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Here is a fact so often left unacknowledged: Heaven is not a gentle place despite all appearances and intentions. It has no room for love or touch, just empty halls upon empty halls. It is pure, blank walls and careful rules to make sure there are no more missteps. A set of regulations to be tightly held, consulted with every breath and move.
Yet, try as he might, Aziraphale had never been able to quite follow those rules. A thousand wobbling steps, a thousand questions held between gritted teeth until there was nothing to say anymore. Crowded shops with every nook and cranny filled, indulgences tucked into corners. A fine bottle of wine here, a card from the nice cafe a few blocks away. Golden sunlight on books he’d loved year after year, parting with one only if he saw a familiar spark, a reverent look on a particular volume. Someone looking for something written for someone like them, the ones who dared to step out of line and Aziraphale knew what that looked like. There had to be something holy in that, he supposed, love sneaking in for the world past, present, and future. In the first moment of recognition - the realisation that oh, there is someone like me.
But Aziraphale knew that was a lie—had known, at least. He had known it like he would have known that what he was doing now was wrong, but that certainty had been failing him lately. Things were changing, even if the world couldn’t remember burnt bookshops and boiling seas anymore. That faltering of that conviction was what let him pick up the phone with steady hands, sure of who it must be.
“Hello, this is A.Z Fell—“ he began, determined to be polite on the off chance he was wrong, or Crowley decided to develop some care for manners. The fact he was abruptly cut off was no surprise, just as his indignant huff could be predicted to the second. A discerning person could even predict the exact tone of it, in fact.
“Yes, yes, we get it,” came the answering drawl, sharp in a way that didn’t stretch far below the surface. “Look, the ducks at St James’s Park have gone without feeding for far too long and you owe me something, at least.”
A radiant smile spread across the angel’s face, brighter than his halo and much more welcome. “Of course, dear. Just let me close up and—“ There was a click of a phone hanging up, earning another huff from Aziraphale.
Despite that display of rudeness, Aziraphale went to get his coat and left the shop with little delay, closing up with a simple snap of his fingers. The walk to the park needed no such miracle, the route familiar after so long. It was natural at this point to settle down onto the bench, straight-backed to his… to Crowley’s sprawl. He tried to focus on the space between them, discreetly miracling Crowley’s bread away to be replaced with corn.
“It's better for them,” he said, straightening further in righteous certainty at the demon’s dark scowl.
“It’s not like humans don’t eat plenty of stuff that’s bad for them, I don’t see why birds can’t join in one the fun.” It might have been surprising, the smirk on Crowley’s face—edging close to a smile, Aziraphale firmly didn’t notice—but thousands of years should have left little room for surprise. Should have, because even as Aziraphale spluttered and went on about the diet of ducks, there was still a warm glow in his heart at the smile.
“Fine! Keep your… your salad, the ducks won’t even like it,” Crowley said with disgust, flinging out a handful of corn and pretending that he didn’t know exactly how quickly they would flock to it. There was a pause in the conversation, filled with carefully held back laughter and mutual enjoyment of a well-worn exchange. In recent years Aziraphale had gotten more fussy about casual laughter, only giving in with… well, with appropriate temptation.
“How are you, then?” he asked, straightening his bowtie and settling down to a contented set of his shoulders.
“Ohhh, you know,” he turned his head to look at him, one sure of his upper lifted, “Gets a bit... boring, without assignments to go on.”
“I’ve been finding it quite… restful. Lots of books to read.” He stayed staring straight ahead, hands folded primly in his lap.
“Right, right. Dickens and such.”
Aziraphale felt his words catch in his throat, unsure of what he could say but an apology still staying on the tip of his tongue. “Look, about that night…”
“It’s fine!” Crowley interrupted, nervousness clear in the line of his shoulders. “We just had some planning to do and… it’s fine. I wasn’t expecting anything. Really.”
“Oh,” he breathed out, chancing a look at the demon. “Alright, then.”
Silence fell on the two of them, one with awkwardness still held tightly in the line of his shoulders and the other bursting with pre-planned and practiced proposals.
“Do you still want to run away?”
“It was the apocalypse, angel. I don’t actually want to run off to Alpha Centauri.”
“But we could still do it.” It slipped out before he could stop it, and Aziraphale lifted his chin and smiled like this was all going according to plan. “Not to Alpha Centauri, but perhaps… somewhere else. Somewhere quiet.”
“With a demon?” Crowley wore his shades and yet still Aziraphale could feel more than see the hope in his eyes. He didn’t have to ignore it anymore, Aziraphale realised.
“With a… friend,” he said, a smile turning stubbornly smug instead of gentle, stuffy instead of caring. The smile that spread across Crowley’s face was worth it, an open adoration of everything about him that made the angel flinch.
“Ngh—I mean, I could manage that,” he drawled, holding onto dignity so desperately his voice took on an almost mocking quality. High and snide, the kind of thing that made Aziraphale smile in a fond way. “Where would we even go?” There was disbelief still in his voice. Even Aziraphale couldn’t quite accept that he had really asked, with no preamble or gradual introduction. It made him want to take it all back, to apologise until there was so much gathering awkwardness he would have no choice but to go off to France.
