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Water gurgles in the pipes as Aziraphale fills the kettle up for their afternoon tea. Scones - macadamia and white chocolate - are cooling on the kitchen island, the latest batch strawberry jam is waiting to be devoured. It comes from their own strawberries, can you believe that, homegrown and plucked and… well, jammed.
Crowley has given him a long tirade about what sort of strawberries to use, which ones would grow best in their weather and why - yes, angel, we do - they need actual straw to cover. He has given the same tirade to the nice gentleman in the market and it has almost cost Aziraphale a miracle to avoid a physical altercation.
Now, a couple of months later, Crowley is out in the garden where it slopes down slightly to the little creek they’ve uncovered last autumn.
Aziraphale can’t help but smile at the sight.
Crowley is quite literally covered in butterflies.
They have flown up when he has approached the summer lilacs he has planted there. The deep green of the bushes, topped by umbels in various hues - some a light lilac, some deeper in color, some white, a few in a crimson that Aziraphale suspects are a personal touch - and in front of them, Crowley surrounded by little white and yellow butterflies.
Some of the tiny winged fellows are just fluttering around him, some are brave enough to land him on him, sitting on top of his head, in his hair, on his shoulders, his outstretched hand.
There is a little upheaval when Crowley unfurls his own wings but soon enough the butterflies descend on him again, almost as if accepting him as one of their own. Except a bit bigger and with feathers that gleam dark in the sun. He curls them in a bit, creating an open cocoon in which the butterflies swirl around him in a little fluttering tornado.
What strikes Aziraphale most, though, is Crowley’s smile. He has forgone the glasses a while ago - at least when they were home - and his grin reaches his eyes, shining bright, not with glee but with joy. There is something so beautifully giddy about that smile, it is calm and boyish at the same time. Unabashed. Dashing. Happy.
Aziraphale blinks as if caught with stealing the first scone when Crowley suddenly looks at him, the smile never wavering. He holds out a hand, beckoning.
Aziraphale steps out through the kitchen door and crosses the garden.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Crowley wraps his wings around them both, trapping the butterflies within.
“So are you.”
Still, the smile doesn’t falter as Crowley blushes. “Close your eyes.”
Aziraphale does - despite himself, he hates not being able to see. It takes a second or two before he feels the tickling of little wings against his skin, his face, in his hair.
“They like you.”
“I…”
That is all he manages before he feels another tickle. Chaste. Brief. Against his lips.
“You taste like strawberries,” Crowley says against his mouth and Aziraphale can still feel his smile.
“There’s no way you….”
The butterflies erupt up and outward as the kettle whistles.
Aziraphale blinks.
He is still in the kitchen, looking out in the garden. Crowley still stands by the summer lilacs, alone now, his new friends scattered, turning back to their butterfly business. The smile is gone, too.
“Tea’s ready, dear,” Aziraphale calls out the open door.
From somewhere up above, a scrap of paper falls. A polaroid.
Aziraphale reaches for it. A smiling Crowley among the butterflies. He puts it with the others he has collected, in a box between his cookbooks.
He’d never tell Crowley he has these or why but sometimes, late at night when he doesn’t sleep and Crowley is snoring - he denies that - in his room, he’d go down into the kitchen and he’d take out the box and he’d look at these happy moments.
Because try as he might, he is still afraid all this would end. Like the summer. The lilacs. The butterflies.
*
“What should I make for Sunday’s lunch?”
“Whatever you like, angel.”
Aziraphale looks up from his books, peering over the rim of his glasses. “I know you don’t eat but you could at least help with the decision. I don’t want Mrs Pertwee to think I only know the one dish.”
They’ve made it a habit to make a proper Sunday sit-down lunch where Aziraphale would cook. He has gotten quite good at it, too, and would always make more than he would eat himself, giving the rest to their neighbour down the road.
It was one way to avoid suspicion about them, about how there was always a light on during the night or about how their flowers blossomed even in the first spring they lived in the little cottage. Or about how they very vehemently did not go to church with the rest of the little village.
“Right then, what are the options?” Crowley gives in at last, putting down the Gameboy he has been thumbing away at for the past hour.
“Why don’t you get me one of my cookbooks? Either one is fine.”
Crowley eyes him. “Are you sure you want to place that much responsibility into my hands? Might come back with the Indian one.”
Aziraphale’s shoulders sag. “Alright, maybe not that one. The vindaloo curry incident was….”
