Archive of Our Own

I came across an injured dove 

I wanted to put her out of her misery

There came no signal from above

No sign, no guide, I thought "whatever could this mean?"

Crowley had grown his hair out and colored it a deep murky red, similar in color to the wine he nearly choked on when Aziraphale opened the bookshop door. The room was dark, but between the streetlights, a lamp left on in the background, and the unsettling ethereal glow radiating from Aziraphale’s angelic body, they could see each other well enough. Seated incorrectly on a chair in one dim corner, Crowley’s dark glasses caught the light as he cocked his head. He was wearing black and red flannel pants and a black tee shirt with the insignia of some alternative rock band plastered across it. Oh dear Lord ...what had become of him? Not his typical attire by any stretch, but at least faithful to his classic color scheme. 

“Well look who it is,” Crowley said, attempting cool and casual and achieving chaos. “Archangel Engilfefer - Archangel Englispofefe- ” he disguised his blunder with a cough. “Archangel English Professor.” 

“Crowley.” Aziraphale had no better luck with words. “You - you’re here. Before me.” Crowley must have rushed to the bookshop as soon as he found out Aziraphale was back on earth. More likely, he was already there. When shock released him and removed the numbness from his body, Aziraphale remembered the weight of a wine bottle in his hand. He had brought Crowley his favorite hard-to-come-by wine as an olive branch of some sort, but had no idea how or when to gift it. He set it on the floor unceremoniously. 

“You grew a beard,” Crowley echoed, tapping his painted black fingernails on his wine glass. “I’ll get used to it.” 

Aziraphale halved a smile and gave his beard a self conscious scratch. It was itchier in his humanoid form. “Indeed,” he said, just to say anything. He took a deep breath. He might as well start strong. This conversation was crashing and burning to hell no matter what. “You are going to help me with something,” he told Crowley, “Be my wingman, as they say.” 

“Help you with what, exactly?” Crowley asked. 

“I’m not certain yet,” Aziraphale wrung his hands, “But be prepared for terrorism or high treason or possibly worse,” he giggled nervously. “Heh, we might even need to do away with an Archangel or two.” 

Crowley’s eyebrows went up and his jaw went down. He rocked backwards and made a noise incomprehensible to human ears. Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. Of all things to say, of all ways to say it, why on earth did he say that? 

Knowing Crowley and his fantasies of running away, he might have seen Aziraphale returning to heaven as avoiding the real problem, even if they both knew Aziraphale thought he was facing the problem head on. Unfortunately, the solution had not unfolded as planned. Micheal had acted positively demonic, fighting him at every opportunity, and the other angels were less than receptive to his proposed improvements. He made only slight progress in heaven and even less in saving the world. Before long, those two goals began to contradict each other. Not willing to choose between heaven and earth, he chose Crowley. Jesus would be reborn any day now, and memories of a certain angel and demon influencing the incorrect antichrist came to mind. Maybe they should take a more direct approach this time, like kidnap - raising the child as their own? If Jesus returned as a full grown demigod, well then…Aziraphale hoped he could fit in the trunk of the - 

The wineglass shattered in Crowley’s hand. Wine and glass shards scattered across his lap. “Oh nooo,” He groaned, jumping out of the chair. “Maggie just gave me this shirt!” He shimmed the last bits of glass off his body and wrung the wine out of his dark tee shirt. “Oh hell,” he complained, “And that was the last of my wine too!” 

Despite the absence of wine, Crowley’s hands continued dripping red. Aziraphale’s hand flew to his quickly tightening chest. “Crowley! You’re hurt!” he realized in horror. 

Crowley wiped his hands on his black tee shirt and watched them bleed. “Oh fuck,” he winced, pain kicking in, and sank back into his chair. 

Aziraphale rested his other hand atop the one over his heart. As much as he wished he could take away the pain, as much as he struggled to restrain himself from running to Crowley’s side, he was unsure how well Crowley would take that distance between them suddenly closing, and decided to start with a problem he had an easier solution for.
“Conveniently,” he said, picking up the bottle of wine he had placed on the floor, “I brought this for you. You mentioned it was your favorite wine.” 

Crowley tipped up his chin and draped himself on his chair in a way that felt illegal. He twisted his mouth into an expectant side smile and settled his gleaming dark glasses on Aziraphale. 

He approached Crowley in a cautious manner best described as shuffling. Once Aziraphale was within arm’s reach, Crowley’s smile sank and his relaxed posture stiffened. The silence between them was a rubber band about to snap. Crowley scrunched his nose with a sniff and reached out for the wine bottle with a painstaking lack of speed, fingers flexing and recoiling in hesitation, clearly waiting for Aziraphale to make a mirrored move. Aziraphale’s eyes flashed between Crowley’s glasses and the glass bottle approaching his bloodied hand. Their fingers made contact. Crowley grinned and ripped the bottle out of Aziraphale’s grasp, leaving red stains on his unblemished skin. With no other option, he let his eyes wander around the room and wiped Crowley’s blood on his tan jacket.  

“Ahaha, the best painkiller!” Crowley laughed with a growl. 

Aziraphale shuffled his feet and tried to express no reaction. “I had hoped we’d share it…” Crowley ignored him. He took a massive swig of wine and let out a satisfied sigh. 

“Can I at least get you a new wine glass or some bandages?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley huffed and grinned, lips and teeth stained blood red.  He miracled closed the deep cuts on his hands with an unbothered flick, but he left the broken glass on the floor intact, kept his shirt wet with wine and his hands smeared with blood. Sentiment is stored in reminders.  “And waste the time of High Mighty Mr. Archangel Z. Fell?” Crowley snarked, “A miracle indeed,” he added in the mocking voice he used when annoyed at something, bobbing his head to the words. 

“You’re not a waste of -“ Aziraphale cut himself off and shook his head. “And we can’t just miracle away all our problems. Often, that causes even more.”

“Certainly. And some of them -” Crowley said, paying special attention to Aziraphale as he punctuated his words, as if the message wasn’t frustratingly obvious enough, “- come back.” 

Those words sent a cold blue fire racing through Aziraphale’s veins, and his senses blackened from burning frost. Without care of consequence or conscious thought, Aziraphale began to dance. A horrified part of him yelled in protest, but something else had taken over his earthly body and pushed him off the cliff he’d backed away from. If he could think at that moment, the former angel would marvel at the irony of feeling possessed. 

 “Aziraphale, what the Hell are you doing?” Crowley sighed as if exhausted. 

