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“I am going to do it. I am going to tell him, and everything is going to be just fine,” Crowley muttered to himself as he wove through the London traffic, foot pressed unyieldingly against the pedal until it nearly touched the floor. Driving fast had always served to calm him. It made him feel untethered and light – free, even, as though he could keep driving forever and no one would catch him.
It was a useful daydream, after spending the entirety of Earth’s existence and most of his own in the servitude of Hell. It was all he remembered, anyway.
No one could recall much from before the Fall, though, sometimes, if Crowley fought for it, he might find fuzzy, bright memories buried deep of chanting in choirs and memorizing rulebooks. He couldn’t be bothered with either, really, so it wasn’t a great loss as far as he was concerned.
In Hell, there was more freedom. Rather, there was the veil of it at first, before everyone came to understand their place. Bureaucracy was bureaucracy, whether bathed in holy light or smoldering flames, and Hell modeled itself after the best. Before Crowley knew it, choirs were replaced with mind-numbing chants of loyalty, and rulebooks with…well, just more rulebooks, but slightly charred versions that he doodled in when bored. Which was most of the time.
Now, things were different. Crowley had no need for launching himself into this imagined world where Hell would not touch him…because that was exactly where he resided.
Sure, it probably wouldn’t last forever. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that. No doubt, their respective head offices would come bother them again in due time. But, until then, Hell thought Crowley was a rouge demon immune to holy water, capable of killing his own, and all-around an invincible menace and embarrassment. He wouldn’t have had it any other way and intended to savor it.
It was with this in mind that Crowley firmly pressed against the brakes, swerving into what was definitely not a parking spot. With a little extra saunter, he stalked into a quaint café to pick up a smattering of pastries, danishes, and cakes. These joined the two first editions that sat in a box in the backseat.
In a brave new world where anything was possible, Crowley dared to wonder what he could do with that freedom. Unsurprisingly, had he ever bothered to think about it before, everything he came up with – including scaling pyramids and planting a tree on the moon and collecting James Bond Blu-Rays – seemed most fun with Aziraphale at his side.
Possibly dangling on his arm, or Crowley on his, or something. The specifics weren’t important, and they didn’t need to get heteronormative about it, anyway. What mattered was that there was arm linkage involved, or hands…
The primary obstacle to this fantasy, however, was that Crowley didn’t know if Aziraphale wanted that, too. Whatever they felt, whatever Crowley knew Aziraphale felt for him and vice versa, was quiet and not to be discussed aloud.
One of those truths, whether Aziraphale was fully aware of it, was that Crowley loved Aziraphale like a demon was never supposed to. It was such a deeply rooted part of who Crowley was nowadays that he was practically numb to it. Not the love part, but its existence in him. He forgot to even be annoyed by it, eventually. It became a facet of him at some point, another one of his little traits. His name was Crowley, he tempted the first woman, he wasn’t nice at all thank you very much, and he loved Aziraphale.
Just one of the things that went unspoken until the idea of voicing it was…
Demons weren’t supposed to feel fear. Or maybe they just weren’t supposed to let it show, but the thing no one ever admitted to about fear was that it burned. It felt like a literal fire, a lick of flame smoldering in one’s chest. A tea candle, totally harmless, until it caught the curtains of your affections and engulfed you in an inferno. It became such a real presence that fear itself was more terrifying than whatever sparked the feeling initially.
There was nothing quite like the constant fear that your mere presence beside the one you love could get them killed.
Crowley’s fear hadn’t been a tea candle for millennia.
In the demon’s mind, there were three factors at play, and none of them were golden-haired, blue-eyed Antichrists. One of these was freedom, long unattainable, and now a truth they had to settle into tentatively, with all the precaution warranted of two lifetimes that begot no taste of it. The second was fear, as constant as freedom was not, not entirely banished even now, but lingering for different purposes and different reasons.
And the third was Aziraphale.
Crowley parked in Soho in what was, again, not a parking spot, swooping up the boxes from the backseat and approaching the bookshop. It was closed, naturally, but Crowley didn’t knock, because he never had before and was not one for starting new habits when he didn’t have to.
Once again:
“I am going to do it,” Crowley said through grit teeth. “I am going to tell him, and everything is going to be just. Fine.”
