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There was a garden where there shouldn’t be. Crowley frowned up at the apple tree as it reached towards the skylight of the bookshop that was, for the moment, the world.
On the other side of the tree, Aziraphale shifted, shoulders forward, hands at his sides. A battle footing. Crowley recognised it. He looked at the floor, at the impossible leaves and vines in this impossible place, and he waited for Aziraphale to make a plan.
But Aziraphale said, “So. What do you want?”
Crowley turned his head, blinking at him.
“Me? Why me?”
Crowley realised that Aziraphale was shaking.
“Because I only want one thing. And that’s not what this is about anymore.” A breath, an attempt at a smile that never even reached the edges of his lips. “What do you want, Crowley?”
You, Crowley thought. For a very long time, angel, all I’ve wanted was you.
But that’s not what this is about anymore.
“You know what I want,” Crowley said. It came out a bit strangled, a bit too soft. He met Aziraphale’s eyes for a moment, held his gaze, and then he breathed out hard. “But I want a real universe. I want people to have a real chance. I want Free Will to be a real thing.”
Aziraphale was closer to him now. Crowley didn’t know if he had moved or if Aziraphale had, but they were closer now. He could see the lines of Aziraphale’s face tightening, the grief settling in the bones of him.
He swallowed hard, half-choking, but he forced the words out anyway.
“People deserve the chance to live in the real world.” He kept breathing. This was the crux of it. “Even if there are no angels. No demons.”
Aziraphale was still standing still, still watching him, half-nodding and for once not talking, just letting Crowley talk, just letting Crowley stand in front of him and want.
“No us,” Crowley said, and he saw the words hit Aziraphale in the sternum, watching with his heart in his throat as Aziraphale turned away, “ever again.”
For a few long moments, all Crowley could see was the heaving of Aziraphale’s shoulders and the shaking of his hands, and the apples. He thought of what he’d done last time Aziraphale had turned his back to him, thought of the way he’d crushed their mouths together in some desperate last-ditch attempt to make Aziraphale stay with him, to make him understand.
He couldn’t do that this time. It hadn’t worked before anyway. So he waited, counted the seconds, and he thought of Eden.
“Did I say the wrong thing?” Crowley asked eventually. Something of a joke, pitched low and easy. It hit its mark.
Aziraphale laughed, soft and brutal. When he turned back, he was smiling. It reached his eyes. He laughed again.
“I believe we’ve come to a decision.”
“But you said you wanted-” Crowley started, because this was about the two of them. It had always been about the two of them, and only one of them had weighed in. Crowley wouldn’t make this decision alone, wouldn’t back Aziraphale into a corner that neither of them could get themselves out of. “That you only want one thing.”
“Yes.”
“I think I know,” Crowley said slowly. “Or maybe I hope I do. We never really got through talking about it, and I just—”
“You,” Aziraphale said with a full-body sigh. He looked like someone had taken the air out of him, cut his strings. He said it with the finality of someone with one foot in the grave, like he’d been handed a death sentence and was finding his last words. “The only thing I want, my dearest, is you.”
It wasn’t a death sentence, Crowley realised. It was a resurrection.
Crowley stepped towards him, reached for him. He went to take his hand, first — something familiar, something safe, something they knew how to do — but Aziraphale looked so small and so, so tired, so Crowley changed course.
Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders, and he heard the way Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat. For a split second, it was just Crowley holding Aziraphale, feeling him warm and soft and alive against him, and then Aziraphale held him too.
It was too tight. It was desperate. And then it wasn’t. Aziraphale’s hands went from clinging to his back to resting on his waist. The rigid way he’d been holding himself relaxed, and he rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder as Crowley slid a hand into his hair.
“I do, you know,” Aziraphale said quietly.
“You do what?”
A hum, a stroke of Aziraphale’s thumb along the line of Crowley’s hip.
“Love you,” Aziraphale said.
“Angel,” Crowley said, pulling back and twisting to look down at him just as Aziraphale reached up to press his hands to either side of Crowley’s face, to stroke gently at his jaw and the lobes of his ears, to stretch onto his toes and press a kiss, soft, to Crowley’s lips.
This was what it should have been. It always should have been soft. Crowley was very glad to know that it could be, that for right now, it was.
“I’m sorry I never said,” Aziraphale muttered between kisses.
“S’okay,” Crowley said against his mouth. “I didn’t either. And I do, too, tell me you know that.”
“I know,” Aziraphale said, still kissing him. “I know.”
When they broke apart, they both were breathing unsteadily. Crowley’s fingers had gotten tangled in Aziraphale’s hair. He took a moment to untangle them.
“So.” Crowley ran his hand down Aziraphale’s shoulder, down his back. “What I want to happen next, that’s. Erm. You know.”
“It means no ‘us,’” Aziraphale said shakily. “Yes.”
“That’s a lot to give up,” Crowley said. “Too much, maybe. I don’t want you going blindly into the void with me, angel. Not if it’s not what you want. I want to give them a chance, but you… you don’t have to want that, too.”
Aziraphale swallowed thickly, looking back at the apple tree and down at Crowley’s shoes.
And then, softly, “How long do you think we’ve got? Before they come looking.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Is there… is there Time here, do you think?” There was a spark in Aziraphale’s eye now, a twist to his lips that Crowley recognised as a portent of some new scheme.
“Dunno,” Crowley said, “hang on, let me see.”
Crowley had always had a handle on time (sometimes physically). He had a sense for it, knew where the strings of it lay and what it took to pull on them. But as he reached for them now, searching for the threads in that endless stream, he didn’t find them.
“Angel,” Crowley said slowly, “what are you thinking?”
“We are outside of time, aren’t we,” Aziraphale said, looking exceedingly pleased with himself. “I thought we might be.”
“Angel.”
“I want to be with you,” Aziraphale said, and he sounded steadier now than he had since they’d appeared in front of this blessed-damned tree. “And I also think, or perhaps I know, that you’re right about it. About all of it.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I want them to be free too, Crowley. Of course I do. But I also want… well. I suppose I just want a little more time with you.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing here,” Crowley said, but the heat wasn’t in it now.
“We are,” Aziraphale said. “Just. Us.”
“For how long?” Crowley found himself asking. “There’s no restaurants, angel. No shops to pop to for another bottle of wine, another box of teabags. There’s just this, for how long?”
“Until we’re ready,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley took a moment and looked at him, at the curves and softness of his face and body, at the bowtie that was slightly askew beneath his chin. He looked at the faded, worn-in texture of his waistcoat, at the gold chain that had sat so faithfully against the swell of his belly for so many decades. And then Crowley looked him in the eye, and he understood. They could have this. They could be. And it wouldn’t be perfect, or even enough, but it would be theirs.
“Cup of cocoa, angel?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale smiled.