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It wasn't fair.
It shouldn’t matter that it wasn’t fair: that wasn’t the point. The point was that the whole business of… well… everything, was, you know. Ineffable.
God works in mysterious ways and so forth. Unknowable. Everyone in the universe merely players upon her stage.
So Aziraphale had told himself almost daily over the long years of his existence. It had become a mantra repeated to himself so often that was seared behind his eyes.
Don’t question, don’t presume, don’t think too hard about it. Trust in God, always. Things will work out fine. Or at least as they were always meant to - and that should be a comfort to any angel for whom the entire purpose of existence is in service of her plan.
And it had been a comfort. On the good days. The ones where Aziraphale hadn’t been asked to undertake any assignments that involved sacrificing a part of himself. The days when he could be the angel of pure kindness and grace he aspired to be, carrying out spontaneous good deeds, helping the kind and the righteous succeed, and generally looking on humans and their wonderful world with a smile. On those days it felt easier to believe heaven’s company lines and feel part of the noble collective endeavour for Good that was the ineffable plan.
On the bad days, it felt like swallowing a bucket of nails.
Today was definitely a bad day.
It shouldn’t have been a bad day. In fact it was the sort of day that Aziraphale looked forward too, despite everything. Crowley had turned up at the bookshop in need of a distraction from whatever hell had him doing, and dinner had led to drinks had led to nightcaps back at the shop. It had been wonderful.
And yet. For all the free-flowing conversation and camaraderie, Aziraphale couldn’t help but be left with a sense of emptiness as Crowley finally left the shop. As the demon’s hair flicked as he glanced back over his shoulder at the angel one last time, Aziraphale felt like a stone wedged itself uncomfortably between his diaphragm and stomach.
This wasn’t a new phenomenon. He didn’t leave every encounter with the demon with this sensation, but it tended to happen on those occasions when they’d indulged in more wine or conversation than usual, or when heaven had been testing his resolve in ways that left him feeling particularly exposed and vulnerable. It had been going on for some time, though – he first noticed it around the Flood. And while it wasn’t just the demon’s presence that brought it on, there was a strong correlation, and Aziraphale was sure it was happening more frequently over time. There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about this evening in particular - so similar to so many they’d had together before. But somehow the feeling was more acute than usual.
Perhaps that last brandy had been a mistake.
Aziraphale had a number of distraction tactics to employ in this scenario, which were broadly aimed at stopping himself from looking too directly at the geology of the stone in his stomach. There was:
1) Keep drinking. This usually worked eventually, but could have unexpected and undesirable side effects.
2) Get lost in a book. This worked well in response to smaller pebbles, but Aziraphale had found the success rate rather poor for more serious occurrences.
3) Leave the house. Go for a long walk, go shopping, feed the ducks, stretch his wings. Try to make a point of focusing on the mundane: look at the faces of the humans, appreciate colourful and well-designed displays in shop windows, observe any new offerings in the pastry shop around the corner. Listen to the birds (such as there were in central London – randy coos from pigeons and shouty squabbling sparrows being the most common). This had a high success rate but required a certain amount of mental and physical energy. It was also less than convenient at 3am, even if the Soho nightlife could indeed be distracting, particularly at the weekend.
But for some reason Aziraphale found he simply couldn’t bring himself to commit to any of his usual tactics. He had neither the energy nor the appetite to take a hold of his own mind and tame it in the way he usually did. He suddenly felt very old and very weighed down. The stone felt like it was rapidly progressing towards mountain status.
He couldn’t…
He needed to let himself think.
He sat heavily back down in his chair with the dregs of the last bottle of wine he’d shared with Crowley. He took a deep breath in and closed his eyes for a moment, leaning his head against the backrest. A wash of emotion flowed over him. A tsunami that threatened destruction.
Aziraphale realised with a sigh that he simply didn’t have the energy to hold it back this time. He took another slightly choked breath. His skin felt too tight and too hot. His hands were shaking slightly. In this moment, of all the moments that had been before, it was all too much.
Biting back panic, Aziraphale tried to ground himself. He looked around the room, tried to focus on the titles of the books on the shelves. Remember where the knick-knacks on his desk had originated. But he couldn't keep focus on anything for more than a moment - his thoughts felt like water running off a duck’s back.
He swallowed. Looked dumbly down at the bottle of wine, without raising it to his lips.
Well, if he couldn’t hold it back…
With some trepidation Aziraphale gave himself permission to allow his mind to wander inwards for a moment. He turned to face the tidal wave.
