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It was widely considered unbecoming of a demon to uncontrollably materialize flowers whenever an angel looked at them.
Well, it's probably considered unbecoming. It'd never happened before, at least, not that Crowley was aware.
There was, uniquely, a case where a demon had been turned into flowers when an angel had looked at them. That was different, of course- it had been a simple matter of a strong distaste for salt.
Crowley supposes he's always been different.
–
It starts, as it always seems to, on a dark and stormy night. Dramatic was his thing, after all.
Crowley hadn’t meant to get caught in the storm. Perhaps, if he’d checked the weather forecast, he would’ve known. It was just his luck that the one time he decides to walk to the bookshop is the day that a freak weather event happens.
No amount of hindsight could help him now, walking hastily down the sidewalk with his head tucked and water pounding against his back. The whole ‘caught in the rain with his lover’ look didn’t work for him. No, it was more like the clothes on his body, already tight, now sticking to his skin gave him the ‘shriveling, sopping wet street cat’ look. Pathetic wasn’t exactly in these days.
His right arm is tucked under his worn black leather jacket, protecting a small sweets box. It contained a single serving of rice pudding, which was rapidly cooling. It’s miserable.
Thankfully, the streets were mostly empty, meaning Crowley could make quick work of the remaining walk. It’s so nice traversing empty streets that, if it wasn’t for the fact that he had to brave such atrocious weather, Crowley would almost consider it a pleasant walk.
The bookshop is closed, as it often is. Aziraphale had been quite angry at him the last time Crowley had broken in, complaining that he’d had to get the lock replaced after Crowley’s botched attempt to pick it, which more so turned out to be him melting the metal with a not-so-small fire fueled by frustration.
Smartly, he decides to knock instead.
“We’re closed!” Comes the shouted reply, muffled by the walls and dampened by the wind.
“I know!” Crowley calls patiently back, feeling quite ridiculous. He did have a key to the place, but it was safely locked away within the Bentley. He’d never had a need to carry it around- usually Aziraphale would either sense his approach and unlock the door preemptively, or they were together, so carrying the key would be redundant.
The door swings open quickly, and Aziraphale is dragging him inside within seconds.
“Oi!” Crowley grunts, though he makes no other effort to protest.
“What were you doing out there?” Aziraphale asks with a gentle sort of anger, as if Crowley were a small child who didn’t know any better- the full ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ shebang. It doesn’t make Crowley feel bad, but he does feel a wee bit guilty. “It’s raining cats and dogs! Oh, dear. You’re soaked!”
Meekly, Crowley offers him the pudding.
“You-” Aziraphale takes a deep breath, his hands coming up to tug at Crowley’s jacket. “You should really learn how to check the weather, my dear.”
“I know,” Crowley says, kicking the pout on his face up to eleven, “I didn’t realize- really, I didn’t!”
Aziraphale eyes him, worry taking over everything else. He knows Crowley is using his very best puppy-dog eyes to slither out of trouble, but that doesn’t make that look any less effective. He’d like to think that a look couldn’t influence him that much, but he just can’t help it!
He wasn’t truly mad, anyways- it was more so concern that had him worked up. It would be no good if Crowley went and got himself sick. What happened if he made himself badly ill and he lost his corporeal form? Who knew if Hell would give him another one to inhabit after everything had gone down.
Aziraphale doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if Crowley went and killed himself over a small container of rice pudding. Aziraphale couldn’t lose him over that- he couldn’t lose him over anything. Carefully, he takes the pudding and sets it on the entryway table.
Crowley lets Aziraphale pull away his jacket, doing his best to look as innocent as possible. Aziraphale folds the coat neatly and adds it to the table, carefully away from the pudding.
“Just be careful, okay?” Aziraphale says gently, brushing wet hair away from Crowley’s eyes with his fingertips. Crowley shudders at the touch, but Aziraphale doesn’t acknowledge it.
He slips away quietly to the back room, calling over his shoulder, “Now, stay here. I’m going to get you a towel.”
That’s when it happens.
They appear suddenly, in the place of his jacket.
Gardenias. Crowley recognizes them instantly because he has some of his own growing at his flat. His are yellow, though, and these are red- incredibly red.
