Archive of Our Own

Heaven - Before

There has scarcely been so much light shed in eons, and it bleeds out of the fabric of reality. There are bodies clashing together, weapons smashing each other apart, and scream after scream as nothingness becomes downwards and figures slip away.

A flaming sword clatters down, and an angel lands hard on their knees, three pairs of wings beating frantically. Something hurts, and beams of radiance pool in the angel’s hands. They grab for the sword and try to use it as a staff to try to stagger upward. The universe is compressing and hot.

Then a hand presses against the angel’s chest. The spilling of light slows, and then stops entirely, leaving wisps like smoke around their feet. The angel looks down, and then up, blinking their many eyes. They can make out a figure, glowing black, terrible and impressive and full of fire. And then the figure moves on, smoke trailing behind it. The angel wonders if they ought to have hefted their sword and run the figure through. 

The world shakes violently. Another screaming voice echoes through the everything. The angel moves on, sword aloft. Michael’s voice is everywhere, and Heaven is still there to defend.

Mesopotamia - 3004 BC

The rain comes down hard and harder and harder still. And for a while, this is good. Puddles form for the children to splash through, and for farmers to scoop up in pots to carry back to their houses. It hasn’t rained in a while, and the crops will be pleased.

And the rain comes down hard.

Rivers run along the ground where no rivers used to be, and shoes are submerged, followed by ankles and shins. Children ride on their parents' shoulders and expressions of relief start to turn into worry.

And the rain comes down harder.

Crawley and Aziraphale are perched on a ledge in the air attached to nothing, shielded from view. They look over the edge and watch. Water refuses to saturate the ground and instead grows tall, climbing the thighs of men who are trying to pick up their goats. Wooden boards made of tied together branches are procured and small animals and babies are piled onto them in the hopes that they will float as the water rises. Children stand on fences, clinging to posts, as their parents wade around in a panic, calling to each other frantically and trying to save whatever they deem to be most important.

And the rain comes down harder still. 

Little waves start to form, knocking people over. More children cling to the boards, which are dipping dangerously in and out of the water with how laden with babies and belongings they are. The water rises to four feet and five feet and six feet and the ground is full of bobbing, screaming heads. The water is hot; it came out of the sky hot. Some people swim around, trying to find their families. Others have never learned how to swim. 

There are fewer goat noises now.

There are fewer human noises now too.

The sun falls and the moon rises, and the moon falls and the sun returns, and the rain does not stop. One by one, the heads disappear. Sometimes there’s a scene, arms flailing and splashing, and sometimes there’s just a concession to exhaustion and a silent slip underwater. Babies cry, and are swallowed by the sea. And the sun and the moon dance around each other in a sickening choreography until the only sound is drops of rain landing in an ocean of death.

Crawley’s knuckles are white against the ledge they’re sitting on. He hasn’t moved in days. 

The rain stops, eventually. The drops slow and slow and eventually, they disappear completely. The sun is threatening to rise again, but it’s the moon that glimmers off the ocean behind them. The fortieth night is over. The flood is complete.

“I suppose we should get down now,” Aziraphale says. His voice is scratchy from disuse. He too has been still and silent. There hasn’t been anything to say.

“And go where?” Crawley replies, voice barely above a whisper.

“Somewhere… somewhere it isn’t flooded, I suppose.”

Crawley makes an aborted noise in the back of his throat. 

“I’ve actually heard that there are some areas on the Asian continent with quite good–”

“Are you going to say food?” Crawley snaps. He turns to look at Aziraphale for the first time in forty days and nights. “Are you going to tell me that there’s an excellent inn that does the perfect rabbit stew or– or, I don’t know, duck, or whatever it is?”

Aziraphale closes his mouth.

“After all this. After all of this, you want to go up to China and eat. Drink. Talk to people. Forget about this.”

“Crawley…”

“You do. You want to go and forget about this.”

Aziraphale looks down at his lap and fidgets with his robe. “Well, I can’t say I’m looking forward to remembering it.”

“You can’t forget this. How could you? You saw– you watched when babies rolled off their rafts and drowned. You watched people’s faces when their children died. What was their sin, anyway?”

Aziraphale clears his throat delicately. “God was, ah. A bit angry over the general, you know, violence and corruption in this area.”

“And so She murdered everyone.”

“Not murdered–”

“Were those children violent and corrupt?” Crawley cuts him off. “The infants? The animals? Were they violent and corrupt? They’re down there now. They’re down…” He trails off, and then lets out a terrible, strangled snarl like thunder and pitches forward. He barely knows that he means to do - to go look for them, maybe, to dive into the ocean and retrieve the bodies, to breathe life into them if he still knows how to do that - but then Aziraphale’s arms are around his middle, yanking him back. Crawley thrashes against him, but Aziraphale is strong and he locks his arms around Crawley and refuses to let go until eventually, Crawley sags, head hung low.

“Don’t,” Aziraphale says softly. “Don’t go down there. You know what you’ll find.”

“It’s terrible,” Crawley breathes.

Aziraphale is quiet.

“It’s cruel.”

Aziraphale says nothing.

“Do you understand it?”

Silence stretches out between them, until eventually, Aziraphale says, “No.”

Crawley sucks in a soft breath.

“No, I don’t understand it.”

Aziraphale’s forehead presses to the back of Crawley’s neck, just above his shoulders. His lips brush against Crawley’s skin as he breathes. He does not let Crawley go, and Crawley does not try to get free. He can feel little puffs of air against the top of his spine, and he can feel how they’re shaky. He relaxes a little more in Aziraphale’s arms and lets Aziraphale take some of his weight. Aziraphale doesn’t shift him away.

“Don’t you want to?” Crawley asks eventually.

Aziraphale sighs against his neck. He’s quiet again, and then he says, “I don’t think I do.” A pause. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think any of us can.”

“We could try.”

“I don’t think we could understand it even then.”

“Ineffable,” Crawley says tonelessly.

“Unfortunately so.”

The edge of the sun peeks up over the edge of the ocean. It sends shimmery ripples of light toward their feet. They stretch and elongate like a pathway. The two of them have been sitting here for so long that it would be a challenge to remember how to walk down it.

“Come, my dear boy,” Aziraphale says softly. His lips are still touching against Crawley’s spine as he speaks. “We don’t have to go to China. But let’s not stay here.”

Crawley nods slowly. They sit for a moment more, and then Aziraphale releases him. The lines of flesh Aziraphale's arms were pressed against chill immediately. 

Aziraphale stands up on nothingness, and then steps down onto the water. The light from the sun hardens into a real pathway, and Aziraphale holds out his hand. Crawley takes it and steps down, clumsy and stiff. But he allows Aziraphale to turn back toward the sun and they start walking over the ocean, toward something that perhaps one of them can understand.

Sinai Desert - 1402 BC

It’s hot.

Crawley is annoyed that Adam and Eve had invented the desire to be clothed. It had been more comfortable before that, and much more comfortable than these robes. As they must be, they are black, and his hood is pulled up over his head, draped low over his eyes. The more he tries to shift the yellow into something more human-like, the smaller the whites become, and eventually he gives up and ducks his head away.

There is a crawling sensation up the back of his neck. He rubs at it through the fabric of the robe and grimaces. This sweating thing that humans do is tedious as well. Perhaps one day he’ll sort out a way to turn it off. He blows discreetly into his hand and the moisture evaporates, leaving just the heat baking in. 

Crawley makes an irritated noise and stands up. There are a couple clusters of people in the area, sitting on rocks carved into benches and chatting or weaving or drinking, and no one pays any mind. Crawley glances up at the sun, then slips away. He climbs up a small hill, mercifully empty, and then strips off the top half of his robe and knots the arms around his waist. It’s better, somewhat; at least there’s air on his skin as he sits back down to watch. The crawling sensation intensifies and he slaps at his skin like there’s a mosquito there.

“Are you alright?”

Crawley jumps a little and whips his head around. Through the dusty air, which has gone twisty with heat, he sees a figure walking toward him, clad in white and washed out by the sandstone. He squints, and then remembers to look away, but then the voice picks itself out of his chest and he looks up again.

“Aziraphale?”

“Just so,” Aziraphale says. He comes up to Crawley and peers down at him. “What are you doing up here?”

“Sitting. Being hot.” Crawley shoves some hair off of his forehead. “Waiting. But mostly being hot.”

“It is the place for it.” Aziraphale toes at some grains of sand with a soft leather shoe. “May I sit?”

“If you like.”

Aziraphale does seem to like, and he sits down next to Crawley, tucking his legs to the side.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I’d hazard the same thing you are, given that you’re here.”

“Exodus,” Aziraphale agrees. 

“They should be coming through here any moment now.”

“Why not wait in Canaan?”

“Oh, they won’t be there for ages. Give myself something to do.”

“I would think your place was down there with them.” Aziraphale gestures down at the small village that Crawley had abandoned. “You know. Enticing and whatnot.”

Crawley shrugs. “Hardly worth it. Humans hate doing things when it’s hot.”

“I daresay they’re used to it.”

“I hate doing things when it’s hot.”

“Is that why you’ve started stripping?”

“Just so,” Crawley mimics, and he catches a tiny, amused smile on Aziraphale’s face. “You could try it. Lovely breeze up here.”

“I think I’d burn.”

“Not if you didn’t want to.” Crawley touches his own shoulder, gauging the temperature. He wills it a couple degrees cooler. Heat evaporates out of him, and he sighs.

“Oh, I suppose that’s true.” Aziraphale looks down at the village again. “We don’t hardly blend in, do we?”

Crawley shrugs. “We don’t tend to. They never seem bothered.”

Aziraphale contemplates that, and then shifts up and tugs his coat off and his tunic up over his head. He folds them up and lays them gently to the side, then leans back, propping himself up with his arms behind him. Crawley glances at him, and a slight breeze dances across Aziraphale’s bare chest. 

