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Every century, sometime during the seventeenth year, Aziraphale has his one-on-one with Gabriel.
“A couple of things on our agenda today,” Gabriel says, flicking through his filing cabinet from the other side of his massive, ornate desk. “First, is there anything you want to discuss? Career development? Something you need from me for your projects?”
Aziraphale swallows.
“No,” he lies. “Everything is going just—just delightfully.”
“All right,” Gabriel replies agreeably. “My first item is—“
Honestly, Aziraphale really should pay attention, but unfortunately yesterday he’d had the pleasure of joining Crowley for tea. Now all he can think of are spindly fingers and sly smiles and try this combination, angel—
“So you’re willing to take it on?” Gabriel finishes.
“Oh! Oh, er, yes. Absolutely. Anything management needs.”
“Excellent. Now, on to the next agenda item. I’ll be honest, Aziraphale, it’s an awkward one. But my superior said we needed to have the conversation.”
Oh dear. Aziraphale is paying plenty of attention now. Maybe they’ve finally noticed that the flaming sword is gone.
But when Gabriel drops the pictures on the desk, he can feel his heart plummeting. Falling. Is this what Falling feels like? Is he Falling right now?
It’s pictures of him and Crowley. At the opera, at Shakespeare, at the Ritz—feeding ducks. Why an angel would waste its time spying on him and Crowley squabbling next to a mossy little pond in England, he can’t imagine.
“I can explain,” Aziraphale nearly gapes, although he’s not sure how or what he will explain it away with. He was feeding the ducks holy Communion bread to combat Crowley’s sourdough-flavored evil influence?
Gabriel’s face pinches. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Dimly, desperately, Aziraphale wishes he’d had the courage to—he doesn’t know. Put his hand on Crowley’s knee yesterday at tea? Kissed him flat on the mouth? Now Aziraphale will be wiped from the universe as a pining coward.
“I know it looks awful, simply awful, but there’s no fraternizing, I swear—“
Again, Gabriel winces. “I said I didn’t want to hear the sordid details, Aziraphale. I’m your boss and it’s very inappropriate to discuss mechanics of the… fraternizing. All I need to know is this: you’re dating a member of our rival company. Hopefully you realize what the next steps are.”
Discorporation. Fire and brimstone. God herself condemning and disowning Aziraphale.
All of this must show very vividly on his face, because Gabriel sighs.
“I know none of you read even half of your compliance training documents.” Of course Aziraphale doesn’t read them. There’s been 1,342 this year alone—he’d have no time for sushi, or movie nights with Crowley. “Admittedly, this is a… rarity. But we do have protocols in place.”
“Excuse me—protocols?” Aziraphale huffs, delicately.
“We have the forms, of course,” Gabriel sighs, rooting through his desk. “Haven’t had a reason to use them before, so they’re a bit covered in old dark matter, but—here we go.” He stands, winds around the desk, and hands Aziraphale a stack of tan folders. “The non-disclosure agreement, the declaration of conflict of interest, all the relevant training modules for compliance, and more.”
Aziraphale just stares at him.
“What,” Gabriel says. “We’re a civilized organization. Did you assume we’d burn you in hellfire?”
He’s smiling. Aziraphale isn’t. “A smidgen?”
Gabriel laughs, claps him on the shoulder. “We’re going to do something much worse. The paperwork alone will take you centuries.”