“Interesting.” Crowley gives him a gleeful grin then unfolds himself from his sofa and heads over into the kitchen.
Aziraphale goes back to his book for now, trying not to think about the vindaloo curry incident. He has already turned a few pages when he notices that Crowley hasn’t come back yet. “Just pick one, will you?” he calls after him.
No answer.
“Crowley?”
He puts the book down and rises from his seat when he receives no answer again. Curious and only a little bit panicked, he follows. For the past year there’s always been this latent fear strumming along his nerves, a fear that now makes the hair at the back of his neck stand on end.
Have they found them? Have they taken him?
Aziraphale lets out a shuddering breath when he finds Crowley perched on one of the stools at the kitchen island.
“There you are. Gave me a bit of a scare. Silly, really. Did you find something you like?” He knows he’s rambling. There’s something in the angle of Crowley’s shoulders that makes him uneasy.
“No.”
“Well, then… I shall have a look myself.”
“Aziraphale.”
It’s the use of his name that makes him stop mid-step. He’s heard the humans talk about this, about how the use of their middle name never bodes well. This is like that for him. When Crowley doesn’t say ‘angel’ but uses his proper name. Not good.
“What is it, dear?”
Wood scratches over marble as Crowley slides something across the countertop. “What is this?”
Aziraphale swallows.
Before him sits a wooden box. A box he’s kept secret. For a lot of very good reasons.
In the box lies a small stack of photographs. Polaroids. More are scattered in front of Crowley.
“What are these?” he asks when Aziraphale doesn’t answer.
“They’re.. they’re photographs.”
“We don’t have a camera,” Crowley says as if that explains everything.
“No,” Aziraphale admits, his voice small. “No, we don’t.”
“This is when we patched up the roof.” Crowley pushes one polaroid over the counter. “This is when we took that trip to the Devil’s Dyke.” A second photo. “The winter carnival.” A third. “When we discovered the creek in the garden and dug out a little pool.” A fourth. “The summer lilacs.” Five. “When we found the beehive behind the shed.” Six. “That bonfire thing they did for Easter.”
“That was a disaster,” Aziraphale says before he can stop himself.
“It was hilarious.” For a second there’s that gleeful spark back in Crowley’s voice. “Explain this.”
Aziraphale hesitates. There is a perfectly good explanation for this. An adequate reason. It’s the same reason why he has kept these a secret for the past year.
Because things have changed since they've moved here. Nothing big, nothing dramatic, but a steady shift into something… There have been accidental touches, not quite so accidental looks, but never anything more. Not a word about what was happening, where it might be going, not anything with the intention of moving things towards something more… personal. No. Intimate.
All that it has been is wistful daydreaming and the yearning that came with it.
“They… are memories,” he says at last, knowing he has not yet said enough.
“Why do you have them?”
Aziraphale sinks down on the other stool, at last facing Crowley. He doesn’t look up from the pictures strewn in front of him, fingers absently brushing along the edges of one of the photographs.
“I… I wanted something to hold on to. The good memories we made. In case this would… in case they’d…”
“Aziraphale, they are all of me.”
At last Crowley does look up and the breath hitches in Aziraphale’s throat. He can’t say what he has expected Crowley’s reaction to be - given the fact that he was never supposed to find out - but it surely isn’t this. It isn’t the ashen face, the tight lips, the wide-eyed look from eyes that are brimmed with tears.
“Yes. Yes, they are.” Aziraphale fidgets with the edge of the box, trying to find the right words. For someone who loves to surround himself with the literature of the world, he finds surprisingly few good ones right now. “You see… when we moved here… when we started building something that was… something of our own, I noticed that... “ He takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “You seemed happy, Crowley, and I’ve never seen you like that and I… I wanted to be able to remember that. To hold on it. Because it might all just end and I…. once I started I couldn’t stop and you weren’t even supposed to know because… because you’d think me ridiculous for wanting…”
“Stop.” Crowley holds up a hand. “Just stop.”
“No, please. Let me explain. I…”
“I’ve tried so hard, Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupts, fingers digging into the countertop as if he means to leave a mark there.
“Tried what?” Aziraphale aches to reach out for him but he holds himself back. This was not at all how he had imagined this conversation to go. Mostly because it wasn’t supposed to happen in the first place.
“To fall out of love with you,” Crowley says and the air disappears from the room. “I tried so hard. Every day.” He laughs to himself but it holds nothing but sorrow. When he looks up again, tears roll down his face that he doesn’t care to brush away. “And there you are. Being… you.”
