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"Wine-dark sea." Aziraphale's voice is a sleepy murmuration from its place somewhere by Crowley's thigh, reclined as he is on their red-checked picnic blanket. Before them stretches an endless expanse of whispering waves, slowly turning to a fathomless purple carpet, swishing against the shore. Somewhere below, Crowley knows that seashells are washing up, small white things, fragments like the filaments of a feather, and larger ones, wholer and holier than either of them.
"What was that, angel?" Crowley asks, softer than the limestone cliffs he watched his friends help shape aeons ago, softer than the sand between his toes when he strolls late late late at night, softer than the yellow-white curls atop his angel's perfect head. He asks, "What was that?" even though he heard him, because he wants (needs) to hear that lovely night-deepened butter-warm voice pronounce Homer's poetry around a mouthful of drowse.
"'S a wine-dark sea." Aziraphale does not disappoint, he never does (too fast for me, you go too fast), and he shuffles slightly closer, cheek resting against Crowley's leg, and Crowley is one movement away from throwing himself into the ocean. "Like Homer said. Never could quite figure out why he called it that. Not before recent. Before this."
Whatever the hell this is, Crowley thinks--not bitter, just resigned. Maybe, he thought when they first moved out to the chalky expanse of the South Downs, maybe if he told himself often enough he could be content with this, he would eventually believe it and stop wanting (needing, it's a need, an ache in his sulfur-blackened obsidian-rough heart) moremoremore. Drawing out moremore more from his angel until his light unravels and they both feel whole-holy again, wanted-loved-craved, tied together like the ancient human tradition.
They moved here a month ago and it is November now, early and cool, not the best weather for a picnic by the sea but they are occult and ethereal and the cold does not matter to them. The ocean looks different in autumn, all the algae dying and leaving the ocean a pale blue instead of a deep blue-green, but in the red sunset it still dyes purple. The sea will grow verdant again in a few months’ time, but no matter the color it is still beautiful. A deadly deathly surge of power which lures the bravest human men far out into its rolling fields.
Sometimes Crowley feels the call, too. He wonders if his angel does as well.
He does not dwell. Sometimes, questions are better left unanswered.
Crowley feels a lot like this sea, he supposes, when it comes down to it. It's windy and the clouds are boiling overhead. The grass ripples, a poor echo, a shoddy forgery of the rage-bent vengeful froth of ocean below the cliff. He finds himself walking down here more and more often the longer they live here together, just to look at the sea. Just to feel fathomless.
It rages on the surface, violent and violet as the clouds which hang bulbous with their pregnancy, but underneath he knows it is cold and calm. The air is thick with anticipation, ready for the first crack of thunder, and beneath the waters, in the depths, it is still and constant.
It has been a year since the world did not end in fire and flame and the stars did not burn out and the legions did not march forth. A year of dinners and drives and exchanged glances which mean nothingnothingnothing because they can't. Ten months of a cottage on the south downs, walking the chalk but never talking past everyday talking-chatter. There is a garden because of course there is, and the place is swamped with books because of course it is, and they have their places and it's fine because why would it not be fine? Why would Crowley's heart ever try to rend itself from his chest? Why would he ever yearn for more than he has been so graciously given?
Aziraphale comes down the path, then, carrying in his hand a cream-white umbrella, and when he sees Crowley the clouds run for cover and the ocean is as blue as his eyes because when he smiles the sun comes out and the birds sing and this, Crowley thinks fervently, this is Eden. "It's going to rain," Aziraphale says, and oh, the way he has to tilt his head to look at Crowley has the charcoal-chunk of his heart stuttering. "What were you doing out here?"
"Looking at the sea," Crowley tells him, honest as he always is with his angel. "It looks different before a storm."
"It does," Aziraphale agrees, blue eyes flicking around to take in the view before returning to Crowley's face. "All dark and frothy."
"Mmm. Big and scary, tossin' all about," Crowley continues. "What was that you said about rain?"
"That it's going to, you big silly demon. Now come on, if we hurry back we might beat the rain." Aziraphale grins and Crowley, weak as he always is for that face, grins back, takes Aziraphale's offered arm, and they head back for their cottage.
