Chapter Text
When Aziraphale Eastgate had woken up that day, he couldn’t have possibly imagined how bad it would turn out to be.
Mostly because Aziraphale’s everyday life consisted in a series of well consolidated routines.
On an average day he woke up, had a solid English breakfast (even if he’d been living in the States for more than 35 years, he still couldn’t help but follow the deep-rooted traditions of his native country), he wished his partner Rafe a jolly good day and he took the bus to Yale where he was chair in the Department of English.
Depending on the day, he would teach a class or two, catch up on grading, do some research and update his lessons material.
One day a week, he would meet with students at scheduled visiting hours (and these were the days he disliked the most).
Aziraphale had been a professor of Comparative Literature and English at Yale for ten years by now, but he still preferred the research activity rather than lectures.
The whole talking-to-students thing, well, it wasn’t really his cup of tea.
Aziraphale wasn’t really a persons person. He had to deal with this aspect of his job, of course, but if it had been up to him, the door to his office would have always been closed – to anyone.
He saw no reason for unwanted physical presence, let alone physical contact. He could always answer his students’ questions by mail, or even better by phone.
Unfortunately, many of his students preferred vis-à-vis interaction and he couldn’t avoid them. At least, not if he wanted to keep his job, as the dean had told him a hundred times before.
The problem with Aziraphale was that he didn’t really like being around other people. It made him nervous, mostly because he always felt inadequate, an ongoing conviction most certainly due to the fact that he’d grown up craving for his father’s approval whilst his elder brother Gabriel was the personification of the Greek god Apollo, always the best at everything. (Seriously, everything.)
Gabriel was the tallest, the most handsome, the funniest, the most ambitious, the most popular, the smartest. (Well, maybe not – really the smartest.)
Aziraphale’s IQ was 176, he’d graduated magna cum laude and he was a Professor at Yale. The University had begged him to accept a tenure, so much so that he’d almost felt obliged to accept their offer, even if all he’d ever wanted was doing research, possibly in his study, at home, alone.
And Gabriel… well, after a short interlude as an actor in a sci-fi production, he had turned to the dark side. When his brother had realised that acting wasn’t really for him, he’d become a producer for a famous film studio, and within the last ten years he’d made more money than he would possibly be able to spend in a lifetime.
Not that he’d actually needed to make money, mind you, not if you consider how wealthy Aziraphale and Gabriel’s family was.
But status was everything to his brother, and Gabriel never missed a chance to remind Aziraphale of its importance. That’s the kind of brother he was. A charming self-centered second-rate celebrity who’d been famous for a while and tried (more often than not) to make his younger brother feel less worthy than he already did.
🎄🎄🎄
Gabriel was also the kind of brother who had introduced Aziraphale to Rafe.
Rafe worked in the industry, one of those actors you can’t really name, but you just know that you’ve seen them, somewhere.
One of those faces that makes you open IMDb only to silence the voice in your head asking, ‘Where did I see this one?’, and then you find their name, you read their filmography and WHAM! There you go, he was a cop in NCIS, or a villain in an episode of Doctor Who, or a guest in that episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Aziraphale often wondered why Rafe had chosen him.
He’d never felt like a catch, he wasn’t particularly attractive, and he was – as his brother never forgot to remind him at every possible occasion – soft.
And yet, Rafe had wanted to date him, court him, move in with him. He’d practically begged Aziraphale to accept him into his house.
At the beginning of their relationship, Aziraphale had considered this a teeny bit romantic. He’d assumed that Rafe had probably fallen in love with his refined eloquence and his elegant manners, if not with his physical appearance.
More recently, Aziraphale had come to the realisation that his first assumption had been totally wrong and he’d started to believe that his partner was appreciative of his status, more than anything else. (And this shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering who’d introduced him to Rafe.)
Rafe’s latest gig dated back to more than six months prior. Aziraphale often (every night?) came back home only to find him playing on the Xbox, sometimes with friends.
When interrogated about those particularly attractive men that he considered just friends, Rafe usually shrugged off any possible argument by saying that Aziraphale was making himself ridiculous by being preposterously jealous.
