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“I do miss when you had more hair, it was lovely,” Aziraphale says, studying Crowley meditatively over the top of his book. They’re sitting in the back room of the shop, not doing anything in particular, and Crowley has done absolutely nothing to deserve a comment like that.
“Ssorry?” Crowley says, startled into half a hiss, because the only reasonable answer is that he was daydreaming or something, slipped off into another world while staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing, and misheard very dramatically.
“Your hair, my dear,” Aziraphale says. “It used to be rather glorious, and there isn't much of it these days.”
If this is a dream, he hasn’t woken up yet. “You liked my hair long?” Crowley can’t possibly believe that. His hair is red, is fire and sin and vanity. He’s always been fond of it, but that’s a rather different thing than an angel being so.
“Anything with eyes could see it was beautiful, my dear.” Aziraphale is smiling at him softly, benevolently, like this is a perfectly ordinary conversation for them to be having.
“But… you liked it?” Crowley is not going to get past this point in a hurry. “…When?” You can get away with so many things these days, if he could be something Aziraphale liked to look at—
“The last time it was really lovely was Elizabethan England, I should think, but in Bretagne, Egypt, Golgotha, Mesopotamia, Eden…” Aziraphale sighs wistfully. “You were such a vision, and I didn't allow myself to appreciate it properly at the time, and now I could.”
“…Eden?” Crowley sounds rather strangled, and he’s considering finding a pin to stab himself with. This cannot be happening. It’s impossible, it’s cruel even to dream. “You thought I was beautiful in Eden?”
“But you were, darling, of course I did,” Aziraphale says, like it was nothing of note for the Guardian of the Eastern Gate to admire the lowest tempter, the cursed and fallen, the bearer of humanity’s original sin, even in silence.
Crowley is silent for a long moment, then miracles a pin into existence and stabs it into his arm. It hurts quite a bit, and the room doesn’t melt away into wakefulness. He swears and fumbles at it, trying to pull it out and fix the wound before he bleeds on Aziraphale’s couch. Before he can manage, Aziraphale has crossed the room, fluttery and fretting, whisking the pin away, pressing a damp cloth that has just found itself in his hand to Crowley’s arm, which has suddenly discovered that it is not in fact clad in a jacket and that its sleeve is rolled up.
“My dear, why did you just—” Aziraphale is flustered, concerned, and his fingers are brushing Crowley’s arm around the cloth, and this is actually worse than the conversation was. Crowley wonders if a demon can discorporate from sheer force of despairing self-restraint.
“Thought I was dreaming,” he says shortly, trying not to look Aziraphale in his kind beautiful worried face, though unfortunately this leads to looking at Aziraphale’s hand on his arm, the angel’s neatly manicured fingernails and golden skin against Crowley’s own almost sickly pallor. It looks wrong, it looks perfect, and his stomach twists. “Sorry. Was trying not to bleed on your couch.”
“It’s hardly a trouble to clean that,” Aziraphale says, and he’s not moving his hands but Crowley can almost feel his wings fluttering helplessly around them in indecision, even unmanifested. “Isn’t the usual thing to pinch?” he asks, a little helplessly, and Crowley hates himself again for putting that distress into Aziraphale’s voice.
“Sorry, angel,” Crowley whispers, squeezing his eyes closed. He ruins everything. “I just— seemed too good to be true. And now you’re sad.”
“Only because I distressed you,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley feels the motion of the air as Aziraphale makes an abortive reach for him. “I won’t mention it again, if you would prefer not to hear it.”
Crowley laughs a little wildly. “The problem is very much not that I don’t want to hear it, angel, it’s that I don’t deserve to. I’m Fallen.”
“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale’s hand makes it the rest of the way to his cheek this time, and rests there, warm and soft and so tender Crowley wants to weep. “I enjoy looking at you a great deal more than I do anything in Heaven.”
Crowley forgets how to breathe, which he notices immediately but can’t quite be bothered doing anything about because he has a terrible certainty that his next breath will be a sob. It takes several moments of thinking about this before he realizes that he has also forgotten about having a heartbeat, and he hurriedly jolts it back to life, too quickly, so his pulse flutters in his veins and under Aziraphale’s fingers like a hummingbird. He’s dizzy with disbelief and desperation, and this is agony, he might as well look at Aziraphale’s face while he burns, so he opens his eyes. Aziraphale’s eyes are fixed on his, and his heartbeat staggers like a horse drunk on fallen apples, and he couldn’t look away if he wanted to. And he does, and he doesn’t, he’s falling into Aziraphale’s eyes and he’s burning and it sears through him and he doesn’t know what he will be when it ends.
Hair, he thinks desperately, and flails mentally at his powers with the vague thought that if he has more hair maybe Aziraphale will look at it instead of his eyes, which he wants and doesn’t want and he cannot bear this, he is stripped clean, all his defenses gone. After a few moments of disorganized but fervent effort, his hair lengthens all at once, cascading over his face and Aziraphale’s terrible tender hand. His short hair was styled forward enough that a great deal of it falls in front of his eyes as it lengthens, interrupting his view of Aziraphale, to his relief and sorrow.
