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“Aziraphale?”
The angel blinked, realizing the lift had stopped and Metatron was standing a meter or so outside it, as though he’d exited fully expecting to be followed and only paused upon realizing he wasn’t. The Voice of God was silent, with a smiling mouth and cold eyes.
“Oh! Yes.” Aziraphale smoothed his hands down his vest and patted his trouser pockets, because his Being felt something was missing, but his mind wasn’t ready to accept that it was gone. “I do apologize. Goodness, me.” He stepped out of the lift lightly and let out a sigh. “It’s…nice to be back…on good terms.” He smiled.
Metatron watched him for a moment, eyes never wavering from the angel’s.
“Indeed.”
Aziraphale swallowed and continued nervously grinning. Finally, Metatron turned away, seemingly satisfied with whatever he’d found in the expression of the new Supreme Archangel.
Free from observation, Aziraphale shut his eyes tightly as he heard the lift doors slowly closing behind him. He let out a low, pained gasp as the doors sealed and Earth seemed to completely fall away below. The lift hummed "GOING DOWN" as it moved toward the place that he’d fought so hard to remain a part of yet had left. Toward the place where the only one he’d ever…
“Come along, then,” Metatron’s voice tugged him out of the hole he was spiraling downward into, and his eyes opened, glassiness clearing away.
The lift was gone now. As he followed the voice that had urged him forward, he couldn’t deny the feeling he should have been on it.
-:-
His head was pounding with enough force he imagined his eyeballs were pressing into the lenses of his ink-black glasses. Sure, he could Miracle the alcohol poisoning away, but this was preferable to the pain he’d experience with a clear head.
“I’m afraid I have to cut you off, lad. Closing was twenty minutes ago. Do you need me to call you a car?” the graying bartender offered.
Crowley raised his head, eyes shut tight against the lights above the bar, and sighed.
“You casting me off too, then, angel?” he accused too loudly. “Well, what if I tell you, ‘No,” and refuse,” he said, baring his teeth, “to let you walk away? After all I’ve done for you; after all I’ve risked and all you’ve cost me.” He was seething such that saliva dribbled down his bottom lip, which he roughly wiped away with the back of his sleeve.
The bartender, for his part, had seen many such dramatic displays in his chosen profession; in fact, this wasn’t even in the top ten percent. He tossed the towel he’d been using to dry the next-to-last glass he’d clean that evening onto the bar, then crossed his arms.
“Listen, any other evening, I’d be happy to hear all about it, pour you drinks until you fall off your stool. Part of the job and all that.” He sighed a long, exhausted breath and dropped his shoulders. “But tonight, I don’t have it in me. Life’s unfair on this side of the fucking bar, too. So I’ll just give you the advice I give everyone who comes in here looking like he’s been chewed up and shit out: Do not go gentle into that good night, my friend.” He leaned forward, pushing the tab toward Crowley with a raised eyebrow. “As far as costing you anything, well, that’s fucking good scotch, that is.” He tapped his finger on the table next to Crowley’s almost-empty glass.
The demon finally opened his eyes—not that the bartender had known they’d been closed the entire time—and glared at this person quoting poetry at him.
“Are we—waxing philosophical about normal human problems while I—“ he laid a hand upon his chest, indignantly, “—have just been rejected by—a person—who I have spent eons building my life around? I mean, where is the reward for all this—this—” his spread his hands wide, gesturing at everything and nothing. “This fucking—positive character development!” Crowley laughed venomously. “What was the fucking point of it all? What the fuck do I do now?!”
The other man smiled pityingly.
“Aye. Sounds like a ‘normal human problem’ to me, lad.”
He left Crowley alone after that. Went about his business tidying things up, counting the till, signing slips and waving off the other remaining employees for the night.
When he did go to check on the spiraling man with the slicked-back red hair and the pitch-dark glasses, all that remained was an empty glass and a few pound notes.
-:-
When the sun rose over a foggy graveyard in London, the Bentley filled with a brilliant orange light like Hellfire. Crowley stared straight ahead, an empty flask in the passenger seat. His sunglasses reflected the day breaking on a world without his angel in it.
He ripped them off his face so his snakelike eyes greeted the dawn instead.