“That is rather nice,” Aziraphale murmurs, eyes closed. Crawley feels strangely pleased about that. He does enjoy being right.

“So what are you up to, Angel? Off to comfort the Egyptians?”

“Certainly not. That seems like your side’s sort of thing.” Aziraphale spares the village one last glance, then leans back, shifting to prop himself up with his elbows instead. “I’m just keeping an eye on things, really. It’s been slow for quite a few centuries.”

“Supposed to really pick up in about eight hundred years or so,” Crawley offers. 

“Is it eight? I thought it was at least another millennium.”

“Latest report says eight.”

“I must have read mine wrong. Lambskin these days.”

“Ours are moving on to scrolls. If you do tree bark quite thin, you can write on it, then roll it up around a stick.”

“How clever. I’ll bring that up with whoever’s working up front next time I pop in. I hear Pravuil has been promoted.”

“Oh, well done her.”

“Yes, well.” 

“Mm.”

They fall quiet. The desert in front of them is monstrously vast. This village is just another in a long, long string of them twisting off in the direction of the Mediterranean. It’s small, and tightly kept, as he supposes it must be. It doesn’t leave much room for entrances.

“It’s a bit lonely, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale raises his head up a couple inches. “I’m sorry?”

“The waiting. This lot we’re waiting for, they’ve been out here nearly four decades, and there’s barely anyone around to, you know. Do sins. And they all seem to like each other, which makes it harder.”

“They do,” Aziraphale muses. He smiles again. “It’s a lovely change of pace, I have to admit.”

“It’s annoying,” Crawley mutters. “All they do is talk to each other about things.”

“I suppose that’s why you haven’t found an in yet.”

“Neither have you.”

“Well… No. But I’m not trying to interfere.”

“Change of pace, that.”

Aziraphale makes a face. “As though you’re one to talk.”

“I’m just saying,” Crawley continues. “That it’s a bit lonely out here. Hard to make friends when you’ve got animal eyes.”

“Oh, I don’t think they’re all that noticeable.”

“You’ve got used to them. Humans don’t like it when things are out of the ordinary. Drown their own kid if it’s got a weird bit sticking out of it.”

Aziraphale purses his lips. “Quite.”

“Snake eyes would certainly scare the shit out of them,” Crawley says in a definitive sort of way. “Let alone if you walked up without your issued body on right. ‘Be not afraid’ never did anything for them.”

“We did hope that they would take us at face value,” Aziraphale says mournfully.

“You don’t have a face. Do you? Or are you one of those fiery wheel types?”

“Oh, no, I had several faces,” Aziraphale says. “That was part of the problem, I suppose.”

“Fits in the suit better than a wheel.”

“They all fit in the same.” Aziraphale looks up now, eyes unfocused as if he’s looking directly into Heaven’s floors. “I do quite like the body, though.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, yes. It took a little while to get used to the limbs and bits, but I find it very comfortable now.” 

Crawley sizes up the body in question. It is quite pale for the Sinai desert, but so is his own. It’s pleasantly soft and sturdy and strong, unlike the emaciated people that Crawley keeps stumbling across. He reaches out without thinking and touches Aziraphale’s chest, fingers resting against one pectoral as his palm presses against Aziraphale’s sternum. If he focuses, he can feel a human heartbeat.

“Does yours have to do that?”

“Oh, no, but I enjoy it. It goes nicely with the breathing bit.” Aziraphale doesn’t look particularly startled, and he doesn’t move Crawley’s hand away. He seems very relaxed, which is an unusual look on him.

Crawley wrinkles his nose. “Never cared for the breathing bit.”

“It is a bit laborious, but you do always catch the humans counting at you when you don’t do it. Like it’s some sort of trick. So I carry on. But the heartbeat is lovely.”

“I’ll have to try it out. Forgot how.”

“Take your time.”

Crawley closes his eyes and puts all of his focus into the palm of his hand. He’s not totally sure what a good heartbeat for humans is - it seems like most of them are focused on there being one at all rather than how fast it’s going - but this heartbeat seems strong and steady. Crawley counts in his head, and forgets to keep time as well.

“I don’t remember where it starts,” he murmurs. 

“Somewhere around there.” Fingers brush against his ribs and Crawley’s eyes snap open. He glances down, and Aziraphale is reaching out and touching him too. Knuckles press in just under Crawley’s sternum, then dig upwards a bit. Crawley hisses. “Just in here.”

Crawley nods and closes his eyes again with a bit more effort. It’s harder to keep them closed now that Aziraphale’s hand is on him, but he serves as a good guide. He runs Aziraphale’s heartbeat through his head like he’s whistling a reel, over and over again until his skin starts to throb all over, very slightly, in time.

“Now you’ve got it,” Aziraphale says, sounding pleased.

“Have I?”

“You do. I can feel it.” Aziraphale’s knuckles leave Crawley’s sternum, and a second later, close around his other wrist. He guides Crawley’s hand to his own chest and presses his palm down. Crawley stills for a moment, until he can feel a pulse inside his bones. “Isn’t it nice?”

“I can feel it in my fingers,” Crawley murmurs. He lets his hand drop, and Aziraphale’s drops with it. Crawley mourns the loss of touch, but his other hand is still pressed against Aziraphale’s chest, slowly rising and falling with each breath.

“You’ll get used to it. Sometimes I don’t notice mine at all anymore.”

“No?”

“Not particularly. It’s just another aspect of the body. But sometimes I listen for it and it feels like everything in the universe starts to move in time.”

“Or you’re moving in time with something else,” Crawley offers quietly.

Aziraphale tilts his head, then nods once. “You know, I do enjoy that as well.”

He looks so at peace with that answer. Crawley doesn’t feel like he’s seen Aziraphale look at peace with much of anything in their sporadic meetings. Even that first time in Eden, he had been incredibly stressed. Now, he just looks comfortable.

Crawley is fascinated.

He can’t stop touching Aziraphale’s chest. He can’t stop thinking about how it feels like the chests of other men he’s met. He remembers the touch of angels before the Earth was, and those burned through him like so much desert brush, but Aziraphale. Aziraphale is just soft and solid. His heart beats like a man, but only because he wants it to be so. His lungs play at being greedy for air. 

Crawley wonders if Aziraphale could still burn him like this. He wonders if Aziraphale’s breath is poisonous to him, or if his blood would scald like rainwater, if his grip would break these fragile human bones. He still feels the heated imprint of Aziraphale’s hand around his wrist and he wonders how close he had come, and if there will ever be an opportunity to come closer.

“Aziraphale,” he murmurs under his breath. It just slips out. It barely reaches his own ears.

Aziraphale, though, opens his eyes again and tilts his head toward Crawley. “Yes?”

Crawley hisses softly. His fingers twitch against Aziraphale’s skin, and then finally, finally, he pulls them away. He twists his hands in his lap instead, hiding them in the fabric of his robe and fitting his fingers to the memory of Aziraphale’s hand squeezing.

“Nothing,” he settles on eventually. “Just thinking.”

Rome - 191 BC

Crawley - or Crowley, these days - stretches, and then rolls onto his stomach and sighs. His hips and his back ache now, to say nothing about his insides, but he feels heavy and liquid, like he’s going to pour off of this bed and pool on the ground. He flexes his feet and arches his back and groans low in his throat, reveling in the deep twinge.

“Another round already? I’m afraid I need a moment.”

Crowley glances over his shoulder. Aziraphale is on his back next to him, one leg bent and the other crossed over it. He looks extremely sated and a bit sweaty, and Crowley’s not sure if he’s imagining it but it does look like Aziraphale is gleaming a little from some unknown source. Crowley’s eyes skim over him - he’s still wearing a loose linen shirt with the lacing around the neck pulled free, and nothing else. His human cock, which has gone somewhat soft but certainly isn’t planning on staying there long, is nestled along his hip bone. It’s still shiny and wet, matching the same slickness that illuminates Crowley’s ass and the insides of his thighs. Crowley bites his tongue to ward off the furious desire to put it in his mouth.

“You don’t need a moment. You could be ready any time you wanted.”

“There’s not a rush. Shall I find some more wine for you?”

“No, don’t. You’ll have to go over by the dead ox to do that.”

“I do wish they wouldn’t display it so,” Aziraphale says distastefully. 

“At least they aren’t eating it this time.”

“Rather.”

Behind them, a woman wails in pleasure. Crowley glances up at her, past Aziraphale, who is sitting up and reaching for his own wine. The woman is riding the cock of some man, who is wearing a horned mask and splayed out on an altar table, and she looks to be having a marvelous time. Crowley wonders idly if he has the energy to do that, or if he can get away with just rolling over again and letting Aziraphale do as he pleases.

“Easy on the alcohol, angel,” he says lightly as Aziraphale finishes the goblet off. “Gluttonous. Pleasure is a sin, and all that. Hate to see you explode right when the night’s getting good.”

“Pleasure to excess is a sin,” Aziraphale corrects. He toasts the empty goblet to the air and it refills itself obligingly. “Which you should be familiar with, Crawley, squirming all over the bed before I’ve even touched you again.”

Crowley swallows. His traitorous face had learned how to blush, and it’s betraying him now. “Wasn’t.”

“I think you were.” Aziraphale takes a delicate sip of wine. “I think you would be squirming all over your own fingers if I made you wait any longer.”

Crowley grits his teeth. “You’d better not, then. Wouldn’t want to be perpetuating sin.”

Aziraphale’s eyes sparkle. “You seem awfully concerned about my virtue. Besides, it’s not like either of us could help it. It’s in your nature to be such a wanton thing.”

“Angel, I will get up off of this bed and go find someone else. I’ll tie a blindfold over my eyes.”

“And fall victim to the ecstatic dancers? That’s very unlike you. You’ve never been one to dance.”

Crowley grinds his teeth. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Aziraphale was teasing him. Or taunting him. “That’s not true.”

