Archive of Our Own

Aziraphale thinks that, perhaps, knocking with such cheeriness was a mistake.

Crowley’s dwelling in Venice is shockingly modest. He’s in a little flat off a campo mostly populated by elderly locals and rowdy students, far, far away from the thrumming, crowded St. Mark’s Square or the Grand Canal. The restaurants in the neighborhood are excellent, though not quite so excellent as could be found in more traveled parts of the city. The door to the flat was once painted a delightful blue, but after years and years of weather, salt air, and loud, brutish knocking without a single refresh or even a wipe down, the paint decided that enough was enough. Vast sections of it have peeled away for greener pastures, which it did not find in the sewers and waters of the lagoon. The paint that has remained is doing its best, and its best is somewhere south of neutral and rapidly approaching shabby.

But he knows Crowley is here, so here is where Aziraphale wants to be.

He knocks again, with (he hopes) more gravitas this time. He wonders if Crowley might be asleep, and is on the cusp of fretting about what will happen if Crowley does another one of those BIG sleeps when a muffled voice comes from the other side of the door.

“Go away,” the demon says, and after going so long without hearing that voice Aziraphale doesn't think there are two greater words in any language.

“It’s me,” Aziraphale says. (The words were great, yes, but that doesn't mean he has to abide by them.) “Crowley, I desperately need to talk to you.” Aziraphale waits. Crowley will open the door. Crowley has always opened the door, always run out to meet him, always picked him up, always met him more than halfway.

But the door doesn’t open.

“Just leave me alone,” the voice on the other side of the door says. “I don’t want whatever it is.”

Oh dear. Crowley seems to still be operating under their… misunderstanding, from all those months ago. Well, that’s easily dealt with.

“This isn’t about heaven, Crowley,” Aziraphale tries to explain. “Ah, well, I mean, it involves heaven, of course, but it has nothing to do with -”

“I already told you, I’m not coming with you.” Crowley’s voice has an edge to it now, one that Aziraphale has rarely ever heard directed at him. “So you can go back upstairs and tell them that their little honeypot trick didn’t work, that -”

“I - this isn’t about honey, Crowley!” If only he would open the door! “I’m not - I don’t want - I came to tell you that I’ve… I’ve come back, as it were.” No response. Perhaps he should clarify. “To earth.”

Silence, and then the sound of at least five different locks opening one by one. That did it! Aziraphale knew it would, he knew Crowley would never -

“What do you want?” Crowley asks, throwing the door open.

His demon is standing there, and he is the best thing that Aziraphale has ever seen. Still dressed all in black like a storm cloud, a scorch mark, hair strangely disheveled and falling a bit into his eyes.

It’s the hair that does it. There’s a strange touchable quality to it that he’s never noticed before, and now it’s all that he can notice. Aziraphale opens his mouth, closes it again. Suddenly all his mouth can do is remember being kissed, just once, brief and brutal. Suddenly kissing is all his mouth is good for, kissing one person in particular as soon as he possibly can.

Should he lean in now? Take the leap? Show Crowley how much he wants him? He should really explain things first, tell Crowley everything that happened in the bookshop and Upstairs and - oh, but he wants to kiss him, wants to feel Crowley’s warmth against him again. See if he tastes the same.

Touch his neck.

Aziraphale takes a step forward. The demon takes a corresponding one back, looking almost alarmed, one hand on the door as if preparing to slam it shut.

“I said what do you want,” Crowley says again. He does not take his hand from the door.

“I just - well-” Aziraphale looks around the doorframe for some kind of assistance. None is forthcoming. “I just wanted to explain.”

“I think you explained enough,” Crowley says, and he takes another step into the dark recesses of the flat. “I got the whole thing. The jist. The low down. I’m all set.”

“Crowley -”

“If that’ll be all, I have some important… some important something to get done, so if you could just -” He is closing the door. Crowley is closing the door. Crowley has never closed the door on him.

“Not just explain!” Aziraphale says it quickly, and the door hesitates. “To… to apologize.”

“Apologize?” Crowley grins through the crack in the door, and Aziraphale doesn’t like it at all. “Apologize for what, exactly?”

“For - you know.” Aziraphale shuffles from foot to foot. Why is this always so difficult? “For before.”

“You’ll have to be a lot more specific than that.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Do I?” Crowley tilts his head. “Is it the literal thousands of years of only calling on me when you want something?”

“Of course I -”

“Or for not coming with me when we thought the world was about to end?”

“It didn’t end, though -”

“Or making me believe you’d been discorporated by hellfire-”

“Now that wasn’t really my fault -”

“Or how we left it?” Crowley pauses. “How you left it. Is that it?”

“Yes! And all the rest of it, however much of it I can really be blamed for, of course. I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.” There. He’d done it. Now Crowley would ask him to do the stupid dance and Aziraphale would do it. Would take Crowley out to a lovely little osteria, then afterwards they would take a walk and then finally, finally -

“Naaah,” says Crowley.

“What?” Aziraphale snaps his head up. “Crowley, I’m apologizing to you for all of it.”

“You can’t, though.” Aziraphale can’t really see Crowley’s expression, not with those glasses in the way, but Crowley’s mouth is pressed into an angry, jagged line, and Aziraphale can guess the rest. “You can’t just do these things over and over and over again and then apologize like that makes it all better.”

