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Crowley reluctantly releases Aziraphale’s hand when they reach the front door of the shop so that Aziraphale can pat down his pockets and locate the shop key on the silver weeping angel keychain Crowley had bought him as a gag back in 2007. Crowley fingers the silk scarf and thinks about all of the material flotsam and jetsam of their shared lives. Even his flat (which he hasn’t been to since yesterday breakfast and has no desire to return to tonight) has essence of Aziraphale all over it, indelible, irrevocable, irreversible. It’s practically a shrine to his triplet passions of houseplants, glam rock, and Aziraphale. He’s really very lucky that most demons are a pedestrian lot, when all is said and done, and probably wouldn’t recognize the acute symptoms of I’m in love with my dearest friend who happens to be an angel even if Crowley's photo was used to illustrate Wikipedia's entry on the subject.
Half a step in front of him, Aziraphale unlocks the front door and turns the CLOSED sign back to OPEN as he steps through into the shop. Crowley hesitates on the threshold, aware that it’s foolish to feel the necessity of an invitation. He's walked into Aziraphale's shop without waiting for a welcome since day one -- technically, day one minus five when he had walked in without any advance warning whatsoever to help Aziraphale unbox his wares. Opposition researchwas a delightfully bureaucratic and sinister phrase to cover a multitude of what both angels and demons would otherwise consider most irregular behavior.
"You'll come in?" The uncertainty in Aziraphale's voice is painful to hear and Crowley winces.
"Sure, yeah, I, uh..." he fiddles again with the scarf Aziraphale has just bought him, then shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans to stop himself from tying it in knots. He suddenly wants nothing so much as an afternoon nap somewhere safe and quiet and … shut of everyone except Aziraphale whom he wishes to keep within arm’s reach for the rest of their days. “The, ah, fleece blanket … thingy …” He won’t call it a nest because that would be embarrassing. “That you keep under the counter in winter, is it …?” Aziraphale’s smile is softly understanding and Crowley wants to hide under a rock rather desperately. But he doesn’t. “For you, my dear,” Aziraphale catches him by the hand and tugs him inside. “I always keep it ready for you.”
A few years previously -- before they had discovered Adam was Adam and before Anathema was the other contact in Aziraphale's mobile phone -- there had been a particularly damp and cold winter in London. Crowley mostly remembers the exhaustion of never being warm enough or able to wake fully. It had reminded him unpleasantly of the Little Ice Age, most of which he'd slept through in a hamper next to the coal-warmed bricks of Aziraphale's stove. As it had in the Dickensian years, during the cold of that more recent winter his own work sowing seeds of minor discontent had mostly ground to a halt. His world had narrowed to the tropical warmth of his expensively-heated flat and Aziraphale’s shop -- the only location he willingly emerged from hibernation to visit. In fact, if anything, he’d been around the bookshop even more than usual in order to grumble at Aziraphale who would make noises of sympathy at him, and then feed him tea and boiled eggs and hot toddies on the particularly chill days.
One afternoon when the north wind was rattling the windowpanes and Crowley was nodding off while pretending not to -- because there was a customer in the shop Crowley probably ought to push into an unwise purchase or two -- Aziraphale had taken his elbow and gently led him behind the counter where he kept a small electric heater humming against the draft from the front door. Under the counter there was a space for Aziraphale's knees just to the left of the ancient cash register and that was where the heater lived in the winter months. Beside the heater a nest. A snake-sized felted cave from which spilled, invitingly, a garish purple and orange plaid fleece throw Aziraphale had taken a fancy to at a Marks & Sparks after-Christmas sale and bought the remainder of (the other six he'd promptly given away to the street people outside the shop).
"Sleep, my dear," Aziraphale had said, hand warm and familiar at the small of Crowley's back. "Sleep and be warm."
Tears of rage had welled up behind Crowley's protective lenses because of how cared for Aziraphale made him feel in that moment. Because of how vulnerable it felt to be this hungry for Aziraphale's care. How ashamed he was about the fact that Aziraphale understood, because Aziraphale always seemed to understand, that Crowley was hanging about the shop because Aziraphale never made fun of his need for sleep and layers of insulation. But he was too tired for tears, and in the end could do no more than rearrange his atoms and slither into his nest -- his nest, that Aziraphale had made for him -- and fall into a much-needed sleep.
