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"Angel?" Crowley's voice was scratchy and tired over the receiver of Aziraphale's rotary phone.
"Crowley?" Aziraphale sighed a bit with the word, bewildered and concerned. "Crowley, dear boy, you left the bookshop an hour ago. What is so important that it could not wait until tomorrow?"
The pair had drunk themselves silly only hours before, discussing and debating the pros and cons of Armageddon. Crowley was absolutely certain that the Anti-Christ had arrived, having delivered the boy himself to some American diplomats under behest of the Lords of Hell. The world had eleven lovely years until the destruction of their quaint planet, and Aziraphale and Crowley had only eleven years until an eternity of tinny harps or tortured screams, respectively.
Yet, for all of Heaven and Hell's excitement for the upcoming war and eternity of triumph, Crowley was less than keen on the idea, and made it known to Aziraphale, prowling on his weakness towards mortal niceties and love for all creatures' existence to persuade him to help stop the end of the world. The obedient angel was hesitant to partake in such conspiracy, but after some logical reasoning, he was reluctantly swayed.
"Angel, are you in the bookshop?" Crowley's somewhat unnecessary question elicited a small, patient smile from Aziraphale.
"Of course I am, where else would I be at this hour?" After Crowley had left the bookshop, Aziraphale resolved to spend some time doing surface inventory of his selection. If the world was ending, the angel wanted it to end with him having completed all of the great works of this era.
“Are you busy, then?” Aziraphale chuckled softly into the receiver, glancing around at the stacks of books that surrounded him.
“Not particularly, but truly I don’t see why you ask-”
“I’m coming in.” said the voice on the other end, in a tone so resolute that it left no room for argument.
“Crowley, I-”
Dial tone. The demon had hung up.
“Well, it must be something important then,” the angel muttered to himself, placing the phone back on its base.
Just then, the doors of the bookshop flung open, as if a gust of particularly determined wind had decided it needed housing in the angel’s residence. Startling a bit, but not alarmed, Aziraphale turned on his heel to face the presence walking through the threshold, his brows furrowing as he saw Crowley’s bony fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle of wine.
“Angel!” Crowley’s eyes widened brightly behind his sunglasses, a too-carefree smile sprawling across his rosy cheeks. His faded red hair was wild and tousled in its waterfall down his neck, his black coat carelessly slung across his back.
“Crowley, my dear, why-” Aziraphale started as the demon in question sauntered towards him, steps wobbly, “Oh,” realization twinkled in the back of his mind, “Crowley, dear, are you drunk?”
“What? No, of course not!” Crowley slurred, elongating his vowels in a telling fit of defense, “I just wanted to see you, angel, that’s all!”
“Right, alright,” the angel knew how to deal with Crowley under the influence. If the incident in Edinburgh had taught him anything, it was this. “Alright, dear, why don’t we sit down, yeah? I’ll make you a cup of tea.” When Crowley was this drunk, it didn’t make sense trying to convince him to use a miracle to sober up, so they’d just have to do it the human way.
Tea, sleep and faith that the victim won’t be sick.
"No, no, angel- Aziraphale, wait a minute," Crowley brushed Aziraphale's hands off from where they were guiding him towards the overstuffed sofa, mumbling emphatically, "I have-" he was tripping over his words, unable to get the sentences out as the sluggish wheels of his brain spun with effort, "I have something to say."
"Yes, I'm sure you do, but let's sit down first, hmm? Then we can talk as much as you'd like." Aziraphale led him patiently towards the sofa, humming affirming noises as they made their way slowly.
"Aziraphale." Crowley whispered, as soon as he managed to get them seated.
"Yes, I'm right here, dear."
"Aziraphale," the demon repeated softly, words muddling together as he worked to weave them into thoughts, "You're so.."
"Innocent? Nice? Holy?" the angel in question recalled the various words thrown at him during their many tête-à-têtes.
"Good."
"Oh." Aziraphale blinked, taking in the demon's words. He'd been called good by his companion before, but never without a hint of sarcasm and belittling enveloping the word, and certainly not with such sincerity, such earnestness. "Well, I'm an angel, Crowley, I'm meant to be good."
"Yes but you're not.." he paused, sinking further into the plush cushions as he searched himself for words. The half-drunk bottle of wine was still clutched loosely in his hand. "All of the other angels, they say they're good, all cherubs and rainbows and whatnot, but they do bad things in the name of...Her." Distaste bloomed in his tone at the mention of the Almighty.
"Crowley, I'm sure I don't know what you mean." Crowley was drunk, he clearly didn't know what he was talking about.