He would never, ever admit it to anyone (he'd sooner perish in a bath of Holy Water) but this was his lowest point, sitting in his car and pathetically mourning the loss of someone he supposed he never truly had. Had Crowley made himself so easy to toss aside? When had he become someone who valued himself so little that he would risk his very existence for someone who could abandon him, for a job posting, no less?
Pitiable. Pathetic. Loathsome, disgusting, actually. That was what he was. What he had been for thousands of years now.
A simpering, desperate fool.
He'd seen an angel and allowed himself to be influenced by him. Changed things about himself because he couldn't bear the angel's disappointed gaze. All this time, he thought he'd been the one tempting Aziraphale, opening him up to the wonders of autonomy and free will and the world. And all along, it was truly the angel who had won, so to speak. Crowley had become a project. A demon to bring to heel.
Bitter tears filled his eyes, but as they rolled down his cheeks, the hurt and rage caused his skin to burn so hot the tears evaporated instantly. He gritted his teeth and gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand while the other replaced his sunglasses.
Do not go gentle, he thought. Do not go gentle. You are The Demon Crowley, forged in Heaven and reborn in Hellfire. You make your own ineffable fucking plans.
"Well," he cleared his throat, "there's really only one thing to be done at this point, wouldn't you say?"
The Bentley's radio blared the opening to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" as Crowley and the car roared out of the graveyard.
-:-
Six months later:
Aziraphale was content, in an ill-at-ease sort of way. Did he regret coming to Heaven to help plan and execute The Second Coming? Yes. At times he felt in over his head. But was he? Also yes. He was not qualified for this job. He cared and empathized far too much with humans to be the angel in charge of planning the end of their world. But could he set his personal feelings aside and do the best job he could to please The Almighty and fulfill Earth's destiny?
Oh, dear. He was very, very fucked.
"Aziraphale."
"AHH!" He cried, knocking his inkpot and cup of feathered quills across his desk (just because Gabriel hadn't had one didn't mean he wouldn't positively insist) and had the fleeting unwelcome thought that Crowley would've found the quills incredibly pretentious and Aziraphale would've found his teasing charming, and oh...someone was saying his name.
"I apologize for disrupting your work," Michael said unapologetically. "It has come to our collective attention that you have yet to comment on the matter of the demon Crowley." Michael straightened and leveled a cool gaze at Aziraphale. "You missed the morning meeting, again. Perhaps if we’d brought pastries like the humans eat, you’d have managed to find your way there."
Aziraphale finished fussing with cleaning the mess on his desk and then straightened his vest.
"Yes, sorry about that. I will be there tomorrow, of course! I've just been busy, you know, what with the whole apocalypse-round-two business, and--"
"The demon Crowley is causing mayhem and calamity on Earth, Aziraphale. The place you hold so dear. I might begin to wonder if you are truly the right angel for this job, if you're too clouded by your feelings for a demon to stop him from derailing our plans..." Michael's voice trailed off lightly, questioningly. He held out his closed fist, and Aziraphale swallowed as Michael lowered it to the surface of the desk, stopped an inch above it, then opened his hand to drop something that was clearly broken.
"What--" Aziraphale began, but as he leaned forward to inspect the shiny black bits of glass, he recognized them to be--
"Familiar?" Michael asked with false naivete and a widening smirk.
Aziraphale looked up in horror.
"What have you--"
"Oh, nothing," Michael put his hands up defensively. "None of the Heavenly Host have lain a hand upon your little friend. These," Michael said, lowering his voice and pointing to what was once sunglasses, "were destroyed by their owner. We recovered them to bring to you, should you need evidence that Crowley has returned full-time to his hellish occupation." Then Michael laughed unpleasantly. "Or, rather, to a higher position, actually. Your demon pet is now a Duke of Hell. Didn't you know?"
Aziraphale swallowed, forcing his lips to twist into a weak grimace. He meant to only glance down at the crushed black shards, but then he couldn't rip his gaze away. They weren't just broken, they were destroyed. Crowley had worn those for...for so long, they'd become a part of his identity. And now Crowley had decimated them, because he'd rejected that identity--the "peaceful existence he'd carved out" for himself--and Aziraphale knew this was not the sort of thing he'd have done lightly.
