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In the beginning there was light….
In tha
In the beginning there was matter and
It begins with lov-
Crowley scratched out every word he had written before he threw the pen over his shoulder with a frustrated snarl and a clanking, shattering noise stirred up the silence behind him a mere second later. He assumed the flying pen has ended up knocking over a vase, breaking it in the process.
He made a vague mental note to add said vase to the already endless list of all the things that needed fixing now. And creating! The truth was, absolutely everything needed fixing and creating, which stirred up the question of how one might fathom exactly how much everything is? And how much of it would take up a page or a word and could any of it even be expressed in writing at all?
Well, God did it once; can’t be that hard, then.
“What did you do that for?!”
Aziraphale’s high-pitched voice burst through the empty bookshop, hammered against the glass windows and then evaporated within the great Nothing that lay beyond them.
Strange thing to look at, really, Nothing. It stretched out before them with certain infinity and yet with his eyes surely fixed on it, if asked, Crowley would never be able to describe the sight.
The utter lack was beyond any word he knew. But then, given another thought, it was also exactly the one, simple word that had been perched on the tip of his tongue since the very beginning of the end of everything:
nothing.
This Nothing looked like absolutely nothing at all.
“I need a new pen.” Crowley said, not looking up before he also threw the book he was holding into a far-off, dark corner. This time though only a carpet-y thud followed suit, which disappointed him slightly.
“What? Another one? This is the fourth one you’ve tried and then thrown. They’re all perfectly ordinary and functional fountainpens. Whatever might be the problem?”
Aziraphale’s tone was accusatory but not sharp. Crowley could hear the headless worry in his voice though, and it made his skin crawl with the same neediness he had known for as long as he could remember. He had to fix this, he had to fix them. Crowley needed to erase the Nothing that surrounded them and fill it out with everything, if only so that Aziraphale wouldn’t have to worry another second of his life.
“It’s not the right one, I can feel it. Can’t write the new book of life with the wrong pen, now can I? Also need a new book too, while we’re at it.”
He swung his legs off from where they had lain on Aziraphale’s writing desk and started pacing around the bookshop.
“Well, do help yourself, we’ve got plenty of empty pages waiting to be filled around here.” Aziraphale mused absentmindedly as Crowley developed the sudden desire, the desperate need of wanting to stare at his angels’ curly, blonde head.
Which is precisely what he did as he stopped his pacing and looked over to where Aziraphale was sat in his favourite armchair. The familiar sight would’ve struck his heart like thunder and lightning, but weather didn’t exist anymore and so all Crowley was left with was a plethora of emotions he could neither name nor articulate.
He also couldn’t stop staring.
Aziraphale’s reading glasses sat low on his nose and there was a steaming cup of cocoa on a small table next to him. The gentlest of smiles played on the angels’ lips while he wrote and wrote and wrote away into the empty book that was sat atop his thighs.
It was here where Crowley had to come to the unfortunate conclusion that although everything had been erased, there was still a universe gathered and breathing and beating within the small confines of his heart. It had followed them into the bookshop at the end of creation, that heart of his, and it had lost none of its vigour.
Crowley sighed aggressively.
And then he swayed his hips over to where Aziraphale was being his most ordinary, most adorable self and sat himself down on the armrest of the angel’s armchair; creating a closeness between them that made the dust-ridden air of the bookshop oddly fizzy with anticipation.
“What are you writing about, angel?” Crowley asked.
Upon fleeing into the bookshop at the end of everything a small while ago, they had agreed to try and reboot whatever they could by turning this world of empty books into life and matter and life again. But Crowley’s head was spinning and his heart had strained for so many years, now that he was close to his angel again, the wound just would not let itself be told to quit hurting. And surely, rebooting the universe with nothing but a broken heart to draw from was not the most sensible position he could be in.
Not that Crowley ever wanted to be known as someone who is sensible.
Aziraphale squirmed slightly, once he seemed to have realised how far Crowley had suddenly moved into his personal space, and the hand that was eagerly writing away before was now frozen in place, leaving an unfinished swirl of ink to dry on gilded paper.
“Ostriches.” Aziraphale replied tersely and Crowley’s right brow shot up from behind his glasses towards his hairline immediately.
“Ostriches? Why on earth did you start with ostriches?”
Aziraphale squirmed even more, then, and finally put the pen down and snapped the book shut as though he was too embarrassed to allow Crowley to read whatever it was about ostriches he had written down already.
“It’s quite simple, when you think about it.”
Aziraphale took his reading glasses off and neatly folded them before placing them on the table next to where the cocoa was still steaming away peacefully. And then he looked up at Crowley, with his blue eyes and that sticky-sweet expression that always clung to the (former-) demon as soon as it landed on him.