"Yes, you do, angel. They're all pretend-y good. You," Crowley continued, "You're properly good. Like- oh, bollocks, what was her name- Meri- no, Moor- angel, help me, the girl, in Edinburgh, with the-" he stuttered drunkenly, words muddying apart beneath intoxication and a thick accent, "The, the body snatcher girl-"
"Wee Morag?"
"Yes! Yes, angel," his voice dissolved into a Scottish accent and rose in pitch for the name, "Wee Morag! Now she, she was properly good, or, least she wanted to be. If it wasn't for those bastards-" he muttered, thoroughly incensed by the poor girl's mistreatment.
"Of course," Aziraphale cut him off before he could start rambling, "But Crowley, dear, what's your point?"
This was all beginning to feel too reminiscent of the discussion they'd had only hours earlier, except this time, Aziraphale was sober. Crowley, however, was clearly not.
"The point! Yes, yes, the-the point. The point is, you're good, angel."
Aziraphale sighed. "Crowley, I'm an angel, of course I'm good. Dear, I just explained-"
"I heard you!" Crowley exclaimed, the force and fervor of his argument drawing him to stand again, stumbling to face Aziraphale, a thud where he had set down the wine bottle still vibrating through the floor, "I heard you, but you didn't hear me. Angel, Aziraphale, they don't deserve you."
"What? Crowley, dear, you're not making sense, why don't you sit back down-"
"None, none of them do, they don't deserve someone as good as you, angel, you do the best you can and you're so good and you're so kind and I honestly don't know how you do it because humanity can be so terrible but you try so hard, and it's so wonderful to see," he was rambling, he knew he was, and he knew Aziraphale could see it but he needed Aziraphale to hear him, "Because you're so good and they don't deserve that, not when they're so terrible-"
"Crowley, who are you talking about?" Aziraphale asked quietly, the question dropping from his mouth like a brick into a pond.
"Heaven."
"Crowley-" Aziraphale started, chastisement at the tip of his tongue.
The demon was biased for one, and completely gone to a different state of mind due to apparently excessive amount of alcohol, looking down at the seated angel with wobbly yet fierce eyes, clearly holding back something indiscernible behind the press of his lips and between the falling strands of fire hair. But before Aziraphale could disprove his little claim, by both the lack of virtue of his actions and Heaven's ineffable kindness, Crowley spoke, voice the most clear and sure of itself it had been since he had rung Aziraphale.
"Run away with me."
"What?"
"You heard me, Aziraphale."
"Crowley, you're drunk."
He was. He was intoxicated, inebriated, off his head. He wouldn't suggest it otherwise. Crowley would never suggest something so blasphemous, so cowardly, as simply running away from their problems unless he was so utterly gone that he didn't know left from right, right from wrong. He wouldn't do that.
"Angel, you're not listening to me, to what I'm saying, just listen-" The demon's voice shook as he spoke, the words pouring out of his mouth like he was struggling to hold them back, like he had been trying to hold them back for longer than Aziraphale could imagine.
And Aziraphale was listening, he heard Crowley, heard the terrified intonation of his words and the firm request layered in his voice, determination and hope and anxiety all folded atop each other in four simple words. But he wasn't in his right state of mind, this was merely a drunken fantasy, an unrefined, primitive inquiry, perhaps even a test from the demon to see if Aziraphale would, by some Grace, take him up on something like this. Crowley couldn't be seriously asking this of a former Principality of Heaven.
Except.
Except a dull thud reached Aziraphale's ears, and suddenly the demon was on his knees in front of him.
And by the Almighty, his eyes.
His sunglasses had slid down his nose ever so slightly, revealing the shining, honey amber of his eyes, black slits drawn down the center of them, vines of yellowing verdant snaking through the iris. His pupils were glazed over, but it was different from a normal drunken haze. Instead, his eyes were soaked in pure, unadulterated desperation. The beginnings of salty tears were welling from their edges, fear and desire and hope brimming from them and pooling in the corners in a way that made Aziraphale want to wipe them away.
"Ang-Angel, it's not safe here anymore. This- This stupid apocalypse, it could be the end of every-" Crowley's words tumbled out of his mouth in broken bits of poetry and wretched pleading, "Everything. No more bookshop, no more Bentley, no more... no more us, Aziraphale." his voice shattered, cracking on the angel's divine name.
"They'll keep us apart, angel, you know they will. There'll be no re-" Crowley was stuttering over his words as they spilled from his lips, eyes gazing up into Aziraphale's over the colored glass walls that usually shielded them, "No reason to see each other anymore. They'll keep us apart. I won't see you again."