“I suppose not. They at least have some form of rhythm.” Aziraphale swallows down the rest of the wine again, and then sets the goblet aside. He looks back at Crowley, and his eyes are bright in the dimness of the temple.

He is definitely teasing Crowley.

“Angel. Come on. Do I have to say please?”

“I don’t think you know how.”

“I can. If…” If that’s what you want. If that's what it takes.

Aziraphale’s smile turns wicked. Crowley can’t really see how this isn’t lust to excess, but he’ll trust Aziraphale that it isn’t, somehow. “I think I should like that.”

“Oh, Satan,” Crowley mutters under his breath. “Come on, Aziraphale. Have me again. Please.” He hisses a little bit on the last ‘S’, embarrassment causing his tongue to trip, but it’s worth it if Aziraphale will just press him back into the bed. “Angel. Please.”

He may imagine it, but under the sounds of music and dancing and moaning all around them, he thinks that Aziraphale sucks in a soft breath. Aziraphale reaches over and runs his hand over Crowley’s bare hip, and Crowley’s insides clench pleasantly, reminding him who had put the ache in them in the first place. 

“Fascinating,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Come here, my dear.”

Crowley breathes out a great sigh. He rolls over and Aziraphale plasters against his back, and soon, sweet, blinding relief presses back into his body and he joins the ecstacy around them.

Florence - 1458 AD

If you look at Aziraphale, in his well tailored coats and his rings and his silk shirts with the cuffs linked in gold, holding a well preserved book in his lap with little crinkly lines around the corners of his eyes, you can almost be forgiven for forgetting about the razor thin steel edges inside of him. You would hardly be blamed for not remembering that the same soft hands that stir sugar into tea once held a sword that had run through the ethereal chests of demons.

Now, they are currently curled around Crowley’s jaw, the fingertips digging into the flesh under the points of Crowley’s bones, and Crowley is trapped on his knees by the way he can see the reflection of millennia-old fire in Aziraphale’s eyes. His thumbs are pressing Crowley’s mouth open, digging in between his teeth, as if Crowley’s mouth needs any encouragement to open as wide as it can. Crowley is gagging for it already, briefly forgetting about the tedious corporeal concept of swallowing, and trying to get his tongue around Aziraphale’s fingers. Aziraphale tugs the skin of one cheek in retaliation, but he reminds Crowley that he understands mercy too because he moves one hand up and drags an extremely ungentle hand through Crowley’s hair.

Crowley hisses. “God, Aziraphale…”

“Hush,” Aziraphale commands him. His voice sounds like it’s coming from everywhere. Like many Aziraphales, all gathered around, their hands running over Crowley’s back and chest and hair and face. This is what it feels like to have Aziraphale’s undivided attention and Crowley is already half out of his mind.

“I want,” Crowley manages, around the intrusion of Aziraphale’s thumb. “Let me.”

“I know,” Aziraphale answers. “I will.”

He pushes Crowley back, and then his hands move to his trousers. Crowley starts to raise a hand off the ground to snap them away, but then Aziraphale’s boot is pressing it back down. He grinds Crowley’s hand delicately against the dirt - just hard enough to make a point, that he will be taking the lead and Crowley is not going to be able to get away with anything faster than Aziraphale wants. Crowley bows his head a little, showing off that he understands, and Aziraphale returns to his buttons, popping them one by one with rather more flair than is strictly necessary. Crowley’s eyes are glued to them anyway. It’s been a while. 

Aziraphale pushes the last button open, and then tugs his cock free and Crowley is rather embarrassed by the way he shivers and rocks forward on his knees. But it has been centuries since anyone has felt anything good around here, it seems, and Florence is verdant and green now, and Aziraphale is commanding every one of Crowley’s senses so that Crowley knows that there is no death or politics here. There is only frantic hunger, and it’s in Aziraphale’s eyes as well.

Crowley moans when the first taste of Aziraphale slides across his tongue. He lets his eyes fall closed, and belatedly, feels the light pressure of his dark glasses being removed from his face. One blunt thumb tugs at his eyelid and so he looks up again. Aziraphale looks almost feral right now. He stares Crowley straight in the eyes with such ferocity that Crowley wants to turn away, but Aziraphale’s hands are still locked around his jaw, and now his cock is spearing into Crowley’s mouth and Crowley is trapped and drowning in flames.

“Miraculous,” Aziraphale says, his voice gentle despite his ravenous expression. Crowley cannot stand that, and he surges his head forward, choking himself with the intrusion. Aziraphale shudders, and it feels like the very air in the bell tower they’ve hidden away in shudders with him, its atoms disturbed. A hand on Crowley's jaw finds its way to the back of his head, grabs a handful of hair, and yanks him down even farther. Crowley gasps, sort of, an undignified snorting sound, and soon, he cannot breathe at all. 

Aziraphale thrusts shallowly, no rhythm to speak of, and his nails dig into Crowley’s scalp. Crowley can hardly taste him anymore, or perhaps he can and everything just tastes like Aziraphale when he’s buried this deeply inside him. His hands find Aziraphale’s calves and hold on, and Aziraphale fucks into his mouth until a burn starts in his chest and starts spreading outward. It takes Crowley a moment to identify this as oxygen deprivation, and he tries to pull back to catch his breath, but Aziraphale doesn’t allow him to move. Crowley looks up frantically, his eyes wide and his chest hitching, but Aziraphale says, “None of that. You don’t need to breathe, remember?”

He doesn’t. That’s right. It’s been so long since he started breathing that he’s tricked himself into expecting it. Once he remembers that, the burn disappears and replaces itself with a slightly underwater sort of sensation. His chest stops hitching and Aziraphale purrs.

“That’s it. You don’t need air. You just need this,” he says. His voice is too big for the tower, and it echoes into Crowley’s body. Crowley nods anyway, and his throat convulses around Aziraphale’s cock because he’s forgotten he doesn’t need to swallow, either, and Aziraphale is far too deep for him to be able to do even that. Logic states that when Aziraphale pulls out on his next thrust, Crowley will be able to take care of the spit in his mouth, but logic doesn’t explain Aziraphale burying himself as deep as he can in Crowley’s throat and grinding Crowley’s face against his belly. The nails on Aziraphale’s calves turn sharp and scratch and Crowley’s hips are the ones bucking now. 

Both of Aziraphale’s hands are in his hair now, and they’re trembling, Crowley can tell. Aziraphale keeps pulling tighter and his presence keeps getting bigger, and his body is starting to move in unsteady twitches as jerks that Crowley is pretty sure are not intentional. The pressure in his throat lessens for a brief moment, and then Aziraphale’s hips snap forward and Crowley gags before he remembers he doesn’t have to do that either. And by the time he remembers, Aziraphale is thrusting into his mouth again, and again, and again with all of the finesse of a cord that has snapped and is dangling in the wind.

It’s perfect.

Aziraphale is shaking hard now, and Crowley urges him on, grabbing at his hips and his ass and pulling him forward. The smack of his face against Aziraphale’s skin makes soft, slapping sounds, barely audible over Aziraphale’s reverberating moans. Crowley drops one hand down and grinds the heel of his palm against his own cock, and then Aziraphale lets out a roar and there’s an ear-shattering crack and the world explodes. Six huge wings unfurl all at once, pure white and shining and unknowable, and Aziraphale’s body dissolves into hot, expansive Holy light. Crowley feels Aziraphale's touch all over him now, wrapping around him and choking him and pulling his hair and pressing down on his tongue, but he can’t look. He is filled with the light, which is forcing his mouth open and stealing down into his body, filling up his chest and belly. The tower shakes and the bell clangs rapidly, uneven and confusing for the whole city outside.

Crowley feels his own ecstasy fill his body, spilling out in deep red waves, but the light blasts it away and takes over. He is surrounded by it completely and it touches every inch of him, under his clothes, under his skin, under his soul. It burns so purely, the pleasure of it incomprehensible, and he is helpless to the beauty of it, the sensation of it, the wracking shudders it draws out of him when his own orgasm is swallowed up and magnified back at him ten times, fifty times, a hundred times through all of the dimensions and years.

Things go grey for a little while, and then get dark. Crowley cracks open one eye, and then both when he recognizes that across from him is only the bell tower wall and not eye-searing Holiness. He looks down and grimaces at his pants, which are definitely and very obviously wet in the crotch, and then over at Aziraphale. Aziraphale has laid down, or else fallen down, and he’s on his back now, in his human form, panting softly with his trousers still unbuttoned. All around them, there are scorch marks in the shape of feathers seared into the walls, and the bell is still rocking above them, though at least it isn’t ringing anymore.

Aziraphale clears his throat. “Very sorry about that.”

Crowley shakes his head hard. “Don’t be,” he rasps. “Clearly you were pent up.”

“It was nice to feel something good again,” Aziraphale admits. “It’s been a bit of a rough couple of centuries.”

Crowley hums. It has been. And it had all been moot for both of their sides - the Black Death was amoral and filled the ranks of Heaven and Hell like a broken dam with no preparation.

“Was it… alright for you?” Aziraphale asks. He’s started to recede back into shyness.

“Was it– my whole brain exploded, angel. It was damned excellent.”

“Blessedly excellent,” Aziraphale corrects absently. He pushes himself up to sit and grimaces at the wetness of his cock and belly, then starts tucking himself back into his trousers. “We should probably go before someone comes to inquire about the bell.”

Worms, Holy Roman Empire - 1521 AD

“Here you are, sir,” says the property owner, handing Crowley three metal keys. Crowley takes them and examines them. They jingle together on their rough woven ribbon.

“Very good.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a bag of coins, bigger than should fit in these trousers, and the property owner happens not to notice. “Four months.”

“Thank you very much, sir.” The bag disappears and the property owner’s smile takes its place. “And a very happy new year to you.”

Crowley stuffs the keys into his pocket and stalks inside, through the building, and out the back door. It’s a small building, made for people shorter than him, and he wonders if it’s worth shrinking himself a bit for the brief time they’ll be here. Best not. It’s a pain to set right again.