Crowley had missed that too and he wished Aziraphale would never tear his eyes away from him ever again. But then the angel got up from his armchair, put his book on the cushion and walked across the room without a clear aim before he started speaking again.
“Rebooting the universe from memory is not something you do every day and so I thought, what would the Almighty do? But then, we do know what the Almighty would do, Her doing is precisely the reason why we’re here. And that’s no good at all, is it? And so, then I thought, what would the Almighty not do.”
Crowley considered his words while he grabbed the book that Aziraphale had left behind as the angel continued his monologue about feathered creation.
“Ostriches can’t fly and I’ve always wondered, are they not sad? Having to look up at the sky, spreading wings that would not lift them off the ground while all the other birds are soaring through the clouds with abject grace. And thus, what good is it to let the Almighty’s ostrich be sad when I have the power to change that now?”
Aziraphale had stopped pacing in the middle of the bookshop and looked at Crowley with an impregnable layer of anxiety sprawled all over his pretty face. He wiped his hands nervously on his coat, too, the way he always did when there was something boiling within him that frightened him too much to let it be spoken aloud.
Crowley knew, of course, that none of what he had said about ostriches had ever been the actual thing he wanted to talk about, but it had rarely been Crowley’s style to really poke the angel where he suspected the truth might actually be hidden. No, for that they needed to talk and that was the one thing they weren’t good at, despite the billions of words that had already been shared between them. But that was then and what good had then ever done him?
“What about penguins?” Crowley asked, while his fingers rubbed up and down the clothbound spine of Aziraphale’s abandoned book about flying ostriches.
“What about them?” Aziraphale asked in return, as though Crowley’s question wasn’t born from an obvious deduction.
“Are you going to fix their flightless existence too?” Crowley offered and Aziraphale’s expression fell into even deeper pits of the anxious ocean he seemed to be drowning in.
“I haven’t really thought about it.” Aziraphale confessed with a pout.
This drew a smile from Crowley that barely moved the corners of his mouth, but the sensation overwhelmed him, nonetheless. There hadn’t been a single honest smile since Aziraphale had left him.
“Why don’t you start literally anywhere else before you start fixing the imaginary insecurities of flightless birds, angel?”
Something changed, then, the fizzy air around them became dense and Aziraphale’s anxiety morphed into sudden frustration. The angel threw his arms up ever so animatedly and looked at Crowley with frantic eyes.
“Where would you suggest I start, pray tell? There has to be something I can do right in this world, when I have already ruined heaven and humanity and-… and all of creation, but who’s counting now? And when… when I have already failed-“ Aziraphale’s voice broke into a desperate sigh that dug into Crowley’s heart with urgency.
“When I have already failed to fix what matters the most, Crowley.”
Wet blue eyes were staring at the (former-)demon now; wet blue eyes that were threatening to wet the round, rosy cheeks that sat below them. There was an impulse growing inside him to run away, to cower at the first sight of an honest conversation but there was literally nowhere to go and besides, the last thing Crowley wanted to do is to be parted from Aziraphale ever again.
If the last three years had taught him anything then it was precisely that truth. The absolution of knowing that there was no him without Aziraphale, that his existence cannot be complete without him and it had always been that way. For as long as he could remember, the essence of him reached into the essence of the angel and it was there where his beating heart was drumming its rhythm. Their connection is his lifeline and without it?
Without it the universe was far emptier than the raging Nothing outside the bookshop could ever be.
Now the question has always been, whether Aziraphale was willing to open his eyes to that truth too, because there was no doubt in Crowley’s mind that the angel felt the same way. But he had to choose it. He had to choose to see the truth and the last time Crowley had begged him to, Aziraphale had walked away.
Crowley slumped down into the armchair before he dared raising his voice.
“And what’s that?”, was all he managed to say, looking at Aziraphale from where he was sitting, clutching the book of flying ostriches in his hands and hiding wet, yellow eyes behind black tinted glasses.
“Us, Crowley. I still haven’t fixed us. And I just don’t know how-…”
His voice broke away again, desperation cutting through the syllables like ragged daggers. Aziraphale sighed with a shaking chest and the white curls on his head seemed to have paled into a sad grey.
“I don’t know where to start.”
Crowley rolled his eyes with such dedication, that his neck moved with them although his annoyance lay with himself more so than with the angel. He was tired of wanting an apology from Aziraphale. For three years he has wanted it, had wanted nothing else but to reconcile with the one he loved and the way that want tasted on his tongue now, how it spread out into his throat and flowed into the depth of his stomach made him want to vomit.
