Archive of Our Own

Crowley pulls his front door open and Aziraphale smiles.

It’s awful. Nothing at all like any smile he has ever seen from him before.

It wobbles, one side falls a little. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“May I come in?”

Crowley waits a moment, as though an actual choice is being made; Aziraphale deserves to think that one is.

He steps back after exactly five seconds, holds the door open wider and waves a hand to invite him in. 

It takes far more effort than he would like not to fork his tongue and taste the air as he closes the door. He has made too many missteps with Aziraphale, thought he could read the smallest twitch of his body only to learn he knew nothing at all. It would be easier to pluck the truth from the air that follows the angel into the hall.

Instead, he takes a firm grip on the snake and shoves it away, the tattoo slithers behind his ear to hide amongst his hair. Better. 

Aziraphale hovers awkwardly in the doorway to the lounge. It unsettles Crowley to see him so unsure here, somewhere that should have been theirs.

His shoulders curl up and he gestures to the seats. “Hot chocolate, A-” he chokes, almost swallows his tongue, “Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale tenses, his smile even worse than before. “I… yes, thank you.”

He takes the blue mug Crowley holds out, then hovers between an armchair and the sofa. Crowley sprawls carefully across the other chair, leaves his own mug on the table with the Eccles cakes. He counts the seconds in the ticking of the kitchen clock.

His patience snaps before Aziraphale makes a choice. “Will you just sit down.”

Aziraphale near collapses onto the sofa and it can only be a quick miracle that keeps the hot chocolate from spilling across his hideous suit. 

His head rests against Maggie’s striped blanket and Crowley’s fingers curl into the palms of his hands.

The pieces of his heart rattle loosely in his chest.

Aziraphale sips the hot chocolate - sweetened with a little bit of sugar just the way he likes - and tries not to fall apart.

There’s too much silence between them. Not the comfortable quiet he’s used to, when Crowley would finally calm and they’d simply be together. This is the kind of silence that leaves a mark.

He doesn’t know how to break it. He’s never had to before, Crowley has always done it for them.

He flicks a quick glance over, but Crowley doesn’t look ready to start this any more than he is. 

‘There are no nazis to save you from now, Angel, no discorporation for me to mourn. You’re going to have to do it the hard way this time.’

He swallows. Right, of course. He can do this.

Leaning forward, he places his half empty mug onto the coffee table. There are coasters shaped like little records. He spots the Eccles cakes then, three on a plate, their pastry flaking. He has a corporeal body again now, a heart that thumps away in his chest, only there’s still that hollow emptiness there too that throbs because Crowley hates sultanas. He never eats them.

“I for-” Crowley flinches and Aziraphale hesitates, still half bent over the coffee table. Crowley’s eyes are hidden behind his dark glasses, but there's something watchful about him. He isn’t nearly so relaxed as his familiar sprawl suggests. It makes Aziraphale feel cautious. He can’t remember if he’s ever been cautious with Crowley. Perhaps he should have been. He clears his throat, tries again; “I forgot how good these smell.” 

Crowley doesn’t so much relax, as stand down. Aziraphale wishes he could see his eyes.

“Help yourself.” 

He reaches for one but can’t bring it to his lips. He missed food so much this past year, but the thought of taking a bite now turns his stomach. He settles back, the pastry resting on his thigh. “Perhaps later.”

Thick silence falls again, too many things said and unsaid lay in the gulf between them. 

“Look, Crowl-”

“You’ll ru-”

They stop, Aziraphale daren’t blink, Crowley stares at him; is he even breathing? “Sorry, perhaps you…”

Crowley swallows and Aziraphale watches the movement, everything else about him is so still. 

“I was just going to say, uh, you’ll ruin your suit like that.” He gestures to the pastry and Aziraphale looks down; already a little greasy circle is starting to form on his trousers around it.

And he remembers then the foam stain on his shoe, the one he could still tell was there right up until Metatron brought him his new clothes and both shoes were taken away. He hopes they made their way to the Bookshop. He’d like them back.

His chest hitches with his next breath and he looks up to find Crowley, head tilted, still watching. “On reflection, I don’t think I like this look very much.”

A beat and then the tiniest twitch at the corner of Crowley’s mouth. “Good, because it really doesn’t suit you.”

He wonders what it will take to get Angel back. If he ever can.

A clock ticks quietly; it’s in the kitchen above the sink, he knows, always three minutes fast. 

“I…uh, I have s-something you could wear.”

Crowley looks like he regrets speaking before he’s even done, so Aziraphale nods quickly.

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

“Right, okay.” Crowley pauses before jerking to his feet. “You’d best follow me then.”

He does. He’s not going to stop following Crowley; it’s going to be his new thing.

If Crowley could slam his head into the wall without Aziraphale noticing, he would.

‘I have something you can wear’? Idiot. So much for staying aloof. 