"I...of course I knew, b-but..."
He'd read the reports from other angels, scouts on Earth, even human newspapers that detailed horrible and mysterious events happening since Aziraphale had taken this job. He'd known who was responsible. He'd looked the other way, assumed this was grief rearing its ugly head and Crowley would settle, with time, back into that casual, goes-along-with-hell-as-far-as-he-can demon he'd become.
But he'd gone the other way. Millenia of progress lost. Back to Hell and havoc and...hurting humans. Humans Aziraphale was now even more responsible for.
"Well, I think it's past time you authorized one of us to take corrective action. Or you could handle it yourself." Michael smiled with far too many teeth. "Whatever you decide, do it quickly. You wouldn't want Metatron to notice and question his decision in appointing you. That could be disastrous...for you, and for your demon." The threat was left hanging in the air as Michael sauntered away, heels clicking on the pristine white floors.
The Supreme Archangel slumped in his ornate (white, because it was Heaven) wingback chair, and pressed his face into his hands.
Did he regret coming to Heaven? Yes, he did. Was he in over his head? Yes, very much so. But he was confident that he'd eventually handle the apocalypse and The Second Coming with at least moderate success. Every working person eventually had to do things they didn’t want to in order to keep their job, after all.
But handling Crowley? Tempter of Eve, Sordid Serpent of Eden, Literal Deliverer of the Antichrist and Capturer of Aziraphale's Heart?
He withdrew his hands from his face and fixed his puffy-eyed gaze upon the shattered spectacles. In an instant, they were restored to perfect condition. His mouth settled in a determined line.
No, he wouldn't allow Crowley to backslide and erase thousands of years of work on himself. There was too much at stake.
Crowley's existence, for one.
Aziraphale gently folded the sunglasses into his breast pocket and stood, knocking his ink pot over again and scattering quills about.
"Shortage of pens up there, Angel?" He imagined Crowley teasing as he marched toward the lift to Earth. "And here I thought Heaven had everything."
Aziraphale stepped inside the lift as soon as the doors opened and jammed his finger into the "down" button.
"Not everything," he whispered. The doors closed.
"GOING DOWN."
-:-
Crowley sat up, suddenly wide awake. Serpent eyes raking across his flat, (reclaimed now that Shax had returned to Hell) everything looked to be in order. But something was definitely amiss.
He closed his eyes and felt, reaching out with his consciousness and touching the edge of a familiar car.
His car!
Launching out of bed, he grabbed his trousers from the floor and sort of hopscotched into them as he ran for the door. Vagrants, youths, whatever they were, if they'd so much as breathed on his Bentley--
He flung the door to the outside open and ran in only trousers and socks down the street to where his car was parked, only slowing down when he saw nothing immediately wrong with it. No humans licking it and it wasn't on fire, his two greatest fears.
A bit out of breath from worry and not taking very good care of (abusing) his chosen fleshy suit, he leaned over, clutching his chest, supporting himself with one hand on the hood of his Bentley.
"Did you see a little sports car again, get a little too excited?" he panted, chuckling. "Whoever it was, they're too young for you."
"Good to see your morality is still kicking when it comes to age-appropriate relationships between sentient automobiles."
The second he'd heard the voice, Crowley's spine had gone rigid. The light, musical quality to it. Familiar and fond.
And it pissed him off.
He slowly straightened and turned with gritted teeth to see the face he'd once hoped to see every day for eternity.
"Aziraphale," Crowley said as nonchalantly as he could manage.
"Long time no see," he replied cheerfully. Too cheerfully. It grated.
"Not long enough." Crowley turned so he was leaning fully against the door of his car and crossed his arms over his naked chest. "What did you do to my car?"
"Oh, nothing. Just popped in to say hello to an old friend."
"I am not your friend," Crowley growled, baring his teeth.
"I was talking about the car." Aziraphale smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. Then his expression fell into one of deep regret. "However, since you're here, there are a few things you and I must discuss. I hear you've been...quite busy...since I left?"
Crowley's nostrils flared.
"And what's it to you? Just doing my job. One I've neglected too long. I would think you'd understand, knowing how important jobs and duty and obligations are to you." His voice dripped with sinister derision, and he leaned forward just enough that his upper body intruded upon Aziraphale's personal space (what he'd used to refer to as his 'bubble'). The angel didn't back down.