He didn’t immediately tune fully into the clamouring voices of his subconscious, which seemed to want to have several rather urgent and fraught conversations with him simultaneously. But he allowed himself to become aware of their discomforting presence and the broad regions of their complaints. Together they were creating a writhing mass of feeling.
One strand of his unhappy mind was distinctly demon shaped: a pair of bright yellow eyes manifesting and glaring through his subconscious. It held a mild scent of sandalwood mixed with spice and smoke, hints of black leather and snakeskin. Warm, familiar, but with more than a hint of danger.
Another had the colourless, antiseptic tang of heaven. It sounded like the chime of miracles and ringing crystal glass. Cold and lonely, it was too brightly lit, like a migraine headache.
A third attention-seeking strand of his mind lurked ominously behind the others. It had no specific form, but felt more like a dragging absence: a shapeless void with just the slightest echo of a female-sounding voice.
Aziraphale shuddered. He pushed that last strand of thought firmly away and buried it deep under some brief reflections on the nature of the duck-billed platypus (the familiar question of “why the duck billed platypus? I mean, just why?” had often served as a useful if brief distraction from more perilous mental territory). Even in an inescapably introspective mood there were some subjects it wasn’t safe to even consider contemplating.
Once the last webbed foot and stumpy furred tail had left this mind he allowed his attention to settle more firmly on the strand of thought closest to the front of his mind: Crowley.
Crowley.
Still here, in his mind and his shop after nearly 6000 years. Crowley: always shifting, moving, changing. And yet still the very same being who he stood with on the Wall so long ago.
A friend. And yet not a friend. The word always felt both too much and too little at the same time.
Aziraphale indulgently played back a few scenes from the evening that had passed between them. Some rowdy bickering about the artistic value of brutalist architecture over their starters at the restaurant. Crowley’s teasing raised eyebrow as they reminisced about Shakespeare’s Globe and why modern interpretations of Hamlet always got things slightly wrong. A brush of hands as they passed the wine bottle between them back at the bookshop.
The stone in his stomach reasserted itself suddenly as Aziraphale recalled the play of the light in Crowley’s hair as he stood up to leave. The recent memories, which had for a moment felt soft and warm, suddenly acquired edges sharp enough to wound.
Aziraphale was many things. He knew he was a slow-paced soul, and that he struggled to keep up with the changing fashions, technologies and habits of the humans - particularly in recent centuries, which seemed to change constantly with ever increasing speed. He knew he had a tendency to sentimentality, and as a principality, getting overly attached to places and people rather came with the territory. He was also highly intelligent, and probably the best-read being in the universe. He’d read novels, biographies, histories, essays, scientific theories, political treatises, books of psychology. Journals, scrolls, letters. He even had some stone tablets somewhere in a dusty cupboard. In his time on earth he had consumed literature in much the same way he’d consumed food: voraciously, embracing all genres and cultural offerings as much as he could.
He was also a world-class worrier, and over-thinker. If any angel in God’s creation could think a thought over so much as to turn it completely inside and back to front, stuff it down his own jumper and pull it out his ears then Aziraphale could.
Given all of this, despite his best attempts to ignore or distract himself from the issue over the years, he’d been unable to hide the nature of his connection with the demon from himself completely. He’d read enough romances, been to enough plays and watched the lives of enough humans play out before his eyes to have picked up a fair bit about the nature of human love. And he couldn’t avoid spotting the symptoms in himself. The way his heartbeat increased unbidden when those sunflower eyes met his. The gentle heat that grew just below his gut whenever he noticed the way that Crowley’s hips swayed, or he caught a glimpse of pale belly, exposed by one of the demon’s cat-like stretches. And more and more in recent years, he noticed Crowley’s absence when he wasn’t around. The lack of Crowley seemed to follow him around the shop, like a ghost. He’d had whole conversations with that ghost.
So oh yes he knew he was in love. Irretrievably, inescapably in love. And had been for… well. Aziraphale hadn’t let himself linger in the subject long enough to pin down exact moment it began. But a long time. The knowledge habitually drifted, largely unacknowledged, through his subconscious. He was used to pushing it away whenever it got too close to his conscious mind.
But even without looking directly at it, he knew that he was in love: in the way that fire feels warm even when blindfolded. And he knew it wasn’t fair that he felt this way.
It wasnt that it was wrong as such. In the very core of his soul, Aziraphale had never been able to categorise his feelings towards Crowley as wrong. He was a being designed for love. It flowed out of his every pore. And as the antithesis of evil, how could love ever be wrong? Even love for a demon.
