Chapter Text
It started slowly: an accidental brush of skin when Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s untouched-til-then dessert, a grazing of the shoulders when they drifted close while walking and never course-corrected. It was the angel who started to take advantage of this, who initiated the hands that rested on shoulders, the reassuring touches when the trauma got to be too much.
Crowley didn’t complain. Not at first.
Then the touch itself became too much. The warmth of Aziraphale’s skin started, metaphorically, to burn. Six thousand years of pulling back, of respecting boundaries he knew Aziraphale never wanted to set–it would be so easy to break those barriers now. But six thousand years was a long time, and Crowley couldn’t read minds. Knowing where the line had been didn’t mean he knew where it was now.
So it was Aziraphale, eventually who reached out with a trembling hand to take Crowley’s in his. And it was Crowley who, aching to his core, pulled his hand away.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry. I thought–”
“I don’t know what’s allowed,” said Crowley. His voice was hoarse, echoing the desperation it had held at the end of the world. “I don’t know where the line is.”
Aziraphale reached out and took his hand. Their fingers tangled together. Angel and demon alike were shaking.
“Do you trust me, my dear?” Crowley wasn’t the type to answer aloud, but they knew each other well enough for Aziraphale to understand the silence. “I thought so. I don’t know either, you know. I have no idea where the line is. But you can trust me not to cross it.”
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Neither of them let go.