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It had been nearly a week of Crowley navigating the new dynamic between him and the former guardian of the Eastern Gate. Nearly a week since Crowley realized Aziraphale’s plan to write a novel was nothing short of a ruse. Nearly a week since Crowley called his friend out on said ruse and kissed Aziraphale for the first time.
Both he and the angel were eager to explore whatever this overwhelming all consuming thing between them was. The tricky part was they weren’t really in a new relationship– they were simply acknowledging a love that had dared not speak its name for the past six thousand years.
Unlearning thousands of years worth of poor communication habits was surprisingly difficult. That was why now– after taking Aziraphale out to the Ritz as a proper date this time– Crowley stood awkwardly outside his Bentley, fidgeting with his necktie.
He and his angel had had an absolutely wonderful lunch and now it was over but Crowley– Crowley didn’t want it to end. The temptation to stay with Aziraphale for a few more minutes– heaven, a few more seconds, really– was downright torturous. But old habits die hard.
Even now that they were together, Crowley was reluctant to take risks. To ask for too much. To go too fast. Fortunately Aziraphale, catching the subtle clench of his partner’s jaw, was quick to offer up an excuse, just as he had done during the days of their Arrangement.
“Would you mind joining me inside? Just for a few minutes, I mean,” Aziraphale clarified quickly. “You see, I’ve been thinking of getting some plants for the bookshop and could use an expert’s advice.”
Crowley chuckled at that.
“You spent five years working as a gardener, angel.”
Aziraphale blushed, wringing his hands together sheepishly.
“Well, yes, but I… I cheated !”
Crowley grinned, all anxiety from earlier forgotten as he followed Aziraphale into the bookshop.
“You whot?”
Aziraphale sighed, his lips twitching into a begrudging smile.
“I don’t have the natural talent for it, my dear. Not like you do.”
“And yet you were the one chosen to guard the apple tree…”
Aziraphale scrunched his nose in an adorable display before clicking his tongue and correcting Crowley.
“As I’ve told you countless times now, my celestial assignment had nothing to do with botany. It was military service. Well, to an extent. In actuality, all I was meant to do was stand there and look pretty… but you already knew that. You just like teasing me,” Aziraphale realized, tutting.
“You are very good at looking pretty, angel,” Crowley murmured softly. “Don’t worry, I can help you with your plants. Knowing you, we should probably start with succulents…”
—
Unlike the whole novel situation, it turned out Aziraphale actually was considering trying his hand at gardening. Or at the very least, he was committing to the bit. Regardless, he and Crowley had been bantering away for hours now, just the way the demon liked it.
“Really, my dear boy, I don’t think yelling at them is productive. A gentle… Well, a softer touch might be better.”
Crowley scoffed at that, throwing out a hand.
“Right. Of course you would say that.”
Soft, squishy, gentle angel –
“What’s next? Are you going to suggest that I praise the plants?”
Aziraphale wiggled in his chair, humphing in a way that indicated that was precisely what he was going to say.
Crowley laughed aloud, but his demonic cackles faded as a picture of Aziraphale sprung to mind: the Principality was gardening, clutching a plant mister in one hand and a book in the other as he whispered sweet nothings to sunflowers and cacti and ferns.
Yes, his angel would be kind to the plants, caring to a fault just the way he was with Crowley.
It was embarrassing– humiliating, really– how without even trying, Aziraphale had turned the former serpent of Eden into an ooey-gooey fluffy mess. Crowley quickly ran a hand through his hair, trying and failing to compensate for the absolutely undemonic lovesick expression on his face.
When he finally had the strength to meet Aziraphale’s eyes again, the angel was looking at him curiously. Then he stood, excusing himself while pattering on about hot chocolate and putting a kettle on.
Crowley let him leave, flopping over onto his designated bookshop couch for a quick snooze. Aziraphale, after all, tended to be very meticulous when it came to brewing hot beverages; at times the ineffectual bookseller would take upwards of an hour to craft the perfect cup of chamomile.
