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Aziraphale thinks about the kiss.
He thinks about it when the Metatron gives him the tour of his new office. He thinks about it while he meets his soon-to-be subordinates. He thinks about it during the rehearsal, while he is learning what lines to say, and when to say them, and how to navigate the pomp and circumstance of becoming Supreme Archangel of the Heavenly Host.
He thinks about it during his ordination.
“All rise and rejoice,” booms the Metatron, “for Heaven hath become brighter this day.”
The Host rises. The angels sing. Aziraphale has not heard angels sing in many, many millennia. It sounds a bit grating, if he’s being honest.
He can almost see Crowley rolling his eyes in agreement, beside him.
Which he would have. He would have, if he was here. If Crowley would have come with him, the imbecile, if he would have just got out of his own way for one damned second and come with him, they could be up here together right now, smiling and bowing, and Crowley could say something sarcastic in his ear, and Aziraphale could try not to laugh, and then they could go back, back to Aziraphale’s office, which is more like an entire floor of a stark, empty office building, alone, they could go alone, with no one there, with no one watching, and they could—they could—
“Congratulations, Archangel Aziraphale,” says Michael.
She bows. So does Uriel. They’re both staring daggers at him. They hate him, they must, they must loathe him to their core, which of course is unbecoming for any angel, especially an archangel, but—Aziraphale knows—not impossible.
Angels can hate, too. They can hate like the worst of them.
He should probably be afraid. They don’t want him here. In not too distant memory, he was a traitor to all of Heaven and the Great Plan. Now, he is their boss. But Aziraphale is not afraid. He’s not even thinking about how he should probably be afraid.
He’s thinking about the kiss.
He thinks about it while he greets the various department heads. He thinks about it while he bows, and smiles, and says how lovely it will be to work with them in the future, and while he waves goodbye.
(There are no handshakes. Not here. Not in Heaven.)
(Angels do not touch each other.)
He thinks about it during the debrief meeting, when it’s just him and the other archangels, and the Metatron, and one scrivener to keep notes. The scrivener’s memory will be wiped afterward, the Metatron assures him, and Aziraphale suddenly stops thinking about the kiss.
“Will that be necessary?” He’s thinking of Gabriel in his bookshop, empty-headed, and dim, and frightened, and in pain. “Couldn’t we simply appoint an official scrivener just for archangelic meetings? We could make them take a vow of secrecy—”
“Nonsense,” the Metatron says with a dismissive chuckle. “No need to bring another person into the fold. Secrets must be kept close, you know.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees, but then adds, carefully, “but doesn’t it hurt them, to lose their memories?”
“Not to worry,” says the Metatron. “We do it all the time.”
Aziraphale thinks about Muriel. He wonders how often their memory has been wiped.
“They’re only scriveners,” the Metatron adds, as if this is a helpful reassurance, and then he moves onto a different topic.
***
Aziraphale thinks about the kiss when he is alone in his office.
There is no desk. Why would there be? Angels don’t have human bodies up here. They’re not affected by gravity. Or fatigue. They don’t need to rest. They don’t need a lot of things, without human bodies.
Aziraphale’s fingers twitch, the tips of them. He looks out the window at the bustling angels out on the Floor, and he thinks about all those angels, working together next to each other, as they have been for millions of years, as they will for eternity. Working together, and never not working, never relaxing, never resting.
He brings his fingers to his lips.
Maybe Crowley would come up behind him. If he were here. Maybe he would lean down and whisper in Aziraphale’s ear, his hot breath on Aziraphale’s skin. Maybe he would say something funny. Or something reassuring. Maybe Aziraphale would lean closer into him, almost reflexively, subconsciously, instinctively, like the face of a flower turning toward the sun. Maybe Crowley would lean back.
Maybe Aziraphale’s face would turn, actually turn, and maybe Crowley’s would turn too, the opposite way, the sideways way, the way that human faces did when they slotted their lips together and—
“Archangel Aziraphale,” says a voice, and Aziraphale nearly jumps with shock.
It’s the Metatron again, coming toward him. Aziraphale is starting to miss when he was just a floating head.
“Now that you know the basic plan for the Second Coming,” the Metatron starts,
(—does he? Does he know? He wasn’t paying attention. He wasn’t even listening in that meeting. He was only thinking about one thing—one thing—one thing—)
“I think it’s time to discuss what to do about the Demon Crowley.”
Aziraphale blinks. He tries to keep a straight face. “What do you mean?”
“Well, he didn’t want to come here with you. So it’s going to be a bit difficult to keep an eye on him.”
Aziraphale isn’t sure he understands. “Keep an eye on him?”
“You know,” the Metatron says, “He’s always… meddling. We can’t have him doing that. Not for this. This is it, Aziraphale, the big one.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale says, “but I don’t… I don’t think he’s going to care.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels something inside himself crumble. It’s true, though, isn’t it? If Crowley cared, he’d be here. He’d be here, an angel again, trying his goddamned best to do what was right.
