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“He had a whole— a whole heist planned, like in a film,” Aziraphale says, gesturing rather dangerously with his wine glass and ignoring the last half inch sloshing about. “When I finally gave it to him, I think he was mostly disappointed that he wouldn't get to play thief.”
Crowley reaches out and captures Aziraphale's roaming wine glass, bringing it back down to the table to refill. Anathema Device’s taste in wine is not as sophisticated as theirs, but it is at least expensive. Americans can be counted on for some things. The window in the kitchen is open to let in a warm breeze, along with the purpling light of dusk and the scent of spring.
“What I was mostly disappointed about was that I'd given all my operatives their halves up front already,” Crowley says. “You couldn't have been quicker with it by an hour?”
It's a lie, of course. Or not a lie, but a… reframing. What he was most disappointed by at the time had been watching Aziraphale get out of the car and walk away. You go too fast for me, Crowley.
But things are different now. Not where Crowley wishes they were, obviously, but the two of them are closer every day, and Aziraphale stood next to him and defied the Heaven that he'd always been so afraid of, and that has to count for something, doesn't it? And now they have lunch at the Ritz and walks in the park and occasionally supper with human friends in the evening like some yuppie couple. It's different now. It's better. Maybe they'll get there someday.
“Sounds like great fun to me,” says Newt, grinning. “A heist! Like ‘Entrapment.’ Or the Ocean ones!”
“Exactly like that!” Crowley exclaims, vindicated. “We had someone to get lowered from the ceiling, and someone to do the lowering.”
“Brilliant,” says Newt admiringly. Anathema, next to him, looks dangerously fond.
I know the feeling, Crowley thinks.
“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Aziraphale sniffs. “Or at least discorporated. Very childish.”
Crowley rolls his eyes from behind his sunglasses. (He is very good at making sure everyone knows he has rolled his eyes even if nobody can see them.)
“Oh, you don't get to talk about childish and getting nearly discorporated,” Crowley says. “How about nearly getting shot by Nazis because you wanted to play spy, to pick just one example?”
“Nazis?“ Anathema gasps with interest.
“Spies?“ Newt adds, leaning forward.
His hope that Aziraphale would be abashed by this reference doesn’t last long.
“Oh, in the second World War!” Aziraphale beams, threatening to drag his jacket cuffs through the gravy remains on his emptied plate. “Yes, that was jolly good fun.”
"Jolly good fun?“ Crowley snorts. He reaches out and silently scoots the plate safely out of the way. “Including, I suppose, when your operative friend —”
“Oh no, don’t spoil it!" Aziraphale says quickly. “You must let me tell it, it’s my story."
Crowley wonders which ones are his stories, by Aziraphale’s estimations. But he leans his chin on his hand and makes a loose ‘carry on then’ gesture in the angel’s direction. Aziraphale did this all through supper too, and Crowley will never admit it, but he likes it — this acting as though they’ve told and bickered over these stories a thousand times, when who would they have told them to? They’re on their own side. Anathema and Newt seem to be enjoying them, though.
“It was at the height of the Blitz,” Aziraphale begins, eyes alight. “My bookshop was well established by that point, of course, as was the reputation of my collection of first edition prophecy.”
Crowley listens. He listens, and he looks. He’s glad Aziraphale has always let him look. He’s sure he must seem an idiot, he knows Aziraphale has noticed. He’ll glance over at Crowley as he stares, and make a little self-conscious wiggle, and glance away again, pretending nothing is out of the ordinary. Well, maybe it isn’t. Crowley has been staring for a long time. He can stand all this a long time more, as long as he’s allowed to look.
Their human hosts are paying nearly as close attention as Crowley is. Aziraphale is a decent storyteller when he gets going, Crowley can admit. He ought to be, with all those books he reads.
