Chapter Text
Two years later.
Aziraphale was standing on the dock when Crowley found him.
“Hi,” Crowley said. He slid his arms around Aziraphale’s waist and squeezed lightly. “Wool-gathering, angel?”
“Mm.”
“About the publisher? Or the release date?”
Aziraphale laughed lightly, tilting his head back to look up at Crowley. He’d started growing his hair out again several months before, and it was nearly to his shoulders now.
“For once, no. It’s all squared away.” Aziraphale sighed. “Out in bookstores nationwide on Friday.”
“It’ll be a bestseller,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale could hear the edge of bitterness in his voice. “I mean. It won’t, but it should be.”
It was important, the book. They both knew it. They’d done it together, as a family (“We’re the damn Family Von Trapp,” Crowley had joked, “fighting fascism with art. Maybe we should take up song and dance.”), and it was the best thing Aziraphale had ever seen. But it was a book about magic in a world that was still deeply uncomfortable with the reality of it, and there was no chance it would be flying off the shelves. It had taken an awful lot of begging, pleading, and an endorsement from Nina and Maggie Davies to find a publisher in the first place.
There was a push for the re-integration of magical beings amongst the general public that had been gaining traction for the past few years, but nothing was fair yet. Nothing was equal. In his private moments, Aziraphale thought that it might never be. But Crowley looked at every step in the right direction as a momentous fucking occasion, and Aziraphale tried to let himself feel that, too.
The orphanages had been dismantled for the most part, with many parents coming forward to claim their magical children, and numerous new court cases leveled against the Archangels as a result. Some of the homes remained, still populated by children who had nowhere else to go. A few months after Nina’s article, Aziraphale had been located by a magical advocacy group, and he’d been asked to consult on interviews to find new caretakers for the remaining group homes. He had gone, and he’d brought Crowley with him. They’d both spent the train ride home from the interviews in silence, holding each other’s hands too tightly, unable to find any words.
Aziraphale had started the book that night.
He and Crowley had informed the advocacy group of each of the children who lived on Tadfield Island. Aziraphale had watched Crowley’s lips tighten as he gave each of his children’s names to a woman who would put those names on a list, a list that they could use to match the children with any birth parents who came forward to claim them. He watched Crowley grieve the potential loss of each of them, each of the kids he had raised and taught and loved when no one else would. Aziraphale felt the hollowness in his own chest, too, the gripping fear that one of the children would want to go home.
When no parents came forward to claim any of the six children, Crowley grieved then, too. He sobbed into Aziraphale’s chest, and Aziraphale cried into his hair, and they held each other until the worst of it had passed.
No one had come for any of them, and that was a kind of loss, too.
And now it was the week of the book’s release, and Aziraphale was terrified that it would sit, unbought and unread, on the shelves of every major book retailer until it was eventually marked down, placed in the bargain bin, and forgotten.
“It should be required reading, is what it should be,” Aziraphale said, with a bit more venom than he’d intended. Behind him, Crowley made a noise low in his throat, agreeing. “I just… I don’t know, darling. Is it good enough?”
Two years had passed, and Aziraphale always came back to the same question. Is this enough? Am I enough?
Will anything we do really matter at all?
“It’s so much, angel,” Crowley whispered softly, burying his nose in Aziraphale’s hair. “It’s everything. To me, to all of us. To every damn kid in every damn house and orphanage in this country who doesn’t know anything about who they could be.”
For the first time in many minutes, Aziraphale felt himself start to breathe properly.
“We can’t save the whole world, love,” Crowley said. He’d said the same after the end of the trial, when the Archangels were marched off by the bailiff in matching jumpsuits, each of them with a multi-year sentence that still didn’t seem like a fraction of the punishment they deserved. “Much as I love seeing you play the avenging angel and all. Sometimes, this just has to be enough.”
Aziraphale looked at the water, at the gold of the slowly setting sun, and he took breath after breath of the warm sea air.
“This is enough,” Aziraphale said. “It is.”
A home, and a family. A husband. Kids. Two best friends. His cat. And the sun, and the sand, and the sea. It was enough.
“I’m going to go start dinner,” Crowley said. “It’s Nat and Newt’s date night, and Adam might send Dog and Oscar after me if I wait too long.”
“Ah, well. I suppose I’ll let you go, if only to spare you from the fate of those two jumping around your ankles while you hold hot plates.”
A laugh rumbled through Crowley’s chest. “Ah, the fearsome Kitchen Beasts, indigenous to Tadfield Island. Should put that in our next book, angel.”
Aziraphale tilted his chin up, and Crowley caught his mouth in a kiss.
“You staying here for a bit, then?”
“I think so,” Aziraphale said. “Just for a little while more.”
“I’ll send one of the kids out to get you for tea if you’re not in by then.”
Aziraphale kissed the line of Crowley’s jaw. “Thank you, darling.”
The sun was sinking ever closer to the sea, and Aziraphale bent to roll up the legs of his trousers so he could sit on the end of the dock and dip his toes into the cool water. He had a few minutes of quiet, a few minutes where he let his mind go blank and watched the sky and sea turn orange, before he heard the sound of small feet crunching through the gravel.