Aziraphale inhales sharply in surprise, and now Crowley can’t see his face to tell what his reaction to the sudden appearance of hair is, and this was rather a terrible plan. He thinks about manifesting some sunglasses back onto his face, giving himself something to hide behind, a wall to put up, but Aziraphale’s hand is trembling on his cheek and he can’t bring himself to push his angel away, even on a metaphorical level.
They both stay like that, still and silent, for long moments. Slowly, Aziraphale’s other hand lifts to thread into Crowley’s hair over his forehead, combing it back over his ear and revealing his face. Crowley is not in any way terrified of looking at Aziraphale again right now, and does not at all consider closing his eyes and pretending that this isn’t happening. He is also not desperately restraining himself from pressing his head into Aziraphale’s hand and melting. Because he is not doing any of those things, his eyes meet Aziraphale’s again, to find that they are shining with a mixture of emotions that Crowley is somewhat terrified of attempting to identify.
“I’m overwhelming you, aren’t I,” Aziraphale says, soft and regretful. “I’m sorry. I always seem to be holding us to my pace, don’t I?”
“It’sss not your fault,” Crowley says automatically—discovering in the process that his voice has gone rather hoarse—because he refuses to allow Aziraphale to blame himself for anything. “I just— I wasn’t quite— not quite prepared for that.”
“I didn’t realize.” Aziraphale is so tender, and Crowley feels stripped raw by it. “Perhaps I should have.” He moves his hand a little in Crowley’s hair, perhaps to remove it, perhaps to comb through more, and this time Crowley can’t stop his head shifting to press against it, or the small sound that escapes him.
Aziraphale stills again, and his face goes considering, almost sly. He runs his fingers through Crowley’s hair, caressing his scalp, and Crowley has to fight to haul his eyes back open after they flutter closed with a gasp. He has never actually dared to imagine Aziraphale touching his hair, but if he had, he rather suspects the reality would thoroughly eclipse anything he could have dreamed. Aziraphale’s fingers are warm and soft and delicate, his caress so reverent it’s almost painful. Aziraphale’s barely even touched Crowley, and he is nevertheless thoroughly undone.
“Would you like me to stop touching your hair?” Aziraphale says.
It takes Crowley a few moments to even process the question, he feels so liquid and dizzy. “Ngk,” he says, then tries again. “No. I’d—” he swallows, he has spent so long not asking for anything he wants, he hardly knows how to shape the words. “I’d rather like you to never ssssstop.” He is apparently thoroughly incapable of controlling his hissing right now, but Aziraphale doesn’t seem to mind the reminder that Crowley is the Serpent, only smiling at him with something like possessive pride.
Aziraphale moves forward, and Crowley is confused for a moment, and then Aziraphale has seated himself on the couch next to Crowley, his hands leaving Crowley’s head in the process, and he beckons Crowley closer.
Crowley attempts to work out how to turn on the couch so his head is actually convenient to Aziraphale’s hands and ends up slithering off into an uncoordinated heap on the floor. He sits up, and Aziraphale’s knee presses into his shoulderblade, and then Aziraphale’s hands are in his hair and he cannot imagine a more incredible thing that could happen in all of Creation than this moment, Crowley sitting at Aziraphale’s feet with Aziraphale touching him, treasuring him.
He melts back against Aziraphale’s legs, his head tipping back into Aziraphale’s lap, and he can no longer keep his eyes from drifting closed as both of Aziraphale’s hands run lightly over his scalp and through his hair, smoothing it, arranging it, tugging gently. It takes an impossible to quantify but not insignificant amount of time for Crowley to realize that Aziraphale is loosely braiding chunks of his hair, then unbraiding them again, in between feather-light touches to Crowley’s scalp and temples.
Crowley is, as much as possible, refusing to acknowledge the existence of any noises he may be making during this activity, but when Aziraphale traces his fingers lightly over Crowley’s cheekbones and then his lips, he feels he can rather be excused the rather desperate whimper that comes out of his mouth. This is the most glorious and the most intimate thing that’s ever happened to him already, and bringing his mouth into it at this point is just not playing fair.
Aziraphale apparently finds this reaction interesting, because he runs his thumb back and forth over Crowley’s lips again. Crowley makes another embarrassing noise.
“I think,” Aziraphale says, from somewhere above him, “that I should like to kiss you, Crowley.”
Crowley has absolutely no response to this, because this statement was not within the realm of things he had considered conceptually possible for the universe to contain.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says again, and Crowley can hear the fondness in his voice, and also the implacable fact that Aziraphale is not going to let him go without responding. “May I kiss you?”
Crowley feels it is rather unfair to expect him to produce words at this juncture, but he also does not wish his answer to this question to be in any conceivable way ambiguous, so he musters his faculties with a herculean effort and manages to hiss out a “Yessssss.”