The problem, Aziraphale realizes as he flips through page after page of monotone legal jargon, is not that Heaven believes he and Crowley are dating. The problem lies firmly in that he and Crowley are not dating, but there are approximately five thousand dotted lines where both he and the demon are expected to sign, and they all go something like this:
I, ___________________ (INSERT ANGEL NAME HERE), HEREBY DISCLOSE MY CONSENSUAL ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH _____________(INSERT DEMON NAME HERE)…
THE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP HAD ITS INCEPTION ON _________(INSERT DATE HERE) WITH THE ACT OF (CHECK ALL RELEVANT)
- A FIRM HANDSHAKE
- SEXUAL RELATIONS
- LOVE CONFESSION FROM ANGEL
- A VIGOROUS GAME OF CRICKET
- MATRIMONY IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, NORTH AMERICA, EARTH, THE ONLY LOCATION IN WHICH ANGEL/DEMON MARRIAGE IS LEGAL
- SOUL MERGING
- YODELING
- OTHER: _____________________
THE BELOW SIGNATURE INDICATES THE PARTY DID NOT EXCHANGE ANY INSIDER TRADING KNOWLEDGE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO…[10 pages of legal jargon]
_______________________(ANGEL SIGNATURE)
_______________________(DEMON SIGNATURE)
(ANGEL ONLY) WITHIN THE LIMITATIONS OF THE BELOW BOX, DETAIL HOW THE DEMON TEMPTED YOU INTO THE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. THIS WILL BE USED TO OPTIMIZE HEAVEN’S FUTURE WORK PRACTICES.
Crowley hates busywork. He surely can’t be too thrilled about how clear this makes Aziraphale’s feelings, either.
But maybe if Aziraphale is lucky, Heaven will spend years putting this through their systems and Hell won’t ever find out—
Crowley nearly kicks the bookshop’s door open.
“Careful!” Aziraphale scolds, flapping one hand. “Oh, Crowley, the books—“
“What did you do,” is Crowley’s response. “I just got three commendations and a personal visit from Satan-As-Freddy-Mercury where he practically sang me We Are the Champions.”
What did I do, Aziraphale thinks reproachfully. The whole thing is Crowley’s fault, after all. Honestly. I fell in love with you, of course.
Rather than say that, he pulls out the dreaded stack.
“Unfortunately,” he says, “to earn the commendation, I think you’ll have to sign these.”
“Bah,” Crowley growls, with feeling, and it makes warmth flutter in Aziraphale’s chest. Best friends shouldn’t be allowed to have these—these endearing little habits. “What is this, angel?”
“Well,” Aziraphale replies, haltingly, “Heaven may have gotten an… impression.”
“What kind of impression?”
“The wrong kind?”
Crowley is quieter than Aziraphale has ever seen him, and Aziraphale visited for some of the century that Crowley was asleep for. Just to, you know—check up. Check in. To gently stroke one hand over the apple-red hair and murmur, sweet dreams.
Now, the demon is just—sitting on a couch. Flipping through page after page of documents with a confident speed that makes Aziraphale nearly jealous. Imagine all the books Crowley could be reading, they could be having book club and dinner club nearly every night.
Aziraphale voices this. Flipping another page, Crowley says nothing. Aziraphale compensates for the quiet with his own excessive babbling.
“The last item on the agenda, oh, if only I’d distracted him till the end of our schedule meeting time, maybe I could’ve bought another century before he brought it up. Do you think, my dear? Honestly, they only have pictures of us out and about on the town, they certainly jumped to conclusions.”
Sinking further into Aziraphale’s impressively plush cushions in his flat, Crowley makes a hand motion that distinctly says eh. Bound to happen sometime.
“The nerve of some people and their gossip,” Aziraphale continues.
“Mad indeed,” Crowley agrees, “saying you’re in love with me.”
Aziraphale doesn’t know if he’d label deductive reasoning as madness, but he tucks his hands behind his back and sighs anyway. If Crowley assumes it’s a misunderstanding rather than a revelation, it’s just Aziraphale’s good luck. “Well. I know how you despise paperwork and rules, Crowley, but we can spend this afternoon going through and signing them? And then,” delighted with himself, he thrums one set of fingers up his buttons, “we can celebrate making it through with a nice dinner. I’ll even do the miracle to get us seats, this time. How does that sound?”
Crowley whips off his sunglasses, and this is how Aziraphale knows those eyes are looking to him with burning intensity. “You aren’t going to dispute this?”
