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“Yeah, but like - it’s not that bloody simple, is it?”
Aziraphale sighs. It’s the sort of fond yet world-weary sigh that mothers give their children when they complain that their bedtime is too early, or the suggestion of cleaning their room is as impossible as teaching their pet goldfish to play the clarinet. Crowley doesn’t appreciate it in the slightest, and makes this known on his face with a scowl (though, this hardly being an irregular expression on face, Aziraphale either doesn’t notice, or chooses not to care).
“You are a buttering a piece of bread, my dear,” he says, “not saving the world. I should know for a fact that you’re not doing that; that whole ordeal ended last weekend.” Crowley watches his brow furrow as he contemplates two jars of jam with near-scientific ferocity, before beaming with unbridled self-satisfaction as he unscrews the lids off of both. “Last weekend was the end of the world. This weekend,” Aziraphale says, cutting a strawberry jam sandwich in half before setting his sights greedily on the marmalade, “we’re having a picnic. Thus, a perfect excuse to teach you how to make a good sandwich.”
“Are we mayhaps going to stop at Lady Marguerite's cotillion before the Radioactive Winter next week?” he snorts. He was getting quite proud of his impression of Aziraphale’s stiff upper lip; six thousand years may not have done much for his culinary skills, but it did wonders when giving him time to practise his ethereal mockery. “How positively quaint.”
There’s a beat of silence; Aziraphale hums to himself a tune that Crowley vaguely recognises as some record that normally plays in the background of his shop while he potters about with his books and his novelty cups of hot chocolate.
“It’s just a stupid sandwich,” Crowley says - rather, he huffs, and decides to make a point of over-buttering the next slice of bread - when Aziraphale fails to respond to his immaculate impression. “It’s not like it’s a fucking - oh, I dunno, some sort of - fancy-rocket-space-thingy.”
“Rocket science?”
Crowley cuts the sandwich at an odd angle. “No. Maybe. Shut up.” He shoves it into the proffered tupperware box in Aziraphale’s hand. “The point is, Angel, there’s no right way to do it. You throw butter on bread, you stick something in it” - Crowley wiggles his hands vaguely in the direction of the Aziraphale’s precious jam collection, “and then you slap it together.” Each described phrase is punctuated with a messy demonstration of him throwing together quite possibly messiest meal Aziraphale has ever had the displeasure of seeing, but the end result is still shoved rather unceremoniously into the same tupperware alongside his prim-and-proper little squares. Crowley appears to notice this distaste and, after another beat of silence and an overly-dramatic sigh, he snatches his wonky sandwich out of the box and makes a half-hearted attempt at reconfiguring it into something edible-looking. “There’s no right way to do it.”
“Now, Crowley, that’s really ridiculous, and I must say that I quite disagree. I read an article online-”
“Online?”
“- on that Google of yours, no less -”
“For the last time, Angel, I don’t own Google, I just took credit for it.”
“- that claimed that the absolute best way to do it is to have fresh bread cut half an inch thick, covered in no less than a teaspoonful of butter - unsalted, of course - then followed by between two-to-three teaspoons of your desired filling, because too much can unfortunately lend itself to some rather unsightly spillage, and too little can -”
Crowley drops his shoulders, throws back his head, and performs the most dramatic sigh since his days ‘enjoying’ Shakespeare’s tragedies at the Globe (which, just personally speaking, he always thought he could do a better job than that stingy Burbage character that liked to muck around on the Globe’s stage, while ol’ Willy nicked some of Crowley’s best lines to sully in Burbage’s mouth - not that Crowley was at all bitter, it was really just common sense, any old moron could see that, Angel, no he wasn’t bitter at all, and just because he had auditioned for Hamlet and Burbage had gotten the role instead meant absolutely nothing, really, it was bloody stupid to even suggest such a thing).
“For the love of somebody, Angel, I will make the stupid sandwich! Just - please. Please, I am begging you, if you say one more thing about any bloody article, or cook book, or - I don’t know, whatever some stupid chef told you once in a dream in the eighteenth century, high on opium, while lounging about in one of your cosy little Gentleman’s Clubs, or whatever it is you like to call them -”
He’s running out of steam as his train of thought hurtles off of whatever train tracks it unfortunately began on, and he can’t quite remember what he was talking about. In fact, he’s only sure of two things at this point: that he’s right, and that he’s going to make a big deal about it until Aziraphale admits that.
Aziraphale makes a noise that reminds Crowley of a disgruntled pony. It’s a noise he’s used to, and he never quite tires of it; it’s a surefire indicator that he’s on the right track to irritating Aziraphale just enough for the apples of his cheeks to colour in the most fantastically artistic way. “Well, that’s rather uncouth of you to bring up. It was second-hand opium, for a start, and who am I to deny any single one of God’s creations?”
“And that includes opium, does it?”
His grin is met with pursed lips. “Perhaps. Focus on the butter, dear.”
Crowley finds the hand holding the butterknife enclosed by Aziraphale’s palm, guiding him away from taking his usual barbarian-esque chunk from the corner of the butterslab and escorting it very delicately to a fresh slice of bread (brown and seeded, of course; Aziraphale might have be glutton, but enough of an attempt at a healthy lifestyle was there for him to validate his penchant for a nice Victoria sponge). He let him do this, a little reluctantly at first, but the warmth of the hands over his is enough to convince him.