He doesn’t even realize that he’d made them at first, too stunned to really process.
Crowley stands there for so long, simply thinking, that the realization of what had truly happened comes so late that there’s no time to truly do anything about it. He has, inexplicably, manifested flowers by mistake.
Aziraphale emerges from the back room brandishing what may be the most hideous towel Crowley has ever seen, a terrible shade of pink with a horrible amount of cherubs embroidered onto it.
He plops it into Crowley’s arms, and Crowley does his best not to gag at the horrendous… thing now in his possession.
“Oh,” Aziraphale turns pleased when he sees them, hands hastily reaching out to touch the delicate petals before Crowley can even think of protesting. Crowley sheepishly watches, struggling to come up with a decent excuse.
Luckily, Aziraphale beats him to it.
“You brought me flowers?” He asks, grinning. “You wily snake- how did you sneak these past me? They’re very beautiful.”
“Mhm,” says Crowley, who had been making up an elaborate lie that had absolutely nothing to do with the flowers having been a gift, “I thought you would like them.”
He doesn’t even care about being soft. He’s just glad that the perfect excuse has landed in his lap.
Luckily, Aziraphale is so enamored, he doesn’t even seem to notice the odd behavior.
-
The next time it happens, Crowley hardly notices it.
It’s sunny again, but it’s the cold sort of sunny, the sunny that drove away rain but didn’t permeate the chill.
He watches with lazy interest as Aziraphale pours a cup of tea.
Crowley doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get over the way that the angel made mundane tasks artfully divine. Steam winds through his fingertips, light from the window creating twining rainbows that flow around his hands. Crowley watches until Aziraphale turns towards him, and then he quickly looks towards a window.
Aziraphale presses the mug into his hands carefully. It’s Crowley’s mug, the one that Aziraphale had purchased specifically for him.
Perhaps it’s a little tacky, all black with a dopey-looking snake highlighted in red. But it’s Crowley’s, and Aziraphale had gotten it with him in mind, and that made it special.
Crowley tries not to linger on it too much. It was still weird sometimes when someone did something because of him that wasn’t despicable. Aziraphale had always treated him kindly, but it had only gotten worse ever since they’d separated from their respective sides.
Crowley wasn’t good at kind. Didn’t know how to handle it.
He’d bought Crowley gifts- plant pots, blankets, artworks, anything that caught his eye. He’d invited Crowley over more often, more freely, more blatantly. They’d gone to the Ritz, the day after last, and they hadn’t even put on a show about how painful a meeting it was. They’d gone in the same car, and they’d left together too, and…
It was something Crowley had wanted- no, craved- for centuries. Now that something more finally felt attainable, he was lost. It’d been out of reach for so long, he never thought he’d actually make it here.
“Sugar?” Aziraphale asks, softly, affectionately. And the tone rings in his head, over and over, making his head all hazy.
“What?” Crowley blinks, glancing back over to Aziraphale, who was offering him a sugar cube. “Ah- yes, thank you.”
Aziraphale nods, adding two cubes to Crowley’s mug and adding none to his own. He asks every time, almost like a formality. It wasn’t necessary in the slightest- neither of their preferences had changed in years.
Still, he found it rather sweet.
“How’s the store?” Crowley asks, trying to sound interested without seeming too interested.
“Good,” Aziraphale smiles warmly, “I haven’t sold a single book in months!” He’s smugly satisfied. Crowley doesn’t know if Aziraphale’s unwillingness to separate from his books made him a good bookkeeper or a terrible bookseller. Perhaps a mix of both?
Aziraphale turns his back to Crowley, turning on the radio before moving slowly but purposefully throughout the motions of making cookies. Every movement is sure, and he doesn’t check a recipe once.
It feels so painfully mundane, so disgustingly, horribly, normal. And the worst part was that Crowley could get used to this, wanted to, even. Sitting in the kitchen, watching Aziraphale work. It was nice. And that wasn’t something that Crowley thought lightly.
Crowley sips his drink slowly, watching the steam curl out of the mug.