Aziraphale’s concience came back blinding like a strobe light. He began to state the obvious, that it was the apology dance, but Crowley cut him off. “I know what you’re doing, stupid, why in the Hell are you doing it? 

Aziraphale struggled for words. “It’s just - it was so cold between us, and I froze,” he stammered. “I - I couldn't come up with anything to say.” 

“You’re joking with me,” Crowley assumed, eyebrows speaking more than his mouth,  “Do you think this is a joke?” 

“No. It’s an apology,” Aziraphale replied with dumbfounded stupidity. 

Crowley snorted, and mouthed something to himself that looked like ‘unintentionally funny.’ “You’re gonna have to apologize even more, after whatever the fuck this is,” he said. 

Aziraphale’s face scrunched with shame. “I know!” he exclaimed, hands enacting their latest nervous gesture, “I’m sorry. It was in poor taste and it came across even worse!”  

  “You can’t just waltz in here after - after all this, and do the apology dance like it’s nothing,” Crowley said, “It’s like - it’s like a secret handshake or inside joke! It’s using acid as eye drops!”

“I didn’t know what else to do!” Moving beyond desperation, Aziraphale edged a step closer to Crowley. He needed to stop this, to fix this, to undo the damage. His mind faltered. “Shall I do it again?” he asked, because he did not give up or back down. For better or worse, perseverance was all he knew. 

“Why the hell not,” Crowley huffed, “Can’t undo it, and we clearly have nothing better to do.” His tone was miserably sarcastic. 

“How lovely,” Aziraphale exclaimed with faux enthusiasm, “An encore!” 

Crowley’s eyes pierced him through his dark glasses. He scrunched his nose and took a sip of wine. “Again?” 

“Of course,” Aziraphale shrugged, already repeating the dance before Crowley even spoke. He started the routine from the top, making sure every movement was executed with perfect precision. “I was wrong, you were right, I was wrong, you were right,” he said in a singsong voice, punctuating his words with dance steps. He spun to a stop. Crowley’s eyebrows asked many questions. Aziraphale poised himself to continue dancing, his own brow quirking a reply. 

Crowley shook his head. “Just get on with it,” he said through an impatient grimace, waving a nonchalant hand in his direction.  

Aziraphale’s feet resisted stomping off his frustration. This was Crowley’s way of putting off a difficult conversation, and though Aziraphale wasn’t looking forward to that talk either, it was inevitable and dire. Perhaps if he sang the words this time. “I was wrong, you were right, I was wrong, you were right!” He warbled, adding in an extra spin. 

“Now you’re just trying too hard,” Crowley said between sips of wine. His tone was pitiful. “You look pathetic,” he frowned.

“I understand,” the downtrodden dancer replied. He would simply have to try even harder. 

And so Aziraphale danced again. And again and again and again until the minute hand had spun around the nearest clock, every dance had bled into another, and time had slowed to irrelevance. Until Crowley had gone from one uncomfortable position in his chair to another, then leaned against the wall until he gave up and crept towards him until he stood mere steps away, arms folded and cradling the wine bottle intended to avoid this kind of situation. Until Aziraphale could no longer focus on the dance steps or how many times he had done them, only the way Crowley’s slender fingers tapped impatiently on the hollowing bottle and his too familiar mouth twisted into a hollow frown. Until he could barely carry on dancing from some exhaustion, be it mental, emotional or physical, and his heart stung and feet ached and mind screamed. Until he thought of everything, anything but the dance.  

(Crowley paced around him like a vulture. “Angel!” he called. To call him an angel, he poised for the fall.)

He couldn’t stop thinking about Crowley. Crowley couldn’t stop thinking about him, and they both knew this but didn’t know what on earth to do about it, and that’s why they were here now, avoiding talking, only thinking and feeling. Aziraphale wanted to despise Crowley and distrust him and be disgusted by him. He wanted to fear him again. He wanted Crowley to scorn him and yell at him, to slap him and spit on him, to sink his fangs into his neck and feed him venom from that toxic tongue...Aziraphale heaved a broken breath and sucked on his lips. He wanted Crowley to say and do everything, anything but that: standing and staring, anxious and annoyed and angry. He wanted him…(In ways an angel shouldn’t).

(Crowley reached out like a matador corralling a bull,  mouth opening for unformed words. His lips pressed shut. His arms fell, hands balling into tight fists by his side. He grimaced and groaned. 

“Aziraphale?” he asked. He shook his head, still stalking in circles. 

 “Do you need me to ask nicely?” Crowley raised, “Say pretty, pretty please?” 

“Aziraphale…” he said, hissed like a warning, then  shrugged a sigh. “Please?” He pleaded.  He was talking to him like a child, and in a sense, they had been children together.)

Ages ago, Aziraphale found the once shining star kindler like a wounded bird fallen from its nest, and now, by some accursed miracle, he had finally flown away. Perhaps Crowley saw Aziraphale as a similar lost creature, though even for an eldritch being, he was particularly unknowable, and lately, he had become a strange bird all over again. Aziraphale came to accept the hard way that Crowley would not return to heaven with him, and that he could not understand Crowley as well as he hoped. The saddest part was, that deep below the naive denial, this was something he had known for a long time. Above it all, he was still leaving Crowley behind, and it felt like leaving behind a part of himself. In a shameful way, leaving Crowley took the form of a disappointment, a betrayal, a mistake. That’s one small thing the two of them could agree on. Aziraphale sacrificed his whole worldly life to build a better world for himself and Crowley, for every living thing and burning star in the universe, and his heart imploded when those dreams came crumbling down. He gave everything and he lost more. He already failed Heaven and Earth, he couldn’t fail Crowley again. 

(“Aziraphale, you idiot! What’s become of you?” Crowley shouted, “You’re better than this!” His harsh tone was tainted with fear.)

 To be honest, Aziraphale had felt as lonely and alone surrounded by angels and halls of white as Crowley must have been surrounded by books in that empty bookshop. He had Heaven and he had Earth, but both were missing something, though neither were ready to admit what exactly they missed. Nor did they name the dull pangs of sickness aching in their cores. They simply knew they were homesick, and that it took two birds to build a nest. To further enlighten his darkest truths, as much as that demon ruffled his feathers, even now as he taunted and tortured him so, Aziraphale would rather be under Crowley’s thumb than have the whole world in his hands. This pain was catharsis. This ordeal was a deserved punishment. For failing, and falling from grace and falling for a lie and for falling in love. Perhaps turning to heaven and away from Crowley was a form of flagellation, as if any insincere repentance could save him from the ultimate sin: loving Crowley more than God. No amount of Her love could save a soul already sold to another. 