"Oh Crowley," Aziraphale's voice was a hushed sympathy bleeding into the demon's ears.
"No, no angel, please, just listen for once. Come with me. Alpha Centauri, Zeta Reticuli, any nebula or star system you want, for Satan's sake, I made 'em all! I know them all and we can go, angel, we can go and stay there, somewhere only you and I will be, no one else needs to know, it can just be us!" Aziraphale wasn't sure if the sincere hope which dripped from his begging was from drunkenness or naïve desire. "Aziraphale, we've relied on each other for many millennia now, you can't tell me-" he broke off.
What more could the demon say?
"Angel, please," his voice was fraying at the edges. Broken. "I need you."
"What? Oh, Crowley, stop this please, you know-" Aziraphale began. He needed to reason with the demon, get him out of his jumbled, fearful state of mind, that's all.
"Al- Alright, fine, Aziraphale, don't go with me forever, God knows no one could handle forever with me, but, please, come- come with me." Sweet Satan, Crowley really was pathetic now, wasn't he? Begging at an angel's feet for an ounce of his merciful love. "A minute. A day. Just to talk about it. About what to do next," his voice was a frenzy now, falling apart at the seams as the words toppled out, "The world is ending, please, let's talk about it. Somewhere hidden, where no scary eyes will even think to look for us, just go with me for a bit, angel-"
"Crowley, dear, please." Feeble firmness took hold of Aziraphale's voice as he forced Crowley to take a breath, trying to quiet his worries and his pleading. "You know we can't do that."
"What, what do you mean we can't?" Crowley's despair was slowly trickling into something less kind as fresh tears pricked at his starlight eyes. "Angel, we are immortal. We were born before the stars. Who the fuck said we can't?"
Did he not care?
After six thousand years of seeing each other, being around each other, however infrequently, however brief, whatever façade of convenience they had put up to avoid facing the fact that they simply enjoyed each other's company, did Aziraphale really not care that they could never see each other again? Was this stupid, so-called ineffable Plan so incredibly important that two eternal beings out of several thousand could not simply extract themselves from it? They could be replaced.
Was he angry at God, for making that inconsiderate Plan, or at Aziraphale, for trying to follow it so perfectly?
Not Aziraphale. Never Aziraphale.
Crowley never could stay mad at him.
The angel was staring down at him where he knelt, beautiful eyes in which he could see bursts of a cloudless afternoon sky peering down at him, conflict and grief shuttering through them like flashes of a camera. He was confused, Crowley realized with a quivering inhale. He didn't know why the demon was so intent on this, so desperate.
Maybe he just needed to explain more. Maybe he just needed to show Aziraphale how much he cared for him.
"Angel, c'mere." Crowley shuffled towards Aziraphale where he was seated on the well-worn cushions, still knelt as he reached out.
"What? Crowley, what are you-" Aziraphale began, puzzled at the sudden drop in volume.
The bitterness had leaked out of his voice. Instead, there was a shift. From terrified, hopeful, despairingly longing for some comfort, to anger and frustration and confusion, and now, this resigned, quiet request. His voice was no longer steeped in uncertainty and anxiety, in harsh anguish and pain. Suddenly, his voice had become soft, as if sharing a secret only the two of them could bear the burden of.
The demon silenced him with a hum and callous, outstretched palms, beckoning Aziraphale ever nearer from where he sat. Shifting to draw closer to Crowley until he was merely perched on the sofa, he watched the demon with hesitance embedded in an angelic stare, his composure struggling to maintain itself in the face of emotions laid bare.
Then Crowley was grasping the angel's pale, well-loved hands with his own bony ones, with a hold so gentle it could almost be called reverent.
It was as if the shared space between them was so fragile, he was scared to break it.
The moment slowed, the heady weight of seraphic hands in his own muffling the world around Crowley, the entire world shrunk down and fitted only to where the two had joined hands, every nerve in this distractingly human body suddenly alight with the feeling of finally being able to touch the angel, of holding the purest piece of divinity in his palms. The pair breathed together, inhaling and exhaling to ground themselves in this new sensation, in this undiscovered sector of physicality.
Crowley had held novae and nebulae in his palms before, but even that didn't compare to the feeling of Aziraphale's hands in his own.
In a slow, muddled movement, almost akin to a dream, Aziraphale's hands were guided to cup Crowley's cheeks, holding the demon's face in his palms with an almost tender, light hold which had Crowley shuddering at the kindness of it all. As his shoulders tightened at the touch, only to breathe that tension out in the next soundless puff of air, his own hands pressed the angel's palms into him. His serpentine eyes had fluttered close, lips resigned, pressed loosely together.
