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Crowley doesn’t know how to say it.
He’s never had Aziraphale’s way with words, hasn’t spent centuries poring over books to find just the right combination, wouldn’t know how to do it if he tried. And how can something so big be compressed into a few syllables anyway, how do you say You are the only reason I ever wake up and Sometimes I forget why we bothered trying to save it all but then I see you and remember and I could live forever but without you I would only be existing and… and everything else that runs through his heart? It’s too much. Impossible.
He thinks, sometimes, that humans have it easy. They might think they understand, but their passions can only run for decades, they’ve never had to handle thousands of years of affection and devotion and—
He still can’t bring himself to use that word. It feels untouchably holy. Out of bounds, off-limits. Forbidden. A four-letter word, if you will.
So Crowley finds other ways to express it. In little touches: brushing past Aziraphale and reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder; twisting their fingers together when they sit next to each other; smoothing away blond curls from a weary forehead, after too long dealing with customers. In small gestures: presenting a rare copy of an old book; making dinner arrangements; once, memorably, creating a traffic snarl for ten kilometers in every direction to prevent anyone from being able to get to the bookshop at all, so that Aziraphale could close shop without the slightest trace of guilt.
Aziraphale knows, surely. He’s got to. Words come easily to him, though; after it’s all Ended and Restarted, when they’re sure nobody is looking over their shoulders, he becomes so affectionate in his speech that it makes Crowley’s insides do things he’s fairly sure they aren’t supposed to be able to do. A single darling from his angel is enough to make his head spin and he’s still not sure how he heard sweetheart for the first time without discorporating on the spot.
“Good morning, my lovely,” Aziraphale will say, beaming, and Crowley, overwhelmed, will squeeze his hand in answer. Or Crowley will drape an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders and receive a whispered “Thank you, dearest.” It is an intricate dance they play, balanced so delicately that they might as well be on the head of a pin.
He should be able to say it, shouldn’t he? Instead of resorting to a wordless caress here, a silent touch there. He’s had millennia to get used to the idea, he shouldn’t be stumbling over the sentence anymore, he ought to let it slip out as naturally as Aziraphale does. But he can’t.
Crowley tries not to hate himself for it, because he knows what Aziraphale would say if he knew. He wants to let himself take the time he needs. He wants— no, what he wants is to be as free with terms of endearment as Aziraphale deserves.
He keeps it to himself, though, smothered and muffled inside, beneath the feeling of giddiness that comes from burying his face in Aziraphale’s neck and the lightheadedness of being called precious. This is enough, right? This could be enough.
“Dear?” Aziraphale murmurs one night, when they’re pressed against one another on the sofa. Crowley’s practically on his lap and he’s just tangled his fingers into the downy tufts of hair at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck. It takes him a few seconds to answer because he’s too captivated with the sensation of it, of being entwined with him, of having the freedom to just hold him like this.
“Yeah,” he says, swallowing, and looks away from his own hand to make careful eye contact with Aziraphale. His sunglasses are on the table beside them but he hasn’t thought of putting them on since they came off an hour ago. He never needs to wear them when it’s just the two of them anymore, but he still does sometimes just so he can make a point of taking them off. (No one will ever accuse him of being subtle.)
It is only once he is looking properly that he sees something unexpected. Aziraphale has the beginnings of tears in his eyes.
“Hey,” Crowley says, panicking, struggling to find what to say and coming up with a vaguely incoherent, “No, don’t cry. What is it, what’ve I done? M’sorry, please don’t cry, I’ll—”
“No,” Aziraphale hurries to tell him. “No. It’s not you. How could it be you, Crowley, no.”
It settles him only slightly. Crowley sets trembling fingers to Aziraphale’s cheek and tries to convey with the motion all the things he doesn’t know how to articulate. I don’t ever want to see you sad and Your tears would kill me as certainly as holy water and a million sentiments he would scoff at as absurdly sappy if they weren’t his own thoughts. He tames his wayward pulse with an absentminded flicker of intent, then asks, “So what is it, then?”
Aziraphale draws a fortifying breath. “I’m just… sorry, I suppose.”
“For what?” Crowley demands. He sputters. “What could you possibly have to apologize for, angel?”
A shaky smile. “Going too slowly?”
Crowley pauses. “Are you still hung up on that?”
Aziraphale closes his eyes. He leans back just enough that Crowley’s fingers slip out of his hair. Crowley’s hand feels suddenly empty. “Yes.”
Long fingers find their way to Aziraphale’s lips. “Don’t say that.”
Aziraphale laughs, maybe: a low noise in his throat, an exhale against the pads of Crowley’s fingers. His eyes are still closed and perhaps Crowley tells himself that is a laugh so he doesn’t have to face the possibility that is anything else. Aziraphale cannot cry or it would destroy him. He clings to this thought.
“Don’t,” he repeats. “You… You outpaced me ages ago.”
But it was the wrong thing to say, it must have been, because now Aziraphale is frowning and there is nothing worse than that in the world.
“What?” Aziraphale says slowly. He’s opened his eyes now and Crowley is relieved to see that the tears are gone, but they’ve been replaced by a look of confusion. “How?”
It is Crowley’s turn for an incredulous laugh. “S’that a joke? Course you have. Look at us.”
“I am, " says Aziraphale, with a helpless little gesture that could mean anything. “Crowley. Crowley, I’m not keeping up with you, I’m still making you wait, and I’m so sorry—”
“Would you stop that!” Crowley runs his hands through his hair. He wants to pace, but he cannot bring himself to stand and give up the proximity they’re in. He drags his hands over his face. “How have I still been going too fast for you, how? Show me, point to where I’ve been doing anything of the sort, because—”
“Dearest,” Aziraphale interrupts, but Crowley cannot let that slide, not anymore, not right now.