(“Angel, for the love of - you’re ruining it!” Crowley yelled, “This - this isn’t cute or funny anymore, and it never was to begin with!” He couldn’t reach him, his angel up in the clouds once again.)

The first thing that struck Aziraphale when Crowley wasn’t around was the frigid waste that took his place. At some unknowable past point, the demon Crowley became Aziraphale’s comfort, his hearth, his beating heart. He didn’t realize how much he took that connection for granted until it was too late. When he returned to heaven, and that bond was ripped away, it was like an artery severing, a lifeline breaking, a string of fate being cut in two. He and Crowley had separated before, but this time was different. Heartstrings snapped, and he clutched his chest and died inside. Even now, the effortless space they once shared was desolate and cold. That warm familiar flickering glow that radiated between their souls was fading. The stars were dying. Aziraphale had to do something, everything, anything to bring them back. 

Crowley blew on the wine bottle, like some conch shell or musical instrument, and saved Aziraphale from his descending madness. “When did you stop dancing?” he demanded to know. The line sounded oddly concerned, even desperate. 

Aziraphale forced his eyes from Crowley’s moving lips to his own numbing feet. Sure enough, he had forgotten to dance. If Crowley didn’t notice when he stopped either, he hadn’t been able to even bring himself to look at him. Aziraphale could think of several reasons why. He grimaced. With some effort, he continued his apology. After flawlessly completing the routine for the nth time today, he slowed to rest again. He had the apology dance memorized for ages now, but now he could tell you how long it took down to the millisecond. He could probably do it in his sleep, backwards and dizzy from spinning in circles, wearing a Victorian hoop skirt while tomatoes were thrown at him, balancing on a tightrope over the American Grand Canyon. Perhaps that would be enough for him. Aziraphale’s aching body started breaking through the pain of giving up. This game was overtime and well past over.  

Just before Aziraphale could choose to intervene, Crowley rearranged their plans yet again.  “Sing for me, Angel?” he raised, grinning like a devil. His voice was strained, snide and snarky. He dropped the wine bottle on the floor so that it not distract him from the entertainment, and both beings winced when it hit the floor and bounced away. 

“Oh, please,” Aziraphale complained, getting snappy. Of course, only now Crowley wanted him to sing, and since he would do anything for Crowley, he would sing again. He went to rub his eyes and they popped wide when his hands came away wet. Sometime between when he stopped counting dances and when he stopped dancing, he had started to cry. He looked at his feet again and shuffled them like cards, then unceremoniously wiped his teary hands on his jacket. No point in hiding the painfully obvious. He sighed. Perhaps his vulnerability could be of some use, perhaps in getting that demon to forgive him a bit, for example. Crowley waved him down and pointed at his wristwatch with concern. Aziraphale suppressed an eye roll. He was too far gone to stop now. The things he did for this arse; the things he would continue doing for him. He began to dance, and then to sing. 

When Aziraphale finally forgot what made him do that stupid dance, he formally decided he had enough and would like to file a complaint. One last dance, he meant it this time, and he would make it the best fucking dance the demon staring at him through dark glasses had ever seen. He would honor the wing choreography they had neglected over time. He would attempt a pirouette, learned from watching too many ballets. He would ease into the splits at the end of the routine, head neatly folded upon the floor, and miracle a rain of glittering golden confetti. He’d done all such moves for fun before, and had confidence he could blend them all together; he knew he could and he would! 

“Watch - !” 

He would have. A sickening pain in Aziraphale’s left wing tore a screech from his throat. The floor collected him violently, and he collapsed in a heap of feathers, flesh, and broken pride.

 “Angel!” a familiar voice cried out, distorted by pain. Aziraphale moaned in grief. He had tripped on his godforsaken wing. Feathers flew and blood stained his white plumage. He crumpled into a ball, and though he squeaked and sobbed into his injured wing, he dared, cared, bared not to take his blurry eyes off Crowley. 

The instant that Aziraphale’s wing had ripped, Crowley’s eyebrows jumped. His mouth fell open in a silent scream that echoed his fallen dancer’s cry for help. He stumbled forward, reaching towards Aziraphale with so little thought that his arms nearly threw him off balance and onto the floor. He hesitated, withdrew, then forcefully restrained himself and cantered backwards. When he regained his footing, his glasses were barely clinging to his face, one of his phoenix yellow eyes exposed and glistening with burning tears. His sharp nails dug into his palms, almost to the draw of blood. A bead of blood welled on his lip from an obvious bite. His chest struggled to remember the rhythm of breath. With noticeable difficulty, Crowley forced his body to behave. He turned his shallow breaths and stifled sobs into a nervous chuckle. 

“A most flawless execution!” Crowley hissed with copious sarcasm, clapping sadistically. “All the gold stars!” he added with a torturous noise somewhere between laughing and crying.  

Heat rushed through Aziraphale’s body, still adjusting to its earthly form, and his cheeks turned ruddy from anger, humiliation, something else…A demon, however outcast, however loved, was a horror, a monster, a fiend, and the Crowley he knew would prefer those titles not be denied. Bookseller and former Archangel A. Z. Fell knew better than anyone that there was more to a story than its name. To invoke Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a thorn by any other name would still steal blood. A rose by any other name would still bloom blood red. 

A searing pain spasmed through Aziraphale’s injured wing. He kicked up his brows. He unfolded his crumbled limb and spread apart the bloodstained feathers. Once bleeding profusely, the torn wing tip had been cauterized and numbed of pain. His wide eyes met Crowley’s crooked glasses and softened. Crowley’s exposed eye darted away and he conveniently bent over sideways, balanced on one leg as he grabbed their bottle of wine in fluid motion, unkempt wavy hair swishing as he returned to his post. Something fluttered in Aziraphale’s chest but he forced it down and frowned. This was an unlikely time for Crowley to have pure intentions. Running off spite alone, Aziraphale sheathed his wings, stood up with decent grace, and brushed the glitter off his shirt. 

“Crowley, we’re done here,” he decided. No reply. Typical. He was too busy readjusting his glasses and taking a massive swig of wine. “Crowley?” Aziraphale tried again. His personal nuisance practically tossed the wine bottle back where he dropped it on the floor earlier, and it rolled halfway across the room. Even the Almighty might not have known how it was still in one piece. 

