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After the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, Aziraphale found himself in something of a dither.
He didn’t mind a good dither, usually. Once or twice a century he’d get truly agitated about a newly released edition that changed a line he’d quite liked actually and he’d work himself into such a dither he’d inevitably end up writing a strongly worded letter to the editor and then throwing it out. It was already done, after all.
This was not a dither to enjoy. No less than thirteen cups of cocoa and tea were scattered around the bookshop, untouched and stone cold, and in the kitchen Aziraphale made himself another without thinking and he considered and he thought and he worried. He set the tea down next to a pile of children’s detective novels that he hadn’t owned a week ago and kept walking, and the tea resigned itself to going cold.
The problem was this; he no longer worked for Heaven.
Not really, anyway. And he hadn’t minded working for them, not when he got to go somewhere nice and eat some of the local food and perhaps makes someone happy, but he could keep doing all that, probably, while they spent the next half dozen millennia trying to forget him.
The problem was that he no longer worked for Heaven, and Crowley no longer worked for Hell. Or so he assumed. No reason to think otherwise.
And while both of those facts brought a strange weightlessness to him, like when he spread his wings and felt his feet almost lift from the ground with the lightness of them, there was a third, inferred, fact, that did quite the opposite.
Without Heaven, and without Hell, there was no Arrangement.
And that sunk in his stomach like lead, undoing any lightness he might have felt, because without The Arrangement, without perhaps the demonic joy of tempting an angel, what reason did Crowley have to continue to pop up?
Quite unlike himself, even a plate of petit fours, ordered and delivered from a beautiful little bakery down the way, sat in their sweetly decorated box, completely untouched. The sign on the door remained stubbornly closed, even as Aziraphale began to wish some customers would come to distract him while he made the place as unwelcoming as possible.
He knew what Crowley had wanted , of course. The demon had made his temptation abilities all too well known, and Aziraphale had slowly but surely been pulled into his orbit, as he was sure many others were. None were immortal, of course, so not worth bothering about (not that that stopped him, imagining Crowley in the back of a dark nightclub, at some rally, or- God forbid- in the backseat of his Bently, whispered words and long fingers lingering just outside of the realm of Aziraphale’s imagination). Crowley was kind, even when he wasn’t nice, and he’d made living on Earth tolerable, through centuries that may have become crushing loneliness without another to share it with, even only occasionally. But he desired in a way that Aziraphale didn’t. Aziraphale could remember a hundred lingering touches, invitations, that tempted him all too well and- well, perhaps it was incorrect to say that Aziraphale didn’t desire, but it seemed to be saved solely for a certain dark-glassed demon. And, worse, he did more than desire. Although he found Crowley delightfully distracting, he wanted more than that. And to give in would have been to give up on the rest of it, wouldn’t it?
But now Aziraphale was almost wishing he had given in, just once, even if it had been all Crowley had wanted from him because, well, now they were over. Crowley’s time and- and his desire, was his own now, not Hell’s, and Aziraphale couldn’t see how he fit into that picture at all.
He sat down heavily. There is was. The thought that he’d been dancing around for- well, gosh, how long had it been? A little over six thousand years, yes, but also here in his bookshop- four days? That was a bit much, probably.
Aziraphale closed his eyes a moment, and thought back to the first time he ever saw Crowley. He wasn’t called Crowley then, hadn’t picked the sleek black wings that matched his new name and job. No, he was radiant, all golden light and gilded wings, resplendent in God’s light and glory. Aziraphale had been so far below him he didn’t think they’d ever so much as speak, but in one of those long stretches before days existed he passed by and Aziraphale had paused and he had turned to him, reached out to him, and closed his eyes, already golden, but like a burning star. So golden they hurt to look at. His hands didn’t burn where they cupped Aziraphale’s face, though. They were warm as sunlight.
“So much love,” he’d said, his voice deep and resonate but not all that unlike it was now. Breathy. And, for that moment, reverent of him , of Aziraphale, who was only the guard of a wall that didn’t yet exist, nothing like this creature.
And then he’d been gone, and it had hurt to watch him walk away, even more than looking at him usually did.
Azirapahle hadn’t seen him again before he Fell.
Crowley sometimes said he didn’t mean to fall, that he just hung out with the wrong people, but Aziraphale wondered if he actually remembered it. Because Aziraphale did. Yes, Lucifer had been at the head, with the angel who would become Beelezbub, but he hadn’t been that far behind. He wasn’t angry they way the others were, but he wanted answers. Asked, pleadingly, for answers to questions they weren’t even supposed to think. Aziraphale could still remember the moment they’d been cast out. His golden eyes had, in that moment, passed through a hundred emotions. Confusion, betrayal, rage, heartbreak, and, Aziraphale thought, a moment of understanding. And then they were gone. All of them, as though asking questions and starting a war were the same crime. Aziraphale had turned away, tried to harness that moment of understanding. Perhaps, he thought, it was all part of Her plan. The plan was often cruel and you weren’t meant to- weren’t able to- understand it. It was… ineffable. That was it. He tried to keep that understanding close.
