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-- 1941 --
Crowley was saying something. He was in the kitchen digging through Aziraphale’s cupboards for something alcoholic, and he was saying something. It might have been important. Aziraphale wouldn’t have known.
The dark voice that Aziraphale had known forever, Crowley’s voice, was nothing but a cloud of unintelligible background noise. It was a sort of fuzzy cushion behind the racing beat of Aziraphale’s heart, breaking through the gaps between the thoughts that had become too loud in Aziraphale’s head.
‘Little demonic miracle of my own.’ The books. A funny hop-skip-twisting dance down the aisle — good Lord, down the aisle, like it had been a wedding — of a church. Sunglasses and the tip of a hat. A new name, one that still felt sharp on the back of Aziraphale’s tongue. ‘A last minute demonic intervention’ and an explosion. Crowley’s smug confidence, and dead Nazis, and a lift home. And the books.
Aziraphale could feel himself begin to shake, but he couldn’t summon the self-composure to even want to care. He sat in his overstuffed armchair, and he shook, and he waited for Crowley to come back.
Soon enough Crowley did just that, a bottle of amber liquid that had long since lost its label dangling from his fingers. Dust clung to his hair (cut short now, shorter than it had been in Rome), and there was a goofy lopsided grin on his face. There was a smudge of soot on the underside of his sharp jaw. How had Aziraphale not seen that before?
How had Aziraphale not seen Crowley before?
Crowley, kind and generous and impossibly patient. Crowley, protecting Aziraphale at every turn. Crowley, harmless by nature but forced to do harm. Crowley, making plans that were not so much against Hell as for himself (and Aziraphale. For himself and Aziraphale). Crowley, the closest thing Aziraphale had to a friend. Crowley, snake-like and beautiful.
And now there was Crowley, being loved by Aziraphale. That was new. The other things were familiar in a vague kind of way. They were things that Aziraphale had never allowed himself to think about for too long, things that had gotten shoved under beds and swept into corners and thrown back into closets — ha — for nearly six thousand years.
This new thing, though, was too big to be ignored. It was standing in the sitting room of Aziraphale’s flat, directly in the path between Aziraphale and Crowley. It was impossible to avoid seeing, and so Aziraphale had resigned himself to looking at it. He was staring with a half-open mouth at the empty space between himself and the demon he loved, trying desperately to wrap his mind around some sort of plan. Some way out of this, some way to deal with this.
The portions of Aziraphale’s physical senses that were not occupied with processing the fact that he was in love with Crowley were essentially on sentry duty, staying online only to let Aziraphale know if something in the atmosphere around him changed. The sentry-sense in charge of his hearing had suddenly begun raising alarms, so Aziraphale turned his attention toward what was happening in front of him.
It had gone silent. Crowley had stopped saying something, and he was watching Aziraphale from behind his dark sunglasses. The bottle of alcohol — some form of whiskey, in all probability — was still in his right hand, and the cork that had come out of it was stuck between the fingers of his left.
“Angel,” Crowley said in a tone that indicated the word was a repetition. “You in there?”
“Sorry.” Aziraphale nearly bit off the tip of his tongue in an effort not to call Crowley ‘dear.’ It felt different now, the thought of using that particular word to address Crowley.
Real, Aziraphale’s brain supplied, and he nearly winced. It feels real now.
“Y’okay?” There was genuine concern in Crowley’s voice, and the love in Aziraphale’s chest bloomed.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”
Crowley shrugged. “Dunno. Seemed… ‘s fine. Never mind. Was just asking if you’d like to use glasses or just drink from the bottle.”
“Glasses,” Aziraphale said.
“Then you’ll have to help me find them, because I haven’t got a clue where you’ve moved them to since the last time I was here.”
The words Crowley didn’t say were nearly as audible as the ones he did. The fact that he hadn’t been here in almost eighty years was entirely due to Aziraphale’s denial of his request for holy water, a rejection which Aziraphale had driven home with words like ‘fraternizing’ and ‘out of the question,’ with the substitution of ‘suicide pill’ for Crowley’s descriptor, ‘insurance.’ Some part of Aziraphale had thought that he might not see Crowley again until the final battle at the end of the world, when all parts of the Great Plan came to fruition. And yet Crowley had come back. He’d come back, and he was waiting for Aziraphale to help him find glasses that they could fill with liquor in order to drink away the memory of the war raging outside these walls.
