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“There’s something I’ve been wondering, my dear,” Aziraphale says cautiously, breaking up the silence. The bedroom is quiet but not tranquil; earlier, Crowley was roused from his deep sleep by yet another nightmare about the events preceding the first Nopocalypse, and the echoes of the terror linger.
The demon makes an inarticulate noise from where he is burrowed into the angel’s embrace. It could mean either “go ahead, I’m listening” or “over my dead body will we talk about feelings”; Aziraphale chooses the first interpretation.
“You told me about multiple spots of trouble that you got into over the years before our retirement, some of them the exact kind of plight for which you requested holy water. But darling, you can stop time. It seems that it would be beneficial in multiple, if not all, such predicaments, yet you never mentioned attempting that…” Aziraphale trails off as the demon makes a noise of disagreement. He waits, patient.
“You mean, like, freeze Hastur and Ligur instead of trying to trap them? Doesn’t work like that,” Crowley grumbles finally, emerging from under the covers, hair ruffled. The angel waits some more. The demon sighs, resigned, and explains.
“Remember before the Beginning? When we first met?”
“Of course I do, darling,” Aziraphale murmurs softly. As if he could ever forget the incandescent angel that Crowley had been.
“Remember Let there be matter, let there be gravity, let there be everything?”
“Yes, and you missed one thing. The universe didn’t light up until there was light,” Aziraphale chuckles fondly.
“Well, time was bundled with the everything bit, somewhere in the first few thousand pages. There was no time before the beginning, not as such. And when it popped into existence, the first thing it saw was the two of us.”
“Are you saying that time imprinted on us?”
“Best I can tell, yep, like a baby duckling hatching right next to an unsuspecting snake couple.”
“Oh, you were not exactly a bystander in the process of creation of the universe, my dear. So when you stop the time…”
“...I don’t miracle it stopped, I kind of ask nicely to take a pause, and time usually obliges. But it has to be when we are together, doesn’t work otherwise, it doesn’t recognize us or something. Trust me, I’ve had more than my fair share of scrapes when this would’ve come in handy!”
“Oh, darling,” Aziraphale hugs Crowley tighter, if that’s even possible. “I didn’t know. Well, now that we have put all the business with the world ending to rights, there is hardly a reason for us to be apart.”
“Hardly a reason for me to stop time either,” Crowley huffs and hugs back.
They stay like this for quite a while.
Time goes on. Had it been more self-aware, it would’ve been looking on the couple at the cottage indulgently, happy for its ineffable parents. As it is, it just goes on, unhurriedly, at its pace. It doesn’t stop; they don’t need it to.