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Crowley had naively believed that the start of the rest of his life would actually be the start of the rest of ‘our’ lives. But as his tense palm pressed against his Bentley and the life he wanted to live looked into his eyes from afar before stepping back into the ranks of heaven, he realised that he had been wrong.
He had loved Aziraphale for an eternity and more, pushing and pulling against each other for 6000 years, before he realised that perhaps the string that held them together was never attached to his angel in the first place. An illusion of love that had been dangled as bait only to be ripped away by the almighty herself. He had lost his best friend again and this time there was no imminent apocalypse to distract him.
He sulked for a touch longer before slithering into his Bentley and hitting the gas, he wanted to leave, to go anywhere that wasn't here, somewhere that didn’t remind him of the angel. He drove for hours, not held back by the 20MPH speed limit around the London boroughs and not the traffic infested grind of the M25 because right now he had one destination. He needed to go somewhere remote, somewhere he could scream to the heavens without scaring the locals.
This is where we find him, sitting down back resting on the Bentley somewhere in the South Downs, watching the wind kiss the grass and an evening chill whisper in his ear.
He had always loved God’s creations, it calmed him in a way that made him angry. This was all her fault wasn’t it, his misery. She was always ripping his happiness away from him. From his nebulas to his stars to his planets to his wings, to Aziraphale.
What did she want from him? Was he still being punished for asking questions, was it for her amusement, was it a test, or was he just wrong for assuming Aziraphale’s feelings?
6000 years was a long time, and he had thought that after everything they had been through, the Ritz, the glances, the touches, the dancing, the arrangement, the ‘our side’, that he knew how Aziraphale had felt. But after the kiss, the disgusted face of his best friend staring back at him, the ‘I forgive you’, perhaps he was wrong. Could he really blame god for that, she created a being of purity and good and kindness, how could Aziraphale ever love a demon? Did he hate who he is so much that he would rather see Crowley restored to something he isn’t than accept him for who he is?
Love was complicated, he thought. Like Nina had said, it’s one thing meddling with other people’s love lives, it’s a totally different thing trying to navigate your own.
The night sky had creeped its way into view, the absence of London’s light pollution allowed Crowley to marvel at the stars, his creations.
“I always thought that they were lovely” a voice.
A woman’s voice.
Her voice.
“Then why did you make them so far away?” Crowley questioned, if he was already damned, what were a few more questions to the almighty going to do.
“A somewhat selfish reason I’m afraid, I simply didn’t want the humans to create a mess of it” she sighed.
“I didn’t think you were capable of selfish acts”
“We are all selfish in a way Crowley, angels, demons, humans, me… and you”
Crowley scoffed.
“You have taken everything I wanted, I have no reason to be selfish anymore. You took him because that’s what you wanted , I don’t get the luxury of being ssselfish, not when I know that as soon as I express an ounce of want, a slither of jealousy, you take it all away”
He was now standing, shouting at the sky, tears in his eyes. If anyone was to see him they would see a broken man, screaming his frustration to a world that won't answer back. But unfortunately, someone is there to answer back.
“Crowley you are very selfish, you wanted Aziraphale to come with you without understanding first what his intentions were” she stated calmly.
“Oh I know what his intentions were, he wanted me to become an angel because he cannot stand the idea of even being seen with a demon”
“You always were dramatic”
A beat of silent anger from the demon.
“All of my creations were created to make choices, to experience emotions, to make connections, to question everything, to create more, to love, to hate, to cry, to be equal. Demon or angel, mortal or immortal. You are all the same to me and I have no control over anything, including Aziraphale. You have chosen hate and anger Crowley. You blame me and more importantly you blame yourself for Aziraphale’s actions, but did you ever consider why he made his choices? It was his choice to join heaven after all, do you really think he would put heaven above you? Are you that selfish to believe the story you have constructed in your head over the truth?”
Crowley stared at the ground like a child who has just been told off.
“Then what is the truth then?” he looked towards the sky.
“You were always asking me questions like I knew the answer, but the answer is not with me, the answer was never with me. I think you know where the answer is to this one.”
Silence.
Crowley sighed.
Then he screamed in fustration.
He knew where the answer lay, it lay within the one person he couldn’t bear to see right now, the one person who’s truth truly mattered to him, the person who he’d chosen to stand next to all those years ago.
Aziraphale.