Crowley whipped around. Hands in his pockets, he studied Aziraphale intently and intensely. “Why?” He asked, visibly confused. Even through those dark glasses, the hellfire in the demon’s eyes burned Aziraphale’s skin. “Why only now?” He exclaimed. 

Aziraphale shimmied in frustration and swallowed the  hostility rising in his throat like bile. “Might this at least wait for a better time?” he compromised, “We’ve rather important things to do.” An excuse, if a practical and truthful one. 

“I thought you liked dancing?” Crowley cocked his head with sarcasm, leaning forward slightly, ignoring Aziraphale’s appeal to common sense in favor of whatever personally peeved him the most, surprisingly or unsurprisingly. 

Aziraphale pouted. “I did.”

“Keep dancing, then?” Crowley asked with a coy shrug, as if it was an innocent rhetorical question. Aziraphale knew what Crowley was playing with, and so did Crowley. This petty child’s game of theirs was almost as old as their situation…ship to the point of feeling like an outdated tradition, an inside joke that didn’t land. 

“We don’t have all apocalypse, Dear ,” Aziraphale reminded him, channeling every bit of his signature bitchy sass into that last word.  

Crowley’s jaw clenched. “Whose problem is that?” he hissed through bared teeth, clearly seething. He’d started hissing his S’es. Oh my. Any moment now he would start doing strange things with his arms, a sign that serious trouble was bubbling. 

“This is becoming excessive,” Aziraphale reasoned, level head contending with his heart’s urge to bite. 

“Stop then! I’m not stopping you!” Crowley insisted, arms flailing in an overly animated fashion. 

“I can’t stop!” 

“One of us has to!”

Aziraphale scrunched his face and shook his head. “This isn’t fun!” he shouted, “This isn’t us!” 

“Well, guesss what?” Crowley sassed through a sarcastic grin. His face slackened. His voice hardened. “People. Change.” 

The words broke in his mouth to an extreme Aziraphale could no longer weather without spilling over. Angel tears welled up again. Aziraphale inhaled into a sideways lean. He laid his hand across his mouth and sighed into his palm. He dragged his fingers down his chin and clung to his lapels. “Isn’t change beautiful?” He smiled at Crowley in that soft way only he could, spoke in that secret language only they could understand.  

“You and I both know how this ends, Supreme Archangel.” Crowley said his former title with a venom that paralyzed him. With a startling jolt of horror and humiliation, Aziraphale realized that this could only end with himself. Just like he had started it. True to the nature of a stage performer, he was projecting. He was reasoning with madness of his own making. He was drowning in his own tears. 

 “Crowley!” he sobbed. “We’re killing each other! Why would we want this? To watch me dance until I discorperate?” He wiped his face on his sleeve. “Because I’d do it!” He choked. “If that’s what it took to fix this, Crowley, I’d die for you!” The boldest thing he ever said, and it was a pure white lie. He would die with him, sacrifice his body and more, and they would pass into darkness together or never , by the wrath of the Almighty Herself if it came to that. Stardust to stardust. But they would not separate like this. Both their bodies and souls were getting away from each other intact, even if their hearts were shriveled and dark as currants, even if their love was chewed apart in their mouths until it was gone, even if they could never see or talk or touch each o -

Crowley bit down so hard, his teeth would have broken were he human. His breathing turned erratic and desperate and he choked like a man underwater. His limbs twisted in bizarre nervous gestures. Tears steamed down his cheeks. He rubbed his forehead in an attempt to mask his broken face, knowing full well he wasn't disguising anything. He looked like a bomb trying not to explode. This rare expression of distress, which Aziraphale struggled to recall in all he and Crowley’s years together, nearly pushed him over the edge and into more pieces than the wine glass still shattered by the wall. This time, he had induced it. He hated manipulating Crowley, especially in a state like this, his headstrong free spirit broken by torment, but the alternatives were unspeakable. Aziraphale stepped forward and reached a cautious arm to him. “I - ”

Crowley shattered in Aziraphale’s outstretched hands. His glasses mirrored him. Cracks spiraled across the lenses like violent starbursts. “What would you have me do, Angel?” He wailed, flipping his arms towards the ceiling. “We can’t stop; We can’t do this anymore!” Crowley yelped like an animal caught in a snare. “I drank and I cried and I slept for yo- for years! I destroyed books; I was drunk at the wheel and almost destroyed my - I hit a tree!” His hands fell back to clutch his screaming head. He tore out strand upon strand of his wild red hair. “There’s no running from this!” he cried, “I’m not running - you’re not getting rid of me this time!” 

Aziraphale’s chest seized. He fell back and squeezed his eyes tight, unable to bear Crowley in such agony. A few stray tears bled down the angel’s reddened cheeks. For once, he didn’t care about the books. Books were paper, already dead, but Crowley had been reckless and crashed the Bentley and - oh fuck - he could have…. Aziraphale was dizzy, nauseous, as if his own body was being destroyed. As much as that bond between them had weakened, it still carried blinding volts of electricity. “This isn’t working!” Aziraphale shouted, transferring his own anguish to anger, “This little game of ours, no one is winning!” 

 Fiery eyes burning through his broken dark glasses, Crowley flicked away his tears with pizazz. “It’s. Your. Turn,” he hissed. His words came out like drops of poison. 

“No,” Aziraphale replied, voice strained and hoarse, those two letters soft as a torn feather. “No,” he gently mouthed, shaking his head. Crowley only nodded, a tight bright smile on his face so fake it would be comical if it didn’t nearly discorporate Aziraphale on sight. He smiled back, a true, loving smile, and Crowley’s face softened and his body relaxed. Aziraphale’s benign demon took the deepest breath of his 6000 years, sunk to the floor, and started sobbing like a child. 

Aziraphale’s stomach dropped with him. What had he done, what had he done, oh God no, what had he done? He approached the fallen angel on the floor as if he were a wounded bird. “Oh, Crowley, Crowley, Crowley,” he cooed, “I’ve been a fool.” 