This time he’s committed to not being the first to give in. It was different, out there, against the combined forces of Heaven and Hell. It was easy to push aside everything when there’d been nothing between them and being wiped from the Book of Life except a great big gamble. 

Talk to him, Nina had said. Like it’s that easy. Crowley tried that before, it didn’t work, did it?

And it’s all just a little too nice, having Aziraphale here. In the cottage. Here within Crowley’s reach again. He isn’t going to reach, but it’s nice to know he could, if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t.

He rubs at his chest, digging his knuckles in against the tender ache. Perhaps he should have kept the pieces bound up after all, everything still feels a bit too raw right now.

He leads Aziraphale down the hallway towards the bedroom. He’s glad to find the library door still shut, he half expected the cottage to throw it open as they passed. (He knows the Bentley is going to turn yellow the moment Aziraphale gets in it again. If he gets in it again.)

Can he leave Aziraphale in the hallway while he grabs the clothes from the wardrobe? Of course he can, but would that be better or worse than just letting him see inside? What if he goes exploring while Crowley’s digging out his shoes from the trunk at the bottom of the bed? Who knows what the cottage might decide to show him.

It’s too complicated, all this thinking. Second guessing every move, while Aziraphale follows silently behind him like a grey suited shadow. 

He doesn’t need a shadow, he’s got a shadow. What he needs is…he needs…a drink. Or twenty. 

Instead he wraps his fingers around the door handle and pushes down. “Just don’t look at anything.” The door swings open. He wishes he’d made the bed before he ran off to collect God’s son.

He rushes over to the wardrobe, swinging open the side he never touches. Aziraphale’s jacket, waistcoat and shirt hang where he left them, worn and mended more times than either of them could count. The trousers are hooked up underneath the jacket and Crowley grabs all the hangers in one hand. 

He turns to find Aziraphale has made it only two steps through the door. He has his hands clenched into fists at his sides and his eyes slammed shut so tightly Crowley can see a little vein in his forehead pulsing with the pressure.

Something jagged slices sharply in his chest. 

“So I cleaned them, stench of heaven and all that.” He holds out the clothes, braces for Aziraphale to open his eyes. 

He expects the surprise in them, he isn’t ready for the way they glitter, going wet.

“Crowley.” Yeah, no he’s not doing this.

“Shoes! Just…stand over there.” He points to the window, curses when he remembers the statue against the wall beneath it - two celestial forms entwined that have no resemblance at all to anyone - and then figures Aziraphale has never made a big deal about it before and buries himself in the trunk.

He knows exactly where Aziraphale’s shoes are: straightened neatly in the left back corner, but he shuffles through the extra blankets Anathema and Newton gifted him for the house warming, forcibly shoves aside the little locked chest of white feathers and tries to draw this out until he’s sure Aziraphale will have pulled himself together.

Eventually he has to stop hiding and he plucks the shoes up, slamming the trunk lid closed.

“Here. I’ll just…I’ll be outside.” He shoves them at Aziraphale blindly and starts to back away to the door.

“Crowley, wait, I-”

“Chocolate!” It’s half a shout. He still isn’t looking up from the fluffy cream carpet. It was a good choice the carpet, wood in here would echo.

“… choc- what?”

Crowley rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, at his chest with the other. “The chocolate, it’s probably cold now, I’ll just go, warm it up. In the microwave. Brilliant invention that. Humans, am I right?” And then finally his back clips the edge of the door frame and he’s out. 

He presses harder against his chest and tells the mess inside to stop bloody pounding.

He forgets to grab the mugs from the lounge, but they’re already sitting on the kitchen counter when he walks in anyway.

Aziraphale stares at the empty doorway long after Crowley leaves the room, his fingers clenched tightly around the clothes.

His clothes. The ones Metatron took who knows where. Crowley said he cleaned them. Crowley never cleans his own clothes, he just miracles up new ones when the fancy takes him.

He looks down at the shoes, hastily balanced on the pile in his arms. There’s no foam stain. Not even at the molecular level. His knees fold, but thankfully the bed is right there.

The cottage radiates Crowley’s love like Tadfield does Adam’s. Like a warm blanket that covered him the moment he stepped over the threshold. 

It makes the void in his chest feel all the more hollow. 

He’s never been in Crowley’s bedroom before.  Even while he used the globe to look in all the other places he hasn’t been invited he knew looking in here would be a step too far.

Sometimes he watched the closed bedroom door for hours, imagining he could hear Crowley’s snores, chasing the calm he had been too blind to realise they’ve always brought him.

He brushes his fingers across the rumpled sheets, pats the downy duvet and feels the soft bounce of the feathers inside.

He wants to bury his face in the covers, inhale and let Crowley’s unique scent fill his lungs.

