Work Text:
You called me angel for the first time
My heart leapt from me
Hozier, “Unknown / Nth”
Aziraphale watched Crowley turn toward the bookshop door with his head spinning and bile rising up in his throat.
“I forgive you,” he had said.
He didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—why it hadn’t been enough. He had offered Crowley everything, offered to take him to Heaven, offered to reinstate him as an angel, offered to be with him forever.
“We can be together,” he had said.
It was all he had ever wanted. For six thousand bloody years, all he had wanted was to be with Crowley, together, a team, a group, an us. But nothing was ever that simple, and they were destined to be at odds with one another from the day Crowley fell. No amount of love between them could change the fact that Crowley was a demon and he was an angel. That’s what it was, though, wasn’t it? Love?
Aziraphale loved so many things: Heaven, the world, his bookshop, large oat milk lattes with a dash of almond syrup. That was his thing, after all, as an angel. Love. Goodness. Light.
So maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him to realize he loved Crowley, too, wanted to spend eternity in his company, reading Jane Austen novels and eating at the Ritz and going for rides in the Bentley.
“You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he had said.
He hadn’t meant it. Not really. All things considered, six thousand years couldn’t possibly be deemed a rush. Every time Crowley looked at him, laughed at something he’d said, called him Angel in that sweet, wicked voice, he felt himself fall further and deeper and faster. It scared him, knowing he was creeping closer to the end of his ability to conceal his desperate, hopeless love. He wanted to savor it, wanted another six thousand years of this, wanted to bring Heaven and Hell alike crashing down so he could just have this without fear or resistance or shame.
“Oh, Crowley. Nothing lasts forever,” he had said.
That was what he had said, but what he meant to say, wanted to say, was this: I am in love with you, and it terrifies me. The only thing I know to do is to leave, to take you with me, to keep you safe, to change the very fabric of Heaven so it will wrap around you and let you in, love you the way I have loved you for as long as I’ve known you, so fiercely it consumes me like a starving animal.
Crowley hadn’t understood.
You idiot. We could have been us.
Yes, Aziraphale thought, that’s what I’m offering. Us, forever, in the only way I know how to give it to you.
Crowley had kissed him, kissed him so hard Aziraphale thought he might die with the force of it, too shell-shocked to react. For six thousand years, he had wanted this, wanted Crowley—wanted them—like this, but not like this. Not when Crowley was choosing to leave.
He pressed his fingers to his lips, begging to feel a whisper of Crowley still there. But it was too late, and Crowley was gone, out the door, away from him and their bookshop and their life together.
Maybe he was a fool to have thought Crowley would choose him. He had hoped, deep down, that his feelings were reciprocated, that Crowley might love him even a fraction as much as he loved Crowley. He knew that love, conceptually, wasn’t really a demon’s forte. They dealt in upheaval, in darkness, in sin. But that had never been Crowley, had it? Perhaps he was a bit mischievous, and he certainly had a penchant for temptation, but he was good, more angelic than most of the angels he knew. He was soft and kind and tender, and probably a million other things he wasn’t supposed to be.
Still, it wasn’t enough. He didn’t want Heaven, and he didn’t want Aziraphale, and that was that. He had made his choice just as the angel had made his.
Aziraphale left the bookshop, trying to ignore both Crowley’s stare from across the street and the wave of nausea in his gut. He stepped onto the elevator and took a deep breath as the door closed in front of him. Slowly, the elevator began creeping up, toward Heaven and toward his decision and away from the one thing he loved the most.
He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t.
He did.