That was new. And telling.
He meant business.
"Is there, perhaps, a place of neutrality where we could have a civil conversation, Crowley? In the middle of the street is bad form." Aziraphale gestured around them. "Perhaps we could sit in the car--"
"You will never touch my car again," Crowley hissed, one eyebrow reaching his hairline, "and I'm no longer interested in civil conversations of this particular type." He enunciated 'type' with razor sharpness, showing his teeth again. It was disconcerting, paired with his uncovered yellow eyes.
Aziraphale dropped his shoulders and straightened his spine so he appeared a few centimeters taller. "Very well. Thought I'd ask to be polite, but I can see that you don't appreciate my efforts." He waved his hand and then he and Crowley were suddenly in the bookshop, where Muriel was sitting at Aziraphale's former desk, halfway through reading a thick novel.
Crowley was Miracled into a black turtleneck and boots.
"How’s this a 'place of neutrality?'" he growled, but Aziraphale ignored him.
"Oh! I wasn't expecting visitors!" Muriel jumped up from their seat, wedging a tasseled bookmark between the pages to mark their place. "Is there mischief afoot?" Their eyes sparkled with interest.
"Certainly not--"
"Stand down, Inspector Constable--"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake--"
"Shall I pop out for a bit so you two can have a private discussion?" Muriel said brightly, obviously better at reading books than at reading a room.
"If you don't mind--"
"I'd prefer a witness, actually--"
"Okay! I'm off, then. Think I'll grab myself a coffee. Not sure what I'll do with it, but that's what the humans all say!" And then they were out the door, and Crowley and Aziraphale were left alone, in the bookshop, for the first time in six months.
They both looked around them, noting how little had changed, and trying very hard not to think about what had happened the last time they'd been alone in this bookshop.
"Oh, how I've missed this place," the angel said with a quiver in his voice. He blinked rapidly and sighed. "It's as though I never left." He reached out and touched the spines of his Jane Austen collection with trembling fingers.
Crowley set his jaw in irritation and turned his gaze away from the exact spot where he'd--really made a fool of himself and felt his face burn with something other than demonic rage.
"But you did leave."
Aziraphale stopped caressing his books, hand frozen in midair.
"Yes, I did." He said it simply, unapologetically. Because he'd gone but done nothing wrong by going; he was an angel doing his angelic duty; a servant, as he was created to be.
Crowley sneered.
"Proud of ourselves, are we? How's the end of the world planning going? Has Heaven devised new methods of torture for us lowly demons to use against the humans during their Trials and Tribulations? I've been working on a few of my own and I do have some suggestions--"
"That's what we are here to talk about. You've been up to some unsavory activities of late--"
"Yes, far behind schedule, if you ask me. Making up for lost time--"
"--and shirking your disguise? Letting the humans see what you are, showing them--"
"Oh, this?" Crowley interjected, pointing at his eyes as he sprawled lazily across a velvet-upholstered chair. "Yeah. Doesn't have the effect I was going for. Apparently now even some humans can achieve this with contact lenses." He sighed. "So I've made up for what I lack in physical atrocities with...actual atrocities." He grinned maliciously. "I can describe them in great detail if you need, for your records. I imagine you're the note-taking sort of snivelling bureaucrat."
A flash of hurt crossed Aziraphale's features, but it was quickly replaced by stoicism befitting an angel of his station. Crowley's stomach dropped. Aziraphale sighed and lowered himself smoothly into a chair opposite his friend-turned-adversary.
"No need for the gory details; I have all the information I need. I'm afraid you've gone too far, Crowley. I've checked, and you haven't had the proper permits, or even authorization from Hell. You've been acting on your own...in a most incongruous way." For a moment, looking across the short distance to Crowley, if Aziraphale forgot about the content of their conversation, he could imagine them as they once were. The pain of escaped familiarity lanced through him like a Roman spear.
Crowley grinned madly and gestured at himself.
"What can I say? I've still got it."