“Very good, my dear,” he hears Aziraphale say, close enough to his ear to feel his breath breeze over the tips of his ears (which were quickly growing warmer than he normally would have liked to admit). “You are doing wonderfully. I’ll have a Michelin star chef of you in no time!”
“Whatever,” Crowley says - a weak combat tactic against whatever heat is trying to bubble up onto his cheeks like some awful pot of home-cooked stew left on the stove too long by a careless nanny (not that he’s speaking from experience, of course). “It’s a stupid sandwich.”
“It’s lovely, is what it is.” He can hear the smile thick in Aziraphale’s voice. He speaks like that so often that it feels somehow stranger to hear him without a smile, unless it was his characteristic fumbling anxiety that often came about when Crowley left mugs on his desk without using a coaster, or disturbs him with some comment while he’s attempting some mental math to figure out a tip: there isn't really an in-between with Aziraphale. He is very comfortable like that.
Familiar, is what he is.
Crowley knows just how to tease him enough to get him flustered, but not overtly upset, and then how to flatter him in just the right ways to see that foolish smile again. He knows where he stands, mostly because he knows that Aziraphale never actually lies. Sure, there’s telling a customer that a book isn’t for sale when the price tag is clearly stuck onto the cover by Aziraphale’s own hands, but Crowley barely counted that as lying - for an angel, sure, a smack on the wrist and a bad Yelp review (did they have that for angels? They should, Crowley thought, he had been keeping a list of words to call Gabriel for quite some time now, and he was almost running out of space in his notebook), but for a demon?
Nah.
For a demon, it was barely dipping your toe into the water. It was the dairy-free option. It was the Diet Coke of evil. It was probably a question on the demon entrance exam, where they told you to write your name and you were supposed to write ‘Mike Rotch’ or ‘Hugh Jass’ or even just ‘fuck off’.
Aziraphale would probably write his name in full cursive. He’d probably dot the ‘i’ with a lovely little flick. Pretty, but just passive aggressive enough for whoever marked it to know instantly that he had passed the hypothetical test with flying colours.
Crowley snorts as Aziraphale lets go of his hands and eyes his work with the proud eyes of a master artist surveying the work of his brilliantly capable apprentice.
He can almost see Aziraphale smacking his lips already. “It looks delicious,” he says, and appears to mean it. “A brilliant job by a brilliant young chef.”
Crowley shoves it back into the tupperware. He spends a little too long fiddling with the lid of the box so that it slots properly into place (never possible on the first try; another one of Crowley’s little demonic inventions - which, of course, is regretted by no one more so than Crowley himself) so he doesn’t have to bear Aziraphale’s surely overly-gracious look.
“Whatever. It’s just a stupid sandwich,” Crowley says, for possibly the fifth time that morning. But with the smile on Aziraphale’s face so supernally convincing in its sincerity, for a hair’s breadth of a second, Crowley believes him.
*******
Crowley’s plants have always been a source of contention in their relationship; not that it was much of a relationship as they were known more commonly in human social circles, but after six thousand years, the lines between what might be deemed ‘platonic’ and ‘romantic’ do tend to get a little blurred. For instance, Crowley thought it was strange that the only situations where hand holding was deemed accepted was if it was a parent with a young child, or if the people in question were dating.
Hand holding, for Crowley, was essential with Aziraphale. There was no telling which cafe he might wander into while heading back home from a walk in the park, or which bookshop he turn off into suddenly because now, my dear, it’s not the sin of Pride to have a peek through a few shelves just to see if they’re properly organised, or - worst of all - yes, dear, I know for a fact that this is a shortcut to the restaurant, now chop-chop, hurry up, we don’t want to miss our reservation, often said while disappearing down some laughably ominous alleyway.
There was no way to go anywhere with Aziraphale unless Crowley was holding his hand, pulling him down the right street, making sure he doesn’t slip away by accident and end up lost in an alleyway like some bedraggled cat (or, on one momentous occasion, locked up in the holding cell of police station that was an hour’s drive outside of London).
It was like trying to control an overly-enthusiastic labrador with a leash made of strawberry laces: absolutely impossible, unless the strawberry laces were used as an incentive for the dog (even so, in which case, they would last barely five seconds).
And sure, people often thought they were dating. They weren’t not dating, per se, they just didn’t necessarily decide that they were. Crowley imagines the progression of their relationship to be the closest thing to human aging that he will ever get. The sort of thing where you just wake up one day, and suddenly your hair is grey, and your teeth are crooked, and you can’t walk in a straight line without your bones screaming their protest that the earth beneath your feet claim you this instant, or there will be a very strongly worded letter written about it.
It’s like that, Crowley thinks. They both just sort of… woke up one day and realised they were past the point of typical friendship. Nothing had particularly changed; if anything, it felt more like they had just noticed something that had been hanging over their heads since the Garden of Eden.
It’s not like they need labels, anyway. Occult (and ethereal, Aziraphale’s voice likes to remind him in the back of his head every so often) forces hardly need to be told the nature of their relationships, especially when they probably crafted half the core concepts with their very own hands before the universe even existed. The void of space doesn’t glance over at the passage of time and wonder what are we? like some lovesick teenager.
They didn’t have labels.
They just Were.
They just Are, and they just Will Be.
Right now, however, with Aziraphale pouting his lips as he inspects (with great and saccharinely sympathetic intensity) his quivering plants, Crowley’s quite certain that he wishes he just Wasn’t.