The garden out back may have once been pleasant, but is now covered in mud and snow and more mud. Among all of the sludge is a very clean wooden bench and a very clean wooden table and a very clean man taking advantage of both of those things. Crowley wanders over toward him and sits on the table.

“Mind the tea,” Aziraphale says. He slots a bookmark between the pages and delicately closes the book. “Are we all set?”

“Indeed. Keys and all. We’ll have to find a place to store them.” Crowley pulls the keys from his pocket and swings them around his finger. Aziraphale puts his hand over his teacup.

“Perhaps we should just use them.”

“I’m not trying to keep track of these. Tiny little things. Whatever happened to those big skeleton keys? You could hardly misplace those.”

“Difficult to carry around, I would think. Let’s go in, it’s rather chilly out there.”

“You could have just come with me,” Crowley points out, but he slides off the table. Aziraphale tucks his book under his arm and picks up his tea and rises, and they fall into step as they walk back to the apartment building. Crowley lets them in with the building key and gives Aziraphale a pointed look. Aziraphale shoots back a yes, you’re very talented eye roll and goes on ahead. Crowley shuts the door behind them, and they climb two flights of stairs until they get to their new base of operations for the next Satan knows how long.

“It’s comfortable,” Aziraphale says, sounding surprised as he sets down his book and tea. The room has a divider, which makes it almost two rooms, and space for a fire and a kettle in the corner next to a window. “I was picturing something much smaller. How did you convince them to provide beds?”

“Asked.” Crowley closes and locks the door behind them, and then removes his dark glasses and flings himself onto one of the beds. It’s certainly not the most comfortable he’s ever been on, but it’s far from the least, and it will do.

“I do hope the landlord didn’t have to go through any trouble.”

“I hope that he did. Serfdom’s still floating around.”

“Still?”

“Oh yes. Especially eastward.”

Aziraphale purses his lips. “Oh dear.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, angel. The lords’ll get what’s coming to them, and all that. Come sit.”

Aziraphale hums, but he strips out of his coat and his gloves and his hat, and then comes over and sits down beside Crowley. Crowley drifts toward him, out of instinct more than anything.

“I know I’ve said this before, but are you quite sure this is a good idea?” Aziraphale asks hesitantly.

“As good as any other I’ve had. And I’ve had some wonderful ideas.”

“I just really can’t see how Upstairs wouldn’t notice,” Aziraphale says, not for the first time.

“Upstairs has been a bit busy the last few years, if you haven’t noticed,” Crowley replies, also not for the first time. “And frankly, I still don’t know why you all weren’t ready for this. You lasted nearly fifteen hundred entire years before everyone decided that they wanted a different type of Christianity. That’s plenty of time to get prepared.”

“It just seemed like it was going well,” Aziraphale says unhappily. “Everyone was doing alright with it.”

“Oh, angel, you know that’s not true at all.”

Aziraphale shifts. “Well. I don’t know if it warranted nailing a list of the Church’s shortcomings to a door, is all I’ll say.”

“Pretty harmless, in the grand scheme of things.”

Aziraphale sniffs. “Not harmless enough to keep us from ending up in Worms, of all places.”

“Stop pronouncing it like that. It’s not like the things in the ground. It’s got a ‘V’ sound. You’ve been spending too much time in England again.”

“I have not! And I enjoy England!”

“Don’t think the Holiest of Romans do, so let’s hear that ‘V’.”

“Oh, enough.” Aziraphale looks around the little sleeping area. Two beds is a luxury in a place like this, and the cooking corner will be put to use. Crowley had done very well. “We ought to redecorate.”

“Oh, no.”

“If we’re going to be working out of here, I want it to be comfortable!”

“I’ve seen some of the places you’ve lived.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll just change it.”

“Ah, ah. No miracles in here,” Crowley says. “You really don’t want to draw Upstairs’s attention with unnecessary miracles right now, do you?”

“Whereas you can bandy about doing whatever you like.”

“Beez won’t mind,” Crowley says cheerfully. “Head Office is over the moon about all of this, quite frankly, and they’ll just think I’m tempting people out of faith entirely. Enough of them are going on their own.”

“I doubt they’d be over any celestial bodies about you referring to the Lord of the Flies as ‘Beez’.”

Crowley waves a hand. “Nah, they won’t care. Beelzebub, if you must. Every little puff of magic around here has been wax seal approved since 1517.”

“How pleasant for you. You’re certainly not going to be picking the decor.”

“I don’t mind how it is right now, but if you want to haul in some new furniture by hand, be my guest.”

“Perhaps I’ll grow accustomed to it.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’ll make every endeavor.”

“You won’t.”

“I might.”

After that, they leave for dinner, practicing using the new keys. They find coarse bread rolls with bits of fruit in them from a street vendor. Aziraphale insists on taking them past the newly completed Dom St. Peter, and Crowley has the idea to walk along the Rhine for a while and they lace their fingers together and watch the currents slips around the riverbends. The sun goes down and the moon rises and the snow starts to fall again as they make their way back.

Several days later, Crowley leaves for Dortmund for a few weeks. He has some sins to commit and some temptations to do, and Aziraphale’s gotten word of a blessing needed in a tiny town next door. Crowley tries to remember his blessing skills as he rides in the carriage he’s hired, and he marvels at the novelty of having something interesting to return to after he’s done.

Königsberg, Duchy of Prussia - 1525

When Crowley comes home, it’s quiet. That’s his first clue that something’s off.

There aren’t too many people out right now, and when he ducks under the fences and makes his way up to the little cottage, no candle is lit in the window. Crowley frowns and slows his movement to a creep, then presses himself up against the side of the cottage. He listens, and then smells the air. Nothing seems unusual.

Slowly, he strokes one fingertip over the lock, and a soft click grants him entry. Crowley takes an unnecessary breath, and then pushes his way inside, eyes darting all around the room.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary here either. Just Aziraphale, sitting at their table, twisting his fingers around a very worn scrap of paper. He startles when Crowley bursts in, and his eyes widen. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing? It’s dark in here.”

“Close the door,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley narrows his eyes at him, but he obliges. He turns the lock, and for extra security rests his hand on the frame to knit all the wood together into a solid wall, and then he sits down across from Aziraphale. Their knees bump. Aziraphale doesn’t remark on it.

“What’s going on?” Crowley asks, feeling remarkably less pleased to be home than he had four minutes ago.

“Nothing. At the moment,” Aziraphale says. He glances at the dark window. “I’ve seen demons.”

Crowley snorts and rolls his eyes. “Is this new foreplay, angel? I don’t think I’m quite getting into it.”

“No. Real demon. Some of yours.”

“Oh. Here?”

“Yes.”

“In Prussia?”

“In Königsberg. Here.”

“Not in the house.”

“No,” Aziraphale says, sounding a bit relieved about that. “Not in the house. But in town.”

“When?”

“In the last week. Just yesterday, even.”

“Did they see you? Who was it?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea who it was,” Aziraphale says. “And I… I can’t say for certain if they saw me.”

Crowley swears. “Are they looking for you?”

“Again, I haven’t the faintest idea. Though I do feel that if they were looking for me, they probably would have found me, being in the same street.”

“Are they looking for me, then?”

“I find that more likely, but there’s no way of knowing without confronting them.”

“Well, I’m sure as Heaven not going to do that,” Crowley says. “It’s a shame, I was starting to like this city.”

He looks around at their one room cottage. It’s small and cramped and has little light. The bed takes up a full quarter of the space, and the table and chairs another quarter. The rest is packed with boxes and hastily built shelves and candles and papers. It’s by no means a particularly comfortable living situation, but they’ve only been in it a few months and it’s far from the worst they’ve settled in.

Aziraphale’s lips press together. “I think that perhaps we should abandon this,” he says.

Crowley groans. “Oh, come on. We’ve only just moved in. We can throw up some protection sigils.”

“That will protect us against humans,” Aziraphale says. “But not against anyone who would recognize them. And we can’t screen against demons, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get in. Likewise with angels. I don’t think this one is safe anymore either.”

“Aziraphale.”

“This isn’t working, Crowley.”

Crowley sighs heavily. “Alright. Fine. Do you have any intel on where Protestantism is going next? I’ve heard things are heating up in Geneva.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Look, it’s fine, we can blow the cottage up. It was built without permission anyway.”

“Crowley.”

“What.”

“We need to split up again.”

Crowley deflates at that. It’s a very logical thing for Aziraphale to say, and they’ve been living on borrowed time for a while. It was never as safe as that first apartment they had managed to spend ten months in. “Come on. We can try again. Somewhere out of the way.”

“They’ll find us again,” Aziraphale says. He sounds mournful. “I can’t believe there were demons here by accident.”

“It’s the Reformation. Everyone is everywhere.”

“And we should be too. This is too dangerous. How many times have we run now?”

“It’s not running. It’s moving.”

“Out of fear,” Aziraphale says bluntly. “Moving out of fear is running. We’ve done this a dozen times, Crowley. It’s just not sustainable. We’ve tried it, and it didn’t work.”

Crowley doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then, very quietly, admits, “I don’t want to.”

“Oh, my dear. Neither do I.”

“But you’re afraid.”

Aziraphale folds his hands together, and then folds them in a different direction. He looks away, and then his eyes find Crowley’s again. “Yes. I am. For both of us.”

Crowley’s own eyes slip closed. He drops his face in one hand, elbow propped against the table, and sighs again. “Alright. Alright. Where are you planning to go?”

“I haven’t thought about it much. East, perhaps.”

“I suppose I should go west, then,” Crowley says. “See if the Protestants have made it to England yet.”

“I haven’t heard anything about it.”

“Maybe I’ll help it along, then.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“That’s why I’m going to.”

They look at each other. Aziraphale, straight-backed and melancholy; Crowley through his fingers. 

