Work Text:
Six Months after Hatchards
It had started, as most important decisions did with them, over too many books.
They were in Crowley's flat – a small, aggressively minimalist space he'd rented when he first moved to London, all sleek furniture and bare walls. It had the distinct feeling of someone who'd never quite committed to actually living there. Aziraphale had come over after his afternoon lecture, and they were attempting to cook dinner together in a kitchen barely large enough for one person, let alone two.
"This is ridiculous," Crowley said, attempting to maneuver around Aziraphale to reach the stove. "We're like those physics problems about fitting objects into impossible spaces. Or Tetris."
"Perhaps if you'd organized your kitchen more efficiently …"
"There's no efficient organization for a kitchen the size of a shoebox, angel."
Aziraphale shifted to let him pass, and his elbow knocked into a precariously stacked pile of books on the counter. They tumbled to the floor with a crash that made them both wince.
"Sorry," Aziraphale said, bending to gather them. "Why do you have Horticultural Digest on your kitchen counter?"
"Was reading it during breakfast."
"You eat breakfast standing at the counter?"
"There's no dinner table, angel. Where else would I eat?"
Aziraphale looked around the flat – really looked at it – and something in his chest tightened. This wasn't a home. This was a place Crowley slept between weekends at Aziraphale's, a holding pattern disguised as a residence.
"Come live with me," he said, the words out before he'd quite thought them through.
Crowley straightened, still holding a pot. "What?"
"Move in. Properly. You're at mine most weekends anyway, and this place is –" He gestured at the cramped space, the minimal furniture, the general air of impermanence. "This isn't a home, darling. This is a very expensive storage unit."
"It's not that bad."
"You eat breakfast standing at the counter. You keep books in the kitchen because there's no bookshelf space. Can you even sit on that sofa? It looks … dangerous."
"I sit on it sometimes."
"When?"
"Sometimes. Leave it, angel."
Aziraphale set the fallen books on the counter and took Crowley's hands, making him set down the pot. "I have space. Too much space, actually, for just one person. A proper study, multiple bookshelves, a kitchen where two people can actually move without performing gymnastic feats. And I –" He took a breath. "I want you there. Not just weekends. Always."
Crowley looked at him for a long moment, something vulnerable crossing his face. "You're serious."
"Completely. Unless you're actually attached to this flat, in which case I apologize for insulting your aesthetic."
"I hate this flat," Crowley interrupted. "Loathe it. Only got it because it was close to the firm and I was too miserable to care about things like natural light. Been meaning to look for somewhere better but then I met you and every weekend I'd think 'why bother when I could just stay at Aziraphale's?'"
"So stay. Permanently."
"You sure? I'm – " Crowley gestured at himself. "I'm chaos. I'll leave books everywhere, steal your sofa, laugh about your tea, reorganize your bookshelves when you're not looking."
"I know. I'm counting on it." Aziraphale pulled him closer. "Move in with me. Bring your chaos. Let's make it ours."
Crowley's smile started slow and spread into something radiant. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Whenever you're ready. Today. Or next month. Whenever. The space is there. The invitation is standing."
Crowley kissed him then, laughter caught between their mouths, joy fizzing out of him like he couldn’t possibly hold it in. "As soon as possible. I'll give notice on this place, pack my stuff. We can start combining our book collections and arguing about who has the best literary taste."
"Perfect. But the argument is moot. I do, obviously."
They never did finish cooking dinner that night. Ordered takeaway instead, ate it on the floor and spent the evening planning how Crowley's books would fit on Aziraphale's shelves, which furniture could stay and which should go, whether the bedroom needed repainting. They made lists and drew diagrams and started referring to Aziraphale's flat as "ours."
A few weeks later, Crowley's lease was up, his furniture mostly donated, and he stood in the doorway of Aziraphale's flat – their flat – with two suitcases of clothes and approximately forty boxes of books.
