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It was New Year’s Eve, the bookshop was closed, and two supernatural beings were bickering for no other reason than to bicker, having long lost the thread of their respective arguments in favor of simply talking to each other. The jug of mulled wine had gone empty, the table it rested on littered with exquisitely festive little gingerbread creations from a charming bakery nearby. The back rooms were warm and cozy, of course, especially the squashy couch that housed a pleasantly sloshed Crowley and Aziraphale. Sharing the sofa was a new phenomenon, in light of the ApocaLet’s-Not, Aziraphale’s soft knees budging up against Crowley’s bony ones, the tips of Crowley’s fingers brushing Aziraphale’s shoulder as he drunkenly gestured to illustrate his point. Aziraphale had stopped trying to count the touches between them sometime around September, when up until then he could recall every one over their long friendship with perfect clarity.
“—all I’m saying, is that—Italians really knew how to throw a party,” Crowley burped around his words. “Lost art, party-throwing. Went all quiet and dignified for a while. Makes me glad I slept through…whenever it was. Boring old nineteenth century.”
“I cannot believe you slept so long you almost missed the 1920s,” Aziraphale sighed[1]. “It—really seemed like your scene.”
“Who says I did?” Crowley grinned, stretching out his leg and settling his ankle over Aziraphale’s foot. “Might’ve been all my idea, the twenties. Lovely great parties, over in America.”
“Nasty bootlegging business,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Organized crime. Did you get a commendation for that one?”
“Might’ve done,” Crowley mused, looking into his empty wineglass like he’d just remembered he had it. “Twenties were fun. Sixties were fun. Great music.”
“Not all that great,” Aziraphale mumbled, and Crowley’s foot tangled up in his twitched.
“You know your problem, angel,” Crowley grumped, pushing his already gravity-defying hair further up his forehead, “your problem is—closed-minded.”
“I am not,” Aziraphale protested, going to set down his own glass and misjudging the distance, instead dropping it to shatter on the floor. “Oh, bother—” He miracled it whole onto the coffee table, rattling with the horrified memory of its recent destruction. “Anyway, I’m perfectly open-minded. Open—open like a book. All the books.” He gestured around them at the bookshop for emphasis.
“Name one new thing you’ve accepted since 1873.” Crowley raised his empty glass to his lips, then realized it was empty again and set it on the floor, leaning his head on his newly-freed hand. “Not a book.”
“The computer,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley rolled his eyes, long since uncovered and gone warm and languid with the rest of him.
“Still over twenty years old,” Crowley said dismissively. “It doesn’t even work anymore, angel, why do you still have it?”
“I believe you pressed the issue until I had one,” Aziraphale yawned, full of good wine and feeling quite comfortable indeed. “I’m perfectly open-minded. I just like used, comfortable things.”
“You’re a used, comfortable thing,” Crowley muttered, his tone petulant. Aziraphale smiled, leaning back and closing his eyes, his arm resting along the back of the sofa and close enough to feel the quiet presence of Crowley’s arm. The ensuing silence was familiar and amicable, the kind of silence that had become the norm since summer[2].
“I rather think I am,” Aziraphale murmured after a few long, long moments. He heard the gramophone that had been playing soft, quiet classical tunes all evening start to skip, and sighed. He was far too comfortable to want to get up and deal with it right now. Crowley, however, began to twitch and fidget the longer the skip occurred.
“If I have to fix it, I’m taking control of the music,” Crowley warned, and Aziraphale sighed again.
“Go on, then,” he said without opening his eyes. “It’s a holiday. I can be…” Aziraphale smiled, and sat up to look Crowley in the eye, “open-minded.”
“You think you’re just so clever, angel,” Crowley chuckled with no reproach, and snapped his fingers. Some bouncy, poppy modern music began filtering through the dusty bookshop air. “If you’re so clever, how come—how come you only learned one dance, in six thousand years?”
“One dance that you know of,” Aziraphale muttered, and at the slow smile spreading on Crowley’s face he instantly regretted it.
“Really,” Crowley purred, sounding far too predatory for Aziraphale’s current languorous mood. He leaned forward, shifting so his knee was overlapping Aziraphale’s thigh, a crooked smile and mischief glimmering in his yellow eyes. “Show me, then.”
“I have nothing to prove to you, you fiend,” Aziraphale huffed, and felt his unnecessary heart thump harder as Crowley leaned closer, practically crawling into his lap; he was really quite close now.