He’d choose the tragic bliss of a drunken slumber over the taste of his own desperation any day.
But still he needed it and Aziraphale needed it, too. If there was any way forward for them from the end of creation, then only by building that bridge.
Crowley slumped down further into the cushion of Aziraphale’s armchair, his long legs had fallen open, and he tried to look unbothered, but he knew he looked as pathetic as he felt.
And yet, there was hope! But alas Crowley was so dreadfully frightened of it.
He waved one of his hands in the vague direction of where Aziraphale was currently overthinking his own mind into a frenzy.
“Anywhere is fine with me.” Crowley said, giving Aziraphale an opening, careful not to lead him on because the last thing Crowley wanted was for his futile bit of hope to conclude in further disappointment.
He really didn’t think he could survive having his heart broken a second time. Then the Nothing out there would have to swallow him whole, if it came down to it. He really, really hoped it wouldn’t come down to it though.
“Very well then.” Aziraphale’s voice had regained a sense of calmness that had been absent previously. He wrung his fingers, brushed the wrinkles out of his pristine coat and then:
“I love you, Crowley.” said the angel matter-of-factly.
Then, silence erupted drastically, engulfing them and raising the noise of Crowley’s heartbeat to the point where it seemed to be hammering against the insides of his ears.
That’s really not where he thought Aziraphale would start nor was it the point where he had allowed himself to hope where the angel might have ended up. And the discrepancy was frying something in his brain that was wholly beyond his control.
“Ngk.” answered the demon and Aziraphale appeared to be somewhat satisfied with that response before he continued speaking.
“I love you and I need you to forgive me for not saying it sooner. Not with those words, anyways, because I was a coward, Crowley. A ghastly, stupid angel is what I was-“
“You’re not that bad, really.” Crowley mumbled.
“- and I know you tried to warn me about heaven but how could I not at least try to make a difference? You taught me to be brave and I thought I had finally been given real power to do good. I needed to use that power to try to save the humans from heaven once and for all and I needed to try to save heaven from itself, too, and even more so I needed you by my side to do it but these last few years I realised why it is that you refused and I also realised that none of it was what you needed and really, Crowley, in the end, that’s- … what you need is all that matters. You need to be you, not an angel, not anything but you and I dread to think that whatever I said or did ever made you believe that being you is not what I need as well. I need us, Crowley! I need us to be us. Because you are the only one I have ever-”
Aziraphale’s rosy cheeks were tear stained.
“and far more than heaven and God and earth and people and, and- and food and wine and books and-… you are the only one I have ever truly loved.”
Crowley was entirely frozen in place. He wasn’t even sure whether he had fused with the armchair cushion or not or whether he would have to live a life as a mindless but comfortable piece of furniture from now on; that’s how empty his head felt. And his body refused to budge until upstairs would give it an order to do so.
“Well, are you not going to say anything?” Aziraphale asked with an unsteady voice.
Some time must’ve passed since Crowley’s brain had crashed but somehow, with great effort, he finally managed to un-crash it so that he could also un-fuse his limbs from the armchair cushions and stand up at last.
There had been tears welling up from the yellow of his eyes, too, although they were unable to spill down his cheeks because his glasses contained them; and there was some part of him that feared that the water might rise and rise to the point where his eyes drowned entirely.
Can eyes drown? he wondered. They must, otherwise they’d be the last things left alive if the rest of me went swimming. But that’s lunacy, what’s the use of seeing anything or anyone if you can’t feel for them too?
With tear-blurred vision Crowley managed to saunter over to where Aziraphale had been waiting for an answer to his heartfelt confession and he only stopped once he got so close that a single step more would’ve had the two of them colliding.
It was in that closeness where Crowley suddenly remembered a different taste to the one of his own desperation; the taste of Aziraphale’s lips. And he grew more famished the wider that taste spread out on his tongue and in his memory.
Pretty angel, he thought. Stupidly, pretty angel.
The air around them was fizzy again.
“I understand if you can’t find it in your heart to do so, Crowley, but I am asking you to forgive me. The Nothing out there could never frighten me as much as the dread I felt on the day I left you and every day thereafter.”
He really couldn’t stand watching Aziraphale cry.
While he was gambling and drinking his car and brain and days away, he had sometimes convinced himself that seeing his angel suffer would in any way make up for all the pain Aziraphale had caused him.
Needless to say, Crowley had been thoroughly mistaken, in fact he had been so mistaken that the realisation struck him rather fiercely just here and then. He now knew much he would sacrifice and how far he would go to never, ever have to see Aziraphale cry ever again.