He hears Aziraphale tut. If Crowley didn’t know Aziraphale quite as intimately as he did, it could possibly be mistaken as one of those arbitrary noises that human bodies made, or even (if it was clear that he was tutting) as a disapproving individual who accidentally made the tut a little louder than intentioned, and might have been embarrassed about the mishap.
But Crowley did know Aziraphale. He knows Aziraphale very well, and this was very much the sort of tut that was intentionally as loud as it was, and was ripe with the sort of syrupy, angelic judgement that he would have expected from someone like Gabriel.
“My dear,” Aziraphale says eventually, but Crowley knows he means to say A.J. Crowley, you absolute bastard. “My dear, you treat them so terribly. Whatever happened to a nice hug and telling them to buck up? Where did positive reinforcement go?”
Crowley sniffs. “Positive fucking what-now?” He doesn’t bother to hide his smugness at Aziraphale’s sour expression. Aziraphale enjoys lavish jams and richly aged whiskeys and oysters served on a silver platter, fresh and briny, with a tart lemon garnish and a spoonful of mignonette.
But Crowley finds his own delicious enjoyment in much, much simpler pleasures, such as swearing in front of an angel who thinks using the word ‘bitch’ even to refer to a female dog is scandalous.
Crowley brandishes his plant mister. “Tough love,” he says.
He invented it originally as a gardening technique, only somewhere along the way the original intention had been lost and parent’s started using it as an excuse to neglect their offspring.
A shame, really. Plants often benefited from both the cyclone of carbon dioxide that yelling often produced, as well as a healthy dose of infernal fear.
He’s presented with another haughty tut.
“Now, now, my dear.” He watches as Aziraphale fingers the leaves of a vibrant split-leaf philodendron that towers over him at nearly twice his height.
Is he feeling jealous?
That’s ridiculous. Of course he’s bloody not. That’s a stupid plant, and he’s a literal demon, and the fact that the former is currently getting more attention that Crowley has been given all day is absolutely not something to be upset about, not at all.
He realises Aziraphale is still talking, and manages to tear himself away from eyeing the hands that stroke the patchwork of waxy leaves.
“Is that any way to treat a lady? I don’t think our beautiful Miss Jasmin here appreciates being threatened.”
Crowley finds himself scowling again. It feels natural to him as a response, in the same way that Aziraphale likes to tut at him.
“She,” he says with a hiss, “has no more of a gender than you or I.”
“Well.” Aziraphale clears his throat. “She would still like to be treated with a little respect, dearest. She’s a houseplant, my dear, not a bank hostage.”
“She’s about to be bloody compost, is what she is.”
“Crowley!”
If plants had ears, Crowley is sure Aziraphale would have gasped with incredibly sincere shock-and-horror and clapped his hands over their shrubbery ears, lest they break down in tears at such an insult.
He watches with amusement as Aziraphale puffs up his chest, round cheeks pink and practically cherubic in their near comical consternation. He seems to toy for a moment between scolding Crowley and giving up entirely, the purse of his lips betraying this war in his head as he stares Crowley down like (somewhat ironically) a hungry snake judging it’s next move against some pitiful little rat.
After much mental contention, Aziraphale seems to decide that the secret third option (of course, Crowley snorts to himself, there’s always a secret bloody third option) of spritzing Crowley with his own plant mister and denouncing him as a foul little hellion, before Crowley even has a chance to wrestle it back from his hands.
The cool mist of water isn’t unwelcome, though. It dews up on the outside of his glasses, making seeing a little difficult (at least, before it’s remedied with a click of his fingers) but where it manages to settle on the skin of Crowley’s face, any unsightly heat blushing his cheeks die down enough for him to face Aziraphale properly again.
The air in Crowley’s apartment is thick and humid: just opening the door flung him suddenly into a verdant and practically veritable rainforest, or to the beach while running over hot sand on a particularly sweaty day. He keeps it warm for his plants, mostly, and perhaps a little because he enjoys the weight of heat and the way it presses down against the scales lying latent under his skin.
In a way, the whole apartment mirrored Crowley’s thoughts on life on Earth itself, and (despite the fact that his flat is used primarily as a storage box, rather than an actual home) he sometimes felt strangely proud of his little microcosm of the universe.
Existing here on Earth, Crowley thought, is like wading through honey. Everything is stiff and slow, life lingering for just a fraction of a second more than it should, perhaps because of the knowledge that it isn’t going to last. Clinging to what little existence it had.
Pathetic, really, when you thought about it. Admirable, but pathetic.
His own little flat felt the same. Not the clinical cleanliness of Heaven, nor the dank and soured basement of Hell, but something a little more charming in its homeliness (or lack thereof). Hot, sticky air that clung to your skin like a layer of sweat, dust trailed in from the outermost corners of London, Heaven, and Hell combined from not properly wiping his shoes on the doormat (much to Aziraphale’s chagrin). Books and odd slips of paper stuffed behind shelves or left for weeks on his desk, stained with the eye-like rings of teacups because yes, I know I can just miracle away any spillages, my dear, but I’m trying to teach you some manners.
