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One week after the world doesn't end, Crowley brings Aziraphale a blueberry muffin.
It makes butterflies rise up in Aziraphale's chest and he can't help the smile his face breaks into. Crowley has given him things before but they've always been few and far-between. Usually it's something to be shared, or that can be passed off as an excuse to trade intelligence: bottles of wine, concert tickets, dinner reservations. Very rarely is it something explicitly for Aziraphale himself. But this is a single muffin and clearly meant for one.
"Thank you, my dear." The demon's mocking hiss at the thanks is half-hearted and that makes the butterflies rise higher. "May I ask as to the occasion?"
Crowley shrugs much too casually. "Does there have to be one? Last I checked, no one was looking over my shoulder to tell me not to."
Aziraphale feels his smile brighten and Crowley's forced casualness becomes more genuine. "Very true." He takes a bite of the muffin and goodness, it's delicious. The flavour and texture are nice on their own but there's something metaphysical beneath it that wraps everything up in a perfect little bow.
Crowley seems to have spotted this as well and he's smirking behind the glasses. "Satisfactory, I take it?"
"Marvelous. So much love has gone into its preparation - I can taste it." Aziraphale reaches for the paper take-away bag the muffin came from. "Where is this from? I don't recognise the logo."
"Little bakery opened up not long ago a few blocks from my flat. One of those family-owned places you like. Figured I might as well see if they're any good."
"Well it certainly has my approval." Aziraphale meets Crowley's glasses again and his face feels warm even with the smile. "Thank you again. That was thoughtful of you."
And even though Crowley pulls a face, the angel thinks his cheeks are a bit pink too.
The next week, Crowley shows up to the bookshop with a fruit tart from the same bakery. Three days after that it's a cupcake. Then a cinnamon bun. An apricot danish. A chocolate croissant. A loaf of pound cake. A slice of cherry pie.
All of them are delicious. Fairly average in terms of food quality but it's the aftertaste of love that Aziraphale delights in. So much care has been put into these snacks that it leaves him satisfied in a way that has nothing to do with his stomach.
But even more wonderful than the taste is the fact that Crowley keeps coming to the bookshop and keeps bringing him little gifts. Aziraphale is elated and a bit humbled to discover that the muffin was not a one-time thing. Now that the threat of discovery isn't hanging over their heads, Crowley seems determined to explore just how many treats he can give before he hits some sort of barrier. It isn't just food, either. Within a few months the shop has three new ceramic figurines, another mug, a tiny succulent, and a discontinued model of Aziraphale's favourite type of fountain pen.
"I don't mandate a visitor's fee, you know," the angel tells him one evening as he's handed a to-go cup of tiramisu, only half-joking. As much as he loves the gifts, he wants to make it clear that Crowley is welcome always without having to buy a slice of Aziraphale's time.
"'Course I know," Crowley replies breezily, but there's something in his shoulders that relaxes just a bit.
He shows up four days later with no food or trinkets at all and is welcomed in just as enthusiastically. The visit after that is the same. Aziraphale suspects there is boundary testing going on. The following week Crowley arrives at his doorstep three nights in a row empty-handed and each time they drink and laugh and bicker until the early hours of the morning and Aziraphale's cheeks hurt from how much he's smiling. He wouldn't have things any other way and by the end of the week he can tell by how freely his friend is lounging across the sofa that that the demon knows it too.
Five days later, Crowley shows up with two slices of red velvet cake and neither is for himself.
Aziraphale's heart does something amazing and complicated at the realisation that Crowley still wants to give him gifts just...because. No payment. No bribes. No evening out a score. Just a treat for the sake of giving a treat.
He's never had better red velvet cake in his life.
Aziraphale is out for a walk one day when he comes upon the bakery. He never asked exactly where it was but he recognises the logo from the take-away bags and decides that a nibble for the way home sounds very appealing.
It's a small place: clean but cramped. The young lady behind the counter looks particularly bored and isn't even trying to hide how much she's watching the clock on the wall. Aziraphale gives her a smile - which doesn't serve to cheer her up at all - and requests a blueberry muffin. As she ducks into the case to get it he can see into the kitchen in the back. There's a sour-looking gentleman rolling out dough and a teenage boy who looks like he ought to be stirring at batter but is instead playing on his phone. Not quite what he would have expected given his experience with the food so far but he supposes everyone has their bad days.
He pays for his muffin, thanks the cashier, and takes a bite as he heads for the door.
And very nearly spits it back out.
It's terrible.
