Work Text:
1.
When Aziraphale realised he had fallen in love with Crowley, he wondered how a being made to sense love could be so absolutely blind to said emotion growing within himself.
If he looked back now, he noticed the signs going as far back in time as the first time they met. On the walls of the Garden when they had stood watching the desert sands long after Adam and Eve had vanished beyond the last dune, chatting and joking with the demon had come with such ease.
It’d be funny if we both got it wrong, wouldn’t it? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?
He had glanced at him and laughed once, drawn to those bright yellow eyes and the wisp of a smile on his lips, before the reality of the statement caught up with him and he stuttered in horror.
Heaven and Hell were needed to maintain the balance in Her plan, each side dutifully carrying out its tasks. Angels were meant to carry out the Good, and demons were there to carry out the work of Evil. These were the thoughts that came to him almost mechanically as though it were habit. What would happen to the balance if they were to disobey that? Surely, nothing good could come of it?
No indeed, he thought resolutely. That wouldn’t do. The demon in that instance had to have been teasing him, because nothing that Aziraphale did would go against Her ideals. He was an angel that had faith in Her and Her Ineffable Plan.
But also, some small part of him wondered, could anything truly be wrong if it was all part of Her Plan anyway? An even smaller part wondered, if everything was orchestrated by Her then wouldn’t the forces of Hell also be… right? Could they be well and truly Evil when they are still of Her creation?
His thoughts would sometimes wander down such paths but he never let himself believe that, ruthlessly squashing them before they could grow any larger in his mind. That was a dangerous line of thinking and he certainly didn’t want to Fall.
So he shook his head and let the question of right and wrong rest. It settled gently in his mind like a mortal creature would settle into the folds of warmth in a bed before resting for a long time. It settled and slept, deep and far enough back in his divine mind that it would collect dust in its corner and wouldn’t be roused for another few centuries at least, if not millennia.
He sighed. Still. Giving away the sword had been against his orders from higher ranking angels – his superiors. He couldn’t help the part of him that continued to feel embarrassed by his impulsive actions.
The two beings stood for a while in silence and watched the oncoming storm clouds. As the soft drops of rain began to fall, he glanced again at the demon next to him and it felt like second nature to lift his wing and grant him shelter. If he stared a little too long at Crawley as he shuffled closer, nobody was there who could notice. Aziraphale himself just chalked up the lingering gaze to his own curiosity in regards to his Fallen brethren.
2.
The next few instances wherein Aziraphale had met the demon occurred over the course of a few millennia. He learned that the demon had changed his name from Crawley to Crowley and even though they met rarely and briefly, he quickly grew to think of the other being as entirely pleasant despite their differences. He was curious to know what it would be like to sit down properly sometime and converse with him.
By the time he was in Rome and he heard the familiar drawl ordering a drink from the bored lady at the bar, he had already decided that he would ask Crowley to join him for a meal. Aziraphale wouldn’t admit it but his time on Earth was getting kind of lonely.
So he went to talk to Crowley, let the slightly tetchy snark roll off of him and was delighted when the demon, smirking, accepted his invitation to Petronius’. They talked and drank, ate oysters, laughed and as they bid farewell at the end of the night with no plans set to see each other again, Aziraphale realised he didn’t mind this. He supposed this was him making a friend, and that the next time they ran into each other with some free time on their hands, they would be able to do the same again.
He contentedly strolled through the streets of Rome, the people who occasionally brushed past him continuing on with an inexplicable lightness in their step and brightness in their eyes. He thought about Crowley and the pleasant tilt of his mouth when he laughed, the way his glasses would occasionally slip down and reveal yellow eyes. Briefly, he wondered whether the demon was going back to his residence in order to sleep. He had said it was a habit he learned from when he was a serpent, dozing in the sun or under a tree more often than existing in the form of a human.
Abruptly, he stopped walking and froze. An old question had sat up in its long-forgotten bed, rubbing its eyes and bringing itself to Aziraphale’s attention. Was it okay to see an occult being, a demon, and think of him as anything other than Evil? What was right and what was wrong?
He thought of the demon laughing as he stood on the walls of Eden and told him about the sword he gave away for Adam and Eve to protect themselves. He thought of the discomfort and worry that he pushed down in the days before the flood and Crowley’s own concern for the children that were to be drowned. They had stood for days on a mountain as they watched the rains come down, slowly but surely getting harsher and stronger. They had stood for hours, watching as God’s son slowly bled on a cross. When they had parted ways that night, they were silent.
