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“To the world,” Crowley says, holding out his glass, reveling in the continued existence of things like pianos and tablecloths and champagne flutes.
“To the world,” Aziraphale returns, and the smile on his face is so beautiful that Crowley forgets to maintain his circulatory or respiratory systems for several long moments.
He turns away and manages to hide the hitch of his first inhale behind his glass, he thinks, and viciously stamps down the soft something inside him that wants nothing more to stare at Aziraphale's face until eternity crumbles. It isn't for you, he reminds himself. Aziraphale has love shining out his stupid beautiful angel face for all of creation, not for one rather substandard demon. You mean nothing to him. He manages to conjure up the memory of the bandstand, Aziraphale snapping “I don't even like you,” and “It's over,” and that's finally enough for the unwanted soft thing to curl in on itself and stop straining towards things it can never have.
After a few moments he manages to wrestle himself back into a reasonable facsimile of his usual nonchalance, and tosses back the rest of his alcohol, which is unfortunately not nearly enough to help. Not that it would be a good idea to get drunk in front of Aziraphale. He always seems to blurt out things he never wanted the angel to know when he does, making everything awkward and strained.
“So,” he says, and regrets it immediately because he has nothing to follow it up with that wouldn't be incredibly stupid to say. He casts around desperately for a topic and seizes on the first one that comes to mind with considerable relief. “I'd better go check on the Bentley. I know you said it was fine, but I'd just—like to look at it myself.”
Aziraphale smiles at him, beatific, unruffled, untouchable, unconcerned, and Crowley hates himself a little bit more. “Yes, I think I'd rather like to get back to my bookshop myself. I trust you, of course, but you're hardly familiar with the entire collection.”
Something sharper twists inside of Crowley at the word trust, hisses liar, you don't, you never did, you never will, I'm a demon and you're an angel and neither of us will forget that for all of eternity, don't pretend, but he holds it behind his teeth and keeps from flinching with long practice. He flaps a hand at Aziraphale carelessly. “Yeah, yeah. Couldn't tell my Wilde from a hole in the ground, me,” he drawls, and he hopes it sounds like their usual banter.
He must have succeeded, because Aziraphale flags down their waiter for the check with every evidence of his usual good humor.
Crowley stands and leaves before the check comes, knowing that Aziraphale will get it and knowing that it exasperates the angel when he walks out before their bill is settled. He needs that, to feel secure in being irritating and unlikeable on purpose, to pretend it's his own choice that no one above or below or in between will ever want him around.
His mood is bitter and self-loathing, so he steps into a taxi that a hurried-looking businessman had hailed and slams the door in the man’s face, an act of minor evil making him feel another bit more in control. He directs the taxi to the parking space where Aziraphale had said the Bentley waited, and when they arrive he burns out the engine of the cab in a dramatic billow of white smoke in the middle of the street that will back up traffic for hours.
He immediately feels guilty about sabotaging the driver’s livelihood and miracles a wad of cash out of the nearest corrupt businessman's wallet and into his own pocket, yanking it out and shoving it in the cabbie’s hand without looking as he stalks off to his car, ignoring the man’s babbled apologies and thanks. He's furious at himself for doing good for no reason, acting like he isn't irredeemable, but it's done and he'd rather just stop thinking about it and act like it hadn't happened.
He's good at that.
Aziraphale maintains his outwardly pleasant disposition until he makes it inside the bookshop. He glances over the non-burnt books briefly before turning, locking the door with a viciously emphatic click, and kicking the lower panel for good measure. It scuffs his shoe, makes his toes hurt, and doesn't relieve his feelings in the slightest.
He had hoped they could talk, now that everything was done. That he could invite Crowley to come back to the shop with him for a spot of tea or wine, or that Crowley would invite himself.
Crowley had apparently not picked up on Aziraphale's entirely unconveyed invitation, which was understandable as he had never shown any evidence of being able to read the minds of angels, so Aziraphale has only himself to blame for coming home alone to an empty shop and feeling like something had been carved out of him.
In point of fact, Crowley had apparently not been able to get away from Aziraphale fast enough. He had thought his counterpart had been happy about the lunch invitation, but perhaps—
Aziraphale turns away from the door. It doesn't matter. He had been thoroughly awful to Crowley through the whole blessed— blasted— horrible bloody apocalypse, and it served him right.
“Crowley—” Aziraphale sounds miserable, and it's a knife in Crowley’s gut. He turns around to face Aziraphale, unable to decide whether to express his concern or feign carelessness, and ends up with frustration written on his face. It's at himself, but that clearly isn't obvious, because Aziraphale flinches when he sees his expression. His shoulders are hunched, like he's waiting for a blow, and his clothes are rumpled and unkempt, the same clothes he’d been wearing when they went to lunch, days ago. There's a scuff on one shoe, Crowley notices, and he knows Aziraphale has had those shoes since 1927 and takes meticulous care of them. Dread uncoils in his stomach. Something is wrong.