The problem was that Aziraphale wasn’t actually jealous of him. Of course, he wasn’t that daft. He was almost certain that Rafe wasn’t totally faithful, but he didn’t really blame him. Especially considering that their sexual life was almost non-existent.
They had had a few passable weeks at the beginning of their relationship when they had slept together, but that was because they’d been mostly testing their sex compatibility), and Rafe had seemed to be attracted to him. (Things had considerably slowed down in that, uhm, field. Hence the by now almost non-existent sex life).
It wasn’t just Rafe’s fault, to be fair. Things weren’t that different for Aziraphale. Rafe was a man who exuded a roguish charm that would make anyone fall at his feet. And yet, with him Aziraphale had never felt ‘the spark’. The mythical butterflies in your stomach that make you realise you’ve found the one, your other half.
To be fair, Aziraphale had probably never felt like that. Not that there had been so many opportunities to ever feel like that, considering his short list of ex-partners. The only one worth mentioning was Daniel, one of his classmates in the doctoral program, and probably the only man he’d ever developed some kind of emotional bond with.
Their relationship hadn’t lasted in the long run, but Aziraphale couldn’t deny that at least, with Daniel, he usually felt eager to fall in bed, something that had never happened again, not with his (few) later partners and not with Rafe. He’d always thought it was because Daniel had a brilliant mind, and they spent hours talking about literature before getting into bed (which was definitely the easiest way to turn Aziraphale on). Maybe the fact that they had shared something had been the key to unlock his sexual drive?
If so, he was doomed, because Aziraphale had never felt this kind of intellectual connection with Rafe, they had nothing whatsoever in common, and maybe that was the reason why he didn’t feel that kind of sexual… appetite, either.
When Rafe had moved in, Aziraphale had been interested in finding out whether cohabitation would rekindle whatever it was that had made him want to be with Rafe at the beginning. The camaraderie but also the flirty banter, those feelings of excitement and anticipation that led to fireworks in the bedroom. Something he’d last felt with Daniel, blurry memories of sensations that Aziraphale was fairly sure he wouldn’t be able to experience with anyone else anymore.
It hadn’t taken him long to register that his disinterest towards Rafe wasn’t determined by the living arrangements.
The few times they’d had sex, it had almost felt awkward. Like they didn’t belong together, like they weren’t compatible. At all.
Aziraphale usually preferred spending an evening with a good book and a glass of wine, rather than in bed with his partner. He’d somehow started to believe that he was trapped in a dull relationship from which he couldn’t escape. Mostly because he felt that being with Rafe was enough, that what little they shared was enough. He also tried to ignore the traitorous voice in the back of his mind that reminded him that he wouldn’t find anyone else who might like him and want to live with him, if he let go of Rafe. (Yes, that voice sounded very much like Cowardice.)
And yet, despite the lack of intimacy, Rafe had decided to stay, probably because living with Aziraphale was a very convenient accommodation.
And Aziraphale, on his part, had stopped looking for a deep bond that would ignite ‘the spark’. He’d simply decided to settle for what he already had, knowing that someone like him shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and even if he’d lost his chance to find someone else, someone who could make him happy, his life with Rafe was enough.
It had to be enough.
Even if he wasn’t in love with him. (Even if he’d lost any hope of finding true love.)
Such a lot of bollocks, they would say in England.
(England. Tadfield. Home.)
🎄🎄🎄
Aziraphale and Gabriel’s parents had been a very uncommon couple. They’d gotten married after a long hot summer spent together in England (Aziraphale often wondered how hot that summer had been, seeing that his very proud-to-be-British mother had found it in her heart to marry his unbearably-yankee father). They had nothing whatsoever in common, his father being the firstborn of one of the richest families of the New York Tri-State area and his mother being an heir of one of the most sophisticated families in England.
Maybe their marriage had been an arrangement between their families, or maybe his parents had just been hallucinating because of the heat of that infamous summer, Aziraphale didn’t really know.
What he knew was that his mother had found herself pregnant and the result of that foolish summer was still inconveniently manifesting his tendency to be a real prick (or a pain in the ass, as they say in the States) each passing day.
After getting the news, the Eastgates and the Boltons had promptly put together a shotgun wedding, and when the child had been born seven months later, they had made people believe that he was premature.
