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Crowley was four and a half bottles of Côte-Rôtie La Mouline in, and Aziraphale had been banging on his door for seventeen minutes.
His flat was unchanged, save the new wine cellar – rather an unusual feature for a penthouse but he was too drunk to care about the details.
He heard a single, loud, suffering huff, and then Aziraphale materialised in front of where he was sprawled in a leather armchair.
He had the courtesy to look rather sheepish.
Crowley raised a single eyebrow.
“Should I do the apology dance?” Aziraphale asked quietly.
Crowley stared at him, and did not move a muscle.
“I think that perhaps I ought to do the apology dance.”
He took in a breath and extended his leg.
“You were ri-“
“Angel, I’m tired.” Crowley had dropped his head into his palm. “I don’t have the energy to smile or laugh or shake your hand and do a decisive little nod that returns things to the status quo or whatever it is you want me to do. I’m old, I’m humiliated and I am trying very hard to count my blessings – gah – that I did in fact get what I wanted from you – a straight answer.” He waved his hand dismissively. “So go ahead and do the stupid little dance we made up when it felt like there was a place that we might go afterwards. But know that if you do, it will be for the same reason for which you seem to be making all of your choices. Entirely for your own comfort.”
Crowley took a large gulp of wine. The glass immediately refilled itself. A single droplet of red made a winding path down his jaw.
Aziraphale set his feet at ease and looked sheepishly down at his hands, folded carefully in front of him.
“Is that what you really think? That I chose what I chose for comfort?”
Crowley screwed up his nose and nodded.
“Yes. The comfort of a nice cushy office job where somebody brings you a glass of cool holy water every half hour and tells you what a marvellous job you’re doing.” He smiled bitterly and quirked his wine glass, spilling some onto the deep black leather of the chair. “But most of all, the comfort of deluding yourself that you know for absolute certain what’s right and what’s wrong. Because how can anything ever possibly be wrong when the walls are white, and the floors are swept, and the lightbulbs all work, and everyone’s covered in fucking glitter. You can spin around as many times as you like in your ergonomic wheely chair and never see a hair out of place and never need to ask a single question. Because you’ve seen where questions get you, haven’t you angel? Questions turn you into me. And what does your lovely shiny book say about me? ‘Cursed am I above all livestock, above all beasts of the field, on my belly I shall go and dust I shall eat the days of my life.’”
Crowley barked out a laugh that made Aziraphale flinch.
He swallowed, and almost imperceptibly quirked his head to the left.
“You know, I’ve never quite understood that bit.”
Crowley shrugged sloppily.
“Neither had I. I actually thought I was clever, can you imagine that? For managing to create this body and saunter about in it in defiance of the holy word; thought perhaps it was some residual creativity from before the Fall. Thought it might even be possible that She was turning a blind eye, that she might be showing me… that thing your lot are fond of.” He smirked, and it was a horrible thing that fell in on itself, then continued melting until it was the prototype dragging grimace of a sad clown. “Turns out there are a lot of ways to writhe in the dirt and eat dust. And quite a few ways to choke on it. So yes, your book is right, although you knew that anyway, because the proof copy is kept in a lovely airtight cabinet right on the very top floor behind glass that gets buffed every day. And as long as you stay close to it - only a floor down, actually – there’s no need for you to do anything that might turn you into anything close to me. Damned serpent of Eden and dirt on the underside of your shoe.”
He threw the wine glass to the floor.
Something strange was happening inside Aziraphale’s chest. Cracks were blossoming across his heart.
“Is that what you think I think of you?”
“Well…” Crowley slid his sunglasses down his nose, and mimed writing exaggeratedly into a notebook. “The mounting evidence would seem to suggest –“
“Crowley, that is not why I did what I did.”
Crowley smiled warmly, and leaned forward. He spoke in a gentle, haunting whisper that Aziraphale didn’t quite yet dare to lean into.
“What you want now, is for me to ask you why the, why you did what you did. So that you can hop up onto your high bloody horse and teach this godforsaken Fallen a sage lesson about righteousness and obeying the will of God and yada, and yada, and yada. But demon that I am, I’m not going to. And frankly, shit demon that I am, I’m going to show you mercy, and tell you in no uncertain terms to get out of my flat. When I could very well instead click my fingers and curse you to stay here forever, trapped with the thing you can’t bear to be close to because it stinks of decay and disarray and damned damned uncertainty.”
