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This isn’t what Crowley had meant to say, when he opened his mouth. When he started talking. It’s a distant realization, one that happens in slow motion and too late. Like he’s drifting somewhere far away, just out of reach, just far enough that he can’t intervene, can’t stop himself. He’d meant to say something else – what had he meant to say?
I love you, he’d meant to say, I love you and I thought I’d lost you and it scared me, angel, but what came out was, how could you be so stupid?
Like watching a car crash. It’s not what he’d meant to say.
--
The end of the world has come and gone. They are standing on the tarmac in the air base and Crowley is acutely aware of the fact that, if they were in a movie, now would be the time to press Aziraphale against a wall and kiss him passionately, desperately, overwhelmed with some combination of relief and adrenaline.
But they’re not, and he doesn’t.
They walk to the bus stop instead. Crowley doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They feel almost separate from him, keep making errant, jerky motions, as if they might reach for Aziraphale entirely of their own accord. Aziraphale very politely doesn’t mention the awkward twitch of his fingers as he comes to his senses, or the way he shoves his hands deep into his pockets with a scowl.
They wait for the bus and he sits as far away from Aziraphale as he possible can, tries and fails not to notice the hurt that flashes across his face at the purposeful distance. But he can’t be close to him, not yet – Aziraphale smells wrong, his still-newly-corporated body having had no time to accumulate comfortable, familiar scent it usually carries. There’s none of the faint dusty smell, no lingering traces of tea spilled on a shirtsleeve that wasn’t quite fully miracled away, not even the new cologne he had been so please with. It’s wrong, disconcerting, and Crowley tries not to think about why that is, or when he became so familiar with the smell of him in the first place.
They’re surrounded by the type of silence that forms when there’s so much to talk about that no one can quite decide where to start, and they stay that way until the postman comes, and Crowley offers a silent thanks to someone for the way it diffuses the growing tension between them.
“Do you—”
“I’m—”
Aziraphale smiles awkwardly when they both try to speak at once, and Crowley feels something unclench in his chest at the genuine expression.
“Sorry, my dear,” he says, “go ahead.”
Crowley pauses. Perhaps it’s good that they’d both spoken at once – he was on the verge of saying something revealing. The stuttering pause has given him time to come back from the edge slightly.
But not enough, clearly, because—
“Do you want to come back to mine?” he asks, wincing slightly even as the words leave his mouth. “I—” he catches himself. “We should have a plan. For dealing with—” he shrugs, gestures vaguely. “You know. The bosses.”
Aziraphale looks at him as if he knows that the sentence had had an entirely different direction when he opened his mouth, which is true. But he humors Crowley, seems willing to skip their usual game of arguing against temptation.
“A plan – quite right. And I’ve had something of an idea about that, actually—” Aziraphale starts just as the bus comes. “Ah, but I suppose it will have to wait. I’m rather too tired to talk shop at the moment, at any rate.”
Crowley raises his eyebrows at the admission, but doesn’t tease – he’s too tired to make the effort, and at any rate this was what he wanted even if the change in routine leaves him on edge, somehow.
It’s a start, he tells himself. They’ve been speaking in codes, reading between the lines, looking for meaning beneath layers of words for centuries now. A frank conversation feels like a lot to ask.
“What were you going to say, back there?” Crowley asks once they’re seated, before he can think better of it.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, tips of his ears faintly pink. “Just—I’m terribly glad you were here.”
Then, having left Crowley reeling, he falls quite soundly asleep, or at least does a very good impression of someone nodding off against their seatmate’s shoulder. Crowley isn’t sure which it is – Aziraphale’s never been one for sleeping, not really, but then again it has been an awfully long day – but he’s suddenly, painfully aware of every bony angle of his body, how his shoulder certainly can’t be a comfortable place to rest one’s head, the awkward way his elbow is sticking into Aziraphale’s side.
But Aziraphale doesn’t seem to mind. He’s leaning heavily against Crowley, more physical contact than he can ever remember the two of them having and a far cry from the angel’s usual careful distance – but then, they’ve broken plenty of unspoken rules today. Why not add another?
Perhaps he’s being selfish, perhaps he shouldn’t let Aziraphale lean against him when he’s so clearly rattled, when they both know Aziraphale would never ordinarily do this. But Aziraphale is so warm, and Crowley has never been able to pull away from that warmth, not really, and maybe they both need the reminder, that Aziraphale is whole and here and warm and alive because he still can’t quite believe it.
And besides, it’s good demonic work, being selfish.
Aziraphale shifts in his sleep, sighs against Crowley’s collarbone. Crowley quite completely forgets to breathe all the way back to London.
--
They go their separate ways that morning, already swapped in case of observers.
