Chapter Text
Crowley had told himself that, no matter what happened with the humans, he wouldn’t disappear completely again. That meant checking in when he changed country or if he’d been silent for over a month, it meant at least a card on their birthdays, and it meant making an appearance for Adam’s birthday. They had proven all too well how prone to worry humans could be and, well, he didn’t want any more pain on his conscience from people he cared about. Once this lot died off, he had thought rather stubbornly, he wouldn’t even learn another human’s name for at least a century. It was like getting emotionally attached to a mayfly.
Two days before Adam’s birthday, Crowley took a room in a hotel in Oxford, left the Bentley in the car park whilst giving all the other cars a stern, meaningful look, and let himself blackout for the night.
He awoke later than he had intended and got ready to leave in a bit of a fluster. Having barely spoken to Anathema since January and Adam since April, he was feeling unsettled, a touch out of sorts. The Bentley made excellent time to Tadfield and the warm weather did a lot to lift Crowley’s spirits on the drive. There was nothing like speeding along in his beautiful car, ignoring traffic rules, feeling the wind stream through the windows; it really blew the cobwebs out.
By the time he pulled up at the gate that separated the road from the footpath into the woods, Crowley was feeling almost happy.
With Adam’s birthday gifts tucked under one arm, Crowley wandered into the woods along the path he’d taken so many times before. There was never any question of where he would find The Them; if he hadn’t seen them by the time he parked the car, then they were in the woods. In the shade of the trees, Crowley pulled off his sunglasses and tucked them into the neck of his shirt.
The usual spot looked deserted, but Crowley could hear voices coming from nearby.
“Helloooo?” he called out.
“We’re round here!” came Adam’s response from behind the shack.
Crowley headed towards the voice, feeling lighter than he had in a while and resolving to consider thinking about possibly allowing the humans to spend time with him again. He rounded the corner and saw The Them sprawled on the grass, Anathema sitting in a chair making a daisy chain with flowers that Newt handed to her from his patch of grass, and Aziraphale looking relaxed and dreamy.
His heart stopped and his lungs collapsed inside him. Aziraphale turned his head to look at him with an expression of such hurt and anger that Crowley felt disgusted with himself for standing before him. Confused and scared, Crowley panicked. Aziraphale knew that Crowley always came the day before or the day after Adam’s birthday, he let Aziraphale have the actual day as one of the small ways he could admit his wrongdoing in the aftermath of their split. He dropped the gifts and turned to run back to get away, back to the car, anywhere that was away from Aziraphale’s awful expression and the pain it caused.
Dipping into his power, Crowley closed the distance between the shack and his car much quicker than should have been possible. He was behind the wheel and starting the engine before he had a chance to draw breath. The lane was narrow and the Bentley long, so turning around took a little effort but Crowley was desperate. He was just about to floor the accelerator when the air shifted around him and something landed heavily in the road in front of him.
The whole world looked white for an instant as Crowley’s eyes adjusted to the brightness. The outline of wings slowly came into focus with Aziraphale in the centre, looking furious. Crowley stared, utterly bewildered at this development.
In his daze of half-formed thoughts, Crowley found one point to focus on. In Aziraphale’s perfectly white wings, there was one dark feather. Not dark, but black. Crowley’s feather. He turned the engine off.
The world returned in a flash and Aziraphale was banging on the window.
“Crowley, please get out of the car. Please, Crowley, please. Don’t leave, not again.”
Aziraphale was crying. Why was Aziraphale crying? Nothing was making sense but Aziraphale wanted him to stay and he was wearing Crowley’s feather and that seemed to be more important than leaving. Crowley opened the door, giving Aziraphale a chance to step around it. He unfolded his legs and briefly wondered if they would be able to support him if he tried to stand.
Aziraphale stood just out of reach, worrying at his ring and crying openly. That was wrong, Aziraphale shouldn’t be crying. Crowley got to his feet and took a step towards Aziraphale, expecting him to flinch away. He looked hopeful, desperate, and so vulnerable, Crowley opened his arms and wrapped Aziraphale in them.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Fuck, angel, I’m so sorry,” Crowley sobbed into Aziraphale’s hair.
Aziraphale’s arms tightened around Crowley’s waist and tears soaked into the fabric of Crowley’s shirt.
“Don’t go, don’t go. Stay, stay, stay, please. Crowley, stay.” Aziraphale’s voice broke with every other word but he held fast to Crowley.
“I won’t go. I’m here,” Crowley tried to breathe normally to comfort Aziraphale as he needed.
A noise at the gate made him turn. Adam and Pepper had collided with it in their eagerness to catch up to Crowley and Aziraphale. Behind them, Brian, Wensley, Anathema, and Newt were catching up.
“I don’t think we need an audience for this,” Crowley grumbled, wanting to protect Aziraphale from the scrutiny of their friends.
“Here!” Anathema threw a bunch of keys at Crowley. “Use Jasmine Cottage, we can stay here until you come back.”
The benefits of having friendships like this were slowly coming back to Crowley as he gave her a smile of thanks.
“We’ll be back before too long, promise.”
Crowley walked Aziraphale around the car and opened the door for him like he always had. For a moment, everything had a veneer of normality over it, as if nothing had ever gone wrong. As soon as Crowley got back into the car, the illusion shattered with a single choked sob from Aziraphale.
He started the car and drove them to Jasmine Cottage in relative silence, not knowing how to pick between the elephants crowding them. Although he had the keys, Crowley just pushed the door open for Aziraphale and followed him inside. As soon as the front door closed behind them, Aziraphale pulled Crowley back into a hug so tight that it crushed his ribs.