Wensley sat down beside him. His early teenage years were making him long and lanky, his limbs growing too fast for the rest of him, making him resemble Warlock and Crowley more with every passing day. He was still in many ways the boy he had been, but there was something of a young man in him now that made Aziraphale’s chest go tight.
“Hello,” Aziraphale said. He wrapped an arm around Wensley’s shoulder and squeezed. “How are your trees today, darling boy?”
“Really good,” Wensley said. He pulled an apple from his pocket and took a bite before handing it to Aziraphale, who did the same. It was a ritual at this point. Whenever Wensley’s trees gave him an apple, he shared it with Aziraphale. “They say hello.”
“I’ll come with you to see them in the morning,” Aziraphale said. “It’s been a few days, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Wensley said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and took another bite of the apple. “You were out on a walk with Dog and Newt this morning, and down at the beach with Adam yesterday. S’okay though, you don’t need to see them every day.”
“I know, but I like to.”
Wensley grinned at him. “Yeah?”
“They mean a great deal to me,” Aziraphale said. He remembered the first day he had met Wensley’s apple trees, the day he realised that he understood nothing about this boy or this island at all. “They’re yours, after all.”
“You sound like Da,” Wensley said, laughing.
The name had started as a joke, a moment of teasing between Crowley and Adam. When Adam had first come to stay with Crowley, he’d called out for him in the middle of the nightmare, and he’d called out for his Da. ‘Halfway to ‘Dad,’’ Crowley had joked. After Heaven’s Gate was dismantled, after a proper wedding had taken place and adoption paperwork had been signed, Adam had called Crowley ‘Da’ to poke fun, and it had stuck. Aziraphale adored it.
“Do I?”
“Actually, the two ‘f you are gonna merge into one mega-ultra-parent one day, Adam says.”
Aziraphale chuckled and ruffled Wensley’s hair. “He could make that happen, you know. Think of how horrifying.”
Wensley pulled a face, and Aziraphale shook his head, laughing harder.
“He wouldn’t really do it,” Wensley said, patting Aziraphale on the leg. Always comforting, always protecting, even now that Aziraphale didn’t need it anymore.
“I know, darling.”
They finished Wensley’s apple, passing it back and forth until it was down to the core. Wensley took the seeds out of it and stuck them in his pocket, and then a vine slithered along the slats of the dock, retrieving the core from his outstretched palm. Aziraphale watched as the vine curled its way back toward the grass and pulled the core along with it, burying it in the sand and soil.
“We have a compost bin at the house, you know,” Aziraphale said amusedly.
“‘S a long way away,” Wensley replied, flashing a shit-eating grin that Aziraphale knew he’d learned from Adam. “Besides, I know you like my magic.”
“I do,” Aziraphale said. “It’s beautiful. I love it, and you.”
Adam and Warlock would have groaned at that, would have blushed up to their ears and told Aziraphale that he was being embarrassing. Pepper and Brian would have teased Aziraphale for being so normal, for being so awestruck by such a little thing. Dog would have turned first the colour of beetroot, and then into a dog, to avoid any more compliments.
But Wensley leaned close to Aziraphale’s side and said, “Love you, too.”
They sat together until the sun had set and twilight was creeping, cool and grey, over the island. Behind them, the windows of the house were warm with light, and the faint strains of the other children’s voices floated on the wind.
Wensley turned his head toward the treeline, head tilted to the side, listening closer.
“Hey, Wens,” Warlock said, stepping from the shadows and onto the dock. “Time for tea. Da said to come and find you both. I figured you’d be together.”
Aziraphale didn’t play favourites. It wasn’t the done thing, for a parent. But each of the children knew that there was something about Wensley’s gentleness that couldn’t quite be matched by any of the other adults on the island, not even Newt. There was something about finding Wensley with Aziraphale that just made sense.
Wensley nodded and climbed to his feet, offering a hand out to help Aziraphale up, as well. Aziraphale took it.
“What’s for dinner?” Wensley asked over his shoulder, already making a beeline for the house.
“Why don’t you go and find out, hey?” Warlock called after him. He looked at Aziraphale, who was busy uncuffing his trousers and trying to smooth out the wrinkles. “He’ll eat us out of house and home at this rate.”
“You were much the same when I met you, if I recall,” Aziraphale said. “Having a house full of teenagers is a challenge that Crowley and I are more than happy to rise to.”
“Should hope so,” Warlock said. They started to follow Wensley back toward the house, and Warlock slowed down his long steps so that Aziraphale could keep pace without hurrying. “You’re a bit stuck with us now.”
“And what a blessing you all are,” Aziraphale said.
Predictably, Warlock blushed, all older-sibling bravado and bluster gone in an instant.
“You’re so embarrassing,” he mumbled. “Honestly, Dad, it’s awful.”
Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat, but he said, “Well, you’d better get used to it, my dear. Seeing as you’re stuck with me.”
When Warlock smiled, it was open and wide, and it cracked Aziraphale’s heart straight in half.
“Worse people to be stuck with,” Warlock said, teasing. “I think you’ll do just fine.”
*********
The House in the Cerulean Sea: Understanding Magic and Its People
Written by Aziraphale and Anthony Crowley-Fell
Illustrations by Warlock Crowley-Fell
Dedicated to the sprite and her husband, who have made their island into our home, and to our children, who have shown us greater strength and love than we ever thought possible. Wherever you are, so we will be, and we will call that home.