Chapter Text
The back room of A.Z. Fell & Co. was drowning in a heavy, exhausted silence. It was a Tuesday morning, far too early for the street outside to be busy, and certainly far too early for what Crowley was doing.
It hadn’t even been a month since the Apocalypsn’t 2.0. They were safe, they were together, and yet, Aziraphale couldn’t shake the feeling that they were both still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
From the corner of his eye, Aziraphale watched as Crowley quietly reached for the bottle on the side table, his movements practiced and stealthy, tilting it back for a quick, sharp sip before pouring it into a glass to make it look casual. It wasn't the first time this week. It wasn't even the first time today.
Aziraphale swallowed hard, the book in his lap entirely forgotten. He couldn't keep pretending he didn't see it.
“Crowley, my dear…” Aziraphale started, and immediately cut himself off.
Crowley looked up, an eyebrow slightly raised.
“Are you… quite all right?” Aziraphale asked, not daring to quite get to the point yet again.
Crowley relaxed a bit in his seat. “Angel, you’ve been asking the same thing for weeks. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said softly, his fingers tightening around the edge of his teacup. “You’ve been saying that,” he murmured, his voice barely carrying across the quiet room. “But you only repeat yourself like that when you’re trying to convince both of us.”
“Oh, pfft,” said Crowley, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “We saved the world, angel. Again! And, much more importantly, we get to be us this time. An us.” He gave Aziraphale a sincere, soft smile. Then his smile fell a bit, and he looked away. “What more could I want?”
“Indeed,” said Aziraphale, before he could stop himself. He swallowed hard when Crowley looked back at him. “What I mean is…” He gestured at the small graveyard of empty wine bottles accumulating near the sofa.
“Come on!” Crowley interjected before Aziraphale could actually say what he meant. “You drink, I drink, we all drink… in a blink! Okay, that sounded way funnier in my head.”
“But at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Crowley?” He gave Crowley a look that was entirely devoid of judgment, only filled with a quiet, aching concern.
Crowley rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not a human, right? We asked God to put everything back the way it was, and somehow, she listened. I’m still immortal, and I’m not going to get sick from some wine, either. At least not in the long term. Sorry about puking on your carpet the other day, by the way. But I miracled it clean! We’ve been through this already…”
“I’m not worried about your physical health, Crowley, or the carpet, for that matter!”
Aziraphale huffed. “I’m worried about you. Why are you doing this still? You’ve said it yourself, we saved the world, the universe. We’re us.”
Crowley blinked behind his glasses. For a moment, the silence filled the room again. Then Crowley spoke, in the lowest mutter he could muster. “We should have gone the other way.”
“What?”
“We should have gone the other way!” Crowley all but shouted, standing up in the process. “We should have told God to scratch this universe and start over. No Heaven, no Hell, no demons or angels!” He paused for a second, lowering his voice just a bit. “No God. Just the universe, the Earth and its creatures. And humans.”
“No us, then?” Aziraphale asked sincerely, the heartbreak in his voice palpable.
Crowley instantly froze, horrified. “Well, there could be an us. Eventually, if… if God… or the universe rather, would grant us human lives. Well, I guess we could have asked God to keep us, if only as humans, and there could be an us one day.”
Crowley’s voice trailed off, his shoulders tense, looking at Aziraphale with an expression that was almost pleading. He looked frantic, desperate for Aziraphale to understand that he hadn’t meant to wish them away, only the endless, agonizing terror of losing each other.
Aziraphale didn't answer right away. Slowly, carefully, he set his teacup down on the saucer with a faint, trembling clink. He stood up, the old floorboards of the bookshop groaning softly beneath his feet, and walked over to where Crowley was standing.
He didn't stop until he was right in Crowley's space, close enough to feel the erratic heat radiating off the demon. Aziraphale reached out, his hands hovering for a fraction of a second before he gently, firmly took Crowley by the arms, grounding him.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice dropping to a soft, aching whisper. He looked up, searching the dark lenses of Crowley's glasses as if he could see right through them. “But that wouldn't really be us, would it?”
Crowley swallowed hard, his jaw tight.
“We wouldn’t have the bandstand,” Aziraphale murmured, a small, incredibly sad smile touching the corners of his mouth. “We wouldn’t have six thousand years of… of shared glances, of rescues, of dine-and-dashes, of growing together. If we were just humans meeting on a street corner, we wouldn’t be the us that survived all of this.”
Aziraphale’s thumbs brushed gently against the fabric of Crowley’s jacket. “I don't want a universe where I don't remember loving you.”
Crowley could barely keep upright on his feet. The yellow eyes behind his glasses clouded with tears, and a very undignified noise (kind of that of a dying aardvark, he reckoned) escaped his throat.
“For every beautiful moment I spent with you, angel, there’s an equally devastating one. I don’t know if I could ever get over the anguish we’ve experienced. That this world was never meant for you, or me, or us.” He spoke calmly, letting the tears roll down his face. “This universe was never made for us to make it. To be happy.”
Aziraphale smiled that sad smile again. “Isn’t that the beauty of it, then? To be happy in spite of everything?”
Crowley stared at him, the quiet words hanging in the air between them. For a long moment, the only sound was the distant rumble of London traffic starting to wake up outside.
Slowly, Crowley reached up and took off his sunglasses. His eyes were red-rimmed, the bright gold muted by tears, looking entirely exposed in the morning light.