Crowley had always protested to being called “nice” (most notably, on a memorable day at an ex-nunnery), and he felt justified in saying it was true he wasn’t, considering he’d never had the freedom to express niceness before. He still wasn’t sure what niceness meant, and if it was the same thing as being kind or loving or doting, or if it was just a performative version of those things. Still, whatever it was, niceness or something else, Crowley had been enjoying the freedom of being it without repercussion for the past year since their “retirement.” It was evident in his motivations, and ultimately, if Aziraphale hadn’t known that Crowley cared for him before, he most certainly did after all the dinners and gifts and outings.
In the interest of fairness, it wasn’t just Crowley whose actions were loud, lately. Aziraphale struggled with it – his fear always burned a little hotter than Crowley’s, who had already lost everything once and survived it – but he made an effort to…catch up. He called as often as Crowley, visited the demon’s flat on occasion (though he nagged the whole time about how dreary it was), and even fulfilled that old promise from the 60s about taking Crowley on a picnic a half dozen times. Picnics had never been Crowley’s thing, but they grew on him with such wonderful company – and he would never have complained, anyway.
So, they were taking it slow. It was comfortable, and a Heaven of an improvement over the whole we can’t say we’re friends because that might get us killed thing that’d clung to their coattails since the literal dawn of time.
It was always easier for Crowley to shake, or ignore – his body was shaped by rebellion, so it was in his blood in a literal sense – but Aziraphale felt differently. He was more cautious, more careful in his decisions…so long as flaming swords weren’t involved, anyway. He liked to evaluate every possible outcome and inspect his every emotion and thought before committing himself. It took nearly five centuries before he acquiesced to the Arrangement, after all, and that was after over four millennia of acquaintanceship.
Now, that Arrangement was no more, ever since Adam Young reset the world to its previous state, but with a few more adventure books in Aziraphale’s collection.
After the dance of their relationship, long established as a gentle push and shove, Crowley was always afraid of asking for too much, for being too much, even when he felt that too much was asked of him. For Aziraphale, however, where there had long been dread and fear, a slowly morphing sense of security and rightness was growing roots right beside Crowley.
They both clutched to that feeling with no intention of ever releasing it.
“Angel!” Crowley called out as he entered the bookshop, though it was largely unnecessary; Aziraphale knew there was only one person who could get in when the door was locked, and Crowley knew there were only four sitting spaces in the whole bookshop that the angel frequented.
“In the back, dear!” Aziraphale replied, which was obvious, as he wasn’t at the counter. Crowley readjusted his load and continued to where he knew he’d find his angel, probably perched over some manuscript.
Sure enough, Aziraphale was at his desk. Judging by the little spectacles Crowley tried very hard not to find adorable, and the smell of leather glue, he was in the middle of a book repair, which he always insisted on doing entirely the human way – unless it was impossible without a little miraculous nudge. He might not be able to drop what he was doing right away if that was the case, but that was alright.
“Oh my,” Aziraphale exclaimed when he saw the two boxes in Crowley’s arms. “Look at all this!”
He still looked shocked and excited when Crowley brought him gifts, like it still surprised him after all these years that this was the way Crowley loved him, or perhaps that he continued to do so. Crowley understood. Heaven and abandonment issues weren’t exactly foreign to demons. “Brought you a couple things,” Crowley said pointlessly, placing them on one of the few tables that managed to be clear of books.
“Give me one moment,” Aziraphale said eagerly. “I need to finish this bit, but I’ll be only a tic.”
“’Course,” Crowley replied, not even teasing him about it. Aziraphale loved repairing books and, alright, maybe it was weirdly attractive to see him so focused on this delicate, underappreciated craft. Crowley may not have been a book person, but the way Aziraphale loved books was oddly inspiring.
While he finished up, Crowley wandered the bookshop. He knew it better than anyone but the angel himself, but it still struck him sometimes – the sheer volume of tomes that cluttered the space. There were as many books as there were pine needles on forest floors, in every variety of color and shape and age, some as ancient as writing itself and some practically as fresh as the pastries in their boxes – and all were well-loved.
Not a single page would dare be dog-eared in his presence, but few were truly pristine. Pristine books weren’t cherished, Aziraphale often insisted. It was the signs of wear and care, proof that a book had survived despite the passing of time, that were important to him.
Crowley’s mind wandered as he breathed in enough dust to give a human at least three diseases, the tang of binding glue faint in the grove of leather, fabric, and parchment, with the slightest hint of vanilla lingering. It was a storage of not just books or knowledge, but of sensations, of memories, of – in many ways – them.
The two of them were stored in these pages, and not only literally in his misprinted bibles, but also in the books Crowley gave him. In the books they discussed. In the books Aziraphale ranted about as Crowley tried to follow the rapid-fire storyline Aziraphale failed to retell chronologically.
