Chapter Text
Present Day, Soho
“Crowley? Is everything alright?” asked Aziraphale, peering at Crowley over the biographies in his arms.
Déjà vu. Émile Boirac described it as an abrupt sense of familiarity that impresses upon the waking state. St. Augustine called it a false memory. Plato, who believed that souls transmigrated from one body to another, might have called it a precognition from another life.
Crowley was no philosopher. He lacked their verbiage. He knew souls did not migrate. And he never met Boirac or St. Augustine but he had gotten drunk with Voltaire once, which basically made him just as much of an expert on the philosophy of the supernatural as the rest of them.
Plus, you know. Demon. If there was anyone that could speak to what déjà vu was, it was the occult being that had once talked to God Herself and was currently perched on the armchair of a certain angel’s bookshop, sipping from a glass of cabernet sauvignon. What it was — what all the rest of it was (silly words humans gave to things they didn’t really understand, like the big bang theory and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) — was fiction. An imaginary thing. Fiction based on dreams and memories, maybe, but certainly not false memories, and certainly not past lives.
And yet.
And yet, decided Crowley, who had been watching Aziraphale shelve his collection of Ernest Hemingways, thinking of how those words had been turning stubbornly in his head ever since their bus ride from Tadfield, I have been here before.
No, not the part about being in the bookshop, drinking wine, watching Aziraphale — nothing strange about that. This had become their regular Tuesday (and Wednesday and Thursday and all the other days) afternoon routine in the weeks following the not-pocalypse. Aziraphale, minding the shop. Crowley, minding Aziraphale. Evidently the recent exertions had shocked them into such a routine, which was not something Crowley could ever say they had before. They didn’t have routines, they had an Arrangement. Their meetups occurred at random. Crowley thought this — whatever it was, this delicate predictability, perhaps — was their way of dealing with the startling awareness of a new life. And the trauma that followed their old one.
Something else, then, something else was familiar about all this. It scratched underneath the surface of his skin, begging to be picked at like a scab. To expose the wound, to recall what made it.
It was a compulsion, Crowley realized with sudden understanding. That’s what the déjà vu was.
Is everything alright? Aziraphale had asked just now, voice wobbling over the Shostakovich record playing in the background. No doubt he’d caught the far-off look in Crowley’s eyes.
Crowley wondered — not for the first time — how he ought to feel knowing he could affect the angel in such a way. Stopped in his tracks. Brows furrowed with worry. Come up with something, Aziraphale had pleaded when the ground shook underneath them, or I’ll never talk to you again. It had been a heavy thing, the weight of Crowley’s fear. Laid bare before a bunch of snotty kids and the Antichrist.
But, as Crowley came to realize in the following days, Aziraphale hadn’t meant what he’d said as a threat. Hadn’t meant to strong-arm Crowley into submission.
Aziraphale had meant it as a prayer.
I have been here before, Crowley thought again with resolve. And, like the dozens of other times this moment has happened before, though he did not know how he could possibly know this, Crowley’s wrangled, reckless heart twisted with the certainty of what comes next. “Aziraphale,” Crowley said to wide blue eyes, “I’m in love with you.”
If he had any expectation of Aziraphale’s next words — and he did not, could not possibly conceive of any reaction, had never allowed himself to even imagine — it was certainly nothing close to this.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said with a rush of breath. “Again?”
____
2019, Tadfield
When Adam rewrote reality, and the black clouds of Satan’s constitution cleared the airfield, Crowley’s first thought was of the angel.
“Are we...safe?” Aziraphale asked from beside him. Crowley wondered when they had moved toward one another, and who had moved toward who. If he still believed in Her he might have prayed with all the relief he felt. For the briefest of moments he thought he did.
“We’re still here. We’re safe,” Crowley returned firmly, as though he could speak the words into being true.
Aziraphale examined his hands, turned them over. Looked at the sword that had stopped burning. An extension of its owner, like the tail of a dog, that had somehow known all was well and acted without being told. “Because of you,” he said in wonderment.
Crowley turned to Aziraphale with a start, embarrassed by the gratitude fuzzing Aziraphale’s voice. “Because of Adam.”
“No, my dear boy,” Aziraphale insisted. “You bought us time. Folded us into the cosmic stratosphere. You did that,” he said, and his voice had gone low and very soft, “all because…all because I asked.”
Somewhere in his periphery Crowley was vaguely aware of Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell, of the American woman and her stodgy friend, of Mr. Young and the Antichrist and the other kids, but they may as well have immaterialized with Satan for all Crowley knew. What he did know was the way his useless heart jumped to his throat. The way his mouth had gone dry. The way this moment, held in Aziraphale’s unflinching gaze, pressed upon Crowley like six thousand years of longing revealed for what it was.
Crowley had wanted to say it. Just minutes ago he’d thought he may as well. What better opportunity was there? The ground had shook. He’d fallen to his knees. Looked at the angel, his angel, and thought wildly of how this hadn’t been how he wanted it to end. Not surrounded by strangers, not on a nowhere-Tadfield air base for Someone’s sake. And altogether he’d much rather be alive. But at least Aziraphale was there, at least they could go out together. At least he could call it by name before it all ended.