So he laid the question back to rest. He hummed to himself as the question burrowed deeper into the sheets he tucked it into because he didn’t yet have an answer for it. He was patient. He would wait for the answer to come to him eventually, even if it were to take millennia.
He took hours to wind through the city and walk far beyond the city bounds. Tomorrow he was to meet a woman named Agrippina in the Pontine Islands and oversee her safe return to Rome. So he stretched his creamy white wings and took off into the darkness.
They met a few more times in the next few centuries and he thought to himself, perhaps he could get used to this kind of friendship. Sure, they were still meant to be adversaries in their stations on Earth, the foil to the other’s plans, but still they managed to cultivate a friendship of sorts. He was really growing to like it.
3.
Then he was given orders to deal with the Black Knight and he found him. Except it was Crowley there, still managing to saunter towards him while covered head to toe in chainmail and armour, suggesting an arrangement, something unbelievable and totally nonsensical. Really, he couldn’t be expected to deal with all that at once so he yelled and refused and stomped away.
He reached his inn, went to his room, undressed and sat down heavily on his bed. Lie to their respective offices about their work? Just so they can avoid cancelling each other out? Hah! Ridiculous. Heaven was not like Hell. They’d check Aziraphale’s reports and miracles and if anything were off, they would notice. So he lay on his bed, fuming all night.
When he went out for breakfast the next morning, he realised he hadn’t actually done anything about the Black Knight yesterday. Then he thought about Michael.
He had always made sure to never make mistakes in his reports. It was so that he wouldn’t accidentally waste Michael’s time correcting anything. He hadn’t lied when he said they were quite the stickler for rules. However, he also knew that they were quite a busy archangel with a lot more to do in Heaven and on Earth other than checking a single field angel’s work.
Perhaps, just maybe, after four and a half millennia of his reports, was there a chance that they weren’t all being checked as thoroughly? He resolved to test that for himself.
For the next few days, Aziraphale went about his business, performing miracles and trying to counteract Crowley’s Evil with his acts of Good. He didn’t face Crowley again but when he went back to King Arthur’s court and set about writing his reports, simply as an experiment, he carefully penned in a few errors and discrepancies. They were nothing huge. He didn’t fabricate any new events or drastically change the outcome of a miracle. He only wrote that some of them had occurred at a slightly different time or place than what they did in reality, and then sent the reports on their way.
Months passed and his penned reports with small errors grew to have slightly larger and larger errors. Still within the realm of reason and not outright proof that he wrongly performed some miracles. Yet he received no reprimand from an irritated Gabriel. He wouldn’t have said that any specific plan had begun to form in his mind. But he did think that if Crowley brought up the topic of an arrangement again, he would be have a few different things to say to him next time.
However, as it turned out, Crowley didn’t have to bring it up next time because Aziraphale managed that just fine himself.
He ran into Crowley again in Geneva, only a few years later. Aziraphale bought a delightful spread of cheeses that he’d been dying to try out and they went to the cottage where Crowley had recently taken up residence. He ducked into a room and emerged with several bottles of wine that he said paired well with the cheeses. Within a few hours, the angel and demon were both pleasantly drunk, the Black Knight incident long forgotten.
“So whah- what temptations are you in town for this time, hm?” Aziraphale slurred out, too drunk to bother tip-toeing around the topic anymore.
“Ohh just… encour’ging a spot of infidelity next weekend,” he said, loosely waving his hand to the side. “It’s meant to have a wonderful effect on this other fella somewhere farther to the west. I’ll have to take care of that in two weeks too. You?”
Aziraphale didn’t bother asking in which way the effect would be ‘wonderful’ since he was fairly certain it would be a chaotic idea of wonderful anyway. Instead he said, “Well I’m, hmm, on my way to the… place where the king’s been living what’s it called? Pal- Paris! Yes, there.”
“Paris!” Crowley cried out abruptly. “Oi that’s where I’ve got to go to next. Oh He-. Wish I could go there right now. This town was so boring until you showed up, angel.”
“Well, why don’t you?” Aziraphale said suddenly as he tried to straighten up in his chair, ignoring the sudden fluttering in his chest. He just managed to lean a little forward and to the left. “I don’t want to be going to Puh- Paris yet, not really. I wanted to spend more time here, trying the new pastries the bakeries have come up with. That lot really are quite competitive – makes them creative. And even once I get to Paris it would just be ‘work, work, work’ before I had to head off to Aachen again. Barely enough time to just sit down and enjoy the food, Crowley.”
