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Crowley couldn’t stop laughing, and even if he’d wanted to, all it took was one glance to the side, meeting Aziraphale’s eyes, to send him spiralling into laughter all over again, or rather reduce both of them into a helpless mess of giggles.
Going to the Ritz at least twice a month had become routine for them, and whenever they found themselves there, wrapped in the elegant atmosphere, exquisite food, and the soft sound of the orchestra in the background, they couldn’t help but think back to the dinner that had brought them even closer together, and therefore to the whole body swap incident.
Several months had passed since then, but the memory never failed to draw smiles across their faces. Aziraphale positively glowed in those moments, lit up with happiness, and perhaps, just perhaps, that was part of why Crowley adored those shared moments of complicity so much.
“I still can’t believe it!” the demon exclaimed, slapping a hand against the table.
“A rubber duck! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to immortalize that moment. I’d have a life-sized photograph hanging on one of my walls by now.”
“Well, that’s certainly one way to bring holiness into a demon’s home!”
Crowley shot him a mock-offended look from beneath his dark glasses, lowering them just enough for Aziraphale to saw his eyes, and the angel burst into laughter again.
The demon’s heart twisted tighter and tighter with that unbearable sense of comfort, or bliss— though he would never actually call it that. Never truly—that came from seeing his best friend so free and at ease being exactly who he was, without dogma choking down remarks like those, remarks that were so delightfully pleasing to Crowley’s demonic ears.
“You really are a little bastard, you know that, angel? I love you so much.”
Everything stopped at once.
Their laughter faded. Crowley didn’t dare to move.
He stared at Aziraphale helplessly, lips slightly parted in the latest wave of horror his own stupidity had inflicted upon him. He watched the angel’s gaze dart somewhere off to the side before dropping to his lap, where his hands had begun twisting together anxiously.
Then everything happened too quickly for Crowley to make sense of it anymore. Maybe Aziraphale had opened his mouth to reply. Maybe he’d remained trapped in the same stunned paralysis. Crowley couldn’t tell, because his mind had already gone into overdrive.
Turn into a snake and slither away? No. Too much attention from the humans, not to mention the risk to his own safety.
Stop time? Impossible. The angel would notice immediately.
I’m fucked. Now what?
Inside Crowley’s head, those moments stretched into entire eons. Stars could have shifted somewhere across the multiverse in the meantime; Earth might have completed a thousand revolutions around the sun...but in reality, only a few seconds had passed.
Crowley did the only thing he could think of. He tossed some money onto the table, rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, and avoided meeting Aziraphale’s eyes again after ruining such a perfect evening.
“I have to go, angel.”
He didn’t add anything else. He didn’t want to invent some pathetic excuse and lie to him, not to him. Nor did he wait for Aziraphale to answer. Crowley swept away by pure serpentine instinct, he fled as quickly as possible, his face burning with unnatural heat.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Crowley stormed into his flat like a hurricane, throwing his phone somewhere across the room and making his plants tremble in fear of terrible consequences. The demon didn’t even notice them, too consumed by his own disaster.
He grabbed fistfuls of red hair and called himself an idiot over and over again.
Then he looked up toward the ceiling. His sunglasses lay abandoned on the floor, and his large eyes, full of anguish, lifted upward more out of habit than anything else.
He couldn’t help speaking to Her, despite everything.
“You could’ve sewn my mouth shut while You were at it. At least I would’ve avoided saying idiotic things, and tempting one of your best angels!”
He let out a loud sigh, followed by a bitter laugh. He wished he could erase the moment entirely, but there was no taking it back. He couldn’t pretend it had merely been affection, because it was painfully obvious that it wasn’t. And he certainly couldn’t blame the alcohol when they’d barely finished a single glass of champagne.
The only one to blame is me. Stupid bloody serpent.
He glanced around desperately for a solution, and suddenly his earlier line of thinking came back to him.
Alcohol. Right. That’s what he needed.
A mountain of alcohol.
A short while later, he was seated with three, four, who even knew how many glasses of wine, and various other alcoholic concoctions spread out in front of him at one of his favourite pubs. It was a small but cozy place, unmistakably English, always packed with people the way pubs in Britain tended to be.