What would it be like to touch sheets still warm from Crowley’s heat? Tentatively he pushes the thought further, what would it be like to press his face into the source of that heat, rest his head on a thin chest and hear an unnecessary heart beating?

He can feel his cheeks pinking. ‘Careful Angel, I thought you didn’t fraternize.’

His lips still tingle sometimes, like they are now. He never thinks about The Kiss. It’s tangled up in too many other things he never thinks about to be safe. But he thinks about it now. The way Crowley’s fingers had trembled around the lapels of his jacket.

He rubs a thumb across the same spot.

It had been a twisted reflection of the kiss Crowley had worked so hard to set up for Maggie and Nina. That moment of vavoom. 

Aziraphale can’t remember if he moved at all with Crowley pressed so closely up against him, can’t remember if he raised his hands or let them fall.

But he remembers how soft Crowley’s lips were against his own, despite the desperate pressure behind them. He remembers the sound Crowley made just before he pulled away, how the puff of breath felt like a hurricane against his defenses.

He remembers how he couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes but he still knew when they lost that final tiny fragile shimmer of hope.

‘I forgive you.’

He hardly recognises the being in his memory, the one who pulled back, who ran. Straight into Metatron’s machinations.

If he could go back in time, he’d give his past self a good talking to and shove him out the door after Crowley. Or perhaps he’d go back further still and tell himself to kiss back. Or to stay in the bookshop, to not listen to Metatron at all. Forget Heaven, forget Hell. ‘Just us.’

The ding of the microwave pulls him back from thinking impossible things and he springs up from the bed in surprise.  His shoes tumble to the floor and he scrabbles after them. The move brings him nose to…ahem, well…with the cast iron form of two entangled heavenly bodies.

His cheeks flame and he leaps back. A flailing hand catches the edge of a lamp, toppling it and everything else near it to the floor in a series of thuds. Aziraphale closes his eyes. There isn’t a chance Crowley didn’t hear that.

Crowley, who had spent the minute and a half that the two mugs of chocolate had been spinning around in the microwave contemplating whether it would be too pathetic to steal away in the Bentley and go sleep for a night next to a field, does hear the thuds of heavy somethings hitting his bedroom floor.

The pieces of his heart take a collective jump into his throat and he sprints from the kitchen. 

“Angel!”

He bursts into the bedroom expecting to find  Aziraphale gone, stolen away by either Heaven or Hell for disobeying at the last minute, or worse; a scene from one of those grisly horror movies humans enjoy watching so much. It’s a good thing that he sees evidence of neither, he’s just not exactly sure what he is seeing.

Aziraphale sits slumped on the edge of the bed, cheeks flushed bright pink, while half the contents of Crowley’s bedside table lay scattered on the floor.

He gapes for a moment, clinging to the doorframe and gulping in breaths that the brief sprint from the kitchen shouldn’t have left him short of. He’s a demon, he doesn’t even need to breathe.

Eventually, something occurs to him; “Did you break my lamp?” 

Aziraphale’s hands flutter in front of his chest. “Not on purpose.”

“Of course not…what were you even doing?” Because he wasn’t getting changed, that much is certain. He hasn’t so much as undone a single button. Crowley pulls his eyes away from Aziraphale’s chest, swallows a little too loudly.

Aziraphale is still blushing. It’s endearing. Crowley doesn’t want to be endeared. Aziraphale hasn’t even apologised yet.

“I’m sorry.” That wasn’t what he meant, “I dropped my shoes and uh,” Aziraphale shrugs and tries another smile, it’s a little bit better than his earlier attempts. “I can fix it.” He sounds more hopeful than confident and Crowley rolls his eyes.

“Forget it. I’ll do it. Just get changed if you’re going to, or the chocolate will get cold again.” It won’t, of course, not unless they want it to, it shouldn't have gone cold the first time but he isn’t thinking about that, he’ll just feel pathetic again.

He turns to leave but hesitates at the sound of Aziraphale’s indrawn breath. 

“Thank you, for the clothes.” 

Crowley inclines his head, waits.

“Why do you- surely they returned to the bookshop?”

Behind his glasses, he narrows his eyes, wonders how honest he needs to be. Nina said they should talk, he took that to mean be truthful, like before, but it feels like too much, too quickly to start with this. 

“They did. But Muriel has been experimenting with fashion. They wear anything they find these days, but they change the colours. Makes them look like they’ve been rained on by skittles most of the time. I didn’t think you’d like that.”

It’s not not true. It's just not not a lie either. He shoves his hands into his pockets, finger catching on the worn strip of fabric there. 

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t.” Aziraphale’s shoulders are still slumped, curled in slightly, but he smiles gratefully at Crowley. It looks sad. He looks sad. Crowley hates it.

“There’s also this,” he pulls his right hand out of his pocket, the abused bowtie hanging limply from his fingers. “Not sure how it got in there.”

He steps around the bed to hand over the bowtie, keeping his gaze locked on his hand as it trembles. 