“In spite of everything,” Crowley repeated, his voice a low, raspy scrape. He looked down at Aziraphale’s hands still holding his arms. “They’re always going to be looking over our shoulders, angel. Heaven, Hell... they don't just forget. We’re always going to be the anomalies. The errors in the system.”
“I know,” Aziraphale said softly. He didn't pull away; instead, his grip tightened just a fraction, steady and unyielding. “They built a universe based on rigid, unbending lines, Crowley. They wanted perfection, or destruction. But look at what we found in the spaces between.”
Crowley let out a shaky, self-deprecating breath, his eyes dropping. “We’re a bit of a mess, aren’t we? I’m drinking at sunrise because my head won’t stop screaming, and you’re... well, you’re still entirely too proper for your own good.”
“Exactly,” Aziraphale murmured, and this time, a genuine, warm light broke through the sadness in his eyes. He reached up, his fingers gently brushing a tear from Crowley’s cheek. “We are entirely imperfect. The world we saved is deeply flawed, full of injustice and terrible, chaotic noise. But it is ours. Every burnt toast, every rainy Tuesday, every silly human tune.”
He leaned in slightly, making sure Crowley was looking right at him. “We fought for a life, Crowley. Not a perfect one. Not a safe one, apparently. But a life where we get to decide what happens next. If the system is broken, then let us be broken right along with it, together. It is still entirely worth living.”
Crowley’s chest rose and fell in a long, shuddering exhale. The frantic, desperate tension that had been keeping his shoulders rigid for weeks finally seemed to drain out of him. He didn't lean away. Instead, he let his forehead drop forward until it rested gently against Aziraphale’s shoulder, his hands finally coming up to grip the back of Aziraphale’s coat.
“You’re an idiot,” Crowley muttered into the tweed, his voice thick.
“Extremely,” Aziraphale agreed, wrapping his arms fully around him, holding him tight against the morning chill. “But I am your idiot. And we have all the time in the world to figure this out. God agreed to let us keep this broken universe just as it were, and even though one might have a reason or two to doubt her word…” He softly broke the embrace, but still held onto Crowley’s arms. “She said she was open to ‘fixing’ a thing or two.”
“She never sounded very sincere to me…” mumbled Crowley. “And I don’t want to get involved in that mess. Or you.”
“Oh, never again! Heaven and Hell can figure themselves out; we’re officially retired. That’s the first change we’re introducing: angels and demons can retire after a certain time!”
“Angel, you’re getting involved again.”
“Right! I shouldn’t do that. But it is a good proposition, don’t you think?”
Crowley chuckled genuinely. “I guess we could try to help make this messy system a little less chaotic. Since God is apparently open to suggestions now.”
Aziraphale beamed, a look of pure, unadulterated affection breaking across his face.
“Oh, Crowley,” he murmured, his hands sliding down to give Crowley’s wrists a warm, encouraging squeeze. “Listen to you.”
Crowley blinked, instantly on guard, his golden eyes narrowing slightly. “Listen to me what?”
“You’re accepting the mess,” Aziraphale said softly, his voice thick with a sudden, tender pride. “Look at where we started this morning, with you wanting to scratch the whole canvas and start anew. And now... here you are, willing to face it. To help make it just a little bit better, despite everything they did to you.”
Crowley looked away, his cheeks coloring slightly as he gave a dismissive, defensive shrug. “Yeah, well. Don't go making a big, sentimental thing out of it, angel. It's just logistics.”
“It is not just logistics, and I will make a big thing out of it if I want to,” Aziraphale insisted, a stubborn little smile playing on his lips. “It’s remarkable growth, my dear. Truly.”
“Ugh, you drive me insane, angel, you know that? You might be the zaniest creature I have ever met.” The ‘and I love you so much for it’ was totally implied.
Aziraphale just smiled his sweet smile for a moment. “Although…” he began, changing his tone to a more serious one.
“Yes?”
“You really need to stop with the day-drinking.”
Crowley threw his head back in frustration. He then looked at his glass on the table and the bottles on the floor longingly. “Technically, it’s evening somewhere in the cosmos.”
Aziraphale crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head with an expression of pure, unyielding amusement.
“Yes, and technically, you are currently standing in Soho, where the clock has just struck half-past eight,” Aziraphale said, his tone thoroughly cheerful but entirely brook-no-argument. “The cosmos will have to get along without your solidarity for the day.”
He stepped past Crowley, carefully navigating the little glass graveyard on the floor, and picked up the half-empty bottle still sitting on the table. With a definitive pop, he jammed the cork back into the neck.
“But angel—” Crowley started, trailing after him like a disgruntled shadow.
“No ‘but angels,’ my dear,” Aziraphale interrupted smoothly, turning around with a bright, victorious smile. “The bar is officially closed. Now, I am going to put the kettle on, and you are going to sit down and behave yourself. Or at least, as much as a demon of your stature is capable of.”
Crowley plopped down onto the couch, crossing his arms. “Ugh,” he mumbled as Aziraphale walked away. “Next apocalypse, I’m choosing the do-over universe. With blackjack and day-drinking.”
“What’s that, dear?” Aziraphale called from the other room.
“Nothing!” Crowley replied fake-cheerfully. A reluctant smile did find its way to his lips, though. This life was messy, and hard, and absolutely unfair. But it was his. And Aziraphale’s. It was theirs.