Crowley is gratified to see the bookstore whole, very pointedly ignores the rushing in his ears as he opens the door.
It grows very hard to breathe, all of a sudden.
He forces it down, forces himself to focus on Adam’s additions and the way he knows Aziraphale will fuss about them and pretend to be bothered and never sell them to a single customer.
The circle is gone from the main room but he can still feel it, the knowledge it was there, can still smell burning and taste the smoke at the back of his throat.
He wants to leave, wants to go sit in the park and feed the ducks and pretend that he never saw a thing, pretend that his mouth isn’t horribly dry and his hands aren’t clammy, wants to pretend that his eyes aren’t dilated in fear just at being here.
But there are eyes and ears everywhere, and he’s meant to be Aziraphale, and Aziraphale wouldn’t leave his beloved shop so quickly.
Crowley makes himself a cup of tea, then a cup of something considerably stronger, and tries to ignore the way every sip tastes like ash.
--
The bookshop is silent – sound muffled, must be all the paper. Crowley can hear his pulse thundering in his ears, so loud Aziraphale must be able to hear it too.
Aziraphale’s breath hitches, a tiny, desperate noise. The loudest noise Crowley’s ever heard. His eyes widen, somewhere between hurt and concern.
Crowley is certain he must look wretched, terrified, angry, all of the above. Sick – and he is that, with a week’s worth of ignored anxiety crashing over him all at once. All the stages of grief hitting him in one fell swoop even as the object of his mourning stands before him. He’s standing perfectly still but gets whiplash all the same.
He wants to reach out, to grab Aziraphale’s wrist and plead wait, to explain that’s not what I meant, what I meant was—
But it is what he meant. Unhealthy, he thinks distantly, still far away. And unfair – it’s not as if Aziraphale was discorporated on purpose—
But there’s something twisting and bubbling in his chest, something like anger and fear and desperation that has no right to be there, not when Aziraphale is standing before him, whole and unharmed and so beautifully alive. It’s directed at himself, mostly, an unending tirade of should have been here, could have stopped it, should have kept closer but something about seeing Aziraphale in the bookstore, in the same place he’d lay helpless on the floor as books burned to ash all around him, is making the swirl of emotions leak out of him, spilling over in unexpected ways.
That hurt is still in Aziraphale’s eyes, accusatory and terrible even if he doesn’t mean it to be and Crowley feels a stab of guilt at being the one to put it there. They’ve wounded each other enough, these past few days. They should be celebrating, should be relieved, but he just feels sick. There’s something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach that won’t go away, won’t loosen even a fraction.
It feels an awful lot like guilt, or maybe grief, or fear, or maybe love.
--
Lunch was a good idea, Crowley thinks, watching, satisfied, as Aziraphale’s shoulders inch ever downwards, gradually descending from his typical stuffy good posture into something more relaxed.
Crowley can’t say the same for himself, is perched gingerly in his seat in what he hopes is a good impression of a disaffected slouch.
He hadn’t expected it to hurt, being in Heaven. He can’t explain why, has always known that holy ground burns. There’s no reason the holiest ground of all should be any different, and it wasn’t, it’s left him aching.
It’s an all-encompassing sort of hurt – physical, yes, but deeper too, a sort of hollowed-out feeling in his chest, one he remembers from when he’d first Fallen. He’d built up a callous, of sorts, after all those years, but being there, seeing it, being so close to it all and surrounded by enough love to make him nauseous, even as distant and bureaucratic as it was – well. Leaving with the knowledge he’ll never return hurts just as much the second time around.
But if he lingers on that particular train of thought too long it’ll show on his face and he’s been doing a good job of keeping it together so far, so he leans even further back in his chair and lets Aziraphale’s voice wash over him, hoping he looks coolly disinterested and not as sore and wanting as he feels.
It’s relaxing, listening to Aziraphale, the familiar cadence of his voice as he meanders through his side of the conversation and then carries Crowley’s, too. He’s still hurting – will be for some time, he imagines – but this helps, the return of their easy banter and comfortable silences, and when Aziraphale declares the meal “positively delightful, my dear, are you certain you don’t want anything?” Crowley doesn’t bother hiding the small smile he can feel creeping across his face.
Their ankles brush together beneath the table, and neither of them pull away.
They’ve been playing this game for a long time, but now the rules have changed midway. An entirely new experience. Crowley feels a relieved, almost hysterical laugh bubbling under his chest, buries it. Aziraphale’s always said he goes too fast. He’s been taking his time, these six millennia. Even if he wants to rush into it all at once, now that they can, he can be patient a while longer.
“Did you really ask Michael for a rubber duck?” he blurts out, then flushes when he realizes he’s made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t listening. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to mind the interruption, just blinks once, then smiles, a wicked grin Crowley has only ever seen on rare special occasions when the angel is especially satisfied with himself.