“I know I’ve upset you terribly, and there’s been a dreadful misunderstanding, but -”

“There’s been a misunderstanding alright,” Crowley says. “For thousands of years there’s been a misunderstanding.” Crowley’s expression shifts, and suddenly he looks so, so tired. Exhausted. Like he’s been awake for weeks. Aziraphale wants to reach out, brace his hands against Crowley’s slumped shoulders, pour whatever strength he has into Crowley through touch alone. But Crowley is too far away.

The demon sighs. “You can pop back up to heaven now, if that’s all.”

“No, Crowley that’s not - I’m not going back there, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you -” Crowley has to understand, he has to see what Aziraphale has chosen.

“Back to London then?”

Aziraphale smiles at last. Crowley has always known him best.

“Indeed. Back to the bookshop. And sushi.” Aziraphale allows himself a little wriggle of excitement. He’ll let Crowley gather up his plants, toss out a quick miracle, and they’ll be back home in minutes.

“Have at it then.” Crowley attempts to close the door, and without thinking Aziraphale wedges his foot in the way to keep it from closing.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Azirapahle asks, aghast. He thought they understood each other, he thought -

“Why would I be coming with you?” There’s no hope in Crowley’s voice, no spark that Aziraphale can cling to. What is going on? Every inch that Aziraphale has ever given Crowley’s tried to take a mile, tried to tug him forward faster and faster when all Aziraphale wanted to do was slam on the brakes. He should already have Aziraphale in his arms. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

“Because -” Aziraphale fumbles for the right thing to say. “Because I’m here now.”

“And?”

“And -” Fine. Aziraphale would rather have done this when the timing was right, when they were sitting over tea and dessert at a restaurant with linen tablecloths and soft lighting. Dancing, rainstorms, all that. But this is it.

Aziraphale sticks out his chin. He stares Crowley right where he thinks his eyes should be behind those glasses. “And I love you.”

“Right,” says Crowley, and slams the door shut.

“I don’t understand where I went wrong,” Aziraphale says, one hour of frantic, unanswered knocking later. He’s taken himself to London alone after all, and sits in Nina’s coffee shop nursing a peppermint hot chocolate. “I told him how I felt! I told him I was sorry.”

Maggie and Nina share a look. It’s a look that says “I don’t want to be the one to tell him, but I don’t know anyone else capable of explaining to this otherworldly being what an absolute hash he’s made of this, plus we really should say something since we never got to have a little sit down with him like we had with Crowley before he fucked off to wherever he went.” (It’s a very diffusive look.)

“Sometimes that’s not enough,” says Maggie. “Sometimes people just need a little time.”

“I’ve been gone for months, how much more time does he need?”

“You’ve known how you feel,” Nina chimes in. “You’ve known for however long it took you to quit your new job and come back down here. But he doesn’t know that. It’s all new to him.”

“And…” Maggie hesitates for a moment before continuing. “Sometimes people move on. It’s not uncommon.”

“It’s been six thousand years,” Aziraphale says around a mouthful of eccles cake. “Surely he wouldn’t move on so soon?” He swallows. Then he takes another few bites because he is very miserable and he deserves this little cake until the little cake is gone.

“Did you really apologize, though?” Maggie asks. “I mean did you lay it all out, tell him everything you’re sorry for? Does he understand?”

“Or.” There is a warning in Nina’s voice. “Or maybe you should just leave him alone. You’ve said your piece. If he wants to see you he’ll come to you.”

“No,” Aziraphale shakes his head. “That’s always been the trouble. He’s always been the one to come to me. I have to go to him this time. I have to be persistent.”

Nina and Maggie share another look.

This one says, simply, “Let’s just hope he’s right.”

It takes him a little time to figure out how to go about it.

He tries again in Florence the same way he tried in Venice, and gets another door slammed on him for his trouble. When he tries to meet Crowley in public in Vienna and later on in Warsaw he stumbles over his words and by the time he’s found them again Crowley has already gone.

Right, Aziraphale thinks, as he sits at a table enjoying a slice of makowiec after his last failed attempt. The frontal assault has to go! Aziraphale has to come at this from the side, or maybe the diagonal, be a bishop, not a rook, or something like that. The angel returns to his bookshop, where he thinks, reads, makes cups of tea that he forgets to drink, and thinks some more.

It's on the third day of reading and thinking and clearing half consumed cups of tea from seemingly every flat surface in the shop that it comes to him, right as he takes a sip of that very same tepid tea and spills a drop of it on the cover of Wuthering Heights.

The books!

Aziraphale has read every book in his shop at least once. He has reread some of his favored volumes dozens of times, has memorized whole great swaths of them. If his own words are insufficient to convince Crowley of his sincerity, then perhaps the words of others can!

(He might have the decency to ask the books what they thought of this plan. The books had been watching the two of them for over a hundred years, and certainly had a great deal to say on the matter. But Aziraphale neglects to consult them, and thus will be very unprepared for what happens next.)

Crowley, luckily, is still in Europe. Aziraphale decides to begin boldly, with words that echo down through their long history, words that will, perhaps, invoke happier times and happier places.