“‘We are all here,’ said the wretch, and then the young woman turned her pistol upon me!” Aziraphale declares. Anathema grins, and Newt gasps satisfyingly. Crowley crosses his arms over his chest and his ankles under the table. He is amused to see Aziraphale has, over the last several decades, renegotiated the egg on his face into a thrilling twist in his pulpy spy adventure. He’s interested to see how he comes out in this version. He doesn’t have to wait long.
“And just when everything seemed lost,” Aziraphale says now, his voice hushed, and then flings his arms wide in a gesture that almost knocks over Crowley’s glass. “The church doors fly open!”
He suddenly turns a smile on Crowley that nearly shrivels the demon like a worm on the pavement when the sun comes out.
“And dear Crowley comes marching in,” he says, voice shining with admiration, which would be bad enough without the ‘dear.’ Crowley scowls and fights against a blush, especially when Aziraphale’s audience turns toward him as well. He also doesn’t remember “marching” being the right word, but like Heaven is he going to say anything about that .
Aziraphale gives Crowley a few heroic zings he doesn't remember saying. He also outright omits asking Crowley if he was working with the Nazis, which Crowley is honestly fine with, as the accusation didn’t flatter either of them.
“The bomb fell,” Aziraphale says, “with a noise like you can't imagine, and when the dust had settled, there we stood, the filthy Nazis dead and us safe as houses.”
Is that where he's ending it? Surely he hasn't forgotten— no, it's a surprise, he sees the twinkle in the angel’s eye now.
“But in my rush to protect us,” Aziraphale says, his voice convincingly mournful, “I’d completely forgotten the books!” Anathema’s hands fly up to cover her mouth in sympathetic horror. “I was sure they were buried in rubble at the least, probably burning, utterly lost.”
There's that smile again, turned toward Crowley. He's better prepared for it this time and stays mostly stoic.
“And then Crowley put the bag in my hand,” he says, his eyes impossibly warm. “I'd forgotten my own treasured books in the fuss, but he hadn't. He'd spared one more miracle to rescue them for me.”
Crowley gazes back at him, allowing himself to soak up Aziraphale's admiration and gratitude. It's nice. It's almost too nice — he has to take a sip of wine to hide his smile behind his glass.
Aziraphale sighs happily, and turns back to their hosts.
“And that's when I knew it was love,” he says.
There's an unfortunate few moments between Aziraphale saying this, and Crowley remembering that, as a demon, he can simply disappear the half a glass of wine that's ended up down his windpipe. He snaps his fingers and sucks in a breath.
The whole table is looking at him.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Aziraphale asks with concern.
“Fine, I’m fine,“ Crowley rasps. “Obviously I’m fine. Just some wine down the... down the wrong, uh, tube. It’s fine.”
Aziraphale coos sympathetically. Anathema is developing a worryingly knowing expression.
Everyone is still looking at Crowley.
"Anyway, great story, angel. Think I’ll step out for a, uh. Smoke.”
He doesn't run for the door, exactly, but it's a near thing.
The cottage’s namesake is blooming now, seeping perfume over the moon-washed front yard. Crowley stands and takes in one great lungful of it, and then another. He doesn’t get much more than that before he hears the front door creak open. He has just the presence of mind to miracle a lit cigarette into his hand. He hopes it’s Newt, or even Anathema.
It’s not.
“You haven’t smoked for ages,” comes Aziraphale’s voice behind him. It is neither suspicious nor accusatory, just a banal observation. Crowley lifts the cigarette to his lips and takes a defiant drag anyway.
Aziraphale is silent. Every one of Crowley's nerves is jangling in the quiet, the impossible word filling the air love love love like the scent of jasmine. What the fuck? What the fuck?
Crowley waits until he can't anymore, waits deliberately, knowing already that Aziraphale won’t speak first.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” he grits out at last.
“I might ask the same,” says Aziraphale mildly. “Our hosts are a little worried, I think.”
Crowley takes a moment to cope with the injustice of that. When he's done, he turns to face Aziraphale. The angel has manifested his own cigarette, and looks up expectantly from its slow scribble of smoke.
