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It had never sealed his lips before, had never held his tongue. But tonight, somewhere in the middle of their revelries, the wine had stained his mouth the heavy bruise-plum of repentant longing. Crowley’s was loose, scarlet-pink and pearl, laughter rippling and tumbling over his teeth. He was a Hanging Gardens waterfall, this creature before him, this not-quite-demon spinning stories around the room like hyperbolic moonlight. He was released from bonds almost as old as time itself, and his joy should have been contagious. Yet there Aziraphale sat, spine and sinew being pressed into knots by the weight of centuries gone by.
What if he had loved him, openly and freely, all those many times ago? What if he had revealed himself to Heaven and Hell, to the very stars above, to himself? Would it have mattered, would a thing have changed?
The walls of Eden had crumbled, devoured by that great sand sea. Nothing holy could remain on this earth of men. Nothing holy, save love. It should have disappeared, humans should have vanished, vanquished by the audacity of their hunger for knowledge. It did not. They did not. They rerouted rivers, harvested seeds, tilled the land and sailed the seas. They retained the prize of Eden in their blood, in their very marrow. If Aziraphale retained one thing in the innermost makings of his incorporeal self… it was love.
The Ark had sailed. Flooding had been horrific, death on a scale that nearly made him turn away from his side. No prismatic wonder, no fool’s trick of the light, could entice his heart to ever fly as free. He blamed not that singular raven, that wretched animal of death, for its abandonment of Noah’s shelter. Whether it found nourishment or a lonely end, Aziraphale would never know, but it beared respect, unlike the blind obedience of a well-trained dove.
But even a simple reformer, an ascetic carpenter with no desire greater than to help his brethren live by the kindness and justice of his heart, could not be saved. And in his name, corruption spread like wildfire, multiplying loaves of loathing for the communism of the heart. If one such as he could not profess gentle fraternity and survive the grip of fear, how could such a failed sentinel as himself hope to escape crucifixion while loving his enemy?
Yet the lines between enemies and allies did grow dim in the shadows of empires. Aphrodisiacs and aphorisms filling his mouth, and the reservation of a temptor who, even then, sparked a keening desire in the belly of the Good. What love could they have shared then, in a world where once it was blessed! No sin or saviour to deny them the tenderness of the heart by way of the firmness of flesh.
Firmness of spirit, though, Aziraphale found in spades. That sodden isle which The Powers had decreed their homestead was to be defended in righteousness, or at least, in righteousness’ name. He denied the deal in that dark age, and again himself each night, as he sat wondering, weaving dreams of the night-cloaked knight as the women their tapestries. Arthur and his Guinevere, their Lancelot duLac, hidden away from Christian eyes. Where would he have hidden then, when even in the mists, Avalon could not be found?
Give in he finally did, if only to a trade. One thousand years since, one thousand lonely suns passed. All the world a stage, and they, the play within the play. Deus ex Aziraphale, if it were not the height of blaspheming to claim. His joy, by then, at the sight of his well-beloved could be rivaled only by the madness of his heart, a chained Ophelia terrified of its own yearning for the window. A gloomy one, he had said. And in his way, he was not wrong.
But then, despite nothing more than a silent plea to the sidelines, he was there. Breaking the chains and announcing a love that perhaps could have no name. Sugar sweet and cocoa rich, he was nourishment for the senses, delicious indulgence in defiance of a war. Perhaps some true forever balance could be wrought, wrapping their arrangement gently, so gently… too tight and it may burst.
It was fear which had burst instead, citron-pulp fear which had flowed through him all these years, threatening to sour the briefest exuberance at the sight of his beloved. It spilled from him one afternoon, when the skies were cheery and the geese had only just returned home to roost. How could he be asked to bear it, the destruction insurance of the sole reason for his lazy heart to beat?
Louder than the Heavenly Host itself, beat again it did. A miracle, any miracle, was a gift to the enactor as much as the blessed. And a miracle, any miracle, hinges on the ability to love. Was it decades in the making, or millennia, he finally allowed himself to wonder. Did it matter? He now supposed not. That had been it, after all. A peculiar moment in the history of allkind, when two opposing forces met in the swell of fire and ash, and nothing was burst, save doubt.
Trust. Love was nothing without trust. He had summoned a flask and every ounce of his courage, and poured his trust into a bottle. That it had not proven the cause of a second deluge, the tidal wave destruction of his own hope, he still some nights could not believe.
Yet here they sat, neither Heaven or Hell, but only half a metre between them. Most of time, almost every moment he had spent on this earth, and now they were just two, sitting, drinking, for all the world to see. For all the world…
Aziraphale’s eyes swung up from the navy throw where they had been lost.
‘Crowley?’
‘Mm?’ A fluid tilt of head, the serpentine expanse of pupils.
He stuttered silently, words failing in every language, and knew there was only one thing left to express. He leaned forward, lips finding lips in the space between all the things they had never said. Crowley, warm, inviting, clever Crowley, slipped a hand inside Aziraphale’s jacket, flattening his palm against the back of his shirt, and it burned with the fire of a binary sun orbiting its eternal mate. Aziraphale slowly, oh so slowly, turned to press himself against the sofa back, trapping Crowley’s heat, his brightness, finally for his own.
‘Angel.’ The tender whisper of borrowed breath fell on his lips, ‘Angel,’ his jaw, ‘Angel,’ his temple.
Two sets of eyes closed, two sets of lips laughed, and one world, one new glorious world, was born.