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It was still raining that evening. As someone who spent considerable time in England, Aziraphale ought to have been used the rain. He was sitting, empty-eyed, in a dingy Pariasian pub that smelled vaguely of old beer and sweat. The waitress had spoken to him briefly in French and left him at his table, staring out the window. Of course it had to rain today. If Aziraphale had been feeling a little more blasphemous, he might have taken it as a cruel, practical joke from God. Raining today.
If Oscar were here, he’d probably write something about the beautiful, cruel, symbolism of it. Aziraphale snorted bitterly into his mug. He remembered his very dear friend as he had been that morning, tortured with meningitis, coughing until he no longer had the strength or will to sit up. Aziraphale had read and read and read to him, every clever and pretty piece of literature he could find, to ease the man’s passing. And with every passage Aziraphale had read, he could feel Oscar, his dear Oscar, who signed his last name, Wilde, with a flourish, sink farther from the world of the living until he was gone.
And then things had been a blur. The cold French streets, a tightness in his chest, collapsing into a pub and drinking and drinking. He had known Oscar since he was a young man, cavorting about the streets of England with the other blossoming writers of his age. Aziraphale had met him in a gentleman’s club, and they had delighted in tasting champagnes and learning the Gavotte together. They read the brilliant new literary works that were springing out of England and France, and had many stimulating discussions over them. Aziraphale remembered Oscar as full of life, bubbling over with witty, important ideas about the glittering world around them. Aziraphale didn’t hide his admiration for the man’s talent, offering praise and encouragement at every draft of Oscar’s that he had the pleasure to see. When Oscar’s first (and only, now) novel was published, Aziraphale was overjoyed for him.
The friendship he shared with Oscar was wonderful. But he never forgot that Oscar was human, never crossed that invisible line he kept between himself and the mortal world. Still, something about Oscar’s joyous and painful life drew Aziraphale like a moth to a flame. Oscar took questions Aziraphale usually shied away from - what does it mean to be here? Is it right to judge me if I love a man? - and explored them with such wit and passion and fearlessness one could not help but get caught up along with him, head full of disruptive ideas about the better worlds that waited just around the ideological corner. Oscar was unashamed in his dress, his passions, his lovers - even if he hadn’t been an angel, Aziraphale couldn't have helped loving him just a little for that. For someone who had their morals predetermined for them 6,000 years ago, Oscar’s delighted freedom, his disregard for cloistering rules - and not for malic! For pure joy! - was awing. “How could it be that who he wanted is so terrible?” thought Aziraphale wistfully, drunk enough that he did not immediately squash the rebellious thought. Bright young thing indeed.
The rain had slowed to a sprinkle outside now. If it wasn’t so cloudy the stars would be out in full force. Aziraphale was almost glad they weren’t. He remembered Oscar on a starry night, telling one of his delightfully animated stories to a group of guests. He flung off his coat so he could gesticulate dramatically, laughter swelling in the room. (It had been a women’s coat, Aziraphale remembered. Fur lined the outside and when he’d throw back his head and laugh, it looked ravishing.) He could only smile a little at the memory now. He wasn’t stupid. No one was really surprised when the police came for Oscar. Beautiful Oscar. With his penchant for particular coats and his disregard for who knew about it. Damn that brave, brilliant, stupid man. How many miracles had Aziraphale desperately spent on him, drawing veils over the eyes of those who would hurt him, and then when he couldn’t, keeping the man warm on his coldest nights in prison, feeding him, curing more than one bout of syphilis or the like in desperate, terrible hope that he could see Oscar’s defiant, blasphemous, queer life end in any kind of love.
Still, in the back of his mind, he had known it would end like this, for Oscar. Passing away in a hotel room at 46, having been driven out of the only place he’d ever called home. Dying, holding the hand of an angel who, later, no one would remember was there. Aziraphale had allowed himself to hope for any other outcome, for any shred of happiness for the man whose life had been damned before he’d taken his first flamboyant step. Everything was according to the Almighty’s plan, and in her weaving the tapestry of fate she did not leave a soft corner for Oscar Wilde. It was 1890’s England. For him to live his life fully and freely without persecution would have required divine intervention indeed. That world was not made to fit Oscar, and no matter how much Aziraphale resented that, he knew it was ultimately beyond his power to change.
And now, deep in liquor, Aziraphale began to cry. Quietly, with only small shudders as though he was desperately trying to pretend he was not actually crying at all. To admit why he so hated the way Oscar’s story ended (with a terrible, personal reason - for wasn’t it almost Aziraphale’s story?) was almost worse than feeling the hurt of it at all. He thought unbidden of Crowley, standing on the wall of Eden, coming close to him to stay out of the rain. He thought of Crowley the night Noah’s arc had set sail, cowering in the hull of the ship, children sleeping about him. “I could only save these,” he had said, eyes red and desperate. Rain crashed outside the ship. “They’re all gone now, angel. All the rest of them. And I could have gotten one more. One more, angel. I could’ve…” and he collapsed into Aziraphale’s arms, as the angel miracled bread for the children and held and rocked the demon. 6,000 years he had known that when something was in the plan, there was no changing it. 6,000 years and he still couldn’t bear to watch the ineffable play out again and again.