His plants were his own little Eden; one he wouldn’t be banished from, not this time. They dominated the otherwise largely-empty expanse of his flat, transforming it into an inner-city jungle in which he prowled through like a tiger on the hunt. A fruit bowl is his Tree of Knowledge, guarded by a gorgeous little bonsai tree (because Crowley is no one if not a man who enjoyed a little stylish symbolism). He has a plant mister instead of the river Pishon, and a waterfall-like feature in one room that is his own personal Gihon. He likes to think that his kettle stood in for Tigris, and Euphrates is his top-end shower.
There is no Adam and Eve, either, and no God.
There is just him and Aziraphale.
Aziraphale who is still mulling over his plants with mother-like anguish. “Still,” he hums with some half-hearted resignation, “they are looking lovely. Really, dearest, they are quite stunning. Almost as stunning as you are.”
“Yeah, well -” Crowley knows he has gone red in the face; the colour of his hair doesn’t help, if anything it brings out the colour of his cheeks even more. “It’s just -” a wave of his hand, entirely chalant in it’s overly-enthusiastic nonchalance, “- it’s really nothing, I just - you know -” another vague wiggle, “- it’s just nothing really.”
Aziraphale is beaming at him. “A chef, a gardener, and humble?” he exclaims, and causes Crowley to snort at the very concept. “Now, isn’t luck a lady for me tonight?”
“Is that some reference I don’t get, Angel?”
“Guys and Dolls, my dear. We must watch it sometime. Tonight, perhaps, after dinner, would be absolutely lovely - I have just the bottle of red saved for a cosy night in! Not the best musical, and Lord knows it has some themes that certainly haven’t aged well, that I’m not particularly fond of: but, still a classic, and a few good songs to match.”
Aziraphale offers the plant mister back to Crowley, who takes it with a small twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“Say something nice to them, won’t you, dear? Just before we head out?”
Crowley plants his feet into the ground. “Absolutely not. I’m not doing that. They don’t deserve it.”
“Now, now, dear, that’s not very kind. Just something little, maybe tell them they’re doing a good job. Buck up now, it will hardly kill you.”
He considers pretending to discorporate on the very spot, just for a joke, but ultimately decides against it - too much hassle for something not nearly worth it, and he would hate to see Aziraphale get upset for missing their dinner reservation. So, instead he just flashes his teeth and says, “You don’t know that, Angel. I’m a demon, after all, so doing nice things could very well kill me.”
“Ridiculous. Stop being a baby and tell your plants that you’re proud of them, or I’ll -” Aziraphale falters in his threats; he never was particularly good at them, it just wasn’t something that came naturally to angels (at least, to any angel besides Gabriel). Crowley sees his eyes flicker towards the plant mister. “Or I’ll mist you again.”
“You’ll miss me, will you?”
“Oh, do shut up. I’m going to douse you with your own fertiliser.”
“Not very angelic of you, is it?”
Aziraphale doesn’t answer. He just shoots him a look and taps the face of his pocket watch like an impatient white rabbit. With the waistcoat and white hair, he could almost pass for one, in fact: Harry the Rabbit would be out of a job soon, at this rate.
Crowley lets out a sigh. It won’t be being nice that will eventually be the death of him, it will be Aziraphale himself.
He stalks over to the one that Aziraphale has now apparently named Miss Jasmin. He takes a big, deep breath.
Then another.
Then another.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says from behind him. He can hear him tapping on the watch face again, and even though he currently has his back to him, he finds himself pulling a face regardless.
“Yeah, yeah, Angel, gimme a minute, will you?”
Another breath.
“Oi. Plant, you. Yeah, you. Jasmin - Miss Jasmin. You’re, uh -” his face scrunches up like a child trying their hardest to choose the right colour crayon from a box that only contains black and various shades of grey. All the resolve he can muster in the world apparently isn’t enough. “You’re, erm - growing nice, I guess. You could do better -” he hears a tut from behind him at that, so reels himself back for simplicity’s sake, “- but I’ve seen worse. Good, uh - good job. Nice leaves.”
Crowley grimaces at the plant, turns around, and finds Aziraphale clapping his hands together. There’s a smile on his face that makes it seem like Crowley has just won some marathon, or completed some other impossible feat that humans normally deem worthy of praise.
Is that a tear in the corner of Aziraphale’s eye? That wouldn’t be surprising, not in the slightest.
“Marvellous, my dear. I’m so pleased with you.”
Crowley doesn’t have time to protest this because Aziraphale has already swept up both of his hands and planted a wet kiss on the back of each of them, bustling with more compliments as he does so.
“I know that must have been hard for you, but I want you to know that I - and Miss Jasmin as well, of course - am very pleased with you. Absolutely chuffed.” He plants a third and final kiss on the back of Crowley’s left hand, before dropping his right so they can hold hands as he’s pulled out the door. There’s a twinkle in his bright blue eyes that Crowley doesn’t like to admit is as charming as it is. “You did swimmingly.”
“Stupid phrase,” Crowley mutters, at a loss for anything else to say. “Didn’t swim anywhere, did I? Doesn’t make sense.”
Aziraphale is still smiling at him. He squeezes Crowley’s hand and - that look on his face, the most devilish Crowley has ever seen him. He surely must enjoy seeing his face burn up like the fourth of bloody July whenever someone compliments him.
Maybe he had got it wrong, after all; maybe Aziraphale was worthy of being a demon.
“I’m quite pleased with you, dearest. Good lad.”