Crowley decided to wake up sometime around sunset. He could do that– choose exactly when to wake up– so long as he had the mental energy. When he didn’t have the energy… Well, he could get a bit carried away. The demon had been known to sleep through the occasional decade or two out of boredom, and following he and Aziraphale’s argument in 1862, he napped for nearly an entire century out of spite.
When Crowley roused himself roughly forty minutes later, hopping off the couch in a noodly tangle of limbs, he gasped. It wasn’t sunset– in fact, it was impossible to tell what time it was because the sky outside wasn’t streaked with soft yellows or pastel pinks or any of the hallmarks of a dwindling day. Instead, the world beyond the walls of A.Z. Fell & Co was white. The bookshop, the old serpent realized with growing horror, was caught in the middle of a blizzard.
“Angel!” Crowley called, racing into the kitchen. “Angel!”
He nearly ran into Aziraphale who was holding two cups of hot chocolate and looked adorably pleased with himself.
“What is it, my dear boy?”
“Just–” Seeing no available hand to hold tenderly, Crowley snaked an arm around Aziraphale’s waist, urging him to follow. The angel, who had instantly gone soft and pliant at Crowley’s gentle touch, let himself be led along. Thirty seconds later they were standing together in the doorway of the bookshop, gazing outside.
“Look!”
Aziraphale blinked at the raging blizzard before shrugging and settling down in his armchair.
“Hmm.”
“Is that all you have to say about this? It’s snowing in the middle of November!” Crowley cried incredulously.
“This is what’s got you so alarmed? My silly old serpent, this is normal weather for this time of year. Well, a bit early in the season, perhaps, but nothing too unusual,” Aziraphale replied, never once tearing his mischievous eyes away from his hot chocolate.
And really, Crowley should have known his partner was up to something, but the truth was he was distracted : a fleck of whipped cream had caught on the corner of Aziraphale’s lips and the angel– bastard that he was– had the audacity to dart his tongue out of his cute little mouth and lick it up .
“M-my Bentley,” Crowley stammered once he was able to put a coherent thought together.
Aziraphale snapped his fingers.
“There we go. She’s safe and sound now– I’ve miracled her out to the country. It’s not snowing there, to my knowledge.”
Crowley nodded, setting himself down on the armrest of Aziraphale’s chair and taking a sip of his own hot chocolate. He didn’t adore food the way his angel did, but every now and then he liked to indulge. And of course, his partner had done a fantastic job brewing it.
“Well–”
“Well–”
Both man-shaped beings giggled sheepishly.
“You first,” Crowley insisted.
“Well, I suppose we ought to make ourselves comfortable,” Aziraphale offered with faux innocence. “After all, it seems we’ll be trapped here together for quite some time.”
A look passed between them– one Crowley recognized from the days of the Arrangement. This was one of their games: they were both perfectly capable of snapping their fingers and willing the snowstorm away, just like how the angel could have gotten himself out of the Bastille in 1793, and Crowley could have miracled up alcohol for himself in 1941.
But fixing their problems was never the point.
The real point– the unspoken point– was that the serpent and the Principality were incredibly and irrevocably in love and would do anything to spend more time in the other’s company. But seeing as both were unwilling and unable to ask for what they wanted, half measures and half-truths would have to do. The sweet sting of this dance they did– waltzing and side-stepping around their feelings– was so familiar it was almost comforting.
“Yup,” Crowley drawled, making a point of popping the ‘p’. “It certainly looks that way.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Aziraphale put on some music– classical music, of course, not ‘bebop’– and while Crowley had a preference for Queen, he was quite content to sit and watch his silly angel wriggle along in time to Tchaikovsky.
A blissful eternity later, Aziraphale switched off the record, looking at Crowley with an expression so fond the demon thought he might discorporate if he had to bear the brunt of that compassion-ridden stare for another second.