Crowley takes another moment, making sure he's capable of pronouncing every word he's about to say.
“‘That's when you knew it was love’?” he says. He speaks crisply, precisely. If he doesn't stay clinical here, he's going to lose his damn mind.
Aziraphale finally looks a little self conscious.
“Yes, well,” he says. “I know we've had some setbacks” — Does he mean the Apocalypse? Is he referring to the Apocalypse as a setback? — “and I know we're going at our own pace, and being discreet, but they're such lovely young people, I don't think they're going to tell anyone.”
Crowley has a few seconds to puzzle over that, his mouth hanging open, feeling as he might if Aziraphale had just handed him, with utter confidence, a bedazzled rutabaga.
“And, and, and besides,” Aziraphale adds, and Crowley recognises, with distant alarm, the marks of Aziraphale blowing on the embers of a Proper Strop. The rutabaga was important; Crowley's bafflement at its presence has been noted but misidentified, possibly, as distaste. “It's been almost a year , Crowley.”
Crowley stares, his cigarette limp in his fingers.
“A year?” he dares to say.
“Since they’ve left us alone,” Aziraphale huffs. “Which we don't know how long they’re going to do that, might I add, and oh, I'm not trying to rush you,” he tacks on, already backing down with no input from Crowley.
Crowley isolates this one thought and identifies it as something he can put handles on.
“Rush me into what?” he says.
It isn't surprising that Aziraphale immediately balks.
“No, you're right,” he says, which would be more satisfying to hear if Crowley knew what it was he’s supposed to be right about. “We have plenty of time. I'm sorry I—”
“Angel,” Crowley cuts him off, more in the tone of a warning than an endearment. “Rush me into what, specifically?” He will not grit his teeth. He will not shake Aziraphale by the shoulders. “What are you waiting for me to do? ” No saint ever claimed by the Other Side ever had as much patience. “Do you have any requests?”
Conflict wars on Aziraphale's face, before resolving into a mulish pout.
“Well, you could get around to kissing me, for starters,” he says, and Crowley still doesn't have any idea what the fuck is going on, but he can do that.
He doesn't think to drop or vanish the cigarette, so all he can do is stride forward and cup the back of Aziraphale's head with his unoccupied hand and kiss him. Aziraphale squeaks into his mouth like he's surprised, which is pretty rich from someone who asked to be kissed not ten seconds ago, but he's also wrapping his arms around Crowley's neck, so Crowley doesn't pull away. He just kisses Aziraphale, as hard and sweet and deep as he always wanted to.
After a minute it seems smart to pretend he needs to breathe, and he separates from Aziraphale with only a small embarrassing gasp. Aziraphale blinks at him, looking very well snogged. Crowley clears his throat and steps back out of the circle of his arms, because if he doesn't he's just going to kiss Aziraphale again, and that won't get them anywhere.
The angel's arms drop to his side, his face utterly unreadable. Crowley takes a nervous puff on the cigarette he'd almost forgotten he was still holding.
"Request granted,” Crowley harrumphs. “Now would you like to explain to me what's going on?”
Aziraphale blinks again, closes his mouth.
“Where should I start?” Aziraphale says simply.
Crowley gestures widely with the half burnt-down cigarette.
"We might start at the Blitz, it seems,” he says, more casually than he feels.
Even in the dim glow of the porch light, Crowley can see Aziraphale's eyes soften.
"I knew it was love,” he says, using the same words, the same warmth. Crowley fights the strange panic it flutters in his chest and focuses on filling and emptying his lungs in a slow, measured way.
"First I'm hearing about it,” Crowley mumbles, and even though Aziraphale blushes, that's not exactly true, is it?
You go too fast for me, Crowley. It's not the same thing as ‘Give up Crowley, it's never going to happen.’ So Crowley had waited. And Aziraphale…
“You said we've had some setbacks?” Crowley ventures, and Aziraphale sighs, pressing his lips together and dipping his eyes toward the ground.