“Angel, but who’d do my work here then?” he asked with some confusion, slowly blinking like he was trying to put the last piece of a puzzle together but kept missing because he was terribly drunk.
“Why, me of course!” the angel exclaimed, looking incredibly pleased with himself. Meanwhile, Crowley’s elbow which had been supporting his body against his chair slipped sideways and he lay sprawled on the armrest. “No, no I’ve thought it out. Heaven can’t quite connect miracles to the being who did them and well, I checked after the last time we talked. Michael is less attentive about my reports than I had expected!
“See, they just check that the effects of the miracles are carried through and don’t care as much about the method by which they get done. Meaning you can carry out my work in Paris, I can carry out yours here and then we only have to send in our reports with the details a bit botched and there you’ll have it! Heaven and Hell get their work done and we have less of our time taken up by long, troublesome journeys and work. It’s a win-win all around.” He looked at Crowley expectantly.
Crowley was staring at him with his mouth opening and closing like a fish. There were a few seconds of silence and Aziraphale, who had started to sober up, began to feel a little trepidation as his face slowly fell. It couldn’t have been that bad a suggestion, could it? Crowley had suggested similarly just a few years ago.
“O- or you know, we could still just do our own work, I suppose. It’s your choice real-,” he cut off as he suddenly found himself with an armful of demon. Crowley quickly squeezed the angel in a hug and just as swiftly sat back in his chair with a blinding grin. Aziraphale felt warmth filling his body. He dismissed it as the after-effects of the wine.
“I completely agree with your plan, angel,” he said and that was that.
When the demon started sobering up again, he stammered out a vague apology for his abrupt conduct which Aziraphale surmised might have had to do with the hug, although he hadn’t minded it. But by the next morning, the demon was back to his cocky sauntering self. He left Aziraphale with instructions about the demonic temptations to be performed just as Aziraphale told him about the angelic miracles.
He saw Crowley off at the door and went back into the cottage, having elected to stay there as he worked for the next few weeks. He noticed a largely empty bookshelf in the corner of the living room and smiled. He was going to set out the next day for good food, books and miracles.
4.
After a few centuries of their mutually beneficial arrangement, it became… well not common, but also not exactly uncommon to carry out small rescue missions when one or the other of them was in a situation that required help breaking out from. Provided that they were in the area and knew about it, of course.
There had been that time when someone had accidentally caught sight of Crowley’s eyes. A group of priests and villagers had come knocking on his door that night to take him away in iron chains. Aziraphale had, miraculously, just finished helping a woman give birth in the home opposite the church that Crowley had been taken to and was there to see the crowd enter the building. He heard the faint yelps and hisses from the demon as he trod across consecrated ground.
He waited until dawn when he knew that the guards would all be the most inattentive: partly from sleepiness and partly from the misguided belief that demons hold little power during the day. Within a few minutes of the sun’s first rays shining from the east, they were leaving the church and within an hour, the two of them had left the village.
There was also another time when Aziraphale had been imprisoned for accidentally insulting a nobleman’s choice in fashion. Crowley had been there then, but only because he had already been meaning to meet the angel for a miracle he had needed him to perform when Aziraphale went to Edinburgh again. Well, that and the bottle of tequila he had wanted Aziraphale to try before he left.
They quietly chatted as they made their way out through the dungeons. In the meantime, every guard on the way had seemed to remember they needed to file taxes that very moment and conveniently missed the prisoner escaping with a rather thin looking man.
So suffice it to say, it wasn’t uncommon that they rescued each other from tight spots. Even though Crowley would refuse to call them rescues out loud because that would make Hell upset and that would in turn be inconvenient for both of them. Sometimes they could barely even be called rescues because help was not necessarily needed as much as company simply in order to stave off boredom while escaping.
But nevertheless, rescues they were. And if one were to ask Crowley, he would say none had ever quite managed to have a cause as ridiculous as Paris in 1793. Aziraphale would protest that he could not be blamed for having good taste in clothing while entirely missing the point that he crossed over to the mainland and into the midst of the French Revolution, not even trying to dress to blend in, for the sake of crepes.