The room was beginning to smell of hatred. And the worst part was, Aziraphale could tell that not all of it was directed at him.
“Crowley…”
“Don’t be cruel about it,” he hissed, voice teetering on the dangerous edge of a break. “It’s not in your nature.”
“Crowley…”
“Aziraphale, please just go.” His voice this time was darker and wetter. He shoved his glasses back up his nose.
“No. No, I need to explain myself. And to do that, I need to show you something.”
He began to stride forward.
“Now hang on, what the hell are you –“
And then Aziraphale’s hands were on his cheeks. His index fingers at his temples, his thumbs grazing his jaw. They were warm.
And then they were somewhere else. Somewhere pink and purple and green and yellow, unformed and ununiform, sprawling and bright and new.
They were in a memory but it was wrong.
They were outside of it, looking in.
At themselves.
“There we are,” Aziraphale breathed. Crowley was, at that particular moment, unable to do such things. “Before The Beginning. This is when we met. And my dear, you were so beautiful. So uninhibited. Look at you. Admiring all that you created, happy and proud and… love. You were love.”
Crowley managed to gulp, and it wasn’t quite finished by the time he managed to spit out, “The angel I was is not me.”
Aziraphale nodded, lips pursed and tears in his eyes.
“The angel you were is not you. But the angel you were is something that you clung to, Crowley. Painstakingly, desperately you clung to it. I saw it, in every moment that drew me to you, over six blessed millennia. I saw the fragments of your former self which you managed to claw away from the incinerator. In every aid, in every mercy, in every kindness. You wouldn’t have expended so much energy, so much turmoil, so many reminders of what you lost - unless you were desperate to get it back. You wouldn’t carry the shards of a broken mirror in your bare hands unless you thought it could be repaired. Surely. They must cut Crowley. They must hurt.”
“Get rid of it,” Crowley said gravely.
“What –“
“Get your hands off my face and get rid of it,” he spat, serpentine tongue hammering against his teeth like a prisoner trying to escape. “Of that.”
He thrust an accusatory pointer finger towards the image of their former selves. Aziraphale heard his heart creak under the weight of their own fracture lines.
“But I haven’t finished –“
“Aziraphale.”
There was no flash of light.
Aziraphale was simply standing in front of Crowley, hands by his side.
Crowley was looking up at him. The eyes behind his sunglasses were so, so tired.
“You have me wrong, Angel,” he said flatly.
Aziraphale nodded, lips pressed together. He took in a sharp breath through them.
“Tell me how.” His voice joined Crowley’s on the precipice of a break. “Tell me how I have you wrong.”
Crowley sighed heavily. He raised himself from his sprawl and folded his hands together. Rested his chin on them. Closed his eyes.
“The angel I was does not exist anymore. Not a fragment, not a whisper, not a speck of dust. Gone, zilch, nada. Anything I’ve done over six blessed millennia that you’ve mistaken for that fresh-faced naïve bastard making a cameo appearance, has been something else entirely. Choice, angel, plain and simple. Because I went native the second my feet made contact with the Earth. My own way of rebelling I suppose, I told myself. Taking what wasn’t mine. Free will. I chose to hide Job’s kids, I chose to heal the sick, I chose to resurrect doves and help people fall in love and for my fucking sins I chose to save those books. There was no voice whispering in my ear that I could be saved. There was no ulterior motive of being restored to a type of being that could perhaps take a breath every few centuries. I did stuff, and don’t you dare insinuate I should put an adjective in there, because I wanted to.”
Aziraphale was silent for a moment. Very silent indeed. The sort of silence that could possibly be visible on an as yet undiscovered light spectrum.
Then, cleanly as he could have with a flaming sword, he cut through it.
“I’m confused.”
Crowley groaned and leaned back slightly.
“I don’t know how I can possibly be any clearer.”
“No… not about you. About me.”
Crowley blinked.
“About you?”
Aziraphale shut his eyes. Every atom in his body stood to attention, and they were all shaking.
“I. Fell in love with you. When you were an angel.”
Suddenly, Crowley was very sober indeed. Every atom in his body turned into a butterfly. They flapped frantically for the briefest of moments. Then they died.
