Chapter Text
Aziraphale chuckled, sitting back on his heels as he scrubbed the last of the paint off the bookshop floor. "I’ve never been so glad to be wrong!”
Crowley boggled. “Glad? What?”
“Sharing a body didn't make us explode!" Aziraphale grinned, his eyes sparkling with mirth and mischief.
The demon laughed, and leaned across to kiss him on the nose.
“Well, putting it that way, Angel, I’ve never been so glad you were right!”
—
Aziraphale bit his lip nervously as Crowley stared at him, aghast at his - admittedly profoundly unorthodox - suggestion.
“I thought you said a demon and an angel sharing a body would-”
“- ‘probably explode’. Yes, I know. And I do still think a single human body would probably explode if we tried to cram two ethereal beings fully into it at once. But Crowley, Agnes was never wrong. And we wouldn’t actually both occupy a single body together. For a moment, we’d cross paths, yes, but there’d still be two full bodies for the two of us, both designed to carry ethereal beings!”
Crowley nodded thoughtfully, exhaustion lending tarnish to his beautiful golden eyes. “‘Kay, but ethereal and occult at the same time, though?”
“That’s just it!” Aziraphale wiggled with excitement as he gained momentum. “It was demons being able to possess humans that made me realize I could do it in the first place. Demons were angels once. What if you still are? What if ‘demon’ is just another job title, like ‘Angel of the Eastern Gate’? I haven’t been that for millennia, and my powers haven’t changed in the slightest. Have yours? You’ve been blessing and I’ve been tempting for centuries!”
The demon frowned, looking down. “I’m still burned by consecrated ground.”
That did give Aziraphale a moment of pause. The whole point of this was their respective vulnerabilities and immunities being reciprocal. Clearly there were still differences between angels and demons beyond job title, but even so, those differences were grounded in each other. If nothing else…
“I’m fairly certain we’d have noticed by now if a space was consecrated by my simply occupying it, my dear.”
Crowley nodded again, the hint of a smile finally pulling at his lips. When he looked up, his eyes were gloriously bright again. As they should be.
“Yeah. Okay. I see where you’re going with this, Angel. So how do we do it?”
“I think-” Aziraphale clasped his hands together to keep them from fluttering, and cleared his throat. “Well, that is, I think touch would help. And then we just sort of… pour into each other’s corporations. But we need to be certain we do it at roughly the same time.”
Crowley stared at him blankly for a moment. “You realize I have no idea what that means, yeah?”
“I think I do. And perhaps, once you feel it, you’ll understand?”
“You want to ‘pour into me’?”
Oh, my dearest, you have no idea.
“Something like that, yes.”
Crowley shrugged and held out his hand. “Alright. Let’s give it a go.”
—
Crowley wasn’t sure what he expected it to feel like, the angel ‘pouring into’ him. He just knew that, even if it destroyed him, he’d rather go out holding Aziraphale’s hand. And if there was a chance - any chance at all - it would save them, well, it was worth it, wasn’t it?
So he held out his hand, and Aziraphale took it.
At first it was just a tingling, like the static of a radio, all noise, no signal. Then a feeling like his hand had a bit too much in it, too much signal becoming noise. It wasn’t painful, exactly, just deeply uncomfortable, like pressure in the ears when they need to pop, only it wasn’t his ears, it was his whole arm, and popping just then would be a very bad idea.
The flow, the fullness, reached up his arm to his chest, filling his torso, flooding his heart.
He gasped as his knees buckled.
Aziraphale caught him effortlessly, and carried him to his bedroom, knowing now where it was without needing to be told. The angel laid him carefully down and stretched out next to him, all without releasing his hand, nor withdrawing.
The feeling flooding Crowley’s chest was distressingly, unmistakably love. Like every ounce of feeling he’d bourne for six thousand years, carefully hidden from Hell and the angel alike, dangerously seeping out at the edges whenever they were together - it was all suddenly collected, all pooled in one place, and then echoed, compounded.