“A conservative way to describe it, I know. I'm surprised you took me back at all after the things I said. I'm ashamed to think of them.”
Things he said…? Ah. He doesn't mean the Apocalypse, apparently, just those handful of moments in it when he'd broken Crowley's heart.
Wait. Took him back?
“You said we were going at our own pace,” Crowley remembers, an honest to Somebody theory starting to form, and a buzzing crescendoing in his ears. “And being discreet.”
“We had a lot to lose,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Heaven and Hell were watching, we didn't know how closely. But we had time, even when we didn't have anything else. And we still do, of course, I didn’t mean to—”
Crowley holds up a hand, silencing him. The buzzing has stopped. He feels very calm all of a sudden. He takes off his sunglasses slowly.
“By your estimation,” he says, “how long would you say we've been in a…” Crowley pauses, sucks his teeth consideringly. “...relationship?”
Aziraphale still has his eyes fixed on the cottage's front stoop, but he glances up at Crowley's face for a second at that.
“It's, ah. It's all a bit nebulous,” he hedges, which Crowley waves away.
“Sure, sure,” he says generously. “But your best guess, at the earliest.”
Aziraphale is fiddling uneasily with the hem of his waistcoat now, and has dragged his eyes up as far as Crowley's shoulder.
“We went for dinner,” Aziraphale says. “And I told you I… enjoyed your company. And you said the feeling was mutual.”
“And this was when?” Crowley prompts.
“April,” Aziraphale mumbles. “1941.”
So about a month after the bomb and the church.
So about eighty years.
“Right,” says Crowley. Aziraphale's shoulders slump.
“Clearly I've gotten something dreadfully wrong,” he frets, wringing his hands. His cigarette has disappeared, probably right about when Aziraphale forgot he was holding it.
Crowley drops his own stub of cigarette and grinds it out carefully under his shoe, his eyes trained on the action and his hands stuffed halfway into his pants pockets.
"I have,” Aziraphale moans, as though Crowley has answered a question he’s asked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I knew even then that I was being silly, but I was sure since then we’d… you’d…”
"It was our anniversary,” Crowley says, stepping on the end of Aziraphale’s distress. Aziraphale clamps his mouth shut over his abandoned thought. Crowley is still frowning over the mental maths.
"Couple of weeks ago, wasn't it?” Crowley says, squinting. Aziraphale blinks rapidly for a moment.
“Yes,” he says.
They look at each other for another moment while Crowley considers this. The crickets trill serenely in the dark.
"The picnic?” he guesses. “The cufflinks?“
Aziraphale clears his throat.
“Yes," he admits.
Crowley cocks his head. He’s fighting a bubbling feeling in his chest and a smile that wants to stretch his face foolishly, but he's staying stoic, he's being cool.
“I didn’t get you anything,” he says.
The tension is leaking from Aziraphale now. He breathes a sigh and dimples shyly at Crowley.
“That's quite all right, my dear,” he says.
Crowley steps forward and takes his hand impulsively, because he can, because Aziraphale is his… his what? Boyfriend? No, Newt in there is a boyfriend. Aziraphale is his… sweetheart? Ech. Lover? Oof. Aziraphale is his…
Aziraphale is his. Who would’ve guessed?
“Come on back inside, angel,” he says. “Pretty sure I smelled dessert earlier.”
He's a little dizzy, a little bewildered still, but everything else they can figure out later, somewhere other than a human’s front step. Aziraphale beams at him.
“I saw a collection of James Bond video recordings on their shelf,” he says. “I think they're Newton's. I'm sure he'd like to talk to you about them.”
“He probably swears by Tomorrow Never Dies, ” Crowley grumbles, but judging by Aziraphale's smile, he's not fooled.
He pulls Aziraphale in for another kiss, quick but firm. There will be time. There has been time, apparently.
He pulls away again, biting back a bright grin. The evening falls thick on the trees, and the flowers, and Lower Tadfield, and all creatures great and small, and the smell of jasmine follows the two of them back into the cottage.