Regardless of later arguments on the events, in that moment when Aziraphale was sitting in a cell, unable to miracle himself away from the threat of discorporation by guillotine, hearing Crowley’s voice in the abrupt silence was enough to make something incredibly pleasant bloom in his chest. It had been so long since he’d heard that voice. Oh, he was still in chains, still in the clothes of an aristocrat and meant to be waiting for his death sentence to be carried out within minutes. But as he stopped and turned, he felt radiant.
They bickered and Aziraphale categorized his pleasant feelings as mere relief at escaping an unnecessary execution. They went out for crepes. Hard as they were to find, a few miracles tipped the odds in their favour. This time, they were in clothes less likely to get the angel arrested, so they talked and laughed and drank, easily staying out of the way of the revolutionaries as their roars of approval flew over the active execution grounds.
5.
If Aziraphale’s revelation regarding the presence of romantic love within him came down like a falling domino at the end of a line of them, the first domino was toppled in a park in London. It was 1862.
He glared down at the paper in his hand, the words ‘Holy Water’ scribbled on somehow managing to make his limbs feel like ice. He turned his glare onto the demon beside him. Fear and horror were clutching at his heart but he only let his anger shine through.
“No, absolutely not. I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley! Why would you even ask me this?”
Crowley twisted his torso towards him and simultaneously leaned away. “That’s not- it’s just insurance, angel,” he claimed in exasperation.
“For what?” he asked, his voice getting shrill.
“In case things go pear-shaped,” the demon replied bluntly.
Aziraphale wanted to scream right there in the park. It must have shown, because Crowley hurried to correct himself.
“I would never use it on myself. You have to believe me.”
That gave the angel pause. He stared at the demon, trying to understand the point of this horrible conversation. He looked at the rigid set of the other being’s jaw. It was suddenly clear to him and he wanted to recoil in horror at the understanding, but he could only stay frozen. “You mean to use it on… others,” he said slowly, the implication that the ‘others’ were demons being quite clear to both parties.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that Aziraphale. I know exactly what I’m asking for,” he said, his jaw clenching as his entire demeanour hardened.
“Crowley I… I can’t. You know what it does to you. It’s such complete destruction. I can’t get that for you. You must know, I can’t let you do it.” He knew he was begging but he couldn’t let his best friend do this. He may be a demon but he couldn’t let him kill that way.
Crowley stood stiff for another beat and then seemed to deflate almost imperceptibly. He laid his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and squeezed. “I get it, angel. I won’t ask you again,” he said. He patted him on the shoulder and slid his hand down as he walked away.
Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel wrong-footed after the whole conversation.
He was used to silence between them. Going for a few decades with near zero contact was normal for them and sometimes it had even gone on for centuries. But that was in the early days of their friendship. The silence this time, running through parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, felt off and strained from their last conversation. Nonetheless, he went about his business, looking after the precious books in his bookstore, discouraging customers with sporadic opening hours and dining out regularly. He also still performed his miracles whenever he got orders from Above and for a brief period of time even joined a dance class. He kept himself occupied and just like that, the new century turned.
Soon, the War began and in 1941 Aziraphale found himself in a church with a traitor’s gun pointed to his head and the familiar sounds of a demon walking on consecrated ground coming up behind him.
Things moved fast in the next few minutes. His elation at seeing Crowley again was dampened by the Nazis hanging around. Then he was looking at Aziraphale like everything was alright, casually mentioning requiring a miracle to survive an air raid bomb and Aziraphale had just enough time to make it happen. They stood in the rubble together, untouched, and Aziraphale thanked Crowley to a snarling ‘shut up’. He saw his smirk as he wiped and put on his glasses though. He didn’t mind.
“Oh, my books!” the angel exclaimed in a panicked voice. “Oh, I forgot them and they’ll all be blown to…” he trailed off as Crowley approached him, having just yanked the bag of them from a dead man’s grip. Their fingers brushed as he handed it over, a fission of static and warmth travelled up his arm, and Aziraphale froze. In that instant, exactly two thoughts didn’t so much cross his mind as they did run across it, screaming into a megaphone loud enough to be heard in the dreams of the kraken and several species of fish sleeping thousands of kilometers away.
Aziraphale was in love with a demon. And demons were incapable of love.
The realisation hit him like a punch to the gut with a five second delay. He wheezed out a shaky breath. His eyes were still fixed on the bag of books by his side, the point on the handle where their hands had touched, and his body was rigid as he tried to process this new development.
Angels were by no means foreign to the concepts of love. If anything they were the opposite. They were beings of love, capable of feeling love for all things created by God and sensing love in the things She made. Aziraphale had felt an equal kind of love for everything in the universe for as long as he could remember. He could sense the different kinds of love in the people and places he had visited for the past six thousand years.
