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They're out of time. It's the End of Days, the end of the world. The end of everything.
Aziraphale doesn't know how long the battle has raged, because the sun has long since gone dark over what was once the Earth, but now it, too, has come to an end. The note of a crystal horn rings over the churned desert sands, silvered with celestial ichor, and everything stills.
"We've won," says Aziraphale, and feels sick.
Hands, lips, teeth, skin-- thrusting, grinding together, desperate and afraid. Deep inside Aziraphale, Crowley buried his face in the sparse down between Aziraphale's winged shoulder blades, his hands twisted so tightly in the angel's that his knuckles ached.
He and Crowley are on the fringes of the battle, surrounded by the handful of low-ranking angels that rallied around Aziraphale towards the end. With swords hanging exhausted by their sides they all watch as the heart of the churning battle grinds to a bitter halt. The surrender has been rung, and they are bound to stop... but some are desperate to get in one last blow before eternity.
Dead litter the ground, real dead, occult and ethereal like. Here on these fields they can die. Heaven, Hell- and nonexistence.
Breathless and spent, they lay twined in the wreckage of Crowley's bed, trembling together. Unable to stand even that separation, Aziraphale reached out and put his hand on Crowley's chest. A heartbeat, a blink- and he had permission to thrust in with something far more profound than flesh. He felt Crowley's essence recoil around his in reaction, and bore deep.
"That's it, then," Crowley says, numbly. Overhead, garrisons of angels are starting to organise, circling, herding down their sullen captives. "It's over."
Crowley had fought beside them- beside Aziraphale. He was the only one to rebel twice. He had no hope of redemption. He did it anyway.
"Do it now," says Crowley, turning to face Aziraphale, eyes burning in his chalk-white face. The low-ranked angels near them only stare. "Before they come to drag me in."
Crowley's essence roiled at Aziraphale's merciless intrusion, causing a jerk in his physical body as molecules leapt to form around the outthrust folds of essence that were his wings. Heedless, Aziraphale forced his way in deeper, harder, and Crowley clutched him in with equal desperation.
"Angel," Crowley says frantically, when Aziraphale hesitates, "now." He rallies and tries to smile sickly. "You don't get a kiss goodbye. Already did that."
Heedless of his brothers watching him, Aziraphale lays a shaking arm around Crowley's shoulders and draws him close, loverlike, unable to stop himself from bending his neck to hide his face in the dark notch of Crowley's throat and shoulder. Crowley hunches down at the touch, huddles into it, and tucks his own head against Aziraphale's neck, warm breath stuttering against his skin. The sword trembles as Aziraphale sets its consecrated tip to Crowley's breastbone.
They always knew it would come to this. After everything Crowley's done, all that awaits him in Hell is as much torment as any angel. If Lucifer had won, Crowley would have his fangs in Aziraphale's throat right now, too.
Aziraphale's body wails, but it's an inhuman noise, like splintering crystal. Every piece of glass in the deserted city shatters. Wrapped tight in Crowley's essence, he lets himself shatter, too.
"Put the flamesss out, would you? Would hurt too- ngk-"
Aziraphale's knees fold as he catches Crowley's collapsing form. They fall gracelessly to the mud. Pupils hugely dilated, Crowley wheezes, pierced through the core of his essence by holy steel.
"M'I dying?" he asks inanely, agony and wonderment in his eyes. Already his breath is coming fast, shallow. "I'm dying. G-good. Can- can sssay it now."
Even with one hand still wrapped nervelessly around the sword that's thrust clear through Crowley's body, Aziraphale can't cry: his corporation was killed a long time ago and his true form has no tear ducts.
"Love you," Crowley gasps, silver ichor spattering his bloodless lips, and it's only then that Aziraphale finally screams.
Afterwards, gold-barred purple feathers littered the mattress and floor. The ceiling and walls were cratered and cracking, smashed by the spastic blows of twenty-foot wings. Every ash-silver feather on Aziraphale's own wings quivered with the electric residue of having been buried so deeply within Crowley that, for a moment, they were indivisible.
In the distance, a storm was building.