“I did,” he says, and this time Crowley doesn’t bother to tamp down on his laughter.
He could have lost this, Crowley thinks as Aziraphale hums a laugh, eyes soft, and launches into another story. His best friend was almost gone, really gone. What would he have done? Would he still have come to the Ritz, dined alone at their usual table with six thousand years of memories for company? He doesn’t think he’d be able to stand it – but where else might he have gone? There isn’t a place on Earth that he hasn’t been with Aziraphale at some point. There’d be nowhere to go that wouldn’t be a reminder, a death by a thousand tiny cuts.
The laughter dies in his throat, after that.
--
He’s fidgety in the car as they drive back to the store, knows Aziraphale has noticed even if he hasn’t said anything.
“Nightcap?” Aziraphale asks as he pulls up to the curb. “I’ve a lovely port that I’ve been saving for a special occasion; I think this probably qualifies.”
Crowley thinks of the awful choking feeling he’d had that morning, standing in Aziraphale’s kitchen. He should say no, needs to go home and pull himself back together, but Aziraphale is smiling at him, warm and inviting, and he finds himself nodding instead.
“Alright,” he says before he can think better of it. “A nightcap, then.”
He gets the door for Aziraphale, ignoring the question in his eyes as he does it. The lock sticks, just a bit, and Crowley sticks, too, frozen in place just outside. He’s not sure what prompts it – some daft idea that if he sees the angel in the store, unharmed, all his pent-up concern and grief and anger will just disappear.
It doesn’t work like that, of course. How it works, really, is that Aziraphale goes to step through the door and Crowley’s arm reaches out entirely without his permission, a desperate little half-grasp that he stops before he can do something embarrassing like grip Aziraphale’s sleeve. He’s less successful at stifling the choked noise that comes out of his mouth, though, and Aziraphale stops, turns to him with a question in his eyes.
“’s fine,” Crowley mutters, forcing himself to push past Aziraphale and into the shop.
It’s not fine, and Aziraphale, for all that he can be willfully oblivious when he wants to, has always been able to read him too well. He makes it three steps past the door before Aziraphale grabs him by the arm, turns him and backs him against a bookshelf so he can’t look away.
“Crowley,” he says, frowning, “what on earth is the matter?”
He takes a deep breath, opens his mouth before he’s really sure of what he wants to say. Rookie mistake. Everything comes out at once, one confusing rush of anxiety and anger and sadness and fear and there’s a rushing in his ears, the same way there had been that morning, swelling to a crescendo that drowns out anything Aziraphale might be saying, Crowley can’t even look at him, doesn’t know what to do with his arms and—
“How could you be so stupid?”
Not what he’d meant to say.
--
“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, “look at me.”
Crowley can’t read his voice. He drags his eyes up to meet Aziraphale’s, certain he’s wearing the dreadful truth of his feelings on his face, certain his expression must be something wretched.
Aziraphale doesn’t seem fazed, just reaches up and plucks off his sunglasses, casual as anything. Crowley tries not to hiss, filled with the sudden certainty that if Aziraphale looks at his eyes he’ll see everything, know every terrible emotion he’s spent the past six millennia hiding.
“What—angel, what are you doing?” he chokes out, and Aziraphale looks at him so softly, brings his hand up to his cheek.
“What’s wrong, dear?” he asks, instead of answering.
Quite against his will, Crowley’s eyes fix on the spot he’d stood just yesterday, surrounded by crackling heat and books burnt to ash and a terrible, devastating sense of profound loss. He opens his mouth to protest that he’s fine, really, angel, stop fussing, but nothing comes out, just a creaky sort of whine.
Aziraphale just looks at him, brow slightly furrowed with concern, and suddenly Crowley is too exhausted to keep fighting with himself, too tired to hide how he’s feeling
“I lost my best friend,” Crowley croaks, willing Aziraphale to understand, terrified that he will.
Aziraphale frowns at him, puzzled.
“You lost—” he starts, so soft it’s barely audible, then his eyes follow Crowley’s gaze and Crowley can see the moment the realization hits in the way Aziraphale’s eyes widen, just slightly, the way his mouth opens, closes, opens again and—
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, then, ”oh.”
Crowley looks down, unable to meet Aziraphale’s eyes for fear of what he might see.
Aziraphale takes in a quick, quiet breath somewhere above his head. “Oh, dear,” he says, voice soft and gentle, “how selfish of me—I hadn’t even thought—you must have had quite the fright.”
He brings up his other hand to cup the side of Crowley’s face and it burns – the touch, the too-true words, it’s more than Crowley can bear, too much too soon and Crowley has spent six millennia years going too fast for Aziraphale so how is it possible that he’s the one who needs things to slow down, now?
