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When Crowley and Aziraphale went to light the candles on the fourth night of Chanukah, they were both in a decent mood. They had spent most of the day together, with a brief respite in the early afternoon while Aziraphale read and Crowley tended to his plants, and they were getting along well. Crowley insisted upon lighting the candles himself, and although Aziraphale had been planning on doing it, he couldn’t think of a good reason to deny him, so he acquiesced.
That was when things started to go downhill.
Crowley’s hands were shaking, was the thing, and he refused to acknowledge it. Aziraphale didn’t notice until after the demon had lit the match, so he didn’t want to interrupt, but Crowley’s hands were shaking something awful.
“Erm,” Aziraphale piped up when he could no longer take it. “Crowley, dear, are you quite sure you don’t want me to do that?”
“No, angel, it’s fine,” Crowley huffed, staring intently at the match in his hand as if daring it to burn down to his fingertips.
He lit the shamash with some difficulty, put out the match and set it aside. Then, rather than picking up the candle and using it to light the rest of them, as was customary, he promptly knocked over the chanukiah. The shamash fell but stayed lit, rolling several inches away; it caught first on the entire book of matches, then on a nearby dish towel, quickly building to a flame the size of a common domestic cat on Crowley’s kitchen counter.
Aziraphale yelped and jumped back before overcoming the initial shock and regaining his composure. He snapped his fingers, putting out the fire even faster than it had appeared and setting all the items on the counter back to rights, and released a hard-held breath once he was certain the imminent danger was gone.
“I told you –,” he began berating Crowley, only to turn and find that the demon was no longer standing beside him. “Crowley?”
Furrowing his brow, the angel looked around him, searching for where Crowley had run off to. It had only been a few seconds, he couldn’t have gotten far. Aziraphale stepped into the living room and peered down the hall, finding nothing, and then he heard a noise.
It was a soft sort of whimper, and it was coming from Crowley’s bedroom. Aziraphale was loath to intrude on the demon’s privacy, but he was rather concerned, so he ventured to knock on the door.
“Crowley? Are you alright?”
There was no answer, not with words at least. Aziraphale heard a loud sniff, a desperate gulp of air, a muffled sob, and then he opened the door, deciding rather soundly that he could intrude this once.
Crowley was on the floor in the corner with his knees pulled up to his chest, his teeth digging into his forearm, his body wracked with sobs. He saw Aziraphale come in and met the angel’s concerned gaze, only to squeeze his eyes shut and fall into a renewed spell of tears.
Out of his depth and worried for his friend, Aziraphale moved to kneel in front of the demon, cooing gently in a weak attempt to soothe him. When he saw how hard Crowley was biting down on his arm, the angel’s concern tipped rather closer to alarm. He ventured a slow and careful reach to blanket Crowley’s hand with his own, giving the demon’s fingers a gentle squeeze.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, not wanting to startle Crowley by speaking suddenly. “Crowley, can you hear me? I need you to let go of your arm, can you do that?”
After freezing up at the sound of the angel’s soft voice, Crowley tried to shake his head, inadvertently causing his arm to slip free of his clamped teeth. He pressed his lips together tightly and buried his face in his arms instead, his hand still firmly held in the angel’s grasp as he continued crying. It took a few minutes, but the demon’s seismic sobs subsided into heaving gasps of air, which eventually took on verbal substance.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, dear,” Aziraphale murmured. “You have to look at me.”
Sniffing, Crowley risked a peek at the angel. “I’m sorry,” he said, ragged and pathetic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Aziraphale wrinkled his brow deeply and pulled Crowley’s hand toward him, holding it now securely in both of his own hands. “Whatever are you sorry for?”
“I fucked it up, angel, I fucked it all up,” Crowley mumbled thickly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Crowley.”
“I ruined it.”
Shaking his head, Aziraphale shushed the demon gently. He moved from his knees to sit next to Crowley against the wall, and Crowley reflexively leaned into him as the angel uttered soothing reassurances. “It’s alright. It’s alright, darling, it was a little thing.”
Crowley shook his head vigorously in return. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to, angel, I’m sorry.”
“Crowley.” The angel’s voice was firm and strict, and he waited for Crowley to look at him again before continuing. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I mean it. What is going on with you? You’re scaring me.”