“I think I must have tucked them away,” Aziraphale said as he got to his feet. “But I’m sure they’re in some nook or cranny. Let’s have a look.”
For the next few minutes, Aziraphale and Crowley searched through the cupboards, the shelves of the pantry, and a stack of milk crates in the corner that Aziraphale had no recollection of hoarding despite the fact that he’d evidently been doing so. Eventually, Crowley stepped back, tucking his hands in his pockets.
“Any more ideas?”
“Not a one,” said Aziraphale.
“Damn,” Crowley said. “Guess we’ll have to go old-fashioned tonight, then, eh?”
Old-fashioned. Yes. Like they’d done before, when they’d found themselves in noisy pubs and wanted to go somewhere quieter or when they’d both been too drunk to pour a glass of wine successfully.
Aziraphale said, “I suppose,” and he led Crowley back into the sitting room.
They passed the bottle back and forth for the better part of half an hour. Aziraphale was trying very hard not to think about the fact that with every drink he took, he was touching his mouth to the exact place that Crowley’s mouth had just been. He tried not to think that this was a kissing-adjacent activity. He tried not to think about Crowley’s mouth tasting like the same whiskey he was drinking. He tried not to let his mind go there, to that very dangerous place, but it did anyway.
Crowley was saying something again, and for all that Aziraphale loved the sound of his voice, he couldn’t seem to focus on the actual words. He was too busy watching Crowley move. Crowley was lounging on Aziraphale’s sofa, a collection of angles in a dark suit that fit like a second skin. Crowley’s fingers were long and slender and beautiful as they traced invisible loops and lines in the air. His mouth was a fine line that flexed as he spoke, his teeth occasional flashes of white that caught in the dim lamplight. His eyes were on display now, his ever-present sunglasses having been set neatly on the coffee table a few minutes prior, and Aziraphale found himself thinking (not for the first time, if he was honest with himself) that Crowley’s eyes were his favorite color in the universe.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said without meaning to.
Whatever words were next going to come out of Crowley’s mouth got caught behind his teeth, and a dark eyebrow climbed onto his forehead. “Yeah?”
Shut up, Aziraphale told himself. This is a bad idea. Shut up, stop talking. Tell him you lost your train of thought. Say something about what he was saying (what was he saying?), say anything but this.
His mind did not heed these warnings. It did the opposite, in fact, which was why Aziraphale found himself confessing to something he’d only just recently realized for himself.
“I’m afraid I’m quite terribly in love with you,” Aziraphale said unceremoniously.
Crowley, who had been in the process of sitting up, promptly fell off the sofa.
“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale. “Are you alright?”
“Am I—” Crowley shook his head, levering himself upright and crossing his ankles. “Did you honestly just ask if I’m alright?”
“That looked like it might have hurt,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley made a noise that was the verbal equivalent of a shrug, his yellow eyes wide and unblinking. “Didn’t feel it if it did.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Crowley continued staring for a few moments longer. His tongue emerged briefly, flickering over his lips at a speed that quite exceeded the upper limits of the human tongue’s capabilities, and then he grunted and pulled his knees into his chest.
For the first time in Aziraphale’s memory, Crowley looked small.
“‘S that it, then?” Crowley asked. He was looking Aziraphale in the eye, but Aziraphale couldn’t get a halfway decent insight into what he was thinking.
“What more is there to say?” Aziraphale said petulantly. “I suppose I’d hoped to know your thoughts on the matter, but—”
“I’m all in favor,” Crowley broke in. “Very, very much in favor.”
Aziraphale set the whiskey bottle on the table with a heavy thunk. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“I’m in love with you,” Aziraphale said for the second time, and Crowley looked like he’d been hit over the head with something heavy. There was a little smile crawling across Crowley’s thin lips, and Aziraphale felt his pulse quicken. “And that’s… well, it’s not something we’ve ever discussed or agreed upon, so I’d very much like to know why you aren’t upset with me.”