Their return from Tadfield after the apocalypse-that-wasn’t remains hazy in Crowley's memory. The only bit, apart from his grip on the wheel of their demonically-hotwired Subaru, that stands out is the knowledge of Aziraphale -- pale, silent, alive -- sitting beside him. Aziraphale had put a hand on Crowley's thigh as Crowley turned the ignition and not pulled it away until Crowley set the parking brake in the lane outside A. Z. Fell, Bookseller. Crowley doesn't think he made it out onto the pavement in nominally human form; he remembers Aziraphale lifting him tenderly in his arms and carrying him cradled against his chest to the door of the reconstituted bookshop. Aziraphale has always lifted Crowley, in whatever form, as if he weighs no more than a newborn kitten. Until recently (until yesterday) Crowley has tried very hard not to think about how much being held comforts him. Somehow, that night, Crowley had ended up curled in his nest at Aziraphale's bedside. He'd slept there, wrapped in the horrendous Christmas fleece, for two weeks; every time he woke from the nightmares he was surrounded by the taste of Aziraphale and remembered he was home.
Home. He can’t more than sidle up to the idea yet, not in human words, not in any of the languages he and Aziraphale have shared. But certain truths are easier to accept in snake form and his love for Aziraphale has always been one of them. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it was as a snake that Crowley first encountered him beneath the apple tree at the heart of the Garden, where the air was heavy with knowledge and truths impossible to hide. He knows Aziraphale will want to keep the shop open for several hours more, and a spring in his step as they had returned from St. James suggests A Project is on the horizon. Crowley can curl up in his nest, with his new scarf wrapped around himself, and listen to Aziraphale rattle around emitting sounds of self-satisfaction and delight: home. It will be a perfect way to pass the afternoon.
"Shall we go up for supper, my dear?" Aziraphale asks now, rubbing Crowley's nose. Crowley nuzzles into the touch and then raises his head to give Aziraphale's wrist a lick.
<<Warm.>> Crowley says, satisfied. <<Aziraphale. Home. Stay.>> Crowley in snake form tends not to bother with full sentences in whatever language he and Aziraphale are currently using. This has never been a problem for the two of them -- in fact, it had not occurred to Aziraphale until the eighth century BCE to wonder how he understood Crowley in snake form.
Gabriel had tossed the papyri down on his desk, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, then steepled his fingers before leaning forward over them and saying, "Aziraphale. I insist. The reports. They must remain factual."
Aziraphale had blinked. "They are. Factual, I mean. Your heavenlyness."
Gabriel sighed and pulled the scroll back over to the center of the table between them. He scanned the lines them turned the roll around, tapping his broad, blunt finger on the offending passage.
"Crawly."
"Crowley?" Aziraphale repeated the name, hoping his mistake would become clear. It usually did.
"This is the third report you've delivered in which the demon Crawly speaks."
Aziraphale had blinked again. "...yes?"
"Demons of his kind do not speak." Gabriel's tone was infuriatingly similar to the one he used when attempting to be patient with a flock of tipsy cherubs.
Aziraphale had opened his mouth to argue that of course Crowley could speak because Crowley has been speaking with him for ... and then his brain caught up with his mouth. "Ah," was what actually came out.
There had been a pause.
"Yes. ‘Ah.’ " Gabriel had replied. He had let the scroll roll back up and set it aside. "See that it doesn't happen again."
Removing Crowley's words from his reports had, Aziraphale eventually understood, been the first small act of outright rebellion. Once you stopped relating conversations to your superiors in minute detail, rationalizing elision and occlusion became the choice of a word here, the slant of a summary there. And in those cracks, their private world of two took root.
<<Warm. Home. Stay.>>
Crowley slithers out of the nest and coils his way up Aziraphale's arm, then wraps his midsection around Aziraphale's waist. It's a comfort to have Crowley wrapped so firmly and completely around him and Aziraphale sighs with pleasure and satisfaction as he pushes himself to his feet to finish closing up the shop. Crowley's head is cool and close against his collarbone. He strokes along Crowley's body and feels the ripples of pleasure his touch induces. He knows all of the personal fears and external threats that have kept them apart and still mourns that they have not held one another at the beginning and end of every day from the very first day of existence.
"Do you remember? This is the form in which you first touched me," Aziraphale murmurs, turning to press a kiss to the place just behind Crowley’s ear that he can reach. He pulls down the blinds and moves through the evening shadows to the panel of light switches by the stockroom door, then through to the stairway that leads to the first floor flat.
<<You like it. This form.>> Not quite a question, not quite a statement. Crowley trails his tongue down Aziraphale’s throat and Aziraphale feels the shiver of response down his spine, a stir of something deep within that’s both familiar and new: he’s felt this tug and twist of desire for centuries, but now he has memories of the sensations Crowley can wring from him through touch and taste, scent and sight, and the back and forth of speech in many tongues: Yes, that and Please, again and Don't stop.
