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Crowley’s door knows what is good for it, so it swings open as soon as he and Aziraphale are standing outside. Crowley steps inside first, throwing off his jacket into a dark corner and sauntering over the threshold with a gesture for Aziraphale to follow.
“Make yourself at home, angel.”
He tries to stay casual. Like he hasn’t thought of Aziraphale in here dozens of times before, for a million reasons. Aziraphale hangs his jacket on the coat stand before he bends down to retrieve Crowley’s, hanging it on the hook closest to his own. Aziraphale follows him through the spinning door and he gasps softly at the plants, drenched in the moonlight that spills through the high and wide windows.
“Oh, they’re beauti-”
“Don’t.”
The plants rustle in fear and Aziraphale raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t ask. Crowley steps into the room where there is no longer a pile of Ligur in the doorway, which is interesting but his brain is moving so slowly he won’t try and process it until tomorrow. Aziraphale is standing in the room with his hands clasped in front of him, letting his eyes wander the blank walls and the high backed thrones, the television that Crowley only has because he got tired of his records being interrupted by Hell trying to contact him so he gave them another way. Then his gaze falls on the multitude of photographs stacked in a neat pile, pages all pulled from an Astronomy textbook when Crowley had been trying to decide where they would run off to together.
“Oh...”
“Just looking at options,” Crowley says easily, as though he doesn’t suddenly feel raw and exposed with the way Aziraphale is staring at them, “Guess we don’t need them now, do we?”
Aziraphale is spreading them out on the desk, fingers running over some, and then others. He breezes over Alpha Centauri with a smile, before he lands on the Carina Nebula. Crowley remembers creating that one.
“This was one of yours, wasn’t it?” Aziraphale remarks casually, and Crowley feels like the warmth of the room has been sucked into space. A cold, uneasy feeling begins to creep into his gut.
One of yours thrown out so casually.
One of yours said like he... like he knew
“What.”
Aziraphale is still looking at the nebula with fascination, his fingers dragging over the glossy paper, “This one. Carina was one of yours, I think?”
Crowley forgets that they’ve just saved the world (but not really). He forgets that they’re supposed to be on a side of their own and that Aziraphale had apologized on the long bus trip, begged for Crowley’s forgiveness because he had wanted so badly to believe in Heaven, and Crowley had forgiven him.
“Get out.”
Aziraphale’s eyes widen and he pulls back his hand from the image like it had burned him, “Crowley dear? What do you mean?”
“OUT.”
Crowley is in a rage. He can feel it bubbling- boiling under his skin like hellfire. He’s wondered for six thousand years if Aziraphale had known, known who Crowley was before the Fall and just never said anything; and in the last millennia Crowley had finally convinced himself that perhaps Aziraphale hadn’t known him at all and they could build something on ground and not the ashes of who Crowley used to be. He’d considered in the bandstand, when Aziraphale’s hopeful voice had reminded him – as though he could ever be allowed to forget- that he had been an angel once too. But Crowley had forced it down and away because no, no, Aziraphale would have told him years ago because they didn’t keep secrets like that. And yet here they were, in his flat in the dead of night, and the truth had come out.
Aziraphale isn’t moving from the desk, is only watching Crowley with confusion and sadness and Crowley wants nothing more than to slam a door in his face. Six thousand years and he’d never even made the suggestion that he had known him, and now he had thrown it out there like he was suggesting crepes for breakfast the next morning. It was the only way he could know. Crowley had never told anyone, and he highly doubted that God was up there sharing the information that a filthy, wreck of a demon had hung the beauty of the stars in Her sky.
“I’m not leaving.”
Aziraphale’s voice is firm, his back now a little straighter and his jaw set, “I’m not leaving until you tell me why you’re kicking me out of here.”
“Why?” Crowley hisses, “The angel wants to know why?”
“Yes. And then when I know why, I’ll leave. But not a moment before.”
“You’ve been lying.”
Aziraphale makes a face and shakes his head, “Yes, Crowley. But I explained on the bus, I told you I thought Heaven would be better-”
“Not about that!”
The thought that Aziraphale is going to stand there and lie sets fire to his insides and he feels it burn like nothing else. He stalks forward, trying to be menacing and terrifying and only succeeds in building his own rage when Aziraphale stares him down with cool eyes and grabs Crowley’s wrists.
“Talk to me, Crowley.” he urges, “Please.”
Crowley is so tired. So raw and aching and still smelling of a burned bookshop and scorched leather; and Aziraphale’s hands and soft and warm and this entire day has been so long. Crowley can’t keep his energy to stay angry. He breaks.
“Who was I to you? Before? At least tell me that?” he asks softly, because he knows it will keep him awake if he doesn’t know. Aziraphale looks so lost again that Crowley feels even more tired, somehow. Like it leeched into his human bones and made a home there. He wishes he could remember Aziraphale from Before. There’d been no faces back then, only energies and vague shapes.
“Before what?”
“Before I Fell, you daft idiot!” he snaps, “You knew me.”