“Crowley…”
“I don’t stand a chance, do I?”
Aziraphale watches him as he rises. Watches how he walks into the hall. Watches him take his jacket off the peg. Watches him leave.
He watches how the early morning sun spills through the windows set into their front door. Once. Twice.
He still watches the door on Sunday when he’s supposed to cook lunch but he still doesn’t know what to make.
Crowley doesn’t come back.
Not for that Sunday lunch. Or any of the 57 Sunday lunches after that.
*
Aziraphale still cooks on Sundays and he still walks down the road to Mrs. Pertwee’s house to bring over a dish. But he learns how not to wince every time she asks where the fine young gentleman is who shares a house with him and who she hasn’t seen in a while.
To fall out of love with you
“Busy,” he learns to say. “Quite busy, yes. Lots of work.”
He learns a lot of things over those 57 weeks.
To fall out of love with you
He learns when to water the plants (the hard way, some die). He learns when the pears are ripe; they have opted against an apple tree for the sake of irony. He learns that the creek clogs up with autumn leaves and it floods half the garden. He learns how to ignore the odd looks he gets when he goes to the market by himself. He learns how to keep the door to the other bedroom firmly closed because there is no point in looking inside to only find it empty. He learns that there is no use in shedding tears over words that haunt him.
And he learns that the house is awfully quiet and that it gets cold in the winter and that he hates it so much that he almost chooses to hibernate.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he learns how to chop wood without accidentally discoporating himself, stokes a fire and sits down in front of it. He has the wooden box in his lap, absently flipping through the photographs.
To fall out of love with you
A picnic in the garden. A walk through the fields. The summer festival. The concert one town over.
Those have been good memories. But now they are tainted. Now they taste like ashes.
He almost throws them into the fire that night. He stops himself when he holds one particular photograph in hand.
The summer lilacs.
Crowley’s smile.
Aziraphale remembers that day. Warm but not hot, around tea time. Scones with strawberry jam. Crowley among the butterflies, looking so boundlessly happy that Aziraphale has caught himself daydreaming. Thinking about crossing the lawn, stepping into the soft shade of Crowley’s wings, Crowley kissing him.
He has messed this up royally, Aziraphale knows that. Has messed up the one good thing that has come out of that entire Apocalypse situation. His life with Crowley.
To fall out of love with you
A life he’s never thought possible. A life he’s never even allowed himself to think about. But a life that has become a reality step by step and stone by stone and now… now it’s gone.
*
The winter turns into spring and spring turns into summer again.
Snowdrops grow, then tulips, the pear tree, the summer lilacs.
Aziraphale drags a bench out there to sit under the colorful bush to read. It throws a nice shade and the scent is quite lovely. The butterflies don’t come to him, though. He tries to spread out a wing, to show them he is one of them in a strange way, but they dismiss him.
Quite right they do.
He is not him.
Could never be.
Maybe it’s because he doesn’t smile.
*
It’s going to be the 58th Sunday soon when Aziraphale is in the kitchen late one evening to prepare himself a cup of tea. It shatters in the sink, loose tea leaves flying everywhere, when he sees him.
Well, to be fair, he has seen him quite a few times in the past year. In the corner of his eyes, in the distance. Always far away and out of reach and just a figment of his imagination, of wishful thinking. But this time… this time he’s real.
Crowley looks tired. Exhausted, even. His hair is longer still, falling past his shoulders now as he sits hunched over on the bench underneath the summer lilacs.
For a long moment, Aziraphale just looks at him, unsure what to do. He has waited for so long (well, not really that long by their standards) but now he doesn’t know if he wants to go out there and yell at him. Or lock the doors from the inside.
He does neither of these things. Instead, he grabs a knit throw from the back of the sofa and steps out of the kitchen door.
“It's getting quite cold in the night these days,” he says as he lays the blanket around Crowley’s drooping shoulders and sits next to him.
Crowley nods in reply, tugging the plaid around himself as a shiver makes his body quiver.
“You missed Sunday’s lunch,” Aziraphale continues after a while spent in thick silence. He still isn’t sure if he wants to just leave Crowley out here or if he wants to reach out and brush his hair back so he can look at him properly again.
After another long silence Crowley speaks, his voice sounding as if he hasn’t used it in a while. “I had to walk it off.”
“You’ve been gone for over a year.”
