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Crowley lay sprawled half under his sheets in the hot winter morning air, eyes bloodshot and staring at the ceiling, contemplating the merits of insanity. If the heater were turned off completely, he would freeze, but it was malfunctioning and had been for days. As a result, he’d been forced to keep it on as well as his window cracked to even the temperature out. His landlord was on vacation and could be bothered to answer his bloody mobile and he wasn’t supposed to be back until after the holidays next week.
It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except….
Maybe if I go mad, I wouldn’t care about the heat. Maybe if I go mad, the noise outside my narrow second story rental won’t keep me awake. Maybe if I go mad, someone will put me in a nice QUIET room where the
INCESSANT.
ANNOYING.
UNBEARABLE.
SOUND OF THAT FUCKING WIND CHIME WOULD FINALLY STOP FOREVER!
In one swift move he was on his feet, throwing open the blackout curtains and flinging up the sash.
“AHHHHHHH!” He yelled nonsensically, and to no avail.
It was 6AM. There was nobody outside who wasn’t in a car, and absolutely none of them paid his scream of anguish any mind. All he accomplished in doing was giving himself a headache by admitting the blinding sun into his second shift cave of solitude. And frightening a few birds.
~*~
Next door, Aziraphale was just sitting down with his morning cuppa when he heard a strange noise outside. Just over the sound of the merrily tinkling wind chime he’d installed last month, there was some kind of bellow that surely went on for far too long to be a person. Some sort of odd vehicular sound he was unfamiliar with? When it stopped there came a sharp bang that might have been a truck backfiring, so perhaps it had been a preamble to that? He really didn’t know anything about autos, so it was a good enough explanation for him, so long as it didn’t happen again. It wasn’t the most tranquil start to what looked like what was shaping up to be a beautiful winter day.
~*~
Crowley’s shift ended an hour late that night because one of the printing presses kept breaking down and he got home at 2AM.
He was pretty sure he’d liked this job okay when he’d started it. The pay was sorta shit, but the people mostly minded their business, and they didn’t care if he wore sunglasses under the stupid florescent lighting. Only problem was, it made going out and socializing himself near impossible. Second shift hours weren’t greatly conducive to seeing, well, anybody. He used to go to clubs more (though that was getting a bit old, at least it was a way to get laid) and get dinner with friends (which he no longer had because he moved and hadn’t seen any of them in a year).
In short, he was lonely, miserable, and now also tired.
The weather was breezy and the air smelled like rain. It was a fairly temperate December night, so he had his windows rolled down when pulled in to the parking spot in front of his rental. The brisk air helped keep him alert on the drive. He was hungry, his back hurt, and he hadn’t gotten any sleep yesterday. With a sigh, he cut the engine and leaned back in the driver’s seat, his eyes shut. For a moment he could feel himself already falling asleep, the sensation of tipping over the edge of something, or reaching the top of a hill on a roller coaster before plummeting down again into unconsciousness….
Another breeze blew through the open windows.
~*Ting-ting-tlang-taling-ting*~
Crowleys eyes popped open wide in the darkness.
It couldn’t stand. It WOULDN’T STAND! But what was he meant to do? Go over there and plead at two in the sodding morning for whomever lived on the other side of the brick garden wall (who apparently thought irritating bell sounds were an adorable edition to houses with walls not twelve feet apart) to remove their infuriating decor?
The chimes continued to tinkle.
Crowley continued to fume, his hands gripping the wheel.
One doesn’t make good decisions when one has had shoddy sleep for a week.
“Screw this,” he growled when the wind picked up even more and the damn thing started swinging into the downspout and adding a discordant *clang* to its infuriating chorus. “I’m going to sleep tonight!”
Storming out of the car, Crowley gripped the brickwork on the garden wall, fingers finding holds in the old crumbly tuck-pointing. Through sheer determination of will and a few strategically placed branches of vegetation, he found himself on top of the nine foot wall minutes later.
“I’m a fucking mountain goat!” He stage whispered to himself, honestly shocked he’d made it now that he was looking down to the ground from a perspective of fifteen feet up in the air. Forgetting his precarious position in his glee, he stepped on a loose patch of mortar on the top of the wall and almost slipped. Adrenaline shot through him and he managed to catch himself. Straightening back up, he wobbled but threw his hands out to balance, then followed the top of the wall as it went toward the house next door. In a few steps, he was under the object of his rage. He grinned up at it. “I’ve got you now, you Tinkerbell motherfucker!”
