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there's a strange love inside/ it's getting louder and louder and louder and louder and louder

Summary:

Aziraphale & Crowley post church scene 1941. They feel a lot of emotions.

Notes:

Work title comes from Two Men in Love by The Irrepressibles.

Work Text:

Aziraphale kneels before Crowley's injured feet with a basin of water and a cloth; white, though it's not meant to stay that way.

"Angel, really, you don't have to."

It will take Aziraphale a moment to be able to speak again, he knows it, and Crowley can tell by now.

There was an overload (of emotion, of events, of stuff) before the lift home, and Aziraphale was silent through the drive, silent through dragging Crowley into the bookshop, and silent through sitting the demon down and untying his shoes for him. Peeling the socks off as gingerly as possible.

The angel just- he just needs to do this. He needs to recollect himself, he needs to do something for Crowley.

So, he kneels at the feet of the one he loves. He dips the cloth into the basin, and soothes it over the burns. Gently, so gently.

It feels like blasphemy to Aziraphale. Not because it's a sin. He knows the majority of sins are man made. No, this is blasphemy because the devotion he feels to the one sitting before him is that of someone kneeling before a cross, taking sacrament, the water of a baptismal font. Jesus washed the feet of the damned and Aziraphale heals the feet of his love, also damned. He lets out a wild giggle at that thought.

"Angel?" Crowley is concerned, and Aziraphale doesn't know what to say.

Aziraphale clears his throat, "...yes, dear?" He feels like he might cry, or he needs to yell. Anything just to expel a fraction of the emotions within him. He loves Crowley, insurmountably and devotedly. Ever since the demon asked for holy water, since crepes, since oysters, since seeing him for the first time on the wall of Eden. Aziraphale knows it now because of the books, and the saving him (over and over), and the burned feet. Crowley's burned feet. Because of me. No, for me. Which Aziraphale is kneeling at, gentle as a prayer. He continues cleaning them.

"Angel, can you look at me?"

Aziraphale isn't sure if he can without revealing everything in him. Instead, he tilts his head up with his eyes closed.

A few seconds pass, and then, gentle as a fallen feather, the demon rests his forehead on Aziraphale's.

"It's okay, Angel. it's okay." In his 6000 years on earth, and infinite years before, Crowley has been a starmaker, a midwife, an angel, and a demon who cares. And he doesn’t think he has ever spoken so gently to anything as he is to Aziraphale. "It's okay."

Aziraphale feels the tell-tale ball of wool in his throat, but he doesn't want to cry. He loves this demon, more than how an angel is supposed to love everything, more than how one person loves another, more than how someone of the cloth loves God. He's realized it now, and he does not know what to do about it past healing the being in front of him.

In spite of himself, Aziraphale sheds out a tear and sniffs before replying, "I understand." And, after rubbing the side of his face on the shoulder of his sleeve, he says, "Now, sit back so I can take care of this, if you please"

"Yeah. Okay, angel."
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In a bookshop in Soho, 1941, there are two beings, ethereal, immortal, one damned and one holy, and they love each other. Devoted as can be, though they cannot show it at present. No worries, however, they'll get there.