“Let’s plan a new rendezvous point,” Aziraphale says. “Milan, perhaps?”

“If it’s still standing. Think fifty years will be enough?”

“I should hope so.”

“Right. Well.” Crowley drops his hand on the table. “I’ll be off tonight, then.”

Aziraphale nods.

“S’pose you should wait a bit.”

“Not long.”

“Bring the house down when you leave.”

“Such a waste,” Aziraphale murmurs, but he does not disagree.

Crowley’s still watching him, like he’s waiting for something. They sit for another moment, and when Aziraphale has nothing else to offer, Crowley makes a sharp noise in the back of his throat and pushes himself up. He waves his hand and things start packing themselves into wooden boxes, and the wooden boxes stack themselves up and grow wheels and handles and straps to bind them all together. Crowley reaches for his long coat and pulls it on, buttoning it closed, and dons a hat, and he becomes a dark shadow in the cottage that Aziraphale can hardly see.

Crowley stares around the cottage one last time, and then turns to Aziraphale. He tips the brim of his hat a scant inch, and then the door becomes a door again and he pushes through it, banging it closed behind him. Aziraphale flinches a little, but he doesn’t move from the table for a while. He just sits and stares at nothing in particular. The cottage seems a little too empty now.

Eventually, he convinces himself to lie down and go to bed. His remaining belongings tidy themselves into a trunk while he sleeps, and they’re ready for him when he wakes up in the morning.

He slips out the door of the cottage and locks it, a force of habit more than anything else, and as he walks away, the structure starts to fold in on itself. The stone crumbles without a sound and the wooden roof splinters and turns into so much sawdust. Aziraphale feels it in his chest when the building is gone, turned into a well and some horse stalls, which are worn like they’ve been there for decades and not seconds, but he does not look back, lest they do what he wants and reform back into a home.

He walks to the city proper, and there are more people out today. He buys a hot bun from a stall that smells like warm bread and eats it slowly on the walk to the port. There should be a boat heading to Denmark soon; perhaps he can go there and lie low for a little while before turning back east. 

A dark cloud passes through Aziraphale’s consciousness. He nearly trips and his trunk skids on the stone street. He rights it again, and then looks up, and he sees dark eyes looking back at him. He freezes, his belly running cold, and he stares back at the demon lurking by a sign post. There is absolutely no question this time that Aziraphale has been seen, and he clenches his fists tightly, just in case.

But no confrontation comes. The demon stares at him, stares into him, and then takes off in the direction that Aziraphale had just come from. It has none of Crowley’s swagger whatsoever; it walks like its legs and arms are welded into straight bars. Perhaps it has never been to Earth. Perhaps it has never heard of Aziraphale, or Crowley.

Perhaps it isn’t actually heading straight for the place they lived not sixteen hours before.

Aziraphale isn’t going to stick around and find out.

Miraculously, there’s a ferry leaving from the port when he arrives. He mentally calculates the over-under of the paperwork for willing a whole boat’s worth of international travelers into a commercial fleet’s books as he boards with a ticket he finds in his pocket, and he tucks himself inside the small cabin, trunk jammed against his knees. It’s going to be a long trip, and a quiet one at that. 

The cabin fills up and the boat pushes away from the docks. Aziraphale retrieves a book from his trunk and opens it to a bookmarked page and doesn’t read it. He keeps coming back to the demon, and the cottage, and all the places they bunkered down before, hoping that no one would notice. They’d grown complacent. Foolish, trying to grab for a constant in between trips across Europe performing miracles and blessings. Of course it was not meant to last.

He sighs and shuts the book, then tucks his scarf against his shoulder and closes his eyes to rest. Fifty years of silence should be enough. Quiet and lonely and isolated, but enough.

Soho, London - 1861

“All I’m saying,” Crowley says. “Is that I don’t think that angels are supposed to do cocaine.”

“I’m not doing cocaine,” Aziraphale says. 

“I am fairly certain that you are, right now, doing cocaine.”

Aziraphale raises his teacup to his lips and watches Crowley coolly across the table as he takes a long, slow sip. Crowley rolls his eyes behind his glasses and ashes his cigarette on a little bronze plate. It’s very cold outside, and the inside of the bookshop is only marginally warmer. Aziraphale hasn’t set the window frames right yet.

Aziraphale swallows down the last of his tea, then sets the cup back on the table. He reaches for the teapot and pours himself some more, then picks up a small, green-smoked bottle. He carefully counts off two spoonfuls of the contents, which smell pleasantly herbed, and stirs it all together and inhales with a soft smile.

“There you go again,” Crowley says, leaning back in his chair. “That’s got to be worth some kind of write-up these days, hasn’t it?”

“It isn’t cocaine,” Aziraphale insists. “It’s a tonic. What they’re out there selling as medicine these days.”

“Oh? And what is it that’s ailing you, then?”

“It is awfully cold out.”

“Fix the windows, then.”

Aziraphale waves his hand dismissively, then sips at his tea. Crowley watches as he swallows and his pupils dilate a bit more. 

“What all is in these tonics you keep trying out?”

“Herbs, most of them.”

“And?”

“Mineral oils, sometimes.”

“And?”

“Well, some of them have laudanum in them. Quite a lot of it, really.”

Crowley leans forward.

“Oh, alright, some of them do use coca leaves. For coughs, of all things.”

“Do you have a cough, then, angel?”

“I’m certain I must have done at some point or another,” Aziraphale says primly. “It’s fascinating, the things that humans come up with. Do you remember Paracelsus? Very strange chap.”

“I never liked him.”

“You’re annoyed that he came up with the word ‘bombastic’ before you.”

“No, I just thought he was a right prick.”

“Highly unnecessary to burn all the medical texts, I will admit.”

“Surprised you’re not more upset about all of that.”

“It was a heavy loss, but I believe I still have copies of some of them somewhere.” Aziraphale gestures back toward all of the boxes stacked up around the room.

“Are you ever going to unpack?”

“I have, some. Enough that people keep coming in and looking, the nosy buggers.”

“Hard to have a shop that doesn’t sell anything, angel.”

“And yet I’m managing just fine.”

“Only because your rent collectors never come back.”

“And why should they. They get what they’re owed.” Aziraphale smiles cheerily and takes another sip of tea.

Crowley watches him idly, then takes another drag off of his cigarette. A tiny flake of ash dislodges itself and drifts toward Aziraphale. They both watch it as it twists and dips and eventually settles on the leg of Aziraphale’s trousers. Aziraphale stares at it, and then gently pinches the ash between finger and thumb. It disintegrates immediately and Aziraphale’s eyes light up a little more. “Ephemeral,” he murmurs, sounding almost in awe.

Crowley reaches across the table and picks up the bottle. The label is printed in ornate letters and belies nothing about what is actually contained within. “How did you come across this, anyway?”

“Purchased it. Off a man who comes round sometimes.”

“Did you call for a doctor?”

“Oh, no. He is most certainly not a doctor.”

“But he’s prescribing you things?”

“He was pleased with himself for scamming another undiscerning gentleman out of money for a product that won’t cure any ails.”

“And you?”

Aziraphale smiles beatifically. “I managed to procure cocaine for a far cheaper price than alcohol without having to leave my bookshop. So I suppose it’s a matter of opinion who has come out on top.” 

“Think I can guess your opinion.”

“I often come out on top, it seems.”

Crowley snorts and takes another drag off of his cigarette. “And Heaven is alright with it.”

“Oh, it’s not Heaven that’s got the problem. It’s the humans who have gotten themselves all worked up again,” Aziraphale says. “You know how they are. The second anything is pleasant, they tend to panic.”

“They’ve got booze nailed down pretty well.”

“And food, too, but they’re forming societies against the alcohol.”

“Oh, I’ve been to one of those. In the States. Great party.”

“It’s tragic, really,” Aziraphale goes on. “They can be so terrified of enjoying themselves, they forget the reason they’re doing it in the first place.”

“And what, pray tell, is that, angel?”

“Well… joy, really.”

“Heaven doesn’t take kindly to joy.”

“But it does, though. Just not the kind that hurts you. Pursuing happiness and pleasure isn’t a sin, that’s what the Earth is for. It all goes wrong when they start to do it because it hurts.” Aziraphale swirls his tea around a little. “If they push away their vice because it’s harming them, that’s virtuous. And if they avoid something that they know will cause them harm, then that’s intelligent. But if they push away the finer things in life because they’ve come to the conclusion that pleasure itself is sinful, well. That’s just a bit silly.”

Crowley’s nostrils flare. “That’s very wise. Did you get that from that writer you were seeing a few years back?”

“Oh, no, he was a bit too dour for all that. What I say is my own. Humans didn’t invent self-flagellation, but they certainly perfected it.”

Crowley hums and brings his cigarette back to his lips. He holds it in his mouth, breathes in, breathes out, breathes in again. The tobacco burns his throat. His jaw hurts from clenching his teeth together, as it often seems to whenever he and Aziraphale talk moral philosophy these days.

“Some of the salesmen have passed through Heaven,” Aziraphale is saying. “Many of them went the other way, obviously, but there’s only so many tools they have at their disposal. They still accept the miasma theory, for Heaven’s sake. But some of them really believe in what they’re doing, they really want to help.”

“Not the man you bought cocaine from.”

“Oh, well, him, probably not,” Aziraphale says. “Not much to be done about that.”

“Isn’t it your job to try to salvage people like that?”

“Not unless I get a memo about it. Free will and all.” Aziraphale looks a little uncomfortable now and he takes another sip of tea.

Crowley leans back in his chair and watches him. He ashes his cigarette again, but doesn’t take another drag. Aziraphale is staring into his teacup now, gently swirling the liquid one way and then the other. It’s impossible to tell if he’s avoiding Crowley’s gaze or if he’s just a bit high.