~*~
Aziraphale frowned, staring at the corner of his house with some confusion. He’d just gotten back from a run to the shops when he noticed that his wind chime was missing. Putting down his bags, he shuffled his feet about in the leaves, thinking it had probably fallen the night before, though it had made it through a few windstorms in November without fail.
There was nothing in the leaves. Nor in the bushes. It was gone. Completely and without a trace!
Surely that meant only one thing: Someone had taken it!
“The nerve! The breach of-of neighborly trust! I can’t believe someone here would do this!”
~*~
The righteous tantrum of a plumy voice in a tizzy pulled Crowley up out of sleep. Sleep that had been a long and blissful eight hours. At fist he groaned, but then he pinpointed what the posh squawking was about and he grinned at the ceiling.
Later, he took great joy cutting the brass stars and cherubs apart from each other and dropping them into his trash. “‘Breach of neighborly trust,’” he mimicked in a Eton-infused accent between snips of his scissors. “Sure. And you’re loud-as-the-heavenly-host chimes aren’t a public bloody nuisance!”
The next day was bin day. Crowley sniggered to himself all the way down the pavement as his bin made small tinkle sounds every time it’s small wheels hit a bump.
That was, until he looked up to see an angel at the kerb beside him, staring at him with grey (no, blue!) eyes. Crowley froze mid stride. This had to be the most gorgeous man he’d ever seen. Who was this?
“Hi,” he squeaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m Crowley. Moved in last month. Don’t think we’ve met.”
He stuck out his hand. And his bin hit the ground with a distinct jingle behind him.
The eyes that had snagged his attention a minute before squinted suspiciously above a neatly trimmed, but still curly, beard. He looked a bit like Santa and a putti cherub had a love-child. But then a wave of realization slammed into Crowley and he felt his heart jolt in panic.
NO. This WASN’T FAIR.
“Aziraphale,” the instantly recognizable voice said, but he didn’t take Crowley’s offered hand. “I live next door.”
They stared at each other for an excruciating few seconds, before Crowley was backing up his drive and yammering about getting rid of old Christmas décor and bells and how crazy that they hadn’t met yet! When he was a safe ten feet away, he turned and fled back inside, away from the death-glare of those gorgeous eyes.
~*~
It was Christmas Eve, and as he was wont to do on said holiday, Crowley was several glasses into a bottle of wine without having eaten anything. What the hell else did he have to do, really? No family to speak of.
He was annoyed with himself, and was talking at his houseplants about it.
“The- the sheer AUDACITY OF IT!” He claimed, waving his glass at the gigantic, shiny leaves of a monstera. “Of him to be so-so-so damn adorablll!” He wobbled a bit where he perched on the arm of a chair. “With the CHEEKS ‘n’ the blond CURLS ‘n’ the little way his nose tilts up at the end! Who gave him the RIGHT?” The wobble became a tilt and he sank onto the seat, wine sloshing as his butt hit the cushion. Draining the rest, he clutched the glasswear to his chest with one hand and reached up to grope at an imagined softness in the air above him as his voice dropped from a crowing to a rumble. “And those THIGHS!”
It was true, Crowley had been unable to stop wondering about his neighbor for the better part of the week. It was to the point he couldn’t tell if he hated him or if he wanted to know what those pouty lips tasted like. He stared at the ceiling for a good ten minutes, trying not to feel pathetic about it, then rolled out of the chair and onto his feet with the weird acrobatic grace of a drunk man. “How very DARE he?!” He growled.
With a deep sigh, he slunk into the kitchen and dramatically draped himself across his kitchen island to get to the last glass worth of wine in the bottle. Mid-pour, he paused.
Was that?
NO.
~*ting ting ting*~
“No. No, you don’ get to ge’way with it just ‘cause you’re cute, Angel!” He straightened, suppressing a sudden hiccough, then roared, “Thasss comin’ down too!”
~*~
Aziraphale was a little bit tipsy when he was dropped off from the office Christmas party at 9PM. There really was no way for him to get through the thing completely sober, after all, but he could at least get out of there before the drunken singing began, or Gabriel got buzzed enough to start making “good natured” gay jokes at him like last year.