“Why the Heaven would I be upset with you?” Crowley’s smile was growing bigger by the moment. Aziraphale could see his teeth now, the too-sharp tips of his incisors. “Being in love with someone isn’t something you ‘discuss’ or ‘agree upon.’ It just…” Crowley faltered, flapped his hand in a wonky circle. “It just happens.”
“You’d know that, would you?” Aziraphale asked, trying to keep the new warm thing in his chest from growing too large. It wouldn’t do to have hope until he was certain that Crowley felt the same way, because if he was wrong, it would be catastrophic. He didn’t think he’d recover from a blow like that, so it was best not to hope.
“You’re mocking me,” Crowley replied, and something dark flickered in his eyes. “You are mocking me, aren’t you?”
“I most certainly am not.”
Crowley’s jaw dropped open. “I thought you… fucking Somebody, Aziraphale, I thought you knew.”
Aziraphale, for all his angelic nature, was running rather short on patience.
“If you’re trying to make a point, my dear, you had better make it,” Aziraphale said snippily. “With the right words in the right order, so that I am clear. We’ve had misunderstandings in the past—” Crowley flinched at that, and the word ‘fraternizing’ echoed once more in Aziraphale’s head “—but this would be the absolute worst time for one.”
“Right,” Crowley said. He swallowed hard, gave a sharp nod, and set his jaw. “Never thought I’d get— never thought you’d want me to.”
“I want you to.” The heat was spreading through Aziraphale’s body without his permission, liquid fire flowing through his veins. “Please.”
That word was what did it.
“Been bloody well in love with you for, ah. While, now. Long while.”
The fire on the inside of Aziraphale’s body took to his skin, turning his cheeks red and sending hot blood to the tips of his ears.
I’m in love with Crowley, and Crowley is in love with me.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said happily. “Well, that’s certainly something, isn’t it?”
Crowley was on his feet in a fraction of a second, and he was standing over Aziraphale just as quickly. He tilted his body forward and turned his face downward, and his beautiful eyes slid shut. It looked like this last action had taken quite a bit of concentration (which, upon thinking about it, Aziraphale realized it probably had — Crowley had a tendency to forget how to blink when he was overwhelmed, and Aziraphale thought that this was impossibly adorable and more than a little bit charming).
And then he said something that made Aziraphale’s heart fall into his stomach.
“Can I kiss you?”
Aziraphale hadn’t known that his emotions could switch so quickly. He hadn’t known that his body could go from raging with heat to filled with ice in a millisecond, but he was learning that it could. Crowley’s breath was still warming the skin of his nose and mouth and chin, and it was suddenly scalding. There could have been burns.
“No,” Aziraphale said quickly, pushing himself back against the cushions in his chair. What had he been thinking? Where had his mind gone, his common sense? And what was Crowley thinking, doing this?
Crowley’s eyes shot open, and he took two stumbling steps backward. His hands were still outstretched, seemingly stuck in the position they’d been in when he’d braced himself against the back of Aziraphale’s chair.
“What?” Crowley’s smooth voice was a choked thing now. “Oh, shit. Sorry, do you not want to do that?”
“It’s not that.” Aziraphale was watching Crowley, watching him stay as still as a statue. Watching Crowley watch him.
“Then what’s th—”
“We can’t, ” Aziraphale said. Calm, or nearly so. Trying to be.
“Did I…” Crowley’s hands dropped to his sides. Aziraphale heard them connect, a muffled slap of skin on fabric. For no reason that Aziraphale could identify, that sound hurt. Drove right to the center of Aziraphale’s heart. “Did I not hear you right? You said… Christ, angel, you said you’re in love with me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Twice,” Crowley insisted with a shake of his head. “You said it twice.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said again, increasingly confused by Crowley’s mounting anxiety.
“And I said it back.”
“Yes, what are you—”
“And you said that you don’t not want to kiss me.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale snapped. “You were there. You know what happened.”
Crowley was pacing now. “Clearly I missed something.”
“We’re in love with one another,” Aziraphale said, reaching for reserves of patience that he wasn’t entirely sure were there. “And that’s… well, I think that’s good. But we can’t do anything, can we?”
“See, this is the part I’m missing,” said Crowley. “Why the ever-loving fuck can’t we?”