The bookshop always had a way of making room for Crowley.
Just like Aziraphale did.
Though Crowley knew he’d loved Aziraphale for so, incredibly long, he’d never been clear on the form it took. There were so many varieties, shifting in language and their respective cultural expressions. Crowley considered them as he took slow steps past the overflowing shelves.
There was friendship, which was certain. Aziraphale was his best friend, and they were finally, blissfully, at a place where they didn’t have to deny it to anyone else or themselves.
There was familial love, in addition to that. A protectiveness, a mutual desire to guard and keep. There was the idea of the chosen family, and that sometimes felt very much like what they had. They had chosen each other over their respective “families,” in a sense.
Then, there was the question of romantic love. Romantic and sexual relations were so often intertwined that Crowley had long struggled to separate them in his head, both being such incredibly human things. He had no sexual desires that he could tell, only curiosities and questions at best.
Romantic love was different, however – separate but sometimes related to lust. Romance was friendship and family together, plus something else indefinable. It wasn’t inherently more than friendship but was sometimes treated that way. That said, what made friendship and romance different at all? Commitment, covetousness? Crowley had no pool of friends to compare like humans typically did. He just had Aziraphale. Humans cropped up, yes, and many wormed their way in deep and never left Crowley completely, but Aziraphale was the only person in the universe with whom Crowley could have a lasting bond, especially after their unceremonious exiles from Above and Below.
They were it for each other.
Would such a thing indicate an inherent romantic subtext? No, but it could. What would it mean, for them to be romantically involved? Typically, to be exclusive, which was a guarantee of their circumstances, but possibly worth discussing, anyway. Crowley figured they could introduce a physical element, a non-sexual intimacy, to make it romantic, but couldn’t friendships also have such things? What made one type one thing, and something else another? As supernatural entities, could they ever hope to define it? Was it about the involvement of tongues, was that it?
Does it matter?
The more Crowley thought about it over the centuries, and especially in the past year, the more difficult it became to place his feelings for Aziraphale. He indulged in the romantic clichés he knew of and found that some suited them, and some didn’t. He couldn’t be sure if that was an answer in and of itself, but Crowley was not used to getting answers, anyway.
Regardless, their relationship had always rebelled against mortal definition, with millennia spent in a gray area between enemies and not-enemies. They were whatever they needed to be, until they were whatever they wanted to be. And that was enough. More than.
All Crowley knew, now that the world had changed by staying the same, was that he reveled in the barren honesty that was steadily developing between them. Being open and vulnerable took practice and time, but he was beginning to see how worth it that was.
And if he truly valued honesty so much, then he wanted to be able to use the words to be honest about this, too.
Big breath in, exhale.
“I am going to tell him, and everything is going to be just fine,” Crowley whispered as his fingers brushed down the spine of an old Jane Austen novel.
While he did believe that, their old habits wouldn’t evaporate overnight, or in a few months, or in a year. This was going to take many years, but so long as they did it together, Crowley was fine with that.
He was snapped from his reverie by Aziraphale clearing his throat. Crowley turned, realizing the angel had been watching him for some time, trailing a gentle touch along the bindings of the collection. Aziraphale offered a soft smile. His look was so knowing, Crowley wondered if he’d heard Crowley mumbling to himself. He quickly abolished the thought, because if Aziraphale knew, he didn’t think he’d be able to work up the courage to actually say it.
“All finished?” Crowley asked, brushing invisible dust from his hands with a smirk. A fake plume erupted, fluttering to the floor and dissipating before landing anywhere. “I’ve just been dusting. Hopefully I’ll be done in a millennium or two.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes indulgently at Crowley’s antics. “How very kind of you to clean for me, my dear.”
“Slander!” Crowley cried with mock offense. Stepping forward, he accidentally inhaled the fake dust he’d stirred up and started coughing – very dramatically, of course.
“Oh, stop that,” Aziraphale chided. “You don’t need to cough, let alone breathe. More importantly, you’ve got your little boxes tempting me by my desk and I’d like very much like to see what’s in them.”
Crowley considered teasing him for the word choice of “tempting,” but decided against it. Instead, he followed the angel through the narrow aisles and past overflowing tiered tables to his desk, where the gifts awaited reception.
In typical Aziraphalean manner, the angel exclaimed with delight at the treats and insisted on trying one that instant, as though Crowley hadn’t been bringing him sweet nonsense from the same bakery ever since Aziraphale made an off-handed comment about their blueberry filling a decade prior. After the requisite taste test, Crowley presented Aziraphale with the books with a wink and flourish, because obviously, and he gave Crowley an extremely gooey look that made the demon glad for his sunglasses.
