Chapter Text
August 2029 - five years later
the end is where we start from
The end of August is such a poetic time of the year. It rains often in West Sussex, first of all. Aziraphale has always found the rain deeply poetic.
Well, not when the rainstorm left behind a cloak of humidity and terrible smell. But that seems so long ago now. Now it leaves behind the smell of fresh grass and a pleasant glow on the pavement, and a cool breeze that moves the flowy white curtains in front of the big windows in the living room in a way that screams peace and quiet.
“I hate the rain.” Crowley launches himself on the sofa, landing with his head in Aziraphale’s lap and almost knocking the book out of his hands. His hair is still damp and he’s wearing the tartan houserobe he insists he hates.
Aziraphale just rolls his eyes, patting his shoulder affectionately. “You’re the one who insisted he needed to stay outside while it was raining.”
“Angel, the sky looked yellow. Do you know what it means when the sky looks yellow?”
“Hail, darling. I know.”
“Hail! I needed to protect the tomatoes. What else are we gonna eat?”
Aziraphale doesn’t mention the fact that they attend a farmer’s market weekly, and that Crowley’s tomatoes have only been edible once. His hand moves up to tangle itself into Crowley’s hair.
“Thank you oh so much for your service, my dear sir. We’ll get through the winter.”
Crowley is an excellent gardener. Their own garden is breathtakingly beautiful, all luscious plants and perfectly green grass and the most beautiful wildflowers in all of the village.
Vegetables, on the other hand, seem to hold a personal vendetta against Crowley. Aziraphale has caught the poor man hissing at some very distressed looking zucchini on more than one occasion.
“I should have let the fuckers die.” Crowley grumbles, arching into Aziraphale’s touch. “I hate vegetables.”
“You’re in a foul mood tonight,” he chuckles. “Is there anything you don’t hate right now?”
Crowley’s frown immediately turns into a poorly hidden grin. “Dunno.” He shoots up, and suddenly Aziraphale finds himself with a lapful of tartan and gangly limbs. “Might think of a few things.”
Aziraphale squeezes his thighs. “Tartan, for example?”
“It’s as warm as it’s hideous, I’ll give you that.” Crowley leans in to kiss Aziraphale’s jaw. “Wanna know what else is warm?”
Aziraphale snorts. “Jesus, that was terrible.”
Crowley leans back and puts his hands up in surrender. “Yeah, well, work with me here! I’m trying to do something.”
Aziraphale moves his hands with a featherlight touch, a touch he knows makes Crowley shiver, until he reaches his destination. “Well,” he says with a light smack that draws a yelp out of the squirming mess in his arms, “It seems to be going pretty well.”
“Mmh, we’re almost fifty now. Gotta keep things interesting.”
Aziraphale hums contentedly when Crowley’s lips find his jaw again. “I thought this morning was plenty interesting.”
“And you kept saying we didn’t need a bathtub in the bedroom…”
Just as his hands are starting to toy with the belt of Crowley’s houserobe, the doorbell rings.
Crowley’s mouth unlatches himself from Aziraphale’s throat with a loud smack. “What the fuck. It’s Sunday.”
Aziraphale sighs, and moves Crowley out of his lap. “I’ll get it, love.” He secretly rolls his eyes as well. Who on Earth would dare to disturb their peaceful Sunday?
It turns out to be Mrs. Potts from down the road, an elderly lady with flaming hair and a personality so large it couldn’t fit inside a castle. She adores them both, though, and comes bearing a casserole made with her fresh zucchini (which Crowley absolutely doesn’t envy, obviously) and a big smack to Aziraphale’s cheek. “You shouldn’t have, Mrs. Potts.” She doesn’t know just how true that statement is.
“Oh, nonsense Mr. Eastgate. I do enjoy spoiling my boys a little bit.”
Despite himself, he has to smile back. “We don’t appreciate you nearly enough.”
The first time the doorbell rang five years ago, Aziraphale had nearly passed out.
They had moved in less than a day before, and it was all so perfect he had the paralyzing fear something was about to go terribly wrong. He’d opened the door with one shaking hand and the other one clasped in Crowley’s one, sweaty but solid.