“Do sober up, my dear.” Aziraphale had done so himself a short while ago, having decided that alcohol wasn’t going to help him decipher Crowley’s thinking. “That should help you understand, I think.”
“I’m not fucking drunk,” Crowley practically spat. When Aziraphale glanced at the bottle on the table to verify this, he found it full. “You’re just not making any sense.”
Aziraphale sighed. “I am an angel, Crowley.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Crowley’s chest was heaving. “I know what you are.”
“You’re a demon,” Aziraphale said, beginning to think that he really was going to have to spell this out.
“Satan, don’t you think I’m well fucking aware of that?”
Aziraphale stood up and was standing in front of Crowley in three steps, curling his fingers into Crowley’s lapels. He was not thinking about the fact that Crowley was warm under his hands, that Crowley looked beautiful even in his unreasonable distress.
“We can’t have a romantic relationship, Crowley. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Crowley’s sunglasses materialized on the bridge of his nose, and Aziraphale stifled a cry.
“Ridiculous,” Crowley said flatly. “Right.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Sure.”
“We’re on opposite sides,” Aziraphale said, hating the desperation that crept into his voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Fine.”
“I didn’t…” Aziraphale could feel Crowley pulling back into himself. The bright smile from a few minutes prior was nowhere to be found, and in its place, Crowley’s lips were crushing against each other to form a straight line. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Crowley.”
“If you fucking apologize again , I swear to shit, Aziraphale—”
“I’m not sorry for loving you,” Aziraphale said forcefully, and Crowley whimpered. “I am, however, sorry that I can’t do anything about it.”
“Why does it matter?” Crowley’s voice was shallow, tiny and fragile, and it tore a whole in Aziraphale’s heart. “Why the Heaven does it matter that we’re on ‘opposite sides’? We haven’t been, not really, for centuries now.”
“We are accountable to someone other than ourselves,” Aziraphale said. “That’s why it matters. We have bosses. We have jobs. We’re on opposite sides, whether you think we are or not.”
“Beelzebub can go fuck themself,” Crowley hissed. “I don’t give a damn about anyone’s opinion, angel, except for yours.”
For the space of four breaths, Aziraphale wanted to give in. He wanted to let go of his responsibilities, forget about Gabriel and Uriel and Michael and Sandalphon, and give in. He wanted to apologize for saying ‘no,’ for stopping Crowley kissing him. He wanted to ask Crowley to try it again, to ask him again.
But on the fifth breath reality came crashing back in, a battering ram to Aziraphale’s rose-colored dreams.
So Aziraphale took a deep breath and said, “My opinion doesn’t matter. Not with this.”
Aziraphale couldn’t see behind Crowley’s glasses, but he could see the muscles in Crowley’s face shift. They stiffened, became hard and solid and impenetrable. Like they’d been in the church, when Crowley had been facing an enemy.
Crowley pulled Aziraphale’s hands away from his jacket and straightened out the wrinkles with a snap of his fingers. He stepped around Aziraphale, heading for the door.
By the time Aziraphale registered what was happening — Crowley was leaving, really actually leaving — Crowley had retrieved his hat from the coat rack and was jamming it onto his head.
“Where are you going?” Aziraphale asked, near begging.
Crowley stopped moving, still facing the door. “Home.”
“Why?” Aziraphale was at his side in a moment. “Our feelings about one another, Crowley, they’re the same. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough to know?”
Crowley laughed. It was a brittle thing, something that had once been sunwarmed that had found itself plunged into a bucket of ice.
“Is it enough for you?” Crowley’s voice was bloodless.
No, Aziraphale thought. No, it’s not. But you can’t kiss me — I can’t let you kiss me — because I will never want to stop. I will never want to stop kissing you, don’t you understand? And we have to live and work and function. We have to talk to our bosses, and we have to be stable. If I kiss you, I will not be stable. I will be shattered. Radioactive. And I will be beautiful, and I will be radiant, and it will be too much.
Aziraphale shoved those words deep down inside of himself, and he reached for Crowley’s hand.
Crowley pulled away, and all of the oxygen in the bookshop disappeared.
“It has to be,” Aziraphale said after a moment, lacing his fingers together and bracing them against his belly. “It has to be enough.”