He'd begun wearing sunglasses about two millennia back, switching up style and make as trends developed. Before that, it’d been a nightmare to try and hide his pupils from humans, endlessly superstitious. He was seen as anything from a wicked spirit to a revered God, depending on the who and where and when. It got tiring fast, to wonder if the populace would greet him with a stoning or piles of gold.
Not that he minded the latter, mind you.
At some point, the device became more than a tool for shielding his snake eyes from humans and avoiding the accusations and troubles they came with. He just felt safer with them covered, like no one could read him or see his thoughts.
Crowley wondered suddenly when Aziraphale had become someone he needed to hide from; more accurately, why he still felt a need to.
On the heels of this thought was the realization that Aziraphale could read Crowley, regardless, as easily as one of his many books.
Unwilling to proceed any further with the evening while in hiding, considering the entire point was open honesty, Crowley slowly removed the sunglasses and tucked them in his jacket pocket as nonchalantly as possible, hoping Aziraphale wouldn’t draw attention to it.
He’d be a fool not to notice the way Aziraphale’s eyes widened the next time he glanced over, the way he held Crowley’s unveiled gaze with a quirk on the sides of his mouth betraying obvious delight, but he was kind enough not to say anything.
Gifts in the afternoon turned to tea. Some days, they’d go out and eat somewhere, but they elected to order in and have a lazy evening in the bookshop. Crowley had been spending much more time there, so it was routine by now – a new and brilliant routine. The bookshop was like a home-away-from-home, except his flat had never felt like a home. Demons didn’t have homes. They had…lairs, domains, dens. Crowley’s flat was designed to suit the tastes of Hell: cold, impersonal, dark. The plants were the exception, though they probably radiated enough sheer terror to make up for that – and they’d keep it up if they knew what was good for them.
But there, surrounded by familiar comforts, Crowley felt his inhibitions and barriers slip away like they’d never been there at all.
What is a home, to a demon? Crowley had spent his time on Earth in many houses and buildings and spaces, but even they never felt like they belonged to him. No matter where he was, Hell could appear in an instant. Hell could be watching. The bookshop should have felt so much worse, with the threat that Heaven’s agents might walk in at any given moment. It was not a safe space, only a static one, a fixture of a city Crowley had begrudgingly grown to love.
Everything changed when Crowley watched it burn and come back. Some days, he needed the reminder that it was still here and none of that had happened but in the minds of a select few witnesses, most of whom had likely forgotten it like the rest of Armageddon.
Crowley studied Aziraphale, enjoying the light colors that came of having his sunglasses removed, and realized that the bookshop was not a home to him, either. Maybe home didn’t have to be a place, at all.
As they finished their food and Aziraphale suggested breaking out the wine, time slipped recklessly away, each minute another one closer to what Crowley planned to do that day. Every minute he allowed to pass without starting the conversation was potently felt.
He wasn’t anxious in the same way that Aziraphale was. Crowley didn’t twist his hands or stammer over syllables (though he did tend to babble a bit). Mostly, he shoved it down so deep he choked on it, then let it overwhelm him the moment he was certain he was completely alone.
Crowley could feel it creeping up on him, threatening to make him sprint out the door any moment with some half-formed excuse.
Perhaps Aziraphale noticed his discomfort somehow, for, halfway through pouring the wine, he glanced up with a concerned air and said just a little too casually, “Is anything bothering you, Crowley?”
The demon pressed his lips together. Considered lying. Realized that would, again, defeat the whole purpose. He thought about that Robert Frost poem everyone knows. Two roads, something, something.
“Weeeeell, not bothering, exactly,” Crowley answered carefully, “but I did, uh, have something I wanted to…bring up.”
Aziraphale raised his eyebrows in genuine interest. That was something Crowley loved about Aziraphale – how he was always interested in what Crowley had to say, even if it was something that he didn’t understand, like that M25 project, emojis, iPod charging cords, pop-up ads, and literally every aspect of printers. He cared, just because he could. Aziraphale was a bigger supporter of Crowley’s low-grade evil than Hell was, even if he scolded the demon for it all with sparkling eyes.
“Alright,” Aziraphale said calmly, presenting him with the filled glass.
“So, thing is,” Crowley began as he accepted it, fingers brushing, “ever since we got our freedom from Hell and Heaven, we’ve been exploring what exactly we like doing with that. And that’s been really fun, yeah?”