“Are you tired, my dearest? I know you enjoy sleeping regularly and… Oh you precious thing, you must be absolutely exhausted,” Aziraphale cooed.
With that, Crowley’s remaining brain cells all but evaporated. A full minute later he finally managed to mutter, “Nah, don’t worry about me, angel. I’ll just take a quick snooze on your couch and in the morning everything will be– what’s that ridiculous expression you love? ‘Absolutely tickety-boo.’”
Aziraphale shook his head, tutting and pacing the room.
“Certainly not, Crowley! We can’t have that.”
Before Crowley could object halfheartedly, they were both instantly transported to Aziraphale’s bedroom– a part of the bookshop that, like the kitchenette, popped in and out of existence sporadically, according to the angel’s ever-fluctuating whims.
The room was, of course, very Aziraphale : it was small, cozy, and incredibly beige– the bed itself, ridiculously enough, had tartan sheets.
Crowley was all too quick to surrender, summoning up a pair of pajamas and flopping himself down on the bed. He had already napped earlier, but he would be a fool to will his exhaustion away now.
“I like seeing you like this. Soft. Cozy. Safe,” Aziraphale confessed, lingering in the doorway.
Stay , Crowley urged silently, please just stay.
But when Crowley opened his mouth all he managed to do was tease Aziraphale.
“Right, well you should probably go. Don’t you have a novel to pretend to write?”
Aziraphale chuckled at that, but he didn’t turn to leave. No. Instead he waited, just like Crowley had in another life– a life that never was and never would be– leaning against the Bentley and watching Aziraphale with an aching heart, hoping and hurting and praying that he would change his mind. That he would stay .
Here, in a life far from that lonely imagined world, Crowley wanted Aziraphale to stay just as badly. Just as desperately.
He wanted and he wanted and he said nothing.
Finally Aziraphale sighed and smoothed his lapels, his bottom lip dipping into a subtle pout before he flicked off the light.
“I’ll go and do just that. Sweet dreams, my sweet thing.”
“I’m not sweet,” Crowley muttered, curling up under the tartan covers.
Aziraphale’s answering giggle echoed through the darkness.
“How silly of me. Of course you aren’t.”
—
Crowley woke up some time later from dreams so sweet they had practically caramelized him. Once he was finally level-headed enough to get out of Aziraphale’s bed, the demon sauntered back into the book part of the bookshop. Predictably enough, the angel was sitting stock-still in his armchair, glasses perched on his nose, completely and totally fixated on his reading.
“You’re not having anything for breakfast? No scones or little cakes?”
Aziraphale started, dropping his book onto his lap and blinking as he slowly but surely returned to the world of nonfiction.
“It’s kind of you to worry, my dear boy–”
“Not kind.”
“But I’ve already had breakfast. And lunch. And my afternoon tea. In fact, it’s really rather close to dinnertime. Should I have woken you? You looked so comfortable that my heart hurt every time I considered it.”
Crowley took a moment to revel in Aziraphale’s compassion before internally cursing his corporation for oversleeping and cheating him out of watching his angel eat two meals.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s fine.” Crowley snorted. “‘Absolutely tickety-boo’.”
With that, the demon sauntered over to the bookshop door to assess the whole trapped-in-a-blizzard situation. While it wasn’t actively snowing anymore, the stuff was piled everywhere, blocking the roads and the stairs leading up to A.Z. Fell & Co. And then there was the ice, which posed an invisible yet significant risk: getting discorporated by a literal misstep would be comically tragic and neither Aziraphale nor Crowley wanted to report to their former head offices anytime soon.
“It’s no use; there’s no way out.”
Aziraphale simply waggled his eyebrows at that, popping over to stand by the demon’s side.
“Not through the front door, that is; we can go out the back.”