Far was the raucous, drunken demeanor from mere minutes ago, now he was venerant, revering. Peaceful.
"Crowley," Aziraphale was surprised by the softness of his own voice, "what are you doing?"
"Shh," but Crowley's voice was like a zephyr drifting through the silent book shop, "just watch, angel."
As if by instinct, Aziraphale's eyes drifted close, and in the familiar darkness of his mind, he heard Crowley breathe out a sigh as his hands left Aziraphale's and dropped back to his lap, where his legs were folded under him. Then,
"Let there be light."
The demon's voice reverberated in his companion's mind, ringing through in a symphony of baritone silk words and deep, rich laughter.
Suddenly, Aziraphale was back in Rome, in Paris, in Eden, in Heaven.
Suddenly, he was among the stars again, watching a newly alive angel with stark red hair create stars from his fingertips, blooming, bursting flowers of burning dust and potential, beaming with unabashed joy at his creation.
He was in Eden, watching humanity grow and thrive with the plant life and grinning as they thanked the Almighty with each word and furrowing his brow as they cowered from the slithering presence in a Tree.
He was welcoming onlookers to gawk at the Arc, advising Arthur in the Round Table, watching the Son of God be executed for his wisdom.
He was laughing.
And through it all, there was the figure robed in striking dark colors by his side. The Black Knight, the Serpent of Eden. The angel with the bright red hair.
Crowley.
In each memory, as Aziraphale stared out into whatever splendid sight graced them, glee and fascination and adoration for the world ever present in his eyes, there was Crowley, staring at Aziraphale with the same look of shrouded, smitten love.
What? No, that couldn't be right. Crowley would never...
He could never...
Yet, as Aziraphale sank further, deeper into this crystalline pool of carefully stored memories, he searched, and he saw.
A wave of fingers to open a table at Aziraphale's favorite restaurant. A 'little demonic miracle' to save the books in 1941. A snap to tidy the Bentley before offering the angel a ride.
And still further, he looked, and he saw.
A shy glance to the floor, a demure, disbelieving chuckle escaping, a look of pure and utter fondness draping onto Aziraphale from Crowley's giddy eyes. But only while the angel was distracted, never when his focus was placed was placed on him.
And as he searched, and saw, he felt.
The love Crowley kept so perfectly tucked behind his heart was spilling out now, seeping through his hands where Aziraphale's precious palms met his drawn face, bleeding into the memories that danced between them like ink on the edges of tea stained paper. Elusive looks which poured affection like an offering at the feet of an unknowing, impervious idol, whispered confessions at the alter of love, worshipping and devoted beneath the shadows of uneasy friendship.
A damn built of fear of disdainful rejection and shame for loving the serene, unreachable glory of an angel was breaking now, crimson vulnerability leaking through the rippling, shattered glass cracks.
Smothered under the weight of many millennia of memories, Aziraphale gasped.
All at once, the angel knew.
This, this was it. This was how Crowley would get through to him. Losing themselves in a sea of shared fragments of time, finding newly renewed joy and delight in the film reel of their existences together. This would explain the tearing, ragged hope in his voice as he begged the angel to listen to him. This was how Crowley could show Aziraphale why he needed them to be able to reunite, to be around each other and bask in their innate contrast and simply exist with each other. This was how Crowley would show him why he cared.
But then, he felt it.
The blinding, scalding warmth of divinity.
The golden tendrils of deistic, white hot magic snaking its way through his mind.
The celestial heat of angelic miracles.
And suddenly, Crowley saw too.
His own memories, so thoroughly tarnished and painted with dull, dirty watercolor, details blurring and falling into obscurity with age, like the yellowed borders of an old photograph, were suddenly aglow with new, vibrant life.
But they weren't only his memories anymore.
Suddenly, Crowley could see too.
And he looked, and he saw.
He saw himself through Aziraphale's eyes, all sharpened edges and rasping laughs, softened with nativity to friendship, a brick fortress of solitude worn down by years of polite knocking, a patient soul just waiting to be let in. He saw the looks that Aziraphale laid upon him as he gazed out into his jaded reality, understanding and hopeful and so soft. He saw his sweet blue eyes dote upon him, all love-drunk and infatuation-laden, and he saw the angel's hands twitch and tug at themselves in an effort to hold themselves back from reaching out to touch him.
Crowley had felt himself be ruined by this all these years, and now he was witnessing Aziraphale's destruction, at his own hands.
The revelation was like being able to breathe again.