And thus, Crowley did the only thing he could think of to stop his and Aziraphale’s tears; he wrapped his arms around his angel.
Aziraphale’s hands had clutched Crowley’s lapels as soon as he had been drawn closer and his tear-stained cheek was then pressed against the part of Crowley’s chest beneath which his heart was being mended.
Curly, white hair tickled Crowley’s chin.
Aziraphale was so soft and warm in his arms, that he felt like he had reached into the sky and buried himself within the most gorgeous of all the sun kissed clouds that ever existed but then, he knew, that this must not be the truth of what he was feeling at all but something else entirely.
Crowley, for the first time in his long life, felt complete.
“I forgive you.” Crowley said. “And I’m sorry too.”
A sob broke through Aziraphale and Crowley held him even tighter.
The Nothing outside ceased to exist and the vanished universe they had birthed so long ago hardly mattered any longer, if the universe that was them, that was between and all around them, at last, was breathing life.
After a while – or a millennium or perhaps all of time itself – Aziraphale carefully freed himself from Crowley’s embrace; leaning back far enough to look up at his demon but not so far that he’d have to let go of him completely. The angel’s hands were still clutching Crowley’s lapels and there was a smile on his lips that made his teeth shine as bright as any sun Crowley had ever created and Crowley felt how his own mouth was helpless to not follow suit instantly.
“May I?” Aziraphale asked, nodding upwards at Crowley’s face.
And Crowley knew his small silence would be understood as consent and thus with careful fingers, Aziraphale let go of the demon’s lapels and reached for the glasses behind which an ocean of tears – at least Crowley assumed that this were to happen – was waiting to be spilt.
“Now that we’ve cleared up that old mess, I was wondering-…there you are-“ Aziraphale said as he gently pushed the glasses off Crowley’s nose and dropped them on the soft carpet beneath their feet.
“I was wondering if you could do the thing again, please.”
Crowley’s heart broke with fullness as he watched Aziraphale’s smile grow impossibly wider as soon as he was staring into the wet, yellow of Crowley’s naked eyes.
The air in the bookshop wasn’t just fizzy now, it was alite; sparkling as though a billion diamonds had been drizzled in starlight and flung into the atmosphere.
“The thing?” Crowley huffed; amused.
“Yes, the-“
Aziraphale pressed his fingers against his mouth and then he laid them on Crowley’s lips for a small, lingering second before letting them drop back down to rest on Crowley’s chest.
“That thing.” Aziraphale offered.
Crowley smiled a smile that only reached one half of his mouth. He thought it would come off as rather smug but in reality, it looked just a bit sad.
“I didn’t think you liked that thing.” Crowley said, watching Azirphale’s brows furrow immediately.
“Well, if you do try to remember correctly, that is not at all what I said and furthermore the timing-“
But Crowley cut the angel off before he could ramble any further and finally, finally kissed him.
This time, when he pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s, there was no sadness, no desperation and there was no angel in his embrace that struggled and fell apart.
No, Aziraphale had melted completely and kissed him back with such sincerity that Crowley had to steady himself so that his knees would not fold beneath him.
They were sweet and shy. They had no practice and not yet an idea of where to take this, but when Crowley tried pulling away for a tiny bit of air, Aziraphale chased after him with an open mouth.
Crowley found that he had never tasted anything sweeter than having Aziraphale devour him.
What a fantastic idea, kissing! Silly humans really never fail with all the things they invent to show one another their love.
Kissing Aziraphale was pure bliss and the memory of a rigid, frightened, crying angel disappeared. All Crowley decided to remember from here on out is what it feels like to be loved by Aziraphale, to be loved in every way that has and will ever exist.
Unfortunately though, there did come the point where one of them pulled away but Crowley had already made a mental note to revisit this new hobby they shared as soon as possible.
“Vavoom.” Crowley mumbled.
They hadn’t separated completely, their arms were still wrapped around one another, their universe was still as small and as endless as their embrace.
“Well, I guess you know what they say, good things come to those who are late.” Aziraphale offered and Crowley huffed in return.
“Wait, angel, good things come to those who wait.”
And Aziraphale’s smile didn’t falter, bliss was spread out on his pretty face and Crowley decided that bliss rather suits him more than anything else.
“Exactly.” said the angel.
“What do we do about all this, then?”
Crowley nodded towards the Nothing that still reigned as empty as ever beyond the wooden doors of their bookshop.
“We keep writing of course. Like we said, if we can remember it, we can bring it back and we can give all those people and animals and skies and stars their lives back. And then we can finally live in peace, on our terms, Crowley.” Aziraphale answered and there was a part of Crowley that would love to simply agree but he finally realised why any word he had tried putting down earlier had escaped his imagination.