Crowley didn’t even look at him. He couldn’t. Aziraphale fiddled with his fingers. What the fuck was he supposed to do? A Noah’s Arc of solutions came flooding through his mind; apologies, niceties, soliloquies…None of them could fix this. First, Aziraphale thought his body betrayed him or was danced around like a rag doll by some unseen force, when he was a puppet pulled by his own heartstrings. Next, he deluded himself into thinking Crowley made him dance to punish him, when he was doing this to and for himself. Then, he mistook Crowley’s morbid curiosity as his way of delaying an inevitable conversation, when he was watching him with frozen horror like an airplane going down. Finally, he figured Crowley let him dance to keep him in the bookshop, when they both knew which of the two of them was more likely to run away. Now, in the deathly silent aftermath, he was confronted with the truth. Crowley had been screaming, crying, begging for him to stop. And once again, Aziraphale had failed him. The stars were burning out and Aziraphale had doused them with water. He choked on his own throat. 

There must be something he could do, something, everything, anything. He must - he needed - he had to. He would fix this. He would save them. He would keep them alive. There were no other options, but there were other ways to say “I’m sorry.” He looked at his fallen star, his wounded bird, the only thing he loved above heaven and below earth, discarded on the floor like a blurry polaroid, crying through those cracked glasses into those rough hands, and knew things the Almighty Herself couldn't tell him. He knew why, and he knew how. 

Everywhere Aziraphale went, Crowley had followed.  Everytime Aziraphale was in danger, and even some times he wasn’t, Crowley rescued him. Every time Aziraphale pulled away, Crowley pushed his limits and his buttons, in the best and worst of ways. Crowley was the push and pull, the thrill of the chase, the personification of the universe questioning itself and that curious lust for life he had tempted humanity with all those years ago. He was everything Aziraphale loved and feared and wanted to be. 

He had tried his best to keep up with him, to balance his weight or return the favor, but could only ever meet him halfway. Perhaps he’d been afraid, or hesitant, or didn’t know how. Perhaps he hadn’t been ready for what all the way would mean. Perhaps, it had simply been timing, because now, it was time. 

Aziraphale knelt behind Crowley, still curled into a ball and crying into his hands. He nested his front against Crowley’s back. With a weary sigh, he softly reached around and laid his trembling hands over the familiar bony fingers that protected Crowley’s face. “I’m here,” he told him. 

Crowley braved a raspy breath. Working as one, the two of them removed his ruined glasses. Aziraphale folded them neatly and placed them in his tan front pocket. He crawled around to face Crowley, and though he attempted to look away, his serpentine yellow eyes followed his guardian angel’s every careful movement. Even as he rose to a standing lean, Aziraphale studied those familiar eyes, and tried to match their spark and desperate glow. He bowed and offered a hand and a gentle smile. 

The embers in Crowley’s eyes died and he dropped his gaze to the glasses in Aziraphale’s pocket. Then he blinked, shook his head as if fanning the flames, and questioned the angel above him with his best approximation at a smile. Crowley’s frozen eyes softened. Though his intestines began twisting into a sailor’s knot, Aziraphale raised his eyebrows in a playful smirk. That mystifying magic between them sparkled back with passion. This next trick would be his most difficult to perform, and he could not turn back even if the show could barely go on. Hitting on him when he’s down, taking advantage of his weakness to strengthen his hold on him…was that taking advantage or merely seizing an opportunity? 

The distant echo of Crowley’s warm lips on his made up his mind, the still lingering taste of his tongue, the force of their bodies slamming together. The time their car hit Anathema, hitting harder than ever. The forced cackling sob Crowley let out when Aziraphale ripped out that blood feather.  All of these were reasons. This was revenge and retaliation and revelation. This was a long time coming. This was taking what he deserved.

“Dance with me?” 

“You really don’t know when to stop, do you?” Crowley answered in a weary way that couldn’t disguise the stars kindling in his eyes. He rose from the ground grinning, curtsied low and slow, and took Aziraphale’s hand as torturously as possible. 

Aziraphale pushed down the heat rising in his face and  escaped Crowley’s gaze. He nested Crowley’s other clammy hand into his own but avoided looking up, knowing that the moment he looked into Crowley’s sparkling eyes, his senses would be blinded by a burst of newborn nebulas. Luckily, leading Crowley in some imitation of a ballroom dance would give him an excuse to look at his feet instead of his eyes, or Heaven forbid, his mouth. 

“Follow my steps,” Aziraphale directed. He could feel the quizzical look on Crowley’s face. “Hopefully we won’t end up on the floor,” he added to break the tension. He quirked his eyebrows and heat enveloped his body. Either he’d cultivated a dirty mind over the years, or his words could have a double meaning. Done overthinking, Aziraphale shook it off and started moving himself and Crowley in a square. He stepped right, forward, left, back, and Crowley followed the best he could until they were back where they started. Aziraphale aimed for a waltz in name only, as they were standing as far apart as holding hands would allow them, and they were sure to mess up even the most simplified steps beyond recognition, but it was the least humiliating way to make fools of themselves. 

After several practice rounds, Aziraphale added the apology. “You were right,” he said, timing his words to the movement of their feet, “I was wrong.” He said the words by himself for a few turns, “I was wrong, you were right, I was wrong, you were right,” hoping Crowley would get the hint. He did eventually.

 “I was wrong, you were right,” Aziraphale started. 

“I was right, you were wrong,” Crowley finished, mirroring his steps. 

They repeated this rendition until phantom music from the back of the bookshop interrupted them. Synchronized like captivated cats, they turned their heads towards the sound in unison. 

“Did you do that?” Aziraphale asked. 

“No!” assured Crowley, “It’s - that’s Muriel’s fancy new phone! They leave it here when they’re off in Heaven,” he explained. Muriel helped Aziraphale escape Heaven, and they hadn’t made it home yet. He asked Crowley why the fuck their phone was playing music. “It has a mind of its own,” his dance partner replied, “And it can potentially read minds as well?” Crowley shrugged. “Modern electronics, am I right?” They flashed each other an awkward smile.

“I was wrong, you were right,” Aziraphale resumed, pulling them back into their dance. 

“I was right, you were wrong,” Crowley continued. 

Now looping over and over, the strange music was distracting in every possible way, from having too variable a tempo to reliably dance to, to not lining up with their steps and lyrics, to having clashing lyrics of its own that were downright uncanny:

“And with my hand I picked her up

And in that moment, [the dove] shifted magically

For when her feathers felt my touch

I saw her a demon

Feathers, they turned black

Oh she was no phoenix, but a creature of the ash

I let her go, she hit the ground

I heard the thud, regained her color

Saw the sky, she had been bound

By someone, and left to die”

The odds of a song about abandoned demonic birds playing right then, on repeat, without prompting, were zero. Muriel’s phone was confirmedly sentient and telepathic, and it was trying desperately to either pull Aziraphale and Crowley farther apart or push them together, closer than ever. 

