Work Text:
London: After the Second Coming
Aziraphale left Crowley upstairs, sleeping peacefully for once, or so he hoped, curled up in the narrow little bed that had briefly belonged to Jim. Something would have to be done about that, Aziraphale knew, as he sat down at his desk to trudge through the backlog of invoices, orders and other paperwork that had piled up during his absence. (Muriel had done their best, but he hadn’t exactly been able to train his replacement properly, and then everything pertaining to Heaven and Hell had gone to... well, shit.) If he and Crowley were going to be living together for the foreseeable future (i.e., forever), Aziraphale wanted to make sure he was comfortable.
Crowley deserved some comfort in his life. And Aziraphale wanted, after all they’d been through together, to give him that. There was plenty of room in the bookshop, more than most human visitors ever suspected, and ever since the… reunification? Aziraphale still wasn’t sure what to call it. But ever since then, Crowley had been curiously reluctant to leave the protection of its walls. He’d been across the road to the coffee shop once, and next door to the record shop once, but other than that, he kept himself very much inside.
He slept, mostly, either in the room upstairs or curled on the sofa beside Aziraphale’s desk. When he was awake, he occasionally tidied the shop (to give Aziraphale a reason to untidy it, so he said), but for the most part, his waking moments were spent staring intently out the window, watching the life outside pass by, and every so often, turning to see if Aziraphale was still there.
Aziraphale thought he understood. After the last six thousand years, and particularly the last two decades, the chance to sit back and to breathe, to simply watch the world go by instead of trying to desperately influence it in one direction or another… to sit and watch from behind a window, in a place of true safety and security… well, it was as close to Paradise as one could get, these days.
And for his own part, he was very glad to have Crowley nearby.
If he closed his eyes and held his breath, he could just make out the very faint, soft susurration of Crowley hissing in his sleep. The smile that touched Aziraphale’s lips was equally soft, and there was no reason to hide it any longer. He bent over his mundane mortal paperwork with a feeling of supreme contentment.
Some hours later – or possibly days, there was a lot of paperwork to get through – he heard the sound of rain on the window and feet on the iron staircase, and turned to see Crowley descending in a louche-boned tangle of limbs. “Hello, my dear,” Aziraphale greeted him with a tender smile. “Did you sleep well?”
Crowley stared at him for several long, breathless seconds. “I—yeah. I did.”
“No nightmares this time?”
“None. …Did something happen while I was sleeping? You’re looking at me like… um.”
Aziraphale shook his head. “No, nothing of consequence. I was just about to make some cocoa, would you like some?”
“Sure. Why not.” Crowley’s eyes lingered on Aziraphale for a second or two, clinging to his outline and then to the space where he had been once he moved from the chair. Then he made for his spot on the sofa, collapsing ungracefully into the corner like a discarded and much-used scarf.
He pulled his knees to his chest and gazed out at the winter rain and the humans hurrying through it with an expression of quiet wonder. Aziraphale gently laid his favourite afghan (a bit lumpy in places, but it was only a first attempt) across Crowley’s shoulders, and went to the stove.
There had been rain, at the final meeting between the forces of Heaven and the forces of Hell, a chilly, pounding downpour that had lightened to something warm and almost caressing by the end, when hostilities had finally ceased, and all were allowed to go their own way with whomever they chose at their sides. Aziraphale and Crowley had stayed out of the way, pressed close underneath a tattered tartan umbrella, watching (a bit gobsmacked) as demons and angels paired off (sometimes demons, sometimes angels, not always in pairs).
“Shax and Furfur’s not really a surprise,” Crowley had commented. “Kinda saw that one coming a mile away. Michael and Dagon, though, wow.”
“Rather,” said Aziraphale, feeling somewhat dazed with the overwhelming emotions flooding into him. “There's so much love , it’s... it’s incredible. I... well. It feels like everyone is finally getting what they want.”
“Mm. Or they will be soon. Apparently if you get angels and demons wet, they act a lot like humans. Millions of fabulous kisses. Vavoom.” He sounded utterly exhausted, as wrung out as a dishcloth. “So. Happily ever after, then. Thanks and praise and don’t let the door hit you on your way out. What now?”
Aziraphale looked at him, and silently prayed for Crowley to kiss him. He didn’t. Aziraphale slipped his hand (filthy, bleeding) into Crowley's (burned, star-tinged). “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“Thinking about fabulous kisses in the rain again?” he teased gently, nudging Crowley’s hand with the mug.
“Eh?” A slight flush bloomed briefly across Crowley’s cheekbones, the merest glimpse of something rare and precious, before he twitched his shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, erm, ngh.” He wrapped his hands (graceful and deft) around the black mug. “Thanks, angel.”