Right. There was a small backyard behind the store– another space, like the bedroom, that Aziraphale willed in and out of existence, at, well, will. Crowley’s angel certainly had no qualms about a little spatial distortion. The bookshop itself was, subtly enough, bigger on the inside Tardis style– a fact the demon teased his partner about ceaselessly.
Aziraphale smiled, taking Crowley by the arm before murmuring, “It’s been quite some time since I’ve experienced a snow day like this one. What do you say we go out and make the most of it?”
The angel batted his eyes and really, how could Crowley refuse?
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
He snapped his fingers, summoning up an elegant black coat for himself and something soft and beige for the former guardian of the Eastern Gate. (Even though they didn’t really need winter clothing to keep warm.)
The rest of the afternoon– or early evening, as it were– was absolutely divine in a way neither heaven nor hell had ever been for the two of them. It took Aziraphale a few minutes to get used to the weather, testing the piles of snow cautiously with the sole of his shoe while Crowley jumped into them with reckless abandon.
Before long they were building two snowmen together: one tall and angular, the other short and round. Aziraphale plucked a spare bowtie out of his pocket, sticking it on the wider snowman’s neck before turning to Crowley, gesturing toward his chest.
“May I?”
“Hmm?”
“Your necktie,” Aziraphale clarified.
Crowley nodded.
“Oh. Yeah, sure.”
A moment later, Aziraphale was standing inches away, one hand bracing himself against Crowley’s chest, the other deftly undoing the cherished silver accessory the demon so often insisted on wearing. The former serpent of Eden was rendered speechless as the Principality caressed him softly before turning to finish their snow sculptures.
A few minutes later when Aziraphale stepped back to admire his handiwork, Crowley, unsurprisingly, was still a blushing flustered mess. Despite the fact he and Aziraphale were dating, bless it.
“Look,” the angel beamed, “it’s us .”
“Ngk,” Crowley managed to stammer before his brain short-circuited.
Aziraphale chuckled knowingly.
“Poor thing. I’ll leave you be for awhile.”
It took roughly fifteen minutes for Crowley.exe to start working again. In that time, Aziraphale hadn’t gone far– just to the other side of the physically impossible backyard. He was tracing some pretentious artistic design into the ground with his foot when Crowley struck, knocking the angel to the ground with a well-timed snowball.
Crowley swallowed as Aziraphale toppled over. Had he been too rough?
“Angel?” he asked, taking a tentative step forward.
No response.
“Angel, are you alright? I didn’t mean–”
Aziraphale shot to his feet, hurling a snowball directly into Crowley’s chest before sprinting away.
“Ha! Got you, you foul fiend!”
For an ethereal being who had given his flaming sword away almost immediately (by immortal standards) after getting it, Aziraphale was a ruthless soldier. So ruthless, in fact, that lovers’ snowball fight went on for hours. It was only when the first stars sparked into the night sky that they decided to call a begrudging truce involving a seasonal variation on their traditional apology dance.
“Alright, angel, my corporation is freezing so I’m going to head inside.”
Aziraphale nodded, understanding as always.
“Of course, I think I will as well and– Oh! I nearly forgot. There’s this thing the humans do in the snow…”
“If you’re going to suggest building a third snowman I’m going to have to disrespectfully decline. I would rather it just be a– ” Crowley fumbled for the word, coming up short sheepishly. “Well, a group of the two of us.”
“A couple,” Aziraphale supplied. “We are a couple , Crowley.”
Crowley flushed, a thrill running through him. It was one thing to know that; it was quite another for Aziraphale to say it so openly. It made him feel safe.
Cared for.
Loved.
“But I was actually referring to snow angels. As I was saying, the humans lay down in the snow and sort of flop around. So I was thinking–”
Crowley cut him off, delighted.
“That we show them up?”
“Quite right.”