Aziraphale nodded, settling into his seat with his own drink. “It’s taken a good deal of adjusting, but I do rather figure we’re doing well for ourselves,” he replied with an air of satisfaction. “Though, I would still like to do that trip as we’ve been discussing.”
“Right. Hit all the places we haven’t been to in ages, or ones we never got to. I haven’t been to Seoul in eons.”
“Oh, and Kyoto.”
“Rome, probably. For the memories.”
“Mmm, yes. And perhaps Mumbai?”
“Sure. Shanghái, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Rio, the Maldives, Vienna…”
“Consta- er, Istanbul!”
Crowley snorted at his slip. “Yes, Istanbul.”
He ignored the subtle tease. “Oh, and definitely Paris,” he said a bit dreamily. “Do you know, I haven’t been back since the Revolution?”
Crowley smirked at the memory. French royals and noble folk getting beheaded left and right, and one little English aristocrat of an angel who thought that was the appropriate setting and occasion for some French cuisine.
He never even learned French, for Someone’s sake.
Crowley shook his head in amusement. “I still can’t believe-“
“Oh, hush,” Aziraphale cut in with pursed lips. “We have the one-century rule for a reason. You’ve had your fun.” The one-century rule was something Aziraphale established very shortly after the Arrangement itself. It dictated that they wouldn’t tease the other for something that happened more than a century ago, but those first hundred years were fair game.
The unspoken secondary rule of the one-century rule was that whoever did the teasing staunchly ignored this, and whoever was getting teased would experience a sudden clarity of memory if they did something embarrassing that they’d rather have forgotten.
“Alright, alright,” Crowley acquiesced with a wave of the hand, sipping the wine to hide his growing smile.
“Anyway, I do believe I distracted us a touch,” Aziraphale said sheepishly. “You were saying something, before?”
Crowley’d forgotten entirely, having slipped comfortably into the usual banter. He tensed at the reminder, then forced himself to relax. “Right, yeah. So, freedoms, exploring stuff. Traveling the world.” He cleared his throat pointlessly. “And, um, we’ve also not had to sneak about and hide in order to see each other, which has been so much easier than all our clandestine meetings before.”
“To be fair, the Ritz was never clandestine, even before-“
Crowley waved a derisive hand again, brushing the comment away before he could even finish, knowing they’d get side-tracked again by arguing the finer points of secret agent etiquette. “Yes, but it’s different now.”
Aziraphale smiled softly. “You’re right. It is.”
Crowley basked in that relaxed and indulgent expression for a moment, eventually reminding himself to move on. “So, I had a thought that, as we are now no longer tied to any particular expectations, as it were, then we don’t really have to answer to what anyone says we should do, or say, or – or be.”
Suddenly restless, Crowley stood to pace, setting the wine on a side table. He felt linguistically inept as he grasped for the right words. Thankfully, Aziraphale had a way of interpreting the drivel Crowley spouted when ranting and making sense of it in succinct ways that Crowley couldn’t have constructed even if he’d bothered to consider how he was going about this beforehand. “My point is,” Crowley said, emphasizing with his pointer finger, “since we don’t have anything we are required to do, nor any specific rules to follow besides the ones we set for ourselves, and choose to follow regarding the limitations of living among humans, that means that we…” He faltered, staring at the ceiling. “We can do anything, now. Whatever we want, right? That’s what freedom means.”
Crowley dared to make eye contact with Aziraphale, who sat primly at attention in his armchair for the duration of this unimpressive monologue. His expression was difficult to parse. There was something deeply contemplative in the way his mouth was set, but likewise there shone that tucked-away excitement that he’d so long had to smother, evident in the crinkles around his eyes. The tense line of his jaw against soft folds was both the soldier of his making and the thinker of his choosing.
“Further,” Crowley continued nervously, “that means that there are things we have been doing, and not doing, because we’re still living according to them, and what they expected of us. But. We don’t have to. This future, this planet, this – whoever we are, is what we make of it. Our choosing.”
Crowley fell still, suddenly out of words.
After a moment’s consideration, Aziraphale finally turned his gaze from the middle distance to Crowley’s sunglass-less face. “It is true that we have those freedoms,” he said carefully, “but a life without any rules would be a chaotic one. As you imply, we have something approaching Free Will, but even humans found that there can be too much of a good thing…” He faltered, glancing away, possibly remembering their very first conversation and realizing as he spoke that he was basically admitting Crowley had been right. At least, in one way.