The rain starts before they make it back (because of course it does), but Aziraphale puts up his big umbrella and it feels like the last day of Eden, a demon huddled close beside an angel as rain patters down around them.
It's been nearly three years since they bought the cottage now, and the garden is flourishing and the house has soaked the smell of old books into its walls and everything is perfect. Crowley thinks it's too perfect, but he's done waiting for the other shoe to drop. Whatever they have going on he will take it for as long as he can. Their days are full of soft-warm hands brushing thin-long ones, pinkies hooking for slight moments as they walk through the bustling farmer's market, fire-red hair sprawled across a creamy-suited lap the same careless way the owner of the red hair sprawls across the couch and listens to his angel read in his warm-rich voice. Crowley doesn't read, not ever, but he likes any book when it's read by Aziraphale.
Tonight, a warm June night three years since the end of the world, Crowley finds himself restlessly returning to the sea. Aziraphale is with him, his angel is never far behind these days, and together they sit and stare at the dark sea and the infinite star-dotted expanse above it. Aziraphale has taken to resting his head on Crowley's sharp shoulder, and although Crowley should question how it's even comfortable, he's not about to stop Aziraphale from coming closer, from touching him. It's been a long time since Crowley has been afraid of burning his angel with his touch; now he burns inside each time Aziraphale touches him. It's simultaneously too-much and not-enough.
"When Homer wrote about the wine-dark sea," Aziraphale says, out of the blue, voice vibrating against the bone of Crowley's shoulder, "it was because the word purple hadn't been invented yet. But I think wine-dark sounds much better, don't you?"
"Yeah," Crowley sighs.
"Just the two of us and our cottage and our wine-dark sea."
There's something in the word our that has a different mouthfeel than ever before, an implication that neither is ready to name. But it's a step, Crowley thinks, towards his angel catching up. He hopes he's going slow enough for their paths to align soon.
“Would you have?” Crowley asks softly. His jeans are rolled up to mid-shin, exposing skinny ankles and bony bare feet which are half-buried in the lime-white sand. Beside him stands his angel, and their hands are linked like the daisy chains Aziraphale made and stuck on their heads. Five years since the apocalypse never happened and Aziraphale is steps away from where Crowley waits, ready, always going slower, slowing down, hoping against hope that he’s still not too fast. But where just pinkies brushed before, the slightest hooking of the littlest finger, now all five twine around those of the other, holding tight, linked firm. Almost there, they seem to suggest.
“Would I have what?” Aziraphale asks, and bends to pick up a soft-pink shell. He doesn’t wear his suit much these days, preferring soft linen pants and softer cotton shirts, casual and unrestrained. His forearms are bare, sleeves rolled past the elbows, and Crowley longs to kiss the soft skin on the inside of his wrist.
“Come with me, I mean. To Alpha Centauri. If I had been different. If I hadn’t been a demon.”
“Oh, my dearest Crowley,” Aziraphale sighs, and he smiles. “It wasn’t because of you that I didn’t want to run away.” They continue strolling down the white stony shore, wine-dark water lapping at their ankles as the waves swish in-out. It’s sunset, as it often is when they stroll, and the ocean is just as dark as it always is at this time of night.
“Then why?” Crowley asks, soft and almost petulant, a plea of say you love me say you love me . “If it wasn’t me, then what was it?”
“It was Earth,” Aziraphale says gently. “It was because I couldn’t leave this place. It was because I was afraid. It was because I needed to stay. And aren’t you glad I did? Aren’t you glad we did?”
Crowley gazes out at the last glimmers of the fading sunlight on the deep dark waves and says, “Of course I am.”
“Then why are you asking me?” Like he doesn’t already know, like he wants Crowley to say it. The sun slips beneath the waves, the last spark of it catching in Aziraphale’s curls, and Crowley feels that deep surge of want-need like a stone in his ribcage.
“Because,” he says, “because I needed to know if me changing would have made any difference. I need to know if me changing would make a difference now.”