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you,” Aziraphale says, joining a very startled Crowley on a park bench in Berlin. “Is that not strange?”

He waits for a smile that does not come. Eventually, Crowley lets out a long, put-upon sigh instead.

“What are you doing?” Crowley asks, in that same flat voice he’s had since Aziraphale’s return.

“I’m telling you how I feel,” Aziraphale says. Surely that must be obvious?

“No, you’re quoting Shakespeare at me in the middle of Berlin,” Crowley replies. “How is that telling me how you feel?”

“Well if you would heed what I’m saying -”

“I’ve heeded what you were saying for the last 6000 years. Never did me a - a spot of good.”

“I’m just -”

“Have a day,” Crowley says, getting up and walking away without a wave.

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” Aziraphale says the moment he sits down in the seat across from Crowley at a cafe in Amsterdam.

“I mustn’t, actually,” Crowley says, and vanishes in the blink of an eye.

“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught,” Aziraphale declares over the loudspeaker in the MoMa.

“Are you fucking serious?” Crowley shouts up at the ceiling, startling no less than thirteen patrons who were doing no more harm than anyone trying to see the Rothko’s at 11:23am on a Thursday morning usually gets up to.

“Oh grow up,” Crowley says to the affronted museum-goers. “They’re all just paintings of his apartment window. Move along!” Crowley looked up at the nearest security camera. “And that goes for you too, Aziraphale.”

Ah. Perhaps mentioning heaven was a bit of a bridge too far.

In the head security office in the depths of the Museum of Modern Art, Aziraphale silently crosses his next six quotations off his list.

The next time, he gets as far as “we loved with a love that was more than love” before Crowley rolls his eyes at him. The effect of this is somewhat dampened by the fact that the demon is wearing a bathing costume and lying in a chaise lounge on a beach in Punta Cana. Aziraphale is trying his best not to look too closely, but – there is an awful lot of skin not to look too closely at.

“They’re both dead by the end of that poem,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale makes a valiant effort to drag his eyes back to Crowley’s face. “You should probably read the whole thing before pulling quotes you think will get me to do anything but tell you to shove off.”

“But it’s beach themed,” Aziraphale argues, maybe a little petulantly. But instead of getting up and walking away or simply vanishing from sight, Crowley leans back on his chaise lounge and sighs.

“Look, normally I’d be the one to skedaddle the… the moment you arrived, but I’m actually enjoying myself here. I’m ‘leaving all my problems behind me’ just like the brochure said. So, you know.”

“It does seem like a lovely place to - ah - to leave your problems behind you.”

“I’m trying to tell you to go away,” Crowley specifies. Aziraphale’s face crumbles. It’s him, he’s the one that Crowley is trying to leave behind - “Or,” Crowley continues, and the word is drawn out a bit longer than it should be. “Or at least just… just get out of my light.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale steps aside and the shadow he’s been casting over Crowley comes with him. “Terribly sorry, I -”

“And stop talking.”

“Right.” Aziraphale waits beside Crowley for fifteen minutes before he thinks the demon might have fallen asleep. He does the gentlemanly thing and leaves him to it.

The books aren’t working. Neither are the plays or the poems or the epics, although drawing from the Iliad was really just a complete misstep on Aziraphale’s part. Perhaps it’s the medium itself that’s the root of the problem. Crowley has never been an avid reader. Maybe the quotes were just… not landing the way they should. Crowley was a demon of the modern world. He loved iced coffee, fast cars -

And films.

However: “I’m just an angel, standing in front of a demon, asking him to love me,” falls completely on its face at a bar in Sydney, although Crowley does deign to finish Aziraphale’s glass of wine in one gulp before popping off to who knows where.

“It’s not because I’m lonely,” Aziraphale begins when he joins Crowley at the summit of Kilimanjaro. “And it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve.” (It was May 13th, actually. Perhaps he should have saved this one, but it was too late to change now.) “I’m here because when you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!”

“Fucking hell,” Crowley says, stumbling in his surprise and falling into the snow. “A little fucking warning would be nice.”

Not quite “I hate you, Aziraphale, I really hate you,” but close enough for ethereal work, as the angels used to say.

In Rio de Janeiro, his attempt at doing a series of cards like the zombie chap in Love Actually outside Crowley’s winter rental goes horrifically awry when Aziraphale fumbles the third card, drops the whole stack, and then Crowley slams the door in his face. He faces similar results at a temple in Tibet, where “Nobody puts demon in a corner,” comes off as very weird and is very difficult to smooth over with the monks.

“I wish I knew how to quit you!” Aziraphale shouts at Crowley over the din of a market in Phnom Penh.

“What?” Crowley shouts back.

“I said I wish I knew how to quit you!” Azirapahle repeats.

“I wish you did too!” Crowley shouts back, and vanishes down an alleyway.

“Look,” Crowley says, stopping Aziraphale when the angel tracks him down at a bar in Casablanca. “Whatever line from Casablanca you’re here to deliver, just stuff it.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Aziraphale sniffs. He wasn’t going to do Casablanca, because all the quotes about love from that film required a bit more contextualization than he was prepared to give in order to make any sense.

