Chapter Text
It was hard to understand Envy in The Before. Technically, sin didn’t exist yet, Lucifer hadn’t even fallen, no bad things could exist. And technically, all the angels should love everything equally, in second place to their love of God. But Aziraphale remembered some angels that seemed to put ‘everything’ in third, with one or two specific somethings in second. Sometimes, it was a specific someone.
He’d catch a seraphim casting longing glances towards a dominion of a completely separate sphere and not understand why. And worse, he didn’t understand why he wanted to understand so badly.
It was normal to see angels huddled close together, and for two angels to wander off to float together in the halfway formed clouds was fine. No one seemed to pay it much attention when angels on different projects lay down in pairs on the newly designed grass species. They rarely touched. Bodies were for the tasks they were assigned, for designing grasses and forming clouds. The angels that did this seemed to find contentment simply existing near each other.
Aziraphale often wondered how they decided to be together. Did one of them ask or did they simply feel an ineffable pull towards each other? Was it hard to be apart? Why didn’t they reach out and let their fingertips meet?
He could ask God, but there was something about the idea of mixing Her and questions together that gave him a sense of dread. Yet another on the list of feelings that didn’t have language yet.
There was The War, and time began, and Aziraphale never saw angels lying together anymore. How many of them had been torn apart, on different sides of the battlefield? Or were they still drifting near each other, somewhere wandering together during their assignments, only daring to lean on each other when no one was looking?
More unspoken questions, never more answers.
It certainly wasn’t as if the other angels would tell him, in the millennia that followed. In the early days, everyone was avoiding talking to each other as much as possible. But later, he knew the other angels chattered, heard them whisper as he took the stairs and later escalator up to Heaven, only for them to fall silent when they saw him.
Like they could smell the earth on him and thought him corrupted for it.
Or perhaps he was just being anxious, another feeling that he only learned the word for from his time on Earth. There were other angels stationed outside of Heaven; did they have trouble coming back?
The way archangels talked to him made Aziraphale wonder if it was just him. Something beyond the dirt on the soles of his shoes, past the real threads that made up his non-magical clothing. Something about him was the problem.
For a few centuries, Aziraphale wondered if it was Crowley. Not that Crowley was the problem, of course. Crowley was the only one who ever gave him answers, even to the unspoken questions. Something with his aura, no fault of his own, must be alerting Heaven that something was wrong with Aziraphale.
Yet the idea of avoiding Crowley made another unnamed emotion roll through him, and Aziraphale dismissed the idea out of hand. He didn’t need to understand the feeling to know he never wanted to feel it again.
Existence could be service to God, while sneaking around Heaven, and spending time with Crowley.
For a long time, Aziraphale could balance those things. The humans taught him the words for affection, the words for loneliness. Crowley answered his questions before Aziraphale had to ask. Yes, he should try the ox ribs. No, a sip of wine wasn’t soiling his vessel.
As time passed, one curiosity went unresolved, and the longer he went without knowing, the more Aziraphale found himself thinking about it. What would Crowley’s fingertips feel like pressed into his own? Did demons flock together, lying next to each other?
It was as Crowley was handing him his books, the rubble of a church beneath their feet, that it almost happened. They’d touched before, a hand on a shoulder, a hug when in Rome, but always with gloves, always through fabric. For the first time, Crowley’s warm skin was the closest it had ever been to Aziraphale’s own.
They didn’t have much time left, did they?
“Crowley—”
He had already let go by the time Aziraphale managed to speak, had already walked through some of the crumbling stones. “Yea?”
For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Did his feet hurt from the way he had to jump early? Did he still hurt from the last time Aziraphale had told him ‘thank you’ in a graveyard?
Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to take the risk. He shook his head, smiling as best he could, and Crowley said something about getting into his car. It was hard to hear over the ringing in his ears that had nothing to do with any potential corporation damage from the bombs. Who might have seen them? Did they get too close? Hell could punish Crowley, Heaven could punish them both. Or worse, Crowley might not feel the same.