As he climbed out of the car and waved goodnight to his overly generous secretary, Muriel, he was absolutely relieved to be home. He took a deep breath of frosty night air and smiled at the Christmas lights that bedazzled the street, reflecting off patches of water and ice and windows.
As lonely as the holiday season could feel sometimes, at least it was pretty. Now he could switch on the little electric heater he’d gotten himself (one that was made to resemble an antique cast iron wood burning stove), and tuck himself in to read a good book. A nice, quiet Christmas Eve. That’s what he wanted!
But then…
Next door, the light was on in the upstairs window, the shade half up. He saw someone moving around and wondered if it was that strange redhead he’d encountered on bin day, with the suspiciously tinkling garbage can.
Pinching his lips together, he gave in to his slightly drunken curiosity and stepped up to the street-end of the garden wall and peeked around, to better see in. It was a bit snoopy, but he couldn’t help himself. His neighbor’s odd behavior that day had nearly been as intriguing as the long, dark lines of him, though Aziraphale would be loath to admit it. Was it possible to develop a crush in the same instant you wanted to slap that same person? The funny sound he’d made when Aziraphale had leveled him with his accusatory glare had been rather…endearing.
And he still wondered about the missing wind chime. He had his suspicions, of course. In fact, he had picked up a new one. It was inside, on his kitchen counter, waiting for the next mild day. Tonight was calm, but there had been a bit of a snow storm in the afternoon earlier and he hadn’t wanted to go out in his party suit to simply put out a new decoration in that weather.
The object of Aziraphale’s pondering passed by the window in nothing but what looked like a pair of black satin sleep pants and an open black robe.
“Oh, dear Lord,” he whispered, shielding his gaze with a hand…before peeking back up again.
To his surprise, it looked as if the window was open. How odd.
A glass of wine held by an elegant hand came back into view. He tilted his head in an attempt to hear. Was he saying something?
“The- the sheer AUDACITY OF IT! Of him to be so-so-so damn adorablll! With the CHEEKS ‘n’ the blond CURLS ‘n’ the little way his nose tilts up at the end! Who gave him the RIGHT?”
“Blond curls?” Aziraphale repeated, touching his hair and then his nose. “Adorable?” He gasped in revelation.
And ran inside to get the wind chime and his ladder.
After giving the chime a good few shakes he fled back inside. He was hunkered down in his darkened window with a cup of cocoa, a tin of Christmas biscuits, and a tingling of anticipation in his belly. He had to know. He HAD to know if it had been this Crowley who had taken the last one. And if it was well, well…
…it would be an excuse to talk to him again at the very least.
~*~
Crowley was too drunk for this, but somehow he was managing to get back up on that wall. Just one more foot.
He’d had the forethought to grab his wool peacoat on the way out, but it was only on over his silk pants and robe and the freezing night air snuck inside to chill his skin at every movement. Billows of wine flavored moisture floated up from his mouth as he caught his breath from scaling the wall.
“Mountain goat. Mountain goat. Mountain goat,’ he mumbled like a mantra as he pulled himself onto his belly on the top of the cold, snow dusted bricks. “Ha!” He cried in victory as he gained his feet.
He found his balance and looked ahead, taking one swaying step forward, then another.
Funny. The air was calm. He hadn’t heard the annoying clanging and tinkling since the ones that had brought him outside. No matter. It was the principal of the thing, now!
His goal hung just ahead of him. A few steps and-!
The neighbor’s porch light flipped on.
Crowley’s head snapped to face it. Things went a tiddly-bit swimmy.
Crowley was too drunk for this.
“Oho… SHhiiit!”
~*~
Aziraphale dropped his biscuit.
His neighbor had just hauled himself up from the opposite side of the nine foot garden wall! This had not been what he’d been expecting at all!
He watched as the man wobbled up to his feet, mouth moving and apparently very concentrated. Then, once he straightened to his full height, a goofy smile a mile wide broke out over his features and he barked a laugh. Aziraphale had the completely daft urge to kiss him.
He must still be slightly tipsy.
The redhead’s arms went out, pinwheeling for a moment, and his coat fell open. Aziraphale absolutely did NOT ogle the pale swath of chest and stomach it revealed as it gaped.
