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By third period on February 14th, there were girls with paper hearts strung along their arms like bracelets, and boys with stacks of them spilling from their notebooks. Aziraphale, of course, was one of those who had won nothing at all.
The entire school had been told the rules at the start of the day. Each boy had received a simple heart shape, cut from red paper, with a somewhat smaller heart removed from its center; the girls’ paper hearts were solid. Neither group was supposed to talk to the other except for school-related reasons. A student who forgot, who talked to someone on the other team, would have to surrender his or her token to that person and then leave the game. It would be over when classes ended for the day.
Aziraphale really wasn’t sure what the goal was, other than to make it very obvious who the popular students were.
He met Crowley in their usual lunch spot — the retaining wall out back of the east wing, hidden and almost forgotten, since it technically belonged to a neighbor who didn’t seem to know it was there. Even though the two of them didn’t have any classes together until later in the day, Aziraphale could already guess how Crowley felt about this game. The flattened line of his dark brows confirmed the suspicion.
“Like I’m going to play along anyway.” Crowley had cut his hair much shorter this year, along with styling it into careful spikes. It gave him a bit of a devilish air now as he glared off into the distance. “I’ll talk to anyone I want, and if they want that piece of junk then they better be ready to fight me for it.”
He pulled a sandwich out of his bookbag and fiddled with the wrapper. He had very nice hands, Aziraphale had realized at some point. Slender and clever, the fingers never quite still.
Aziraphale took a last bite of egg salad on rye from between his own stubby fingers. “Couldn’t you just throw it away?”
“Tried that,” Crowley grumbled. “Mr Tyler caught me and made me fish it out of the bin.”
He was silent for a few minutes. When he unwrapped his ham and cheese, he passed half of it over to Aziraphale without even looking; Aziraphale bit into it without saying thank you. He didn’t want to interrupt the thought that he could tell Crowley was still working on. And anyway, Crowley already knew.
Eventually Crowley shrugged. “I knew it would be the wrong one, you know? Soon as they started explaining.”
Sensitive gold-brown eyes tracked down to the bookbag which had so recently held a sandwich. Aziraphale didn’t need to ask what else was in there. Crowley had been his best mate since they’d been small, the one other boy who seemed to understand him. Crowley had also, out of nowhere, recently become very handsome. He’d always been there to protect Aziraphale from harm, and Aziraphale had tried to do the same in return.
Neither of them could save him from the school record books, though. Those still used the name that hadn’t been right for Crowley since he was six. They still contained, jotted down somewhere, an F where there ought to be an M.
Crowley’s voice was small now. “Wouldn’t help to throw it out anyway. I’d still know. ‘N even if I keep it till the end, it’s just a point for the — for the girls’ team.”
“It’s not your fault, Crowley. They’re just wrong.” Boys their age weren’t supposed to hug each other, which didn’t stop Aziraphale from wanting to. “We both know they’re wrong.”
The sound Crowley made, accompanied by the brief rise of one narrow shoulder, said an awful lot for having no words in it.
There was no more conversation as they each finished half of Crowley’s sandwich. Probably Crowley was just keeping all his hurt to himself, and his anger at having to carry around someone else’s idea of who he was. He couldn’t even give it to some other fellow, because none of them would understand —
The answer came to Aziraphale as easily as that. “Oh, of course,” he said, knowing he was doing his wiggle thing as he looked through his satchel, and not minding, this time, because Crowley would never make fun. “It’s so simple — you see, you have my heart...”
He stopped.
They were still sitting together on the wall, side by side — even closer than before, because he’d gotten out his paper heart and was leaning towards Crowley to hand it over. Now he was frozen like that. It seemed the only movement in the world was the sudden, terrified pounding in his chest, and the sweep of Crowley’s eyes as they rose to meet his own.
Crowley’s mouth parted to let out a whisper. “Yeah?”
Three rabbit-fast heartbeats passed before Aziraphale managed a nod.
The parted mouth closed again, then twitched into a smile that seemed all of a sudden very close to Aziraphale’s own lips. A thin hand reached out between them, and he put his own fat, ink-stained hand into it before he could lose his nerve.
He watched the stars in Crowley’s eyes. “Yes.”
When Crowley kissed him, Aziraphale didn’t move. He needed to concentrate on memorizing the way Crowley’s lips felt — warm; a little scratchy, because Crowley was forever letting them get chapped; and as soft as the squeeze of another hand on his. It simultaneously lasted for a couple of seconds, and absolutely no time whatsoever.
Digging through a bookbag with only one hand didn’t look easy, but apparently Crowley was uninterested in removing the other from Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale held on tight to show his complete agreement.
“You’ve got mine.” The paper heart Crowley shoved towards him was grubby and crumpled. “If you want it, I mean. But it’s been yours for a while now.”
Aziraphale passed his own token — the one with an open center, where the same shape but smaller had been removed — to the only boy he would trust unquestioningly with his true heart. Crowley’s, he took and clutched for a moment to his chest.
“That was in the bin, you know.”
“I don’t care.” Aziraphale slid the solid heart into the clear front of his binder where the other one had been. “It’s mine now, and I say I’m keeping it with me.”
Crowley actually blushed at that. His familiar crooked grin turned shy as he slipped Aziraphale’s heart over his wrist, where the red paper stood out bright against his freckled skin. The effect was something like a bracelet.
One or the other of them had shifted even closer, so that now they sat pressed together, shoulders and hips and knees. Their twined fingers rested gently on Aziraphale’s thigh. Eventually Crowley’s head tilted to settle against his.
“So. Are we...” The words started coming faster as Crowley tensed beside him. “It doesn’t have to be anything, we don’t have to, if you don’t want, but I thought maybe —”
“Boyfriends?”
Aziraphale’s voice squeaked enough on the word that any of the other boys would have laughed at him. Crowley didn’t laugh. Crowley made a strange hiccuping sound instead.
“...that. Yes.” All his bony angles relaxed back into Aziraphale’s side. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Aziraphale. My Aziraphale.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend.”
Crowley sighed, maybe more contented than Aziraphale had ever heard him before. Other than that they stayed quiet until a distant bell signaled the end of lunch.
“I’ll see you sixth period,” Aziraphale said as they each readied to go.
“Yeah,” Crowley answered. “Right. See you.”
Neither of them moved. Their gazes met and wavered as they looked at seemingly anything except the other’s eyes.
“You could kiss me,” Aziraphale said quickly, “again, if you like. I’d like it very much.”
Now he had Crowley’s full attention. He still didn’t move, though — neither boy did — only looked, now, very intently at each other, until at last Crowley’s face lit up with joy.
He darted in just long enough to leave one firm peck against Aziraphale’s lips.
“Bye,” he said, before spinning around, a fist punching the air in triumph, to run off to his next class.
Aziraphale’s shoulders bounced so happily that the motion worked itself all the way down to his toes. “Boyfriends,” he whispered to himself, “gosh.”
He was out of the silly heart game for the rest of the day, which was fine. He’d already won.