“That may be the case,” says the Metatron, “but we still don’t want to take any chances. Even if he doesn’t care about thwarting Heaven’s plans, he may still interfere, simply to be a nuisance. And we can’t have any interruptions, Archangel Aziraphale. I’m sure you agree.”
Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know where this is going.
“Now, it has been suggested to me, by some of the others, that we eliminate him completely.”
Aziraphale’s heart, or the place where his heart used to be, thuds rapidly. He can’t quite get the hang of not having a body. “I don’t think—”
“Nor do I,” the Metatron adds. “I don’t think such extreme measures are necessary. Yet.” He takes a breath. “I propose, in the meantime, we set up surveillance. Keep an eye on him, his activities. You don’t need to be involved directly—there are plenty of angels we could delegate to. And they could inform us of any suspicious activity, should it arise.”
Aziraphale nods in relief. “Of course, I think—yes. Quite right. Surveillance.”
The Metatron smiles. “Leave it to me.”
***
Aziraphale thinks about it in the lift.
It’s a different lift than the one he used to get from Earth to Heaven. This is an intra-office lift, which takes him from the top level of the administration building down to the other floors. He pushes the button for level 1201, which houses the Earthly surveillance team. He descends rapidly, with almost a whooshing sensation, like he’s on a rollercoaster, or like he’s on a high-speed lift, on Earth. He’s falling so fast, he can almost feel gravity again.
And he thinks about the kiss. Oh, how he thinks about it. His stomach is whooshing, his head is light, and he closes his eyes.
“Archangel Aziraphale!” the department head says, surprised, when the lift’s doors open up. “What brings you here, sir?”
Aziraphale is breathless as he blinks his eyes open. “Oh, right. I thought... I’d quite like to see your setup for keeping tabs on the Demon Crowley. I want to be sure that it’s...” he thinks of the right word, “...satisfactory.”
Aziraphale’s insides are in knots as they lead him into a booth. It has what appears to be twelve television screens stacked in a grid. They show him the main console, the buttons and dials and knobs that can track and measure and record and follow.
They show him Crowley, on the second screen from the top left.
He’s a tall streak of black in the image. He’s stumbling down a street. It looks like nighttime. The streetlamps are on. It’s raining.
Crowley is wet. He’s soaked to the bone. He rounds a corner, into an alleyway, and Aziraphale has to shift his gaze to the next screen over. The technician twists a dial to turn up the brightness on the screen. It’s darker, in the alleyway.
Crowley leans his forehead against a brick wall. He puts a hand on the wall to steady himself. His eyes are closed, and he’s breathing heavily. There are puffs of steam coming out of his mouth, too quickly to be a basic human breathing pattern. It’s not due to physical exertion, Aziraphale deduces. He hadn’t been running before. It must be something else. Something else, making his breath come out all chopped and uneven.
Aziraphale feels like he should turn away. He feels like he shouldn’t look. He feels like this is an invasion of privacy, and there are three other people in this room, two to work the dials, one to work the recording, and they’re watching Crowley like this, all the time. Watching him stumble down streets, drunk, watching him cry in alleyways. It’s wrong, it feels wrong, it shouldn’t be this way.
“Does it have sound?” Aziraphale asks.
(He’s a masochist, he thinks.)
One of the technicians flicks a switch. They turn up the volume. It mostly sounds like rain, pattering in puddles on the pavement. But there is a faint sort of gasping in the background, a hitching respiration, even though it’s barely detectable.
Aziraphale wants to go to him. He wants to go to him right now, he wants to throw a lightning bolt down twelve-hundred floors and through time and space, ride it all the way to the surface of the Earth, like the Department of Archangelic Travel had showed him earlier that morning. He wants to ride it into the alleyway, he wants to touch Crowley’s shoulder, he wants to hold him in his arms and smell the alcohol on his breath and feel the heat of his wet human body wrapped up in his own. He wants to put his lips to Crowley’s cheeks and he wants to put them to Crowley’s lips.
He can’t stop thinking about it, can he? Even if he tries.
“That’s enough,” Aziraphale says, straightening up. He clasps his hands behind him, holding tightly his fingers in each other. “Thank you for the demonstration. Do carry on.”
***
When Aziraphale goes down to Earth the next evening, he makes sure to avoid the CCTV cameras.
He had marked them in the booth. His memory had always been sharp. He marked where they were, all twelve of them, at least, the twelve that had been set up that evening, in that street, where Crowley had gone drinking.
He knows where the cameras are, and thus, he knows where they aren’t.
He waits behind a corner where he knows there is a blind spot. He waits for a while. It’s not raining this night, like the last night, and he’s grateful. He waits until Crowley stumbles out of the pub again, the same pub, of course, the same one where he’d been the night before, the same one that had carried Aziraphale in the lift from Earth to Heaven.
