Work Text:
It was suffocating. The white. The endless white. Was it always like this? He’s visited a few times since he’d been appointed to earth, but he assumed it was a reception. The whole expanse was nothing but white. All the books he tried to bring in would magically sort themselves out into an invisible corner till he specifically summoned them again.
“-And that is where you will be. To watch in its inexorable glory. As she planned it.” Metatron finished.
Heaven was suffocating; It was never not. But at this particular moment, Aziraphale couldn’t breathe. More so than usual.
“But Armageddon. It is over. We are done with-”
“Ahh, yes yes,” Metatron flipped the pages on a file and pointed at something, “See, big misunderstanding. Just a few miscalculations. And this is not Armageddon. It’s the Second Coming. Says so right here. On the file.”
Aziraphale liked to think he was a man of words. He had been surrounded by them, literally, for millennia. All that while, he had faith- in God’s plan, in heaven and its rules. He might have wavered. But he had faith. He trusted in that when he accepted his position. He accepted the vast emptiness of everywhere because he believed that through Armageddon they had learnt. Words were failing him now though. So, he nodded.
Nothing he said was going to change the minds of the thousands of angels waiting on a war. Nothing was going to make heaven care about humans the way 6000 years of living alongside them had made him. No one would even try to understand this- except-
“Crowley! Crowley!” Aziraphale walked into the namesake’s penthouse for the first time ever. Under different circumstances, he might have taken a moment to appreciate the interiors. The sleek ash grey wainscotting, the plants that livened up the place. Maybe next time, he thought to himself as he walked down the hallway. “Crowley. It is a matter of utmost importance.” The living room seemed empty with no sign of anyone except a stray open bottle of wine. He was starting to question Muriel’s authenticity of his adversary’s whereabouts. She was, after all, new to Earth. Maybe she misremembered. “Crowley?” he tried again anyway.
He heard a rumble behind the couch, and a slow growl followed, “WHO DARE WAKE ME FROM MY- Oh, it’s you.”
“Oh, Crowley thank heavens you are here. I have some news from Upstairs.” Crowley’s reply was an annoyed grunt. He kicked the blanket that was atop him to a side and waved his hands. A coffee machine began to whir behind.
“What do you want, angel?”
Right, “Heaven. The promotion. It isn’t what I thought it was going to be. The Second Calling. They want us to-”
Crowley scoffed, “You barged into my house to tell me Heaven isn’t all it's made out to be. Boo-fearking-hoo, angel. I could have told you that 6000 years ago.”
“Yes, but this-”
“Let me guess, they want you to design the next Armageddon? The second calling. Whatever you want to call it. Seriously, what did you think something called the Second Calling was going to be?”
“I was going for a nice get-together of angels. An integration programme into Earth, if you will,” He was desperate. He thought his oldest ally, his partner in arms. His- His demon would understand.
“You thought heaven called you to organise a tea party. My dear. Not my department, not my duty. I’m going back to sleep. I presume you can see yourself out.”
Crowley hated being woken up with a vengeance. Especially when he wanted nothing more than to stay warm and hibernate for the rest of time till he was able to forget the pain of rejection. The only reason he’s ever willingly disturbed it was for his angel- the angel. 1941. He’d done it again. Only this time, he didn’t care for it in more facets than one.
“There is a lot to lose if we don’t fix this. It is up to us.”
The freshly brewed coffee wasn’t strong enough for him to deal with this conversation yet. “There is no ‘us’, Aziraphale. You made that quite clear.” The silence was heavy. He wondered if his plants could feel that. They better not. One stray branch on their pots and they knew their fate. He should water them. Despite the demonic miracle, he hated keeping them thirsty. “So, if you have nothing else,” he gestured at the door trying to remember where he put the watering can.
“Crowley.”
“What? What is it? What. Do. You. Want?”
“I-” he whimpered, eyes glistening like they were barely holding back unshed tears. It almost made the demon want to step back entirely. They had several conversations with the same beats before. It was a dance they should have been used to having. If it wasn’t for the k- what happened the last time they met, maybe it would have been.
“Spit is out,” he snarled instead, breaching into the angel’s personal bubble. A bubble he had once been too comfortable with. It feels the same, yet different. When they were too close, he took another step forward, “Go on.”
“I want to be on the same side again. I want to be on our side.”
He sighed, “Too late for that, I’m afraid.” And it was. He turned his back throwing the coffee mug in the general direction of the sink when a hand caught his.
“I know, Crowley. I understand you’re upset. You have every right to be.”
A wicked grin grew on his face, “You underssstand I’m upssset? I really don’t think you get what is going on here, Chief of Heaven’s forcesss. I sssaid leave.”
Aziraphale’s grip remained tight. “You can despise me all you want, Crowley. But what about the people? What about Adam, Anathema, Nina, Maggie? Don’t they deserve better? Do it for them.”
