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“New books from Adam, you said,” Aziraphale says, gazing distrustfully at the noticeably cleaner windows of his new-old bookshop. The Bentley idles beneath them. Crowley shrugs.
“I suppose I’d better catalogue them,” Aziraphale says.
Crowley didn’t expect anything else, but he still puts on a groan. “I can’t even tempt you to one night of sloth?”
“You were a snake, I do recall.” Aziraphale smiles.
“I could be a sloth if I wanted,” Crowley protests. “Let the books wait, angel.”
“I suppose they can,” Aziraphale says, turning to him. “You mentioned that you had some more of that delightful Riesling?”
Crowley frowns, feeling wrongfooted, glad that his sunglasses hide his eyes so they can dart around without giving him away. This is not how things work. Crowley tempts, and Aziraphale lets himself be tempted, but only to a point, and if he does accept it’s always in a fussy, polite way. Aziraphale does not invite himself into other people’s flats. He’s as bad as a vampire that way, was in fact mistaken for one in 1547 for insisting very loudly that he couldn’t possibly step foot inside someone’s home without an invitation. Crowley had to miracle away the smell of garlic. And Aziraphale also doesn’t put off fawning over new books. But the Riesling was good, probably would be better with company, so Crowley shrugs and puts the Bentley out of park.
It’s only once they’re in Crowley’s apartment that he remembers why he never invites the angel up for a drink. His flat might be stylish and tasteful, but it is unwelcoming. Not the sort of flat that friends use to drink late into the night.
“Maybe we should just get the wine and head back to your bookshop, angel,” Crowley says, looking at his couch, the one that he’s not sure he’s ever sat on. Aziraphale holds out a glass for Crowley, contemplating the couch as though he means to actually use it. Crowley takes the wine. “Not sure how comfortable we’ll be.”
“Nonsense,” Aziraphale says. He sits. “Oh dear.”
“I did warn you.”
Aziraphale ignores him. He snaps his fingers, and Crowley’s beautiful, horrible couch is suddenly transformed into the most hideous and luxurious paisley monstrosity imaginable. Crowley splutters, because - because it’s nearly rude . “Do you have any idea how much that cost?”
“It didn’t cost you anything, my dear.” Aziraphale says. He’s smiling, like he’s told some horrible long-winded joke and he’s waiting for Crowley to catch up.
“That’s not the point,” Crowley splutters some more. My dear echoes around and around in his head, but he manages to stammer out: “it’s, it’s, it clashes, Aziraphale, if I didn’t know better I’d ask if your eyes need a miracle, surely even you can see that, that the aesthetics-”
Aziraphale shrugs, still smiling, swirling the wine around in his glass. “So fix it.”
Crowley feels wrongfooted for the second time in one night. Does Aziraphale expect them to spend the night snapping their fingers, switching between two extremes? He opens his mouth to ask, but he stops. Looks down at Aziraphale. That patient, knowing, anticipatory look, half the couch open. Crowley has seen it before, on various humans over the years, never on Aziraphale’s face, and never directed at him.
He knows what he wants to do, but he can’t. He’s frozen, wondering if he could be wrong. Demons aren’t built for hope, maybe that awful (awesome) emotion has finally scrambled his brain. For a frantic, fevered moment he wonders if he’s still trapped in that first, agonizing pool of sulfur. Maybe he never left, maybe this is just another one of God’s tortures.
“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice cuts through the nonsense, the way it always does. Crowley snaps his fingers and the couch turns back to leather again, keeping all the plushness and support that Aziraphale gave it. It’s not like he hasn’t tried, but demonic miracles always tend to slide back into angry lines, in the same way he imagines that anything the angel calls into existence can’t help but sacrifice style for comfort. Aziraphale miracles away their wine and pats the couch beside him. When Crowley perches on it he reaches out and cups Crowley’s cheek.
“Angel,” Crowley breathes. He wonders if he’s always sounded like this, reverent, awed, aching. On the verge of breaking.
“We’re better when we’re together, aren’t we?” Aziraphale murmurs. “You’ve known it for quite some time.”
“No,” Crowley says. It’s not a denial, it’s a plea. Please, no, don’t, we can’t talk about it, I can’t bear it.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale tells him. Crowley believes him, even without that earnest, apologetic look, those wide, open eyes. There is no choice when Aziraphale is this close, when there are soft fingers on his face.