“And out of love when I was a demon. You made that perfectly clear.”
Slowly, Aziraphale opened his eyes again. He shook his head.
“No. No, I didn’t. I have loved you for six thousand years, and I thought it made sense. I thought it made sense to love the angelic parts of you – the parts that made it rain in the desert and fed the poor because… well frankly, I was authorised to love those. And if I worried about the other parts of you that I also loved – the parts that drive too fast and stick coins to the pavement and suchlike well… that was okay, because the good parts overshone it. It was… permissible to love those parts too.”
“Permissible?” Crowley’s eyebrows raised in what would, in any other situation, be amusement.
Aziraphale shook his hands frantically in front of himself, his face sculpting itself into something pinched and pained.
“I’m getting all of this wrong. So, so terribly wrong.” He ceased his flapping. Took in a deep breath. “What I mean to say is. I was under the misguided impression that I was in love with your Goodness. With a capital G. I think it might just be possible that I’m actually in love with… you. The you that you so cleverly built. The you that you chose.”
All that Crowley could manage was a single, breathy expulsion of a laugh.
It was everything he had ever wanted to hear.
It did not make any sense.
“You’re claiming to be in love with me? The unforgivable, the unsavable, the unlovable?” Aziraphale flinched anew at each of those words. “Because let me tell you angel, you have a funny way of showing it, quite frankly hilarious.”
“You are none of those things, none of those horrible un-things. And I concede that you are entirely correct. I messed up horribly.” He dithered, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet for a split second. Then he knelt in front of Crowley and took his hand. Crowley looked at it suspiciously, but did not pull away. “I am claiming nothing. I am choosing. This is me realising my mistake… and choosing you. If you’ll still have me.”
Crowley’s fingers shifted slightly in Aziraphale’s hand.
“This isn’t a Richard Curtis film Aziraphale,” he said lowly. “Overrated things. We can’t just kiss and make up, I tried that one, remember.”
“But perhaps it could be a start.”
Time slowed to an ache as Aziraphale raised his hand, to rest his palm feather-light on his cheek.
Their lips met softly.
It was a kiss of stillness.
One did not move too fast for the other.
When they pulled away, Crowley’s misty eyes were fixed on Aziraphale, glasses miraculously gone.
“I don’t forgive you,” he said quietly.
“No, I don’t imagine that you do.”
He tipped his head forward, until it tapped Aziraphale’s forehead. His hand snaked around to the back of his neck.
“That hurt, Aziraphale. It hurt like falling.”
Aziraphale ran his thumb across his cheek.
“With a capital F?”
“Oh no. Much, much worse.”
Silence settled again. Aziraphale bit his lip.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t forgive myself either. I have caused a ruin, an utter, utter ruin that needn’t have been caused. But it is a ruin that I should rather selfishly like the opportunity to repair. To repair into something… shaped like us. If you’ll let me.”
Crowley shifted his grip on the back of Aziraphale’s neck.
“S’not selfish,” he mumbled.
“What was that?”
“It’s not selfish. To want to repair it. I want it too. But first I want to be angry. And I want you to apologise. And I don’t want the dance. And I don’t want any choirs to sing. I want you to look me in the eye. And tell me that you are sorry.”
Aziraphale looked into his eyes. And saw not broken parts of an angel he had once loved, but a completeness of a demon that he loved wholly and presently.
Guilt and regret and determination to change overcame him like the flood that took all but Noah.
“I’m sorry.”
Crowley nodded, and his pupils swam.
“I’m sorry too. We should have talked.”
“All I ever wanted was to protect you. To let you create and build and simply be, somewhere alive with light, where you could ask all the questions that you wanted and remain safe.”
“I have that here,” Crowley whispered. “Somewhere I can do all that, while also driving an old Bentley and breathing in the dust of 1st edition Austens, to the sound of somebody else clattering teacups a room away.”
“Is that what you want?”
“That is what I want. Is that what you want?”
Crowley’s grip on Aziraphale’s hand tightened.
“Yes. More than anything else in the world.”
And he had to ask.
The question he feared more than any other, the question that could bring it all to rubble once again.
“How about in Heaven?”
Aziraphale smiled, very small.
“Heaven doesn’t stand a chance.”