“Why, angel,” Crowley said softly, “are you lying to me?”
“I—no,” Aziraphale stammered. Crowley was much too close. All rational thought, already hampered by all the wine, stuttered to a halt. “I—learned. Steps, anyway. Never, ah—never did—practice it, myself.”
Crowley’s amusement seemed to make his eyes shine brighter, and he sat back. Aziraphale let himself breathe, then Crowley thrust his hand in Aziraphale’s face. “Show me,” he said, with the smugness of a creature that fully expected to be entertained by someone else’s failure and soon. Aziraphale sighed and banished a good amount of the alcohol from his system, just enough to leave a pleasant buzz, and ate a gingerbread dove to rid his mouth of the sour aftertaste. He wasn’t about to cavort about and make a fool of himself while too drunk to avoid bookshelves. Crowley noticed and sobered up some, as well, genuine interest taking up real estate on his face[3].
“I went to a great many social gatherings over the centuries, you know,” Aziraphale sniffed, standing and taking Crowley’s hand. Somehow, after all they’d been through, the contact still shot electricity into his gut. “I’m clever enough to pick up on a pattern, when presented with one. Dance is just patterned steps, set to a rhythm. Easy enough.”
“Right,” Crowley said as he was hauled to his feet, something like irony in his smile now. “Still a world of difference between observing and doing.”
“How difficult could it be?” Aziraphale retorted, leading Crowley to a more open area of the bookshop. Through the large store windows, shuttered though they were, a picturesque snowfall painted the glass with frost, and somewhere outside was the muffled sound of merrymaking humans. Aziraphale tried to squash the sudden butterflies in his stomach as he pulled Crowley around to face him. They hadn’t always been butterflies—once, not very long ago at all, they’d been dirty great dragons, writhing and swooping and paralyzing him with roars about propriety and millennia of conditioning regarding what an angel Should or Shouldn’t Do, what an angel and a demon Could and Couldn’t Be to each other. Then they were geese, honking about the certainty of retribution for his and Crowley’s rather astounding acts of defiance against Heaven and Hell. Then they were sparrows, twittering about his own silliness, how he was much too ridiculous, too soft, too thoughtless.
Honestly, Aziraphale should be welcoming that they were now silent, fragile butterflies giving voice to his emotional turmoil. He’d done far too much work on his own to not be conscious of the fact[4], as he prepared to dance. He, an angel, dancing. And with a demon, no less, his opposite in every sense. His complement. His Crowley.
Now, hang on, the butterflies murmured, his Crowley? How forward. How presumptuous. How forbidden, they whispered with the echoes of terrible roars.
Oh, hush, Aziraphale told them irritably as he finished maneuvering Crowley into position. Crowley’s smile was still amused, but his eyes were soft as Aziraphale put one of Crowley’s hands on his shoulder and held the other in his own, sliding his free hand to Crowley’s upper back. Aziraphale had enough to be going on with proving Crowley wrong to be worried about the opinions of metaphorical insects. Humans danced with little consequence all the time. He knew Crowley didn’t mind the closeness, either. If anything, he’d been seeking it out from Aziraphale at every opportunity, watching with a wary set to his spine, looking like he was expecting Aziraphale to flinch away and denounce him. Which…was fair. But there was no need to flinch or turn away from Crowley anymore, was there? Five months could hardly undo thousands of years of learned behaviors and coping mechanisms keeping Aziraphale’s heart bound in his chest, to say nothing of the state of denial he’d clung to in the last desperate days before Armageddon(‘t), but. Well. Five months was quite enough time to do this much.
Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the music changed again—still modern, in acquiescence to Crowley’s taste, but he needed the right beat, something softer. Slower. Aziraphale hadn’t specified a song, but the gramophone seemed to have one on-hand[5], a woman’s soft croon filling the soft background. Aziraphale took a deep breath, focused his attention on their feet, and took a step.
Crowley adjusted with his usual smoothness, and when Aziraphale glanced up at his face, Crowley’s smile evolved into a chuckle. “You still need to watch what you’re doing during a waltz, angel?” he teased, and Aziraphale huffed at him, feeling his cheeks go hot.
“I’ve never done this before,” he snapped, and stumbled. “Look, see, I need to concentrate! What if I step on you next?”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, his voice full of warmth and patience, “look at me.”