But never did he care to think that he might feel a different kind of love as well and that he wouldn’t even be able to sense it. Although, he had to admit, it wasn’t as though he had any need to sense its aura. Not when he intimately knew how it felt in his chest, sitting like a burning fire that had always been there giving him warmth for millennia and just patiently waiting for him to notice the source. It burned brighter than all of the other loves he felt combined. The birth of it, the existence of it and the perpetual life of it were all tied to one being. He was standing by his Bentley as he waited for Aziraphale to snap out of whatever daze he was in so they could each go home.
So, Aziraphale moved. He was an ethereal being and he could have vanished himself to the other side of the Earth, or even another galaxy, if he wanted to. To scream, to cry, to hysterically laugh over the six thousand years he had spent somehow missing this thing that was sitting in his chest. Yet surely, even if he did, nothing would ever make any sense. He could shout and shout and ask questions like: Why notice now? Why not sooner? Why not later? Why this angel? Why this demon? But nothing would ever give him an answer. He knew that. It was ineffable.
So he moved.
He walked in silence to the car and packed himself neatly into the front seat. He turned a dazed smile to the being next to him and he looked back with some concern.
“Are the books alright?”
“Yes, they are,” Aziraphale breathed out.
“Are… you alright?”
He forced his smile to stay in place. “I’m quite certain I will be.”
For a brief moment, an old question of right and wrong stirred in his consciousness. He choked back another high-pitched laugh bubbling up his throat and Crowley turned to glance at him. What was the point of right and wrong anymore? Those concepts stopped being relevant the moment a Principality fell in love with a Fallen Angel. Aziraphale didn’t think that conventional ideals could be followed anymore. Heaven and Hell. Good and Evil. Right and wrong. He could probably create a new category outside such a binary. He just hoped Crowley might join him there on the new side.
The question laid back again and waited for a beat. Then it turned into sparks of electricity and flitted away to the stars without looking back.
When they bid each other goodnight at Aziraphale’s shop, Crowley was resting his arms on the roof of his Bentley as he watched him go inside. “Sleep tight, angel,” he called out as he got back into the car and drove away.
Aziraphale got up to his little room and changed into his pyjamas. His head hit his pillows and when he fell asleep, he stayed asleep for two and a half decades.
When he woke up again, one of the first things he found out was that Crowley was planning to rob a church for holy water. He cursed once and scrambled to go get his hands on some holy water himself before Crowley pulled something idiotic.
+1
The Apocalypse was averted and Crowley and Aziraphale have had a good four years. For once, free of their obligations to Heaven and Hell, they had all the time and ability to meet up and dine and get drunk on a regular basis. So they did just that.
After the whole business with handing over the thermos full of holy water to Crowley in the 1960s, Aziraphale had had plenty of time to come to terms with his feelings regarding his best friend. He knew that the Fallen couldn’t love. When God cast them out, She changed them. The same would apply to Crowley too but that didn’t change his feelings of love for the demon.
It hurt him, yes. It made him decide that he couldn’t tell Crowley how he was in love with him since he didn’t want to ruin their friendship. But still, nothing else changed about his emotions on that front. The fire still blazed bright and merry in it chest and if it burned sometimes then, Aziraphale was willing to handle that pain. His love for the demon remained.
As a result of the Apocalypse and its fall-out, over the past four years they had fallen into somewhat of a routine that kept the fire in Aziraphale’s heart dancing. A few days a week, Crowley came to pick up Aziraphale in the mornings and they’d have breakfast together. While lunch and the afternoon were technically reserved for Aziraphale to look after his bookshop, more often than not Crowley would show up around that time anyway, sometimes with pastries, and they’d spend the day out, first at lunch, and then dinner. They’d pour some alcohol, polish off anywhere between a couple glasses and bottles of wine at Crowley’s or Aziraphale’s place, depending on the week, and both crash there. By this point, both their houses had an extra room dedicated to the other being.
It was a quaint little routine they had set up with each other, followed most days of the week. They had never spent as much time together before the Apocalypse, but it was as though the near assured destruction had made them both unwilling to leave the other’s side for the period of time.
It was on one such day belonging to their routine that they came across Michael. Or rather, Michael came across them.