Wouldn’t it be funny, if I did the good thing and you did the bad one? A question so harmless, it became the most dangerous one Crowley had asked since he Fell.
“A-Anyway,” Aziraphale continued, “There needs to be some form of order, one that we can agree upon mutually. Where boundaries and lines are drawn, so as to avoid confusion between ourselves, and the humans, and each other.”
Crowley nodded, relieved that Aziraphale understood. “Yes, exactly that.”
“And the best way for one to go about establishing precedents of behavior and expectation is to discuss such,” he added.
Crowley nodded again, like a bobblehead. “Yeah.”
Aziraphale relaxed in his chair, expression clearing as he regarded the demon on his sofa. “I get the impression that you’re bringing this up for a reason,” he noted. “Is there a specific element of our freedom that you wish to bar, or to suggest?”
Crowley swallowed. That was the crux of it, really. “There’s…something I want to do,” he tried, perching back on the sofa’s edge, elbows on his knees. “Something that involves you. Something I am free to do by technicalities and…overarching, universal bylaws.”
Aziraphale looked both exasperated and fond. “Tell me, Crowley. What is it?”
Crowley’s eyes darted about before settling on Aziraphale’s left hand, which was curled over his knee comfortably, a tiny golden ring on his pinky. “Before everything,” he murmured, “I was never able to say some of the things I think about because of the danger those thoughts presented. To me, and to you. It’s a – well, it’s a really hard habit to break out of. But I’d like to, if it’s – if you’re – if that’s okay. With you.”
Aziraphale made an encouraging sound. “Go on, then,” he urged gently.
“I…I want to be able to tell you that I – that I, you know, love you, or whatever. Now that I can.” Crowley took a deep breath, let it go. “But I don’t know if that’s something you’re okay with.”
The room held its breath. Crowley sat there, completely frozen, ogling one of Aziraphale’s hands, his own curled into fists. He realized with embarrassment that his shoulders were hunched, as though trying to appear small and inoffensive, and quickly sat up straighter.
It was an exposed silence. It was putting his heart into Aziraphale’s hands, as he had so often done to unfortunate effect. Aziraphale seemed to take a moment to acknowledge Crowley’s vulnerability, and the power he suddenly held, whether he wanted it or not.
In that handful of seconds, Crowley felt his resolve wither, just a moment too late to matter.
Crowley was not like Aziraphale. He could not keep his back straight and take what was thrown at him in silence. To turn the other cheek, to remain a pillar of strength in the face of everything that wanted to break him. Crowley was not a figure scratched with the scuff marks of a steadfast faith.
No, he was different. He was glass, simple to splinter. Paint, staining; a feather, slack in the wind. Easily broken when he Fell, though he would rage and fight it the entire way down.
Still, the torment of silence and small talk and lies, of never knowing or understanding, had always been so much worse than the potential for being rendered apart for curiosity. Crowley had no respect for a system that could not abide by his reckless want for answers. That was what allowed him to be fragile: he could tape himself back together from two threads, glue himself from chunks of slivers, sew himself from shreds and patches. He had done it before.
And Crowley knew that Aziraphale saw all of this, had always seen this in him, this ability to regrow feathers no matter how they were torn out, and he probably thought about that Robert Frost poem, too.
His hand clenched. Bravery. The bravery to say something he knew would hurt, or the bravery to say something that had long been lodged in his chest?
Crowley forced his gaze to meet Aziraphale’s. The angel wore his every doubt, his every worry, his every fear and wonder and hope on his face.
But above all, Crowley saw that he was smiling.
“My dear,” he said softly, as though his tone could make the words less loud to Crowley’s desperate senses, “making use of such a freedom is…is exactly what I hope we can do now. I wish to do the same. To tell you every day, in fact, that I love you, if something so sentimental is a habit you can tolerate.”
In his absolute audacity…the angel followed this up with a wink.
“Cheeky,” Crowley replied, throat dry. He returned the smile, feeling alive.
It was the first time they’d tried to put the incomprehensible mass of their feelings into words. Those few weren’t even close to enough, even if they were to repeat the phrase in every language at their disposal. Their love, their – whatever one may call it, went beyond the concepts that humans used to understand it.
Yet, at the same time, it was human itself. In some ways, didn’t the two supernatural beings have humanity to thank for it at all? Would they, and could they, have ever felt this way without their influence, without their – yes – love? Practicalities of proximity aside, humanity was an irrevocably intertwined component of what they were, what they had become, and who they would be.
Them and their humans. Humans and their love.
It was only right that they used a human word to describe it.