The moment he saw Crawley’s golden eyes he knew who he was, that this was who the angel had been, hidden beneath all that greatness. A little hidden beneath something else now. It was why he had blurted out the confession about the sword. And the look in Crawley’s eyes wasn’t that different from when the angel had noticed the love Aziraphale already felt for him.
Over the years he came to realise that the love never really went away, just changed a little (sometimes not that little. The feeling of being blessed whenever Crowley looked his way was exactly the same, for example), but Crowley had been changed. Aziraphale didn’t know if the fall left them able to feel in the same way, or if it just took too much. Sometimes it was easier to think that, rather than the alternative, which was that they could- but Crowley just didn’t. Not for him, anyway.
Aziraphale took a deep breath and returned to the present, where outside it was drizzling the beginning of a storm, and reached for the closest cup of tea, which was two and a half days old. When he grabbed it, in a panic it willed itself fresh again, and by the time Aziraphale sipped it, it was hot and fresh and not at all congealed. He was lucky his mugs liked him.
Aziraphale made a decision. No more moping. He was free of Heaven, at least for now, and he had the chance to do some things he’d wanted to for a long time. Crowley would- he could- well. Aziraphale’s feelings could wait.
By the time he finished sipping he had a plan. The antichrist had done more good in less than a week than Aziraphale had done in hundreds of years, because of Heaven’s shackles. Now he was free to do the things he’d been itching to do since- well, since he heard the questions a golden angel asked urgently.
He started small. He shrugged on a jacket, taking a moment to run fingers over where he could feel the remnants of Crowley’s demonic miracle, and he went for a walk.
He stopped to talk to a man who was sheltering in a doorway, huddled around all of his belongings. When Aziraphale touched his hand he felt the confusion of illness untreated, a panic that made him leave everything he loved and led him here, alone. The man asked him for some change, and Aziraphale gave it to him, as well as some cash. The confusion would clear, and he would run into someone from his past who wanted to help, and he would see an ad in the paper for a job he’d be good at and enjoy, and when he went to ask they would give it to him.
He stopped three or four more times, each time miracling opportunities for people who needed only that, single people and families who only need the opportunity to stand on their own. He got a little angry at how easy it was for him.
He wandered until he found himself at the hospital. He took a deep breath and spread his wings, and walked into the ER.
No-one looked at him when he entered, and he waved a hand, sending a spreading effect of healing and easing. In the children’s ward a couple of the littles looked right at him, too young to disbelieve enough for him to be invisible to them, and he smiled a blinding smile at them and ran a hand over foreheads, easing and curing ailments.
Once he gained momentum it was almost a relief. Half a dozen millennia of withholding his power and now it spilled out of him as he crossed continents, gliding on great wings that brought change. Not even Heaven itself could have stopped him, not that he knew that.
***
Crowley was not in a dither. He didn’t get in dithers. That was the angel’s territory, getting worked up and distracted and upset. Crowley was not dithering.
He wasn’t happy, though.
Five days after their lunch at the Ritz he strode up to Aziraphale’s bookshop, second box of little cakes from the bakery that had just opened handing from one hand, none of them spilling despite his somewhat erratic swaying walk.
“Aziraphale,” he called, knocking and looking through the window.
When he heard no answer and let himself in (not with the spare key Aziraphale left under the mat, because that was beneath him), he found the bookshop deserted. Crowley took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Aziraphale hadn’t been here in over a day. He scratched his head and scowled. His stupid angel didn’t even have a phone he could text. He tried following the thread between them, the one he could always feel, but it was overwhelmed by the lingering effects of the antichrist’s changes. Too hard to feel amongst the static. A thread in a- a, uh, pile of threads.
Crowley poked around a little. He didn’t feel too bad about it, not really, but he did start to get worried when he discovered many, many undrunk cups of tea and cocoa. He was fairly certain Aziraphale didn’t actually own that many mugs. He squinted at one, a white one with a pair of wings as its handle, and saw it repeat around the room.
“You,” he growled, pointing an accusing finger, “clean yourself up.”
Six mugs vanished and the cup found itself clean and away.
It was the petit fours that really worried him. He’d ordered them for Aziraphale the day after their lunch, and they were untouched- unopened. He felt a tightness in his chest. What if something had happened to him? What if… Heaven had caught on? Come after him?
But there was no scent of Heaven's brimstone in the bookshop, nor Hell’s, and to deal with his confusion Crowley set the second box beside it and washed the other ten cups by hand, sunglasses set aside to stop them steaming up over the scalding water, a scowl slowly etching itself into permanence on his face.