He couldn’t breathe.
This isn’t my love for Aziraphale, Crowley realized, eyes wide. This is Aziraphale’s love.
“Crowley,” the angel whispered, “You’ve got to let go. This won’t work if you don’t do it too.”
“I… Aziraphale…” It came out a bit like a sob.
“Shhhh, I know. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to push. I have you. Just stop holding back from me.”
How?!
Crowley closed his eyes and felt at the edges of himself. Not his body, but his spirit, the space that wasn’t anywhere, occupied by his wings, his serpent form, his heart. Being contained on every possible level was how both he and Aziraphale had survived all these years.
How was he just supposed to let go?
“You’ll still be contained, Crowley.”
Had he spoken aloud?
Had Aziraphale??
“Just let me contain you. I know you trust me.”
Crowley let himself sob, and turn in towards Aziraphale, his instinct to contain himself at all costs warring with a compulsion to crawl into the source of all that love, and never let go again.
“Yes, I trust you.”
“Trust yourself.”
He reached out with some part of himself, trying, testing. If he couldn’t let go, maybe he could at least choose to go.
It really was like pouring into Aziraphale. Or more, two streams pouring past each other, tangling and stirring, but never exactly blurring. He didn’t lose track of who he was, who Aziraphale was. It was more eddie currents, swirls of Aziraphale twisted around curls of Crowley, welcoming, embracing. He could feel him, hear what the angel never said, see what he never showed.
Aziraphale’s love wasn’t just that ambient compassion Heaven professed towards the whole of Creation. Certainly he did hold that, yes, but there was more. Some of it, Crowley already knew - deep appreciation for the beauty of symphonies, great affection for hand-crafted books, profound craving for a well-prepared feast.
But there, overflowing all of those cherished worldly pleasures, was Aziraphale’s love specifically for Crowley.
Crowley gasped with two mouths, tears flowing unchecked from two pairs of eyes. He felt their hands clasped from both sides, his unoccupied hand on his other body’s arm, holding him steady. He concentrated, opened his mouth - just his original mouth - to speak, his tongue thick, his mouth too full. He didn’t dare open his eyes.
“Angel?”
“Yes, love?”
How could he put this into words? He could barely form the thoughts. But then, he didn’t need to, did he?
“Yes, love. I know. I feel you, too.”
How can you be so calm about this? I know you feared. Now I can see why, feel all you carried, too. I have barely contained just myself all these years, how can you bear the both of us now?
A rush of affection. Amusement. Acceptance. Concern. Vigilance.
Aziraphale’s overwhelm had been from trying to reconcile his love for Crowley and the world with his obligations to Heaven. He no longer cared for Heaven’s opinions on the matter, and they’d already done all they could to save the world.
His only concern in this moment was protecting Crowley.
From what?
“At the moment, from this process going wrong.”
Guardian. Right, ‘course.
“I’m not less amazed than you are, dearest. I’m not. I truly had no idea you were grieving me today! I suspected you loved me decades ago, but I hadn’t realized you’d thought I’d been destroyed. I’m so, so sorry, my love. I’m here now. I’m right here. And if I have any say in the matter, we will never be parted again.”
Four eyes opened. Two bodies shook with overwhelming love and awe. It certainly felt like something was exploding. His hearts, maybe.
Crowley let go.
For a moment, just a moment, there were no corporations to inhabit or exchange. There was no physical world to occupy. They weren’t two beings, an angel, and a demon, trying to find each other from opposite sides of a divide they never chose.
There was just this.
For just a moment, they were on their own side, and they, as one, knew exactly what that truly meant.
It wasn’t that time had stopped. Crowley knew how that felt, had already exhausted what power he had to do so hours before. Aziraphale, too, had experienced it repeatedly with him over the millennia. It was simply that time was as immeasurable as being, and, for just a moment, they stopped trying to measure it.