When unluckily mismatched dance steps forced them inches apart, face to face, eye to eye, breath to breath, they gave up dancing. Electricity sparked between them. They broke that live wire at the same time, dropping heated hands and stepping away with a matching awkward laugh. Aziraphale blamed the music. Attempting to dance classically to such eclectic modern music could only end in disaster. Crowley blamed the phone. He jokingly suggested it might be possessed by a fellow mischievous demon. 

Their eyes darted about the room, whose fuzzy dimness was beginning to look like mood lighting. The brightness of laughter tapered and faded to reveal a void. 

Crowley’s eyes darkened and lingered on the space between him and Aziraphale. “Why does this feel wrong?” he asked, glancing between their four hands and four feet. 

Aziraphale shrugged a smile. “Why did heaven feel right?”  

“It was still wrong,” Crowley hushed. Aziraphale loved the way his shoulder length hair bounced when he shook his head. 

He sighed in anticipation of what he knew he must say. “It was the right idea.” 

Crowley opened his mouth and suppressed a groan. “You’re wrong!” he argued, carried by contrarianism alone. 

Aziraphale put his hands on his hips. “ You’re wrong!” he parroted. 

Crowley stepped into the dark space between them, putting his face far too close to Aziraphale’s, a favorite way to rustle his angel’s untarnished feathers. Aziraphale’s blood fluttered in his veins. Crowley’s body language was a threat, though not one of violence.  “I was right!” Crowley hissed. 

Aziraphale smiled smugly. “You were right.” 

Crowley’s face scrunched in bemusement. His chin tilted back. “I was right?

Aziraphale sighed into a softer smile. “Don’t you see?” he said, “Neither of us were wrong, both of us were right.” 

Crowley’s still misty eyes drifted off Aziraphale. “We never get anything right,” he murmured. 

Aziraphale didn’t know what to say to that, so said the first brave thing he thought of: “What about us? 

The words hit Crowley like an arrow. His yellow snake eyes clicked back to Aziraphale and widened in awe.. For a timeless moment, an unquestionable longing broke out on Crowley’s face. He swallowed and forced himself away. Aziraphale watched him intently, knowing he would pull back at any chance. He had Crowley back where he needed him, and after all the day’s work put into keeping him there, he wasn’t letting him escape so freely. 

For once, Crowley was taking his sweet time, and Aziraphale couldn’t take it. He closed the growing gap between him and Crowley with a stumble. When Aziraphale improvised a melodramatic collapse onto him, Crowley’s arms instinctively flew to his back to support him. Aziraphale rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder and wound his hand around his waist. Crowley stiffened, but his hands loosened their grip on his back. His touch was light and gentle. They could dance, properly, intimately dance, and Aziraphale could not resist that opportunity. 

“I’m tired,” he said, running his hand down Crowley’s solid chest, “the both of us are.” 

“Just because we -“ Crowley shook his head and licked his lips with a groan. “I’m not going to say it, you know. I’m not going to say what you said after we -  I'm not forgiving an Archangel.”

Aziraphale leaned back and put his heart into his eyes. “Oh, my dear. I never asked you to,” he smiled. Want crept back onto Crowley’s face. Aziraphale wasn’t Supreme Archangel anymore, barely an angel at all, and Crowley knew it. He forgave him after that first dance, maybe even the moment he stepped through the door, and Aziraphale knew that too. 

One of Crowley’s arms crawled around Aziraphale’s back and came to rest with the elbow on his shoulder. The other fell limp by their sides. Aziraphale reached for his hand. He wove their fingers together this time, an explicit gesture that their agreement had become a union. Shock flashed through Crowley’s body. Aziraphale encouraged him with a timid smile. Crowley heaved the corners of his mouth out of an obsolete frown. 

And so they danced again. They clumsily waltzed to the music that now felt as familiar as crickets on a summer night, barely believing the moment they shared was real. They danced until Crowley’s hand snaked around Aziraphale’s neck, then retreated to perch on his shoulder, until his fingers slid down to fiddle with Aziraphale’s lapels. Until the hand on Crowley’s waist couldn’t resist stroking his back and Aziraphale nested his head between Crowley’s shoulder and neck. Until Aziraphale couldn’t focus on anything except the way Crowley’s black fingernails indented creases in his neatly pressed coat and his blood stained fingertips painted the ivory fabric red. Until they forgot to waltz and swayed dreamily to the music, and Aziraphale couldn't care if they were dancing at all, only the way Crowley’s eyes appeared lit by stars when the streetlights bounced off them, the way the lamp in the background formed a halo around his silhouette. Until he wished they could stay that way for eternity, two points of light whirling around each other in the darkness like binary stars, without another care in the universe. (Until he thought of Crowley, only of Crowley.) 

The problem with wishing on binary stars is that sometimes, they collide. The universe and its weight could not be held over Aziraphale and Crowley forever, and when it inevitably crashed down on their shoulders, it broke them apart again. 

“I did it for our good, you know,” Aziraphale breathed against Crowley’s neck, “For the good of humanity, for the good in them, and for everything we’ve worked towards.” 

Crowley’s chest deflated. “I know,” he murmured. His voice sharpened like broken glass. “But you were all the way up there, head in the clouds, weren’t you? You weren’t down here on earth, with humanity, with me. Because from down here, it looked like we weren't “good” enough for you,” he said, biting his words. “We worked our arses off doing damage control for your Heaven, and we did it alone.” He was no longer talking about humanity. 

Aziraphale pulled his head off of Crowley’s shoulder, and it was like pulling apart two magnets, but he kept his arm locked around Crowley’s waist. “I did it because of you,” he told him, directly to his flickering eyes, “I did it for you and your stars.”

The glitter in Crowley’s eyes settled. “The stars are up there, Angel. I’m down here.” 

“What about Alpha Centauri?” 

Crowley sighed again, smiled, and tried to hide that  Aziraphale’s words sucked the light out of him. “We’ll get there eventually,” he promised, a promise to which he would hold, “Build from the ground up. No running away this time.” 

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand. “I’m proud of you.” 

“Don’t be,” Crowley grumbled, “I’m sure I’ll return the favor and fuck you over too, eventually.” 

“You’re not as nice as I feared,” Aziraphale smiled back. 

Crowley’s fading glow flared like a starburst. “Neither are you,” he teased. 