“Dispute it?” Aziraphale echoes, nervously smoothing his hands down his suit. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble, doesn’t it? Apparently there’s no punishment for fraternizing, so would it be so terrible if they thought we were—well—together. Romantically.”
Crowley’s face purses up in thinly veiled frustration. “Would it?”
“Don’t mock me, Crowley, goodness.” He settles with a little hum. Taps his fingers primly on his armchair. “It’d just be—simple. A new Arrangement, perhaps, where the time we spend together gets you commendations and is already noted in my file.”
“Commendations,” Crowley spits. He stands, throwing the papers into the quickly plumping divot of the couch, and begins to pace. Clearly, he requires convincing.
If they don’t sign the papers, don’t agree this is romantic—Aziraphale isn’t sure what heaven will do. What they’ll assume next. (Aziraphale knows what he’ll do. He’s sat on these feelings since—since he realized those labeled irredeemably bad committed irredeemably bad actions that led to the same results as those committed by the incorrigibly good. Crowley taught him that. Taught him from the first.)
“You can report all of the devious ways you’re using me,” Aziraphale coaxes. It seems perfectly reasonable, but Crowley goes nearly fuchsia, hands trembling too much to even manage to shake Aziraphale by the shoulders when he grips them—with the tartan suit, it’s noticeable when the temperature climbs. Fire and brimstone, indeed. “Don’t be angry,” he soothes. He brings a hand up to Crowley’s elbow, grounding but that only makes it warmer. “It seems messy, true, but—“
“I’m not angry,” Crowley snaps fiercely, slinking backwards and snatching the papers. His mouth is slightly open, tongue flicking against his teeth. He’s huffing in air, and it occurs to Aziraphale that he might be tasting it. “Fetch me a pen.”
“Well,” Aziraphale sniffs, because he doesn’t know when to quit, and he and Crowley have an arrangement, “I never.”
Despite everything, the demon relaxes, huffs fondly, and gets the pen himself. While he’s up, he fetches Aziraphale tea from the kitchen. Aziraphale pats him on the hand when he comes back.
“Thank you, dear.”
“For the tea or the paperwork,” Crowley grunts, pen cap between his teeth. He’s already signed three pages.
“Both, I think?”
They sit in silence for a moment, the scritch of the pen interrupted only by flipping paper.
“I suppose this means we don’t have to hide our dinners.” Or their teatime. Or the evenings spent in plush armchairs, Crowley napping and Aziraphale reading beneath the comforting blanket of each others presence.
“I suppose not.”
Aziraphale wonders, briefly, if they’d ever actually managed to hide them. He’d truly tried to do it—keep Crowley safe. Keep him out of the inevitable mess heaven would make of things. As usual, none of those intentions had worked.
“Crowley,” he hesitantly says, “I’m sorry. For everything. I thought I’d been secretive, but—it seems I failed.”
If I could hide you away forever, he thinks, safe and precious and just mine, I’d be happy.
But Aziraphale knows them better. Hiding away wouldn’t make them happy, in the end. That might work for another angel and demon, but Aziraphale and Crowley could never leave Earth, or humans, or the pesky concepts of right and wrong alone.
“I always knew it wouldn’t stay the same forever, angel,” is all Crowley replies.
“But we don’t have to change,” Aziraphale encourages. Ever the optimist.
“’Course not,” Crowley says with an uninterpretable smile, and signs another page.
At their celebratory dinner, Aziraphale can’t help but recall a flash of page 367—I, Anthony J. Crowley, ACKNOWLEDGE THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF THIS ANGEL-DEMON RELATIONSHIP AND THUS—
There’s a strange noise from across the table, and Aziraphale looks up from where he’d been adjusting the perfect bite. Ah. It’s partially his fault—his left hand has reached out, palm up.
Crowley looks between the upturned hand and Aziraphale’s face, and proceeds to slide over the rest of his untouched risotto. Honestly. As though Aziraphale would ask for Crowley’s portion in such a way, brutish rather than needy to Crowley’s fond obliging.