That Furfur thought the photo of them on that West End stage was anywhere near as dangerous as the fires left behind at that church made Aziraphale feel like his sanity was at risk. And he just had to keep going, keep doing his job, like the world wasn’t collapsing around him.
Before he knew it, time had slipped through his barren fingers completely. As he stood with Crowley at The End, Aziraphale promised himself that if they eked out any more time, he’d make every second worth it.
And by Her Grace, they did.
Once was lucky. Twice was a miracle.
“It’s different.” That wasn’t how Aziraphale intended to start this conversation, but at least he managed to say something. The irony of Crowley’s silence wasn’t lost on him. Aziraphale himself had threatened the same thing last time.
He stood with Crowley at The End, again, and the sky above them was finally void of clouds. Aziraphale wasn’t sure where on Earth this last stand had taken place, but it was more pleasant than the Tadfield airbase. There was no concrete, nothing human made within the curving bounds of the horizon. Just blue sky and slowly waving stalks of grass.
Crowley didn’t give him more than a grunt. At least he wasn’t outright ignoring him anymore.
“The last time,” Aziraphale tried to explain, “when the world was supposed to end. You invited me to dinner and it was lovely and—”
“Yeah, not doing that again,” Crowley scoffed.
Wanting to reach out and touch Crowley was not a new sensation. Not even this particular flavor of wanting to reach out, in the form of throttling him. Crowley had a right to be stubborn, though Aziraphale didn’t have to like it.
He took a breath and, somehow, managed to press on. “The nightingales. I hadn’t heard them then. You, uh, mentioned them the last time we…” He hadn’t been back to the bookshop since he’d come back to Earth. Did Crowley ever visit it or did the memory haunt him from a distance too? “I still don’t hear them,” Aziraphale admitted, fidgeting with the familiar texture of his waistcoat. He had missed the fibers of human imperfection.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale watched Crowley go through several facial expressions. Obvious rage, obvious sorrow, and then a series of emotions that Aziraphale couldn’t name. He’d never seen Crowley’s cheeks hollow quite like that, never seen his eyebrows move in that particular way. How did he change so much, so quickly? And if Aziraphale were to look in a mirror, how much had he too changed?
Finally, Crowley seemed to settle on something that was dangerously close to a four letter word. “What do you hear, Aziraphale?”
Why wouldn’t Crowley call him angel? They’d only been on speaking terms again for a few days, but Aziraphale missed the endearment deeply.
With another deep breath, he listened. There was the steady wind through the tall grass. Distantly there was traffic, along the unseen road they might take to get back to London. If he listened very closely, his divine senses could hear the motes of dust bump against each other in the sunlight.
He did not hear nightingales, though there were certainly some wrens and a small group of bumblebees. Aziraphale strained his senses for another moment, because something had changed since the last time the world didn’t end, if only he could figure out what.
He felt it in his heart before he really understood what had happened. While technically a sound, it wasn’t something his corporation could hear. The frequency of angelic harmonies, choirs all in white that so often made Aziraphale feel what he could now label as nauseous, was about as close as he could describe the ineffable background ticking of the universe as it counted down to Her grand finale.
“It stopped.” Aziraphale whispered. Was this feeling terror or joy?
Crowley gave a sad smile. “Welcome to forever.”
There was a pause, the wind shifting between them. For a second, Aziraphale wondered if Crowley was alright, swaying slightly and almost leaning towards Aziraphale. But the moment passed and, without another word, Crowley turned and walked away. Presumably towards the road, but Aziraphale couldn’t tell which way was up or down, let alone where tangible objects were, as he watched Crowley leave.
A single syllable whispered its way past his lips, not loud enough to be heard over the distance. He wasn’t even sure what to say, all he wanted was to say the right thing, though God only knew what that was.
Or rather, Aziraphale realized with dread, She probably didn’t. And even if She did, She hadn’t helped him before and certainly wouldn’t be helping him now.
As Crowley disappeared into the swaying of the grass along the horizon, Aziraphale let himself fall to sit on the earth, weighed down with the realization that he was, for perhaps the very first time, completely alone. There would be no more answers given free of questions, no divine scripture to take comfort in repeating. He would have to solve this by himself.