Crowley laughed again, that same frigid thing. “There’s the proof that you’re better than me, then.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s heart began to crack. “Because I’m not good enough to stand here and look at you right now. I’m not content, Aziraphale. This… this is you giving yourself to me in pieces, and I don’t want you in pieces.”
Aziraphale wanted those wretched sunglasses gone. He wanted them cast out, burned, crushed. Damaged beyond all repair. He needed to see Crowley’s eyes, but he couldn’t.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale pleaded. “Please, try to understand—”
“I do understand,” Crowley said almost gently. “That’s the worst part, I think. I do understand. But you see why I have to go, yeah? You get why I can’t… why I can’t be here.”
“I don’t.”
Crowley’s lips curled into a sneer. “I’ve been in love with you for a long fucking time, an— Aziraphale. And tonight you told me that you… that you, uh.”
“Love you,” Aziraphale finished, and Crowley made a wheezing noise.
“Yeah, that. And I’ve spent centuries telling myself that you’d never feel that, that you wouldn’t ever want to know that I love you, and then you fucking— you fucking do feel that, and you do want to know, and then you won’t let me. You won’t let me love you, Aziraphale, and that’s going to kill me.”
Aziraphale stared.
“So I have to go,” Crowley finished. “I have to, because I love you, and you love me. So I have to go.”
And then Crowley did go. He left with near-silent steps, and the lock on the front door of the bookshop clicked behind him, because he’d told it to. And Aziraphale watched him go, and he saw the deadbolt twist into the locked position, and he heard the rumbling start of the Bentley’s engine.
Aziraphale kept listening, kept not moving or making a sound, until he couldn’t hear the car any more. He didn’t breathe again for close to an hour, not until sunlight was beginning to peek through the shop’s dust-covered windows.
When he did move, when he did breathe, it hurt.
His first movement was a shudder. The second was his hand pressed over his mouth, catching the wounded sound that was threatening to escape. The third movement was his first breath, and it was long because it was interrupted by an aborted sob. The fourth was an about-face, the fifth the straightening of his bowtie.
Aziraphale was in love with Crowley, and Crowley was in love with him, and that was the most terrible thing.
-- 2019 --
“...and I swear I had a collection of Byrons here — I wonder if they’ve gone completely or if the boy simply adjusted my organizational system…” Aziraphale trailed off mid-sentence, having turned around to find Crowley standing in the open doorway. Crowley had driven Aziraphale back to the bookshop after their lunch at the Ritz, and Aziraphale had assumed that he would come in for a drink. Apparently, there had been some sort of misunderstanding. “My dear, are you planning to come inside, or would you prefer to stand there like some sort of shadow?”
“Dunno.” There was a strange quality to Crowley’s voice. “Do you want me to? I can go home, if you like.”
Aziraphale’s brow crinkled. “Why would I want you to go home?”
“Well,” Crowley said slowly, still not moving out of the entryway, “you don’t have to be around me anymore, you know.”
“What?”
“The Arrangement’s done.” Crowley’s sunglasses were an impervious wall of darkness, and Aziraphale had to stop himself from miracling them away. “And the world didn’t end, and we didn’t die, and we’ve had a lunch celebrating all of that. At the Ritz, no less, so you can check that one off the list. One out of two’s not bad.”
Aziraphale was getting the feeling that he and Crowley were very much not on the same page about how he wanted things to be post-Apocalypse. Possibly not even in the same book. Maybe not even in the same library (or bookshop, as it were).
“One out of— Crowley, what are you talking about?”
“‘Maybe one day we could go for a picnic,’” Crowley quoted in a stiff monotone, and Aziraphale felt the air turn cold. “‘Dine at the Ritz.’”
“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed. “Oh, Crowley, no.”
“It’s fine.” Crowley sounded like he was trying to make himself believe it. “I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with myself now. You have to tell me, okay? You have to tell me what you want from me.”
“Crowley—” Aziraphale started, but Crowley cut him off.
“Because I know what I want you to want, but I don’t want it if it’s not what you want.”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, I don’t believe I caught that.”
Crowley blew a stream of air upward. It ruffled his hair, pushed a strand out of place, and Aziraphale itched to fix it.