“No, dear,” Aziraphale redirects, nudging the risotto plate aside. “I think I wanted to hold hands?”
“You think,” Crowley repeats, with a sarcasm so shaken that Aziraphale wants to smother him in layers of soft clothing.
“It’s just,” Aziraphale dabs his mouth with his napkin, nervously (he hasn’t even taken a bite). “Heaven thinks we’re involved in a relationship. They’ll hardly be shocked if you and I enjoy some affection.” Crowley has remained quiet. “I—you’re my best friend, and I’ve never even hugged you.”
Crowley clears his throat, whatever hesitation he’s had dislodged. “Didn’t think your lot was, ah, much for hugging.”
Aziraphale frowns. “Not during work.”
Though, even before time started and humans existed and Principality Aziraphale couldn’t be on shift, angels didn’t go around hugging one another often. That doesn’t change the way he feels.
This shift is practically neverending.
“Maybe they don’t,” Aziraphale amends, finally, “but I do.” More and more often, Aziraphale has begun to suspect that he doesn’t fall in with “his lot” in any way, but the idea has been so inconvenient he’s preferred to ignore it.
“Can you,” Crowley begins, then aborts, then starts again. “D’you think you can repeat. What you said earlier.”
“The fresh basil is simply divine this season,” Aziraphale states, dutifully.
“No,” the demon rolls his eyes, “not dinner. The. About us not hugging.”
Aziraphale is never particularly quick on the uptake with Crowley, and this is intentional. When you jump to conclusions, you tend to play too much off your own hopes, and not the harshness of reality.
But he understands this. And at the very least, he can give it to Crowley. Crowley deserves.
“You’re my best friend,” he repeats, softly.
Crowley sighs, and takes his hand.
Things continue in a pleasant vein for approximately two weeks before Hastur and Ligur pay a visit.
It’s probable that Aziraphale shouldn’t take the liberties that he does, but—he’s lost nearly any ability to resist temptation, at least when it comes to Crowley. So they hold hands. They sit in Aziraphale’s apartment with their feet tangled together on the foot rest, Aziraphale reading and Crowley, head tossed back, listening to music. Aziraphale spills various food and drink on his coat, and Crowley cleans it. Aziraphale spoils all of Crowley’s plants within Crowley’s earshot, sneaking them extra sips of water and praise in a blatantly obvious way. When Crowley musses his hair in an attempt to mimic the newest fashion trend and it doesn’t take, Aziraphale spends the day periodically fixing it, a lock at a time, when Crowley passes by the bookshop register.
Aziraphale could be embarrassed, or concerned. Instead, he feels blissfully freed.
There’s a whole twenty pages in the document devoted to how Aziraphale must prepare himself for interrogation in the middle of—of intimacy. So surely heaven can’t be too scandalized by what he and Crowley actually do.
He and Crowley are pleasantly bickering about books with CDs, pinkies linked and hands resting lightly on Crowley’s sharp knee, when two shadowy figures darken the shop door.
It opens with an ominous creak—not, Aziraphale notices, as intimidating as Crowley could be.
Judging by their general appearances, Aziraphale can guess at who they are.
“Thank goodness,” he says. Hastur’s expression sours.
“What,” he bites, “has he brainwashed you to like demons so much?”
Aziraphale blinks. “I just imagine you don’t want to purchase my books,” he explains.
“Don’t think they can read,” Crowley mutters from beside him. Aziraphale squeezes his pinky. According to Crowley, the two are mostly harmless.
“Don’t be cranky. Would you two care for some tea?”
“You seem more pliable than a priest,” Hastur grunts, sounding vaguely accusatory about it. “I’ve tempted a priest.”
Statistically, it’s more likely that any random civilian will be worthy of heaven than a priest. Aziraphale amiably does not mention this. At some point, Crowley has stolen his knee out from beneath Aziraphale’s hand, and he’s trying to figure out how to get it back.