You hypocrite, Crowley thinks, and there goes his jaw again, teeth gritted together. He’s done a fair amount of that in the last two hundred odd years. Aziraphale goes through such efforts to keep him at arm’s length sometimes, and keeps drawing him in at the same time. He can’t help it, Crowley knows; he’s paralyzed by his own fear, and they’re both too weak to cut ties. And so Crowley appears, over and over again, with business or news or a new book rescued from some old shop, and Aziraphale shoves a table’s worth of space between them and begs Crowley not to leave with his eyes while his mouth is saying farewells.

“Here,” Crowley says, and he reaches across the table, holding the cigarette out to Aziraphale. “You look like you need to sober up a bit.”

Aziraphale’s eyes take a second to focus on the cigarette, but then he takes it. His fingertips brush against Crowley’s and Crowley loathes the way it makes his whole body react in a way that it just doesn’t with anyone else. The touch of other people feels good, but Aziraphale’s skin is a drug he has been systematically teased with for over three centuries and it makes Crowley want to grab Aziraphale and drag him across this overly ornate table and crush their mouths together, or else to scream. 

But he doesn’t.

He just succumbs to masochism. He watches Aziraphale’s lips as they curve around the cigarette. He watches Aziraphale’s throat work over his stupid beige ascot as he breathes in. He watches Aziraphale’s chin tip up as he blows a cloud of smoke over the two of them. Tendrils lazily catch the light, and the whole moment feels rather surreal. 

Aziraphale takes one more puff, then hands the scant cigarette back. Crowley doesn’t touch him this time when he takes it, and stabs the butt out in the little bronze plate. His hand falls to his pocket, and after a brief moment of silent contemplation, he produces another cigarette and lights it with his fingertip. He is weak and he’s not ready to give up Aziraphale’s company just yet. Aziraphale’s face is one of poorly concealed relief and gratitude, and it makes Crowley want to break something.

“War’s on in the States,” he says instead. He leans back and kicks his feet up on the table to see if Aziraphale will push them off. Aziraphale doesn’t, and Crowley ignores his reproachful look. “North versus South this time.”

“Oh dear. I haven’t been to the Colonies in a long time.”

“Long enough that they haven’t been ‘the Colonies’ in a century.”

“Such a savage area,” Aziraphale says. “The number of bodies they’ve left…”

“They really took to this whole ‘manifest destiny’ thing.”

“An unfortunate concept.”

“Someone ought to do a bit of divine intervention to make them stop. It would be the right thing to do.”

Aziraphale looks uncomfortable again, and it gives Crowley a little sadistic thrill of pleasure. “I’ll bring it up with Upstairs,” he says awkwardly.

“You do that.”

“Have some tea, Crowley.”

“Do you mean cocaine?”

“You’re being difficult.”

“I’m being honest,” Crowley says. He tilts his chin up a bit, and they both know that he’s staring Aziraphale down even behind his glasses.

Aziraphale meets his gaze, but only for a few seconds, and then he’s looking away pulling another teacup from nowhere. He fills it up with tea and spoons some more of the tonic into it, stirs it up, and slides it across the table with an extremely pointed scrape.

“Very well, angel.” Crowley picks up the cup, smells it, and swallows it all down in one long, protracted go. “You’ll make a degenerate out of me yet.”

Amsterdam, Netherlands - 1946

“It seems like whiskey would be best suited for a time like this,” Crowley says. “I don’t think coffee is going to get the job done.”

There’s a long pause.

“No,” Aziraphale says eventually. “No, I don’t think so either.”

Neither of them move. Steam from Aziraphale’s coffee climbs upwards through the air, stirred up a little by the early morning breeze. He picks up the cup and takes a sip, and does not appear to taste any of it. His exhale is a pale cloud over the water of the river, and the steam trails back down as he sets the cup on top of Crowley’s newspaper, drawing a damp ring around today’s date. 

17 Oktober, 1946

Crowley reaches over and nudges the cup so that it hides more of the paper’s headlines instead. He’d been reading it, before Aziraphale had showed up, and set it down when he saw the look on Aziraphale’s face.

“I feel I should have been there,” Aziraphale says after another very long pause.

“No point. There were other angels in attendance.” Aziraphale grimaces. “Is that a moment you particularly wanted to share with Azrael and Dumah?”

“It’s not a moment I particularly want to share with anyone.”

“So be glad you didn’t go.”

Aziraphale does not respond. He looks withdrawn, and maybe even a little gaunt, which is not a look that regularly makes itself known on Aziraphale’s face. Crowley isn’t sure how much Aziraphale sleeps these days, but in case he usually does, the circles under his eyes are indicating that he hasn’t. He probably hasn’t for the last five years.

They sit for a while. The weak morning light gets a little bit stronger, and a few more people emerge. A couple of boats leave the docks. But the city is very quiet.

“So where are you off to, then?” Aziraphale asks. 

“Train to France, and then over to America. Big new assignment,” Crowley says. “Not sure of all the details yet, but I’ve got to make a stop at the capital, and then Wisconsin.”

“What’s in Wisconsin?”

“Cheese, mostly, I think. But also some lad named Joseph who’s running for Senate.”

“Hopefully he turns out better than the last Joseph.”

“That’s a low, low bar, angel. Where are you going?”

“I’m staying here.”

Crowley raises his eyebrows. “Bit run down for a holiday at the moment.”

“I’m to help with the rebuilding process,” Aziraphale explains. “I’ll be heading over to Rotterdam next week. The cities are still blown to Heaven and back, and there’s still illness everywhere from the famine. They need all the help they can get.”

“Noble of you. Why aren’t you going back to England? Plenty of bombed out buildings there.”

“The same as you. New assignment.” Aziraphale reaches for his coffee, but just shifts it to hold in his lap rather than drinking it. “There will be a new angel working down here for a while as well, in the continental European area. Sachiel, I believe. All very new to humanity.”

“So you’re going to become a Heavenly supervisor.”

“I’ll be doing the work as well. But they could use some guidance. They’ve never seen anything like this before.” Aziraphale makes an aborted gesture toward the docks. Half of them are in working condition; the other half are splintered apart, graveyards of wood and cement cordoned off with rope.

“No, I suppose not.”

Aziraphale’s jaw tightens a little. His thumbs worry the rolled over edges of the paper up, unrolling them and dampening them with coffee dregs. The wind blows around them. An old, crumpled up newspaper page dances along the path. Crowley catches a glimpse of the headline - Vonnissen Bereikt in Neurenberg - before Aziraphale makes a quiet, wounded noise and reaches his hand out. A huge gust of air hits them in the back and sends the page flying, along with Crowley’s newspaper, dropping them off the side of the dock and out of sight. Crowley’s eyes widen a little behind his dark glasses.

Aziraphale is staring ahead where the newspapers had vanished. His hand slowly sinks to rest on his knee. He looks… he looks scared, and tired, and miserable.

“Crowley.”

Crowley barely hears the word, but he leans over a few inches. “What is it, angel.”

“Tell me it was your fault.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tell me it was all your doing,” Aziraphale says. He’s nearly whispering, like he doesn’t actually want the words to come out. “Or some other demon’s. Tell me you caused this war.”

“I didn’t,” Crowley says. “You know I didn’t, I’ve told you that.”

“Just– tell me. Just say it was you.”

“Why the devil would you want me to do that?”

“Because if it was your fault… If you did it, then it wasn’t just them,” Aziraphale says. There’s a tremor in his voice that Crowley has not heard before. “If you tricked them into doing it, then it was demonic intervention, and not the world crumbling apart. Because if it wasn’t you… Then they founded a flash paper genocide on their own humanity.”

Crowley’s stomach hurts a little.

“This isn’t the first time this has happened, angel,” he says lightly. “This isn’t the first war you’ve seen and it certainly won’t be the last.”

“But the efficiency. The turnaround of it all. Concentration camps in less than a year? And the chambers…” Aziraphale looks wretched. “Did you go to the camps?”

Crowley shakes his head.

“I visited. At the end. To do what healing could be done before the liberation came. They were hollow. They were made of threads. It happened soquickly,  Crowley. It was terrible.”

Crowley is quiet.

“It was cruel.”

Crowley says nothing.

“Do you understand it?”

Aziraphale is searching for his gaze. He is desperate for some kind of answer. A being of light always suffers at the hands of the dark, and a being of light is blinded by its own formation.

“Yes.” 

Aziraphale flinches like Crowley had physically struck out at him.

“Yes, I understand it, angel.” Crowley tries to keep his voice gentle, but his words cut Aziraphale to shreds anyway. “This has been a long time coming, a very long time. There have been echoes of this for millennia. The writing has been on the wall. This is just what they’re like sometimes. The humans do this, over and over again, right in front of your eyes, and no one ever stops it until it’s already happened. Don’t you remember?”

Aziraphale is so still. It scares Crowley, a little. Aziraphale is not the type to shatter. “It wasn’t like this, though,” he says, a little helplessly.

“It was. It was like this four decades ago. It’s been like this. Every part of it. The fighting, and the nationalism, and the genocide, and the Jews being slaughtered, all of it. You know you’ve seen it. Humanity has never stopped. You’ve just not been paying attention.”

Aziraphale presses his lips together. He ducks his head a little. Crowley winces, and he watches Aziraphale’s fingers work his coffee cup to shreds, then reaches over to take it before Aziraphale can spill coffee onto his lap. Then he pulls Aziraphale against his side, and Aziraphale just lets him, for once, and hides against his neck with a shaky sigh.

“I know,” Crowley murmurs. “It’s hard, because you love them. And it’s torture when the thing you love is monstrous.”

“They were beautiful,” Aziraphale whispers.

“They still are. And they are monstrous as well. And we can never change that.”

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Aziraphale says thickly. He sounds like he might cry.

“The same thing they do. Go rebuild. Build it better. Take care of the people who are still there, and bury the skeletons.”

“That sounds like Holy advice.”