“How about this one, angel,” Crowley says, knocking back the last of his wine. Angel, Aziraphale thinks. He said angel, he hasn’t said angel since - “Love don't make things nice,” Crowley begins, and Aziraphale knows this one, he remembers it fondly “- it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit.”

Aziraphale waits for Crowley to finish the line. He knows how it ends, they watched it together, didn’t they? He feels a heart he doesn’t need going absolutely wild in his throat, frenetic beating like it’s a dancer in a Busby Berkeley film.

But Crowley doesn’t say anything else.

“That’s not how the line ends,” Aziraphale observes. Crowley turns red.

“Yeah? Well maybe it's because I don’t - I don't want you to get upstairs and get in my bed,” Crowley sputters. “Because - because -”

“Because why?” Aziraphale prods. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is when he will finally get a chance to explain.

“Because it would make it worse when you leave it!” Crowley exclaims and suddenly Aziraphale understands.

“I don’t - I wouldn’t - When I left heaven it was for good, Crowley.”

“That’s what you said the last time. Or what I thought you said, anyway. I thought that’s what ‘to the world’ meant. To the world. To this world. To us.” He laughs, and it's the worst thing Aziraphale has ever heard. “You can dress it up all you like, use as many borrowed lines from books or movies or television as you please.” Crowley shakes his head. “But I don’t believe you.”

“Oh.” It feels like something is breaking - there is an unmooring in Aziraphale’s chest that he’s never before experienced. Crowley doesn’t believe him. Crowley isn’t running out to meet him, isn’t opening the door. He’s… he’s running from Aziraphale, he’s been running from him all this time, from all the words Aziraphale has thrown at him - both his own and others’ and all the spaces in between.

“I understand,” Aziraphale says. He blinks away the tears in his eyes and swallows down the heart that’s in his throat. “I wish… I wish I could take it all back. Go back, fix it, tell you what I should have told you then. If I could go back further, have gone with you when - well.” He stops. Crowley said he didn’t want any more of Aziraphale’s words.

He nods, and walks away.

Crowley does not turn around to look back at him.

Aziraphale does what he thinks he should have done from the beginning, what Nina told him to do. He leaves Crowley alone.

No more visits to the bottom of the ocean or the top of a mountain or temples in Tibet or cafes in Vienna. No more words that Crowley cannot believe. Aziraphale returns to his bookshop, comes up with an entirely new organization system that takes the better part of three weeks to enact. He rearranges the shelves and tables so he doesn’t have to keep walking past the spot where Crowley kissed him and begged him for the last time to stay. He sends Muriel on a “very important book-finding mission” to Central America (they’re to track down the fourth book in the Lord of the Rings series, The Third Tower, which absolutely does exist but is very well protected and Muriel is very brave and very helpful for taking on this critical task) so they’ll stop leaving him cups of tea with post-it notes telling him to “Feel better soon!” or asking him what a “chapter” is. They still ring him occasionally with updates, but he can handle that much.

He goes to the theater alone, abandons his old haunts, finds new ones where no maitre’d in a well pressed suit will recognize him and ask where his “friend” is this evening. He gets a coffee from Nina in the morning and collects his 78s from Maggie at the end of each week, and tries his best not to wonder where a certain demon might be, and if that demon is warm, or cold, or lonely.

Crowley doesn’t believe him. Doesn’t want him. No amount of apologizing can make it otherwise.

It is six months into this existence when the bell over the shop door rings. It’s a delightful sort of ring, and it shakes Aziraphale out of the book he’s been pouring over since the night before. (A good, sensible naval history. No more fiction for him for some time, thank you very much.)

“We’re closed,” he says, without thinking. (Here, again, if Aziraphale would only listen to his book, he might hear the way each and every volume is screaming at the top of its little petrichor voice “It’s him he’s here he’s here he’s HERE.”)

“Ah.”

It’s a familiar voice. A voice that makes Aziraphale go hot and cold all over in quick and repeating succession. “I can come back, if you’d prefer.”

“No!” Aziraphale says, too fast, leaping out of his chair and making his way towards the front of the shop. Crowley is there, looking tall and handsome and everything Aziraphale wants in heaven and in hell and on earth. Possibly in outer space as well. Not, not possibly. Certainly. Absolutely and always. “Can I -” His voice is shaking. He tries again. “How can I help you?”

“You changed things,” Crowley says, by way of reply, glancing around the shop.

“Yes, I… added some tables, devised a new shelving system.”

“It’s nice.”

“Thank you.” They say nothing to each other for a few long moments.

“You missed an important one,” Crowley says, suddenly, staring up at the ceiling with the intensity of one who’s just taken a class on historical architecture.

“Pardon?” Aziraphale asks, following his gaze. But then Crowley looks down, his gaze briefly landing on Aziraphale before settling firmly on his shoes.

“You missed one,” Crowley says again. “When you were doing all your little… ‘quotations.’” He somehow says the word with quotation marks, and Aziraphale reminds himself to be impressed by this later when he doesn’t feel like he’s about to vibrate out of his corporeal form.

“Oh? From who?”

“Tolstoy.”