Crowley watched, enchanted as Aziraphale flopped over on the ground, summoning his wings. They were delicate things. Precious. Pretty. And the last time Crowley had seen them he hadn’t been able to appreciate them properly; all of his mental resources had been devoted to the whole narrowly-averting-the-apocalypse thing. But now… Now Crowley had a chance to look .
Aziraphale’s wings were shimmering.
Elegant.
Ethereal.
“Look at you,” Crowley whispered, confessing before he could stop himself, “you’re gorgeous.”
With those five words the bouncy bookseller froze, going still against the snow.
“You know,” he finally breathed, the tips of his ears burning scarlet, “that’s one of the first things you said to me. Well, it wasn’t actually directed at me but I thought it was. Or I wanted it to be. I wanted–”
“I’ve wanted you since the beginning angel,” Crowley murmured. “Surely you must know that.”
“I’ve wanted you since even before then,” Aziraphale was quick to reply.
“It’s not a competition.”
“Of course it is.”
Crowley grinned, glancing down at Aziraphale in open admiration. He had to admit, making snow angels looked pretty fun. Even though, technically speaking, he would really be making a snow demon.
The ineffectual bookseller gestured to his right with an adorable little wiggle, effectively making Crowley’s choice for him. (Not that the serpent minded in the slightest.)
After a few minutes of writhing around like overcooked noodles, Aziraphale and Crowley stood, pleased with the way their respective snow entities had turned out.
“What would you say to some more hot chocolate, my dear boy?” the angel offered.
“I’d say that I’m supposed to be the tempter between the two of us…”
Crowley trailed off as Aziraphale pouted.
“But who am I to refuse?”
—
Crowley had no idea if the hot chocolate was good. (It was delicious, of course. His ethereal counterpart was an excellent chef.) He suspected he would have enjoyed the beverage if he had actually bothered to consume it, but Crowley was only pretending to drink. He had been doing so for the past ten minutes now.
He was seething, shrieking to himself silently, all while leaning against a bookshelf, looking like the picture of calm.
This predicament, of course, was all Aziraphale’s fault.
Predictably enough, after making their drinks, the angel had plopped himself down in his armchair, wrapped himself up in a blanket, and popped out his favorite Austen novel.
If that were the extent of his crimes, it would have been fine. Sure, Aziraphale looked absolutely adorable bundled up, but Crowley was able to watch him read, keeping a respectful distance without being driven to the brink of madness.
But the angel hadn’t stopped there. No. He had set down his book, popped over to his bedroom, and grabbed himself a throw pillow. A throw pillow he was currently cuddling, cradling in his arms, and clutching to his chest as he read.
It was beyond pathetic but Crowley had never been more envious in his life.
Of a pillow .
For fuck’s sake.
And now– Now Aziraphale was using the pillow to fidget, tapping his fingers against it gently, absentmindedly undoing Crowley by reminding the demon just how badly he wanted the angel’s fingers running through his hair, playing with his curls and–
And damn it all, he had been staring for too long, hadn’t he?
Yup.
Aziraphale closed his book, setting it to the side and cocking a concerned eyebrow.
“Is there something wrong, Crowley?”
Crowley shook his head, the old array of excuses poised on the tip of his formerly forked tongue.
“I– No, I’m alright.”
That’s when he saw it: one of his angel’s blink-and-you-miss-it micro expressions. It was a flash of frustration. Of disappointment.
With it, the demon’s resolve disintegrated.
“Actually, no, Aziraphale,” Crowley snapped, watching his partner sit up rapidly at the change in tone, “something is wrong. You are being unfair– unjust, even. I love you, we’re finally together after centuries of dancing our way around each other, and now you’re sitting and cuddling a pillow in your lap when I’m right here!”
Aziraphale’s eyes practically bulged out of their sockets as Crowley threw out a hand, gasping for air. Then the bastard angel started laughing, tossing his pillow aside and gesturing for Crowley to come and sit.
“Took you long enough, darling.”
“Angel, I have half a mind to– Took me long enough? What do you mean?”