“I…love you,” Crowley repeated, tasting the words. Words he’d whispered to empty rooms, to pinpricked skies, mouthed into the night. I love him. I love her. I love them. Whatever Aziraphale was, he loved.
“I love you, too,” Aziraphale replied, shifting in his seat with an ecstatic grin. He was someone who should have always been allowed to wear his joy on his sleeve, but millennia of regimented suppression made it a battle not to hold back his smiles, his happiness. He had been taught that his joy was wrong and that he should never express it by Upstairs. He was belittled for the delight he found in the simplicities of humanity. It would take time and effort to feel relinquished completely.
So, seeing his smile now, unfettered, his shoulders relaxed, was truly the most beautiful sight Crowley had ever beheld.
“Do you – I mean,” Crowley stammered. “There are a lot of ways to, and now that we, you know, can, I thought maybe we could try some, I don’t know, some new things? Talk about them?”
Aziraphale only delighted further at this incoherent gibberish, apparently finding something endearing about not being able to knit together a single articulate sentence. “There are lots of human customs that we could try,” he murmured.
“I don’t want to do them just because they’re customs,” Crowley clarified. “No expectations, okay?”
His face softened impossibly further. “Indeed. Though, there are some that I’ve enjoyed in the past,” he admitted pensively as he sorted through centuries of memories. “Things we did because they were the usual friendly touches of the era. Linking arms, kisses on cheeks – depending on where we were, and when we were there, and even the genders we took on.”
“The humans have constantly…shifting views of what those sorts of things mean,” Crowley said, gesturing vaguely. “It wasn’t even that long ago that we were doing stuff without any of the, well, romantic insinuations that they have now. Only a handful of centuries.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said easily. He folded his hands in his lap, studying his own thumbs thoughtfully, before looking back at Crowley.
The demon had relaxed, sinking into the sofa cushions comfortably now that he’d gotten the words out. They were on the same page now, when, for so long, Crowley wasn’t even sure they were in the same book. He felt safe and secure in Aziraphale’s loving gaze.
“If we were to do those things now, like holding hands and kissing – things we’ve done that have been platonic in previous cultures – would it feel different?” Aziraphale asked, earnest and genuine. “Even though the physical act is the same, would the human conception of them, and their association with different types of relations, change the way we are able to experience them?”
“I…think it might,” Crowley admitted quietly. “We may not be human, but we do tend to change with them, and adapt with them.” Giving Aziraphale a significant up-and-down, Crowley added with a slight smirk, “Even if not all present parties necessarily want to.”
Aziraphale sniffed haughtily. “We’re having a serious discussion, Crowley! Now is not the time for poking fun at my tailor’s perfectly respectable craftsmanship.”
Crowley laughed. “Right, right, craftsmanship.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but Crowley was starting to suspect he may never stop smiling. “I suppose the question is…” Aziraphale said, “if we choose to abide by the way humans have changed their views of different forms of physical contact, then what…boundaries are we to set?” He studied Crowley, his practically untouched wineglass, a random spot on the wall. “Do you…want to hold hands and other things?”
It struck Crowley, in that moment, how very stupid they were.
There they were, having this academic conversation, discussing human social mores, comparing their supernatural knowledge accumulation of physical experiences, talking themselves into circles of analysis, discussing and evaluating like professors or historians…when they were both just very old, very daft teenagers trying to hold hands with their crush.
By Someone, there should’ve been a guidebook for this.
“Angel,” Crowley said slowly, blinking under the weight of this epiphany, “come sit next to me?”
Aziraphale didn’t appear surprised by this sudden demand, just pleased. He plucked up his glass and crossed the room. Placing his wine beside Crowley’s, he sat opposite the demon, similarly to how they sat on public benches nowadays. Neither totally at the ends, neither totally in the middle. Nearly meeting halfway.
Crowley was overwhelmed by a sense of de ja vu as he held out his hand with a nonchalance he did not feel. He had done this before, for a practical purpose, and they had let go too quickly, then. The flash of a palm, the wrong skin, the straining curves of flesh over bones and muscle and tendons.
Is it human, to be tactile? Are humans the only ones allowed to want? Well, no. Cats and dogs, lizards and birds, the entire animal kingdom tended to negate that. Most of the pets that humans took on sought physical contact, and while snakes, for example, didn’t necessarily love being touched, it varied, and allowing themselves to be handled was a sign of trust and affection.
The need and want for touch were not limited. It seemed to simply be a trait of the living. And whatever they were, whether their hearts beat or their lungs expanded or they could die by usual means, they were alive.