Pausing for a minute to gather himself more, Crowley focused on the warmth of the angel’s touch to center and ground him, their clasped hands like an anchor holding the demon to the earth. When he was calm enough to think somewhat rationally, he dug around in the recesses of his mind for an explanation.
“I don’t like fire,” he said eventually, almost too quiet to hear. “I’m – it scared me.”
To his great credit, Aziraphale did not laugh, and kept the judgment out of his tone when he said, “You’re afraid of fire?”
Crowley nodded minutely. “Yeah, ever since… well. You know. Since – the bookshop.”
It took a moment before it dawned on Aziraphale what the demon was talking about. “Oh, my dear boy, I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Crowley.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” mumbled the demon.
“Neither do you,” Aziraphale said emphatically. “I just – I wish you’d told me. I didn’t know you were so affected by that.”
“How could I not be?” Crowley looked up properly, resting his chin on his arms and looking at the angel with wild and red-rimmed eyes, his voice heavy and desolate. “I thought you were gone, angel, like – like really, actually gone, and it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. And now I’ll never be able to look at fire without feeling it all over again.”
Aziraphale’s face fell, tears pricking behind his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, a bit lamely. “How’s your arm?”
Crowley looked lost for a moment, furrowing his brow, and then he glanced at his arm and saw the bite marks on his skin. “S’fine,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Didn’t break the skin this time.”
A hot surge of protectiveness ran through Aziraphale, and his grip on Crowley’s hand tightened almost painfully. “This time? What do you mean, this time?”
Turning his face away from the angel’s deeply concerned gaze, Crowley shrugged again. “Happens a lot,” he muttered, “not a big deal.”
“Not a – not a big deal? Crowley,” Aziraphale moaned wretchedly. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, you know that? I don’t want to see you hurting. I don’t want you to just accept your hurt as if it’s normal, or inevitable, as if you have to suffer through it alone, because you don’t. I won’t let you.”
Crowley gave a pitiful sniff and a shaky breath before turning to face Aziraphale again. “You don’t have to say that.”
The angel leaned in closer, touched Crowley’s forehead with his own, spoke in an insistent, fervent whisper. “I do, though. I have to say it because it’s true. Because you need to hear it.”
A tear slipped from the corner of Crowley’s eye and ran down his cheek, and the demon closed his eyes. Struck dumb and overwhelmed, he curled in closer to the length of Aziraphale’s body, moving to rest his head on the angel’s shoulder. They sat quietly together, breathing slowly and deliberately, for a length of time.
“I love you,” Crowley said eventually.
“I love you, too,” Aziraphale replied, quick and plain and easy, and then turned to place a firm kiss on the top of the demon’s head. His lips moved softly against the demon’s hair as he added, nearly inaudible, “So very much.”
Crowley pulled away, then, turning his whole body to face Aziraphale, careful not to pull his hand away from where it was still clasped tightly in the angel’s hold. “Angel,” he said weakly, clearing his throat before continuing, “will you kiss me?”
And Aziraphale did. Carefully, slowly, with a heated gaze locked on the demon’s face, he leaned in and kissed him. At the first feather-light touch of their lips, both beings let their eyes fall shut. Aziraphale’s hands moved to cup Crowley’s cheeks like fragile china; Crowley gasped, then sighed, then slid his own hands up to wrap around the back of Aziraphale’s neck.
The angel used the opportunity of Crowley’s breath to deepen the kiss, licking hotly into his mouth, eliciting another noise of surprise from the demon before he responded in kind. Aziraphale’s hold on his face intensified, thumbs grazing Crowley’s sharp cheekbones as his palms pressed in tight against the demon’s skin, and Crowley twisted his fingers into Aziraphale’s thick curls, pulling him in as if his hold on the angel was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
They took full advantage of their otherworldly constitutions, kissing and kissing for several long minutes. Crowley’s arms found their way to loop around Aziraphale’s neck, while Aziraphale had his hands on the demon’s waist, tucked under the layer of his shirt to share the warmth of skin on skin. When they pulled apart, their lips separated by an inch, their bodies stayed pressed in close to each other.
“Wow,” said the demon breathlessly.
“Mm,” Aziraphale agreed, licking his swollen lips. “We should –”
“Yeah,” Crowley interrupted, anticipating the angel’s words, “we should.”