(As if anyone watching that baby boy of almost 10 pounds would ever believe him to be premature.)
They had named him Gabriel after the Archangel, being his mother very fond of the theme (even if Aziraphale doubted she had felt like Virgin Mary when she’d found out about her own pregnancy).
But it hadn’t taken his parents more than two years to realise that they couldn’t stand each other. At least that was what his mother always told him when she spoke about her marriage.
What bothered Aziraphale even nowadays was the fact that even if they had never loved each other, somehow his parents had found themselves involved with a second child before splitting up for good. The word accident always prompted in his mind when he thought about the circumstances surrounding his own birth. (The same word often slipped from his brother’s mouth when they talked about it with acquaintances, colleagues, and relatives.)
When he recalled his childhood, all Aziraphale could remember was his parents arguing and the fact that they couldn’t manage being in each other’s presence for more than five minutes. They paired up only when strictly necessary, for events and galas and public holidays. As for the rest of their time, they kept themselves differently occupied. With friends, work, charity balls. Also, with secret affairs – at least when it came to his father.
They had moved to New York when Aziraphale was five and Gabriel eight, and his older brother had completed his transformation into the perfect American gentleman in no time. Aziraphale, instead, had always indulged in their British heritage.
Whereas Gabriel drank tons of cappuccinos and soft drinks, Aziraphale loved tea – hot tea, not iced tea (Good Lord).
Gabriel was the athlete, the footballer, and later the actor (not a stage actor, as he’d only managed to make a few appearances in that tv show before shifting to the producing side of the industry).
On the contrary, Aziraphale kept informed about international news, he watched the BBC, he had always had a tendency for English literature – Shakespeare and Austen being his longtime favorites – and in the end he had decided to make a career out of it.
Gabriel was the classic American fella whilst Aziraphale’s accent was impeccably RP, posh, refined. (So much so that people often wondered if he was the actor.)
His mother was proud of him for that. They could talk in proper English when it was only the two of them.
His mother had been the only human being more openly kind to him rather than Gabriel. Aziraphale had often assumed that she resented her firstborn, maybe because his brother looked so much like his father while Aziraphale had inherited his mother’s blue-grey eyes and her pale complexion. And her trademark white-blonde hair, that was fluffy, soft, almost cottony.
His mother had also taught him to sing. Oh, the hours they had spent singing together.
She loved the oldies, the classics. The Beatles, sure, but also the American inventors of rock and roll. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan.
But as soon as Queen’s first album had been published, Freddy Mercury had stolen her heart. Aziraphale’s taste was more sophisticated than that… bebop. He loved classical music, and Šostakovič and Beethoven were among his favorites. But he’d spent so much time with his mother that he’d learnt all her favorite songs nonetheless; she made him play them on the piano while singing together. And he’d eventually started to accept that some of those tunes were quite catching.
His mother joked about her second child being her little puffy cherub, when he was a kid, leaving aside the fact that he, too, had been named after an angel. And when he’d grown up, the ‘cherub’ pet name had turned into ‘angel’, because despite his still soft appearance, he definitely wasn’t little anymore.
As for his father, he had been out of the picture for years. He’d asked for a divorce and moved to Los Angeles to marry a younger woman, an actress, ironically. A woman who was often referred to as a twinkie (a slang term that Aziraphale had obviously started to understand only when he’d gotten older).
His parents’ divorce had become final when he was eleven. He hadn’t seen his father since, and the man had never asked of him (but he’d never been particularly fond of Aziraphale in the first place).
At the beginning, his father had encouraged Gabriel to go visit him in L.A., so his brother had been to California a few times, especially when he’d graduated (barely) and started his acting career.
They rarely spoke about him, but Aziraphale knew that the last meeting between father and son had been a total fucking disaster (Gabriel’s words, not his).
Gabriel had come back from LA looking like hell and pretending nothing had happened, but Aziraphale knew better. He had the distinct feeling that Gabriel had been dismissed like an old sock full of holes.
The two of them had never been particularly in tune with each other, but that day Aziraphale had watched his brother’s armor crumble under his eyes. It had never happened again, and the two of them had secretly decided that their old man wasn’t worth being mentioned anymore.
Considering that money had never been an issue, seeing their mother’s estate, their future would be bright even without him. Especially, without him.