“Guys,” Crowley is saying then, “to what do I owe this incredibly friendly visit?”
Ligur just replies, “it smells in here.”
“When you spend enough time around Beelzebub, the scent stays with your nose,” Crowley offers in explanation.
“It doesn’t smell like fear,” Hastur concludes slowly, “or blood. It smells—“ his nose scrunches, distasteful, and he spits “—cozy.”
“Neither of you have a particularly developed sense of smell,” Crowley snaps. It’s not all on Crowley to maintain their ruse, so Aziraphale kindly steps in.
“Crowley’s luring me to sloth today. A nap sounds delightful.”
“He tempts you with other sins than lust?”
“I have standards,” Aziraphale sniffs. He pointedly ignores the implication.
“You heard my angel,” Crowley follows, the sentence zinging up Aziraphale’s spine and knocking joyfully around his ribcage. My angel. “I’m a demon of many talents.”
Hastur and Ligur prowl the bookshelves threateningly, though they clearly have no plan. Crowley hooks a chin over Aziraphale’s shoulder, hands on the register counter on either side of Aziraphale’s hips, while he returns to his ledger. For an hour, Crowley snipes at the oblivious pair, and the two relentlessly ask odd questions.
“But are you an important angel,” Ligur wants to know.
“Certainly not.”
“Of course not. What do you do, play in the heavenly choir? Come down here as a guardian angel for some lost soul?”
“My first station was at the Garden.”
“Did you carry messages for the human scum,” Hastur laughs scornfully.
“I carried a sword,” Aziraphale says. “I think it flamed.”
Hastur and Ligur don’t ask questions for a few minutes after that, which is blissful. Unfortunately, they seem to rally.
“Where’s the bed?” Hastur asks.
“I don’t have one,” Aziraphale replies, making another mark in his ledger, “I don’t sleep and I nap on the couch.”
“Where does he seduce you, then?” Ligur follows up.
“Use your imagination,” Aziraphale tuts, annoyed. He’s lost count in his head, and he’ll have to start over. “Haven’t you seduced anyone adventurous before?” Hastur seems to take offense. Crowley digs his chin deeper into the shoulder of Aziraphale’s suit. “Stop that, dear.” He pauses, considers. “Dear me? It hurts?”
Even Hastur’s frog seems suspicious about that slip-up.
“You know,” Aziraphale says brightly, “there’s picture books in row 15 you might enjoy.” The rows’ numbering system isn’t in numerical order, which Aziraphale did on purpose, so he helpfully points.
“Trying to get us to touch a Bible,” Ligur scoffs, “as though we’ll fall for that. Keep your pet angel in line, Crowley.”
“Pet,” Crowley murmurs, right by Aziraphale’s ear, and suffuses the word with warmth. “Give up. They’re too clever for you by far.”
Pet, Aziraphale mouths at him, because it’s new. In response, Crowley just buries his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder.
“I mean it,” Aziraphale says. “Bone or Sabrina the Teenage Witch are popular.” Supposedly. Crowley had dumped the comics in his shop five years ago, and declared them decoys. Any child or teen that happened to wander in had a copy stuffed into their arms before Aziraphale swept them out. That one didn’t even pay, Crowley had noted, and Aziraphale wrinkled his nose. Money was no object. Honestly, he’d rather have them reading Austen or Eliot—just not the first edition versions on his own shelves. Leave it to you to think of the children, Aziraphale had noted. Then, because Crowley was looking distinctly uncomfortable, he added, and how to corrupt them with banned books. They’d had a rousing conversation over a Zinfandel just the night before about how they both considered banning books a sin.
Everything in this shop is his and Crowley’s. In spirit, if not in actuality.
“Look at this ‘un,” Hastur crows. He’s got an issue of Sabrina in his hand. After a moment, Ligur seems to acknowledge there’s no angelic trick, and yanks another issue off the shelf.