It wasn’t the past knocking at the door, asking for answers. It was just Mrs. Potts with a smile and a cake and a lot of questions for her newest neighbors, who she decided to adopt fifteen minutes into that first conversation.
Aziraphale’s anxiety didn’t immediately go away, nor did Crowley’s. Their first real date ended after the main course, when Aziraphale grew tired of watching the door and Crowley’s food got cold because he kept looking out of the windows.
Their second date went slightly better; by the third, they made it to dessert.
It took another year of peacefully boring village life to learn how to take deeper breaths. The first night they went to sleep without triple checking their locked door was celebrated like a milestone; the first time they willingly introduced themselves to someone new was rewarded by a lot of cake; the first time Crowley didn’t check the security cameras he so carefully implemented and Aziraphale didn’t jump out of his skin as someone called him by his name was both a surprise and a natural consequence.
It was the proof of the life they carved out for themselves in this sleepy, tiny English village, where no one knows an Aziraphale Fell or Anthony Crowley, but everyone likes the American expats Raphael and CJ Eastgate. (Again, Aziraphale didn’t choose the names. But they somehow fit.) It was harder for Aziraphale to learn how to address Crowley in public, since Crowley only ever calls him angel. He slipped, once or twice, but they managed to play it off. These days he mostly call him some disgustingly sappy pet name that makes Crowley blush and grimace, but secretly loves.
The same surname was a… consequence, as well. On that first afternoon spent with Mrs. Potts, she just assumed the way elderly people do. None of them corrected her.
“It’s just easier, if you think about it,” Crowley had said that night, laying on a mattress with no sheets in a room still full of boxes. “You already have trouble remembering one new name.”
Against him, Aziraphale had nodded. “It’s convenient. But why my name?”
“I would have wanted to take your name regardless, angel.” Crowley had sighed into his hair, intertwining their fingers. “I think it fits.”
So they’d become the Eastgates out of convenience.
Still, a week later, Aziraphale went out to buy fresh bread and came home with two matching rings from the town’s jeweler, one gold and one silver. That night, Crowley took him to their bedroom by hand and recited something very close to vows against Aziraphale’s newly adorned ring finger. He’d done the same against Crowley’s silver band.
It wasn’t a wedding, not really. In some ways, it was more. In others, it was less. For them, it was perfect.
Bidding goodbye to Mrs. Potts with another smooch and an invite for dinner sometime during the week, he closes the door with a click. They don’t lock it anymore, most nights.
“Dinner’s here, darling,” he calls out from the kitchen, putting plates on the table. Some days, the domesticity of such acts would bring tears to his face; on worse days, he will start sobbing while rinsing their spoons. Today, he just smiles as he hears Crowley padded feet sprinting across the wooden floor.
“God bless old ladies.” He mumbles, smelling the air like a proper hound dog. “Smells fantastic.”
Knowing Mrs. Potts, it will also taste fantastic. Having such nice neighbors has done nothing good to their already abysmal cooking abilities. Aziraphale came home one day from the bookstore where he works part time to find his kitchen full of smoke and his not-really-but-actually husband yelling like a madman at a burnt pot. It was Crowley’s version of an anniversary dinner.
Aziraphale cried anyway, and kissed him anyway, and they got distracted enough to forget dinner for a while, and Crowley finally stopped grumbling. Thankfully, the freezer was stocked with premade casseroles.
“Will you open the window, darling? The breeze outside is so nice.”
Aziraphale could open the window by himself, but he knows that Crowley will, then he will wrap himself around Aziraphale like a snake on the way back to the table, to allegedly check his plating skills. “I want more zucchini and less carrots.” He squeezes his middle and noses his cheek, for good measure. “Please.”
“You’re such a child,” Aziraphale says as he puts more carrots into his plate. With one finger, he absentmindedly caresses Crowley’s silver band.
“I eat my greens, you should be proud of me.”
Aziraphale turns his face to peck Crowley’s cheek. “You get a gold star, love. Now let me go and sit before it gets cold.”