He faced the stars again, he could see the constellations, the nebulas, the planets, the colours. He could feel the Earth move, the wind weave, the life of distant galaxies, and the memory of a wing being moved to protect someone beside him from incoming comets.
He closed his eyes and searched through the universe, through heaven and hell, through himself, and when he opened his eyes he was blinded by light.
The suffocating white of heaven’s walls was the first thing he could recognise. And then a figure, sitting with his back to him, fumbling with a stack of half signed documents.
The figure stood out in the stark white, with his cream coloured coat, his brown scuffed shoes, and his baggy light brown dress trousers.
Crowley felt like he moved in slow motion towards the angel. Too distracted by his thoughts,
the angel didn’t seem to notice the light footsteps approaching him.
Crowley cleared his throat.
“I think I have a meeting with the angel Aziraphale '' he half-heartedly joked.
The figure froze.
Then he slowly turned around.
Crowley had braced himself for something, and in his mind that ‘something’ was terrible. Perhaps he will be greeted with a slap, or maybe some harsh words damning him once again to the pits of hell, he even suspected that he may be smited on the spot. What he didn’t think was going to happen, was that he was going to be greeted by an arm-full of angel, and a whole lot of tears staining his black jacket.
Aziraphale tried to speak from his buried position on Crowley’s shoulder before realising that what he was saying was inaudible to literally anyone and pulled his face away, hands still on the demon’s sides.
“I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted to become an angel again and shouldn’t have thought that we could only be together in heaven and that I never asked you what you wanted, and that you have a horrible history with heaven and… Oh Crowley I don’t know what to say to make you forgive me or get us back to where we were before I messed everything up” the angel rambled, tears streaming down his face.
“Angel…” Crowley started.
“No, no please, I need to say something” Aziraphale cut him off, before dropping his hands to the side and nervously tensing them.
“Crowley, I have known from the beginning of time, from the moment you showed me the stars I marveled you. But I believed that my love was an equal spread for all of God’s creations, because that’s what angel’s do. But I have come to realise that perhaps I am a rather lousy angel. I have realised that I have been very selfish because I loved one of her creations more than any other. I have been..”
He looks into Crowley’s eyes.
“We have been on Earth for 6000 years and out of those 6000 years I have spent most of it in denial because I felt like I had to be one thing. I thought that the only true good in this universe comes from angels. That’s why I accepted the job, because I believed that the only way to make things perfect is to change heaven, and offering a job here to you was the only way you could be saved from evil. But that’s not true, because no one is truly good, but no one is truly evil either. We are all just beings going along with what we are told as far as we can. And I selfishly thought that what I was told was right, that heaven was perfection. I don’t want you to be something you're not because then you wouldn’t be you, you wouldn’t be the irritating, funny, silly, dramatic, beautiful demon that I have had the pleasure of knowing and…”
He took a breath.
“And the pleasure of loving”
And before Crowley could reply he felt warmth on his lips and a hand on his face pulling him into a deep kiss. His hands made their home on the angel’s waist whilst the angel’s other hand found solace on the demon’s back. This is what Crowley had wished for in the bookshop, something that in the past 24 hours he’d convinced himself that he’d never get. But as Aziraphale kissed back and they entered a steady rhythm he decided that this is where he wanted to stay forever.
It felt like an eternity until they moved apart. Their hands still as they looked at each other’s eyes. Before breaking into smiles that could've ended worlds in the wrong hands.
“So what now?” Aziraphale asked tentatively.
“What do you want to do?” Crowley smiled.
“Well… If you’d still have me, I would like to be us” the angel smiles back nervously.
“I think that could be arranged”
“And I also want to quit this fucking job”
Crowley lifted head back in a laugh.
“Swearing in heaven? Isn’t that like a sin or something?”
“Oh who cares, I just want to get back to our bookshop and not worry about who we ought to be, and focus on what we want to be, and what I want to be right now is sitting on the sofa in your arms with a hot cup of cocoa”
Crowley dramatically pulls away and grabs Aziraphale’s hand.
“Right then! We better get going, we’ve got a lot of time to catch up on”
And so the angel who is just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing, and the demon who deep down is a little bit of a nice person turn their backs on their past lives and start the first day of the rest of it.
__________________________
Crowley stopped them before taking the lift back down to Earth.
“Angel? You didn’t happen to have a conversation with the almighty before I came over did you?”
Aziraphale looked surprised.
“How did you know that?”
Crowley let out a short laugh.
“That meddling bastard”