He shrugs his shoulders, shoves Aziraphale away and crosses his arms in front of his chest as if that might protect him from hurt, somehow, wondering all the while why? Why is he doing this, when he’s waited for this moment for centuries? It’s wrong, all wrong, he’s ruined it again.
Of course I didn’t, he wants to say, I’m a demon, I don’t get worried on behalf of the likes of you.
But what he chokes out instead, raw and rough and awful, is “yes.”
A moment of quiet. The admission hangs heavy in the air.
“Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale says, “look at me, please.”
Childishly, Crowley shakes his head, only to feel Aziraphale’s hand guide his chin upwards. “Look, Crowley,” he insists. “I’m right here. Safe and whole and not going anywhere.”
“But you did,” Crowley chokes, “you could. You were gone, angel. I thought—you were gone,” he trails off, pitiful.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, and suddenly Crowley finds himself being tugged into Aziraphale’s chest, warm arms wrapped firmly around his back. “I know. I’m sorry. But—I’m here, now. I’m alright.”
Crowley’s breath hitches embarrassingly. His hands are gripping Aziraphale’s shoulders so tightly it must be painful, but Aziraphale doesn’t say anything, just presses his lips gently against Crowley’s temple.
“We’re alright,” he repeats, wonder in his voice. “We’re here.”
He trails off to a nervous, helpless laugh, then, and Crowley finds that he’s echoing it.
“Yeah,” he says, turning so his head is in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck and taking a deep breath. He still smells off, a little bit, but it’s less noticeable than before; less jarring and Crowley lets himself relax into the familiarity of it. “We are, aren’t we?”
It could be hours that they stay like that, Aziraphale rubbing soothing circles on his back and making quiet, soothing noises against his skin, or it could be minutes. Crowley isn’t sure, stops worrying about keeping track. He almost believes it, that they’ve got all the time in the world now.
Eventually, Aziraphale draws back, fixes him with a tentative smile.
“Perhaps we ought to call it a night, just go to bed,” he says, looking Crowley up and down.
Crowley wonders what he sees. He hasn’t looked in a mirror to know but imagines it’s not a pleasant image, his too-messy hair, the drawn, weary pinch of his brow and the circles he’s sure must be forming under his eyes by now. Whatever he sees, Aziraphale doesn’t comment, just continues talking, his voice purposefully casual in a way that means he’s feeling anything but. “Care to join me?”
Crowley stiffens – he’s not sure what he thought Aziraphale was going to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. “What,” he says flatly, and Aziraphale colors.
“Not – I mean, not that I’d be opposed, but we’ve both had a long day and I just thought – I mean, I thought it would do us both good. Just a thought. A foolish one, probably, I’m sorry—”
“No,” Crowley interrupts, and – not that he’d be opposed – his mind catches, stutters, skips over that particular revelation in favor of addressing the matter at hand, the way Aziraphale is standing before him looking embarrassed and maybe faintly hurt.
“I mean – don’t. Be sorry, that is. Don’t be sorry. That sounds—” there’s a ferocious blush spreading across his face, he’s certain of it, but forces himself to finish the sentence anyways. “Nice. It sounds nice.”
Aziraphale beams at him, and Crowley decides the heat on his face is entirely worth it.
--
It’s awkward at first, both of them laying utterly still under the covers, staring at the ceiling in silence until—
“Oh, you’d better come here,” Aziraphale says, rolling to face Crowley. “It gets terribly drafty at night, I’d hate for you to catch a chill.”
Crowley hesitates for a moment, but Aziraphale lifts an arm in invitation and any arguments he may have had are lost.
When he’s curled up against Aziraphale’s chest – and he was right, the room is drafty, much better to be pressed against Aziraphale’s warm, comfortable frame – Aziraphale gives a satisfied hum, pulls him just that much closer. Crowley doesn’t fight it, just tucks his head under Aziraphale’s chin and whispers a silent thanks against his skin.
There are fingers carding gently through his hair, the soft pressure of Aziraphale’s arms where they’re wrapped around him, and Crowley can feel a week’s worth of awful tension start fade away, breath by quiet breath.
He wants to stay awake a while longer, to savor the stillness and watch the rise and fall of Aziraphale’s chest, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes open. He’s on the verge of letting the drowsiness overtake him when—
“I do love you, too, you know,” Aziraphale murmurs into his hair.
Maybe it should come as a surprise, maybe Crowley should feel some grand emotion, his heart in his throat or butterflies in his stomach, but instead it just feels – natural. Something he’s known for a long time, even if he didn’t know. Something they’ve been building towards, their natural conclusion. A bone-deep truth.
“Yeah,” he hums against Aziraphale’s collarbone, soft and sleepy. “I know.”