“I was waiting for you to ask, dearest. You held out longer than I expected,” Azirapahle explained smugly. “If your gaze hadn’t been so fixated on the pillow in my lap you might have noticed that I haven’t turned a page in the last ten minutes.”
Crowley rolled his eyes, too delighted by his new proximity to his angel to truly be annoyed.
“So what? You were just having fun teasing me?”
“A little,” Aziraphale admitted, “but more importantly, if this is going to work– us, I mean– we need to learn to ask each other for what we want. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone about it like this. Maybe I should have sat you down from the beginning to have a proper conversation but… You know I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.”
Wait.
Did Aziraphale mean–
Crowley gasped.
“Angel you didn’t !”
Aziraphale wriggled in his seat, nodding sheepishly.
“No!”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Are you telling me,” Crowley drawled, filled with newfound admiration for the creature he had adored for the past six thousand years, “that you summoned up a blizzard just to get us to talk about our communication issues? You do see the irony in that, don’t you?”
“Hmph. I was just trying to save us time,” Aziraphale pouted. “We’ve already wasted so much time and… And as we’ve established, we both love each other. There’s no longer any need to invent excuses for that. That’s why, from now on, I want us to be completely open with each other about our needs. So, sure, you could say this was a dastardly scheme; you could also say I was calling us out on our collective bullshit.”
“Aziraphale!”
“What?”
“I’ve never heard you curse,” Crowley murmured in awe. He really did love it when his angel tapped into his bastard side.
“I have said ‘fuck’ before. Just before my bookshop…” a flicker of sadness crossed Aziraphale’s face. “Do you remember when I got discorporated?”
Crowley curled up closer to Aziraphale, wrapping his arms around him.
Of course he remembered.
It was the worst day of his life, after all. Worse than his Fall. Worse than the countless times he was dragged down to hell to be tortured. No, that infernal afternoon was a different kind of pain. It was an experience so excruciating– so soul-destroying– that he wouldn’t wish it on any enemy.
Standing in a sea of flames–
Searching desperately for the one person who makes life worth living not knowing if you’ll ever find them–
Screaming the name of the being you love–
Sobbing and seething and pleading with a god who never answers–
“Yes,” Crowley finally managed to hiss. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
Aziraphale lifted a hand, running his fingers gently through his demon’s hair to soothe him.
“Is there anything you do want to talk about?” the angel offered a few moments later when Crowley was secure once again.
“Well, naps. I love naps. Have you ever tried sleeping–” The fingers in Crowley’s hair stopped moving as Aziraphale clicked his tongue, tutting pedantically.
Right. Crowley needed to be direct .
“I want us to try falling asleep together sometimes. If that’s something you think you’d enjoy, I mean. Like, I know it’s my thing and not yours, so you don’t need to do it just because I like it.” Crowley cleared his throat, blushing as he collected his racing thoughts. “But I think it would be really nice.”
“I thought you weren’t nice,” Aziraphale teased, leaning forward to give Crowley a little kiss on the nose, “but I’m certainly amenable to that. You’re right that I don’t enjoy sleeping enough to make a habit of it… but I might be inclined to indulge on occasion, if the conditions were right. Say, if it were a cold snowy day, and I had a cuddly demon curled up next to me.”
“Say no more.”
Crowley beamed, sitting up and snapping his fingers, transporting both him and the angel to Schrodinger’s spare bedroom.
It was only once he and Aziraphale were spooning that Crowley realized what had happened.
“Angel!” he hissed incredulously into the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“You tempted me!”
There was a beat of silence. Then a giggle Crowley would spend the rest of his life cherishing.
“Oh, I suppose I did.”
The next morning the snow would miraculously disappear just as it had miraculously arrived and Crowley and Aziraphale would wake up side by side. They would eat breakfast together. Take the Bentley out for a drive. Kiss in St. James’s park. It would be a perfect day, just like all their tomorrows.