Or rather, he realizes as he regains his composure and forces down what's already in his mouth, it's exactly the same average quality it's always been but the key ingredient is missing. It doesn't taste like love has been baked into it at all. Quite the opposite: it has that bitter aftertaste that comes of someone who truly hates baking but is forced to do it anyway.
He works very hard not to grimace as he swallows and turns back to the girl behind the counter, who is leaning on the till and looks annoyed that he hasn't left yet. "Out of curiosity, has there been a staff change here recently?"
"Pfft, I wish," she grumbles. "It's been me, Dad, and Jeremy since the place opened. I keep tellin' Mum she ought to hire a fifth person but nah, her vision's to run a 'family establishment'. Might be all right if she helped out in the kitchen once in a while but she keeps sayin' management is her thing."
Aziraphale pastes his smile back on, wishes her a good day, and ducks out the door before his face gives away his real opinion of their food.
He doesn't understand. Everything Crowley has brought him from this place has been drowning in love. He takes a smaller, more cautious nibble off the muffin to check and yep, still awful. Almost painfully so. He loathes wasting food but he loathes deliberately tormenting himself even more, so he tosses the rest of it to a group of pigeons who devour it in short order.
It doesn't make sense. There aren't any other humans involved in the food prep so why does this batch taste so different from the rest?
"Didn't expect to see you out here."
Aziraphale spins on his heel to see a familiar dark silhouette sauntering through the crowd in his direction. Even in his distraction Crowley is a welcome sight, and he finds himself matching his friend's grin without thinking about it. "I could say the same. What are you doing here?"
"I was heading over to yours. What's your excuse?"
"Out for a walk. Though I should ought to head back before the weather turns." It's with a giddy sense of freedom that he allows himself to follow up with, "Care to join me?"
"S'pose I could." Crowley's body language is nonchalant but his face could light up the darkest of midnights. He nods back toward the bakery. "D'you want something for the road while we're here?"
A thought hits Aziraphale like a city bus. No, that can't be it. Surely he's overthinking things. But just in case he isn't... "One of those blueberry muffins sounds wonderful, if you'd be so kind."
"Won't be 'so kind'," Crowley mutters, but ducks into the shop anyway.
Aziraphale watches through the window as the bored girl pulls a muffin from the same tray as the previous one. It's in the demon's hand for less than thirty seconds before Crowley is out the door again and offering it to him. He takes it with a grateful smile and the two fall into step side by side as they start in the direction of the bookshop.
Crowley launches into a ramble about construction zones that have snarled up traffic in the area and how humans really are great at making things harder for themselves with no input from him. Aziraphale hums and agrees in all the right places but he's only half listening. He has suspicions about the food in his hands but what if he's wrong? More importantly, what if he's right? They're three blocks from the bookshop by the time he works himself up to take a bite of it.
It's delicious.
There's so much love crammed into this muffin that it makes him want to cry.
He finishes it slowly as they near the bookshop, and the world seems to fall away as he turns this this discovery over and over and over. There's an instinctive cold fear at first, but it melts away as he remembers the frightened eyes of the lords of Hell as he climbed out of the Holy Water bath. Then there's a feeling like a dozen birds in his chest, all flapping and fluttering until he has to check that his feet are still on the pavement. Then a whole confusing mess of emotions as old instincts clash with new freedoms and he realizes that he is severely out of his depth here and he hardly even notices himself turning the lock of the bookshop door...
"You all right?"
He snaps back to the present where Crowley is closing the door behind them. "What?"
"I said 'Lucky we missed the rain.' Was the muffin really that distractingly good?"
He means it as a joke but he has no idea how close that actually is. "Amazingly so," Aziraphale admits, then before he has a chance to psych himself out of it- "You know how I've said that all of their food tastes like love?"
"Yeah?"
The angel takes a deep breath. "I stepped into that bakery before you walked up today. They don't put any love into it. None at all."
Crowley's brow furrows in confusion and he looks back out the window as though he can see through several city blocks. "They must do. You've always said-"
Aziraphale shakes his head. "There's nothing there. The humans hate what they make. There's not an iota of love in this food...until you hand it to me."
He can see the exact moment it clicks. Crowley goes very still, then very pale, then his head snaps around to meet Aziraphale's gaze. Even through the sunglasses his face is shocked. The demon opens his mouth. Closes it again. Gulps. "You sure?" he manages at last.
Aziraphale nods, feeling his own face go hot. "Quite a lot of love, in fact. There's, er...there's really no mistaking it."