It was the tangled mess that had been strung between him and his angel, yes, but there was also something far more omnipresent lurking in the back of his mind.
“What about Her, angel?”
Crowley took a step back and at last ended their embrace, before he walked back to the armchair to pick up Aziraphale’s tale of the flying ostrich.
“If we bring the universe back as we remember it, won’t all of this just start again? Will She not resume her own final page? How do we know this wasn’t her plan all along?”
Aziraphale’s stunning smile had made room for a contemplating frown that Crowley couldn’t help but resent. Hope is what they needed, what Crowley needed, and yet he struggled with conjuring the damn thing amongst all this desperation.
“I rather think that it doesn’t matter anymore.” Aziraphale said after an eternity of silence that had felt like a mere second.
And when the angel saw confusion arise on Crowley’s face, he continued speaking.
“It’s our choice now, Crowley. We are writing, we are creating.”
Listening to his angel’s conviction soothed his worrying mind somewhat but still doubt persevered. To prove a point to himself, Crowley opened the book he was holding and flipped through the pages until he landed on the one that had Aziraphale’s writing in it.
“The flying ostrich.” Crowley read aloud and Aziraphale hummed in agreement.
Footsteps echoed through the silence of their bookshop.
“The most important thing now, and I do hope you agree, is that we do it together.”
Aziraphale had walked up to Crowley and there was a warm hand cupping his cheek and when Crowley looked down into blue eyes, he all but disintegrated within the warmth that he felt.
“What if it doesn’t work, angel? What if Heaven and Hell return and we end up in the exact same fucked Nothing. And- and what if we make the wrong decision then, what if we make the wrong decision now? All of this can’t have been for nothing.”
Crowley’s head spewed madness and the fear of the ineffable Almighty coming down to seek Her vengeance upon her own creation. The helplessness Crowley felt at the thought of Her taking Aziraphale from him ate away inside of him; leaving a darkness-ridden void in his mind that resembled the Nothing beyond the bookshop’s doors far too much.
“I do think that it can hardly get any more, as you say, fucked than it already is, my dear.”
Aziraphale grabbed the book that Crowley was holding and reached for the pen that lay on the table behind them. He started writing without hesitation and Crowley craned his neck to read the words as they appeared on the page.
In the beginning there was a bookshop and beyond it lay a garden that oversaw the universe. A sky full of stars reigned above that garden and those stars were brand new and unique and yet they were also exactly as old as the two entities of the bookshop remembered them to be.
Once Aziraphale had finished writing, they both looked outside at the same time, and they saw what was and what has always been from now on. Beyond the bookshop lay their garden.
Crowley smiled at Aziraphale openly because he saw in him the Everything they sought to recreate. It was right there, on the hills of his cheeks and in the vastness of his blue eyes and so Crowley reached for the angel’s hand and felt his heart skip a beat once their fingers were intertwined.
“Shall we take a peek?” Crowley asked, tipping his head into the direction of the front doors.
He saw that there was green pressed up against the glass.
“After you.” Aziraphale replied and thus together, their hands interlocked tightly, they made their way towards the Everything that had been Nothing at all and yet had always been exactly what they had written.
The doors opened into beauty and life.
Trees towered above their heads and flowers as big as lions bloomed across the horizon in every colour imaginable and yes, Crowley saw as he looked up, his stars had returned too.
He felt like crying again and he really did not want to cry again. It just gets embarrassing after the third time in a row, doesn’t it?
He clutched Aziraphale’s hand even tighter. A sense of endless possibility overwhelmed them and a question appeared between them that Aziraphale was smart enough to address immediately.
“We can’t change too much, right? We can’t really make the universe anew as we please.” Aziraphale said, looking up at the sky.
“No, they deserve a chance, angel. They all deserve to live the lives that have been taken from them. Their lives, their experiences, their memories. Otherwise, a hollow new world would be no world at all.”
Crowley’s eyes travelled upwards too, as a lone ostrich soared across the sky.
“But this one does look quite happy, you have to admit.” Aziraphale mused, still staring at the sky as the ostrich disappeared somewhere or anywhere, neither of them was sure how complete or endless this new/old reality was that Aziraphale had written into existence.
“Well, maybe some minor edits can be made.” Crowley said, prompting Aziraphale to meet his eyes again.
“Shades of grey, you mean?” offered the angel.
“Light and dark, the whole damn lot of them.” the demon replied.
So, at the end lay the beginning of everything and within it an angel and a demon.
“Aziraphale?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
And it began, as it always did and as it will always end, with love.