Despite there being three demons in his shop, the afternoon passes peacefully. Crowley rolls his eyes when Ligur comments on how illegible the Latin print is, but sways over to read the English to him anyway.
“Sorry about all that,” Crowley says, offhandedly, once they’re gone, and Aziraphale clicks the lock behind them. The angel tilts his head.
“They didn’t touch any older books.”
“Doesn’t mean you wanted them here.”
I don’t want anyone here but you, Aziraphale doesn’t say. The bookshop is his heart. Cluttered, too full of things that are painfully human, and the only existing two sets of keys belong to him and Crowley.
“You’re welcome to have your colleagues over.” He swallows. “Your work friends.”
The reply is immediate, and lullingly low. “They’re not my friends.”
“I just mean.” Aziraphale fiddles with his tie. “If you had friends you wanted to drop by. For teatime. Or a chat. We can handle a few demons.”
Crowley opens his mouth. Closes it. Pushes his sunglasses up.
“You’re my only friend.” Silence, in the bookshop. “You’re the only one.”
There’s knowing something, and knowing it.
“Come here,” he says, and holds out his arms.
Aziraphale’s favorite sushi chef has gone on an international tour, which is why he and Crowley are trying out a new restaurant. The sake bar that accompanies the new location is an accident.
“I,” Crowley slurs, “invented wasabi to look just like avocado.”
“Of course you did, dear,” Aziraphale agrees warmly.
“I put mercury in the fish,” Crowley whispers. “All the fish.”
“It’s partially prevented them from overfarming the ocean,” Aziraphale says, “what a coincidence.”
“You,” he is handed a small cup, “need more sake.”
Aziraphale has just downed three cups of it when Gabriel steps out from behind a window curtain.
“Hello, fellow human man,” he greets the sushi chef. “Good morning.”
“Would you care to join us for dinner?” Aziraphale rushes to say.
“Obviously, that is what I’m here for,” Gabriel says, and smiles awkwardly at the chef for at least a minute. “They suspect nothing,” he confides loudly in Aziraphale moments later. “Humans are truly foolish. Not a care in the world.”
“I’m glad you began drinking before you came out to join us,” Aziraphale tells him desperately, because the appetizers were good, and he’d like to be able to come here again. “Speaking of drinking, why don’t I just sober up—“
“Nonsense.” Gabriel rolls his head on his neck. “Do you serve manna?” He asks the chef.
“Manna,” the chef repeats carefully, “what… is this?”
“Exactly,” Gabriel says, and winks. “Good man.”
There’s an awkward silence, and they’re served water.
“Mmmm,” says Gabriel, nodding to the chef, sounding almost convincing. “Delicious. Scrumptious.” He is clearly hiding the water in one bulging cheek, and spits it back out into the cup when the chef turns his back, probably to avoid witnessing the odd scene. Crowley cough-snorts. “I don’t understand what you enjoy so much about this,” Gabriel whispers, nose wrinkling. “It’s bland, and later, you’ll have to crouch over a hole to leak it back out again.”
“They have toilets now,” Aziraphale tries to clarify, “you know. The Roman Empire? Ancient Egypt? Crete?”
Gabriel waves a hand. “Nevermind all that,” he declares. “You know why I’m here.”
Aziraphale smiles at him. “Of course.” Honestly, the document was thousands of pages long, and—and he had Dickens, and Thoreau, and Mary Shelley—
“You’re here for the check-in,” Crowley mutters. He is coldly sober. “Page 3,457.”
“I’m not talking to you, you fallen demonic harlot.”
Gabriel’s regurgitated water ends up dumped over his head. Aziraphale almost goes to scold Crowley over being so reckless before he realizes that he’s still holding the glass.
He’s my best friend, he wants to shout. I love him.
Gabriel blinks wetly at them.
“Is,” he begins slowly. The temperature in the room is rising.
Crowley dumps his own water onto his head.