Aziraphale reaches out, catching his fingers along with the tie. “I’m so sorry, Crowley.”

Crowley breathes, nods. “Okay. For what?”

“I’m sorry?”

“So you’ve said.” He tries a smile of his own, it feels like it has too many teeth so he stops. “For what exactly are you sorry?”

“For, well, for everything.” The hand that isn’t still clinging onto his flings wide, obviously meant to indicate the sheer size of the everything Aziraphale feels he should apologise for. There’s a nettle of suspicion growing in Crowley’s stomach that says it still won’t be everything.

“And specifically?” He has always been very good at poking where it hurts, at his own tender spots most of all. 

The fingers around his own tighten in a drawn out squeeze. Crowley’s shattered heart stills.

“For Heaven, of course. For listening to Metatron, for not listening to you.” He stares into Aziraphale’s eyes and they’re earnest, pleading. He wonders when it’s supposed to stop hurting. “For after, with the…” Aziraphale gestures to his own mouth, cheeks pinking again. 

It feels cold in here now, Crowley will need to turn up the Aga before he tries to sleep. 

“For leaving you.” 

He waits, but that’s it.

Aziraphale’s sorry for going, but not for wanting to go. Not for wanting to return to the old times, only even nicer with Crowley beside him. An angel again. Even nicer. 

Somehow, he’d still had hope. It smashes through the rubble in his chest as it leaves him. 

Perhaps he’s been overthinking it, all this time. Maybe it shouldn’t matter if Aziraphale sees him and remembers who he used to be. If the angel sticks around, that can be enough. Crowley will make sure that’s enough. 

He gets it; Heaven didn't work out the way Aziraphale hoped it would, he had to learn that lesson the way Crowley did. And Aziraphale had stood beside him in the end, hadn’t he? When it mattered. 

And he’s apologising for hurting him, that’s the crux of what he’s saying. 

Is it really Aziraphale’s fault that Crowley had believed in the impossible and been proven wrong? He can’t really hold his own ridiculous delusions against the angel. 

He binds up his heart again; it’s starting to feel a little less sharp, so that’s something. 

He turns his hand over in Aziraphale’s, tangles their fingers together and squeezes back.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to do the thing.”

Later, things are good, Aziraphale thinks. At least, Crowley says they are.

After he got changed, after Crowley picked the grey suit up with a pair of grill tongs and threw it in the bin outside the cottage. 

After they drank their hot chocolate in the lounge and he ate two Eccles cakes but couldn’t force down the third. 

After Crowley started to sink into the armchair, gestures lazy and slow as he told Aziraphale he could stay for the night. Did he want a book or…?

After Aziraphale wrapped the blanket off the back of the sofa around himself and curled up in the hallway outside the bedroom door, waited longer than he expected for the first snore.

After, it’s good.

It’s Crowley waking at 7am to put the kettle on and tripping over Aziraphale’s legs outside his door, one eyebrow raised but no questions asked as Aziraphale scrabbles to his feet and stutters out an excuse.

It’s discovering everything in the cupboards and refrigerator necessary to make crêpes with blueberries and filling the cottage up with the smell of sugar and batter.

It’s Crowley folding the paper in half and fidgeting with the crease, asking if he’d like a tour of the cottage.

It’s finally being invited inside the library and the feeling of home taking root.

It’s discovering that Madame Tracy calls Crowley at nine every morning to give him a reading for the day, while Crowley smirks and taps a finger on the kitchen table but doesn’t call her a crackpot old fraud.

It’s finding a chaise longue appearing one day in the library, wedged in beneath a window that shouldn’t exist and next to the bookshelves that hold his favorite books.

It’s small tiffs over who was closer to Oscar Wilde (‘I broke him out of jail, Angel.’ ‘Yes, but who was it that visited him there when you had to put him back?’)

It’s being Angel again, although only when they’ve opened a bottle of wine.

It’s good. But it’s also completely dreadful too.

Crowley keeps his glasses on all the time now. Aziraphale feels emptier than ever.

They visit Soho three days after the second coming that didn’t. 

Crowley drives because the Bentley’s joy at Azirphale’s presence in the passenger seat is bad enough; he’s already had to turn the radio off twice after it spontaneously burst into sound. The second time it hadn’t even been music. He doesn’t want to think what the car would do if Aziraphale drove.

The Bentley is yellow again, even the alloys which he hadn’t noticed last time. He lets it be, he’s learnt to pick his battles more carefully. 

Aziraphale looks out of the window, a gentle smile on his lips every time they pass a pedestrian. Crowley drives carefully, just on the speed limit and watches him from the corner of his eye. He’s beautiful in the spring sun. 

The drive is quiet and pleasant and everything the last year hasn’t been. 

Red lights catch them more often than they should. Crowley shifts his hand on the gearstick and listens to the rumble of the Bentley as it idles.