The next moment, Crowley held Aziraphale’s hand up to Aziraphale’s eyes, and smirked.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured, doing his best to imitate his beloved angel’s scholarly affect.
His own voice replied, an unusual note of cheerful amusement seeping through “It’s not that bad, once you get used to it.”
—
Despite centuries of their Arrangement saddling Aziraphale with the temptation and obstruction duties of a demon, he had not often had the opportunity to be truly impish. Even two days before, he’d have loathed to admit it, but Crowley’s creative mischief was one of his most beloved traits. For all Aziraphale had overtly disapproved, he knew now - they both knew, now - that Crowley understood he was rarely terribly serious about it.
But this was an unprecedented opportunity. The princes and dukes of Hell, and all their subordinate demons watching, chanting “Guilty!” to the kangaroo court. Well, it was downright Biblical, wasn’t it?
And now, here they all were, frozen in confused horror as Aziraphale slowly dipped Crowley’s angel-occupied corporation into a bathtub of the holiest water in creation.
And he got to ask them for a rubber duck!
(Crowley always did seem a bit obsessed with ducks.)
Aziraphale watched carefully, memorizing the expression on each and every despised face - particularly Hastur’s - so he could describe them all later to his beloved demon in suitable detail. And if he made a special point of sassing the Archangel Michael while he was at it, well, he was quite sure Crowley would approve.
—
Crowley had never especially missed Heaven. The heavens, yes - it had been far too long since he’d cradled a nebula in his hands, and it pained him, at times, knowing he likely never would again. But Heaven had always been boring at best. The only thing it had over Hell was the cleaning staff.
If Gabriel had shown this kind of murderous wrath before the first war, Crowley was fairly certain he’d have ended up a Prince of Hell himself long since. But no, angels stopped falling once Heaven’s population was conveniently halved.
(Don’t think Crowley didn’t notice. ‘Great pustulent mangled bollocks to the Great blasted Plan’ indeed.)
Aziraphale was right. Demons weren’t really the opposite of angels because hate isn’t really the opposite of love. Whichever side of the line in the sand they all defined themselves by, it was the same bloody line defining them, wasn’t it? And these angels were handily proving the point several times over.
“We were finally going to settle things with the opposition once and for all!” Gabriel said, right after the ‘opposition’ walked right in, delivering Hellfire to obliterate one of their own. Bloody hypocrites.
Watching the Archangel fucking Gabriel tell another angel - his angel - to “shut [his] stupid mouth and die already”, fully expecting him to exterminate himself simply because Heaven ordered it - well, it wasn’t exactly fun. But it made stepping into the Hellfire all the more satisfying , not to mention the pure visceral pleasure of breathing that fire directly at them.
The shock on their faces was worth every moment. Let them know fear.
They wouldn’t dare lay one Heavenly finger on his angel ever again.
—
Aziraphale laughed with his whole body, now, as he leaned back into the old couch they’d yet to move from the back room of the bookshop. Crowley watched, not even trying not to smile anymore.
“Oh, my dearest, you should have seen the look on Hastur’s face! If I didn’t know better, I’d think the stench emanating from his corporation was from soiling himself out of utter terror! And Michael! ”
Crowley laughed too, now. “That I am sorry I missed, Angel. Probably best Michael wasn’t in Heaven, though. The other three had no clue what to do with ‘you’.”
Aziraphale waved a hand, dismissively. “Michael was at a total loss as well.” He sighed, leaning against Crowley, his head coming to rest affectionately on the demon’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s not forever, but howevermuch time we’ve won ourselves, it’s worth it.”
“Absolutely. And Angel?”
“Yes, my dearest?” Aziraphale looked up at him with wide, affectionate eyes.
Crowley gave him a sly smirk, and then leaned down to give him kiss.
“For the record, if it means I get to have you inside me, you’re welcome to make me explode any time you like.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes, swatted Crowley with the back of his hand, and then pulled him down for another, more thorough kiss.