Crowley liked blending in with humans. He liked spilling his problems aloud under the illusion that someone might be listening, while fully aware anyone who overheard him would dismiss it as drunken rambling. It was safe that way. Besides, he was surrounded by the sounds of life, even if they were sometimes irritating, like someone singing off-key or speaking too loudly across the room. At least it was noise instead of the oppressive silence waiting for him back home.
And so the demon began, as he always did when drunk.
“I’m such an idiot! He told me I was going too fast… and what did I do? Stepped on the bloody accelerator again because my stupid forked tongue doesn’t know when to shut up!”
He drank again, and his vision began to blur.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this! And certainly not with words that sounded so painfully sentimental.
Love… what could he possibly know about that?
He knew desire. Lust. Attraction. And he knew that between him and the angel there was certainly attraction, because he was still a demon after all. But love should have been something entirely foreign to a damned creature like him. He should’ve found it revolting, the way he always claimed he did.
And yet he didn’t.
Of course he had to be different in this too.
Every single time he looked at Aziraphale, he thought he understood what love was, absurd and misplaced as it sounded. Crowley didn’t even know when it had happened. It simply had, sudden and unstoppable like the first violent rain.
Every moment he saw the angel smile, saw that same pure joy reach those clear sky-blue eyes, Crowley thought of love, and of how perhaps it couldn’t truly be something so terrible if it could transform his world and give him a reason to live.
He didn’t know when he’d first realized that the frantic beating of the red organ in his chest depended entirely on the other’s happiness. Maybe when they became friends and smiles became more common between them. Or perhaps during the first laugh they shared in the Garden of Eden.
But admitting that would’ve been madness.
Though this entire situation was madness.
“And of course he didn’t answer! I didn’t even give him time to breathe… and for what? Do I seriously think he could ever love me back?”
Him. His angel. A creature so pure, so kind, so radiant, with an empathy vast enough to extend even to the being least deserving of it in all creation.
Crowley already knew the answer.
He downed another glass, heavy sorrow settling inside him as he refilled it again with trembling hands and shining eyes.
Will he even want to speak to me anymore?
Would things be different between them now? Or would they pretend nothing had happened, the way they already had so many times over the centuries?
He swallowed the next drink even faster, his vision swimming, his thoughts growing lighter and lighter until the whole room spun around him.
Crowley let his head fall onto the table.
“I’m sorry, angel. I’m sorry I told you like that, but what else was I supposed to do?”
What else could I do, because I’m in love with you?
He closed his eyes, wanting to disappear completely into the warmth of the alcohol, surrendering himself to drunkenness rather than to his shattered heart.
He certainly wasn’t used to coming to St. James’s Park at that hour, and the silence of the night disoriented him for a while. But he didn’t want the noise of any pub, no music, not even his phone, which he’d deliberately left behind.
He sat alone on a bench—not the usual bench he shared with Aziraphale, that would’ve been too painful even for him—but another one he’d happened upon nearby. He’d been sitting there for who knew how long, red head bowed into his hands, alone with his thoughts as he cursed himself minute after minute.
Idiot. Stupid idiot. That’s what I am. See what you’ve done with that forked tongue of yours? You’ve lost your best friend. Now what, hm? You saw his reaction. You can’t lie anymore, and he’ll never want to speak to you again.
You’re just an idiot.
His mind was a master of punishment. Hell itself couldn’t compare. The noise inside his head was deafening, relentless.
He suddenly felt his sunglasses slip from his face, and for once he didn’t care if they shattered against the ground, but something stopped them before they hit the ground.
Or rather, someone.
A hand caught them just in time, and gently slid them back onto his face before settling beside him on the bench.
“What are you doing here? And how did you find me? I changed the bench.”
Crowley didn’t need to look up to know who that presence was. His heart would’ve recognised Aziraphale anywhere, even if he was also the source of all this torment.
“I’ve been trying to call you for two days! I checked your flat, and this was the next obvious place… besides, well, your new bench is only a few metres away from ours.”