Aziraphale blushed again, something he had become more accustomed to in his life than expected or preferred. He’d get used to it eventually. Now that he stopped to notice, Crowley’s hands had become feverishly warm and his face rose tinted. This, Aziraphale would never be used to, and rather enjoyed. “Might I ask which books you destroyed?” he raised. He dually wielded the innocence and mischief of a troublesome child, playing with fire just to watch it burn. 

Crowley liked mischief, and his innocence died millennia ago. “You really oughta stop shooting yourself in the foot like this, Angel,” he smirked. 

Aziraphale no longer suppressed the smugness puffing up his face. Crowley looked at him like an animal,  grinned at him like a monster, spoke to him like a lover, a fighter, a fiend: 

“I read some of your romance novels. They were lovely, so I destroyed them. I ran over Anna Karenina with the Bentley. I buried Jane Eyre in the park. Beren and Luthien was shredded and now lines my new snake friend’s terrarium. I turned the one on Hades and Persephone into a ceramic pomegranate and dropped it. Emma is a paper mache duck and several origami cranes. I stabbed Romeo and Juliet with a genuine late medieval Italian dagger. I ate Pride and Prejudice. I wanted to keep it with me.”

Aziraphale stepped on Crowley’s toes and disguised it as a failed dance step. Crowley was lucky Aziraphale possessed more impulse control than he did, as his first thought was to slap Crowley in the face, or perhaps he was unlucky, as his second thought was to kiss him out of spite, hard and until it hurt. 

 “You’d better be messing with me,” Aziraphale playfully threatened, “or I swear I’ll - I'll do something! I’ll send the Bentley off a cliff!”

Crowley shrugged. “Demons lie.” This was not comforting at all. 

Aziraphale and Crowley finally abandoned the false-waltz they had been neglecting for some time. They stayed embracing, Crowley’s hand on Aziraphale’s chest, Aziraphale’s arm around Crowley’s waist, their remaining ten fingers linked together like chains, for no other reason than because they could. The song about dying birds had stopped at some unknowable time. A silence grew between them, screaming louder and louder like a bubbling kettle. 

“Oh, somethings been bugging me and I can’t bear it,” Aziraphale blurted out. “I’m terribly sorry, but I - I lied to you earlier, too. I said I’ll die for you…”

“Angel, if you make this worse than it already is…” 

“I can’t die for you, and you can’t die for me,”  Aziraphale said, fiddling with Crowley’s fingers instead of his own. “The universe needs us. We need us. So if - if we need to, if you’re up for it… I would love to burn down heaven and build it back with you.”

“Please stop, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale memorized the way Crowley’s lips moved with every syllable, lingering on how they pressed together when he said ‘stop.’ He took a shaky breath.  “I’m not exaggerating or being ironic. I meant what I offered. I’m good as fallen. We’re starting over,” He insisted, listing those four statements as vows.   “Listen, I know nothing I could say is enough to fix this thing between us, but you are,” he said, “Good or bad, or nice or not, or better or worse, you are enough.” Crowley’s face showed that this was something he had needed to hear for a long time. Aziraphale shook his head, shocked at the words forming on his tongue. “I don’t want anything from you, Crowley, except what you are. I want us.”

“Stop,” Crowley whispered. He looked at Aziraphale the way poets wrote of and songbirds sung about. 

Aziraphale’s heart fluttered. Did he want to kiss him again? He decided as soon as Crowley left the bookshop after their first kiss, that he wanted to and if he ever had the chance, he would. Well, the chance had come. 

Mouth trembling as if touched by a chill, Aziraphale leaned his head up toward Crowley, close enough he could almost feel the way he swallowed and his forked tongue tensed with his jaw, close enough to taste the wine on his quickening breath. Crowley’s lips parted on his next inhale. Aziraphale tested him with a gentle hand across his lower back, squeezed toward his waist. Crowley’s wide eyes scrunched shut for a blink; his breath hitched. Trembling, Aziraphale pressed his forehead to Crowley’s. His skin burned like hellfire. One more move, one more moment and they will have done another thing they cannot take back. 

 As if by its own accord, Crowley’s forked tongue rolled out upon his lower lip and flicked upward, like a snake smelling its next meal. Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment and he failed to suppress a gasp of exhilaration. Crowley’s brow tightened against his forehead. He froze. His fiery eyes iced over, as if he’d caught the chill that made Aziraphale shudder so. He forced his tongue to cower between his teeth and upper lip. With no more warning than a forced blink, Crowley wormed out of Aziraphale’s arms. He snatched his dark glasses out of his angel’s front pocket and shoved him away in one frantic huff. 

“Ohohohuhuh,” he expressed, fumbling his broken glasses back over his inflamed eyes. “ You ,” he voiced accusingly, “I see you - you snake charmer!” He shook his head like he’d been smacked in the face. “Break a leg!” he said, and with his arms outstretched in defense, Crowley backed away from Aziraphale, hissing under his breath like a serpent chasing its own tail. 

 “Do this again, sometime?” Aziraphale called after him. 

Crowley made finger guns and smiled like an idiot. “I can’t wait!” His tone managed to be sarcastic, genuine, flirtatious, and terrified all at once. He slunk towards the back of the bookshop, scanning the room for the nearest escape. He aimed for a doorway and hit the wall. Crowley muttered some profanity, and regained some dignity, then turned around and swaggered through the door. A step short of out of sight, all ten of his fingers curled so tightly it must have been painful. 

 Aziraphale let out a nervous chuckle. The chuckle turned into a giggle. He put his hand over his mouth; fingered his lips. “I think I broke him,” he said to himself. He could shrug and laugh it off, note that he’d never seen Crowley so flustered and that he should be proud of himself, but he couldn’t avoid feeling bad for laughing at Crowley’s expense, even if Crowley had attempted to do the same to him. He had felt far worse for it. Aziraphale shook his head and heaved a bittersweet sigh.

He wandered the bookshop for a bit, straightening books and mending whatever carnage Muriel had inflicted upon his categorization system. The bookshop was in a better state than he expected. Aziraphale’s hand skimmed over the spines of the books. No dust clung to his fingers. Someone had made sure Muriel didn’t cause too much damage. He allowed himself a quiet smile. 