“Oh.” Well, that didn’t bode well. “I didn’t know you read Tolstoy.” Aziraphale is aware he’s giving away too much, his voice is too light, too airy, too unnatural. But then Crowley isn’t doing much better, with his twitching hands and frequent darting glances to the door.

“Had to, didn’t I? Had nothing better to do when I was stuck in the Dardanelles during the big one. Well, the first big one. The great one.” Crowley laughs, brittle and a bit angry. “Not so great then, though. Or after. Not great at all. Who named it, that, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” says Aziraphale. “I could find out, if you liked.”

“Don’t bother.” They both cringe at the use of that phrase, before Crowley lets out an epic yowl of frustration and pulls his glasses off his face. “Right. The one you missed.”

“The one I missed.” Aziraphale takes a few tentative steps towards Crowley, who doesn’t back away. Aziraphale can see his eyes. He hasn’t seen his eyes in so long.

“From War and Peace,” Crowley clarifies, and takes a step forward of his own. Then another. They’re only breaths away from each other now. Aziraphale could reach out and take Crowley’s hand if he wanted. (He wants to. But he doesn’t.)

“Oh?”

Crowley’s tongue darts out to wet his lower lip. “The ‘we’re asleep’ one. Do you remember?”

Aziraphale shakes his head, afraid to speak, afraid to shatter this fragile moment between the two of them.

“We’re asleep until we love,” Crowley begins. “We’re children of dust. But fall in love and -” Crowley looks at him, looks at him like he did that morning, more than a year ago now, like all Crowley had ever wanted was right in front of him and he was watching it slip through his fingers like some much celestial dust. “And you’re God. You’re pure as… You’re pure as the first day of creation.”

Aziraphale remembers it. Creation. Light, stars, all of it.

And Crowley beside him.

Realization hits like a meteor shower, with no wing overhead to shelter him. He didn’t - he hadn’t understood it then.

Perhaps he never had until this moment.

“Crowley,” he breathes, and reaches a hand out in the space between them. Crowley meets him halfway.

It is Aziraphale who pulls him in, who closes the gap, who presses his mouth to Crowley’s. He feels the demon’s arms wind around him, clutching at his shoulders, trembling against him. He tastes the small whimper that comes from the back of Crowley’s throat.

The first time it was broken, desperate, like Crowley was marching off to battle and was certain Aziraphale wouldn't wait for him. Aziraphale hadn't known what to do, where to put his hands, had been too preoccupied with what would come next, his head filled with cotton and castles in the air.

But this? This is nothing like the first time. It's everything Aziraphale imagined, when he allowed his imagination to creep up on him in his more vulnerable moments. It feels right, it feels safe, it feels like all the things Aziraphale has been missing since he watched Crowley unspool the universe in front of him. Crowley’s mouth is gentle, all tentative grasps of lips and sips of air, like Aziraphale is something precious and delicate. His hands on Aziraphale’s back are gentle, fluttering like they don’t know where to land, can’t settle on just touching one part of him.

It’s heaven, is what it is. Or hell, if you’d prefer.

“I thought you didn’t believe me,” Aziraphale says, his forehead pressed against Crowley’s.

“I’m a demon,” Crowley replies, staring at Aziraphale’s mouth like he wants to devour him whole. Aziraphale would let him. Whatever Crowley wants - whatever he wants, he can have. “I lied. To myself, mostly.” Crowley swallows, his eyes flitting over Aziraphale’s face like he’s desperately searching for something. “But you can’t do this again, all right? This is – I don’t know if I’ve got it in me, my heart might just –” He swallows. “I can’t make you promise but - I’m asking. Please. Please don't leave me again.”

“No - Crowley, no,” Aziraphale’s heart aches and he kisses him again - and again again, one kiss for every time Crowley doubted him, he thinks wildly. One kiss for every moment they spent apart. “Never again,” the angel agrees, and presses another kiss to Crowley’s lips. “We should be – an us.”

“All right then.” Crowley’s voice is rough and he rubs at his eyes a bit before pulling back, fixing Aziraphale with a brilliant, beautiful, devastating smile. “Yeah, that’ll work.”

“Now,” Aziraphale says, with a mischievous little grin. “Now, I want you to go upstairs and get in my bed.” Crowley purses his lips and Aziraphale knows that look - Crowley is fighting back a smile.

“You just couldn’t leave an unfinished quotation alone, hm?”

“Well,” Aziraphale says. “Considering the circumstances….”

They don’t actually make it to the bed.

They do make it upstairs though (impressive, considering the way Aziraphale can’t stop clinging, the way he has to walk backwards, trips twice, just so he can keep his mouth on Crowley’s bottom lip. There is a spark of the divine in the fact they don't go careening right back down the stairs.) It’s happening, it’s happening. He’s getting another chance, like a blessing. A miracle.

He sits on the couch with Crowley like it’s the first time he’s ever sat on a couch. They’ve been in exactly this spot too many times to count, with wine in hand and music playing. It was commonplace, everyday (things are getting closer). It meant nothing then – or at least he thought it meant nothing. Thought it was Crowley’s demonic influence that made his pulse beat, his face flush, thought evil must be responsible for the frenzied whirl of his thoughts.

