop going up in flames, it was a night spent in St. James’s Park under the stars. It was love, an endless and ancient six-thousand-year-old love, ineffable and true. It was a love that held them together, had held them together even when they hadn't known, when they hadn't had a name for their collection of fierce protectiveness and exasperation and fondness that tipped over the limits of pure friendship. It was a love eternal, a fizzing champagne, a melody held deliciously in the wind for all to hear.
It was perfect.
Breathlessly, he drew away. Aziraphale looked wonderstruck and slightly dazed, though it must be nothing compared to the look surely written plainly across his own face. He could still feel the warm press of Aziraphale's lips against his own, could taste cake and caramels and unsweetened tea, this fascinating collection of feelings and taste. Aziraphale was a library, a collection. He wanted more, he needed that euphoric sensation again, wanted his angel to ruin him in all the best ways, wanted him to make him his. He wanted this moment, sweet and true, to drag on in its innocence for as long as it could. He wanted. He wished. And Aziraphale did, too.
“This is us,” he said simply, and Crowley agreed. He reached up a hand, pressing against the one Aziraphale still had cupping his face, heart beating wildly. More, I need more, I want as much as you will give. I love you. I love you, how am I only telling you this now, my darling, my shooting star?
“I love you,” he said out loud, to Aziraphale, and he couldn’t have meant it more. The words felt right, drifting from his lips. It was a confession long awaited. It was a confession that had already been revealed in every way but in words.
“I love you, too, my dearest,” Aziraphale beamed, and he was glowing, he was radiant, he was beautiful, and Crowley was helplessly enamoured, in love beyond recognition, beyond hope of salvation. But, he realized with an almost savage flash of warmth and triumph, if this isn’t salvation, then nothing is. “Always and forever. Ineffably.” And he leaned in to capture his lips in another kiss, to give him that something more.
. . .
In its corner, the calathea was overcome with a wave of emotion describable only as a fulfillment of purpose, a calming feeling of finality.