🎄🎄🎄
Unfortunately, their mother had passed away a few years later after a short but painful agony. She’d lasted only three months, after the diagnosis.
During one of their last conversations, she made Aziraphale promise to go back to England, one day. Their beloved England.
She didn’t have the chance to get back to her hometown, always procrastinating the trip to a more convenient time. And when time ran out, she really wanted Aziraphale to make that trip as soon as he could. She wanted him to go home.
“Tadfield is just a little town, sweetheart. And I know we’ve only lived there for a few years, but it’s the last place where I’ve been happy. It was everything to me. I wish you could feel as happy as I was when we still lived there.”
“I won’t be happy until you get better, mother,” Aziraphale answered, managing to keep a straight face even if a sad smile was darkening his traits.
“You know, you’ve always been a bad liar,” she replied. “And I know that you’re not happy here. In the States, I mean.”
“I’ve got everything I need, mother. I am a tenured professor in one of the most renowned Universities in the whole world. People envy my position. They respect me.”
“But you don’t have love in your life, Aziraphale. Can you live only on respect?”
“Gabriel doesn’t have love either, mother,” he pointed out.
“Gabriel doesn’t need love. Not yet. You deserve someone who loves you for the awesome human being that you are.”
Aziraphale sighed at those words, a tear forming at the corner of his eyes.
“A man that makes you incandescently happy,” she finally stated, almost in a whisper. Her son immediately noticed her choice of words. Aziraphale’s eyes had gotten so wide at that revelation. He couldn’t imagine how his mother had found out about this.
“A – a man?”
His mother smiled, tenderly. “I didn’t want to leave this Earth without you knowing that I know. A mother always knows.”
“How – how long?”
“Probably since you started reading Oscar Wilde at any possible chance.”
Aziraphale chuckled softly, taking his mother’s hand in his. “I’m so relieved that you know, mother. And… it doesn’t bother you?”
She looked almost outraged. “What kind of mother do you think I am?”
“I thought father–”
“I never cared about what he thought. He would probably be very disappointed about this, and that’s one of the reasons why we should be happy he’s not in our lives anymore.”
Aziraphale nodded solemnly.
“I’m glad we’ve had this conversation. And you’ve got to promise me that you will consider my words. Find love, sweetheart. Find somebody to love.”
“Quoting Freddy Mercury. Such a low blow, mother.”
As she smiled tenderly, she started singing with a faint voice.
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can’t get no relief, Lord
Aziraphale immediately joined her.
Somebody (somebody),
ooh, somebody (somebody)
Can anybody find me
somebody to love?
They shared a cathartic laugh, holding hands for dear life.
Aziraphale didn’t know it would be their last.
🎄🎄🎄
Aziraphale’s heart was still recovering from that loss when he’d met Rafe. In a way, he’d seemed like a ray of sunshine after a storm (back then). Aziraphale had almost felt like he was keeping his promise to his mother of finding someone to love.
He felt good when he was with Rafe, like he’d checked off an important box. But he was lying to himself. Certainly, he’d had some kind of feelings for him, at some point. But were those feelings love? Aziraphale didn’t believe so.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually fallen in love. He’d had relationships, some of which had lasted longer than others.
But a deep connection to someone? Love?
It was such an important four-letter word. He didn’t want to waste it, not when his mother had been the last person to hear those words coming from his mouth.
So, even if he cared deeply for Rafe, he’d obviously never told him.
Being in love – that was complicated.
Risky.
Not for Aziraphale.
And tonight, after the dullest breakup in the history of breakups, Aziraphale came to the realisation that he’d been right all along. He’d never told Rafe that he loved him because he’d never been in love with him in the first place.
🎄🎄🎄
“What the fuck happened, Aziraphale?” Gabriel asked him as soon as he showed up at his door (probably prompted by Rafe’s phone call rather than by Aziraphale texting him to come).
“Are you ok?” Gabriel asked, looking (vaguely yet unexpectedly) interested in his well-being.
Yes, when Aziraphale had woken up that day, he couldn’t have possibly imagined how bad it would turn out to be. As he welcomed Gabriel into his house, he sighed in defeat.
“I’m just tickety-boo.”