But he was wrong. Maybe it always meant something and he just didn’t know it until this moment. Maybe they were practicing, every time, for the way it would feel right now.

Crowley holds his hand. Crowley sits beside him, petting his thumb across Aziraphale’s wrist. Wrists! Aziraphale wants to shout in rapture to his former place of employment. Why didn't anyone tell him that wrists could feel like this? It’s like there’s a connection from his wrist to his fingertips to his mouth to – other places as well.

“What – what happens now?” Aziraphale asks, nose tracing slowly against the side of Crowley’s neck. When Crowley swallows, Aziraphale can feel it against his skin.

“Whatever you want, angel.” Crowley’s eyes are closed. It’s always a pleasure, a gift, when Aziraphale gets to soak in the amber light of his irises, but there’s something equally precious about seeing his eyelids. The most vulnerable place on the body, aren’t they? Only visible when your guard is down. When you feel safe.

Aziraphale presses a kiss to each one. The skin flutters and Crowley makes a sound that Aziraphale’s only ever heard in some very progressive, “artistic” films from the seventies.

“What do you want?” Aziraphale asks.

“Kiss me again.” Crowley’s voice just shakes a little. “If – I mean, only if you –”

Aziraphale doesn’t let him finish that sentence before his tongue is in Crowley’s mouth (Tongues! he wants to shout, they’re wonderful, and he never knew, thought it was just about sustenance but it’s about taste isn’t it, taste in so many different forms.) Their kisses have taken on a sort of electricity, there’s less gentle sipping of air and more teeth, more tongue, and Aziraphale has to lift his hands to rest on both sides of Crowley’s face, keep him close, hold him where he wants him. Which is here. Right here.

“I have to confess that – while I am extremely well read on the matter –” Aziraphale says it directly against Crowley’s mouth, forgetting for a moment that this corporation actually does require air from time to time. “I haven’t – actually –”

“I know.” Crowley kisses him, kisses him. His mouth moves to Aziraphale’s neck now and it feels so extremely pleasant that Aziraphale briefly forgets what he was saying.

“You know,” he repeats, sighing. (Necks! Incandescent.) “Wait – how do you know?”

Crowley pulls back to look into his eyes. Aziraphale loves his eyes, and he loves them even more now that he gets to see them up close. (Right now they are hopeful and a bit wild, but there are circles beneath them. Aziraphale will see to it that his demon gets more sleep.) “Because if you had been shagging around, I would have been aware of it.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale shifts. “Was… was Hell truly monitoring the situation that closely?”

“Not Hell,” Crowley says. The corner of his mouth pulls up in a guilty sort of grimace. “I might have – I was – anyway, I would’ve known, so.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “Well. That’s – I thought I should tell you. You might have to show me - the - ah - the ropes, so to speak.”

Crowley shakes his head. Flushes to the roots of his red hair. It takes Aziraphale a moment to put the implications together (The trouble is that Crowley’s neck is flushed as well, right down to his open collar. It’s very distracting.)

“You haven’t?” Aziraphale just always assumed that Crowley was tempting his way into the beds of a great number of people. Surely that’s what demons do, part of the job and that.

“I, uh, only ever –” Crowley’s voice gets so quiet and unsteady that Aziraphale can’t make out the last two words.

“Sorry my dear, what was that?”

“Fucking – fuck. Okay. Yeah.” Crowley shakes it off. His hands clench and unclench. “I only ever… wanted you. So.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale feels the weight of six thousand years on his shoulders, the crush of time not appreciated, chances not taken, emotions misunderstood. Aziraphale wonders what it must feel like to want something for six thousand years.

Then he thinks – perhaps he knows already (oysters!)

(No, Crowley obviously, that was just a little joke. Can you imagine?)

“Once I – when I figured out that I –” Crowley gestures at Aziraphale with one lovely hand. “No one else ever held that sort of – anyway. I wasn’t weird about it!”

“Certainly not.”

“So don’t – okay, good, yeah.”

They look at each other. The heat between them hasn’t cooled, but it’s banked slightly during the conversation, simmering like water put on for tea.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says.

“Don’t bloody say that. If this is a pity thing I’ll off myself, I swear to –”

“No, not about that. I’m just –” Aziraphale tries to put it into words. “I’m sorry no one was touching you.”

Crowley just stares at him.

“You –” Aziraphale reaches out, drags his hand down Crowley’s neck to rest on the top button of his shirt. “You should be touched.”

Crowley’s chest hitches beneath Aziraphale’s hand. Then he all but swoons toward him and they kiss again, tears prickling at the corners of Aziraphale’s eyes and at the back of his throat. I love you, I love you, I love you, he tries to press into Crowley’s mouth every time they touch. I love you and I won’t leave you ever again.

Things move rather quickly after that.

It happens like this: Aziraphale – the body and the spirit, the blond and somewhat well-shaped bookseller and the equally well-shaped white-eyed essence made of dove-wings and teeth, acting in total perfect harmony, like a chorus of Hallelujahs, like a symphony – slips off the couch and gets on knees.

“Angel,” Crowley breathes. “Aziraphale, you don’t –”

“But may I?” Aziraphale looks up at Crowley from between his spread knees, “If you want that. If you feel like making an Effort – there are absolutely no expectations, but I’ve – I’ve thought about it.”