"Crowley, this is no time for jokes," Aziraphale said with just the barest edge of impatience. "I have avoided confronting you as long as I can. But Heaven is not just under my command; the other archangels expect my interference. It’s only because of our…relationship that I’ve been allowed to give you this long to come to your senses."
"And you're, what--" Crowley laughed darkly, "doing me a favor as an old friend, warning me off? Instead of just spraying me with Holy Water like I'm a bad cat?" He leaned forward, pressing his index finger painfully into his own temple. "I have thought of nothing for the past six months, but ways to destroy everything Heaven holds dear. Everything you tried to turn me into." His voice shook with unchecked rage. Smoke curled around his head. "And I will keep thinking and keep doing. ‘Do not go gentle’ and all that. This is who I am, Angel," he spat the pet name derisively, "so you let me do my job and skip off back to Daddy."
Aziraphale, for his part, was trying and just beginning to fail to keep his emotions in check. His bottom lip quivered so slightly a human wouldn't detect it, but he imagined Crowley would, if he weren't too overcome with anger to notice.
The angel reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a perfectly-repaired pair of dark sunglasses. Crowley's nostrils flared.
"I believe...this you...this Crowley...is still in there, somewhere. I know you're angry with me. I understand you think I'm foolish for trusting Heaven. But..." Aziraphale swallowed, determined not to lose this battle. "But I only want what's best for you. As your oldest...former friend. And if you carry on the way you are now...you won't just be punished, Crowley. You'll be destroyed."
Crowley said nothing at first. He appeared too indignant, too enraged and embattled, to be able to form words.
Aziraphale determined this was his cue to leave.
Gently, he stood and placed the sunglasses on the cushion of the chair he had just vacated. He had imparted his warning, returned Crowley's property and taken stock of just what stage of self-destruction his friend was in, and there was nothing more to do. It was up to Crowley, now. If he didn't heed Aziraphale's plead for caution, soon he'd cease to be Heaven's problem, or anyone’s, for that matter.
The angel determinedly looked everywhere but at the demon in front of him. This moment felt too much like another he'd rather not relive presently, lest he abandon all hope for the world and run away to Alpha Centauri for eternity.
"Now that I-I've said what I needed to say--"
"Yes, well, I haven't." Crowley bit his offending tongue, then stood to face Aziraphale. The angel attempted to school his features into what he expected a Supreme Archangel should look like when imparting a thinly-veiled death threat to a rampaging demon. Professional, but stern.
"Do get whatever it is off your chest, then," the angel said in the same tone as one would say, "there, there," to soothe a child.
Crowley stepped closer. They were a hand's breadth apart.
"Do you think, I mean, really dig down into that delightful little mind of yours and ask yourself, do you really think I care if Heaven comes to destroy me?" His eyes never wavered from Aziraphale's as he spoke. "Do you think anything they could do to me, Holy Water baths and a good old eraser to where my name is penciled in the Book of Life included, could ever be worse than what you have done to me, Aziraphale?"
He spoke with such intensity that smoke again wafted around his head and rolled off his shoulders. He gritted his teeth so hard they seemed on the verge of shattering. His eyes even glowed with fire, brighter than Aziraphale had ever seen them. They were scorching with brimstone and passion.
"Oh, Crowley." The angel could barely breathe. His heart, whether he needed one to live or not, seemed to stop beating. His throat throbbed from the pressure of what he imagined were his lungs trying to evacuate upwards out of him.
"Don't 'oh, Crowley,' me. Say it. Say that you're entirely without culpability. You have nothing to do with my actions. You aren't to blame for anything. Say it." He was so close. It would be so easy.
"We-we are each r-responsible for our own actions, Crowley. In the end, we all answer for our own mistakes. Take responsibility for yours!" The mistake he was referring to, the angel realized, wasn’t unleashing his anger at Aziraphale upon the human world. It was refusing to join him in Heaven. He would not cry, he would not, he would not cry. When he got back to Heaven, he most certainly would, but not here.
Apocalypse apocalypse apocalypse, he said to himself, trying to focus. Earth needed him. Humans needed him. He could not afford to let Crowley distract him.
"My mistakes?" Crowley bellowed, grabbing Aziraphael by the lapels and slamming him into the bookshelf behind him. "And they're all mine, are they?"
"Y-yes, they are."