Aziraphale grabs his hand in excitement when he catches sight of a horse running through a field and keeping chase with them for as long as it can. The Bentley changes the next few gears itself until Aziraphale gets distracted looking for lemon drops in the glove compartment and lets go.

It’s very nearly perfect and that’s enough. It has to be.

Nina and Maggie are together and it’s wonderful to see. Aziraphale is a little surprised to learn it’s only been a couple of months; he thought his ball had worked out perfectly, up until Shax’s little legion arrived anyway. 

“It’s like we told Crowley,” Maggie explains, smiling as she watches Nina serve another wave of customers at the counter. They’re tucked into a table by the window. If he strains his eyesight, he can see Crowley through the bookshop window, instructing Muriel in something apparently involving a lot of big gestures. “It wasn’t the right time, then. Nina needed some space to deal with her partner leaving. And everything had been a little too strange.”

“Ah, yes, well, I do apologise for our part in that.” 

Maggie waves him off, a smile for him this time. “It was a good kind of strange, I think. And everything worked out for the best anyway, in the end.”

“Yes, you do look very happy together.” Crowley points to something, shaking his head and runs a hand down his face. Aziraphale frowns.

“Oh, thank you. But I meant you and Crowley actually, all that with Heaven and Hell and everything.”

He looks away from the window. “Right, of course.”

“Everything is okay, isn’t it?” Maggie leans forward, an elbow perilously close to the edge of her coffee cup. 

“Oh yes! We haven’t heard a word from anyone, actually, not a single abduction attempt.”

Maggie’s eyes widen. “That’s…good, isn’t it.”

He nods. “Extremely, I think they might actually leave us alone this time.” His attention is back on the bookshop, Crowley holding up two books now, balanced on the palms of his hands, raising and lowering them like a pair of scales.

“I’m glad, Mr Fell. And Crowley must be happy, that’s what he’s wanted for ages.”

“Mhmm.” Crowley moves away from the window, deeper into the bookshop and Aziraphale blinks, turning back to Maggie. “Speaking of Crowley, has he ever, since the Shopkeepers’ Association meeting I mean, does he take off his glasses at all?”

“Sometimes, when it’s dark. Or when Sergeant Shadwell’s been talking about witches too long. Nina says he has an unhealthy obsession with nipples.” 

Aziraphale splutters; “Crowley?”

Maggie laughs, he notices Nina noticing, it makes his chest ache. “No, Sergeant Shadwell. I don’t think Crowley is interested in nipples, although I’ve never asked him. He certainly doesn’t seem as interested as the Sergeant anyway.”

He takes a few sips of his tea to resettle. “I think we’ve gone a little off topic, Maggie.”

She blushes. “We have, haven’t we. What were you asking?”

“When Crowley takes off his glasses, everything is okay, is it? Normal? Nothing,” he leans forwards slightly, whispering; “strange?”

“Strange? No, I don’t think so.”

Aziraphale falls back in his chair. Perhaps that’s it then. In six thousand years Crowley had never found any way to cover his distinctive eyes except for the sunglasses. But if he has found something, perhaps it strains them. Maybe he actually needs the darkened lenses after he does it. Whatever it is.

“Oh! You’re talking about his eyes aren’t you? Sorry, I’ve gotten so used to them, I didn’t think.”

“You’ve gotten used to them?” He can feel the pleasure of solving this riddle dissolving, something leaden sliding into place instead.

“Of course. Don’t tell him, because I think he’s quite sensitive about it, but it was a bit unnerving at first. I’ve never been that fond of snakes, but Crowley promised he’d never change unexpectedly and Nina told him he better not or she’d do something with his glasses that even demons haven’t thought of yet. He seemed quite unnerved, poor thing.”

“That was nice of Nina.” He wishes he’d been there to see the look on Crowley’s face. He’ll have to ask him about it later.

“Wasn’t it?” Maggie’s eyes go distant, her smile soft and he knows he’s lost her attention for a little bit.

He looks back out the window and across the road. The bookshop door opens and Crowley steps out, Muriel a step behind him and his glasses back on his face.

So it’s just him then. Aziraphale will have to do something about that.

Crowley growls, tossing another magazine over his shoulder to join the rest on the floor. He doesn’t know how the things pile up so quickly. 

“Everything okay, Crowley?” He could have sworn Aziraphale was in the library a second ago. He’d looked completely absorbed in a Jane Austen novel. Jane, who had also been a writer. Astonishing.

“I’ve lost something.” 

“Perhaps I can help?”

“No! It’s okay, I’ll find it somewhere.” That’s the last thing he needs. 

Things have been going swimmingly the past few days. He’d been half certain that as soon as Aziraphale stepped foot in the bookshop, he’d want to stay and Crowley had already started to calculate how often he’d be able to make the four hour round trip, without completely burning out the Bentley. 