They were having breakfast at a new bakery a ten minute walk from the bookshop and sitting out at the tables set up for customers to bask in the rare warm sun. Aziraphale got up to get some more croissants when he turned and came face to face with Michael.
Their eyes quickly flickered between him and Crowley. He was sprawled back in his spindly metal chair like it was a plush armchair, staring back at Michael with a delicately raised eyebrow.
“Aziraphale,” Michael inclined their head, the gold flecks on their face glinting in the sun. “I see you’re still spending time with the… demon.” Crowley grinned back with nothing but teeth. Aziraphale bristled at the distaste dripping from their voice.
“Yes, I am Michael. Is there a problem with that? Because I was under the impression that we were to be left alone for, oh, as much time as eternity could offer,” he said frostily. Apparently stopping world-ending events planned by your co-workers did not leave behind much room for respect or fear in regards to said co-workers.
“If I knew a way to permanently discorporate you, Aziraphale,” Michael said with barely concealed venom, “I would gladly carry it out in service of Heaven. I don’t even know why they let you stay when you’ve spent enough time with a disgusting little demon to even survive Hellfire. You’ve clearly been corrupted and that absolutely pathetic creature that you call your boyfriend has done such a thorough job of it.”
The thing was, Aziraphale’s heart had broken a little every time he was reminded of the failings of Heaven; how easily they could sentence their own to death, how little kindness they seemed to have when their cruelty is masked by self-righteousness and how little empathy they have for those they deem beneath them. Aziraphale’s heart had been broken by the appearance of those qualities many times already. This time though, it did not break. This time, any sadness was overcome by the surge of burning emotions he felt towards the supposedly ‘Good’ angel that stood before him and insulted the being he loved.
“Why- You- You have no idea how much good exists in the world beyond those tiny narrow views of yours! You talk about demons as if they are all terribly beneath you and undeserving of respect simply because they Fell while you’re still up there pattering about in Heaven,” he said feeling frustrated and still vaguely incredulous. “No, you don’t know how amazing things can be outside your little world in Heaven, and the worst part is you don’t even try to understand. Crowley is amazing. He is the best thing in my life. If you can’t understand that beings like him are just as worthy of respect as the rest of God’s creations, or more even than the rest since he Fell and he’s still here sitting behind me, then you better walk away, Michael. Because our lives are happier without you barging in on our lovely breakfast.”
He was panting a little and he could see Crowley from the corner of his eye, watching him slack-jawed.
Shaking in tenuously controlled anger, Michael spat out through gritted teeth, “Well, Principality Aziraphale. I was originally sent here to you with a message. From higher up saying that if you wished to be rid of the demonic influence on your essence and person, then the Heavenly powers would grant you your wish. You would have been able to return to your typical angelic duties. But considering the absolute nonsense you’re spouting, I’m going to assume that the message is no longer relevant. You’re clearly mad, even madder than the rest of them.” They shot a glare in the direction of the demon and started to turn. “Have fun with your insane boyfriend.”
“Oh yes, they can definitely take that message and shove it somewhere dark. And for goodness’ sake he is not my boyfriend,” Aziraphale shrieked, his frustration and outrage still exploding out of him. Crowley actually snorted and Aziraphale glared at him.
“Husband or lover then, Aziraphale. I don’t care.”
“Will I ever be able to sufficiently clarify to anyone that Crowley and I are not in a relationship?” he bemoaned.
Michael stopped and turned back, this time with a particularly nasty curl to their lips. “Really, Aziraphale? You give such a speech about your own morals and how they’re superior to Heaven’s-”
“Now wait, where did you pull that from?”
“-But you can’t even publicly admit to the relationship you have with your pet demon? What are you, too ashamed?”
Aziraphale’s mouth went dry. This was getting too personal for him. He tried his best not to look at Crowley as he tried to explain, “Listen Michael, just because two beings spend time with each other does not mean they are in a relationship of the romantic sorts. Surely, you would know something as basic as this?”
The Archangel’s face twisted into a look of disgusted horror and just as Aziraphale was thinking he was getting across to them, they burst out, “Oh my G- what kind of a blind idiot do you take me for? No angel that’s flown over the Earth in the last few decades can miss your disgustingly large aura. I couldn’t give a shit about you idiots’ daily routine! I can tell because we’ve been able to see your massive love-sick aura from Heaven for years. Sure, several of the younger angels were silly enough to think it was your love for humans but come on. Every time you come across that snake, the entire aura just grows exponentially.”