Aziraphale felt a jumbled collection of soft feelings fluttering in his chest. For a short while between his return from Heaven and the... ceasefire, he supposed he could call it, he had been relegated to a curt ‘Supreme Archangel’, or even worse, a deeply disgusted ‘Sir’. And after that hurdle had been overcome, Crowley had addressed him with a courteous but formal ‘Aziraphale.’
But the Second Coming had come, and then gone out again just as quickly. The universe abided, the Earth still span, the stars in the firmament still glittered. All things were new again, except the bookshop of A.Z. Fell and all its contents, and Crowley was calling him ‘angel’.
As God had, apparently, always intended.
She might’ve jolly well said something about that sooner, thought Aziraphale peevishly, no longer weighted down with the burdens of Ineffability. “What was that, my dear?” he asked, realizing that Crowley had said something.
“I er.” His throat made some awkward noises of discomfort. “Nothing, ‘s nothing.” He gulped his cocoa hurriedly.
Aziraphale looked at him over his spectacles. “Crowley, tell me.”
An expression of what might have been pain, but was more likely supremely painful embarrassment, flashed across Crowley’s face. “Said I was thinkin’ about kissing you in the rain,” he muttered, ducking his head. “Stupid, really. Forget about it.”
A hushed little “Oh…” escaped Aziraphale’s lips. He set down his own mug, took off his spectacles and laid them neatly on his desk next to his cocoa, and, very gently, touched Crowley’s cheek. The demon (He was and would always be a demon, just as Aziraphale was and would always be an angel. But those words had stopped mattering as much as they once had.) froze under his hand (soft and sure) for a fraction of a second, and then, just barely, for the space of a breath, leaned into the caress.
Then he pulled away. The message was quite plain: Crowley was not going to be the one to make the overture this time.
Aziraphale smiled. He felt remarkably calm, for a being who was about to take the most momentous step of his life. Armageddon, the Second Coming, the day-to-day running of Heaven, all of it paled into insignificance in those few heartbeats and never returned to any positions of consequence. In Aziraphale’s mind, for the rest of his existence, there was only what came before That Moment, and what came after.
Very carefully, he lifted his hand and threaded his fingers (delicate, careful) into Crowley’s hair. Crowley let out a low sound that did wholly unholy things to Aziraphale’s body, and looked up at him, swirling nebulae of emotions and questions glowing in his eyes. Aziraphale saw the fear most prominently, the uncertainty, the hope.
The love, of course, went without saying. It always had. It had never been in doubt. Not in the beginning, and not now.
“Why not kiss me right here?” Aziraphale asked, keeping his voice quiet and soothing, which would have been very effective at any other Moment but that one. “It’s much nicer in here, though possibly not as cinematically romantic, and—”
The empty cocoa mug went flying. The afghan that had been draped around Crowley went flying. And Crowley himself went flying, straight into Aziraphale’s arms. “Say it,” he whined, twisting his fingers (gently, so gently) into star-pale curls. “Say it, angel, I need you to—”
Aziraphale kissed him, a warm slide of lips against lips and drinking deep of the last thing he had tasted before he went to Heaven. “I love you,” he said, almost as an afterthought, as he glutted himself on Crowley with a tenderness that brought them both to tears, effacing the bitterness of the kiss that had separated them with the sweetness of this. “I love you, and I’m sorry, I am so sorry—”
“Shut up, angel,” Crowley muttered, clutching him close. “No more apologies, I’m sick to the back teeth of apologies, and diplomacy, and no one saying what they fucking mean—”
“I quite agree,” said Aziraphale, brushing his thumb over the corner of Crowley’s mouth. Crowley shivered. “So. Say what you mean.”
“…I love you." Crowley pressed his forehead to Aziraphale's and let out a long shudder of a sigh. “I love you.”
For a few seconds, the two of them were silent.
“…Is something else supposed to happen?” asked Aziraphale.
“Er, um, no, I just…” Crowley made some untranscribable noises. “Guess I was just…”
“Expecting a portal to open up in the floor and drag you back down to Hell for admitting that you love an angel?” Aziraphale stroked his face fondly. “They’re gone, remember? No more Hell, no more Heaven… no more hiding. We can just… be us.”
Crowley stared at him for a long time, his beautiful hands (clinging, safe) digging softly into the worn and fragile back of Aziraphale’s waistcoat. “Ohhh, I’m… I’m gonna… need a moment.”
He dropped bonelessly back into the corner of the sofa, but this time, he took Aziraphale with him, snaking his arms around his angel and holding him with his cheek pillowed on Aziraphale’s hair.
“Take all the time you need, my dear,” Aziraphale chuckled softly, his own arm like an iron band across Crowley’s ribs.
“Good thing we decided to stay inside to make out,” Crowley muttered, his voice muffled in curls. “The rain’s stopped.”
Aziraphale didn’t respond. His ear was pressed to Crowley’s chest, and he could hear the steady beat of his heart, and was enraptured.