It was nice knowing you, was what he’d managed instead.
Perhaps something in Crowley’s divine nature had refused to accept it was the end. Perhaps he’d thought they’d have more time together. What did death look like, feel like, to a demonic being that only ever knew forever? It was not something he’d ever contemplated.
But he also hadn’t contemplated living.
And, Crowley realized with some heaviness, now he had to say it.
“Come on, angel,” he said grimly. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”
____
They slipped away without a fuss — Crowley wasn’t sure if the humans were too caught up in themselves to notice or if it was Aziraphale’s miracle that did it. Certainly wasn’t his own. He barely had the juice to suppress his own nausea when they plodded past what remained of the Bentley. Aziraphale gave Crowley’s elbow a sympathetic pat.
“We’ll have to take the bus,” Crowley said unnecessarily. He knew Aziraphale hated public buses, their stop-and-go-jerking movements, the way they smelled like traffic exhaust and fabric seats. Then again, Aziraphale also hated the Bentley.
“I always liked the Bentley,” Aziraphale said as though he read Crowley’s mind. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
Crowley didn’t want to discuss it.
Somehow their feet took them to a Tadfield town bus stop and by then night had fallen. Crowley managed to summon a bottle of 1921 Châteauneuf-du-Pape from the bookshop and passed it offhandedly between themselves. Aziraphale had taken to his usual method of coping, which involved neatly splitting the bits that didn’t comport with his idea of ineffability (for one being it was by the grace of the Antichrist and not God that the Earth and all the kingdoms thereof remained standing), tucking them away, and explaining the rest as all part of the Ineffable Plan. Crowley, who had an infinite well of patience for this funny bit of subterfuge, only listened, and watched.
“I’m sure She planned it this way all along,” Aziraphale said, nodding, and Crowley knew that even as he said it, the synapses in his brain were strengthening, aligning themselves with the well-reasoned thought. “She’ll be happy it all worked out as She determined.”
Crowley hummed. “You sure there’s still a plan?”
“What else is there?”
Crowley’s remembrance of the events from before his Fall were hazy and, truthfully, he didn’t enjoy thinking about them. But, try as he might, there were some things he’d never forget. “She could be testing us. Wind-up the universe, let it run a few thousand years, poke at it with a yardstick now and again just to make sure everything works as intended.”
“Could be,” Aziraphale agreed. “I wouldn’t put it past Her. Though, I don’t see why testing us couldn’t be part of the Ineffable Plan as well.”
“That’s just semantics,” Crowley said, waving his hand (and with it, the Châteauneuf-du-Pape). “If everything Unplanned is Planned, nothing is unplanned.”
It was a well-trodden argument, one they’d had multiple times in the past, banter without bite. Crowley did not often find himself leaning any particular way. He had no insight on the inner machinations of God. He only knew She did not speak to them anymore. He did not know why.
He supposed they both found comfort in this familiar exchange, a teasing back and forth like reading from a script. He wondered how Aziraphale would react if he changed the script. When he changed it, he determined.
The next line was Aziraphale’s: “Quite. I believe that is precisely the point.”
The line after that was Crowley’s: “Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?”
“No use for that now, I suppose. My dear, it’s ineffable.”
And now again, Crowley’s turn. He could respond tartly that if it’s truly so ineffable, how can you be so certain it’s part of the Ineffable Plan? Instead Crowley pictured the shake-up. He pictured the confession. Bleeding out of him, spilling on the bench seat in the space between them: By the way, sort of off-topic, I love you.
And Aziraphale, intaking this with clinical detachment, cutting it like a surgeon cuts a tumor: I don’t think my side would like that. If Crowley was lucky, Aziraphale might take pity on him and have the forethought to look regretful.
There was also, Crowley realized, swallowing around the thickness that clenched in his throat, there was also the we could go off together and we’re on our side. There was also the bandstand. The way the street lights had lit up, spots of wan yellow in the not-yet-dark evening, the way Aziraphale’s white-blond curls and pressed overcoat shone in the night air, the mist of his breath, the twist of the ring on his pinky finger, the there is no our side spat from his lips. There was also the we can run away together, Alpha Centauri.
Crowley opened his mouth. His line. His time. Thought finally he would say it.
“If it’s truly so ineffable,” he said, “how can you be so certain it’s all part of the Ineffable Plan?”
____
He couldn’t say it.
He could still say it.
“By the way,” Crowley said, eyes fastened to the grab handle of the seat in front of him.
It was hard to stay upright. He might have overdone it with the bus miracle. Aziraphale probably wouldn’t even notice that he’d smoothed out the road to London and gotten rid of the funky bus smell and compelled a Handel aria to play softly over the radio, although that bit was mostly accidental. Still. He hadn’t been able to help himself. By the way, I love you.
Aziraphale stilled beside him.