“Refreshing,” he says, and grins at Gabriel. “You’re meant to pour Aziraphale’s on him, you know.” He leans in, conspiratorial. “Think of the appearances.”
Gabriel dumps Aziraphale’s glass on him, and he smiles, pained and dripping. There is no way they can return to this restaurant.
“What fun!” Gabriel announces loudly. “A miniature baptism!”
“Haha,” Aziraphale laughs, failing to be light and airy and carefree.
“Now,” Gabriel says, smile dropping instantly from his face, “tell me what Aziraphale’s revealed of heaven’s plans.”
“What hasn’t he,” Crowley says, and the falsehoods fall off his lips. A wellspring, that’s what Crowley’s mouth is, an eternal fountain of lies. Lies that make it sound like Aziraphale is feeding Hell bad information.
Lies, lies, lies.
If there’s anything he and Crowley share, it’s that. They always lie to protect themselves. To protect each other.
I love him, Aziraphale thinks, and that’s the only truth he knows, these days.
Crowley falls asleep on Aziraphale’s lap that night, as he is apt to do. Aziraphale runs fingers through his red hair, and frets.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, at 2am, suddenly wide awake. “Aziraphale.”
He puts down the book he wasn’t reading.
“Yes, dear.”
“Hell wants to start the apocalypse.”
So do we.
Angels don’t think like that. Angels can’t think like that.
“If heaven loses,” Crowley says, “I’ll get them to let me keep you.”
“If hell loses,” Aziraphale says, “I’ll be with you wherever you are.”
Perhaps he wouldn’t have the courage to say that, if he didn’t have a heavenly document with his and Crowley’s names scrawled all over it.
“I don’t understand,” Crowley hisses softly, utterly still, staring off into the darkness with yellow eyes, “why they would have paperwork for an angel and demon falling in love.”
“The angel falling in love with the demon,” Aziraphale corrects, absently, still stroking through Crowley’s hair. “They assume the fallen can’t feel love.”
“Why would an angel love us, we’re,” Crowley begins, throat closing up, and never finishes. Millions of words, Aziraphale’s read—poetry and prose and longing in every language—and he can’t find the word Crowley meant to say next.
But the feeling—the feeling, he understands. Because he’s had it about himself.
“They think we’re forced to love ugly things,” Aziraphale admits. “Broken things. Imperfect things, unlike us. God made us love humans. Why would we not be able to love demons, too?”
They believe it’s our punishment, Aziraphale thinks. For being perfect, but not being God.
Crowley knows better than to outright ask what Aziraphale believes. It’s not a punishment of any sort, that’s what Aziraphale believes. It’s not a punishment to love humans, or Earth in all its beauty, or Crowley. The fact that angels think it is-- it's wrong. Inherently wrong.
Heaven is wrong.
It can’t be a punishment, loving Crowley, except in that he’ll never have him.
“But they don’t,” Crowley states carefully. “Love us.”
It’s easy to say it, because Crowley must already know.
"They may not," Aziraphale admits, “but I do.” He thinks of pages and pages, Anthony J Crowley and Aziraphale, over and over. “It is better to marry than to burn with desire. Thus,” he finishes, smiling down, “far too much paperwork.”
Crowley is staring up at him, yellow eyes wide.
“Well,” Aziraphale amends nervously, “not quite marriage, I suppose.”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley intones, eyes practically aglow in the dim dark, “are you saying you love me?”
Dinners, and little temptations, and thousands of years.
“Are you saying you didn’t know?”
There’s no expectation in Aziraphale’s heart of what Crowley will say next. However, it’s certainly not—
“Nevada,” Crowley gasps, writhing to his feet.
“What?”
“We’re going to Nevada!”
Aziraphale’s not completely sure how they manage to drive the Bentley across the Atlantic Ocean, but he’s not going to ask questions. He doesn’t even ask what Crowley is doing, when he’s snarling into the phone, “I know you just tempted a priest into unconscionable sin, I’m asking which one, and whether he’s demonically ordained!”