He shifted from foot to foot, tapped suddenly long and pointed nails on the side of the sink, then put his glasses back on and walked outside purposefully.
Once outside, he realised he actually had no purpose and he paused, and whipped his head around. There- Aziraphale. Or, not Aziraphale but his- his, smell. His power. All over a man in a shoddy suit who was walking down the street. Crowley sprinted after him and a few words later had an actual idea where he was going.
***
Aziraphale lost himself, a little bit, maybe.
Among his journey he had, at some point, become aware not only of people who needed help, but also of the others . The ones who needed the opposite of help. The ones who would probably live very long lives, comfortable lives, doing innumerous pieces of harm before they faced whatever mortals faced after. And he found himself wanting to do something about that , as well. Heaven wasn’t opposed to a little wrath, all told, and it had been built into his very DNA (if that's what angels had at all) to fight, to avenge.
So among the wave of miracles, a few people found themselves facing something they would never find words for, something made of light and eyes that burnt through them, and being told that their wicked deeds would stop for good, one way or another.
They all chose one way. Aziraphale didn’t send anyone to the Maker early, just put a little, well, fear of God into them.
But the more he moved and travelled and did, the harder it was to contain himself within his form. It spilled out at the edges all the time, and his memory became a strange, flickering thing, his whole mind focused fully on the next problem and the next and the next, until the bookshop and his tartan bow ties and sushi, and a certain demon, became hard to think about- to remember.
He continued.
***
Crowley found him, eventually, on the top of a mountain.
He had to fly to even get there, and it was cold and windy and about to snow but- there, finally , was Aziraphale.
Someone who only knew him as a bookshop keeper, or from the Apocalypse, wouldn’t have recognised him. (Except perhaps Adam, but he was, as usual, a rather special case.)
Crowley knew him from much more, and he knew right away who this glowing, burning, figure was.
“Aziraphale,” he said, carefully, from a distance.
The being turned to him and its many eyes bore into him and it burned Crowley deep, but not in a real way. There was no recognition in those many eyes, and that hurt worse.
“Aziraphale,” he said again, and began walking towards him. The creatures wings fluttered, and Crowley was worried he’d take off and be lost. Crowley raised his hands.
“I need your help,” he said, softly. “Will you help me, Angel?”
It was the first time he had ever verbally capitalised the word, but what he was dealing with here was more Angel than Aziraphale. Its wings stilled at his words, and he willed himself closer. At least the heat emanating from the form made the mountaintop more tolerable.
“My problem, see, is that a while back I thought I lost my best friend. His bookshop burnt down,” the figure shuddered slightly at this, “and I thought he’d gotten lost in it. But I didn’t- he came back to me. But now he’s gone and wandered off, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose him again. Please. Help me.”
For a moment the figure flickered, and when it was stable again, its light had shrunk.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, again. He held out his arms. “Come here, Aziraphale.”
The figure swayed, and then fell into Crowley’s arms. The heavenly light was painful but Crowley pulled him in tight, tighter, like he would as a snake, pulling Aziraphale back into himself with pure force of will.
Finally, the feeling of feathers and strange limbs under his arms went away, and he looked down into Aziraphale’s two blue eyes.
“There you are,” he murmured, closing his own eyes and burying his face in blonde hair.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice shaking, “I’m afraid I got rather carried away.”
Crowley laughed, a half bitter noise. “You think? I’ve been following you for months .”
“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s arms were all that held him up.
“Wait-,” he tried to pull back, and found both his legs and Crowley’s arms were quite unwilling to let that happen, so he collapsed back again Crowley’s chest. “You’ve been following me for months?”
Aziraphale felt Crowley nod against the top of his head.
“D’you lose track of time?” Crowley asked.
“I- well. Yes, but that isn’t.. You followed me ? But… why?”
Now Crowley pulled away, just a little, to meet his eyes. Aziraphale realised Crowley wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his golden eyes bore into his own.
“ Why ? Oh, angel-,” and wasn’t it a relief to say it like that again? Familiar and small but so, so big, “you’re an idiot.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale’s voice was very soft. “I thought- but, yes. Yes. I have been, haven’t I?”
“Yeh,” Crowley mumbled, into Aziraphale’s hair. “Did some pretty cool stuff, though. I met a group of very afraid gang members not too far from here.”
“Well,” Aziraphale’s voice was as close to prim as he could make it, “I’m sure they deserved it.”
Crowley’s laugh was softer now.
“Shall we go home, then?” Aziraphale asked, “together?”
Crowley nodded. “Think we better,” he said, voice thick with emotion.
Neither moved for a while, though. After all, nothing felt quite so much like home as the other’s arms.