“There!” he says, almost shouting. “There, right there, you see!”
“No,” says Aziraphale, face blank, voice calm, and it’s infuriating. “No, I don’t see, Crowley. I haven’t the faintest.”
“Don’t make me say it,” he says. Pleads. “I can’t, I don’t know how.”
Aziraphale spreads his hands in a what-can-I-do movement and Crowley seizes one of them in both of his own. Aziraphale sighs: "This."
Crowley goes through a series of indecipherable noises and settles on “Ngk” in reply, followed by, “What?”
Hesitantly, Aziraphale wraps his free hand over Crowley’s. He clears his throat. Crowley waits. And Aziraphale says, “You’re so much better at showing it than I am, you know.”
Crowley begins to protest but Aziraphale shushes him and he falls silent without further argument. He listens instead, because that’s always easier than talking, and he could listen to Aziraphale for the rest of time.
“You are," Aziraphale says emphatically. “You’re always the one to… to initiate contact. You’re more comfortable with it, and I want to be able to match you. And I can’t yet, but I’m trying. I want you to— I need you to know that. Do you know, Crowley, do you know how I want to show you?”
For a minute it seems entirely possible that the world did end with Adam Young after all, because he must be imagining this. And yet in further testament to his monumental inability to navigate language, the only answer Crowley finds himself giving is, “Show me what?”
Aziraphale brings their hands to his mouth and presses a quick kiss to Crowley’s knuckles. It sends a shiver through him, but not as much as Aziraphale’s next words. They are spoken not in a rush but deliberately, clearly, distinctly.
“I love you, Crowley.”
The sentence slides into him like a flaming sword. Crowley is sure he must be combusting. He’ll have to requisition a new corporeal form from Hell and how can he explain this, how do you put on paperwork that your physical vessel burned away because you experienced every emotion too strongly all at once?
He feels, abruptly, even more guilty. “Well there you have it,” he mumbles, ridiculously miserable for someone who’s just been given a confession of— of that caliber. “This is exactly what I mean.”
Aziraphale’s grip on his hands tightens, a welcome pressure that provides something to focus on. “What? Tell me.”
“That’s just it, innit? I can’t. Don’t know how, I’ve told you, I… I haven’t got the words.” Although at least three are still echoing around in his skull. But they feel at once too big and too small.
“Try,” whispers Aziraphale, and he cannot disappoint his angel, not when his hands are still being held so warmly and Aziraphale’s eyes are on him and it’s been so long, so long, he really ought to give it a go already.
“Aziraphale,” he says, in a very low voice, and it’s a start. “Aziraphale.”
“I’m here,” and he’s rubbing his thumb over the back of Crowley’s hand, not confidently, not yet, but it’s more than they had before, and that’s all it takes.
“Angel,” Crowley breathes, and draws in new air with a hiss. “Sssometimes... I think I’ll die if I don’t say anything. And sometimes I think I’ll die if I do, and I don’t know what to do anymore. Maybe… Maybe I never did.”
Aziraphale says nothing, just moves one hand along to Crowley’s wrist, where his pulse is jumping erratically again. He doesn’t bother to calm it this time. Let Aziraphale feel how his touch affects Crowley, let him know, let him once again learn without words what he does to Crowley.
Go on, Crowley imagines Aziraphale saying, you’ve come this far. He closes his eyes for a second to gather himself and then blurts, “You’re— everything. To me. You mean more to me than, than anything. I know I don’t say it enough, haven’t said it at all, don’t want to mess it all up— but I mean it, I just. I, you.”
He laughs at himself, frantic. “There I go,” Crowley says. Mocking. “Can’t even make it through a sentence. And there you are, with your pet names and your confessions and what’ve I given you in return? Nothing.”
“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, reproachful. “You know that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” It’s the simplicity of it, the baldness, that stops Crowley.
He scoffs, but it’s half-hearted. He wants, desperately, to be convinced. His shoulders lower; he didn’t realize he’d raised them in the first place. “Go on, then. What’ve you gotten from me, for all your pretty words?”
Aziraphale drops Crowley’s hands and immediately he wants the contact back, wants to be held, wants to be holding— but then Aziraphale is pulling him in close and the next thing he knows he’s wrapped in a hug. It’s surprisingly tight, but he doesn’t resist. He leans into the warmth of Aziraphale’s solidity, presses himself into his mass, clings to the tangible fact of him, the physicality of the moment. The undeniable nature of it. He’s holding Aziraphale. Aziraphale is holding him. Crowley is sure of nothing in the world but those two statements.
His head is on Aziraphale’s shoulder and he indulges in a rare blink to push back sudden tears. Crowley’s heart cannot decide on a steady rate. He catches his breath. I’m yours; I’m yours, and I’ll never be able to say how much. I’m yours.
“This is what you give me, Crowley,” says Aziraphale, the words tickling comfortably against the back of Crowley’s neck.
“Oh,” is the best he can manage in return. “Alright.”
“And I don’t need nicknames, or grand speeches, or any of that,” Aziraphale continues. “I don’t need anything but you. Okay?”
Crowley’s words fail him but he’s not troubled by it; he clenches his fingers into the fabric of Aziraphale’s jacket and clings even tighter instead, letting his actions speak for him like they have been for centuries.
“I do too, though,” he says before he can lose his nerve. The sound is muffled by the fact that he’s speaking into Aziraphale’s shoulder, but he can’t repeat himself, so he hopes that his angel is picking this up. “What you said. Before. Me too.”
He doesn’t need to see Aziraphale’s face to know that he’s smiling. “Oh, I know, Crowley. I know.”