"That's a lot of boxes," Aziraphale observed.
"You said bring my books."
"I expected perhaps... ten boxes?"
"I downsized. These are just the essential ones."
"Crowley, this box is labeled 'Really Ugly Books I'll Probably Never Read.'"
"Essential."
"How is that essential?"
"They're essential to my well-being. Do you want me to move in or not?"
Aziraphale laughed and helped carry boxes inside. "Come on, you menace. Let's see if we can make this work without killing each other."
The problem with combining two book collections, Crowley reflected as he surveyed the absolute chaos of Aziraphale's sitting room, was that both of them had strong opinions about alphabetization, chronology, and what constituted a "proper" organizational system.
"Alphabetical by author is the only logical system," Aziraphale insisted, hands on his hips as he stood surrounded by towers of books that threatened to topple at any moment.
"Chronological by publication date makes more sense for tracking literary movements," Crowley countered, not because he actually cared that deeply, but because watching Aziraphale get worked up was adorable.
"That's absurd. How would anyone find anything?"
"How would anyone track the evolution of Romantic poetry if Byron's next to Auden?"
They'd been having this argument for two hours while unpacking exactly three boxes.
"Right," Crowley said, making an executive decision. "I'm getting takeaway. You alphabetize to your heart's content. We'll compromise later."
"Compromise meaning you'll secretly reorganize sections when I'm not looking?"
"Obviously."
When Crowley returned later with Thai food and a bottle of wine, he found the books somewhat more organized and Aziraphale sitting on the floor, completely absorbed in reading something that had clearly distracted him from the task at hand.
"Found something interesting?"
Aziraphale looked up, a strange expression on his face. "Well ...."
He held up a worn paperback of Milton’s Paradise Lost – Crowley's personal copy, one he'd owned since university. The spine was cracked, the pages dog-eared, and there were margin notes in teenage Crowley's handwriting throughout.
"Oh bugger," Crowley said, feeling heat rise in his face. "That's – you don't need to read that. Young Crowley had some very pretentious opinions."
"It's fascinating," Aziraphale said softly. "You've been arguing with Milton since you were nineteen. Look – here you've written 'coward' next to Abdiel's speech. And here – 'Finally someone with sense' next to Satan's rebellion."
"Yeah, well. I was an insufferable undergraduate who thought he knew everything."
"You were lovely," Aziraphale corrected. "And lonely, I think. Look how you've annotated this. Like you were trying to have a conversation with someone who wasn't there."
Crowley sat down next to him, looking at his younger self's handwriting – messier than now, more aggressive, the annotations of someone who was angry at the world and didn't know what to do with it.
"I was drowning," he admitted quietly. "Law school, family expectations, trying to figure out who I was. Books were the only things that made sense."
Aziraphale's hand found his, squeezed gently. "I'm glad you kept arguing with Milton. Otherwise you might never have left that note in the library."
"Best act of vandalism I ever committed."
"Indeed."
They sat there for a moment, surrounded by the mingled debris of their separate lives becoming one shared existence. Then Aziraphale carefully opened the Paradise Lost to a blank page at the back and pulled out a pen.
"What are you doing?"
"Leaving you a note," Aziraphale said. "If we're going to share books, we should share margin space too."
He wrote in his careful, elegant script:
My love, I found your nineteen-year-old self in these margins today, and I loved him too. Angry, funny, lonely, arguing with Milton like arguing could change the world.
Here's what I wish I could tell him: You'll be fine. Better than fine. You'll find someone who understands why you identify with serpents and rebels, who thinks your annotations are perfect, who loves you for arguing instead of despite it.
Also, you still haven't learned to alphabetize properly, but I'm working on that.
– A
Crowley stared at the note, his throat suddenly tight. "You can't just – my poor books – "
"Our poor books," Aziraphale corrected. "That's the point of moving in together, isn't it? Shared space, shared books, shared margin notes."