“Whatever,” Crowley says with a sniff. He has to let go of Aziraphale’s hand to climb into his Bentley, but it at least gives him a chance to hide for a second behind the car door and focus on getting his face back to its normal colour. “Shut up. I’m not nice. Which way is the restaurant?”
“Oh! I’m quite certain you turn right, really, it’s a shorter journey in that direction. Yes, definitely the right. I’m sure of it.”
Crowley hums vaguely. He switches on the ignition and sighs comfortably as the car engine obediently spurs to life, purring quietly under his feet. He can almost-believe a lot of what his angel claims, and certainly-believe a whole lot more. But this?
He turns left.
*******
“Excellent! Okay, now from the beginning, dear. Right, left - don’t forget to point your toes! - right, feet together. Keep that arm up! Then step back with you left, then right -”
The only dance Aziraphale knows is a lively French folk dance called the Gavotte; it was one that involved a lot of pointed toes and jaunty steps, back and forth across the antique Persian rug that was spread across the heat-battered wooden floorboards in front of Aziraphale’s fireplace. Crowley had tried to teach him to disco dance, once upon a time, but - while Aziraphale was hardly short of enthusiasm - he was a little stunted in the gyration-department, and spent most of the session complaining that the synthesizers and electric rhythms were straining his eardrums.
“Now -” Aziraphale hooks an arm around the small of Crowley’s back, twisting his body in time with the piano notes that were filtering somewhat lazily out of the vintage gramophone displayed proudly in the centre of Aziraphale’s desk. “Step forward with your left - that’s it, excellent, dear - and half-twist to the side. Then you circle around with your left foot again, another half-twist, and you’re facing the opposite side. Wonderful! You’re doing a fantastic job, my dear!”
Crowley mumbles something that isn’t really any word in particular, but he never quite knows how to respond when Aziraphale says things like that.
Good job!
Well done!
I’m proud of you!
He suppresses a shudder; Aziraphale would surely notice something was wrong, what with the side of his body pressed directly against Crowley’s back, pushing his arm this way or one of his legs that way. It’s all too sickeningly… angelic.
Too blatantly, awfully Aziraphale.
Still, there’s something about it all that nags at the corner of Crowley’s conscious in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant, not in the slightest. It almost feels undeserved; like he’s unworthy of the slightest bit of affection for completely the simplest of tasks. Like making a sandwich or saying something nice to a fucking bunch of leaves. Stupid little things. Things that would probably make Ligur's stomach turn inside-out if he ever got wind of them.
Hastur would probably shit himself right then and there.
Crowley tries his best not to laugh out loud. That would actually be pretty funny.
But the fact still remains: he is a demon. His existence is the very basis of every single hardship and transgression that has ever happened since time began. There was rust on the frayed edges of his soul, blood-red in colour and flaking under the slightest feather-light touch. It was an acrid smell that followed whatever path he took, a ghost he just couldn’t quite shake. Where his blood boiled in the veins of his borrowed-body, it left smoke and debris littered across his bones like the crumbling ash from a discarded cigarette: still smouldering enough to hurt when poked with the bare tip of his finger, but not worth much more than to be left amongst the gravel and empty crisp packets on the side of London’s busiest road.
It takes a moment for Crowley to notice that Aziraphale has stopped dancing, and a second more to realise why: he hasn’t moved for the past few minutes, apparently opting instead to stare into the empty space between Aziraphale’s desk and the fireplace.
He hums back to reality as Aziraphale gives him a gentle prod on his side and whisper in his ear of, “Dearest?”
“What?” Crowley doesn’t meant to sound quite as sharp as he does.
Aziraphale shoots him one of his most scrutinising frowns. “You seem distant. You’ve been studying my wallpaper for a solid few minutes now, and, well, not to put down my own design choices but frankly it isn’t that interesting.”
Another once over - there’s no hiding anything from those eyes.
Crowley shrugs in that infuriatingly dismissive manner which he spent many years perfecting after a rather boring few assignments while stuck in Edinburgh during the sixteenth century.
“Nothing,” he lies, weighted down with the knowledge that he knows Aziraphale can tell. “Come on, step-step, left-right, whatever. Show me how it’s done, Angel.”
He watches a number of emotions flit across Aziraphale’s face, settling finally on resolute concern. Crowley lets him run a thumb over the curve of his cheek for less than a second before pulling away.
“Dearest,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley responds with some half-hearted grumble about one thing or another. “Dearest, if something’s the matter -”
Crowley doesn’t let him finish. “It’s nothing,” he says again, and tries to focus on the jovial little music notes still floating around them.
“If you don’t like the dance, or the way I teach, we can always do something else, but I think you’re doing a wonderful job of -”
There it is again. Those stupid little comments. At this point, Crowley is half-certain that Aziraphale is making fun of him, jabbing at the most sensitive parts of his ego in order to rile him up. To make him remember that he’s Fallen, that he’s nothing, that he’s -
“Crowley?” Aziraphale reaches out to cup the side of his face again. He lets him for longer than a second this time, settling the crook of his jaw into his palm as though it was the first time he had been touched since he Fell. “You can talk to me about anything, you know. You’d think so after everything we’ve been through, what with the apocalypse and all that.” It’s followed by a short little laugh, an admirable enough attempt at lightening the sudden dour mood that’s settled over the whole room.