Crowley straightened slightly and glanced around to confirm the angel was, annoyingly enough, correct.
“It’s not my new bench…”
He muttered.
Silence fell between them after that. Crowley finally risked another glance at Aziraphale and saw him twisting his hands together again, the same expression he’d worn back at the restaurant.
“Crowley…”
“Look, angel, just ignore what I said, alright? It’s not important.”
He cut him off before he could hear something that might completely destroy what remained of his heart. After all, what could he possibly expect? An angel loving a demon? Aziraphale would reject him, obviously. Maybe that was why Crowley had left his phone behind in the first place—why he hadn’t wanted to face him immediately afterward.
Bloody cowardice.
“It wasn’t true?”
Aziraphale’s voice trembled slightly, and Crowley frowned in confusion.
“Of course it’s true!”
He bit his tongue the instant afterwards. Damn impulsiveness.
“I’m just saying it doesn’t matter. We can keep being friends, the way we are, right? You don’t owe me anything, no need for some prepared speech about rejecting me, I already know that...”
“Crowley, you idiot!”
Aziraphale interrupted him so loudly it actually startled him. Crowley turned fully toward him and was met with the angel’s anxious expression.
“Look, I know I messed up, but...”
“Please shut up for a moment.”
Interrupted again, Crowley finally shut his mouth.
He watched as Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly. And when he opened them again, there was something different there now: determination softened by unmistakable tenderness.
“I feel the same way.”
“You… what?”
“You heard me.”
No. No, he had to be misunderstanding. Aziraphale probably meant affection. Fondness. Surely that was all. What else could the best angel Crowley had ever known, possibly feel for a ridiculous demon like him?
Oh, don’t be stupid. You’re imagining things.
"Of course you said that."
“Crowley.”
The angel said his name gently, quieting the spiralling chaos inside his mind.
Crowley looked at him again and saw those beautiful blue eyes shining like stars in the night sky—the brightest celestial thing he had ever seen.
Damn it, he was becoming unbearably romantic.
Then Aziraphale cupped his face with both hands and slowly reached for his sunglasses. Crowley let him.
The angel lowered them carefully, forcing their eyes to meet, and Crowley’s heart dropped at something he had never once dared to hope for.
“I’m saying that I love you too, in a romantic way. Did you really not realize?”
The demon’s yellow eyes widened impossibly further, and he froze there for several seconds while the warmth of Aziraphale’s hands remained against his face. Not restraining him, but cradling him, caressing him, cherishing him.
It felt impossible.
“You.love.me?”
Crowley searched his eyes and found nothing but sincerity there. Aziraphale finally let go of his face, his cheeks flushing in a soft, adorable pink.
“I love you so, my dear. Probably far too much.”
“It’s never too much.”
He managed to say it steadily, despite being on the verge of tears, though he’d already been crying for some time now, hadn’t he? The dampness on his face was surely just the evening air.
Aziraphale looked at him for a moment before suddenly pulling him into his arms, and Crowley melted against him, finally allowing himself the tears he’d been refusing to shed.
The angel pressed a kiss to the top of his head.
“I love you, my foolish demon. And you are wonderful.”
Crowley grumbled something incoherent into the fabric of Aziraphale’s coat and his intoxicating scent, but deep down those words touched something painfully soft inside him.
They stayed wrapped around each other in silence for a while before Crowley finally lifted his head. With courage he had no idea where he’d found, he pressed a quick kiss to Aziraphale’s cheek before immediately retreating again, heart racing wildly.
But Aziraphale smiled.
And Crowley knew he’d done the right thing.
So the demon relaxed once more, resting his head against the angel’s shoulder while Aziraphale held him close, never letting go for even a second.
“Can we sssstay here a little longer?”
“Of course, my dear.”
Crowley looked at him and saw happiness glowing across his face, the sort of joy usually reserved for beloved novels, his bookshop, or the evenings they spent together.
But now it shone through his entire being like a brilliant star.
“Though next time we come here, we’re going back to our bench.”
“Mmmh. Fine by me. Like I said, this one isn’t my bench.”
Aziraphale beamed and placed another soft kiss atop his head.