  As long as books had existed, Aziraphale had pictured himself and Crowley as the lead characters to aid his immersion, and he was starting to realize his fantasy may be influenced by his reality more than he was comfortable with. By World War One, love stories had gone from a guilty pleasure to a fixation, a craving, a lust. He told himself at first that it was an innocent escape from the carnage, that he missed having a certain companion to enlighten him in these darkest of times, but when those fantasies of midnight meetings and star crossed soulmates and clandestine dances inevitably left the page and bled into his real life, such sinful thoughts became harder and harder to shelf. Ironic then, that on a fateful night during World War Two, a bag of books told him why. 

His relationship with Crowley wasn’t a romance in the traditional sense, but that was the closest human equivalent he could make sense of, and romance became a manual to follow, a template from which to build a partnership. The longer they spent on earth together,  the more “human” they became, and the more human love stories began to resonate with their own. They were in love, and if that made them lovers, then so be it.

 Neither of them had defined their relationship by any terms, especially human ones, so being forced to confront their feelings in such a human way was convoluted and overwhelming. They were not human, even if they lived as such, and that dichotomy was as inseparable from their relationship as they were from each other; each other from their histories with Heaven and Hell. Crowley had particular trouble understanding it, Aziraphale reasoned, how easily humanity could label the indescribable tension between them, how they could simplify something so vast and transcendent. What could man know of a love greater than in any of their epics and poems and fairy stories? What was Aziraphale meant to say? That he would cut off his own wings to give Crowley shelter? That he would burn every book to keep him warm? That he would kill God Herself or die trying? Like any human term for their devotion, it would never be enough. 

Lately their bond had changed and warped and escaped them like time. Their arrangement settled into a relationship, simpler and more complex at the same time, and much harder to ignore. The longer they lived a worldly life, the more grounded or human or tangible that relationship became. Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. Perhaps the word he truly seeked was “physical.”

It started the way their friendship had: innocent and unassuming, only revealed to be dangerous once it was too late. First, familiarity, curiosity, playful friendly banter. Next, feelings deeper than a demon and angel should have, especially for each other. Then, that horrific high and low, the blurry line between falling and flying. Last, sensations that should be impossible: butterflies, blushing and blood rushing. Sweat, nausea and phantom fevers. The fear of bursting into flames at the mere spark of his eyes.  

After that fateful night of World War 2 changed everything, and the feelings Crowley dug up with that book bag didn’t bury themselves in the sands of time, Aziraphale had poured into his love stories again, desperate to find some closure for that disorienting burst of new emotion. Inevitable, of course, that he immersed himself deeper, straying from the safety of Jane Austen and classical mythology to the scandalous stories of passion and pleasure and temptation that he had little curiosity for before. That new curiosity propelled him to places that were as wondrous as they were wrong. As he pictured himself with Crowley in every strange and foreign way, he knew no physical desire except to be as close to him as physically possible. He wasn’t disgusted. He wasn’t disappointed. He was no less confused. Clouded by a rolling storm of frustration, he hunkered down and weathered the torment until his senses cleared up. Until everything made sense. Perhaps that’s why Crowley pulled back from his attempted temptation. For once, Aziraphale outpaced him.

He returned to his books with a sigh. No longer able to confine those feelings in his heart like a locket to be opened at some sentimental time, he freed his mind from its bony shell and let his thoughts roam. Concerningly, the romance novels Crowley claimed to have read and ruined were absent from their places on the shelves. Though Aziraphale had always teased him about selling books, he hadn’t expected Crowley capable of destroying them on a spiteful whim. A part of him must have been destroyed as well, and knowing what, or rather who, hurt him made Aziraphale want to burn down the bookshop again and make sure he perished in the fire this time. When Crowley read the romance novels missing from their shelves, did he see Aziraphale, the ghost and memory and lack of him, etched upon their pages? Did he see himself, look at the cherished books on the shelves and see fellow discarded things to be broken? Perhaps he saw the two of them, what they could and would have been, and couldn’t reconcile star crossed stories so like their own getting to begin before they ended.  

Everywhere a familiar book should be, Aziraphale forced apart the two books that used to flank the ones he lost, filling the hole each stolen story left with his fingers. There were more secret compartments in the bookshop than even he could remember, and behind the space in the Shakespeare section that Romeo and Juliet used to occupy, one such compartment was cut into the wall. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had discovered and desecrated those too. He felt around for the lock on the tiny door that covered the secret cavity, opened it, and stuck his hand into the wall. Aziraphale’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. Despite being deceptively large, this secret compartment typically held only one book, an authentic early draft of Hamlet. Someone had changed that. Aziraphale pulled one of now several books out of the hole in the wall. His breath hitched. Pride and Prejudice, still in collectors quality. He thrust his hand back into the compartment. Anna Karenina, not squashed and without a tire mark in sight. He reached for another book. Jane Eyre, too dry and crisp ivory to have been buried in the earth. He pulled books out of the secret door like silks from a sleeve. Tears clung to his eyelashes like dew. Beren and Luthien. Emma. Hades and Persephone. All safe and unscathed. At times when Crowley would vex or bother or lie to him, Aziraphale was often struck by the intrusive urge to punish his loathsome lips by kissing them. (He found the notion odd and unwelcome and laughable before, but times change.) This was one of those times. Aziraphale kissed the embossed title of Romeo and Juliet instead and hugged it to his chest.

“Oh, I missed you,” he told the book. The former and future bookseller made the rounds of his bookshop again, returning each book to its proper place on every shelf, except one. He kept Romeo and Juliet for one specific reason. There was no point in shutting his mind's eye on Crowley when he had let the demon in his head ages ago. There had been no going back for a long while.

He meandered over to the corner chair that Crowley sat on hours earlier, if the unholy way he occupied said chair could be considered sitting. Aziraphale positioned himself on the chair properly, crossed his legs, and propped the remaining stolen book on his knee. He flipped through the pages. In Scene Five of Act Three of Shakespeare's tragically classic romance, Romeo and Juliet, the title characters question if they hear a nightingale. Those pages were gone. Aziraphale pursed his lips. He kicked his feet, shook his head, and pointed a giddy smile at the ceiling. No Nightingale. How clever. He laughed a sigh, eyes drifting back down to earth with his emotions. A certain indestructible wine bottle caught his attention, having rolled and settled not far from the chair when Crowley last discarded it. Aziraphale cocked his head. He grabbed the bottle. His eyebrows arched. A few sips of wine yet remained. He smirked. He drank. Crowley would be sharing that bottle, after all. Aziraphale closed his eyes and prayed for some lingering taste of him.  

I never really found that dove

That's just a story I made up

Because I wanted all of it to stop

And I didn't know how to tell you