"You're going to ruin all my favourites with sentimental drivel, aren't you?"
"Absolutely. Your turn."
Crowley took the pen, searched his angel’s copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray – the book Aziraphale had carried through his whole life, his comfort read during particularly soul-crushing periods – and opened to the preface.
Angel, I've read this book approximately fifty times as well. Every time I hated my job, every time I felt like I was wasting my life on things that didn't matter. Wilde's preface kept me going: "All art is quite useless." Meaning art is valuable precisely because it serves no practical purpose. That beauty and truth matter more than productivity.
But I never wrote in my copy. Kept it pristine because... I don't know. Because nothing I could say seemed important enough for this book. Seems like you thought the same, your book is pristine as well. Well, until now, until you let a vandal into your serene life.
I have a valid reason for my vandalism: I love you. This is important enough and should be written in every one of your favourite books. You make me believe that wasting time reading poetry matters, that arguing about everything is worthwhile, that my annotations have value. You make everything feel less useless.
Also, you're right about alphabetization. Don't tell anyone I admitted that.
–C
Aziraphale read it twice, then set the book carefully aside and kissed him. "We're going to destroy a quite valuable book collection, aren't we?"
"Absolutely. Pass me that Virginia Woolf."
Three hours and several glasses of wine later, they'd made almost no progress on organizing the books but had left notes in approximately two dozen volumes. Crowley found himself pulling books at random just to read what Aziraphale had written, discovering small love letters tucked into Mrs. Dalloway and Wuthering Heights and a collection of Keats.
In his copy of Frankenstein, Aziraphale had written: You said the real monster is the creator who abandons his responsibility. I'm grateful every day that you didn't abandon this – us – when it got serious.
In Aziraphale's Complete Works of Shakespeare, Crowley wrote next to Sonnet 116: Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. Even when you scoff about my bookshelves. Even when you make me watch period dramas. Even when you're wrong about coffee.
By midnight, they'd created a mess – and a new organizational system: chaos, with love notes scattered throughout like treasures waiting to be discovered.
"This is a terrible system," Aziraphale said, surveying the still-unpacked boxes and the books now completely out of order.
"Worst system ever," Crowley agreed. "Want to leave more notes instead of actually working?"
"Obviously."
Crowley pulled out a slim volume of Pablo Neruda's love poems, opened it to "If You Forget Me," and handed it to Aziraphale with a pen.
This was his life now, he thought as he watched Aziraphale's careful script fill the page. Beautiful. Chaotic. Full of love scribbled in the margins.
Two weeks later, Aziraphale was looking for his copy of Emma when he found a note in one of Crowley's architecture books – a dry, technical volume about Victorian building design that seemed entirely unlike him.
Angel, I found this book in a charity shop when I first moved to London. Thought maybe I'd become an architect instead of a solicitor. Thought if I understood how to build beautiful things, I'd feel less like I was wasting my life.
Never got past chapter three. But I kept it anyway, because sometimes it helped to remember I'd once imagined a different life.
I'm glad I ended up exactly where I did. Wouldn't have been in that library otherwise. Wouldn't have left that note in Paradise Lost. Wouldn't have found you.
Serendipity. Some wrong turns lead exactly where you need to go.
–C
Aziraphale stood in their shared study, holding the architecture book to his chest and crying a little bit, thinking about all the paths not taken that had led them both here.
Then he pulled out his pen and added his own note below Crowley's:
My darling, I'm glad you never became an architect. The world has enough people who build houses. It needs more people who build conversations, who turn marginalia into love letters, who understand that the most beautiful structures are the ones we create together.
Besides, your organizational skills are appalling. You'd have made a terrible architect.
I love you. Even in the wrong-turn moments. Especially in those.
–A
He put the book back on the shelf – in the wrong section, because their system was like this now and he'd made peace with it – and went to find Crowley to tell him they needed more books.
Just so they'd have more margins to fill.