Aziraphale sighed and gave in, and with small motions, careful motions, Crowley moved closer, the hand on his shoulder becoming an arm curling them close together. Crowley pressed his cheek to Aziraphale’s as they slotted together more closely. Aziraphale felt his breath catch in his throat. Slowly, he slid his hand down Crowley’s spine, feeling the shiver in Crowley’s entire body as Aziraphale rested his hand on the small of Crowley’s back. The structured steps stuttered to a mere shuffling of feet, a gentle circle of motion fading into the barest of movements. Aziraphale’s skin burned in the best, most pleasant ways at the multiple points of contact between them, and as they swayed while the woman on the gramophone sighed about falling in love despite herself, Aziraphale interlaced his fingers with Crowley’s in the hands they were still holding together; it was beyond gratifying to feel Crowley clutching at Aziraphale’s hand as tightly as Aziraphale was clutching at Crowley’s. Crowley’s breath ticked Aziraphale’s ear, and he thought he heard Crowley give the tiniest, most contented sigh. Or maybe that was Aziraphale. Or quite possibly the houseplants, spreading their leaves and soaking in the quiet atmosphere like sunlight.
The gramophone eventually faded into quiet, playing only clicks and pops, but Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t release each other. For Aziraphale’s part, he was barely aware of the music’s end, his attention entirely tangled up in Crowley and the shivering-electric dance of heat in his skin and stomach and chest. Crowley’s thumb gently began stroking along Aziraphale’s, and he tipped his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder, too close to Aziraphale’s neck to be entirely innocent. Aziraphale thought he may skip discorporation and go straight to vaporized with the strength of the emotions thrumming along his nerve endings.
Abruptly, the faraway human noise outside exploded, and Aziraphale started until it registered what he was hearing.
“A countdown,” Aziraphale breathed as Crowley lifted his head, and Aziraphale squeezed his hand in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. “It must be close to midnight.”
“Well, might should do the thing properly, then,” Crowley said, and squirmed out of Aziraphale’s arms. Aziraphale snatched his hands back, but Crowley stayed rather close, summoning a pair of full champagne flutes into his hands. He held one out to Aziraphale as the countdown neared completion, holding the other up in a toast.
“To open minds, angel,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale was seized by a mad, insane idea. It was ludicrous. He should not under any circumstances act on it.
3…
2…
1…
They were still close enough that as humans outside hollered and celebrated, an angel put his hand around the hand offering him a drink, and darted in bird-like to peck a demon on the lips.
“To open minds,” Aziraphale said breathlessly, and Crowley stared at him, mouth hanging open. Before the twelfth chime of midnight ringing in the new year, Crowley had dropped both champagne flutes, taken Aziraphale’s face in his newly-unburdened hands, and kissed him in a manner that suggested he didn’t intend to budge for approximately six thousand years. Not, Aziraphale thought as he put his hands on Crowley’s waist to drag him closer, that he could conceive of ever wanting Crowley to stop what he was doing.
Breathing wasn’t a necessity, exactly, but stopping for breath seemed natural as Crowley eventually drew back, resting his forehead against Aziraphale’s, soothing his thumbs over Aziraphale’s cheeks. Aziraphale laughed, feeling his whole face crinkle with the joy of it, and Crowley’s answering smile was tender and warm.
“Happy New Year, indeed,” Aziraphale murmured, and Crowley gave a strangled sort of laugh that had the edge of tears. Not that Aziraphale’s eyes were feeling much drier.
“Against all odds,” Crowley replied quietly, and leaned back in for another kiss, which Aziraphale was all too eager to give.
The gramophone may have crackled back to life, and maybe the miracled champagne and glass fragments were safely disposed of along with their damage to the bookshop carpet. It was hard to tell. For a long, beautiful moment, time stood still in the most natural way possible, the gentle slide of lips and beat of hearts more accurate than any old clock on the whole blessed Earth[6].
[1] At this point, Aziraphale was a little too drunk to do proper math regarding certain dates.
[2] If they were being honest, it had been the norm for approximately two thousand years or more, but the distinct lack of worry over Upstairs or Downstairs coming to collect their wings over a bit of friendship had lent a pleasantness to this particular silence that was almost buoyant.
[3] It was quite cozy with the aforementioned smugness and something soft and gentle Aziraphale had been aware of but too afraid to mention for quite some time.
[4] And he was rather proud of himself for the accomplishment, too. Not bad for an immortal being who couldn’t exactly go to therapy to work out his problems.
[5] On-speaker? On-needle? He was being ridiculous again.
[6] Clock, lips, and hearts all agreed: the true time was Far Too Long to Have Waited for This.