Aziraphale suddenly felt very cold all over. His knees felt like they might give out from underneath him. He tried wetting his lips and they came away dry. He very pointedly didn’t look at Crowley. “I-,” he started not knowing what to say.
“Are you going to deny it even now, Aziraphale?” Michael asked with a sneer. “Say you don’t love him?”
The angel breathed out and squared his shoulders, anger at Michael licking back up his throat again. He loved that demon with every part of his divine essence and as much as he wanted to run to hide somewhere deep in the ocean, he’d rather bear the humiliation of rejection than lie about this. He looked to the demon and noticed him looking somewhere above Aziraphale’s head. Very well. No eye-contact, then.
“No, I cannot deny that I love him. And I’m not ashamed of it,” he said. Crowley’s eyes snapped down to his and the angel blinked. “I’ve loved him for centuries. I could never lie about that,” he repeated it like it was a reassurance. He wasn’t entirely sure who it was for. The angels or the demon? Crowley rose to his feet.
“Angel-,” he started.
“Excellent,” Michael interrupted as they adjusted the ruffles on their sleeves. “I’ve won this absolutely ridiculous argument, then! Now, I’ll be on my way.”
With his frustration rising again, because this was honestly too much shenanigans for breakfast, the angel snapped back, “Crowley can’t love, Michael. He’s a demon. We can’t be in a relationship.”
Crowley and Michael both froze where they were. Crowley looked pained while Michael stared at the two. Then they threw back their head and started laughing. Amongst broken intakes of breath and gales of unrelenting laughter, Aziraphale was able to hear a few scattered phrases: ‘too much’, ‘both idiots’ and ‘have to tell everyone’. Then they vanished, leaving Crowley and Aziraphale alone at their table.
Aziraphale snuck a glance at the demon. He was sitting in his chair again and staring into the distance like he was re-evaluating his life. The angel fidgeted with his hands, repeatedly twisting the ring on his little finger.
“Crowley… are you alright?” The demon turned to him and stared for a moment, absently shaking his head. Aziraphale’s face blanched and he hurried to assure the other being that he wasn’t expecting any feelings in return. Their relationship didn’t need to change and they could pretend like it didn’t happen.
Crowley placed his hand over the angel’s and stopped his babbling. “Angel… Aziraphale, I love you. I have loved you for nearly six thousand years. I thought I was so obvious. Gosh, angel what made you think I couldn’t love you back?”
“I- Why, my dear, I thought God took that away from the Fallen. But even if She hadn’t, I didn’t think you would love me. I just-,” he looked down at their hands and loosely tangled his with Crowley’s. He gulped and looked back up, not quite believing this to be real. “I suppose I also thought, even if you could, you would find someone else.”
Crowley raised their hands to his lips. “Never,” he breathed as he pressed a kiss to the angel’s knuckles. “As for the part saying I’m incapable of love… well, I can’t imagine that was anything more than Heaven’s propaganda, angel.”
Suddenly, Crowley’s eyebrows furrowed before they smoothed out again in a flash. He slowly took off his sunglasses and his snake eyes seemed to glow as he rose to his feet, going around the table to crouch by Aziraphale’s side. He leaned in and whispered with a conspiratorial beckon, “Would you like to see the proof for yourself?”
Aziraphale leaned in, eyes flickering to the demon’s mouth and Crowley surged upwards. The angel didn’t breathe as his fingers clung to the other’s shirt. He opened his eyes to see the demon’s aura stretching vibrant around him and reaching up into the sky. He barely held in a gasp just as Crowley was seeing a very similar halo around the angel as well, blurring out the sky in a haze of colour.
They broke apart and watched as the haze faded revealing the colour of the sky and clouds again. They looked back at each other and grinned.
They went home to Crowley’s flat that night and fell asleep tucked against each other. They were warm under the blankets and Aziraphale settled into the feeling, tightening his grip around Crowley’s waist.
“So many centuries and millennia that we could have been doing this for already,” he mumbled.
“Well, let’s ignore the past six thousand years for now shall we, angel? Let’s just go to sleep.”
“Hmm agreed,” Aziraphale whispered back as he let Crowley burrow further into his side.
The last things they heard from before they fell into a deep slumber were the quiet shared ‘I love you’s as the night took over. Aziraphale’s chest was feeling like it was going to burst each time.
Aziraphale stayed up for just a few moments longer, long enough to once again wonder how a being made for love had been unable to detect the roots of said emotion entwined in both their hearts.