Work Text:
They hadn’t made plans, really. He didn’t think they needed to--they were free, they were done with their respective sides, and Pride was one of the biggest parties Soho saw during the year. He was sure they’d find each other.
But that was before nearly the whole day had passed, with nary a hint of angelic presence. Crowley was sure--had been sure, at least--that Aziraphale would have been in the thick of it, holding safety for people, running interference from protesters, and generally just leaking blessings into the crowds.
He was very surprised to find the bookshop buttoned up tight, closed and dark, nothing visible past the rainbow flags hung in the windows.
At first, the door didn’t even open for him. He had to snap his fingers--remind it that as a mechanism it was deeply susceptible to being melted into slag if necessary, before it gave a reluctant click and allowed him in.
The door closed behind him with a very final snick. He paid it no mind, wandering carefully into the darkened shop. Not just so as not to startle the angel, who he could tell was around here somewhere, but also to keep himself from tripping or bumping into any of the haphazard piles of books lying around. He could threaten the lock with fire, but he would never bring fire into the actual shop or let it touch the books and they knew it.
He would swear the shelves had moved, too--he knew that there used to be a direct path to the back room, but now he was finding himself winding through mazes of shelves that shouldn’t have been where they were, that shouldn’t have been keeping him from getting farther in….
“Angel?” he called, softly. It wasn’t quite like yelling in a cathedral--he was fine with doing that, probably in pain as he danced on consecrated ground--but he was only just realizing that none of the jubilant noise outside was making it past the windows and walls. “Aziraphale?” he tried again, a little louder.
A heavy sigh broke the silence, a testy “Back here!” filtering through the shelves.
The next corner opened up onto the back room of the shop. Aziraphale sat in his wing chair, watching him expectantly. Taking in the stray glitter and makeup of him without reaction. “We’re closed, dear.”
“I can see that, angel. I’ve never seen you so closed.”
“Were we supposed to meet today? I’m afraid I’ve lost track of time.” It was a blatant lie, bottomless blue eyes staring straight at him, the only spot of real color showing up in the gloom.
“Weren’t supposed to, no. Thought we might, though. You know what’s going on out there?”
“No, I’ve lived here for the last fifty years and more and had absolutely no interactions with June in Soho,” the angel said flatly.
Crowley wasn’t sure what to do with this--he’d been to Pride before, marched through Soho with people, seen the Angel of the Bookshop helping and greeting and loving, and this was…
This was just not his angel. “Figured it would be your kind of party, is all.”
“Not… not this year, my dear. I don’t.…” The calm reserve broke, icy control cracking into shuddering shoulders. “I don’t think I can, not this year. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Crowley moved like the snake he was, kneeling by Aziraphale’s chair, catching sudden tears with his thumb. “What? What is it? Did Heaven get in contact? What happened?”
They’d grown closer, since the end of the world--allowed for touch, for later nights, for them to stop the caution and spy-games they’d played for the whole of history. He still wasn’t ready for Aziraphale to just crumple into him, forward onto his shoulder, tears burning hot through the sheer fabric of his shirt. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he could ever be ready, not for something like that.
He held on tight anyway.
Later--after Aziraphale had cried for a bit longer, after they’d fortified with some Scotch and moved to the ancient sofa and leaned against each other, their legs tangled together, the picture Crowley had was this:
Aziraphale loved Pride. Aziraphale had spent most of human history with the people pushed into the margins, and it was glorious to see progress made even if there were those still trying to take it away.
But… Aziraphale had spent most of human history with the outliers.
“There were so many, my dear, so many--I tried to help when I could, and I very much think I did some good there, but there were always more, and there were always the ones I couldn’t help, couldn’t pry free of their families in time, couldn’t get to somewhere safe--”
There were discreet gentleman’s clubs, but there were also prisons. There were molly houses and there were work houses and there were fires he wasn’t in time to put out. And even for the people he could help, for those he could get to safety and those he could find a place for, for those whose families he could talk sense into, and those he could directly shelter, and those who could hide… well.
Those people had also died, in the fullness of time, as humans did with their three-score-and-ten, and Aziraphale had gone on. Again, and again.
“And really… I wanted to love today, I did. I stepped out to enjoy this, really enjoy it, without worrying about what Heaven might say….”
Crowley gave him a moment, then another, before gently prodding. “But?”
“Oh, Crowley, I could see them! So many of them--there are only so many faces, only so many expressions, and I could see them! Over and over, joyful and scared and defiant and I remembered them, so many of them, and I thought… I thought…” He took a breath, and leaned his head on Crowley’s shoulder. “I thought, why can we have this, now, when they couldn’t? I thought, what right have I to be here, now, when I can have you here with me, when I finally don’t have to hide?”
Crowley wrapped an arm around his angel, snugging him in close. “You did what you could, angel. You did, you always did. When it was hard, when it tore you apart, you did what you could.”
“It was never enough,” Aziraphale said, face buried back into his shirt.
“No. It was never everything. But it was exactly enough, because it was what you could do. And you can stay here, if that’s what you want. But you can also walk out there, and join in, because you are part of this. Because it’s not called ‘defiance,’ although there’s a lot of that. It’s called ‘Pride.’ Because you don’t have to hide, not anymore. Because those people out there, they will be happy right along with you, you know. They won’t tell you that getting to have what you fought for makes you less worthy. They would tell you to be proud, and never let anyone tell you you should be ashamed.”
Aziraphale lifted his head, facing Crowley with a smear of glitter on his cheek. “How did you get so smart?”
“I spent a lot of time around the cleverest angel I know,” he said with a smile.
They compromised, in the end. Aziraphale wasn’t quite up to the huge crowds, but he didn’t want to disappear into darkness again. So they opened up the shop, and hung a sign over the door that said ‘Quiet Room.’ They miracled up some extra chairs, some snacks and cold water, and settled in watching the street outside.
Their first guest was barely more than a boy, with a smudged rainbow on one cheek and panicked look in his eyes. The angel handed him water and waved him to a chair, and went back to obviously reading his book. He didn’t look at the boy when he drank his water, or when gulps turned to sobs and shakes, or when those trailed off. He looked up when the kid came over to him, though, and offered thanks for a quiet place to be; he accepted the thanks with a smile and sent the kid off with a blessing and a biscuit.
Crowley smiled, watching from the darkness of the corner. “And who did you see, when you first looked at him?”
“Martin,” Aziraphale said. “I first met him in the late seventies, him and his boyfriend Peter--they’d been evicted from their flat, and they’d only just got going there after their families had cast them out. I helped them get another flat, and they were happy, for a while. Until the eighties, really.” He took a breath. “Neither of them survived that long, when things went bad.”
“This one will,” Crowley said.
“How can you be sure?”
“I saw the look in his eye, angel. And I felt that blessing.”
Aziraphale looked like he might have argued, but the bell over the door rang again, admitting someone with a “They/Them” pronoun shirt and a young child clearly on the edge of a meltdown. Aziraphale handed them some grapes and a water bottle without comment, and kept an eye on the pair as the quiet of the shop and the cool of the grapes and water helped calm things.
They spent the rest of the day that way, holding a refuge for people when the crowds were too much, offering shade and peace and quiet. And then, when people went out again, Aziraphale would tell his stories, and remember the ones that had gone before.
~fin~