“I took the long way round.”
“Bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Crowley gives a non-committal sound. “Have you met me?”
“Crowley…”
“I’m sorry, Aziraphale,” Crowley cuts him off. He looks at him then, golden eyes somehow bloodshot and so very tired. “I shouldn’t have…. I’m sorry.”
“You left, Crowley. You… you left me with… with that.” Anger bubbles up in Aziraphale. An anger he had successfully suppressed for the past 57 weeks. “Now I know that time is different for us and we’ve been apart far longer than that but that was… different. That was before. Now you can’t just….” And just like so, the fury evaporates again and he puffs out a sigh. “Sorry isn’t good enough, Crowley.”
“You’re the one who kept those pictures, those…. memories without telling me.” Crowley is on his feet now, the blanket flapping around him like a second pair of wings.
“Yes, because I knew who you’d react this way.”
Crowley snorts indelicately. "You predicted that I'd walk around the bloody Earth because you suddenly decided that after six millennia you…"
"You did what?" Aziraphale looks at him incredulously. "The entire planet?"
"Well, I skipped Australia. Too many distant relatives. But that's not the point." Crowley’s shoulders sag. "The point is…"
"Yes, what exactly is the point?"
"The point is that I'm scared, alright? That's the whole bloody point." Crowley throws his hands up. "I'm scared."
"Of what?" Aziraphale knows the answer to that. Or at least he begins to know his own answer to that.
"Of you," Crowley says at last. "Of you and of me. And… of letting you get too close."
That Aziraphale hadn't seen coming. "But that night you said that you…"
"I know what I said."
"I don't understand."
Crowley huffs a laugh that doesn’t hold any humour. He slinks down onto the bench again as if all energy had left him. "No, you wouldn't."
"Explain it to me, then. I've waited for over a year for you to come back. Tell me what you meant when you said you were trying to fa…"
"I thought you were dead, Aziraphale," Crowley interrupts. There's no anger there any more, no fury, just weariness and exhaustion.
"I was right here. I…"
"That day… Armageddon. When the shop burned down, I was there…," Crowley explains, gaze fixed ahead now. There's a glimmer in his eyes that Aziraphale tries to ignore. "I went in there and I called out for you but you wouldn't…. And I thought you were gone. That they'd gotten to you. Taken you from…."
"You never said," Aziraphale says into the silence that follows Crowley's unfinished sentence.
Crowley waves a hand. "It didn't matter. You came back. There was no time."
Aziraphale doesn't know what to say. That day was still a bit of a blur, bits and pieces not quite fitting together. A discorporation can definitely do that to you, especially one that is followed by hitchhiking another body and narrowly escaping the End of the World.
"I'm sorry. I should have realized… ," he begins but Crowley shakes his head.
"After… when we did the…," he circles both hands between them, "and I was up there… and they were just… They hate you up there, Aziraphale. Just because. Just because you're being… you. Because you're kind and you wonder and you… you enjoy things just for the…"
"Hell of it?" Aziraphale provides, feeling a little smile tick his lips up.
Crowley matches his expression even only by a fraction. "Yeah, I suppose. They hate you for that. Just because it doesn't fit into their world."
"But we took care of them, Crowley. They won't harm us." Aziraphale isn't quite convinced of that himself.
"We don't know that," Crowley confirms their joint fear. "But what I do know is that… if they're ready to burn you with hellfire for being kind then… what are they going to do if they found out we have this." He gestures around them, the house, the garden.
"Oh…"
"I already lost you once, Aziraphale. And when I did, I didn't care about the damn End of the World. It didn't matter. Nothing did."
"Crowley…" Aziraphale wants to reach out but doesn't quite dare to.
"I can't do it again. If they took you, I couldn't bear it. I…" Crowley clears his throat but it doesn't help. His voice still sounds heavy as he continues. "So if that means… what I'm saying is… I'd rather be in a world where I… where I don't love you, than having to live in a world where you're not there."
Aziraphale looks at him even though Crowley’s eyes are fixed somewhere over his shoulder. He’s never seen him like this. In six thousand years, he has never seen him like this; tired and scared and so raw that it makes Aziraphale’s fingers itch to touch him.
“Can you say it again?” he says at last when the silence begins to stretch between them. “The right way around this time.”
“You mean….” Crowley makes a vague gesture.
“Please.”