“Aziraphale? I wasn't expecting to see you.” He glances around at the graveyard he'd been lurking broodily in, leaning on a marble monument to a man he'd enjoyed the conversation of in the seventeenth century. “Certainly not here.” Unspoken lies the fact that he’s been lurking in a little-known historic graveyard rather than his flat precisely because Aziraphale could not be reasonably expected to find him there.
“I've been— looking for you,” Aziraphale says, halting and awkward and more unsure than Crowley has ever seen him. “I just— I wanted—” He squeezes his eyes closed, frustrated. “I needed to tell you I'm sorry.”
“What for?” Crowley asks, deciding to fix on nonchalant and unaffected until he understands what's going on. “You nick a houseplant? Take the Bentley for a joyride?”
Aziraphale looks back up at him, and his expression is so anguished that Crowley takes an involuntary step backwards, alarm starting to overwhelm his defensive carelessness. “For lying to you. For not trusting you. For being convinced only I could possibly know the right way to handle things and not consulting you. For—” Aziraphale swallows and drops his eyes, as if he can't bear to see Crowley’s reaction, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. “For pretending you didn't matter to me.” He shakes his head. “I was a coward and a fool, and I understand why you want nothing to do with me.”
Crowley might have stood there struck dumb by shock and indecision until London crumbled into the sea, but Aziraphale is turning away, and he can't let it end like this, not if he matters to Aziraphale, not if there's a chance—
He's lunged forward and caught Aziraphale's arm before he knows what he's doing, and then he has to come up with something to do next. “Aziraphale— angel, I—” he chokes, makes a strangled noise that might be either a laugh or a sob, and rips his sunglasses off, flinging them who knows where so his hand is free to grab Aziraphale's jaw and pull his head back so Crowley can look him in the eyes unimpeded. “I want everything to do with you, angel, I just—” he chokes on his own cowardice again, and he wants to turn away, slam his fist into the mausoleum or make a joke or anything that isn't being pierced to the core by the guarded, terrified hope in his counterpart’s eyes that are far, far too close to his own. He's stripped bare, Aziraphale can surely see his desperation, his weakness, why did he think taking off his sunglasses was a good idea, he's going to burn in his angel’s eyes and it's not going to be a lark like the trial or the M25. “I didn't want to trouble you. You said it was over, that you didn't— that you—” he can't speak anymore, he can't say it, he can't say you said you didn't like me like a petulant teenage human, and he can't look at him any longer either, he's a coward, he can't admit how much this matters, he can't say the words that thrum through his every atom but he has refused to voice even in his own mind for six thousand years. He squeezes his eyes closed, doesn't move, doesn't speak. He waits for Aziraphale to pull out of his grip and walk away, or say something cutting, or shove him back, or—
What happens instead is that suddenly he's enveloped in warmth, and it takes him a few paralyzed seconds and prising his eyes open to realize that it's because Aziraphale has wrapped his arms around him. Crowley is pressed against Aziraphale's chest, can smell nothing but his silly new cologne and the aching scent that somehow feels of safety and home that means Aziraphale.
If he just keeps standing there like he's been struck on the head Aziraphale might think this is unwelcome, and that thought sufficiently overwhelms his other terrors that Crowley can jar himself into action and wrap his arms around his counterpart. This may be the only time this happens in all of eternity, a temporary moment of angelic insanity, he has to savor it while it exists. As this thought strikes him, his arms tighten convulsively, crushing Aziraphale against him in a grip that would probably shatter a human, and he tries to breathe steadily to calm himself and stave off any unfortunate physical reactions like tears, but he is uncomfortably aware that his calming breaths have an unmistakable similarity to sobs. This could be the last moment— any second Aziraphale might come to his senses and pull away in disgust and leave him forever—
Aziraphale is completely silent, but Crowley slowly realizes that his shoulder feels damp. This results in his brain short circuiting again, chasing itself in a babbling loop of incredulous denial that Aziraphale could care about him enough to weep, until he manages to kick through it and unfreeze enough to start rubbing one hand up and down Aziraphale's back in what he hopes is a soothing motion. Touching him more nearly breaks Crowley, but he clings to the shards of his self control enough not to break down sobbing. He does not, however, have enough control left over to keep from clutching even more desperately at Aziraphale, his other hand somehow ending up threaded into the angel’s ridiculous dandelion-fluff hair, his thumb running back and forth over Aziraphale’s head.
He tries futilely not to think about how he would live with never doing this again. He has waited six thousand years to hold Aziraphale and he doesn't think he can survive another six thousand not doing it, now that he knows what he's been missing.
He wants, needs, to know what Aziraphale is thinking, if he's terrified or disgusted or going to pretend this never happened, but Crowley is a coward, has always been a coward, so he says nothing, only holds onto Aziraphale like a man drowning, and waits.