Shafts of light pierced through the window, illuminating Aziraphale’s carefully concentrated face. It reflects off his hair, shimmering, the illusion of a halo reflecting off his curls. It was so intimate, it felt like something Crowley wasn’t supposed to see, so otherworldly that he inexplicably felt it wasn’t allowed. The radio hums out a soft tune, something he doesn’t recognize but feels familiar nonetheless.
Aziraphale turns, catching his stare, and smiles. It’s a happy smile, one that is so unavoidably fond that it almost hurts.
“Sorry,” Crowley mutters, his body betraying him as his ears flush a bright red. Aziraphale waves his hand dismissively, very nearly flinging flour everywhere.
“What for, my dear? You were just admiring my incredible baking skills, hm?”
“Something like that.” Crowley mumbles. Aziraphale laughs, turning away to leave Crowley to fester in his own embarrassment.
He has such a melodic laugh. It’s a silly thing to feel so strongly about, but Crowley often suspects that his laugh may very well be the best sound he’s ever heard. It fills him with an undeniable warmth.
In a vain attempt to hide his infatuation, Crowley takes another sip of his tea.
The moment that the tea touches his tongue, it turns into a mouthful of petals.
He coughs violently, slapping a hand over his mouth to contain the delicate petals. Fuck. He knows before his brain can even process that it’s happened again.
“Crowley? Oh, dear. Are you choking?” Aziraphale hovers by his side, gently laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Just peachy.” Crowley rasps, not moving his hand away from his lips.
“You’re sure?” Aziraphale asks doubtfully, fingers tenderly kneading into Crowley’s shoulder.
Crowley only hums out an affirmative, trying not to choke on the powerful floral scent in his throat.
“Alright.” Clearly, he doesn’t truly believe Crowley’s words, but he doesn’t question it any further.
The moment that Crowley thinks Aziraphale’s back is turned, he spits out the flowers and chucks them into the bin. His mug is filled with tiny blue flowers too- forget-me-nots. Crowley scowls, dumping them into the trash as well.
Aziraphale doesn’t bring it up again, but Crowley can tell he hasn’t forgotten.
–
It happens again on Saturday, and then again on the day after that.
Flowers, always flowers.
Carnations, orchids, violets. Various objects lost to flowers.
Crowley turns several pairs of sunglasses into sunflowers. He turns a bottle of wine into dark red roses. It happens again and again.
It’s pathetic, almost, but he can’t seem to stop it.
When he wakes up in the mornings, his bed sheets are transformed into pink camellias, his pillows into blue roses.
Aziraphale was the cause- it was always him, it always had been.
Aziraphale would look at him and smile, or touch his shoulder, and he just- he couldn’t help it. Crowley was helpless.
They had been a pair for hundreds of years, longer than Crowley cared to count. Aziraphale was the only constant that Crowley had, the only constant that mattered. Aziraphale was the only constant that had held onto him since the beginning. He was unchanging.
And this- God, it was change. Aziraphale wasn’t stupid. Crowley hid his affections for so long, and now, it was bubbling over. He couldn’t stop it. Nothing was more terrifying than that- change, unstoppable.
So he begins to isolate himself. He’s quiet, withdrawn. It begins happening even more frequently as if vengefully refusing any attempts Crowley made to fix it.
Unfortunately, Aziraphale is unavoidable. Crowley just couldn’t say no to the angel- his angel.
When Aziraphale invites him over to dinner, Crowley tries to come up with excuses, he really does. But Aziraphale has none of it.
It ends, as it started, in the bookshop.
-
It’s routine, almost second nature. They’d done this countless times, dinner was nothing new. It felt intimidating regardless of its familiarity.
The wine that Crowley was supposed to bring turns into a massive bouquet of pink and purple hydrangeas.
He resigns to it. Aziraphale had his own wine, anyway. Flowers were better, anyways. Crowley didn’t particularly need to get drunk right now- who knew what that could cause? The last thing that Crowley needs is to turn Aziraphale’s books into flowers.
Crowley feels like a schoolboy knocking to ask his crush out to prom, standing here awkwardly on the doorstep of the bookshop. He bounces on the balls of his feet, nervously peeking through the window.
“We need to talk,” Aziraphale says cryptically, grabbing Crowley’s wrist and dragging him inside the moment that he opens the door.
Oh.
