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“So, this is it,” Crowley said, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm as the flat door snicked shut behind them. The latch was firmly reconnected and he hinges undamaged.
Thanks for that, Adam Young, he thought with a lift of his eyebrow. I hope you also cleaned up the mess-that-was-Ligur in my sitting room.
The corner of Aziraphale’s mouth tilted up. “You know I’ve been to your flat before?” His face was smudged with dirt, his hair in disarray, and he looked soft and beautifully relieved. Crowley’s heart gave a squeeze.
“Have you?” he asked faintly, trying to recall.
Aziraphale hummed an affirmation, but folded his hands behind his back and started a slow self-guided tour. Crowley watched him retreat, then he removed his glasses and carefully tucked them into an inner pocket of his jacket. Running a thumb along his lapel found singed edges there, small curls of thread and fabric yielding beneath his fingers. A glance in the nearby mirror confirmed a smoky face and hair, but he had neither the energy nor the inclination to miracle himself clean at the moment. He followed after Aziraphale.
Crowley found him in his sitting room, examining his extravagant chair. The angel was running a finger over the ornate crest at the top, expression curious. He looked over as Crowley entered.
“I’d actually managed to forget about this monstrosity,” he said with a smirk.
“Rude,” Crowley uttered half-heartedly.
“You have dramatic tastes, my dear.”
“Well, I take that as a compliment,” Crowley said, his voice gone all haughty with mock disdain.
Aziraphale huffed out a laugh, ducking his head briefly. When he looked back up, his eyes were bright and his smile was curling like a small, secret thing across his face. “I would expect nothing less.”
Crowley’s heart throbbed.
He scoffed, then made his way over to his sun room. Relief suffused his chest as he stepped through the rotating door and stood in the warm air, surrounded by his plants. Drawing in a deep breath, he was able to smell the damp potting soil, the fertilizer, and the subtle electric charge of fear.
He bared his teeth in a grin. “Hello, dearies! Hope no one’s been misbehaving while I’ve been gone.”
The plants all rippled with apprehension.
“Oh, leave them be!” Aziraphale called through the doorway. His footsteps told Crowley that he was moving in his direction.
“Ngh. He’s no fun,” Crowley told the nearby mammy croton conspiratorially. Its glossy, variegated leaves trembled once, then went still.
Crowley heard Aziraphale join him in the room and glanced over his shoulder. There was a planter of hanging epipremnum aureum in the windowsill, and the angel had one of its bright green tendrils twined around his finger like a tiny snake. “They’re all looking quite lovely,” he said. “What’s this one called again?”
“Devil’s ivy.”
Aziraphale laughed and gave the leaves a gentle stroke before disentangling himself. He turned back to Crowley with a smile. “Of course.”
Crowley regarded him across the short distance, tension thrumming beneath his skin like static electricity. Aziraphale just watched him, his edges made soft in the low light.
“When were you here last?” Crowley finally asked, genuinely befuddled.
“Oh, I’d say it was back in …” Aziraphale trailed off as he considered, clasping his hands before him. His forehead wrinkled and his foot tapped an erratic pattern on Crowley’s stone floor. “Well, um—Oh! It must have been around 1990, I believe? Tim Berners-Lee.”
The fog in Crowley’s mind cleared somewhat, his mouth turning up in a grin. “Right! The world wide web. I think we both took credit for that, didn’t we?”
“Indeed, we did,” Aziraphale said with a fond smile.
“Why don’t I remember that better? It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Ah, that was probably to do with the bottles of 1975 Vintage Port that we celebrated with,” Aziraphale admitted, his smile a little sheepish.
“Oh, yeah.”
They lapsed into silence. Crowley let himself drift on not-so-distant memories—the caramel-sweet tang of the port and Aziraphale’s too-kind smile. The soft rustle of his plants was all around him. His angel was here, warm and real and alive. The Armageddon had, somehow, slipped by them.
He felt safe.
Crowley wasn’t sure how long he stood there before Aziraphale’s gentle voice broke through his reverie. He sounded hesitant as he said, “You seemed rather upset.”
“Hm? Uh, well,” he said, stammering a little. “I can’t really remember, but I thought we had been celebrating. Sorry if I was a bit maudlin at the time. I think Tiananmen Square stuck with me longer than—”
Aziraphale hastily interrupted him, flapping his hands at him. “No, no, my dear. I, um—Well, I meant earlier today. In the bar.”