Slowly, after what feels like centuries but the sun indicates has been no more than an hour, Aziraphale unfreezes. The first sign is his left hand clutching at the back of Crowley’s faux expensive designer jacket, slowly crumpling a handful of material into a fist.
“Can—” Aziraphale’s voice wavers and he stops to swallow. “Can we talk?” He’s pulled back enough that his voice isn’t muffled by Crowley’s chest, but he’s not letting go, and he’s not looking at Crowley.
Crowley takes a shaky breath. “Yeah. I think we probably better.”
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says again. “I should have trusted you. I should have told you I knew where the Antichrist was. I shouldn’t have said— any of the things I said in the bandstand. They weren’t true. I,” his voice cracks and he swallows again. “I like you a great deal. You’re one of my favorite things about being on Earth.”
Crowley has to close his eyes to let that settle. Aziraphale has kept everything deniable and unspoken for so, so long. I don’t even like you had cut deep, even though Crowley had bulled through, You doooo, acting like it changed nothing, because that was the dance—Aziraphale pushed him back, and he refused to go.
But he’s made Aziraphale insecure too, and that needs to be remedied. “You’re one of my favorite things too, angel,” he manages hoarsely. Aziraphale’s arms tighten around him and he forgets how to breathe for a moment. “I— You—” Crowley breaks off in frustration and tries to organize his words. “I don’t want to go too fast for you.” He can feel Aziraphale flinch at the reminder of that moment, and he hates himself for it, but he can’t just full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, not when it comes to changing the shape of the Arrangement between them. He’s been pushed away too many times. He needs Aziraphale to reach back. “I’ll be whatever to you that you’ll have me as.” And what a humiliating thing to say, to let Aziraphale know that he holds every card and always has.
“Everything,” Aziraphale blurts, and finally leans back enough to look Crowley in the face with red-rimmed eyes that make Crowley’s chest hurt. “I want anything you’re willing to give. I want us to stand together. I want—” He breaks off and his eyes unmistakably flick down to Crowley’s lips.
Crowley cannot lean forward, not for this. He cannot be the first. He cannot risk the enormity of this shift, of being wrong, of being rejected again. But he can fix his eyes on Aziraphale’s own lips, and ask, “What do you want, angel?”
“Forgive me,” Aziraphale says, and grabs Crowley’s head and yanks him down to crush their mouths together.
After Crowley’s thoughts cease entirely to exist for several long moments, he realizes that this is a bit awkward. Nobody in movies talks about noses getting in each other’s way. He experiments with tilting his head a bit to the side, and oh, yes, that’s more comfortable. He realizes then that his arms have tightened desperately, crushing Aziraphale against him, and that their mouths are pressed together hard enough that his lips hurt a bit against his teeth, which is probably not what’s supposed to happen. He loosens his grip slightly and moves his head back enough that his lips don’t hurt anymore, and that’s also definitely better.
Aziraphale’s lips part and his tongue ventures out to flick against Crowley’s lips, and Crowley can’t help a sharp inhale of shock, even though he was academically aware that kissing frequently involved tongues.
Knowing and knowing are different things entirely, however, and when Aziraphale takes the opportunity of his gasp to slide his tongue into Crowley’s mouth, Crowley’s knees go weak. Aziraphale tastes like ozone and salt and wanting, and Crowley can help neither his whimper nor his burst of insecurity at his own forked tongue. But nor can he resist, now, chasing Aziraphale’s back into the angel’s mouth, reasoning that if Aziraphale had a problem with Crowley’s mouth he wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.
Crowley doesn’t know how long they spend like that, but he has definitely developed a much greater understanding of why humans are so wont to do this all the time. He’ll be happy to continue this activity for as long as Aziraphale would like.
Aziraphale pulls away, finally, and Crowley can’t help the moment of fear that it brings, even though he could not reasonably expect them to just stand there like that forever.
Aziraphale brings up one hand to caress Crowley’s cheek, his face impossibly tender. “Would you mind if we moved this somewhere more comfortable, love?”
Love. Crowley’s heart lurches at the word and he’s pretty sure he’s wearing a besotted grin now. But yeah, that’s a point, they are sort of standing around in a graveyard for no good reason. “Bookshop?” He manages.
“Drive us there?” Aziraphale says, and ducks his head for a moment. “As fast as you like.”
Crowley can’t help but to crush Aziraphale against his chest again. He’s allowed to hold his angel. After all these millennia, this is permitted. “As long as it’s with you, angel.” He can say something more than he’s always said, can express affection. Aziraphale did it first. It’s allowed. He takes a deep breath and looks Aziraphale in the eyes. “Beloved.”
The smile on Aziraphale’s face is more beautiful than the breaking of the first dawn.