Or he could just make it work. “I was thinking the South Downs. Lovely beaches, maybe a nice cottage… you could have a garden.”
“Just… give me some time to think about it?” Crowley looked away, guilty despite the angel’s certainty he hid his disappointment well.
“Of course, dear.” Hesitantly, Aziraphale patted the hand Crowley had resting against the bench, Crowley’s eyes widening in surprise when the angel gently laced their fingers together. They stayed like that far far too long, joking and laughing with hands tightly held despite the rigidly maintained distance between them.
---
When Aziraphale picked up the phone he wasn’t sure if it would be an irritated customer or Crowley (a thought that sent a spike of anxiety and warmth through his body). Either way, he answered with hands that were shaking much more than he would have preferred. “Hello, this is A.Z. Fell speaking. I’m afraid we are closed right now, but—”
“I’ll do it,” a familiar voice interrupted him, making Aziraphale beam. “The address is…” After a mad scramble, the angel managed to get it down without a mistake, movements too rushed to put effort into his handwriting.
“Oh.. thank you, dear,” Aziraphale flattened the piece of paper, not bothering to ask the why or how of it, afraid that he would change his mind.
“Don’t think too much of it, angel,” he said, a hiss making its way into his words. There was no hug this time, only the soft exhalation of a not-quite-man who has just used up all of his courage.
---
They stood together, days or weeks later, Aziraphale with his hands tightly clasped and Crowley still with his trademark slouch, a look of tentative happiness on his face. The cottage was nice, a garden out back and the blue paint still fresh on the door. Wide windows, wooden floors, and floral wallpaper that made Aziraphale light up in joy and Crowley mutter something about poor taste and getting used to it.
“So this is home, huh?” Crowley rapped his knuckles against the wall a little too hard, wincing slightly at the pain. Aziraphale huffed and ignored him, intent on figuring out the lock on the door. “Nice enough, I suppose.”
“Oh, hush. It’s perfect and you know it, you wily demon.” Aziraphale had already set up a few things, his armchair there, bookshelves lining the wall in the living room.
“Bit small…”
That made Aziraphale look up in alarm from where he was admiring the view out the north window, where the hills stretched to the sea. “Do you want two bedrooms then? Because I suppose we could convert the…”
He was stopped by a gentle hand on his pudgy arm, making him turn to face the smile Crowley wore. “I think I can manage to share a bed with such a gorgeous angel,” and Aziraphale could see the anxiety that lay behind the words, the impulsivity and the regret.
So he took one of Crowley’s bony hands in his own thick one and leaned close enough to whisper in his ear. “Thank you, dear.”
It made Crowley flinch back, though he relaxed quickly, satisfied for once in the quiet feeling of love. Because that was what it was, even if neither of them quite dared to speak it into existence yet. “Angel, why... why did you ask me to move in with you? What about Gabriel, what about G-d?” he said in a rush, words tripping over each other at the sudden fear in his eyes.
“It’s not so clear-cut anymore. It never was, really.” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking between half-furnished rooms and his oldest... adversary, friend, something else. “I’m not of Heaven anymore, I’m just myself, and we’re just us, and there is no need to stay quiet, or not to ask as many questions as we want.”
“Do you still love Her?” The question was so hesitant it made him want to leave, to bury his head until things started making sense again.
“Of course. You can question what you love, you know.” Aziraphale had been doing some research on that, digging deeper into human religions. He’d never paid much attention to them before, apart from trying to prevent the atrocities committed in their name. But he’d visited a shul a few weeks back and... that was a story for another time, when there wasn’t
“But you never have, before.” Crowley moved closer, uncertainty and anger replaced by a curious sort of peace, unsure of whether it would last.
“There’s a first time for everything. Isn’t that what this is all about?” His voice was impossibly gentle, all of his angelic love focused on one person. It made Crowley stumble, and when Aziraphale reached out to steady him there was nobody to see when they stayed like that for a beat too long, not quite close enough but getting there. It was a work in progress, a collection of gradual steps, and this was just another one. An important one, a moment to be treasured for centuries to come.
---
Picture the first night in the little cottage: a lamp on the bedside on so the angel, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, could read with reading glasses he didn’t really need. Crowley had kicked up a fuss when he had first worn them, trying to stir up the same trouble he always did. Until Aziraphale cloaked the room in darkness, that is, continuing to stubbornly read with his glasses perched on his nose as Crowley stormed off in a huff.
Finally he returned, though, slipping under the covers and turning away as if he intended to ignore Aziraphale the whole night. It made Aziraphale sigh, but he smiled when he looked at Crowley in the warm light from the lamp. He settled down comfortably, removing his glasses and placing them on the bedside table. After a moment he did the same for Crowley, who was lying on his back with a flat expression. His fingers lingering lovingly on his cheek for a second before that he folded up Crowley’s sunglasses and put them next to his own.