"So you think all this is an overreaction? You befriended me, you twisted me into a different version of me. You made me feel things I never wanted to," Crowley seethed, his white-knuckled grip growing even tighter. Aziraphale balked.
"I didn't intend-"
"Do you think me a common demon, Aziraphale? That you can play games with me when you're bored and questioning your God's holy plans, then desert me when your little feathered family throws you a bone? They don't care about you, you idiot. They don't love you." He swallowed visibly. "Not like I do."
The silence after so much screaming was deafening. There was only their breath, and the muted sounds of traffic outside.
Suddenly the door to the shop opened and an actual, living, breathing customer walked in.
"Ah yes, excuse me. I've heard marvelous things about your shop," the man said, smiling and clasping his hands together and oblivious to the two people pressed into the bookshelf. "Would you happen to have a first edition of--"
A rather large hole opened in the ground beneath the man, and he vanished with a surprised yelp.
"You may have overdone it with the hole, again," Aziraphale said quietly. Crowley only stared at him, waiting.
After a moment, it seemed to dawn on them both what kind of awkward position they were standing in. Crowley's fingers stiffly released Aziraphale's coat and he stepped back a fraction, looking to the side and shoving his hands in his pockets. Aziraphale cleared his throat, pressed his lips together and straightened his collar.
Neither wanted to be the first to speak. What more was there to say, that wouldn't have dangerous consequences?
Finally, Aziraphale decided to try a new approach.
"I am...sorry, Crowley. That I've hurt you. You must know, after everything we've been through, that I...that wasn't my intention. It was a mistake to leave without apologizing for...the fallout of my decision." He took a deep breath and waited for the words to land.
Crowley pursed his lips in thought, all the fire seemingly gone out of him. He looked up.
"My mistake was thinking you could be happy with just the two of us." He shrugged. "My bad. Shame about all that wasted time. Oh, and kissing you without your permission. Rotten of me. Terribly naughty. Sorry." He sniffed and shifted his weight, looking mildly uncomfortable. Like he was ready to be done with the whole thing and he'd truly given up this time. It was so much worse than the anger and screaming.
Crowley looked for all the world like the cold, unfeeling demon he was meant to be. Not the vengeful one causing trouble to get back at Aziraphale, but just a normal one who'd occasionally Miracle extra sugar into a diabetic's tea.
A stranger.
"I'm-"
"If it's all the same to you, I think I'll fuck off to the stars for a bit. See what old Beelzebub is up to." He backed away, beginning to turn, and he'd be gone in seconds soon. Possibly forever.
Aziraphale's arm reached out of its own accord. He opened his mouth to speak as his hand curled around Crowley's forearm, but the words lodged in his throat. Probably stuck there with his lungs. He froze just like that, wide-eyed and unsure of what he was doing.
"Are you having a malfunction?" Crowley looked the angel up and down. "I'd help, but you know. Don't want to."
"C-Crowley, I..."
The demon raised an eyebrow, himself not breathing.
"Can you get on with it? I'm dying to interrupt Gabriel's permanent-vacation-slash-forever-honeymoon."
"My offer still stands. From before." Aziraphale nodded reassuringly. "You can still come with me. All will be forgiven."
Crowley looked into his eyes and for the first time, they were deeply sad. The angel already knew his offer would be rejected, but he made it anyway. The corner of Crowley's mouth twitched in a weak smile.
Reaching up, he pressed his palm against his angel's cheek in the gentlest display of affection he'd ever shown.
"I never wanted forgiveness. I only wanted you."
At this, Aziraphale could no longer remain impassive (he hadn't been since about five minutes after appearing in the bookshop, but he was seriously delusional about his self-control) and he reached up to place his hand on top of Crowley's, holding it there.
"You know...you know it's much the same for me."
"Clearly not," Crowley answered tenderly.
"It-it is though. But being who I am, it's just...there are things, you see..."
Crowley stepped forward and placed his free hand against Aziraphale's other cheek. He stroked his thumbs across the angel's cheekbones.
"I love you, you ineffable idiot. There is nothing you could do to me, nothing," he shook him a little, "that could change that. Please." He said the last word quietly.
"Please?"
"Please. You know the rest."