“Yeah,” says Crowley, almost brushing him off again. He stops himself at the last second, letting the warmth from Aziraphale’s palm seep into the now-clammy skin of his cheek. He attempts his own little laugh but the dryness of his mouth makes the sound crumble into dust as it leaves his mouth. “Yeah, I - uh, I guess you’re right. It just feels… y’know, weird. Freaky. Don’t like it.”
“The apocalypse? I mean, that -”
“No,” Crowley says, and then hesitates. “I mean, yeah. Yeah, the apocalypse, of course the apocalypse. But like, no, not right now. It’s just -” He looks Aziraphale up and down, realises he has his glasses on so Aziraphale can’t really see his eyes or where he looks, and finally makes another vague gesture at his… everything. “It’s not the apocalypse, it’s just… y’know, you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. No. I mean, yeah, I guess, technically, but like… no? I don’t know, Angel. Can we just do your stupid dance again and drink more wine. I don’t like talking when I’m sober.”
For just a moment, Aziraphale looks like he’s about to protest at that comment, but lets it sink in for a moment before responding with a curt nod. “Fair enough, dear. Talking about things is always easier after a glass or two, but - on angelic principle - let’s just pretend I didn’t say that.” He flashes him a smile, withdraws his hand, and miracles two perfect crystal glasses pinched between his finger and thumb instead. “Wonderful idea, dear. Very good.”
Crowley groans. He snatches the bottle of wine straight from Aziraphale’s other hand and swallows as much as the throat of his human body will physically allow him to. “ That ,” he says, running a sloppy hand across his mouth and smearing drops of the Cabernet Sauvignon across his face - the red goes largely undetected against the colour already staining his cheeks. “That. That, that - that thing you’re doing with your mouth.”
Aziraphale runs the tip of his tongue self-consciously across his lips at this. “Are you referring to talking?”
“Yeah!” Crowley stops, takes another swig, and then decides to graciously fill up the empty glass still in Aziraphale’s hand. “I mean, like, no - no, not talking , no, I… like it when you talk. It’s… the other thing you do. Y’know.”
Aziraphale’s sigh is surrounded by a fond-sounding laugh. “No, dear, I don’t know. Can you explain it to me?”
He feels his face scrunch up in thought. “I mean, maybe? It’s that thing where you - you, like, do this thing. You say these things that make me feel all weird, like you’re making fun of me.”
“I would never mock you!” He sounds sincerely scandalised at the very suggestion.
“I know, Angel.” He tries to stress the words as much as possible. “I know you wouldn’t, it just feels like you are. I dunno, it’s weird. It makes me feel weird.” He’s feeling weird right now, and drinks another slug of wine to combat it. “Like, you - when you say stuff like ‘good job’ or call me wonderful.” The words taste strange in his mouth and he smacks his lips together, drowning the cloying flavour with more wine - that technique has certainly never failed him before.
“You are wonderful.”
Crowley ponders this for a moment. “But, like,” he eventually says, after weighing the thought in his head, “I’m not.” He watches the lines in Aziraphale’s face crumple together at this, and so takes his hand on instinct. “Like, literally, I mean. Literally, I’m not wonderful. I’m a demon. Inside, innately… whatever, the point is, Angel, deep down, I’m definitely not wonderful. Probably why it feels so weird.”
Aziraphale nods sagely. “Alright,” he says, “I understand, but I respectfully disagree. Not that it makes you feel weird, that’s completely valid, but I disagree with the claim that you aren’t wonderful. I would know if you weren’t deep down a good person. Angelic senses, and whatnot. You, my dear Crowley, are wonderful.”
Crowley feels his blood begin to burn. He puts it down to all the wine, at the risk of admitting that it’s something else a little more personal.
He doesn’t quite know how to respond to this; the candor of his expression is nearly overwhelming, as though he’s tearing Crowley apart molecule by molecule and targeting every single one of his insecurities with genuine guidance. So, instead of producing any form of well-constructed response, he simply repeats, “but, like, I’m not.”
Aziraphale’s face lights up with his laugh this time, and Crowley, in the very back of his head, makes a note about how much he likes the way his forehead crinkles just slightly under the cherubic curls of his hair.
“Not that I don’t love a good debate with you, my dear, but I fear we may be going back and forth on this matter.” He pauses, and Crowley watches something inscrutable worm it’s way into his otherwise-delighting expression. “Does it make you uncomfortable? I’ll stop if it does.”
“No,” Crowley says, and it comes out far quicker than he intends, “no, it doesn’t. Weird, yeah, but like… in a good way? Does that make sense? No, it probably doesn’t, so stop nodding.”
“It makes sense,” he is assured. “So am I allowed to keep calling you wonderful? Because I mean it, you know. I don’t lie, you know.”
Crowley, for the first time this evening, properly laughs. It’s loud and ugly and he absolutely drinks in the way that Aziraphale appears to relish in the sound, smiling along with him in that awfully dopey way that’s typical of a man who doesn’t quite understand the joke but still loves to see people be happy (even, perhaps, if it meant being the butt of that joke). It’s a sound that bubbles up all the way from the pit of his belly, and it nearly startles Crowley into dropping his precious bottle of wine directly onto Aziraphale’s beautifully patterned carpet as it breaks out of him in like a flurried beast.
“Oh, sure, yeah,” he says, having finally calmed down enough to form actual words again, “yeah, sure. I know you don’t tell lies, but there’s a difference between telling lies and lying. You, Angel, absolutely lie.”