“Do you have any idea how much I have missed you?” Aziraphale asked, husky-voiced and snuffly.
“I am so, so sorry. I have missed you every second of every day since I left,” Crowley paused for a pained breath. “Aziraphale, I know that I can’t make it right, I know I fucked us up, but please tell me that there’s hope.”
The chuckle that Aziraphale gave in response was a shock that Crowley didn’t know how to process.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
“Oh, angel. There’s hope. Now we’re here, there’s more hope than I dared dream.”
Crowley buried his face in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck and held him as close as he could, taking the comfort that was always freely given in Aziraphale’s presence.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” Aziraphale whispered against Crowley’s neck.
“Me? You’re the one here on the wrong day, angel.”
Crowley let Aziraphale disentangle their arms a little so he could make eye contact.
“Today is Adam’s birthday, Crowley. You never showed up yesterday.”
He must have looked pale or faint, because Aziraphale practically dragged him to the living room then, directing him to sit on the flowery sofa. Crowley checked the date on his watch, confused.
“I knew I’d overslept a bit, but a whole day? Doesn’t that feel just a bit, you know, ineffable?” Crowley’s head was starting to hurt.
Aziraphale glanced up, giving the impression of looking far beyond the low ceiling.
“Yes, well. Perhaps the less said about that the better. I rather think that we’ve got more pressing matters to discuss.”
There was an edge in Aziraphale’s voice that sliced right to the core of Crowley, he must have flinched because Aziraphale was reaching for him immediately.
These gentle touches, affectionate gestures, Crowley had never really got used to them before he’d left and now they were overwhelming. He wanted them, he wanted Aziraphale to touch every inch of him, but he was also nervous and flighty, worried about doing the wrong thing. In the way that he always did, Aziraphale calmed him with a look that said they were going to be OK. Crowley fell forward into a kiss that he’d been waiting to give for more than two years.
Aziraphale responded as he always had, warmly and openly, with his arms winding around Crowley’s neck to hold them together.
“I love you, Aziraphale. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, Crowley, you are an idiot. You’re my idiot. I love you so much, of course, I forgive you.”
With that hurdle cleared, it would be lovely to think that the rest of the afternoon was smooth sailing. Life is rarely that kind.
For almost three hours, Crowley and Aziraphale held each other’s hands on that flowery sofa, looked into each other's watery eyes, and talked through all the hurt and misunderstandings of their separation. Crowley learned about Claitiel’s part in the scheme and also Aziraphale’s return to Heaven. In turn, Crowley explained for the first time since they had known each other how it had felt to Fall and how he had been plunged back into those feelings when he imagined Aziraphale going through it.
Crowley gave his very favourable opinion on Aziraphale’s outfit and promised to try teaching him how to summon hellfire. Aziraphale tried to prepare Crowley for the state of his garden and then had to talk Crowley through a mild panic attack at the thought of going home; the one thing he’d never let himself imagine.
“Crowley, my love, I’m sure that we will talk this to death over the rest of our eternity together,” Aziraphale said as he snuggled into Crowley’s side. “But I have one more pressing question for now. Why didn’t you come home when I asked you to?”
Crowley’s brow creased as he tried to think of any occasion that might have included Aziraphale asking such a thing and being rejected.
“You never asked, angel.”
Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip.
“You were in South Africa. Anathema sent you an email about our alignment shift and she included a message from me but you didn’t answer that part.”
Crowley smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“I could have come home in June? Are you serious? I didn’t read the whole email, I ran off to test the theory and when I got back to my room I was so messed up thinking about how I’d put you through all this for nothing. I didn’t read it.”
Aziraphale’s presence was warm and reassuring against his side but Crowley still felt like a prize tit. Too impulsive and self-punishing for his own good. Before he could apologise or curse himself further, Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s jaw.
“Don’t dwell on it. It can’t be changed now.”
Feeling about a tonne lighter, Crowley held Aziraphale’s hand as they walked back to the woods to return Anathema’s keys and give the all-clear. It was easy to tell that that they had been the main topic of conversation since disappearing off to Jasmine Cottage, but Crowley found that he really didn’t mind all that much. Anathema had obviously drilled everyone on the appropriate responses. Aziraphale rubbed his thumb over Crowley’s knuckles as he thanked Anathema and Newt for the use of their home and apologised for making such a scene. Crowley was so full of love that he might burst from it, just watching Aziraphale speak and blush prettily.
They made their excuses to a round of scoffs and insistence that they leave immediately. No one expected them to have resolved all the burrs and barbs of their separation during one conversation, they were assured as they took their leave. Adam made them promise to visit on the old schedule again, together again. Crowley couldn’t stop smiling at the thought.
Having Aziraphale back in the Bentley, driving towards their home, it was heavenly. Crowley could almost believe that the past two years hadn’t happened, betrayed only by the gnawing remnants of guilt in his heart. It was better, though. It was easing, they would be okay.
The house was as he remembered, as homely and welcoming as it had ever been. Crowley kissed Aziraphale on the threshold, in the kitchen, in the library, and once more in the garden. Aziraphale had anxiously opened the french doors to lead Crowley into the garden, stammering excuses for the poor state it was in. Crowley had no idea what he was talking about; the garden was glorious and filled with love. He felt as though he was standing in a physical cocoon of Aziraphale’s love for him.
If, over the weeks that followed, sometimes Aziraphale would forget to set out two wine glasses in the evening, or Crowley would hover in doorways until Aziraphale invited him in, or they butted heads about whether the house was too warm or too cold, there was such a fog of mutual love and relief that they couldn’t really be upset about it. When Crowley laid his head in Aziraphale’s lap one evening, the world was set to rights again.