Apparently, things weren’t that different after all, because the angel still had the chokehold on him and he always did. If he weren’t already forsaken by God he would believe she had a vengeance to enact against him. A very personal and deep cutting one at that.
His face twisted trying to hold back the scream, because the answer was, as Aziraphale would like to say, ineffable. “Fine. What do you want us to do?”
"Coolio. Fun adventure. Just had to anger God enough and Bob's your uncle. See you in another millennium. Or not."
The Bentley was blasting the bridge of ‘Too much love will kill you’. The engine was revving and Aziraphale was still inside.
“How about a nice brunch at the Ritz? I would rather prefer a nice brunch before I have to go back up there.”
Crowley was struck again with how insanely naive his angel could get, “You want to go back? After all this? Again?” he sighed a little helplessly. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not for-”
“I couldn’t care less, what it's for.”
“That’s unfair. We’ve known each other since the beginning of time. And all it took was one mistake. You decided it was enough after one mistake.”
“For crying out loud. One mistake? Is that what you thought that was?”
“Yes. I have spent my whole life fighting for the side of good. Forgive me for thinking I could make a difference from Up there if given the chance.”
Oh, he had some audacity getting out of the car now. Crowley would be damned (more than the present) if he was letting Aziraphale have the last word again. He pushed open the bookshop door loudly enough for it to rattle. “You really are on a high horse aren’t you,” he spat.
“Oh hello, Mr Crowley,” Muriel’s greeting went ignored. She shuffled further into a corner with the book she was carrying.
“High horse? By nature, demon, I am good. You are not.”
“Oh yes, thank you for the reminder. But might I remind you, angel,” the venom in the words was not being held back, “that you have defied god’s will about as many times as I have.”
“You know why I did it.”
“Yes, I do. But I hope you know that makes you just as much of a bastard as me. So, I am never going to be the angel that you want me to be. But you aren’t the angel you want to be either.”
“I never wanted you to be an angel, Crowley.”
“Sure didn’t seem that way when you forgave me.” Those last ten minutes were seared in his brain, replaying every inkling of an opportunity they got. He wasn’t going to let it go either. “Seems like I will remain an irredeemable demon.”
“You think that is what that was about,” Aziraphale looked angrier than he’d ever seen him. “You think it's so easy? You kiss me once and then what? We fly off to Alpha Centauri and live our lives. Like Gabriel and Beelzebub? Perhaps you have forgotten, but, earth is our home, Crowley. I am not going to run off to a different planet just because this one is slightly inconvenient. Gabriel and Beelzebub do not share the responsibilities we do. Hell has other demons; Heaven has other angels. Earth has us. I did not want you to become an angel. I wanted us to have the chance to keep living on Earth. I wanted us on the same side. I forgave you for renouncing our home. Not for whatever you think it was.”
“Oh, for Satan’s sake,” he muttered. “It will never be home without you, angel. And we were always on the same side. Why don’t you get that through that thick skull of yours.”
“Hot chocolate?” Muriel whispered meekly carrying two mugs. “I haven’t perfected the recipe the same way Mr Fell has. I still hope it is to your liking.”
“Thank you, dear.” Aziraphale smiled, not entirely looking at the other angel, but grabbing the white mug, nonetheless. Their screaming match had inevitably led to the quiet truce as always. Aziraphale was not going to let this conversation end just yet. He was resolved to make things right. He never thought he was making the wrong decision. He had regrets about what he had to leave behind, but he believed a few years won’t change what they had. They had bills from the literal beginning of the universe as we know it to prove his thesis.
“What are you going to do now? Do you really think they’ll take you back?” Crowley chided taking his own mug in black. Muriel went back to making herself scarce.
“I don’t expect them to,” he replied taking a seat at the armchair, “and neither do I want them to.”
“Then what in heaven are you going up there for?”
“I need to get back all the things I took there, obviously.”
Crowley pondered on that for a second till he said, “And then what?”
Aziraphale let the silence stretch. He was surrounded by words, and yet none of them could aid him in explaining to Crowley what his conundrum was. How do you summarize 6000 years of longing and terror into a sentence? How do you go about mending what broke with three words?
“You still go too fast for me, Crowley.” Crowley folded his arms closer to his chest looking away. “But I am trying to catch up to where you want me to be.” He put his mug on the side table and got up, “Just slow down a little more, please?” He walked purposefully to his nemesis, his ally. Grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him up to stand.
“Angel, what are you-” Before he could finish the sentence he crashed their lips together, much like that fateful day. It was awkward yet comforting. Aziraphale wasn’t sure if kissing was all Jane Austen wrote it to be, but he didn’t care about that. They’d figure it out later. He didn’t want the message to be lost.
“I want us to be an us too."