It’s such an ordinary scene, eating at their table with the window open, while the last rays of the August sun illuminate the room. It’s ordinary, familiar, something they’ve done so many times by now that Aziraphale sometimes forgets how happy and lucky he actually is, how wonderful their little life turned out to be.
Not tonight.
Tonight he watches Crowley carefully arranging his vegetables on the plate in the way he likes best and the way the sun makes his hair look on fire and his eyes an even deeper gold, and a laugh bubbles out of his chest.
“What?” Crowley asks, one eyebrow raised and a smile already blooming. When Aziraphale smiles, he always smiles back.
“Nothing,” Aziraphale takes his hand over the table. “Everything is perfect.”
Hidden in a safe under their bed, there is a box.
If someone were to come and look inside it, they would find a multitude of things.
There are receipts from a shitty pub in Washington and a cocktail umbrella from a high end hotel in a very different neighborhood of the same city. (“You kept these? How?” “Nnh, they were like - our first dates. Even if you didn’t want them to be.” “Oh, my love. I wanted. I always wanted.”)
There is an old police badge and an older picture depicting a young graduate from the Washington P.D. academy and a severe looking older man. (“Are you sure you don’t want me to burn this as well?” “I think I’ll keep it. Just to remember?” “Why would you want to remember it?” “Because it wasn’t always bad. It led me to you.”)
There are a few different laptops and two burner phones. (“I could ask you the same question. Why keep them?” “Yeah. I get it now. It’s how we started, you and me, isn’t it?”)
There is a stash of letters from one Magdalene Rights, and it’s the only thing in the box that requires them to open it often. (“Angel, angel, come here. I have to show you something.”) The first letter in the stash is barely readable, full of tear stains and crumpled by what were severely shaking hands. (“Oh, God. How did you do this? Why? Isn’t it terribly dangerous? Oh, is this her Maggie?” “I never wanted you to give up your best friend. And I know this is not the same, but-” “I love you. I love you. I love you.” “I love you too. And, look, someone found her angel again after all.” “How did you do this?” “Sit down and stop crying. I’ll tell you everything.”)
There are newspaper articles of what English newspapers dubbed as America’s highest profile trial of the decade, the one against what the general public started to call the Lost Brothers. (“I really don’t want to look at this.” “I know. I’m not asking you to. But I need to see this.” “Alright. Just, don’t make me sit through this.” “It’s alright love. I’m alright. We both are.” “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Still don’t want to see those faces.” “I get it. But I need to.”)
There are pages handwritten with a scrawny handwriting, full of ink stains and more tear stains. (“Erm. So you said you wanted to read something of mine once.” “Oh - oh, Crowley.” “No, no, don’t make that face, angel, just - read. While I’m in another room.” “Let me kiss you first.” “Well, alright.”)
There are pencil drawn sketches of a house and different rooms and a lanky figure laying on a beach. (“Angel? What the hell is this?” “Mmh? What are you talking about?” “Did you make this?” “Well, yes. It’s a hobby.” “You never told me?!” “It never came up!” “It’s beautiful!” “Oh, do shut up.” “No, you shut up! This is beautiful! You’re an artist and you never told me?!”)
There are old passports and IDs and driving licenses. There are newer ones as well, with different names and birthdates. There is a blonde wig and brown contact lenses. There is a glass someone stole from a place called The Flaming Sword in Washington D.C. (“It was, technically, a date.” “I don’t have words for you.”)
There’s the past in that box. Two different pasts that became intertwined at one point, because of a mere coincidence, or a cosmic sign, or some unknown force. Two pasts that, from that point on, never separated again.
Above their bed, there is life. Sighs and muffled shouts and whispered goodnights and moaned I love yous and giggles and tear filled nights and mornings filled with yawns and grumbles and delicate hands and strong arms and lips pressed to cheeks, foreheads, temples, mouths.
There are matching pajamas and slippers and stolen houserobes and borrowed fuzzy socks. There are breakfasts in bed and complaints about crumbles and books always waiting to be read and terrible shows always waiting to be watched.
There is life. There is love. There are hands who always reach for one another and once they touch, they never let go.
Above all, there is joy. Wild, wild joy that fills a house and two wild hearts who were waiting for each other. Once they touched, they never let go.
They never will.