"Yes, I like it," Aziraphale says. “I like all of your forms.” It comes out slightly breathless; just having Crowley wrapped around him, though he’s still fully clothed, is making his skin feel tight. "I have always liked it when you t -- touched me." He doesn't mean for it to come out in a stutter but the words echo on the landing as if they are a solitary confession. He stops, squeezing his eyes shut against the power of finally saying it. The one thing he's been so careful never to speak of, how much he yearned for this: Crowley, his.
They lean together just outside the open door to the flat. His flat. Perhaps their flat. Crowley hasn't said anything about moving in but Aziraphale doesn't think he went back to his monstrosity in minimalist design today. They could build a solarium on the roof, he thinks. Rooftop gardens are all the rage these days.
"This form is you, my dear," he whispers, smoothing a hand over the part of Crowley wrapped around his middle. "Were you worried? Remember that d -- " He stops, swallowing against the closing of his throat. Certain shards of these particular memories hurt: he doesn't bring them out often.
He gathers himself, hands roaming over Crowley’s body. Touch. He’ll never get enough. "Do you remember that in Heaven it's a terrible breach of etiquette for a Host to touch another Host?" Crowley says nothing but tightens his hold and slides his head along Aziraphale's jaw in a caress. Aziraphale shivers. "As a young angel, I had trouble remembering. It was ... the others shone. I was distracted. And when their colors brushed mine -- " He shakes his head at the memory. "But we are supposed to remain Pure. Touched only by God."
<<Don't remember,>> Crowley says after a heartbeat. <<Lonely.>>
"I didn't have a word for it, at the time," Aziraphale agrees, "but yes. Impossibly lonely. The others seemed not to mind. Perhaps I was a broken angel from the start.. But I do not ... I do not believe God intends us to be thus."
<<Humanity,>> Crowley observes.
"Yes, God created humans with the need to touch, didn't They?" Aziraphale agrees. "That is what I have wondered too but." He strokes a hand along Crowley's flank. "I was telling you something, my dear, not about humans but about us." He licks his lips. "You see it was part of how I knew. In the Garden. You reached out and ..."
<<Tasted you,>> Crowley says. <<Fresh ink. Wet earth.>>
Aziraphale remembers it, as he always has, in every sensory detail: the warmth of the sun, the industry of bees, the lemon trees and bougainvillea, roses and pomegranates, the finches and birds of paradise. And there, in a riot of color and taste and smell -- none of it supposed to be for him -- was a serpent whose scales spoke of cool, quiet rock gardens and velvet nights shot with stars for which only God knew every name. A serpent who coiled around the branch of a gnarled apple tree and lowered his body with breathtaking grace so that he could examine Aziraphale with an unsettling curiosity.
No one had found Aziraphale interesting, before Crowley.
<<Angel.>> Not quite a greeting.
"Demon." Not quite a response.
Aziraphale had trembled, wondering if this was how Eve felt: regarded. Aziraphale wanted suddenly, desperately to know what the demon saw when it looked at him.
And then Crowley had moved closer, crowding Aziraphale against the trunk of the tree. Aziraphale remembers the scrape of the trunk against his back, the bark rough against his palms. The scent of mint and grass crushed beneath his feet.
"What --" he had started to say, as Crowley danced closer on the air. Slid his head close, so close, then whisper-cool against Aziraphale's cheek. Scale to skin. Aziraphale hadn't had the words, then, for how Crowley had touched him. Nuzzled him. Pressed himself against Aziraphale's beingness with no regard for -- there were rules. Aziraphale had been punished for far, far less than this: a million lines in the scriptorium. A thousand days of silence. And yet the demon touched him, caressed him, and felt so, so good.
He had closed his eyes and waited to Fall.
"Aziraphale," Crowley murmurs against his cheek and Aziraphale realizes tears have leaked out, wet and gummy in his lashes, sticky salt against his cheeks. He hauls in an overdue breath with a quiet gasp of air. Crowley wipes the tears from his face with the silk scarf Aziraphale bought in the park today.
In the present.
Not-the-end.
They're together.
They're home.
"Aziraphale." Aziraphale turns his face to follow the sound. To let the scent of Crowley eddy around him. Crowley is back in human form, limbs folded around Aziraphale in a way that's bonier but no less secure than being wrapped in three meters of snake. The cool balm of Crowley's fingers, the shush of wings that speak of stalactites in deep mountain caverns, ice cold springs seeping from the darkness of the earth. He's in the now, not then.
Together.
Home.
"None of them." Crowley says, voice infused with the sharp icy fury that reminds Aziraphale his beloved is a demon. "None of them deserved you."
"No," Aziraphale gasps again, hauling the air of clarity into his human lungs. Letting it wash through his atoms, out to the tips of his wings. "No. I know. I just --" want you. Too much. I am too --
"Let me," Crowley growls, leaning in, thigh pressed to Aziraphale's groin. "Let me show you just how much I want all of you."