"No, I really think I'd like the full--"
"Please, don't go back to Heaven. Forget Alpha Centauri. I know you won’t abandon this place; we’ll just have to ride out the apocalypse. We can stay here together, you and I."
His breath ghosted across Aziraphale's face and he shivered.
"But...they'll come for us, Crowley. You know they'll come." He couldn't breathe. This was insanity. Crowley was an impossible choice. His chest felt tight and his legs were going numb.
Crowley, rather than pulling the angel's face to his, stepped into him, so their chests touched, and one hand trailed down from his face to rest at the nape of Aziraphale's neck.
"Let them come, then." Some of the fire had returned to his eyes and his voice sounded thick. "They might decide it's not worth the trouble to bother an angel and a demon who can conjure powerful Miracles together. Or maybe they'll obliterate us." He smiled softly. "Let me kiss you."
"Why?" Aziraphale gasped. It wasn't something angels or demons did. "Why do you--"
"Because we can. Because we both want to."
They were so close Aziraphale couldn't tell where his body ended and Crowley's began. What a mess. What a delightful, crushing catastrophe.
He said "okay,” but it came out in an indecipherable rush of breath. Still, Crowley knew what he'd meant.
It was so much like the first kiss that Aziraphale's soul ached. So full of desperation and desire, and fear. Terrifying in every way, but he felt more alive now than he ever had since the moment of his creation. The way humans must feel quite often, being as fragile as they were.
His hands threaded through Crowley's hair, then traveled to his nape and back up again, and if he'd thought the kiss was passionate before, when he opened his mouth and began reciprocating, Crowley groaned deeply and then they were pressed against the bookshelves again.
"Beginning to think that bartender meant something else by ‘do not go gentle.’” He murmured to himself. “Say you'll stay." Crowley kissed him harder, tugging on his hair. "Angels don't lie; don't lie to me, Angel."
Aziraphale wanted to reply, but he truly couldn't stop. Crowley was everywhere, after such a long, agonizing separation when he'd thought he'd never see him again, much less touch him like this. This was something--this was Heaven. Heaven was not a place with desks and ink pots and meeting rooms to plot the end of the world.
Heaven was Crowley. It was truly that simple.
Aziraphale laughed in the back of his throat.
"Say you'll stay."
"I'll stay, I'll stay."
"Swear on your books."
"I swear on every book in this shop."
"Then I swear--" he kissed Aziraphale deeply, "--on my Bentley and my plants and fucking whatever else you want me to swear on, that I’ll behave—most of the time." He took Aziraphale's bottom lip between his teeth.
The longer they stood entwined, the more heated and frenzied they became. The neck of Crowley's turtleneck was stretched and slouchy and the hem was ripped from the waist of his trousers. Aziraphale's neat bow tie was undone, his coat and hair more disheveled than they'd ever been. Their lips were swollen and red.
"I love you, angel," Crowley rasped.
"And I love you."
At that, Crowley broke away. He smirked, shaking, out of breath. Nervous, Aziraphale realized. Happy. They were both quite deliriously happy.
"Can I...tempt you to a spot of lunch?"
Aziraphale peeled his limp body away from where it had melted into the bookshelf.
"Our usual place?"
"Of course." Crowley stepped back, then offered his hand.
Accepting it, Aziraphale suddenly felt emboldened and perhaps a bit reckless. Things had taken quite an unlikely, welcome turn since this morning.
"Or--we could...go upstairs?" He smiled, fidgeting nervously. "Continue our conversation? Who knows if we'll still exist tomorrow after all." He sounded far more okay with that than he'd thought he would.
Crowley raised an eyebrow until it disappeared into his shockingly red hair and stepped into his angel.
"So...upstairs now...lunch later, if we’re still alive." His voice was deep and thick. "Sounds reasonable to me." He turned his body to head toward the back of the shop and the stairs leading to Aziraphale's apartment. "Come."
Aziraphale didn't need to be told twice.
Outside, all along the roof line of the bookshop with the “Very Closed” sign on the door, Nina's coffee place down the street, Maggie's record shop and everywhere in between, dozens of nightingales sang in unison.
When the birds’ song finished, they all took to the air and flew away for good. They'd been waiting quite some time, you see, and now their work was done.
-:-