That- well, it wasn’t good, was it? Crowley thinks his heart may very well escape his chest. Perhaps having a heart attack would be good- if he was dead, he’d have to face Hell, yes, but whatever this was seemed far worse, at least in Crowley’s opinion.
The bookshop is dim, and his eyes struggle to adjust.
“Don’t freak out,” Aziraphale says firmly, still gripping Crowley’s wrist. He flicks on the light.
Crowley drops his hydrangeas.
Flowers. Everywhere. On every available surface, spilling, oozing. Fallen petals littered the floor, and overcrowded vases were stuffed to the brim.
“I know it looks bad,” Aziraphale is hasty to say, as if defending himself, “but, I just can’t seem to stop making them!”
Crowley’s brain short circuits.
“They just- they keep appearing! Every time I think of you, they just appear, and I think-...”
“You’re- but… I’m-” Crowley flexes his fingers in the air as if trying to grasp the situation between his fingers. “ I’ve been making flowers.”
Aziraphale blinks, the dumbfounded look on his face dissipating as realization dawns. It’s like a switch was flipped in his mind, illuminating something obvious. “You?” He says, a bemused grin spreading onto his lips. “You’ve been manifesting them too?”
“Of course- of course.” Aziraphale sounds almost triumphant, as if this was an outcome he hadn’t considered. “I see now.”
“Yeah?” Crowley prompts, in a voice far higher than his usual tone. He was actively trying and actively failing to contain the steadily building nerves that seemed quite determined to overtake him.
“Oh, Crowley.” And, God, the way he says it. Like Crowley had hung the stars and the moon. Which, okay, maybe wasn’t the best comparison, because Crowley really had hung some stars, but…
That wasn’t the point.
He said it like it was something holy.
Crowley doesn’t move- he can’t. Aziraphale watches him carefully, evidently keen on forcing Crowley to puzzle this one together on his own.
“You’ve been unconsciously manifesting flowers,” Aziraphale says patiently, a gentle prod towards the proper conclusion. “And I have too.”
Crowley states back, uncomprehendingly. He’d been creating flowers because of the excess of his affections. Overflowing like a bucket, love with nowhere to go manifesting itself into physicality. And Aziraphale, apparently, had been-
Oh.
It hits him like a truck. Aziraphale beams at him, a smile so bright he might as well be glowing.
Crowley has dreamed of this moment. Aziraphale tenderly takes one of his hands into his own. His fingers are calloused from work but gentler, like softened leather. It’s familiar, something Crowley has known for eons.
For centuries, Crowley has longed for this so painfully that it was seemingly omnipresent.
And now it was practically in his lap, and he was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t utter a word, couldn’t even move. How many times had he fantasized about this? And yet here he stood, useless.
Thankfully, Aziraphale knew him better than he knew himself. He inches forwards, his free hand coming up to grab a fistful of his jacket. Crowley lets himself get pulled forwards, closer until their lips meet.
The world goes quiet. Everything felt far away. Nothing else mattered. His everything, his universe, was contained here in the bookshop, wearing the same cologne that he had for the last two hundred years.
“Oh.” Crowley breathes when they part.
“Oh indeed.” Aziraphale chuckles, bringing up Crowley's hand to press a kiss against his knuckles like a proper gentleman.
Crowley’s hand falls limply to his side when Aziraphale releases it, colliding with a stray vase on its way down. The vase goes cascading to the floor, where it shatters both the glass and the intimate moment.
Aziraphale laughs, that heavenly sound.
“Sorry! Sorry.” Crowley, against the odds, blushes an even more vibrant shade of red.
“Goodness, would you look at that…” Following his gaze, Crowley finds a single twig, covered in leaves and clusters of dark magenta flowers. It felt final, in a way. Not quite the end, but rather the beginning of something new, something better.
“Heliotrope…” Crowley says softly, tilting his head slightly.
“What? What does it mean?” Aziraphale asks him, grip tightening comfortingly on his hand.
“Nothing, Angel.” Aziraphale frowns, clearly having expected an answer. He looks just about ready to protest when Crowley bends down, gingerly pressing another kiss to his lips. “Now- how about that dinner?”
Heliotrope. A small, shrub-like plant with clumps of small flowers. Eternal love.