Chapter Text
They hadn’t discussed living together. Crowley, looking back, can’t tell when clinging together in drunken, terrified exhilaration after the Ritz had turned into a habit and then the new, unspoken, normal.
He’s the one who’s moved, of course. The one who’d never had much of an attachment to any place save this one, the one who’d occasionally come back with another carload of plants and music and books to add to the chaos that’s Aziraphale’s library system, the one who’d walked round the kitchen after a week or so and decided the whole lot needed to change if he was ever going to cook in there.
And it’s worked. Worked beyond anything he’d ever have dared to hope; a helter-skelter run of finding out what it’s like to share space with someone who won’t hurt you; what it’s like to be loved and to love in return.
He’s gotten better at not hiding all the shameful parts of himself. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to care, or perhaps he’s always known; he’s equally calm about a giant snake slithering through the building as he is with Crowley sitting with his wings out to try and ease the never ending ache in the joints, or Crowley, human shaped, pacing the rooms endlessly when he can’t sleep but can’t think through the exhaustion. Acceptance. Sometimes even support if he can tolerate it.
Aziraphale’s the same. Crowley hears more of his apologies now, when Heaven aren’t listening. The stumbling, fearful, enraged ones when Aziraphale can’t see a path that won’t get him punished. Easy to see now, in this day to day closeness, all the damage the angel’s tried to hide, and it breaks the heart Crowley’s always tried to deny having.
Still, they fit together, broken parts and raw edges and all. Comfortably, safely; all things that a demon isn’t meant to have but he’s been granted anyway. It’s probably a blasphemy. He hopes it is.
Aziraphale likes baking. Crowley arranges the plants, again and again and again. The Bentley develops a habit of not listening to either of them and driving exactly where she wants on sunny afternoons, impervious to any kind of threats, begging or miracles.
Somewhere along the way, he stops expecting it to end. Forgets to look at the calendars for an expiration date, for a time when Aziraphale might legitimately expect him to go back to his flat. Christmas comes and goes, with decorations that are an offence to every bit of Crowley’s style but that make him smile anyway. New Year, when they sit on the roof together with their wings out and watch the fireworks, and don’t quite hold hands in the dark. Spring, when the Bentley takes them down to Kew in lilac time and plays soft smug music all the way home.
Now it’s summer again and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Every day’s carrying the ghost of last year, the memories of time running out. Last year, we did this. Last year, that was happening.
If Aziraphale notices the dates, he doesn’t say anything. He’s busy with customers, with people who want some of the older books for revision and a thesis, and he’s always happy to talk to those ones, occasionally even letting them take a book home although Crowley very rarely sees any money changing hands.
Crowley paces. Walks and drives London, tries to tell himself it’s ok. It was a year ago. It’s over. There’s a future now, endless and shared and utterly unknowable unless he can persuade Book Girl to do something drastic and he’s not sure he wants to.
But he can’t settle.
Aziraphale comes looking for him, in the end. Finds him on one of the bridges at sunset, staring down into the Thames and watching the water sparkle until it looks like it’s trying to catch fire. It had, once. He’d been there then.
‘I remember when this was a muddy stream, and the Romans were having to detour around it,’ he says to Aziraphale in greeting.
‘You came ice skating with me here, once. Or maybe that was a bit more upstream?’ Aziraphale settles in beside him, rests his hands on the railings and stands there, where he’s always been. On another plane, Crowley can feel a wing reaching out to shelter him.
‘Bit nearer St Paul’s, I think.’
‘It was fun.’ The river’s running softly below them. He remembers it being a great raging torrent, and a shadowy backdrop to a dogfight overhead, and somewhere for him to walk at night, lonely and afraid. ‘It’s all been fun, hasn’t it, angel?’
He wonders if he’ll ever see Aziraphale smile enough that he stops marvelling at his expression. At the colour of his eyes, at the warmth of it. Another six thousand years probably won’t be enough.
‘I prefer it like this. With you.’
The openness of it threatens to take his useless breath away.
Their hands are next to each other’s on the railings. He’s seen Aziraphale hold swords and dying men and quills to sign away a kingdom. Watched as he eats and drinks, watched as he places new records on the old player he only keeps for Crowley’s enjoyment. He’s dreamt of those hands and never allowed himself to touch except that one night on the bus.
‘Crowley…’
‘I know. Angel.’
Aziraphale’s hand is larger than his. Warmer. Callouses from centuries of holding a pen that have never quite gone away. The angel tangles their fingers together, tugging Crowley’s hand up and placing it against his chest.
Against his heart.
Below them, the Thames carries on as it always has; always changing and always the same, sparkling in the sunshine. Somewhere else, Crowley arcs his wings out, ebony and jet against the argent and white of Aziraphale’s.
Here, they stand together for a while longer and everything changes.