“Have you.” Crowley’s voice sounds like he’s swallowed glass all of a sudden, and his eyes are wide and urgent.

Aziraphale certainly had. Once. Maybe twice. A week. Since probably forever. He’d seen the goings-on in the Garden, and couldn’t say he’d been all that impressed by them. This particular thought had begun as a genuine consideration of why human beings would engage in such an untidy activity. What was the appeal? Pleasure? But there were so many things that could bring one pleasure, and they seemed easier and less athletic to go about.

But maybe – maybe it was different if you knew the other person very well. If you wanted more than just their body against yours, but their soul and laugh and voice and mind as well. If you treasured them. Admired their complexity and their humor and their sudden shocking kindness and their rage.

Hypothetically, maybe, that would make a difference.

As Crowley was the only being on Earth that Aziraphale felt like he knew well (these were early days, and their acquaintance would only get well-er) he tried to imagine what it would be like to engage in some very particular, quite untidy activities with the demon in question. The scenarios he envisioned might have escalated a bit. It turned out to be a hypothetical question that required a lot of mulling over.

“I wasn’t weird about it,” Aziraphale thinks he should be clear about that though admittedly he’s not the most capable judge in this particular category (he's more of a Talent Show man, really). He watches the bob of Crowley’s throat. The red and black angles of him, looking down at Aziraphale and shaking, shaking –

“What if - if this is – too fast –”

“Oh, my love.” It’s always been too fast for Aziraphale, hasn’t it? Questions, Holy Water, lifts home –

But this isn’t.

He undoes the flashy silver buckle on Crowley’s belt, shivering at the sound of the leather sliding free. Crowley takes a slow, rasping breath as Aziraphale puts his hand on Crowley’s stomach. His skin is warm, and there’s a slight (very slight) soft prickle of red hair beneath his hand.

“Oh my love,” Aziraphale says again, because that’s all he is able to say. Another slow breath beneath his hand, the rise and fall of Crowley’s body, like kingdoms and eras and empires.

He opens the top button of Crowley’s trousers (black and worn and tighter than sin on his legs and his hips and –)

“Oh my love.”

Under his hand, Crowley has made quite the Effort indeed.

“It’s not always –” Crowley gasps, head tilted back. “It just happened – the way you look –”

As if anyone has ever cared a whit about the way Aziraphale looks (no one has, and no one’s ever looked at him like Crowley looks at him.)

Aziraphale unzips him. Presses his mouth to the soft black cotton he finds beneath Crowley’s jeans, loves the hiss and writhe that he gets in return.

“Angel,” Crowley chokes. “Please.”

Aziraphale tugs down the cotton, licks the scarlet thatch of hair that’s revealed. Takes Crowley’s prick in his hand. It’s well-shaped, he thinks. Long and not terribly thick and when he touches it, Crowley makes a sound like broken music, the most beautiful sound Aziraphale’s ever heard.

He bends down to take it in his mouth.

Aziraphale is a creature of appetites. He knows this about himself, and he wasn’t always at ease with it, but that’s well in the past. It means he can kneel and savor the weight of Crowley against his tongue. Can press his head down as far as he can go to nose at the hair at the base of Crowley’s lovely cock, can lick the tip of it in turn, tasting the salt of him and smacking his lips.

“You’re unhinged,” Crowley gasps, one hand desperately digging into Aziraphale’s shoulder, the other pressed in a fist over his own mouth.

“You’re delicious,” Aziraphale says, and he means it. “Is this good? Is this how I should –”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, fuck.” Crowley’s legs spread as wide as his obscene fashion choices will allow. “It’s good, it’s so good – your tongue –”

“Splendid.” Aziraphale gets back to it, grateful for his coffee table book on the erotic artwork of Pompeii, as well as D.H. Lawrence and those aforementioned progressive arthouse films. He listens to the moans that rise up out of Crowley’s throat, pays attention to what makes him go quiet and trembling, and what makes him swear and keen like he’s dying.

“Angel.” Crowley’s hand moves into Aziraphale’s hair, and it’s gentle. Aziraphale realizes that some rather un-gentleness wouldn’t be strictly unwelcome and that may be something to consider in detail at a later date. If they do this again. Oh, he hopes they will do this again.

“I think – oh hell, Angel, I’m close, you should –” Crowley tugs on Aziraphale’s hair but Aziraphale wants this, wants to see what he tastes like. Wants to savor him, as Crowley is meant to be savored. Loved.

“Sweet bloody merciful – oh fuck, Aziraphale –”

Crowley sobs beneath him, tasting like salt and brimstone, pulsing down his throat. Aziraphale swallows and feels brilliant, and proud, and between his legs he aches, as if Crowley’s pleasure held a mirror up to his own. His head is foggy and he kisses Crowley’s hips and stomach, before letting himself be pulled up onto the couch and into Crowley’s lap.

“You –”

Aziraphale cuts him off, can’t get kissed quickly enough. Crowley’s hands are ferocious, ravenous, ravishing, and he shifts Aziraphale off him, onto his back, pressing him down into the velvet cushions. He didn’t know that he could feel like this, this surrounded, this safe, this wanting. Their hips shift together, and Crowley’s weight is gorgeous on top of him, and Aziraphale feels the shimmer of feathers against his back, threatening to unfurl.