Aziraphale snatched his hand back quickly, age-old anxieties paralysing him. Because here’s the thing: Aziraphale isn’t used to touch. He is used to carefully measuring spaces, to reaching out a comforting hand. There isn’t room for hugging, or the soft, sweet love that poets dreamed of. Dreams are familiar, of reaching out and kissing him, of holding his hand, of being close to him in as many ways as he can. There is only one he, of course, age-old adversaries from the dawn of Earth. A constant push and pull, a dance with steps that always involve a carefully enforced distance. Even if it’s only a centimetre, even if it’s an ocean. But there he is, out of his tight clothing and staring blankly at the ceiling and all Aziraphale can do is squeeze his eyes shut and hope for a sliver of bravery.
Instead he just curled up onto his side, still obeying the rules he had made for both of them so many thousands of years ago. But something odd tends to happen when you make rules for other people: they get broken. Aziraphale really should have known this, considering his own grand rebellion. Yet still he stiffened when Crowley draped an arm over his wide belly and tucked his head over the angel’s shoulder.
He fell asleep easily after that, dreaming of garden walls and sheltering wings.
---
Crowley had taken to the garden. Aziraphale had heard so much shouting from there that he was afraid that something was going wrong, but the plants looked so beautiful he figured everything was fine. The shouting trailed off after the first two weeks anyway, and every night Crowley spent curled around Aziraphale the plants seemed to grow a little taller, a little greener. Aziraphale had spent so many comfortable nights that by now it was a routine instead of a thrill, a calm kind of joy that felt like it would never end.
Because once he had dared to dream that he could have this, 6000 years of second-guessing every plan because Crowley always seemed to sneak in there. Because there were a thousand phrases barely bitten back and they were all variations on the three simplest words. I love you, I love you, I love you with every fibre of my being and every breath in my lungs. But it wasn’t like he could just say that, even aside from the fact it was so cliché and soppy it made him think of the romance novels he had hidden away in the bookshop. So instead, he sat with his cup of tea and watched Crowley out in the garden with something like peace in his chest, or perhaps joy. There were no prying eyes, no oceans or tangled phone cords, just them and the simple fact that there was only one thing they could be.
That night, after Aziraphale had gotten out of his long skirt and slipped into comfortable nightclothes (tasteful tartan, perfectly fashionable despite what certain demons had to say) he sat on the bed and thought.
It took another day of gathering courage to finally do it, to slip off Crowley's glasses and then wrap his arms around him. To relax when Crowley pressed a kiss to one round cheek, to let his smile break out unrestrained at his gentle goodnight.
---
Aziraphale was twisted into just the right position for reading in bed, settling in after the normal tossing and turning before settling into bed. He was now diligently bent over an old book that had stayed in suspiciously good condition for it’s age. Not that he didn’t treat his books carefully (there was a charm in doing things the human way), but after a while you’d expect something and after centuries that something should be rather pronounced.
His own guilty thoughts were quickly brushed aside in favour of the demon, who provided a convenient and welcome excuse by interrupting him, “Is this… what is this, angel?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Aziraphale said, placing the bookmark in the book with almost exaggerated slowness, as if in an attempt to avoid Crowley’s eyes. “What’s this?”
“This is sleeping together every night. This is moving in together, there has to be something.” Crowley sat up as he talked, phone discarded, face going through some rather alarming expressions which involved a fair amount of eyebrow movement.
“It’s just… us. I—I love you,” Aziraphale squirmed in place, but he met Crowley’s eyes anyway. You’d think millennium after millennium of pulling the wool over his own eyes would make the confession harder, but instead it just made it seem like an inevitability. A fact like any other, just with more anxiety weighing it down. But here, in the moment, it felt like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Oh. Urgh...” Crowley floundered for a bit, so Aziraphale took that certainty and used it to lean in, to close his eyes and finally get as close as he wanted. One kiss, and Aziraphale pulled away, blushing so wildly it felt like much more.
“I love you too, always have—I… you’re amazing, even if you are a bit of a bastard. Because you are—it’s been so long.” Crowley shook his head, reaching out to trace the line of Aziraphale’s jaw, to feel the curliness of his hair. “It’s been so long.”
They fell asleep so completely intertwined it was difficult to tell who exactly was cuddling whom. It was something precious they had never allowed themselves before, whispered confessions still hanging in the still night air.
---
There was clashing of course, where their rough edges didn’t quite fit. Crowley got a hunted look in his eyes when things got too crowded. Too much polish and shine made Aziraphale draw back into himself, quiet in the empty spaces. So they installed a skylight—miracled, really, after Crowley nearly brought the house down in a fit of frustration. There were bookcases lining one wall and something pretty and framed in gold on the other, floorboards clean and one overstuffed chair pushed into the corner. There was a comfortable bed in a room with dark wallpaper and a rug fit for the most stereotypical of grandmothers. On it rested a rather large snake and one not-quite-man, reading a book and humming an old song gently to himself.
It worked out in the end, you see. They loved each other enough that they put the effort in.