Crowley blinked. “Oh.”
“Yes.” Aziraphale clasped his hands together and twiddled his thumbs against one another. “I was just—um. Just curious, I suppose.”
They stared at one another. Crowley could feel his heart pounding in his throat and he swallowed compulsively. “Yeah. I was a little upset.” He tilted his head and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’d lost my best friend.”
Aziraphale gave him a wobbly smile and said in a hushed voice, “You didn’t lose me, dear.” Crowley’s stomach flipped.
There was an anxious energy clattering along his ribs and squeezing the air from his lungs. “I—uh,” he stammered, his throat clicking as he gulped. His voice sounded faint and raspy, even to his own ears. “I thought the—the fire in your bookshop. I thought it was Infernal. I thought you …”
I thought you were gone for good.
The smile slipped from Aziraphale’s face, horror creeping into his eyes. “Oh, my dear—”
“Do you know that I helped create the stars?” Crowley asked suddenly and Aziraphale blinked. “I can’t remember if I ever told you that?”
“No,” he said faintly. A lovely little crease formed between his brows.
“Yeah. Back when I was an angel, I helped to create galaxies—formed them in my hands.” Crowley’s fingers twitched in muscle memory, recalling the millennia he’d spent holding the beating hearts of stars between his palms. Through the dark window behind Aziraphale, the night sky called to him.
Aziraphale’s face was puzzled, but he said in a small voice, “You did a beautiful job.” A tiny smile pulled at Crowley’s mouth, warmth suffusing him.
“You know, I can feel it,” he murmured, glancing away, “when a star I created dies. It sort of—um.”
Aziraphale remained silent as he struggled to come up with the words to describe the feeling—the weight of his chest caving in, collapsing in on itself, the darkness rushing in to fill the void where light had once been.
“The sky will eat them up or—or snuff them out and they’re just gone forever and I—I get this ringing in my ears and this sort of hollow feeling right here—” He pressed his palm against the center of his chest. “—and I can’t breathe and … It’s just this crushing loneliness. Like the universe is pulling the stardust out of my bones.”
Crowley looked at Aziraphale and said, “That’s what it felt like, sitting in your bookshop today. Like I’d lost one of my stars.”
The angel’s breath came shuddering out of him, his mouth hanging open and eyes wide. “Oh,” he murmured, his fingers curling loosely against the front of his waistcoat.
Oh.
The silence that followed was excruciating. Crowley wished the floor would open up and swallow him. His whole body was burning in mortification, skin prickling.
“Yeah. Oh,” he muttered. He folded his arms and looked away, shoulders hunched up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, angel, I’m just gonna go drown myself in the bathtub—”
A hand gripped his elbow then, tight enough to hurt. Startled, Crowley turned to find that Aziraphale had crossed the short distance between them. He was close enough for Crowley to see the painter’s strokes of hazel in the otherwise blue-gray canvases of his eyes. They reminded him of far-off nebulas.
“My dear,” Aziraphale whispered, awed and exultant. Then he leaned in and kissed him.
It was uncoordinated and brief, a gentle slide of lips against his, but Crowley’s heart lit up like a newborn star, light pouring out from between the spaces in his ribs. Six-thousand years of friendship and affection and desire flared in his chest, igniting the gently burning hope that was there. He felt warm and bright. For a brief moment, he felt angelic.
Aziraphale eventually pulled back, pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth and bumping their noses together. Crowley swayed forward, his center of gravity shot.
He let out a breathless, “Oh,” and Aziraphale huffed a laugh, warmth radiating from his eyes.
“Yes. Oh.”
Crowley brought his hands up to grip at Aziraphale’s coat, grounding himself. His fingers shook as they curled into the lapels, dark smudges of soot staining the fabric there. “Not too fast for you?” he asked, his heart thundering.
Aziraphale’s hands were a comforting weight as they came up and settled over his own, his thumbs stroking across Crowley’s knuckles. Pleasant little jolts were running up and down his arms at the sensation. Aziraphale leaned in, pressing their foreheads together.
“Let’s just set our own pace,” he murmured, his words soft and bright like the future stretching out before them. Like starlight.