Aziraphale shakily stood up, leaving more than enough money for his tab on the table, and stepped out into the overcast night. He wandered down the street, breathing in the crisp scent of wet cobblestone and watching light pool around the gas street lamps. He’d meant to stop crying, but his eyes were puffy and occasionally another tear trickled down his cheek, only to be hastily wiped away. He usually hated crying at all, but there was a deep, dark safety that the small hours of the morning brought. Now was when creatures not fit for daytime’s harsh light came slinking out, stretching their misshapen legs and gnawing their ugly teeth.They would keep his secrets from the daytime world just as he would keep theirs.
Aziraphale walked aimlessly. He wasn’t trying to go anywhere at first, just away from where he had been, until he realized his feet were carrying him in the only direction they knew he could really rest. Celestial creatures, especially those who had known each other for 6,000 years, could feel when they were near each other, and could occasionally tell other things as well. Major distress in one attracted the attention of the other, and at this moment Crowley was pacing his room in Soho, cursing the late night music drifting through his open window, trying to understand what had woken him up. He’d figure it out. After all, proximity only strengthened the celestial signal.
Through the use of one small miracle (small enough that it took Aziraphale several hours of being sober to realize he’d performed it unconsciously that night), he found himself walking through a moonlit St. James park and sitting down on one specific park bench. Quietly, naturally, as though they’d planned to meet here weeks in advance, Crowley slunk across the way and sat down beside him. One look took in Aziraphale’s dark clothes, his tattered shoes, his red, swollen eyes.
Softly, he spoke. “What happened, angel?” He asked it quietly. The answer, just as quietly:
“Oscar. He - he passed away”.
Aziraphale said it like a confession, tears spilling out of his big blue eyes all over again. He looked away, to hide them, and Crowley let him do it. He, of all people, understood the desire to hide wounded eyes from the world. Handing the angel a handkerchief, he sat as Aziraphale wept quietly. After a moment, the angel drawing in shaky breaths of cool night air, Crowley looked over at him. Aziraphale looked back at him, smiling that quick, desperate smile of the miserable.
“Tell me about him,” Crowley said, though he already knew. Oscar Wilde hardly kept a low profile over in France.
Aziraphale sighed. “Oh, where to begin with Oscar?” he said shakily, attempting a brave face. He swallowed. “Well, he was a writer you see, a brilliant one. Remember how I’ve been thinking to open a bookshop? Well, Oscar thought that was a marvelous idea, And he also thought...” and the story slowly stumbled out of him.
Crowley had handed him several more black handkerchiefs by the time the sun started to rise. As he shifted against Aziraphale on the bench, (they had drawn together, for solace and for warmth, as the night went on) he found himself remembering the arc. How they had both seen the children running about that day, had known their fates, had been powerless to save, to deliver them all. He remembered those few in the hull of the boat, how Aziraphale had understood his actions without his having to explain them. How the angel had held him in the flood. Dimly, he wondered if their own fates were like that. If they were predestined to be tossed about, to put their hope in a plan that would weave their demise, with no space for a love too great or a life too full and blasphemous to be allowed.
Aziraphale clung to Crowley on the bench, a small pile of handkerchiefs on the angel's lap. Neither would visit Oscar’s grave, thought both would think about him from time to time. Outcast for loving. Ultimately, they would remember him and silently swear to fight harder at the end of the world, whenever it came. It was a slender, vain hope that they’d see the day when their own side won, in its damnable, lovely glory. Neither would say (or could even fathom saying, at this point) what they would do once they arrived in that (finally) safe place. Both feared, somehow, that to let another soul in to their private, secret hope for love would be to leave it vulnerable to a divine snatching. And so they remembered, and hoped, and waited.
When the sun was fully up, Crowley gathered the handkerchiefs, head out his arm, and said with his classically cocky bravado, “Well angel, it’s rightly morning. Crepes? My treat.” And off they’d gone, Aziraphale gratefully (if wetly) smiling and taking his arm. Together, they remembered how to chatter aimlessly and easily as they pulled themselves into daytime.
Far above them, the ineffable plan was unfurling, unsurprised (never surprised) at their choice of breakfast. The plan gave and took away, pushing and pulling the world into the future at its deliberate and breathtaking speed. God watched Her ticking, whirling creation, the plan of Her own divine workmanship. She turned Her attention from it for a moment, looking towards heaven. At this moment, Oscar Wilde sat in a small, celestial cafe, writing his second novel. Far below him, on Earth, a bookshop was opened in Soho, and the first Bentleys rolled off of show floors, earning one particular demon a stunning commendation. She watched them, angel and demon, armed with a day on the arc, a night on a park bench, armed with each other. She looked up, and smiled across at Oscar Wilde, safe in Her divine kingdom. Everything was going just according to plan.