The sway in his step made Aziraphale frown, and he remembered the wine glass in the hand in front of the window.
Oh dear. He should put a stop to this. He’d been expecting a ladder, or a cricket bat, not a drunk playing silly buggers!
Without stopping to think about it, he went to the door, switching on the pouch light, and stepped into his shoes.
The first thing he heard upon opening the door was a loud “SHIT!” Followed by a crash in the holly bushes.
The next, was a loud groan.
~*~
The last thing Crowley remembered was falling.
The first thing he became conscious of upon waking up, was that it sorta hurt to breathe. Oh, yep. And his back hurt. And his hips. And his head.
He moaned without opening his eyes.
How drunk had he gotten? Had me blacked out and tumbled down the steps? Surely he was too old to be making such amateur mistakes.
Someone was talking. To him.
“Oh thank God, you’re awake! I was about to call an ambulance!”
Crowley’s eyes popped open at that voice of all voices, and it all came flooding back: the wall, the chimes, the THIGHS. He wasn’t at home, and he wasn’t at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
He tried to sit up and a pair of gentle but firm hands grasped his shoulders and eased him back down.
“Don’t move. I brought you inside, but I probably shouldn’t have moved you.”
The hands went away and he found he missed them immediately. He opened his eyes again despite the headache and made out the blurry shape of a blond with hands clasped, bent over him where he lay on some cushy…sofa?
His eyes took a moment to focus. There was a small Christmas tree with sparkling lights over his neighbor’s shoulders and Crowley realized that he was in the man’s home. His softly lit, gingerbread scented, cozy, living room to be exact. The walls were covered in bookshelves, there was a record player, an out of date television, and one of those excruciatingly charming space heaters that looked like a wood stove.
Was that a mug of cocoa on the little coffee table? What Christmas storybook had he fallen into?
He made a noise, but it never morphed into a word.
The hands fretted in front of Aziraphale (that was the name, wasn’t it?) and Crowley attempted to wiggle his extremities to make sure they all still worked properly. It hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken.
“If it weren’t for that holly bush breaking your fall, you might have died!”
There was a warm hand touching him again. This time it was on Crowley’s forehead, pushing his hair back. It felt so good. How long had it been since he’d felt a friendly touch? Was he still drunk?
For a moment it felt like a caress, though the man was surely only checking for bumps.
He winced. Found one.
Aziraphale retrieved an ice pack for Crowley’s head and blanket for his shoulders to take the place of the now damp wool coat in an attempt to “make him more comfortable”. Then he helped him sit up while tutting at him.
“You didn’t even have any shoes on!”
Crowley stared at his pale, bare feet and skinned ankle now crusted with blood. That’s why it stung.
“Oh. Engh. Yeah. Idea was, makes it easier to climb,” he explained lamely, stretching his toes. Fuck, how humiliating. “Look. I should probably go-“
“Oh no you don’t! You aren’t going anywhere until I’m satisfied you haven’t suffered a major concussion. You were really out of it when I was carrying you in here.”
Crowley further embarrassed himself by emitting a squeak. He what? “Carried me in…?”
“Well how else was I meant to move you? Sprawled out half naked in my garden? A wheelbarrow?”
Crowley laughed weakly, surreptitiously eyeing Aziraphale’s arms with even more interest (and now a rising blush to add to his mortification) as he subconsciously pulled the blanket tighter over his already covered chest.
“Now, you stay right where you are, and I’ll go get some plasters and put on the kettle. It’s not recommended one sleep after suffering a blow to the head,” Aziraphale explained, bustling away.
“Blow. Right.” Crowley repeated dumbly, watching him go.
~*~
Aziraphale’s stomach was aflutter, and wasn’t that just ridiculous? What was he doing? He had to be imagining things.
From Crowley’s behavior so far, it was clear that the man had taken quite the knock to the noggin! It would take a miracle for somebody to look at Aziraphale like that anymore, especially not handsome redheads in silk pyjamas. He had to be imagining it.
But it was Christmas Eve and there had been ice patches on the roads, and the A&Es were always overflowing on holidays. If they went to a hospital, it would be all night before he was seen by a professional. Surely looking after him here would be preferable.
Not to mention, this had been Aziraphale’s fault. Well. Sort of.