Uncertainty and fear and despairing horror flooded from his eyes in his tears as relieved sobs wracked his body, and Crowley let his head drop into the angel's safe hands entirely, giving himself to the angel with trust, adoration and love pouring out of him in waves. He drank in Aziraphale's holy light in his dreary mind, listening to his angel's voice as it wove a tale of their lives through bits of sound rising from the memories like music from a crowd.
A small smile drew its way across his face despite the salty tears cascading down his cheeks, a dry laugh mingling with his hitching breath as he watched the unlikely pair of eternal beings work their way around each other, trailing away from each other with hesitant glances that seemed to last longer and longer with each decade. He sighed as he watched them dance around each other, colliding in a torrent of sparks, chaos and decreasingly reluctant shared meals.
Bathed in the comforting warmth of Aziraphale's angelic glow, Crowley lived through their love once again, and thrived with it, knelt at his beloved's feet.
He didn't know what would happen next, if this was even an answer to his desperate pleas for escape, but he knew it would be alright, because his angel would be with him through it all.
Above all of the feathers of dialogue floating through the demon's mind, he heard the sweet sound of his angel's voice, louder than anything else. It rang through his mind like the chime of a church bell.
"I'm sorry, my dearest. They could destroy you."
What?
Suddenly, the faded heat of heavenly magic was back, and stronger than before.
Molten gold vines which had snaked through his mind to reveal the scattered pathways of Aziraphale's memories were aflame now, burning his own memories of his journey into the angel's mind away, destroying any evidence of reciprocation that Crowley may have been able to retain. Distantly, he heard a scream rip itself from his throat as pain seared through the winding recesses of his brain where he had let the angel peer into his deepest vulnerabilities, and with the last burst of energy he had before the force of divinity drained him, he fought to remember.
If not to remember Aziraphale's love, to remember his own.
As the world blinked out into aphotic darkness, he remembered.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The first thing Crowley realized when he awoke was that he wasn't in his flat.
The fresh scent of leaves and repulsive scent of spilled whiskey were replaced by jasmine tea and the faintest hint of old paper. Sleek black and glass walls were instead dark oak, small spots, dents and crevices revealing the paler wood below the bark. Tomes of every shape and color lined the old brown shelves throughout the familiar room, and his back was aching from a night spent on a too soft bed.
He was in the bookshop.
Stretching as he stood, tossing onto a nearby armchair the wool blanket no doubt carefully placed over him by a kindly angel, he called, "Aziraphale!"
Aziraphale was usually awake after dawn, brewing a cup of tea or reading an old novel in the serenity of the noiseless, people-less, morning. The demon cracked his neck as he leaned against the mussed sofa, waiting for the angel to explain just what had transpired over the late hours of last night.
Luckily, he didn't have to wait long, as Aziraphale hurried in with quick steps and a cup of steaming tea grasped in his hands.
"Oh! Crowley," the angel seemed stressed, "You're awake." He almost sounded sad.
"Yes, yes, I am. Now, care to tell me how I ended up here last night, angel?" Crowley's voice was still thick with sleep, groggy as he spoke.
"Oh, you...you don't remember?" an unreadable look passed across Aziraphale's face, leaving the moment it arrived.
"No, last I checked I was in my flat, maybe having a bit too much to drink," Crowley paused, suddenly concerned at his own actions. He prayed to whoever wanted to torture him today that he hadn't done anything stupid, said anything stupid to his friend. He had been keeping the true nature of his affection secret for so long, surely he hadn't blown it on a drunken night. "Angel," he searched Aziraphale's face for any reaction to the nickname, seeing nothing, "did I do something?"
"Well," the angel hesitated, before stuttering out, "No," then more firmly, as if he was becoming sure of himself, "No, you didn't. You drove over here because you had another point about...whales. I let you talk a bit, and then you asked me to let you sleep. Everything was fine. Everything is perfectly fine, between us, and, well, in general."
"Aside from the Anti-Christ." Crowley deadpanned, raising an eyebrow.
"Aside from the Anti-Christ, yes." Aziraphale repeated in agreement.
Crowley let out a noise somewhere between a scoff and hmm. Then, he seemed to take Aziraphale's words as the truth, shrugging the whole ordeal off, before asking, "D'you have a shower I can use? Since I'm here, we might as well get breakfast, my treat. Don't want to show up looking like I did the walk of shame, y'know?"
"Yes, yes, of course, it's right there," Aziraphale gestured to the area where he kept a modest bathroom, mostly for the sake of appearances.
With an easy smile, Crowley straightened as he walked past Aziraphale, missing the sigh potent with relief which left the angel's lips.
He also seemed to miss the way the angel gazed at him, wistful, solemn.
Loving.