Crowley squeezed his eyes shut. If he was going to do this, he could hardly do it with eye contact.
“Angel,” he tried again, willing himself to be brave. Thought of the way he held the Bentley together on the M25, the way he felt cooked in an iron skillet. The way this — the muffled darkness of English countryside, the swell of violins — seemed somehow scarier. “Need to say something. Just once.”
He hadn’t meant to leave a silence, but he did, and before he could finish it Aziraphale spoke instead and the words died in Crowley’s throat as quickly as they’d come.
“You don’t need to,” Aziraphale whispered.
Angels. Made perfect in Her image. Unquestioning. Happy to sit with enough. What would an angel know of need? Not like demons, not like Crowley — unsatisfied, spun in motion, wrung with ancient desire. The way Crowley needed was nothing like he imagined Aziraphale felt need, nothing like craving something sweet after a hearty meal or adding a first edition to a collection of other first editions. It wasn’t a thing of dos or do nots or maybe I will, maybe I won’ts: it governed him, it ate first, it was ugly, it was shameful, it laid at the foundations of what he knew himself to be.
The need was physical, a stormy thing, and with it Crowley felt battered. Each sucking breath. Each shaking exhale. The visceral awareness of his surroundings as though he’d pulled the curtains of Time and held it between pointer finger and thumb. The heat from the angel’s skin rolling off him in waves, the achy way Crowley’s heart constricted and jumped, the stimulus of it all — this time, not cooked in an iron skillet, but sizzling in a frying pan, crackling with energy, a live wire, a lit fuse. Awareness of Aziraphale next to him, caught in polite regret. Next to him, like nothing between them had changed.
“I can’t not,” Crowley bit out brokenly. How could Aziraphale still not get it? “I can’t not say it. I thought you were gone. I thought I’d lost you forever. And today, oh God —”
At the mention of Her, Aziraphale stiffened.
“We’d best not have this conversation now, my dear,” he said. “We still don’t know — well. We’re not exactly in the clear yet, if Agnes’ final prophecy is anything to go by.”
Crowley’s eyes snapped open. He turned. “Blast Agnes’ final prophecy,” he said. “You need to hear this.”
“Please don’t,” said Aziraphale, swallowing.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley begged, trying not to lose the thread. Whatever romantic image he’d pictured for this moment had gone, but he had to say it now. He had to.
“I love you,” he said. So desperately. “I’ve loved you since Eden.”
Aziraphale had turned away when he said it, as though struck by the words. Crowley wondered whether it would’ve hurt less to face the rejection outright. For a long time the angel was motionless, looking off somewhere in the distance, and Crowley thought maybe, in his embarrassment, he’d accidentally stopped time.
“Crowley, please,” Aziraphale finally said, sounding wretched. “Please — we can’t have this conversation.”
Aziraphale was beautiful. He was so gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Did he know? Crowley watched him desperately, searching his face, the slight downward pull of his lips, the way they set in a tight line. The street lights outside flashed odd shadows across his face as they passed, but even then he was beautiful, as the lights rotated on and off his face, as something quite like anguish flickered in his features depending when the shadows hit.
“Right,” Crowley said, at length, staring at the bright underside of the bus. His voice sounded strange to him, as if it’d come from someone else. Then, again. Crowley said it again. Like the echo of it reinforced him, strengthened his will, turned it to stone. “Right, I understand. It’s okay.”
Three things happened quickly then.
First, Crowley felt the familiar, heavy fold of curtains warp around him — the opening of Time, flooding his senses with aeons of smells and sounds and memories, colours and images, and all at once, and one memory in particular, standing apart, of candles in a bookshop — and he whipped his head, confused, looking for the source of the miracle. It took an alarmingly long time — in reality perhaps only a second — to realize, second, it was Aziraphale’s miracle, Aziraphale pulling downwards, Aziraphale reaching through his metaphysical self for the energy to reshape reality, puncturing the curtain, stabbing, then suturing those same tears, effectual and needle-sharp. The force of it was so great it knocked the breath from him, and, with immense effort, Crowley gasped out, understanding all at once what Aziraphale meant to do, and the enormity of it.
Third, Crowley begged. He begged.
“Angel, please, don’t do this,” said Crowley, though he knew it was already too late.
“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said, and snapped.
____
“By the way,” Crowley said, eyes fastened to the grab handle of the seat in front of him. Feeling vaguely like he’d been in the middle of a thought.
It was hard to stay upright. He might have overdone it with the bus miracle.
Beside him, Aziraphale went still.
It was funny, the way certain things got stuck in your head sometimes. A line from a song or a saying from a movie. Suddenly wedged as if planted there, even when there’d been no trigger to prompt its occasion. Right now, of all things, it was an odd feeling of precognition, which he knew humans liked to call déjà vu.
He'd wanted to tell Aziraphale something. What was it?
“Don’t freak out when we get to my place and you see what’s on the floor,” Crowley said.
Aziraphale only nodded in acknowledgment, his eyes strangely glassy.