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The angel sniffles.
For a moment, Crawley considers asking what’s wrong. Angels don’t get allergies or colds; it must be something emotional. He doesn’t ask, because when he looks over at Aziraphale, he’s resolutely staring at the water in front of them like he decidedly does not want to talk about whatever made him sniffle.
Then, the angel sobs.
It’s a small sound, really, but it’s a very sad small sound and here in this quiet corner of the world they’ve found themselves in, it’s a stark contrast against the constant crashing of the sea against the shore. Aziraphale isn’t looking at said sea anymore, instead focused on his clasped-together hands. Crawley can’t bear it. The angel’s sadness is a sea all its own and Crawley feels very much like the shore.
“What’s wrong, angel?” he asks far more gently than he’ll ever care to admit. Aziraphale’s head whips up like he forgot Crawley was there. Oddly, he can’t find it in himself to be offended.
Blinking rapidly and avoiding Crawley’s eyes, Aziraphale admits, “I’m afraid,” with the smallest voice Crawley’s ever heard from him. From any angel, really. How come the smallest sounds carry the greatest sorrow?
“Of what?” Crawley asks. “The other angels didn’t notice that you lied and if God really wanted you to Fall, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Everything’s perfectly normal, is it not?”
“Perhaps,” Aziraphale says, “but…I’ve never actually been alone before. Alone on Earth, certainly, but all these years I had a… community Upstairs, somewhere I belonged. I’m not exactly an angel anymore, am I? I may not have Fallen, but you certainly used to be a far better angel than I was today, and you- I don’t-”
He stops, glancing upwards. “The Almighty wants me to be an angel, and so I am, but - I can’t in good conscience consider myself truly a member of Heaven.” The voice he uses is one Crawley is all too familiar with, despite only having met the angel a small handful of times. It’s his fucking ineffable voice, the one that sounds more like a child reciting nursery rhymes than an angel speaking his mind. The one that makes it very clear just how afraid he is to question.
Somewhere in that sentence that voice becomes a broken, desperate thing.
“I’m afraid,” Aziraphale says, attempting his stern voice but not quite managing to get it right, “of being lonely.”
And that tugs at Crawley’s heartstrings, damn it. He thinks it would even if he didn’t know exactly what the angel meant. It’s not just the slightly pathetic attempt to hide the pain in his voice; it’s the way he’s looking at the sea again, still refusing to meet Crawley’s eyes, the way his eyebrows knit together and his shoulders slump. The way his arms seem to be hugging his body of their own volition.
He inspects the angel for a few more seconds, sighs and stands up. Aziraphale’s eyes widen in hurt, but before he gets the chance to say anything, Crawley says, “Alright, get over here.”
“Get over where?” Aziraphale asks, his eyes flickering around and some of the deep, deep sadness in his voice replaced with confusion. Crawley counts it as a win.
“I mean hug me, angel,” he clarifies a bit impatiently. The more time he has to spend getting the angel to do what he so clearly wants, the more obvious his frankly ridiculous desire to help is and that is the last thing he needs. He’s not even sure why he has that desire, only knows that it’s quite literally always been there. The part of Crawley that wants to hug the angel is the same part that protected him from shooting stars the first time they met.
Aziraphale still hasn’t connected the dots. “Are you trying to tempt me?” he asks with nearly the same voice as before. Crawley groans.
“We’ve been over this. I can’t tempt you, just- you’re practically begging for a hug and it’s annoying me,” he explains, knowing full well that his tacked-on lie isn’t exactly convincing. Neither of them’s going to tell anyone, though, so he’ll be fine. He is, however, getting tired of this charade.
Aziraphale stands up slowly, cautiously. Crawley would thank God if he weren’t a demon, and he’s not going to thank Satan, is he? And so the action remains unthanked for, but Crawley’s grateful all the same.
“Just like what Job and Sitis did, yes?” the angel asks, still trying to pretend he’s fine even after accepting a hug from a demon.
“You’ve never- of course you’ve never hugged anyone before. Yeah, like them,” Crawley says with a sudden and inexplicable heavy feeling in his stomach.
With a small, determined nod, Aziraphale steps forward and just sort of…sticks his arms out. Which is something Crawley does not have the patience for, so instead of letting the angel figure it out by himself, Crawley pulls him against himself perhaps more forcefully than strictly necessary. He’s still a demon.
The angel stands still for a moment and then carefully relaxes, leaning against Crawley just a little more than would be considered normal in a hug. He doesn’t mention it. Two arms envelop his waist and a fluffy head comes to rest on his shoulder.
“Oh,” the angel whispers and the softness of it makes something happen in Crawley’s chest. “Oh, my.”
Oh, my, indeed. Crawley hadn’t even considered that perhaps he might like hugging Aziraphale, too, and in all honesty is not a big fan of the fact that he does, but how could he not? He feels so warm and soft and safe in a way that neither Heaven nor Hell ever did. Holding Aziraphale, he thinks, is the closest he’s come to watching his stars come into existence.
Experimentally, because he always was curious, he reaches up to touch the back of Aziraphale’s head. Aziraphale sighs and Crawley freezes, but Aziraphale’s nuzzling into his shoulder so it must be a good sigh, right?
He’s starting to wonder how long this hug is going to last when the angel sobs again, even more heart-wrenching than the first time. It doesn’t help that now, Crawley can feel his body shake where it’s pressed against his own. Carefully - too much so for a demon, but he was never a perfect one anyway, like Aziraphale was never a perfect angel - he strokes Aziraphale’s hair and with his other hand begins to rub circles on his back. Aziraphale leans even further into him and it takes a small miracle to keep them both upright.
Aziraphale’s hands are clutching Crawley’s robes like he’s holding on for dear life, which of course he isn’t. He’s holding on for something, though, and Crawley keeps holding him in return. More pain leaves the angel in the form of sobs and Crawley gets the distinct feeling that Aziraphale’s never been as free as he is now.
Entirely by accident, he shushes the angel. Talks to him. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “You’ll be alright.” He doesn’t promise; he may be a demon, but he doesn’t always want to lie.
After minutes, or hours - not days, surely Crawley would’ve noticed if the sun had set - the crying subsides little by little until only the sniffles that started the whole predicament are left, and then they’re gone too. Crawley notices only now that his feet are hurting. Aziraphale gives one last squeeze before letting go, only holding on to Crawley’s shoulders, and steps back with a look on his face that’s far too fond and far too knowing - knowing what, Crawley couldn’t guess - for Crawley’s liking.
“Thank you, my dear,” the angel says and before Crawley gets the chance to ask what he’s being thanked for exactly or make it clear that he is not dear in any shape or form, he takes Crawley’s face in his hands and very gently and very softly presses his lips to Crawley’s so quickly that it hardly counts as a kiss.
He leaves with a small final smile, and Crawley is left to touch his mouth in a dazed state of shock and search for why. Quickly, he concludes that the angel must’ve misunderstood this particular human ritual - it wouldn’t be the first one, after all - but somehow he can’t bring himself to entirely dismiss the event. It’s a new experience, is all.
They never talk about those moments - or hours - and the next time they kiss, it’s far less soft and an awful lot lonelier.