Crowley uses the wall for support every few steps as he rounds the corner and heads down the street. Aziraphale follows him. He follows close. When he reaches another blind spot, Aziraphale miracles a new alleyway, one that hadn’t been there before, and he lunges forward, and he pulls Crowley into it by the back of his jacket.
“Whatta—what!” Crowley yelps, as Aziraphale pushes him against the wall and puts his hand over Crowley’s mouth and a finger to his own lips.
Aziraphale’s thumb is resting alongside the bridge of Crowley’s nose. He can feel the damp heat of Crowley breathing through his nostrils onto his forefinger.
Crowley’s eyes are wide and yellow through his sunglasses.
“They’re watching you,” Aziraphale whispers, barely even speaking. In fact, he’s not speaking at all. He and Crowley had learned to read each other’s lips a long time ago.
It’s hard to discern Crowley’s expression in the dark, in an alley, with a hand obscuring one half of his face and sunglasses obscuring the other. But Aziraphale does anyway. The expression is, of course, “Duh.”
Aziraphale removes his hand. Crowley stays on the wall.
Of course Crowley already knows they’re watching him. He’s suspicious of Heaven all the time. He thinks them devious, nefarious, invasive. He thinks they're no better than Hell. Maybe, even, he thinks they’re worse.
Aziraphale suddenly feels embarrassed. He should have known that Crowley knew. He should have known that, and now he’s here, he’s risked an unsanctioned secret trip down to Earth to warn him to be on his guard and for what? Crowley is always on his guard. He’s always on his guard.
(Because he’s always guarding Aziraphale.)
Crowley clicks his fingers. The sounds of the cars on the street disappear.
“Sound blocker,” he says, in his normal voice.
Well, normal is not the right word, Aziraphale thinks. He doesn’t sound anywhere close to normal. Normal volume, perhaps, but that’s the only thing normal about it.
“Ah,” Aziraphale says, unable to think of anything else.
Crowley is still frozen to the wall. “You came all the way here to warn me?”
“I,” Aziraphale says, and that’s when he thinks about it again. There, in the alley, with Crowley in front of him, with the condensation from Crowley’s mouth still wet on Aziraphale’s palm.
“Did you use a lightning bolt?” Crowley asks. Aziraphale can’t tell if he’s worried, or amused.
“Erm,” Aziraphale says.
“They’ll have traced it, then.” Crowley comes off the wall, just a tick, just his head, bending to the side to catch Aziraphale's eye, and he raises one eyebrow in the air. “They’re watching you too,” he says, like Aziraphale is slow.
Aziraphale’s mouth drops open a little. He’s ashamed of himself for being surprised. And suddenly, the whole thing, the depth of what he’s done, and what he’s into now, up in Heaven, the layers of fear and pain and responsibility and control and terror and loneliness and knowledge, they all come down on him, pressing down, like gravity on his head. What is he doing? What is he doing up there? He can’t do this. He can’t, not alone, not by himself, he wasn’t supposed to be alone, he wasn’t planning to be alone, not when he said yes—he can’t do this by himself—he can’t—
“Angel,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale buries his face in his hands.
He sobs into them, uncontrollably. Ugly sobs. He wishes he had created a sound blocker around himself. He tries to stop and can’t. He feels heavy, and cold, and alone, and then he feels Crowley’s arms around him.
“Oh,” Aziraphale chokes out, and collapses in.
Crowley holds him in the alleyway, his arms warm and firm. He doesn’t say anything, and Aziraphale’s almost glad of it. He’s not even sure what he wants to hear.
“I can’t do this alone,” Aziraphale says, eventually, when he can form coherent words again. “Please, Crowley. Please.”
Crowley doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t let go.
“Please come with me.” Aziraphale can’t believe he’s asking again. He’s usually above all of this desperate pleading nonsense. If Crowley doesn’t want to go along with him, then that’s Crowley’s business, and Aziraphale certainly isn’t going to beg. That’s how it’s been for thousands of years.
He begs him now.
“Please,” he gasps, into the demon’s shirt collar. “Please.”
He pulls away. Crowley has been holding him so tightly, his sunglasses are askew. His face is warped into a devastating expression, Aziraphale is devastated by it, and by the fact that all he can think about, right then, in that moment, are Crowley’s lips, twisted in some kind of pain, and how they’d felt on his own, before, in the bookshop, when Crowley was desperately pleading too.
Aziraphale tips forward and kisses them.
He kisses them soft, he kisses them slow. He kisses them the polar opposite of the way that Crowley had kissed his. He’s had time to plan this one out. He’s had time to think about it.
He’s thought about it a lot.
When he pulls away, Crowley’s eyes are closed. Aziraphale can see them through his glasses, even in the dim light of the alley, because he’s standing that close.
Crowley says, “Okay.”