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[and when I sleep on your couch I feel very safe / and when you bring the blankets I cover up my face / I do, love you, I do]
“I’ll just sleep on the couch,” Aziraphale says, cutting Crowley off as he rambles about how the bed is plenty big enough that they won’t bother each other and that he’ll change the sheets to fresh ones and that they really should get some rest after everything that happened.
“Don’t be silly, if anything you can have the bed and I’ll take the couch, but it really would be fine for us to just share I think-”
“Crowley. Thank you. But I’ll take the couch.”
He says it with such finality that Crowley stares, mouth agape for a minute before giving a short nod.
“Right. Okay, sure.” He shifts, pushes his sunglasses up from where they’d slid down his nose. “I’ll get you some pillows and things.”
When the couch is made, Aziraphale settles down on it and pulls the sheets up over him. He looks up at Crowley and smiles. “Good night, dear.”
Crowley takes a breath, starts to say something, then changes his mind. “Good night, Aziraphale.”
The angel drifts in and out of sleep. The beddings are really quite comfortable, and Aziraphale admits to himself that he feels safer here with Crowley just in the other room, compared to if he’d been in the bookshop alone. But his mind is racing.
He’d held Crowley’s hand on the bus ride. All the way from when they sat down until they arrived at the redhead’s flat. They hadn’t said a word to each other the whole ride and Aziraphale was sure that the other was waiting for him to start the conversation about it but. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say, not yet. Not before they dealt with their respective offices, not before they knew they were really safe.
Aziraphale hears footsteps approaching, coming from down the hall where Crowley’s bedroom is. He turns his face away, buries it against one of the pillows.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley whispers. “Are you awake? It’s gotten a bit cold, I wasn’t sure if you’d be warm enough.”
At no reply he drapes the thick blanket in his arms over the supposedly sleeping angel. Crowley starts to turn back to his room, but he pauses, leans against the arm of the couch nearest Aziraphale’s head.
“Are you really asleep?”
Aziraphale holds his breath. He doesn’t say a word.
Crowley sighs into the dark. “I’m confused, angel. All these years of being enemies and not-enemies and partners and not-partners and best friends and not-friends-at-all. It’s a lot.” He tugs at the sleeves of his pajamas.
“And then holding my hand but- but why? Because you care? No, I know you care about me, that much is evident. Wouldn’t spend so much time with me if you didn’t care. I’m just confused about how you care about me, angel. I know how I care about you I- I love you. He says again, softer, but perfectly audible in the silence of the room, “I love you.”
Another sigh. “What am I doing? I only have the courage to say this when I know you can’t hear me, when I know you’re asleep. Because I don’t want to push you into anything. But. I do wish I understood you. I wish I knew if you loved me too.”
I do, love you, I do
Aziraphale can’t bring himself to say it out loud. He thinks it, over and over, shouting it in his head as if that will be enough to get through to Crowley, half hoping it will be, because if their trials don’t go well he may never get the chance to say it. He feels fingers brush through his hair ever so gently, and for a second, he can believe that it was enough.
And then Crowley gets up without another word.
His footsteps retreat back down the hall.
Aziraphale pulls the new blanket tighter around himself and waits for morning.