Crowley bites his tongue. It does. It had just slipped out. But for all the commendations that demons were getting left and right from the war, for all of the ten new residents who were being checked into their very own special part of Hell with nooses still around their necks, the war had weighed heavily on him as well, and it had hurt, and there had been nothing he could do to stop it. “Do you know,” he says eventually. “That I am not a particularly good demon sometimes.”

“It’s hard to be,” Aziraphale says. “When you love them too.”

Soho, London - 1990

“Ding, dong, Aziraphale!” Crowley bellows as he shoulders his way into the bookshop. The blinds are closed and the doors are locked, but they wouldn’t dream of stopping Crowley, especially a slightly tipsy Crowley who’s carrying two very large bottles of champagne. “The wicked bitch is dead!”

Aziraphale doesn’t answer, but Crowley is undeterred. He kicks the door closed behind him and locks it again and does a little five-stepped dance, holding the bottles in the air.

“Out on her ass outside Downing Street! Come on, come celebrate!”

There’s a delicate sound of a throat clearing, and Crowley knows that it does not belong to Aziraphale.

He whirls around, the bottles dropping to his sides, and he stares. It’s rare for Aziraphale's shop to have more than three people in it, but here are seven of them, all skinny young men, all sitting together, on chairs or on the ground. Each of them is holding a book – what looks to be the same book – and they’re all staring at him.

“The door was locked,” one says.

“Are you looking for Mr. Fell?” another asks.

“Uh… Yes. I am looking for Mr. Fell. Is he not in?”

“He’s in back. What do you need him for?”

Crowley is cut off from answering by the door of the back room pushing open. Aziraphale appears, carrying a tray with two teapots and probably all the mugs as he owns. “Now, I couldn’t find Earl Grey like you asked, James, but I do have some rather lovely Irish Breakfast, which is just wonderful with a bit of milk, and–”

“Pardon us, Mr. Fell,” one of the men pipes up. “But there’s someone here.”

Aziraphale freezes, eyes wide, and his gaze snaps over to the door. He sees Crowley, standing there in a pair of tall snakeskin boots and a leather jacket and weighed down by two bottles of champagne, and he relaxes and offers Crowley a warm smile.

“Oh, hello. It’s alright, lads. He’s alright.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Mr. Fell?” A few of the men have little smirks now.

“Certainly. This is Crowley. He’s– got keys to the place.”

Crowley weakly taps a bottle against his hip pocket, where there most certainly are not any keys.

“Sorry for the interruption, boys,” he says graciously. “Was just coming to see Mr. Fell about a spot of news.”

The men all nod at him, and then they go back to their books. Crowley catches one man leaning his head against another’s thigh, and then Aziraphale is ushering him into the back room.

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” Aziraphale asks. He looks worried now.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong. Thatcher resigned. I thought you’d be over the moon, so I brought the party to you.”

Aziraphale’s expression brightens. “Oh, has she? That’s wonderful news, I’m so pleased.”

“Yep. So get some glasses, and then maybe you can explain to me why you’ve got humans reading in your bookshop.”

Aziraphale shoots him a gaze. “It’s a bookshop, on Earth, where the humans live,” he says as he goes to a shelf to find some suitable champagne flutes. “What else would they be doing here?”

“Well, I know you’ve made it your mission to keep anyone from ever buying anything, or really entering the premises at all,” Crowley says. He leans against Aziraphale’s desk. “And the door was locked.”

“You didn’t seem to have any trouble with it.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re just men. From around town. I’m surprised you don’t recognize any of them.”

“What are they here for?”

“A book club,” Aziraphale says. He levels a stare at Crowley, daring him to make fun, and then hands over the champagne flutes. 

Crowley uncorks the first bottle and fills the two glasses up, passes one back and raises his own. “To Thatcher.”

“Long may she rot in Hell,” Aziraphale agrees. 

“That’s definitely where she’s headed.” 

They both drink deeply.

Crowley finishes his glass in one go and pours another. “Should I offer your harem some?”

“Oh, don’t say that. You’re being territorial. Just let them be, they’re not bothering you.”

“But they shouldn’t be bothering you. You hate it when people are at the shop. You’ve told me so. Many times.”

“They’re not bothering me. I invited them. They haven’t got anywhere else to go,” Aziraphale says. “No homes, some of them.” He looks out the door into the main shop. “No time.”

Crowley looks too. Some of the men are still reading, but two of them are wrapping their jackets around a third. He seems preternaturally skinny and a little bit stiff, and Crowley can make out a slight shiver.

“Oh,” he says.

Aziraphale hums. He takes another sip of champagne. They watch as the two un-jacketed men sit back down. One scoots close to the one wrapped in jackets and moves the book halfway into his lap. They lean their heads together and start to read again.

“What’s his name?”

“Arthur,” Aziraphale says. 

“What’s he looking like?”

“Not long. A few months, perhaps. I would like him to get through Dancer From the Dance and Frankenstein, if at all possible.”

“Those are two very different books.”

Aziraphale nods. “They were all excited about them both. It’s self-guided. They’ve done some Vonnegut, some Austen. Bit of Shakespeare. You should see them, acting out the scenes together. Doing sword fights with my pencils.”

“You’ve barely got room to stand in this shop.”

“I clear the shelves for them. They deserve to have a bit of fun.”

“How many?”

“It depends. Who’s available, who’s feeling well. This is typical. Our best was nineteen one night.”

“In this building?”

“It was a challenge.” Aziraphale hesitates, then adds, “I read to them.”

“Yeah?”

“When there are a lot of them, yes. They just sit down on the floor, or lie down with each other and close their eyes and listen.” Aziraphale’s eyes are closed too. “And I read to them for a while, some old classic, and I make some tea. And then they all get up again, and they head back out.”

“They don’t stay?”

“A few have, for a week or two. But it’s rare. They have other haunts too.”

“You’d let them. Stay here.”

“Of course I would.”

Crowley feels decidedly less tipsy now. 

“Reckon we should bring the champagne out to them,” he says after a moment. “Bet they’d want to celebrate too.”

Aziraphale smiles. “I’m sure they wouldn’t be opposed.”

Crowley grabs the unopened bottle of champagne and heads back into the main shop floor. The men look up at him again. “Hey there, lads,” Crowley says. “Thatcher’s on the outs and Labour’s winning the polls. Let’s have a drink.”

They all stare at him, and then their gazes slide to the side as one. Crowley feels a hand press against the small of his back as Aziraphale appears next to him, no light visible between them. Seven pairs of eyes look back and forth between the two of them, and then one man whoops and the rest break out into excited chatter. Crowley pops the bottle and procures some plastic cups from a bookshelf that has never seen a plastic cup in its life. He drops down on the floor to tap his champagne against whatever cups he can reach. They make toasts, vulgar and hysterical, and when Crowley leans back, he’s almost not surprised that he runs into into Aziraphale propping him up.

Vauxhall, London - Four Years Before the End of the World

On the fourteenth of October, Harriet Dowling was approached by her gardener, who asked if he and the house nanny could be spared a day off in a week. The gardener said it was the nanny’s birthday, and she’s been working ever so hard, and it would be such a treat for her to have an evening to herself. He shyly produced two tickets to the London Philharmonic Orchestra and blushed as he told her that the nanny rather liked Bizet, even the pieces that weren’t Carmen, and he should be so happy to take her to see a performance.

Harriet was rather charmed by that, and so at four in the afternoon on the twenty-first of October, a car arrived at the house to take the nanny and the gardener to Vauxhall.

At six thirty, the nanny excused herself to the restroom, and the gardener stepped inside one of the few call boxes to still have a phone attached, and at six thirty-five, Crowley and Aziraphale met in front of the London Philharmonic in well-tailored suits and combed back hair and exchanged smirks.

It’s eight thirty in the evening now, just after the first intermission, and Crowley is lounging over three of the seats in their private box. Aziraphale is leaning forward on the railing, having consigned himself to the fourth, and is watching the stage through a pair of nearly comical binoculars.

“He’s learning maths too slowly,” Crowley comments. “Suppose the Antichrist ought to be good at maths. So that’s good.”

“Excellent,” Aziraphale agrees.

“And he’s quite interested in science. He keeps pushing to do chemistry projects, but that’s probably because he wants to blow things up.”

“I don’t suspect being named Warlock makes that desire any less.”

“Probably not. If I was called Warlock, I’d want to blow things up.”

“Well done you aren’t.”

“He does keep going after my real name. I keep telling him ‘Nanny’ is proper.”

“He’s not a very proper boy, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to you, too. Why do you keep going on about insects? He’s obsessed with them.”

“It’s about instilling a love of all living things. They’re all God’s creations, and he should have doubts when you tell him to step on anthills and that sort of thing.”

“He’s seven. I think that may just be human nature at seven.”

Aziraphale grimaces behind his ridiculous binoculars. “As long as he also questions it. All we have to do is keep things in balance.”

“He doesn’t seem to be particularly divine or evil. He mostly just seems like a brat.”

“That he is. But I’ll take a brat over the son of Satan any day.”

Crowley grunts in agreement and reaches to the side. A glass of wine appears for him to take and he takes a long sip from it. “Good seats, these.”

“Thank you. A party had to cancel.”

“Pity.”

“They’re in Leeds, now. Visiting family. It will be good for them.”

“You’re a hero unto the ages, angel.”

Aziraphale doesn’t respond to that, but his ears go a little pink.

They sit through the rest of Piano Concerto in G Major, and another intermission, and half of Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, and then Crowley says, with less bombast than he usually says anything, “Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale’s head cocks to the side.

“Suppose… suppose this doesn’t… work.”

“You don’t think so? I rather like the organ.”

“No, not that. This. The plan.”

Aziraphale stills, and then slowly sets down his stupid little binoculars. He looks at Crowley, and Crowley can’t read his expression. “The plan was your idea.”

“Loads of things are my idea. It’s still a good idea. But not every good idea works.”