And it's true. A thousand tiny pieces - words, actions, smiles, even insults - are all slotting into place and he can't believe he didn't see it before. In hindsight it's blindingly obvious. The step from 'he brings me presents because he enjoys making me happy' to 'he enjoys making me happy because he loves me' is a small one but at the same time it's changed the entire elevation of his worldview. He has never seen the universe from this angle. It's dazzling. He doesn't know how to approach it.
There's a very long few moments where neither of them move. Aziraphale has no idea what to do or say from this point. His face is practically on fire and he wants to shrink under the weight of the moment, but forces his spine to remain upright. He's petrified of doing the wrong thing, but he has no clue what the right thing is in this situation. Crowley, for his part, is frozen like a prey animal, like one wrong flinch will mean the end of his existence. His eyes are wide behind their lenses and he seems to be desperately trying to gauge something in the angel's stillness. It is painfully clear that neither of them know what the next move is suppose to be.
It's Crowley, ever braver than him by far, who manages to break the silence first. "Isss..." The demon swallows hard. "Issss this gonna be a problem?" he asks weakly.
Aziraphale bites his lip and forces his mouth to cooperate. "No," he whispers honestly. "Not at all. Just...just the opposite, I think."
Tightness bleeds out of Crowley's shoulders just enough that he no longer looks like he's about to pass out. "Right. Good. Right. Glad I can...can make pastries taste good for y-"
"It's mutual," Aziraphale blurts out before he can lose his nerve.
Crowley manages to pale further. "It's what?"
"The, um..." Aziraphale gestures awkwardly between the two of them, and in the general direction of the bakery. "The...the l-love. It-it's mutual."
"Is it," Crowley repeats faintly.
"I...it...yes. V-very much so."
"Oh."
Another long, painful silence stretches.
"I, er... I feel rather silly now. For not realizing before that it wasn't from the baker."
"You feel - you feel silly?" Crowley manages a thin, hysterical laugh, slumping back against a bookcase like his legs are threatening to give out. "You feel... You haven't spent the last few months accidentally flavouring your friend's food because you..." He scrubs a hand over his mouth and Aziraphale isn't sure if he truly can't bring himself to say it or if he's just overwhelmed.
"I'm sure I really ought to have put some pieces together before now," Aziraphale admits, fidgeting just for something to do with his hands. "Then again I suppose I haven't been very forthcoming myself. For, erm, reasons that I hope are obvious. I...I hope this isn't too uncomfortable for you."
"Uncomfortable." Crowley lets the bookshelf go so he can sink down onto the settee. He looks around dazedly, as though trying to find something to anchor to in this newly-off kilter world. "So..." he grasps slowly. "If it's not a problem for you...and it's not a problem for me...then..." He gestures lamely between them, the floor, the muffin wrapper, and the whole shop in general. "Then...we're good?"
That brings Aziraphale up short. "I...yes?" The realization is like all of the blinds rolling themselves up at once. He's been so wrapped up in the shock of it all that simple logic seems to have escaped him. As unstable as this ground seems, the fact is that Crowley is still on his side, and in the face of that, what else really matters? "Yes, I believe we are." Tension drains from him in a magnificent rush. "Oh goodness, you know that really is a relief."
Crowley blows out a shaking breath, devolves into weak laughter, and buries his face in his hands until it stops.
Aziraphale joins him on the settee, grateful to have something solid underneath him. "I have to admit, I have no idea where to go from here."
"And you think I do?" Crowley pulls his sunglasses off and looks up at Aziraphale with incredulous eyes. "Angel, I haven't been this lost since before Rome built all the highways."
"Well at least we're lost together," Aziraphale offers. "Of all the possibilities, I...I must say I'd rather be lost with you."
A look of mild horror crosses Crowley's face. "Oh bless me sideways, we're gonna have to talk about this, aren't we?"
Aziraphale feels the blood drain out of his own face. "Oh. Oh dear. I think we are." The two of them sit with this realization for a few moments before Crowley whips out his mobile and starts punching buttons. "What are you doing?"
"Ordering every type of pastry DoorDash has available, from anywhere except that apparently-shitty place by my flat. And don't you touch any of the boxes before I get to them. If we absolutely have to have a conversation that's open and-" he shudders a bit, "-honest...we're at least going to do it with an emergency reserve of the best-tasting food I can make for you."
The fluttering thing in his chest is back and Aziraphale suddenly isn't scared at all. Whatever is ahead of them cannot possibly be insurmountable because he has Crowley on his side, and Crowley loves him, and he doesn't think it's possible to love Crowley more than he does right now.
Of course once the delivery arrives, that last part is instantly proven wrong.