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Perfection.
Aziraphale has spent a long time striving for — and falling short of — it. Angels, after all, are meant to be perfect, and his own repeated failures in the area of flawlessness were the subject of frequent lectures and reprimands from colleagues and superiors.
The other angels ensured that he never forgot the celestial standard, and his continual unsuccess at attaining it. Aziraphale accepted, eventually, that his deficiencies could never be fully rectified. Try as he might, he was doomed to never be a perfect angel.
He wished, sometimes in the old days, melancholy and self-berating, that he could be a perfect friend. Crowley deserved all of the best, after all. But being a perfect friend to Crowley and being a perfect angel of Heaven were directly at odds with one another.
Every time yet another barbed, frightened, unmeant word slipped free of Aziraphale’s tongue, he was reminded of it. Caught between the constant inner tug-of-war of one loyalty and another, he could never hope to approach faultlessness in either domain.
And then… things changed.
The world did not end. Their lives did not end. And, suddenly, Heaven’s standard of perfection was no longer of any particular relevance.
They spoke the feelings of their heart. They held each other’s hands. They moved to a cottage.
Aziraphale thought, then, that things would finally, truly, be perfect.
He was wrong.
They still fight, occasionally. Jabbing at each other, harsh words with no bosses to blame this time. They try new things, human things, together and individually… and sometimes they fail.
Sometimes they can have a good laugh about it. Other times, it isn’t so easy.
And so together, living their lives in liberty, finally able to be themselves without the looming threat of discovery and destruction, Aziraphale discovers that his imperfections — and Crowley’s imperfections, too — are now only more readily apparent than ever.
No, he is far from perfect. So is Crowley. And they, as a pair, are also far from perfect.
But perhaps, Aziraphale finds himself thinking more and more often, that’s okay. He loves Crowley fully with and for all his flaws, after all. And — for a wonder that never stops feeling wondrous — it appears that the feeling really is mutual. Crowley has known Aziraphale far too long, far too well, for any of the angel’s many faults to be hidden from him. But here they both still are.
And maybe, Aziraphale muses, as he puts his arm around Crowley and leans into the demon’s answering embrace, joining in wordless reconciliation after their latest petty spat, he doesn’t need to be perfect. They don’t need to be perfect.
Perfection is as unattainable as it ever was, and probably always be. Living on Earth, inevitably and uniquely flawed as all the world’s humans are, certainly isn’t likely to bring either of them closer to faultless.
But perhaps, in the end, that isn’t what matters. Perhaps, even without perfection, they can be… enough.
Perhaps, smiling into one another’s eyes, they already are.