But they’d barely been there three hours before Aziraphale was herding him back to the car with a quick goodbye to Muriel and a promise to call them soon. 

Perhaps it’s because the books there aren’t the real books. The cottage does at least have that in its favour.

Since then, Aziraphale hasn’t mentioned going back once, despite the fact that Barlavington is severely lacking in sushi restaurants.

The whole South Downs are really.

Things are going wonderfully and Crowley isn’t going to rock their boat by drawing attention to one of the few issues between them that has so far remained unresolved. It’s not Aziraphale’s fault, Crowley is working on it. His tattoo hasn’t peaked out from his hairline at all today.

He just needs to find these satan forsaken glasses. The pair he’s got on have a scratch on them that’s making him paranoid about his eyesight.

He could miracle up a pair, but they never seem to fit right when he does.

“Crowley don’t be ridiculous, let me help.”

Aziraphale’s hand lands on his shoulder, his palm warm even through the three layers of Crowley’s clothing. He melts embarrassingly into the touch.

“My glasses,” he mumbles, keeping still so Aziraphale won’t move, “there should have been a spare pair in here.” He means the lounge in general, but he’s also pretty sure he did leave them in the magazine rack. 

“Oh those. I sat on them, sorry.”

Crowley turns and Aziraphale’s hand does drop away, but he hardly notices. 

(He notices, he just doesn’t dwell on it. 

Okay, he dwells on it, but that’s later.)

“You sat on them.”

Aziraphale looks sheepish, there’s something off about it. “Yes, they were quite mangled, so I threw them out.”

“You threw them out? ”

“I didn’t think you would mind, you have that pair.” He wiggles his fingers towards the pair on Crowley’s nose and Crowley rears back in case he knocks them off, “and it’s just us here, there’s no reason to even wear them around the cottage unless the neighbours show up.”

The neighbours have never shown up. Crowley made certain when he moved in that they never would. 

But it’s not the neighbours he’s worried about.

He stares at Aziraphale a little too long, long enough to see the uncertainty creep into his smile. “That is okay, isn’t it?”

“Of course, accidents happen. Did I ever tell you about the time I sat on the Crown Jewels? Now that was a mistake. Old Vickie was very much not amused, if you know what I mean.”

He shakes out his limbs as he stands, loose and casual, that’s what he is. No need for Aziraphale to worry, it’s not important; one pair of glasses. Nothing to get worked up about. 

They’ve been getting on: no fights, no disagreements. Steady as she goes and all that. Crowley can do compromise, if it means he gets mornings with Aziraphale eating breakfast at the kitchen table and evenings in the library, glasses of wine balanced on stacks of books.

“Where are you going?”

Aziraphale has followed him to the front door, a frown settling deep into the lines of his face.

That’s bad, mustn’t have that. His chest hurts when Aziraphale frowns.

“To see my guy.” He pats his jeans down for his keys, which aren’t there because he has a hook for them now in the kitchen. He’s the type of demon who has a hook for his keys. Beelzebub would be laughing themself sick, if they weren’t off honeymooning with Gabriel in Crowley’s stars.

He sidles past Aziraphale and slouches quickly to the kitchen.

“Your guy?”

Aziraphale is still following him. Crowley grabs the keys, swinging them around his finger by the ring.

“You know, about my…” He gestures towards his glasses but with the wrong hand and the keys clatter against the lenses, knocking the frames askew.

He panics, shoving them back into place and almost running back to the front door.  “Be back in a jiffy, Angel.”

He’s halfway to London before he spots the tears on his cheeks in the rear view mirror.

It’s fine, everything is ticketyboo.

It might not have been his finest hour, but Aziraphale wasn’t wrong; nothing lasts forever.

Everything has a breaking point. 

He hits his when Crowley turns back up at the cottage with five new pairs of sunglasses.

It festers between them, he feels it echoing loudly in the empty place inside his chest.

He doesn’t know what to do about it. This space that’s settled into place between them.

It’s clear that the love he felt when Crowley stood facing him before Heaven and Hell, doesn’t mean what it once did. Perhaps that is why Crowley hides his eyes from him behind the glasses. They’ve always given him away.

If he could see Crowley’s eyes gleaming, would he know for certain that it’s too late? That the forgiveness he has been offered only stretches so far.

Crowley hasn’t touched him since he turned up at the cottage. Oh, he doesn’t pull away when Aziraphale reaches for his hand, or leans against his back to share the paper. But he’s tense, his body held unnaturally still until Aziraphale moves away.

What they have here is beautiful but Aziraphale knows now what he turned away from in the bookshop and the regret keeps choking him.

Something has to give.

Eleven days after Crowley saved the world, the South Downs are hit with a Spring storm. Crowley is outside cutting the grass and Aziraphale watches him from the library window as he did from Heaven. 