“I certainly did not.” Aziraphale says, sharp and fast with his eyes narrowed, “You think I’d just keep something like that secret? Why the Hell would you think that? I’m the daft idiot, you- you...” he can’t seem to find a word and gives up, instead shaking his head in disbelief and staring Crowley in the eyes, absolutely fearless, “I would never lie about that, Crowley.”
Crowley doesn’t know how he knows it, but he knows the words are the truth. They resonate somewhere inside him and he blinks, now with his own cloud of confusion to match Aziraphale’s.
“You didn’t know me... before?” Crowley says firmly, feeling the spark of terror begin to burn away.
Aziraphale shakes his head, still keeping his grip around Crowley’s wrists as though it will anchor him to the very earth. It would, Crowley thinks. But Aziraphale needn’t know it.
“Not that I’m able to recall, though I’m sure maybe we crossed paths once or twice. Everyone knew everyone back in those days, but I never had a particular camaraderie with anyone before I was sent to guard Eden. Will you... will you tell me what all that was about?”
He says ‘all that’ like Crowley hadn’t just exploded into a fit for seemingly no reason, with the same calm and gentle tones he uses all the time. Crowley wants very much to be swallowed back into the earth, but he knows Aziraphale would never allow it. If they’re to have this, this side of their own that is budding and new, Crowley supposes the truth should be something they cling to.
“I thought- I’ve always wondered if you knew me before and just never said anything. And then when you said you knew I’d done some of the stars,” he gestures to the glossy pages, “Thought you must’ve. Known me, that is.”
Aziraphale’s brow is furrowed in confusion, glancing from the pages to Crowley before he sighs and squeezes gently, moving his grasp from Crowley’s wrists to his hands.
“I’ll need a little more than that, Crowley. I’m dreadfully sorry. How would me knowing you helped hang the stars mean I knew you before?”
“I’ve never told you... have I?”
They do drink an awful lot, but there are only perhaps a handful of times that Crowley has indulged to the point of blank periods of time. He is certain he has never mentioned the stars to Aziraphale, the job that had been one of his was kept hidden under his tongue for six thousand years, because he wasn’t the angel who had hung them- not anymore.
Aziraphale understands all in one moment, his eyes widening and his mouth falling open in a soft ‘oh’.
“Crowley... Crowley I’ve known since Eden that you hung the stars. You’re- do you not see?”
Crowley looks down at where Aziraphale is holding his hands, palms up and reverent. He sees his own skin, pale and lined with maps of blue veins. His fingers, long and spindly. His wrists, perhaps a little more delicate than is standard. Aziraphale is holding them like they matter, like they are important.
“See what?”
Aziraphale looks mad. Looks furious, even. He rubs his thumbs along the outside of Crowley’s palms and shakes his head.
“I can’t believe they would- well... I suppose I can though, can’t I?”
If they’re going to have a side of their own, they’re going to need to get better at communicating, it seems. Crowley is looking at his hands, tracing the dips and creases with his eyes to try and find whatever it is that Aziraphale sees.
“Come here...”
Aziraphale is guiding him to the window, where the moon is spilling through it and onto the floor, leeching the room into monochrome everywhere it touches. Crowley’s hands are even paler in the moonlight, but still wholly unremarkable.
“I do hope this works...” Aziraphale mumbles, still tinted with anger that Crowley somehow knows isn’t directed at him.
“Hope what works?”
Aziraphale’s wings at out in a soft whoosh of air, catching the moon and radiating a soft glow of divine light. Crowley has seen them before, seen them today, even. But it is always breathtaking. His own are darker, obviously. More mangled and sharp, missing the same softness that he can see on the bright white primaries. Aziraphale angles himself with his back against the windows, feathers spread so the light shines just so, spilling through the thin film of wing feather to spill across Crowley’s spread palms.
And then he sees.
His hands are a wash of sparkle and incandescence, swirls of a rainbow of colour that is spread in the sky in every nebula he ever touched. He twitches his fingers and they shimmer and ripple and he remembers every single star he placed carefully against the black sky.
“Your hands are covered in stardust, Crowley,” Aziraphale says quietly, “It just felt like it was never my business to ask about something so sensitive. I’ve admired your hands for so long, I’ve always wanted to ask. Back before the lights came, when you could look up and see nothing but stars, I always thought of asking you but I couldn’t bring myself to make you remember something like that. But your hands, Crowley... they’re beautiful. I’m sorry I gave you the impression I’d been keeping something so serious from you.”
Crowley has stardust on every fingertip, settled into the bed of his nails and the whorls of his prints. He flexes his hands. They radiate.
“I-”
Humans don’t really have the words for how he feels right now. And the language of the angels died on his tongue a long time ago. So instead, he cups Aziraphale’s soft face in his bright, sparkling hands and presses their foreheads together.
“Aziraphale...”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Thank you.”
Aziraphale catches one hand in his own and presses a brief, dry kiss to the swell of Crowley’s knuckles. The stardust doesn’t budge, leaves only a flicker of sparkle across Aziraphale's soft, pink lips.
“Any time, Crowley.”