“Let’s just say that my feelings about you, the ones I told you eighty years ago, haven’t changed,” Crowley said shortly, and Aziraphale’s heart leapt into his throat. “And my feelings about those feelings haven’t changed. I want to love you, Aziraphale — I do love you — but I need… I need you to let me. The world didn’t end and we didn’t die and I can’t not love you anymore.”
“Alright,” Aziraphale said.
“Because I can’t come in and sit with you and drink with you and not be allowed to be in love with you, okay?” Crowley was working himself up, his breaths coming faster, which meant that he hadn’t heard Aziraphale’s response. “So if I can’t, if you don’t want me to— if you still don’t have a bloody opinion, Aziraphale, you’d better tell me now. Because if I come in, I’m going to be in love with you, and I’m going to ask you to let me do things like kiss you. I can’t keep pretending that my feelings for you don’t exist. It’s not your fault, not really, but I just. I just don’t want to do it anymore.” Crowley took a bracing breath. “So you’d better tell me what you want me to do, because I am standing here and I am… I’m fucking bleeding, here, and I am not kissing you and it’s terrible, so tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to come inside,” Aziraphale said, putting as much force behind his words as he could manage.
“You want.” Aziraphale still couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes, but he could see Crowley’s throat working as he swallowed. “You want me to come inside.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said gently.
“You heard what I said about that, yeah?” Crowley was fidgeting now, his fingers playing with the bottom hem of his jacket. “About the… the loving and the kissing and the… the that stuff?”
“I heard.”
“And you want, uh. You want me to come inside, and do that.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, unable to stop himself from smiling. “I want you to come inside, Crowley, and I want you to love me, and I want you to kiss me.”
Crowley made a squeaking noise. “Oh.”
“You said it yourself, you know.” Aziraphale stepped closer, now within an arm’s length of Crowley. “We’re on our own side.”
“Ngh,” said Crowley.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to realize,” Aziraphale said. “I am so sorry, Crowley.”
“‘S fine,” Crowley choked out. “Fine.”
Crowley still hadn’t moved out of the doorway. He seemed to be frozen there, afraid to move, so Aziraphale moved for him. He took Crowley’s hand, and Crowley shivered.
“Come inside, darling,” Aziraphale said softly. “Please.”
It was three eternally long seconds before finally, Crowley did. He took a shuffling step forward, and the door shut behind him. There was a click (which Aziraphale quickly identified as the deadbolt locking after Crowley, but this time it was locking him in instead of out ) and then there was silence.
“Angel,” Crowley said, sounding as small as he had looked that night in 1941 with his knees tucked up into his chest, “tell me. Tell me again.”
Aziraphale smiled up at him. Raised a hand to press a finger against Crowley’s lips, to trace a line upward along Crowley’s jaw. To pull those sunglasses off of Crowley’s nose and send them out into the ether with a snap of his fingers.
Crowley’s eyes were yellow from corner to corner, too wide and very afraid.
“Beautiful,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley made a choking noise.
“Tell me, Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, begging now. “Tell me that you… tell me.”
Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s cheekbone with his thumb, looked Crowley directly in the eye, and said, “I’m afraid I’m quite terribly in love with you.”
It was almost funny, really, how the same words could be so completely different.
“Oh,” said Crowley faintly.
“And we’re our own side, you know,” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s hand shook, his grip on Aziraphale’s fingers tightening by the moment. “One might even say that I am on your side.”
“Oh,” Crowley said again, and his beautiful eyes shifted downward, his gaze coming to rest on Aziraphale’s lips.
Aziraphale’s patience had run rather completely out at this point, so he said, “And I’d very much like to be kissing you, so if you’re not going to do it, I will.”
“Doing it,” Crowley said, and he did.
It was gentle, and it was warm, and a certain kind of fire that had been absent from Aziraphale’s veins for the better part of a century was suddenly coursing through them again.
The kiss wasn’t a long one, but when Crowley pulled away, Aziraphale found that breathing was so much easier than it ever had been before.
“Hi,” Crowley muttered. "I love you.”
So Aziraphale said, “I love you, too,” and the words tasted like sunlight.
A few hours later, when two bottles of 1967 Penfolds Grange stood empty on Aziraphale’s coffee table and Crowley was curled into Aziraphale’s side, Aziraphale had a thought.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley blinked up at him with those lovely golden eyes.
