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“He’s never hosted a meeting before, why the sudden change of heart?”
Crowley stopped in his tracks from where he’d gone to trail behind Aziraphale when he realized the grumpy barista wasn’t talking to herself, but to him. He watched Aziraphale as he continued towards the next shop on the list, probably thinking very hard about how not to offer up another book as a bargaining chip for their attendance.
“He’s unpredictable.” True as it was, that wasn’t much of an answer. “He’s discovered his civic obligations.” Talking about Aziraphale, that sounded incredibly untrue, but it would at least give Nina a little detail to keep her from giving the angel a hard time in the future.
She didn’t look terribly convinced but let it drop in favor of a question Crowley didn’t understand. “You been together long?”
“…who?” he prompted, waiting for something to work with. If he was going to have a chinwag with a near-stranger, he would at least try to hold up his end of the conversation so she wouldn’t have a bad impression of the kind of company Aziraphale kept.
“You and your partner,” Nina said, raising her eyebrows and fixing him with a look as if she’d asked the most obvious question in the world.
Crowley was taken aback, but rushed to correct her. “OH, no, no, it’s not—it’s not like that.”
The more direct tone Nina had when he’d first met her over ordering his caffeine bomb returned when she countered, “it certainly looks like that from here…oh, so you just recently hooked up?” Crowley had barely stuttered out another denial before she pushed on conspiratorially. “You got a husband? Or a boyfriend? Is the bookseller your bit on the side?”
Well, now, he wasn’t about to stand for that kind of outlandish assumption. Aziraphale had good standing here on this little corner of Soho—Crowley didn’t want anyone, not even a woman Aziraphale seemed well acquainted with, thinking the angel would ever be like that. Gabriel showing up naked on the shop steps was bad enough!
“He’s not my bit on the side! He’s far too pure of heart to be anyone’s ‘bit on the side.’ He’s just an angel…I know.” He muttered out the last bit, dipping his head to her to say that he’d realized how that sounded as soon as “angel” came out of his mouth. It just wasn’t like that and he never did seem to have the right words to define exactly what he and Aziraphale were to each other, especially not when the person asking had absolutely no idea what their history was.
It wasn’t entirely Nina’s fault. For all Crowley knew, all she had to go on now that she’d met Crowley properly was Aziraphale’s “he and I go back a long time.” And, oh, how the fondness in Aziraphale’s voice had threatened to make Crowley melt out of the café chair, even with the stress Shax had put on him in the park. At least his moment of weakness hadn’t lasted long, what with the icy chill Nina’s “naked man friend” remark had sent through his veins only seconds later.
“If you say so. But then again, other people’s love lives always seem so much more straightforward than our own.” Crowley stilled as she said it. It was the most sincere emotion he’d seen on her face in the little time he’d been around her. She seemed…almost frustrated as she looked across the road to the record shop, then back to Crowley, before tossing the cleaning rag in her hand down on a table with a sigh and getting back to work.
Crowley didn’t move an inch in the middle of the busy sidewalk. His gaze held on her as his brows furrowed. He looked down the road, where he saw Aziraphale waving kindly into the window of his next target. A bright ray of light bustling his way about this well-loved stretch of shops where they knew his name.
Love lives, Nina had said.
His love life.
Crowley had never really considered the idea that Aziraphale might reciprocate his love.
That’s what this was to others, wasn’t it? Crowley knew he loved Aziraphale, but someone else had seen something there between them.
Nina knew Aziraphale. They clearly spoke to each other, at least a little. And Crowley had been visiting the bookshop since well before Nina had been born, so surely she had noticed his comings and goings before. Maybe she’d even asked Aziraphale about him.
She didn’t know what he was to the angel besides her own assumptions, but she was certainly just nosey enough to have asked about it before. That meant there was every possibility she’d given Aziraphale shit about him before, something about ‘your good friend in the dark clothes that comes to see you nearly every day’, and Aziraphale hadn’t denied anything.
It was wishful thinking, Crowley knew that. But…he’d always been too scared to hope that the love he felt for Aziraphale could ever be mutual.
They’d gotten closer in the last few years, that was certain. But walking the endless plateau Crowley felt like they were on now was agonizing in the gentlest way possible. Crowley loved what they had together. He could spend the rest of his days just as they already were, as long as he could stay by his angel’s side in whatever way Aziraphale would let him.
But this felt…this felt like a revelation.
‘It…it could be a love life, couldn’t it? We could be more than what we already are. If he’ll have me as I am.’
Crowley stumbled backwards a moment, watching Aziraphale smile cheerfully as the shop owner met him at the door to invite him in. He needed a walk. He needed to let this occupy his thoughts more than he’d usually allow. He needed to come up with the words to say his piece. Perhaps he needed some alcohol now too, a nice bottle he could tempt Aziraphale into joining him for when he all done bribing everyone to come to the meeting.
He’d just wait until they sorted all this Gabriel business out. Waiting a bit longer wouldn’t kill him. After all, he’d already waited 6,000 years.
He’d wait until they could finally have some proper ‘us’ time. Until he could finally tell Aziraphale about the ‘us’ he wanted them to be.