“I do not! I’ve never lied to you once, dear; not once.”
Another sip of wine hides the smugness that finds its way oh-so-comfortably back onto Crowley’s lips. “You told a customer yesterday that a first edition copy of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband was out of stock.”
“It was out of stock!”
“Fuck off, Angel, I saw it sitting on your desk!” Crowley throws his arm across the room, “It’s literally right bloody there! Five fucking feet away from where we’re sitting!”
Aziraphale splutters in protest. “And,” he says, composing himself with far too much dignity for a man caught red-handed, “thus it is out of stock.” He finishes his own glass of wine and Crowley automatically refills it for him. “It’s not stocked in the shop, ergo it is out of stock. Now, if that customer had asked if it was in my possession, well, the answer might have been different.”
“Bullshit.”
“Language, darling.”
“Cowshit?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you jolly well know that.”
It’s nice to let the tension out, Crowley thinks. He’s three-quarters way through the first bottle, and - while he’s definitely not drunk (it takes far more than that to get any occult - or ethereal - being drunk) - he can feel its warmth starting to move from a tickle in the back of his throat to a loosening, pleasant buzz. He lets himself collapse back into one of Aziraphale’s plush armchairs, probably one that he bought in 1800 when he opened his bookshop, that was worn down to it’s springs but Aziraphale clearly didn’t have the heart to either fix it with a little miracle (it takes out the character, my dear, I don’t want to lose all those memories of you staining it with various alcohols over the years) or replace it with another, newer chair.
They sit in amiable silence while Crowley finishes the rest of the bottle and promptly uncorks another, this time making the effort of filling both of their glasses (Aziraphale’s first, naturally) and sipping it in a bit more of a civilised manner. An hour into their session, Aziraphale decides he’s sick of continuously leaning over the coffee table to reach the bottle (since Crowley, powering through his wine with the speed of a depressed university student two hours before a big deadline, keeps setting down the bottle much closer to himself than to Aziraphale), so he rather prudently removes himself from his little sofa and plops himself down in the space next to Crowley in the armchair.
“Squidge up, there’s a good boy,” he says, wriggling into the tiny space and pushing Crowley flat against the arm of the chair. With an outrageous amount of mock-displeasure, Crowley throws one foot across Aziraphale’s lap and leaves the other tangled somewhere between the legs of the coffee table and the fast-growing pile of empty wine bottles.
“Good boy,” Crowley parrots, spitting a little wine onto Aziraphale’s lapel in the process, “there you go again with all the - the, y’know, thingy we talked about.”
“The thingy, oh sure.”
“Y’know, the thingy. Wonderful, or whatever. Yeah.”
Aziraphale seems to spend a moment or two tasting the word in his mouth, swirling it around his tongue like a wine not that much finer than the one they’re currently demolishing. “Wonderful,” he repeats, “you definitely are. Wonderful, yes, quite wonderful.” He closes his eyes, muttering the word over and over again, savouring it in every way possible. He murmurs it into the crook of Crowley’s neck and Crowley feels the reverberations pierce him deep inside the marrow of his bones.
Mostly, however, he’s worried that Aziraphale will be able to feel the blood and heat rushing at full-force towards his face again, blooming in unsightly patches across his cheeks and neck. He’s thankful that, if Aziraphale does notice anything, it goes unmentioned.
“Wonderful,” he hears Aziraphale say again, and then feels the warmth leave for just a second as Aziraphale pulls back. “And you’re sure that’s okay? You don’t mind terribly?”
Crowley, with some degree of petulance, shifts so Aziraphale’s face is pressed back into his neck. “It’s fine, Angel,” he says, letting the wine in his system push words out before he has a chance to think them through, “it’s - it’s wonderful. I like it, yeah.”
He feels Aziraphale smile, hears it in his voice as he moves them both again in order to wiggle an arm around Crowley’s middle. “Wonderful.”
The word feels a little like a joke at this point, but a joke that they’re both in on; something that they can both enjoy.
He listens to Aziraphale say it over and over, again and again, until he feels somewhat dizzy at the sound of it, and all meaning is lost. Wonderful, Crowley, you are truly and simply wonderful. He finishes a third bottle of wine, now most definitely erring on the side of tipsy, and rolls the empty bottle rather uncouthly across the carpet in a haze.
“I honestly, truly believe that, you know. My dearest, I wouldn’t lie -” Aziraphale clears his throat, “at least, never - never to you.”
“I Fell.” The words escape Crowley’s mouth before he knows what he is saying. Damn, the wine.
Aziraphale pulls away again, just slightly this time. Enough only to allow enough space to reach up and slide off Crowley’s dark glasses to focus on his eyes. He’s suddenly very serious, almost frighteningly so, and it’s enough to make Crowley wonder if Aziraphale has sobered up without him noticing. Then, Aziraphale hiccups, and Crowley’s heart settles down from his throat a little.
“No one” Aziraphale says, “should be entirely judged by their past. Wilde said that.”
Crowley can’t help but sneer. Possibly jealousy, possibly the holier-than-thou tone of voice he feels Aziraphale is now lecturing him with - at this point in the evening, he isn’t sure, but more importantly he doesn’t care.
“Our dearest Ozzy,” he scoffs, “was probably talking about over-using opium, or criminal convictions for ‘gross indecency’. He didn’t Fall. You didn’t Fall.” He lets this settle over them from a moment. “I did.”