Aziraphale stops, thoughtful, and looks Crowley right in the face, with those piercing angel-blue eyes bright as a summer sky. “You changing would make all the difference, my dear, but I would not think it to be a good difference. Keep you as you are, my darling, and I shall stay by your side until the firmament of heaven crumbles and the universe folds into nothing.”
Crowley’s face does something, then, which one would liken to the crumpling of paper in the fist of a child, and then he is collapsing against Aziraphale’s shoulder and he is weeping like he hasn’t wept in aeons, like the world is flooding and the children are drowning all over again, but it’s just him this time, just his own lungs filling with water and dragging him downdowndown.
Aziraphale holds him like he is precious, and they are one step apart now, just short of catching up to 6000 years of whatever this is they have. Soft and manicured fingers draw meaningless meaningful patterns into the fabric of a black shirt and raggedy-nail hands clutch and claw at a cloud-blue shoulder, and they hold each other together as the wine-dark sea pummels endlessly at a shore made of a millennia of long-dead creatures.
It’s a week and a day and then it all comes crashing together, clanging and banging into a moment of infinite stillness, over a picnic, because of course it’s a picnic that does it. Aziraphale is sipping champagne and watching Crowley watch him, and Crowley feels that surge, that wantwantneedneed swelling, and he is going to die if something doesn’t happen soon. But Aziraphale sets down his glass, and he moves, and next thing Crowley knows there is an angelic head resting in his lap, and a soft hand reaching up to touch his face. Crowley hasn’t worn his sunglasses around the angel in years and yet, now in this moment of intimacy and tenderness, he wishes he could have them.
“Tell me,” Aziraphale says softly.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley chokes. “Angel.”
“Tell me,” the angel insists, always gentle, but nudging, now. Go on. I’m right there. I’m right here.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Tell me.”
“You are. ”
“It comes with being an angel. You were an angel once, you are just as beautiful.” The hand on Crowley’s cheek moves to nest in long sandy-fire curls, reminiscent of Mesopotamia. “Tell me, Crowley.”
“I love you.” It slips out easy, like it’s nothing, like those words haven’t waited for over six thousand years. He says them again, like maybe it was a fluke, maybe it is actually the hardest phrase he’s ever had to say. “I love you. I love you. Angel, tell me. I love you.”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and his face is beaming, and he doesn’t need a halo to glow, Crowley thinks dimly. The angel sits up and cups Crowley’s jaw and strokes his hair, and he says, “I love you, you old serpent. I love you from beginning to end, the firmament of heaven to the fires of hell, to Alpha Centauri to infinity and back.”
“Angel. Oh, angel, oh, oh,” Crowley breathes, and his hands are smoothing down Aziraphale’s shoulders and tangling in his golden curls and then they are back behind him again, too fast, too-fast-too-fast he’s moving too-fast. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, but the words are stolen from his mouth and swallowed and forgotten as Aziraphale leans forward and kisses the hell out of him.
And isn’t that a funny turn of phrase, Crowley’s brain says hysterically as he kisses the angel fierce and tender, like Aziraphale can love the hell out of a wily old demon, like he can pull the black from his feathers and piece his halo together again. And why not, he thinks wildly, as Aziraphale surges forward and knocks them both backward until Crowley’s back is against the grass and he’s breathless and his angel is on top of him and around him as he should be, as he’s been waiting for him to be.
“I’m here, I’m ready, you cannot move too fast,” Aziraphale whispers, and they make love on the picnic blanket and it is the first day of the rest of their lives all over again.
The sea is blue today, and so is the sky, and so are Aziraphale’s eyes. Crowley is alive, thrumming, and he is weeping against Aziraphale’s mouth, and his tears feel wine-dark and thick against his skin but he is overwhelmed and full of divine joy. And when Aziraphale pulls back to wipe the tears from Crowley’s cheeks and tells him again “I love you, I love you,” the sun halos his face and Crowley is in Eden again. Lush and vibrant and verdant and bright.
They are finally, finally walking the same path, along the shores of the wine-dark sea of infinity and the rest of their lives.