The rain pours down and he thinks of The Floods and how bright Crowley was amongst the crowd, questioning God’s will and making plans to save the children.

This is a different storm but it feels just as ominous. Crowley switches the lawn mower off, his hair already plastered to his face and when he looks up to the sky as though to question why, his glasses are still on his face, even though it must be impossible to see through them in this.

Aziraphale isn’t conscious of putting his book down and getting to his feet. One minute he’s watching Crowley mime threats to the sky and the next the back door is clicking closed behind him and his clothes are almost instantly soaked through.

“Aziraphale, what are you doing out here?”

His feet carry him across the grass, rain and mud staining his shoes worse than any foam ever could. 

Crowley frowns, water dripping from his hair, down behind his glasses and then back out again down his cheeks. “Aziraphale?”

“Kiss me.” He says, when only a few inches separate them. He grasps at Crowley’s jacket when he tries to take a step back. 

“What?” 

“Kiss. Me. Like you did before.” His fingers tighten their hold, crushing the black fabric between them. Crowley trembles against his knuckles, his lean body pulling in an arch away from him.

Crowley doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. His eyes are still hidden behind those blasted glasses and Aziraphale doesn’t know if he can live with this hole inside him anymore.

“You can’t, can you?” He takes a breath, flattens his hands out against Crowley’s chest before he steps away. “It’s okay, this,” he waves a hand at the cottage, at the two of them, at the world that still turns beneath their feet, “is okay. We’re still a group of two, but I think I should move back to the bookshop. I think that would be better, for us.”

Crowley sways a little in the wind, but remains silent and Aziraphale doesn’t breathe again until he’s back inside the kitchen. The clock ticks, marking the hour three minutes too early and he doesn’t know if there’s a bus that can get him to a station with a train that can get him to London today, but he has to try.

The back door crashes open at the same moment unnatural lightning tears up the sky, blood red.

Crowley stands steaming in the doorway, his fists clenched at his sides. 

“Better for us.”

“Crowley-”

Crowley growls. “No, this time I’m going first.”

He stalks into the room, the door swinging closed behind him. Thunder roars outside, the cottage shaking with it. 

Aziraphale has never been scared of Crowley, only ever of what he could mean. But Crowley has a depth of power he rarely lets show. Stopping time isn’t something just any old demon can do, or any angel for that matter.

He looks powerful now. He looks dangerous. Aziraphale has missed him.

“You don’t get to leave again, not now. Not after you came back. You don’t get to waltz in here because Heaven wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, which I told you and then slither away again because I’m not good enough.”

“I rather think you have the market cornered on slithering, my dear.” ‘Really, Angel. Jokes, now? We have got to work on your timing.’

Crowley growls again, reaching up and finally tearing the glasses off his face. His eyes blaze,  burning through Aziraphale. “Yes I do, Angel. Because I am the Serpent of Eden. The Tempter, The Damned. Do you see, now? Look at me, this is who I am. This is me. And I’m okay with that. I’ve been okay with that for over six thousand years. Because I don’t feel any different. I just wanted to know why, I still want to know why. And it made me a terrible angel and I’m not the right kind of demon, but I don’t care.

“I understand now, I thought you didn’t care too, but you do and that’s…I’m working on it. I understand why Metatron’s offer was too tempting to turn down, I understand why you wanted to go back to before, to ‘restore’ me. I understand.”

“I don’t think you do, actually.”

The kitchen is cold again, his anger burnt out and leaving him shivering in damp clothes.

Aziraphale looks even worse, still soaking wet and red eyed. His arms crossed tightly around his middle.

Crowley lifts a hand and the fire in the Aga roars higher. 

“Trust me, Angel, I’ve had a long time to think about this.” 

Aziraphale shakes his head, Crowley should have known he wouldn’t agree quietly. But at least he isn’t leaving, at least he’s still standing in the kitchen. As long as they keep talking, then Crowley won’t be alone again.

If his heart breaks anymore, there’ll only be dust left.

“Of course I trust you. I don’t let just anyone shoot a bullet at me.” Crowley shudders at the memory even as Aziraphale smiles. “But you’ve still got it wrong.”

“Enlighten me.” Keep him talking, that’s the key. Wait out the storm and then it’ll all be okay.

“Crowley, I just wanted you to be happy again. Do you remember, really remember what you were like before The Fall?”

“As an angel? I was a bit of a prick, to be honest.”

He leans back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. 

“You were incandescent, so full of joy you were bursting with it.”

Now that’s a bit much. He’s sure he wasn’t that bad.

Aziraphale doesn’t let him point that out. “You were so excited to see your galaxies grow; they didn’t even exist yet and you already loved them. I’d never seen anyone in Heaven as happy as you were creating that nebula.”

He had been pretty happy creating the M25 too, there just hadn’t been anyone around to show off to about it.