“You ‘sauntered vaguely downwards’. You ‘hung around the wrong people’. You -”
“I asked fucking questions and got booted out of the fucking Golden Gates, Angel. I fucking Fell.”
He doesn’t realise how angry he is, doesn’t quite notice the salt on his cheeks, until Aziraphale thumbs a tear away. They’re both quiet, uncomfortably so this time, and for far too long than either of them are used to. Crowley doesn’t like it. He can tell Aziraphale doesn’t like it either, but his anger tells - no, it orders - him to stay shut up out of spite.
It burns more than it ever has before, this anger. It’s a teeth-baring, blind-making, clench-your-fist-until-your-palm-bleeds sort of fury that shakes him to his core, as furious and wreaking as the swan-song of an animal caught in the hunter’s trap. Scowling, screeching, full and bodily as anything that Crowley has ever touched, ever crafted with his own two hands, his own ten fingers. Tearing him apart bit by bit, inch by inch, with the most visceral pain - hurting not least because, in this small moment, in this one little knot in the beautifully knitted fabric of time, he hates Aziraphale.
Crowley hates him.
He hates perfectly buttered sandwiches, he hates cutting them in half diagonally, he hates jam and marmalade and whatever the fucking difference between a preserve and a compote is, he hates walks in the park on sunny afternoons when the ash-grey clouds are convinced it’s going to rain but never while they’re hand-in-hand, he hates stupid little cafes that always have a spare table for two, he hates Shakespeare and he hates Burbage, and the Lord Herself knows he hates fucking Hamlet, he hates his plants, he hates the stupid, stupid fake little Eden of his flat, he hates philodendrons and ferns and dumb little bonsai trees, he hates fruitbowls of crisp apples and he hates the desk they sit on, he hates gramophones, he hates music, he hates ugly patterned carpets, he hates French folk dances and his feet going right-left-right-left-twist-fucking-whatever, he hates cosy old armchairs from 1800, he hates books and bookshops and he particularly fucking hates Oscar Wilde, he hates lying, he hates finicky little stickers that tell you how much things cost, he hates Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and Shiraz and Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Champagne, he hates crystal glasses, he hates wonderful and my dear and dearest and good boy, and most of all, right now, in this very God damned moment, he detests - he loathes - he abhors - he absolutely fucking hates Aziraphale.
And then Aziraphale wipes another tear from the corner of his eye, presses his lips oh-so-gently onto the back of his hand, whispers I’m sorry, my dear, my wonderful Crowley, and he smiles that stupid, awful, angelic smile of his, and Crowley feels it all melt, melt, melt away.
Crowley curls himself against Aziraphale’s chest, hating now only that the armchair couldn’t push them closer together, and the vulnerability that so often comes with drunkenly lounging across someone’s lap. Aziraphale cards his fingers through his hair, and Crowley forgets, instantly, how he could ever hate him in the first place.
“Is that what this is about?” It’s so quiet that Crowley almost doesn’t hear him. He mumbles something that he thinks is meant to be yeah, maybe , but really it’s anyone’s guess. “Oh, Crowley,” he whispers, again and again and again. “Oh, my dear, my sweet Crowley.”
The wine has fully taken over by now, but Crowley can’t be bothered to sober up. Sobering up meant facing things, talking like an adult, dealing with things that quite frankly he doesn’t ever want to deal with. Right now, in this very moment, in this miniscule, worthless little flicker against the great expanse of all that ever was, and ever is, and ever will be, all Crowley wants to think about is Aziraphale ( his angel ) drying his tears with butterfly kisses against his cheeks, and the sound of him whispering wonderful over, and over, and over, and over, and -
“Tell me again,” he says, he chokes, he screams. “Please.”
Aziraphale tugs on Crowley’s chin and breathes the words against his lips. “You’re wonderful. So wonderful, my dear, my sweet, my Crowley. You treat me so well, though I know I can be - how you might say - a bit of a bastard, on the occasion.”
He’s kissing Crowley now. Properly, on the lips, as though he needs to grip onto him for dear life lest he tumble down the rabbit hole of reality and find himself thoroughly lost for a second time since the birth of the universe. No hand kisses, no gentle pecks on his cheeks, no soft and sweet words whispered against his lips.
It’s hungry - no, it’s ravenous - and the whole time Crowley feels the rust that tarnishes his soul peeling back to make room for barrage of sweet nothings that Aziraphale anoints him with this evening.
“Beautiful,” he hears, “fantastically clever, perfect, magnificent, marvellous, well and truly and absolutely wholeheartedly ideal. You are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.”
“Wonderful,” Crowley tries to say back, but his mouth is too busy being occupied by Aziraphale, who - after six thousand years without a proper kiss, a proper touch - is hardly one to relinquish it, not now, not his dearest.
Aziraphale smiles into the kiss. He runs his fingers through Crowley’s hair, traces over the arch of his brow and nose, trails his nails down the curve of his jaw, makes a home under Crowley’s shirt.
“Wonderful,” he breathes, breaking away for just enough time to do so and not a second more, “wonderful.”
Wonderful.
Crowley turns the word over on his tongue, as Aziraphale’s tongue turns over his.
Wonderful.
Something too wonderful as Aziraphale, as his angel, would almost certainly hurt to lose. But here, right now, in this moment?
Crowley, for perhaps the first time in six thousand years, fully, totally, absolutely believes him.