They end up with two priests, in a church in Las Vegas, Nevada. Crowley is bouncing from foot to foot the entire ceremony. Aziraphale will tell him, years down the line, that it reminded him of the spies and his precious books, that long-ago evening when he was reminded for the thousandth time that he was in love.
One priest looks official and speaks in Latin—the other recites slurred lines in between swills from a bedazzled decanter. Crowley spends the entire ceremony tugging at his tie and looking skyward, as though God herself is going to swoop in and smite their union with floods and lightning.
“I do, I do,” Crowley’s promising, urgently. Aziraphale just repeats after him. “It’s done, then? We’re done?”
The Latin priest nods, regal. The other priest belches, “fuck yeah, man.”
Aziraphale doesn’t know why the verse goes it’s better to marry than to burn with desire. They’re married now, and the desire is still burning.
“Crowley,” he says, voice and hands shaking. Their names signed on dotted lines. Entwined. “You’re my best friend. I love you.”
Without words, as always, Crowley says it right back.
At his next one-on-one with Gabriel, they almost make it through without incident.
Then, Gabriel knowingly slides a stack of papers across the desk. “Are your compliance documents up to date? Anything need updating? Are you still,” he chuckles to himself, like there’s anything funny about it, “in love with your demon? No regrets?”
“I do actually need to update,” Aziraphale says pleasantly. He filches Gabriel’s favorite pen and clicks it, once. “Just a section or two.”
When the apocalypse comes, they hardly expect it.
“Hastur, Ligur,” Crowley greets.
“We told you not to bring him this time,” Hastur snarls. Aziraphale beams at them, holds out comics as a peace offering. Ligur sneers, but takes them.
But oh, god, they’re given a baby. Crowley can’t even bear to look.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, voice shaking. “Darling.”
“He’s just a baby,” Crowley snaps, and slams his fists on the wheel. The Bentley will forgive him.
With his husband there, he can look into the youthful eyes of the Antichrist. He’s just a baby.
Just like the baby they find, when exiting the flaming nunnery, tucked into a carriage in the corner.
“Can’t leave him here,” Crowley had pleaded. He always did have a soft spot for children. “He’s just a baby.”
“We are legally married,” Aziraphale says. This is how, in the midst of a fire and the start of the apocalypse, they manage to adopt.
Still, even with a growing, giggling baby boy at their new apartment, Crowley can’t get the eyes of the Antichrist out of his head.
That’s why, when he lays his gaze on the baby in the Dowlings’ crib, he says in disbelief:
“He’s just a baby.”
“I know,” Aziraphale comforts, quiet and soberly soothing. “I know, dear, just—“
“No,” Crowley hisses furiously, “this is JUST A BABY!"
“Oh, bugger.”
Aziraphale had helped him drop the Antichrist off at the demonic nunnery, so after some discussion and a resulting panic session fueled by hard liquor, along with a long hard look at their son—“I’m sure this isn’t the Antichrist, angel.” “How sure?” “Babies look practically the same! Squalling, pink, chubby things! So—90%? Maybe 75%? 33%?”— they manage to trace the Antichrist to a sleepy little village: Tadfield.
“You know,” Aziraphale murmurs as they drive through Tadfield in the Bentley, the green of fields all around them. Their son coos from his car-seat in the back. “It doesn’t look like so terrible a place for a child to grow up.”
Crowley peers at him. “Don’t think there’s much sushi here, angel.”
“Life isn’t all about sushi,” Aziraphale huffs, lips pursed.
“Fatherhood and marriage’ve changed you,” Crowley monotones dramatically in reply, and shifts gears on the Bentley.
“Hullo,” Crowley says pleasantly. Aziraphale props their son up higher on one hip, and wiggles his fingers in a joyous wave. “We’re your new neighbors.”
“Welcome to Tadfield,” the married angel and demon are greeted, “we’re the Youngs.”