Aziraphale nods a bit at that, reluctantly. But then he reaches out and lays his hand on Crowley’s knee. “Crowley. I think the plan will work. I have faith that it will work.”

“Faith,” Crowley scoffs. “What has faith ever gotten anyone.”

“Bite your forked tongue,” Aziraphale chides mildly, but does not look offended. “Faith has gotten many people many places, and you know that.”

Crowley looks away. Aziraphale’s hand is infernally hot on his knee, which doesn’t seem fair. 

“And even if you think faith is a dirty word and that you’re above it – or below it, or whichever – I still have it.”

“And why is that, now, angel.”

“Because evil is not going to triumph. Heaven will make sure of that, and if they can’t, the Almighty will certainly stand in against the destruction of Her creations at the hands of Hell. Good will always prevail over evil.”

Crowley’s stomach twists and his heart sinks. “Right,” he mutters. “The Almighty’s gonna come down and back us up. We’re in perfectly bloody safe hands.” He shakes his head sharply. “And here I was thinking you actually believed in me.”

It tastes bitter, coming out, and Crowley immediately wishes he could pull it back out of the air between them. He closes his eyes for just a moment, pretending that ‘if I can’t see you, then you can’t see me’ works as well as Warlock thinks it does. It doesn’t, obviously, because Warlock is seven and stupid and Crowley is also stupid and trapped with his own terrible decisions just like he has been for the last six millennia, digging his teeth into his forked tongue just a moment too late.

But when he opens his eyes, Aziraphale is there, and Aziraphale is closer, and Aziraphale is looking at him with an expression that Crowley takes a moment to realize is sadness. Crowley wants to look away again, but he can’t, not when Aziraphale’s fingers are squeezing just a little tighter against his knee.

“I do believe in you,” Aziraphale says softly. “You’re one of the only things I’ve ever believed in.”

“Why.”

“Because you’ve always been there. No matter what. You’re the only thing on Earth that doesn’t change. And perhaps you’ll hate me for saying it, but… you’re rather bad at being evil, Crowley.”

“Fuck off.”

“You are. You always have been. You can be the worst, certainly, but there’s too much good in you to be pure evil, and I believe that as well.”

“You’re wrong about that. The damned don’t get to be good. We wouldn’t be demons otherwise.”

“What was that you said about Falling? You didn’t even do that, you sauntered downwards. By accident.”

“You’re going to get struck down for saying that.”

“Then strike me down, if it’s a lie.”

They look at each other for a moment, as if some lightning bolt is going to appear out of the ceiling of the London Philharmonic and fry Aziraphale like a cartoon character. It doesn’t, of course, but Crowley did almost expect it to.

“There you are, then,” Aziraphale says simply.

Crowley shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“As are you,” Aziraphale says, somehow managing to make it sound like a compliment.

“I hate you sometimes.”

“You don’t.”

“You’re so fucking righteous and self-important and– and you’re so stupid about so many things and you make me so crazy with the things you do and you aren’t even taking your hand off of my leg while you’re saying all this bullshit at me.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Aziraphale says softly. “It’s true.” He hesitates, then asks, “Do you want me to let go?”

The answer kills Crowley on the way out, but he still says, “No.”

“Alright, then.”

“I just…” 

He doesn’t know anymore. The things he just are too many to enumerate. The things he wants, and the things he needs, and the things he can’t have that tear him apart, and the nagging, gnawing certainty that lives in his soul that he is less than worthless that God, the God who Aziraphale is positive will help them, had granted him when She sent him plummeting, and the knowledge that Aziraphale can see all of it. It all claws at him, all the time, and it makes him want to rage and rip things apart. And then he looks at Aziraphale, and it feels like he’s been stabbed and the anger oozes out like air out of leaky balloon and equally as effective.

“I just wish I could hold your fucking hand again, angel.”

“I know,” Aziraphale says, like it pains him. “I do too.”

“I wish you weren’t so goddamn afraid.”

“I know. I wish I wasn’t either.” Aziraphale takes a breath and strokes his thumb against the inside of Crowley’s knee, once. “I hope you can forgive me for it.”

Crowley doesn’t say anything. He can’t say anything, and he doesn’t really need to, and even if he did, he’s not even sure what would come out. He inclines his head, just slightly, and Aziraphale can read in his eyes what it means.

Aziraphale gives him a small, sad smile, and then he turns back toward the stage. He doesn’t pick up his binoculars or lean forward again, and he doesn’t move his hand from Crowley’s knee. He keeps it there for the rest of the symphony, and Crowley could not say which one of them suffers more for it. 

Central London - Now

“Eighty pounds, please, sirs.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Crowley says. He fishes out a new wallet, which manifests some money, and hands over four bills.

“Thank you, sirs. Here’s your tickets. Have a good ride.”

Crowley takes the tickets and hands one to Aziraphale. They head around the crowd to the priority entrance, and within a couple minutes, they’re being ushered into one of the capsules. Crowley snaps his fingers and the doorman closes the door and locks up without letting any other people in. Aziraphale walks around the perimeter of the capsule, and then sits down when they start to move. Crowley drops into a seat across from him, sprawling out with one leg propped up.

“I haven’t been here in nearly fifteen years,” Aziraphale says as they start to rise over the Thames. 

“Nor should you. Bloody tourist trap. Forty quid apiece, I swear…”

“You paid.”

“Well, it’s not like it was my own real money. If it was hard to get money, I would have walked off.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. This is exciting.”

“Not after the week we’ve had, it isn’t.”

“I suppose it’s just the right amount of exciting to keep me from fearing for the fate of the whole world.”

“That’s more like it.”

“Come sit.”

Crowley rolls himself off of his seat, then drops himself down on the other side next to Aziraphale. London is getting smaller underneath them. Crowley leans across Aziraphale to get a better look, and then pulls back to drop his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder. Aziraphale curls an arm around him and squeezes delicately.

They sit and watch for a while. The capsule jerks gently every now and then as more people are let off and on below them. It’s a greyish day out, but the view still isn’t bad. There are just so many things crammed into London, it’s hard to take them all in at once.

“I’m glad it’s still here,” Crowley murmurs.

“London?”

“Yeah. And, you know, the rest of it.”

Aziraphale chuckles. “I’m glad it’s still here too.”

“Glad you’re still here, too.”

“My dear, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. And if I were… well, I think you would probably be with me.”

A faint shiver runs up Crowley’s back, but he nods. He would have followed Aziraphale anywhere, including to their ultimate demise, before Adam had saved them. 

“I’m still not sure why you brought us to the London Eye,” Aziraphale says.

“Dunno. Just… wanted to look at all of it. See that it’s all still there.”

“St. Paul’s has a lovely view.”

“Stairs only, past the whispering gallery. And I’ll burst into flames, you know, whatever.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t. Mild burns at the worst.” Aziraphale’s thumb strokes over the curve of Crowley’s bicep. “The stairs, I will grant you, are very steep.”

“Eye it is,” Crowley says. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

“No. No, it’s very beautiful.”

Quiet takes them again. They spend a couple minutes just sitting. Crowley counts Aziraphale’s heartbeats, and reaches over to circle his hand loosely around Aziraphale’s wrist. He brushes his thumb up the vein and the tendons that run into Aziraphale’s hand, and then back down, and then back up again, in long, sweeping motions. Aziraphale says nothing, but he turns his wrist a little to give Crowley easier access. Crowley digs his thumb into the pulse point and thrills at Aziraphale’s little intake of breath.

“Crowley…”

“Shut up,” Crowley murmurs. He slowly raises his head, dragging the bridge of his nose against the point of Aziraphale’s jaw, and presses his mouth to Aziraphale’s throat. His lips hunt out Aziraphale’s pulse, and he lets out a shuddery little breath when he finds it, which Aziraphale echoes above his head. Crowley’s grip on Aziraphale’s wrist tightens, and it might be painful but Aziraphale allows it anyway, with his arm still around Crowley’s shoulders. 

Crowley feels a bit dizzy with it all.

“Fancy me, looking for a heartbeat on an angel,” he mumbles. “Like that means anything.”

“It does,” Aziraphale says. “It does.”

“Shut up.”

“I love you very much, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “And it means everything.”

Crowley makes a low noise in his throat, like a snarl that got swallowed down. The press of his mouth against Aziraphale’s throat becomes a kiss, and the kiss becomes two kisses, and Aziraphale’s throat becomes his mouth, and then they’re pressed together desperately, clinging to each other like they’ll fall into the Thames otherwise. Crowley’s hands are everywhere, on Aziraphale’s neck and his wrists and his chest; Aziraphale stays steady, locking Crowley in an embrace that Crowley could not ever hope or want to escape from. He pins Crowley with his mouth and Crowley can’t stop shaking, not when Aziraphale’s teeth graze his lip and not when Aziraphale’s hands are under his shirt on the small of his back and not when Aziraphale breaks the kiss to bury his face in Crowley’s hair and Crowley hides against Aziraphale’s throat again and clings to his coat with both hands.

“Shh. It’s alright now,” Aziraphale murmurs. “It’s alright, my love.”

“Did you– did you know? How hard it was?”

“I did.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, years and years. Centuries.”

“You never did anything about it.”

“There were other ways to try to be happy with you. And I was afraid.”

“But you don’t have to be anymore.”

“I suspect I will, anyway,” Aziraphale says wryly. “But I’ll certainly try not to be.”

Crowley kisses him again. He kisses Aziraphale because the other choice is not kissing Aziraphale, which is no choice at all. He presses into Aziraphale’s space, molds their chests together, drags his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair. And Aziraphale holds onto him and keeps him from flying away.

“We should probably tidy up,” Aziraphale says against Crowley’s mouth, some indeterminable amount of time later. “Before someone opens the door and catches us.”

“A trip around the Eye is half an hour,” Crowley replies. He pulls his sunglasses off and sets them aside. “We’ve got time.”