He pulled the box of Band-aides and a bottle of paracetamol from the medicine cabinet in his downstairs bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His clothes and beard were disheveled from rushing out to carry a slightly wiggly body inside. He combed his fingers through his hair and beard, then paused as he went to straighten his lopsided bow tie.
But what IF handsome redheads in silk pyjamas COULD stare at him like that…?
Slowly, he pulled the tie open instead of fixing it, then one scandalous button at the top of his collar. He gave himself a bastardly smile he didn’t know he still had in him these days, and considered the sound Crowley had made when he’d told him how he’d been carried in by Aziraphale.
Pushing the soft, heather grey cardigan up to his elbows, he rolled up his sleeves.
What harm would it do? It was, after all, the season for miracles. Perhaps…?
~*~
Crowley watched over the back of the sofa as the angelic, strong, blond with soft, warm, gentle hands vanished down a hallway. He swallowed hard.
Once the figure disappeared he frantically eyed the room for clues of a partner before he even realized what he was doing.
“Don’t be so idiotic, of course he has a partner. Look at him!” He grumbled half audibly to himself when his eyes landed on a photograph on a side table that appeared to be of the man himself, a few years younger, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower with a Champaign flute.
Standing, he limped closer to it, worrying the corners of the blanket in his fingers.
They were probably the one to take that picture. Probably upstairs right now, wondering where the hell their boyfriend- husband?- went. Lookit you, you’re gorgeous.
It was positively stupid how much it made his heart hurt to think about. They’d just bloody met! It was as if sitting in this cozy, lived-in little house was bringing all the yearning and loneliness he’d been feeling in the past year to the forefront and magnifying it ten-fold until it blotted out the anger and anxiety that usually took up half of his brain. And probably any common sense he possessed as well.
When someone bustled into the kitchen at his back, he found himself covertly wiping at his eyes before limping back to the sofa to compose himself into something resembling nonchalant coolness. It was hard to do without his sunglasses and covered in the stinging cuts of a hundred holly leaves, but he tried.
Convinced now of Aziraphale’s unavailability, Crowley stretched into a lounge and decided to indulge the man’s insistence he stay for a while. Fuckit, what did he have to lose? It wasn’t as if his empty flat was going anywhere. He let the blanket fall open and tucked a fist under his chin. Why not have a bit of fun? It was Christmas Hols, after all. Flirting was less intimidating when he already knew the rejection was coming.
There was the sound of a kettle clunking onto the hob and Aziraphale reappeared with a bottle of pills and a box of plasters. He paused, staring at Crowley’s changed position before blinking and placing the things on the coffee table.
“You’re looking… more comfortable.”
“So’re you,” he replied, letting his eyes track from the now draped tie to the bare forearms. “Where were you in a bow tie on Christmas Eve? A date?”
Aziraphale’s eyes rolled to the heavens briefly and a little huff issued from his lips before he caught himself. Crowley assumed he was looking up through the ceiling to his bedroom where his likely partner was asleep. “I wish,” he muttered. “No. A work do. Not very interesting. But enough of that. What were you doing on my garden wall?”
Crowley didn’t like the sound of that. Was this man not being appreciated-
Then his brain caught up to the conversation and his arm dropped. He sat up a bit straighter.
“Hold up, you’re wall? That’s a shared wall, I would think.”
The blond crossed his arms stubbornly. “It marks the property line and is on my side of it.”
Crowley squawked. “Then why did my landlord have me clear all the sodding ivy off my side when I moved in? It took three days!” The volume of his own indignant voice put a lance through his skull and he winced, bringing a palm up to the bump on the side of his head. Before he knew it, Aziraphale was perched on the edge of the sofa beside him.
“Oh, I am sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to work you up. Here, lie down.”
And those hands were on him again, maneuvering and soothing and Crowley followed their guidance despite himself. Soon he was on his back and he knew this was no dream for sure, because if it were, the hands wouldn’t have left after he had become vertical. But Aziraphale was withdrawing, retreating again to the kitchen, where the kettle was starting to whistle.
~*~
Aziraphale had NOT been expecting to return to the sight of the redhead lounging seductively on his sofa. Now he was genuinely confused. Before, Crowley had been all sweet awkwardness, but now he was undressing Aziraphale with his eyes? Which way would things go next? At least it was an answer though, he supposed, to weather the man found him attractive. But now that he knew conclusively, why was he MORE nervous about it? Oh, confounded brain!