Besides, it was possible that – Crowley poked at the thought carefully – They intended living things to feel this way. Crowley had long stopped caring what They wanted him to be doing, but he was also aware that, whatever humans had made of their planet, They laid out the blueprints first. The humans took those blueprints and cut them up into shapes, scribbled on them with Sharpies, folded it into origami, wrote notes and rhymes in the margins. They all shared pieces of it – perhaps the only time humanity had every truly shared something – and made it into something else.
And maybe that was what They intended, too. Humans could spend all day speculating, but the living had not the mercy of certainty.
The problem with Heaven and Hell was that they didn’t ask. They just assumed they were in the right. Assumed their interpretation was the only correct way, not dissimilar to how some humans treated certain religious texts, like the Bible – fixed as an immovable thing to attack people with.
But Crowley learned how to ask questions.
Aziraphale, too, was well on his way, though his trouble came not in wondering but in voicing those thoughts.
When the End of the World had come and gone, the two oldest friends in history held hands for a brief flash, for the first time in many years. The feeling was heavier than it used to be, more significant. But they were not indebted to the views of humans, nor forced to love by the rules they set.
They chose the humans, not because humans were perfect, but because they were not, either.
Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand.
“Oh,” Crowley breathed. What was it about interlocking fingers that felt so intimate? They tested the hold, shifting, adjusting to this new and old sensation. Crowley wondered if his hands had always been so sensitive.
“You’re right,” Aziraphale murmured. “It does feel different.”
“It’s supposed to mean more now,” Crowley considered. “Friends, romances. Friendly romances. Romantic friendships. Wasn’t that a thing at some point?”
“I do recall,” Aziraphale replied thoughtfully. “Somewhat popular in the 18th, 19th century. I believe the term is used for an unusually close friendship, with heightened physical intimacy, but not sexual intimacy. Not quite a traditional friendship, not quite a traditional romance.”
“That’s right. Seems like a lot of queer relationships were described by that, though. Maybe because people didn’t understand it. Didn’t know how to categorize it.”
“That’s highly likely, yes,” Aziraphale agreed. “But it also lends weight to the historical existence of asexual romance, doesn’t it?”
Crowley nodded. “It does, yeah. Is that – do you think that’s what this is? What we’re doing?”
Aziraphale squeezed his hand. “We don’t need to define ourselves according to the humans, but perhaps…it’s a place to start?”
“Maybe.” Crowley shrugged. “Besides, it’s not like we’re stuck with the words we choose, if we choose any at all. We can change later. We can stay the same. They’re going to change over time, anyway.”
Aziraphale again squeezed Crowley’s hand. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” he murmured. “Together. I love you, my dear.”
Though Crowley had initiated this, he wasn’t prepared to have the verbal affection turned around on him again, so it took him a moment to respond. “Love you, too,” he murmured, staring at Aziraphale’s hand once more. Instead of studying its gentle curl over his knee, Crowley now memorized the pads of his fingertips resting between each of his knuckles, the gentle rasp of his restless thumb, the weight of his wrist peeking from behind his cuffs, the warm but not uncomfortable press of Aziraphale’s ring against Crowley’s skin.
There would be time for changing. There would be time for stagnation. But this was simply a time to exist, to relish. It was something humans were big fans of. Exist in the moment. For immortal beings with so much time, they often lacked an appreciation for how precious each minute could be. A great abundance of something could become overwhelming or render them numb to it. The concept of eternity was too large to face on a regular basis, and humans didn’t have to in the same way that they grappled with it.
Too much of a good thing. Time. Free Will. Love. Didn’t the world need chaos sometimes? Were discord and mischief not the counterweight to compassion and selflessness? Or was that simply something humans came up with, to cope with the pain jogging alongside the joys of being alive?
That day, it didn’t matter. Crowley didn’t need to ponder the mysteries of the nature of existence, the discordant echoes of theological queries in contrast to universal truths. There was something to be said for doing it the human way – living. But what was the human way? So many cultures, so many eras, so many rules that changed and shifted over eons and even mere decades. Was there such a thing as a human way of going about things, or was the very nature of Free Will something that negated the concept of a fixed state of being?
Crowley didn’t know. So, he leaned back in the sofa, and he held Aziraphale’s hand.
They chose to breathe.
They chose the people they became with each other; they chose the contradiction of their natures; they chose the way they fit in all the places they were told they shouldn’t. They chose because they could, and when they could, they chose each other.
Above all, they knew that the human word for this was love.