“That was – is it supposed to feel this good?”

“I don’t know, fuck.” Crowley’s mouth is hot and wet on Aziraphale’s neck and it’s like nothing Aziraphale has felt before in his life. He is shining and the light that spills forth isn’t Holy, it’s sacred. “Please can I touch you? Can I do that for you, can I see what you look like? I want to make you feel like I felt, Aziraphale, angel, can I –”

“Please, please,” Aziraphale begs, and Crowley is opening his trousers, Crowley is getting his hands on him, Crowley is touching Aziraphale where no one has ever touched him and it feels like a miracle. “Oh, I’m – darling, you’re wonderful, I’ll –”

Crowley’s fist is slick and tight around him, his touch slow and steady.

“Let me see it happen,” Crowley says, “Fuck, you’re gorgeous. Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, I want – want to lick you off my fingers, let me –”

“I love you.” Aziraphale feels it building, a crescendo, a sudden wave (so blindingly good he thinks there might be something broken in this corporation because surely no human would get anything else done ever again if they could be doing this instead.)

“Anthony,” Aziraphale gasps, cries, digs his fingers into Crowley’s narrow shoulders. “Oh yes please.”

He kisses Crowley as he comes, back arching off the sofa and mouth pressed to Crowley’s throat. Crowley keeps touching him, keeps moving his clever fingers in the most brilliant ways. Aziraphale knows he is making a hideous sound, knows that his eyes are squeezed shut and his hips can’t stop shifting, seeking more, always, and he lets it happen. Lets himself fall apart beneath the person that he loves.

Crowley lifts his wet hand to his mouth and sucks every finger clean.

“You –” Aziraphale can’t breathe watching it happen.

“You’re delicious,” Crowley says. Then he collapses on his chest.

They lie there together, Aziraphale’s hands in Crowley’s hair, their hearts beating out morse code messages at each other that only they can understand.

“Wonder of wonders,” Aziraphale sighs, “Miracle of miracles.”

Crowley slowly pulls back, lifts himself up on his elbows to look down at him.

“Aziraphale.” He draws out the name like a warning. “Did you seriously just quote Fiddler on the Roof to me? Now?”

“It seemed fitting in the moment!”

“No. No, it can’t have escalated to musicals.”

“The sentiment stands –”

“Keep your Gilbert and Sullivan and all their ilk out of our bedroom. I will fucking leave –”

“You won’t,” Aziraphale says, and there’s a flaming sword behind the words. Our bedroom, he thinks, ours. Let me lift you in my arms and carry you there. Let me create it with you like a newborn universe. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t test me.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth and Crowley stops it with a kiss. It’s just as well. The words weren’t coming to him.

“I suppose now you’ll let me explain,” Aziraphale asks, after what he supposes might be a long enough time of lying on the sofa not saying very much at all.

“Explain?”

“What happened back then. How we left it. Why I chose – darling, there were reasons that you couldn’t have known but I –”

“Eh.” Crowley shakes his head against Aziraphale’s neck. The angel feels him smile against the hollow of his throat. “Doesn’t matter.”

“But –” Aziraphale wants to tell him that it does matter, very much. Wants to justify the hurt he caused, make Crowley understand –

But perhaps Crowley’s right. They’re both here, and now, and maybe no reason would ever be enough. No apologies, right, no more little words. Just action.

A leap of faith.

“Tomorrow, angel.” Crowley’s voice is low, rough and heavy with sleep. Aziraphale would very much like to hear that tone of voice again later today and tomorrow and all the other days for the rest of eternity, amen. “You can tell me tomorrow.”

Aziraphale holds him in his arms until he falls asleep. Loves the beautiful weight of him against his chest.

“In for a penny in for a pound,” he murmurs. “It’s love that makes the world go round.”

Crowley groans in his sleep. But they are still on the couch, after all, and Crowley neglected to ban Gilbert and Sullivan from the sitting room.

“You think they sorted it all out then?” Nina is still watching the door of the bookshop rather intently, as she has been for the entirety of the afternoon when not serving customers or making extravagant lattes.

“I would assume the fact that we haven’t seen them in a few hours is a good sign,” Maggie says. She’s sitting at a table with her back to the counter, doing an absolutely terrible job of pretending she also isn’t keeping a careful eye on the bookshop. (Yes, yes, real people and all that, but maybe exceptions could be made in certain circumstances.)

Crowley has been in Coffee or Death almost every single day for the last week and a half, doing what everyone seems to be doing right now, which is staring at the bookshop like a proper lunatic. Finally, just this morning, Nina frog marched him to the door and told him that if he had something to say to Mr. Fell then he had better say it or he could forget all about his six shots of espresso three times an hour.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” Maggie comes behind the counter to press a kiss to the corner of Nina’s mouth. “It looks like they’ll be rather occupied for some time.”

Indeed, the angel and the demon make no more reappearances for the remainder of the day. Around closing time, Nina pops by the corner shop to get a little card that says “Congratulations” in a suitably squishy, colorful font.

She slips it through the mail slot in the front of the bookshop.