He pondered these things while making two teas, and then filled another oversized mug with some of the warm water and pulled a clean flannel from the drawer.
This time when he returned to the den, Crowley resembled more the fainted maiden than the Lothario, arm brought up to cover his eyes, body draped over the cushions. The position did offer a rather uncensored view of his slim chest and torso, however, and Aziraphale allowed himself another moment to appreciate that before placing the mugs down.
Dipping the flannel and wringing it, he sat on the opposite end of the sofa and gently lifted Crowley’s feet into his lap. The man made a few confused noises, but didn’t fight him.
“Tell me if I hurt you…” he instructed softly.
If he had looked up, he would have noticed a blush move down Crowley’s neck as he peeked out from under his forearm at those words.
Carefully, Aziraphale wiped away the brick dust and dirt and dried blood from the soles of Crowley’s feet and his scraped ankle. His thumb slid back and forth over the thin skin on the top of one as he rinsed the cloth.
“Where there any other abrasions?”
~*~
THIGHS Crowley’s brain supplied unhelpfully in neon flashing lights as Aziraphale cradled his feet in his lap. “Thighs,” his even less helpful mouth agreed in a murmur.
“What?”
“What?” Crowley dropped his arms from his face in order to pull himself up onto his elbows and stare for a moment like a complete mollusk. “Yeah. No. Yeah. Just checking.” He wiggled his hips demonstratively as if feeling for injuries again as Aziraphale raised a quizzical brow. “Couple nicks in the ribs region, I suspect. Mostly bruises. Nothing life threatening.”
Aziraphale was staring at his shimmying hips. “Want me to check your back?”
That had not been the blond’s timbre a moment ago. It was deeper, and it made Crowley freeze like a deer in headlights as a shiver went up his spine. That was a innuendo . That was definitely a FLIRT. Crowley’s brain finally rebooted and he smirked. His shoulders relaxed and he brought himself smoothly up into a sitting position opposite Aziraphale.
“Do you make it a habit: rescuing half naked men from your holly bush?”
“Not often, no.” The angel replied, sporting a tiny smirk of his own.
“Does your partner know?” Crowley purred inquisitively.
The spell on the blond’s voice broke, replaced with a hesitation. “P-Partner?”
“Yeah, the one that doesn’t take you on dates?”
Aziraphale’s forehead pinched with confusion.
The redhead lost his own flirty confidence then, also confused. “The one… you went to Paris with?” He flapped a hand in the general direction of the photo with some irritation.
“Crowley…I, I don’t have a partner. That’s a photo booth at the art museum.”
There was an excruciatingly awkward pause where they stared across the two foot distance between them.
Finally, Crowley broke the silence with a very quiet: “Does that mean you’re… taking applications?”
Another pause, then they were both lunging for each other at the same time.
Their foreheads collided with an audible THUNK and they surged backward just as quick, now holding their heads and howling discontent for a moment before dissolving into laughter. They laughed for an unreasonable amount of time, another round starting up every time they looked at each other.
“Sorry if I’ve buggered-up your Christmas plans, Angel.” Crowley apologized, passing over the ice pack from earlier. He watched Aziraphale’s cheeks pink. “‘S all right if I call you that?” He added, feeling dumb for letting it slip.
“I…l don’t mind. And I didn’t really have any. Christmas plans.”
“No?”
“No.”
Crowley drew out a few unnecessary vowels and Aziraphale bit his lip in anticipation as to where it was going.
“D’ya want some?” It came out more as a sigh, and the hopeful little smile on Crowley’s lips was downright charming.
“I’d love some.”
“Brilliant. There’s one thing first though,” he whispered, leaning in.
“What’s that, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, tipping his head to meet him.
Crowley’s smile had gone lascivious in nature as he cocked a seductive brow. Aziraphale inched forward as if he was being offered a naughty secret.
“Would you mind awfully,” Crowley purred, “….taking down that God damn wind chime? I can still hear it through the window.”
“You absolute fiend!” The blond exclaimed, rearing back and tossing a throw pillow into his chest.
Crowley grinned, wide and toothy and a little bit crooked. Azriaphale had that overwhelming urge to kiss him again.
So, this time, he did.