Crowley looks at him then. For the first time in over a year, he properly looks at him and it makes Aziraphale realise just how much he’s missed him. When he says the words, something warm trickles down his neck until it pools somewhere in his chest.
“I love you.”
Aziraphale lets out a long breath that carries a wobbly “Ohhh….” with it.
“It’s alright if you don’t. I…”
Crowley is on his feet again but Aziraphale reaches for his hand, holding him back. For a brief second he presses his lips to the back of Crowley’s hand.
“That’s not…,” he begins, still holding on to Crowley. “I didn’t… I am scared, too.”
“I know. That’s why I never said it.” Crowley turns his hand, his fingertips brushing along Aziraphale’s jaw just so.
“But you did, didn’t you? So many times. In… in so many ways and I never… I never heard you.”
Crowley smiles at him, a thin but understanding smile. “They taught you not to listen.”
“But I’m an angel. It… love… that’s our… our thing. I should have…” Aziraphale tightens his grip on him.
“It’s alright, Aziraphale.”
“No, it’s not,” he protests, jumping to his feet, Crowley’s hand still in his. “It is not alright. Because it hurt you. And me. Because we could have… Because I… I knew that I… that I felt something but I didn’t… I didn’t know what was. All this time. And it… you had to drop a bomb on a church to make me understand what that was. And it… it scared me so much that…. that I kept pushing you away. Over and over. But you stayed.” He draws in a breath because he starts to feel light-headed. “And I just kept pushing until you… and knowing now that you’d thought I’d died without telling you that I…. can you forgive me?”
“I don’t have to.”
“But… I kept it from you when you deserved to know. How I felt and… and about the pictures and… and how I daydreamed about kissing you when you stood here that day surrounded by the butterflies because you’ve never looked so beautiful and I… I’m sorry, Crowley. I should have told you.”
Crowley looks at him for a long moment. Something in his gaze has softened and Aziraphale realises that he is returning his touch, their hands linked together between them.
“You daydreamed out that?”
Aziraphale blushes, glad for the darkness around them. “A little bit… maybe…”
“Was it good?”
“As daydreams go, I suppose.”
“And you thought I was beautiful.”
Aziraphale gives him a little nudge. “Well, I don’t do now. You smell.”
“I walked the Earth,” Crowley protests.
“I never asked you to.”
“Walked through my boots and all. See?” Crowley lifts up a foot to reveal the well-worn remnants of his sole.
“I missed you, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, their lightened mood sobering again.
“I missed you, too.”
Aziraphale clears his throat. “Well, I guess I should tell you now that I…”
“Don’t.” Crowley puts a hand to his chest. “I don’t want you to say it just because I did.”
“But…”
“Are you still scared?”
Aziraphale looks away from him. “Yes.”
“Then don’t.” Crowley shrugs. “I can wait.”
“What about you? Aren’t you scared anymore?”
“I am. And I don’t think that’ll ever go away.”
“Oh… alright.” Aziraphale tries to step back but Crowley holds on to him.
“But!”
“But? There’s a but?”
“There always is. You always have to wait for the but.”
“Let’s have the but, then.”
Crowley grins at him. A full-fledged genuine grin. “I had a lot of time to think as I was doing my… round. I’m still afraid that all this… that it’ll end eventually. That they find us. But until… if that day comes, we still have time. And I… I’d rather spend my time with you. If you’ll still have me.”
Aziraphale nods along with every word. “Well, I always knew you’d come back.”
“Did you, now?”
“You left the car. I knew that even if you left me, you’d never actually leave the car behind.”
“That is true.”
“What are we going to do now?” Aziraphale finds himself playing with the hem of the blanket around Crowley’s shoulders.
“Well, I for one am absolutely knackered, so… I’d like to go to sleep actually. And from what I’ve heard, you broke one of the mugs making yourself some tea so… why don’t we start there?”
Aziraphale wrinkles up his nose. “Maybe you can take a shower first?”
“I thought I was beautiful.”
“And Mrs Pertwee thinks you’re dashing. But that doesn’t mean you don’t smell.”
“Point taken.”
Aziraphale holds out his hand. “Shall we, then?”
“We’ll take it slow?” Crowley slides his fingers between his. Properly this time.
“We have all the time in the world, I suppose.”
“Right.” They walk a few steps back towards the house when Crowley stops again. “Thank you for waiting.”
“I learned from the best.”
“Yeah, you did. Because I’m dashing. And beautiful.”
Aziraphale groans. “That’s going to be one long eternity.”