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“What do you want, Crowley?” he asked.
Crowley looked about the crowded, chaotic configuration of garden/bookshop. Of Crowley/Aziraphale. His movement was agitated.
“You know what I want,” he said, turning back to the angel.
Aziraphale waited, watching, the way one observes a bird that has just settled nearby, not wanting to startle it.
“I want a real choice,” said Crowley. “This–” he gestured around them “–this is just more of the same. It’s the same game. I want something different. Actually different.” His mouth twitched. “I want…” His voice cracked, and he swallowed. “I want a world where you can choose to be brave, Angel. I want a world where I can choose to be patient.”
“Crowley,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley’s yellow eyes took him in, read him like so many pages in a book, a book full of chapters, of contradictions and corrections, a book he would read again and again, the way Aziraphale read Emma every Christmas.
“What do you want, Angel?”
Aziraphale took a steadying breath, pulling into his superfluous lungs the scents of a garden and a bookshop, of Crowley, of the dust motes that hung in the air catching the golden light.
“I want a world,” the angel said slowly, “where you don’t have to keep asking me to go off together...”
Crowley’s brow furrowed.
“...Because we already have,” finished Aziraphale, and the edges of Crowley’s expression melted into something altogether soft.
“I want to be braver,” said Aziraphale. “I want to walk in the park with you and not look over my shoulder to see if someone’s watching. I want to…” He laughed at himself. “I want to take your hand and hold it all the way back to the bookshop, and argue about…oh, any old thing. I want to have you fall asleep on my shoulder while I read out loud to you, and you’ll pretend to not listen, but you really will, and when you wake some time later, you’ll ask how it ended.”
Crowley made an aborted movement toward the angel, stopping himself.
“Yes,” said Aziraphale, and closed the distance, reaching out for the demon’s hands.
Crowley looked down at their clasped hands, wonder on his face.
“We could have it, I think,” the angel whispered. “It would take a…”
“Miracle,” supplied Crowley.
“A good strong one, I should think,” said Aziraphale.
“Definitely,” said Crowley.
“It might not work,” said Aziraphale.
“Might not,” agreed Crowley. He squeezed Aziraphale’s hands in his own. “Could try, though.”
“Yes,” agreed Aziraphale.
They stared at one another, blue eyes to gold, and then Aziraphale was brave. He tipped his head forward, just slightly, and kissed Crowley. Crowley huffed in surprise against his mouth, and then kissed him back.
The miracle spun around them, lifted and darted like it had taken flight. It was woven of them, of moments that added up and added up to 6000 years, of decades and centuries and weeks and seconds. Of the world, of bookshops, and gardens, parks, and plants, and people. Of ducks and whales and gorillas and goats, of oceans and ponds and angels and demons and stars and clouds and bicycles and dogs and computers and nuns and witches and wings and crepes and oysters and hot chocolate and good wine, and through it all, the thrumming pulse of humanity.
It might not work, Aziraphale had said. But Crowley was, at heart, an optimist, and he was teaching Aziraphale to be one, too.
Aziraphale knew the taste of Crowley’s mouth now, and it could not be unlearned. This, too, was part of their miracle.
“I love you,” said Aziraphale easily, when they parted. Crowley’s eyes crinkled in a smile, his expression open.
“Angel,” he said.
They both jumped when a car passed outside.
Aziraphale laughed.