This is apparently entirely clear enough for Aziraphale, because now Crowley’s face is pressed into the familiar smell of Aziraphale’s neck and shirt, because Aziraphale has leaned over him, his head upside down, and the position is thoroughly awkward but Crowley is entirely beyond considering that, because Aziraphale’s lips have pressed against his, and this time he’s not the only one to make an undignified noise. His whimper is met with Aziraphale’s high, startled groan, and Crowley is fairly certain he’s just going to melt into the rug and go about the rest of his existence as a vaguely demonic puddle of bliss.
Aziraphale’s lips leave his and Crowley is vaguely aware of him saying something about angles, but he’s rather beyond following it. Whatever the statement was, it is followed by Aziraphale fisting one hand in Crowley’s hair and yanking him unceremoniously up off of the floor and onto the couch, or more accurately onto Aziraphale’s lap.
Crowley lands against Aziraphale’s chest, his legs draped over Aziraphale’s, and has very little time to consider his position—if he even has the ability to do so, because it’s possible being pulled up by the hair has managed to discorporate his brain while leaving the rest of him intact for it to slosh around in—before Aziraphale’s lips are on his again, but this time the right way up, and one of Aziraphale’s hands is still in his hair, holding him in place, and the other is clutching at his back, pulling him close, and Crowley rather thinks he would like to do some clutching of his own but he can’t organize his limbs to do anything at all. His entire existence has focused down to every place where Aziraphale is touching him, with the brightest burning focus on their lips, which leaps entirely into flame when Crowley moans and Aziraphale takes the opportunity of his parted lips to press his tongue into Crowley’s mouth.
A human might think they had died and gone to heaven, but Crowley knows that Heaven is cold and hard and sterile and nothing at all like this, like the ecstasy fizzing through every atom of his corporation and everything else he is, like warmth and joy and love and Aziraphale.
Aziraphale is kissing Crowley, and clutching at his hair so hard that several small sections of his scalp sting, and Aziraphale’s other arm is crushing Crowley against his chest quite desperately enough that Crowley would be unable to breathe, except that Crowley has only been using his lungs to make embarrassing noises for a fair bit now and is absolutely not concerned with maintaining a respiratory system. Crowley never wants this moment to end.
Linear time does not, evidently, agree with Crowley on this point, and continues marching forward. Aziraphale breaks the kiss after not nearly long enough, and Crowley has the vague sense that he’s being looked at, but he can’t quite figure out which direction his eyelids are meant to open in, so he can’t find out. There’s a gentle touch on his cheek, from which both he and Aziraphale discover that it is wet.
“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale says, his voice full of love and worry. “I overwhelmed you again, didn’t I. I let my hedonism quite take hold of me, and you were so sweet—”
Crowley feels like there is probably something he would like to say about Aziraphale and hedonism, or possibly about himself and sweetness, but he can’t catch onto it, so instead he just presses his cheek into Aziraphale’s hand, which possibly qualifies as the first deliberate motion he’s made in some time, or possibly was entirely involuntary. It is additionally possible that he sniffles, which would, if true, also qualify as involuntary.
“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale says again, but now his words are achingly sweet and possessive. “Come here, darling.” He couples this statement with tugging Crowley gently to the side, positioning him so that his head is resting on Aziraphale’s shoulder, which is good because Crowley sincerely doubts he could have managed that much directed movement, even if he could have worked out what Aziraphale meant by ‘here’.
Crowley nuzzles instinctively into Aziraphale’s shoulder, which smells wonderfully of Aziraphale. One of Aziraphale’s arms is wrapped around his back, holding him secure and close, and Aziraphale is gently stroking Crowley’s hair with his free hand.
“You’re so beautiful,” Aziraphale whispers, and presses his lips to the top of Crowley’s head. “So lovely, so alluring, so perfect. My very dear, my only dear.” Crowley’s shoulders shake, and he is weeping into Aziraphale’s shoulder, but it’s all right, because Aziraphale just keeps holding him and stroking his hair. “Oh, beloved, you are such a treasure. I am so very lucky that you waited for me for so long.” Forever, Crowley would say if he could speak. He would have waited for eternity, and it would have been worth it. “Sweetest and rarest of jewels, my pearl beyond price.” Crowley is nothing, Aziraphale is everything, but Aziraphale wants him, so he is made worth wanting, worth having. On his own, he is dross, but Aziraphale’s arms, Aziraphale’s hands, make anything within them priceless.
“You never have to wait for me again,” Aziraphale says. “And I’ll go as slowly as you need, beloved. We have all the time in the world.” This is a sea change, and Crowley would be adrift, but he isn’t, because Aziraphale is holding him close, is a bedrock and a foundation, the safe mountaintop to rely on.
He’s safe. They’re safe. They have all the time they need. Crowley finally manages to work out how his limbs work and fastens his arms around Aziraphale’s neck. He has everything he’s ever wanted.