“And then I told you about Her plan and it was gone. That joy. Crowley, I couldn’t bear it. You were so happy and I took that from you. I made you doubt. I made you ask questions.”

“Aziraphale-”

His angel waves him off. “No, I know, you would have found out soon enough, but it was still my fault. And then you Fell, and I thought, that’s it, no more chances. And you were beautiful and fierce and nice, but were you happy? Metatron said you could be restored to full angelic status and I didn’t think about changing things, not at first. I just wanted you to be that happy again.”

Crowley swallows, his heart is a living thing in his chest again, still in pieces but it feels less broken, more like a puzzle waiting on the final piece to click into place.

“I am happy.”

Aziraphale’s eyes are soft, like they were that morning. “My dear, you’re crying.”

Is he? His hand comes away wet when he brings it to his cheek to check. “Well not right now, but then, before. Not before. But in London, the bookshop.”

“Just us?” Aziraphale takes a step away from the table, closer to him. It’s hypnotic, the way his eyes lock onto Crowley’s as he moves.

“Exactly. There was so much I didn’t know, in Heaven. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. That’s not being happy, Angel, not really.”

“But now you know?” Aziraphale is so close now, Crowley can hardly think.

“I…don’t know.” His words bounce back at him, from Aziraphale’s lips.

Fingertips brush at the corners of his eyes. “I thought if we were both angels again it would be easier to be together. I got caught up in the wrong ideas and I wanted you to have that joy back, but I never needed you to change, not to love you.”  

“You don’t mean that, Angel. I’m a demon, we’re unloveable.”

Aziraphale’s hands cup his head, his thumb moving unnervingly to rest on the inked snake behind Crowley’s ear. “Oh my demon, that isn’t true at all.”

There isn’t much space left between them, but it still feels like it takes an eternity for Aziraphale to lean in and their lips to touch.

His blood roars in his ears and his heart - solid, mended - lurches at the same time his hands grip tight to Aziraphale’s shoulders, pulling him closer. 

Outside the rain stops. The sun comes out and birds take to the sky.

Aziraphale’s lips are soft and still a little chilled and they curve into a smile against his own.

“I can hear the nightingales.”

Angels were made to love, to feel love. Aziraphale has never felt so full of love as he does now. Even when She had touched him, it hadn’t felt like this.

There’s no longer an empty cavern in his chest, only a heart pounding against his ribs as his fingers tangle in Crowley’s hair.

This kiss isn’t a goodbye, it doesn’t end with bitter words. It doesn’t end at all, not for a long time. An unexpected perk to not needing to breathe that he intends to take advantage of. Often.

Beneath his thumb, the snake wriggles and Aziraphale encourages it out, back where it belongs.

He feels a sudden surge of warmth as Crowley dries their clothes. The pool of love inside him surges higher.

Eventually, they’re no longer kissing, just resting against each other.

His fingers map the bones of Crowley’s back, pressing carefully against the places his wings begin.

Crowley’s hands rest against his hips, squeezing in an addictively random rhythm.

“I am truly happy, Angel. With you. Always have been.”

Crowley’s nose slides against his own in a long caress, his lips pressing barely there kisses against his cheeks, his jaw.

“Yes, She implied that.”

The kisses stop as Crowley stills. “You spoke to Her?”

They’re still pressed so tightly together that Aziraphale can feel the way Crowley’s pulse speeds up, can hear the catch of his breath as it stutters in his chest. 

“She gave me back my sword.” Actually, he’s not at all sure where that ended up. It certainly wasn’t in his hand when he arrived here. 

“Right.” Another kiss, Crowley’s lips tremble nervously. “How, uh, did She seem? I don’t suppose She’s happy with me, of course.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that, my dear. She’s the one who brought me here.”

Crowley swallows audibly. “Oh, that’s…well…really?”

“Mhm,” Aziraphale nuzzles against Crowley’s cheek, humans might be onto something, all that time spent touching each other. “Dropped me right on your doorstep, so to speak.”

“Our doorstep.”

There goes that flare of love again. Aziraphale knows he’s been almost wilfully blind to it, in the past, but how has all of heaven missed this? 

Crowley’s hands squeeze his waist pointedly. “Our bookshop, our car. Our cottage.”

His lips are right there, Aziraphale lets himself be tempted again.

“You named it after Warlock.” He says, some time later, when his mouth isn’t otherwise occupied. 

Crowley shrugs, but his yellow eyes are soft and his cheeks a little rosy. “He was a little bit ours too, don’t you think?”

Somewhere in their cottage a radio starts playing, the lilting lyrics of their song crooning softly as the evening draws in.

Aziraphale curls his arms around Crowley, pulling him in until they’re cheek to cheek. “Dance with me?”

“We don’t dance.”

But as dusk paints the kitchen in shades of pink and purple, right there in their kitchen, they do.

End