“Do you know how long I’ve loved you?” Aziraphale asks.
Crowley inhales so sharply he nearly chokes. “Don’t.” Another plea.
“You walked on consecrated ground for me. It would have been inconvenient, but they couldn’t have hurt me, not really. But you came anyway. You saved my books.”
That one had been rather ham-handed of him, Crowley had to admit. Even now, he cringes thinking about it.
“Don’t do that,” Aziraphale says, shifting closer, drawing a leg up so that he can sit fully sideways on the couch, placing a hand over one of the ones Crowley has fisted in his lap.
“I’m sorry it’s taken this long, but I…” Aziraphale, for the first time tonight, looks unsure. “I suppose I thought it would be unfair - you were so far ahead of me, you see. And I thought it would be cruel, when I knew I wasn’t ready for - for you in the way that you already were for me. I… I wasn’t sure if I would ever get there.”
Oh, Crowley thinks. For a long time, that’s the only thing he can think. Aziraphale waits, brushing his thumb every so often against Crowley’s cheek. It’s better than any wine, all the hedonisms humanity has managed to think up over Crowley’s long life. It’s better than all of them combined.
“And now?” he croaks, eventually.
“However you’ll have me,” Aziraphale tells him. “Anything you want, everything I can give.”
Crowley just sits there, staring at Aziraphale’s honest, open face. Dumbstruck. No wonder Aziraphale looked so uncomfortable back in the sixties, a thermos of holy water between them and Crowley so grateful and desperate to show it he’d slipped up, shown his hand, begged. What is anyone supposed to do with this?
The only thing he can think to say is: “It’s been so long, angel.”
“I know, darling, I’m sorry.” Aziraphale looks miserable. “You understand, don’t you?”
However much Crowley likes to say he didn’t really fall as gently spiral downwards, the truth is more complicated. He doesn’t like thinking about before, but he does remember a moment of speculation, when he’d stopped to think about how things might play out. A moment when he’d wondered whether he was going too far, whether it would be too late to turn back. He feels something like that now, as if he is standing on the precipice of a cliff that he couldn’t see. Back then, he had inched his foot forward and slipped, and the precipice had turned out to be an agonizing freefall into the depths of hell.
He hadn’t turned back then, and he doesn’t want to now.
“Kiss me,” he says. Begs, really. He’d be embarrassed, except that Aziraphale looks the way he does when he’s offered free samples, when Crowley surprises him with chocolates or an ancient book. Surprised and delighted.
“Yes.” Aziraphale does. Crowley is shaking apart. Perhaps his body isn’t made for this and it will be the last thing he ever does. Well, what a way to go. He unclenches his hands only as long as it takes to fist them into Aziraphale’s lapel, pulling them back, so that Aziraphale’s weight bares them into the perfectly comfortable, perfectly gorgeous couch. Even that is not enough.
Crowley wrenches his head away, “Aziraphale -” he cuts himself off, cheeks burning.
“Anything,” Aziraphale promises, breathed into the skin of Crowley’s neck. He presses a kiss there too, under the bolt of Crowley’s jaw.
Crowley squeezes his eyes shut. “Tell me - tell me you love me.”
“Oh, Crowley ,” Aziraphale says. He pulls back enough to cup both of Crowley’s cheeks. Waits until Crowley opens his eyes. “You silly creature. That’s the easiest thing you could possibly ask of me.”
“Please,” Crowley begs.
Aziraphale smiles, the playful one that reveals the little wicked streak in him that Crowley can’t help but adore. “Very well, darling. I love you. And since you asked so nicely, I’ll say it to you as many times as you like. In all the languages there are, dead or otherwise. I’ll make up for the lost time. I’ll say it to you anyway I can, all the ways there are.”
It’s too much. Crowley tries to turn his face away, but Aziraphale holds him fast. Kisses him again. “I’ll love you for so long that these six thousand years will seem like an eyeblink,” he whispers.
“Oh,” Crowley manages.
“Yes.” Aziraphale sounds a little breathless himself. “Yes, Crowley. Yes. I love you. I love you, I love -”
***
Later, much later, when Crowley’s heart stops racing with every tiny shift Aziraphale makes against him, he says. “Stay with me forever.”
Aziraphale’s lips turn up in a smile against his collarbone. It seems Crowley’s heart isn’t calming down after all. “My dear,” Aziraphale murmurs. “You ask for the simplest things.”