“Yeah?”
“You called me your best friend.”
Crowley grunted. “Yeah. ‘S that a problem?”
“Not as such,” Aziraphale said. He began to thread his fingers through Crowley’s hair, because he’d been wanting to do it for quite some time and figured that this was as good a time as any. Crowley hummed, nuzzling closer to Aziraphale’s chest and pushing his head into Aziraphale’s hand. “I was only thinking that while you are, of course, my best friend as well, we might be able to come up with a better descriptor.”
Crowley snorted. “Like what? ‘Boyfriend’ seems a bit juvenile, don’t you think?”
“Oh, more than a bit, my dear,” Aziraphale laughed. “I had something else in mind.”
“Mm?”
“I thought that ‘husband’ might be best,” said Aziraphale.
There was a thudding sound, and Aziraphale found that his hand suddenly empty and his side devoid of any former demons.
“Ow,” Crowley said from his new position on the floor.
With a sigh, Aziraphale leaned forward and found a red-faced Crowley lying at a strange angle, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale tutted. “You must learn how to stay on the sofa. This is getting to be a habit of yours.”
“Deal with it,” Crowley said to the ceiling. “You said ‘husband.’”
Aziraphale wrinkled his nose. “You don’t like it?”
“Shut up,” Crowley snipped. “‘Course I bloody like it.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Lovely.”
Crowley did not make any attempts to get up from the floor, but he did roll his head to the side and fix Aziraphale with a loopy-looking grin.
“You didn’t even propose,” Crowley said with a megawatt grin. “That’s a rubbish way to start a marriage, I think.”
“You say ‘start’ as if I haven’t been devoted to you for most of my time on Earth, my darling,” Aziraphale replied, returning Crowley’s smile. “It simply took me a little while to realize it.”
Crowley did nothing but stare at Aziraphale for a moment, unblinking and slack-jawed. Without another word, he pulled his long legs back underneath his hips and pushed himself to a standing position, his eyes never leaving Aziraphale’s. He took a step forward, the front of his shins pressing against the seat cushion on either side of Aziraphale’s knees.
“Marry me,” Crowley said softly.
Aziraphale’s eyebrows pinched together. “What?”
“If you aren’t going to ask…” Crowley closed his fist and moved his right wrist in a semicircular motion, like the turning of a doorknob. When he opened his fingers, a thin band of black metal was resting on his palm. “Look, I just thought that one of us should ask properly, ‘s all. We don’t have to make it— it doesn’t have to be a thing, okay?”
Aziraphale worked his signet ring off of his pinky finger in a moment. He swapped it for the band in Crowley’s outstretched palm, ensuring with a thought that the ring he’d worn for thousands of years would fit perfectly on the fourth finger of Crowley’s left hand.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said after he’d made the swap, taking care to speak clearly as he slid the cold black ring over his own ring finger. “Yes, I will marry you. Will you marry me?”
“It’s like you said.” Crowley mimicked Aziraphale’s motion. He held his hand up for a moment, just long enough for the gold of Aziraphale’s — Crowley’s, now — ring to catch the light, to shine. And then he let his hand come to rest against Aziraphale’s, shifting their fingers so that their wedding rings were pressed together. “I’ve been devoted to you for… well, for the entirety of my time on earth, really. This just makes it official.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale, who was experiencing such a dizzyingly large wave of love at that revelation that he nearly forgot how to form words. “Is that a ‘yes,’ then?”
“It’s a yes,” Crowley laughed. “Husband. Yeah, I definitely like that word. Fits, I think, for you. For us.”
With a wink, Crowley bent at the waist, raising his hands to grip the back of the sofa just as he’d done so many years before. He ducked his head down and moved his face toward Aziraphale’s, stopping it when their noses were just shy of touching. Aziraphale could feel the air between their skin, alive with electricity. Charged. Waiting for a moment of skin-to-skin connection that would complete the circuit — the brush of noses, the caress of a finger over a cheek, the press of one set of lips against another.
“Can I kiss you?” Crowley asked as his eyes fell shut.
He was beautiful, and Aziraphale was in love with him, and there was really only one thing to say.
So Aziraphale smiled against Crowley’s lips, took a breath, and said “Yes.”