But wanting in the way he sometimes (too often) caught himself. Well, that was more complicated.
His intellectual mind understood all too well how unacceptable these feelings would be to heaven. He could see Michael’s disgust and the sneer on Gabriel’s face. The mere thought of heaven catching sight of his feelings for the demon filled him with cold dread – born for the most part out of very real fear for what hell would do to Crowley when heaven inevitably shared news of their discovery. But alongside that fear was also a tiny strand of selfish horror at the thought of finally conceding that he was indeed a terrible angel, who didnt belong in heaven. That all his failings would be laid bare before God and the Host and, stripped of all his masks and little white lies, he would be cast out – if not to fall (because who did that these days, really?) then to lose himself. Because if he had no place in heaven, and no Crowley by his side (even occasionally), then who would he be? If not an Angel of the Lord, what would Aziraphale be?
To reach out to hold and seek to touch and love in the way that he wanted – in he way it felt he’d been created to do - would be the first step on the path to losing everything. Annihilation.
It wasn’t fair.
The stone in his stomach seemed to heat up as if there was a fire beneath it. Aziraphale forced himself to open his eyes and take another grounding breath. He ran the hand that wasn’t still clutching the nearly empty bottle of wine over his face and pressed his palm into his forehead.
His eyes drifted to the now empty sofa. His thoughts were helplessly drawn to a moment when Crowley’s eyes had met his that evening. The demon had taken off his sunglasses, face flushed with wine and cheerful conversation. They’d come to the end of an enjoyable to and fro about the times Crowley had come to his aid when he’d found himself in absurd circumstances that threatened a little too much divine paperwork. The gaze had lasted a little too long – just a beat more than a casual exchange of glances might permit. Crowley’s mouth had twitched into a smile just before he looked away, the lines round his eyes crinkling. When he had looked away, his gaze had dropped just slightly - resting for the briefest moment on Aziraphale’s lips - before Crowley had almost flung his entire body away and toward the kitchen in search of the next bottle of wine to attack.
Aziraphale knew Crowley well. They'd been around each other, on and off, for 6000 years. He thought of him often. And yet, he'd before never voiced this particular suspicion regarding his friend to himself. He’d obviously wondered, in weaker moments, but he’d always talked himself away from the idea that the demon might reciprocate anything. Dangerous territory to be avoided at all costs. And anyway, love may be natural for an angel, but who was he to make assumptions about a demon’s emotional range?
And yet. If he applied the same logic to Crowley as he had to himself, compared his behaviour with that had been written and sung about and played out in front of him for millennia, then… oh fuck.
That really wasn’t fair.
The stone in his stomach suddenly turned white hot. A bolt of energy shot through the angel and unbidden he found his corporation had stood up and launched the wine bottle in his hand against the nearest bookshelf. Aziraphale didn’t even register the deep red liquid now dripping down the spines of several precious books, or the vivid spots that had splashed back onto his coat: he was too busy picking up the chair he’d been sitting in and hurling into the sofa and bookcase behind. Wood exploded into splinters and fabric sagged.
His eyes became luminous, lit with pure white light. His wings materialised, almost filling the space around him. His shaking limbs seemed surrounded by a pale hazy glow.
It wasn’t fair and he was angry.
For the first time in 6000 years Aziraphale looked around for something to smite. Finding nothing he cried aloud, desperate and almost animal, beating his foot against the ground with such energy that the floorboard cracks beneath him. Every lightbulb in the shop sparked and went black.
The light left Aziraphale’s eyes at the same moment, as if some divine fuse had been blown. He dropped to his knees and brought his wings up and around himself like a shield. His hands fell to the rug and he grasped frantically at the fabric. He began to weep.
Eventually he fell asleep, or at least his consciousness vacated his mind. He remained on the floor, curled up in a cocoon beneath his wings, until the first rays of morning light began to wind their way across the bookshop floor.
It didn’t take much effort to put things right. A couple of miracles and it was like nothing had happened at all. Books clean and new, chair whole and back in its place. Floorboards mended and Aziraphale’s cream coat once again spotless to any observer.
Aziraphale probed his thoughts gently. He didn’t feel, well, anything very much. Everything felt muted, as if all the emotion of the night before had been washed away by the tide. If there were tiny flecks of anger and fear and guilt remaining like foam on the beach, then he certainly wasn’t going to look too hard at them.
He swallowed back any temptation to return to his former strands of thought. He locked them back up behind a door in his mind. He carefully hid the door behind a bookcase full of books about platypuses.