Forgivable

CHAPTER ONE: I Forgive You

"Tell me you said no."
Confusion washed over him, but then Aziraphale realized that Crowley must not understand - didn't understand the implications, the opportunity. "If I'm in charge," he said, "I can make a difference."
Crowley stared at him for a moment, then let out a long breath and turned away. "Right," he said, "okay, right." He paced for a moment, his long legs stretching across the floor, then came back, stopping in front of the angel. One hand planted on a lean hip, pulling his jacket back. "I didn't get a chance to say what I was going to say. I think I'd better say it now. Right. Okay. Yes. So." He blew out another long breath and looked down at the floor.
Aziraphale waited patiently for his old friend to speak. He didn't know what he could have to say that could possibly be more important than responding to what Aziraphale had just told him, but he trusted the demon, who was clearly struggling to say something.
"We've known each other a long time," Crowley began. "We've been on this planet for a long time - I mean, you and me. I could always rely on you."
Aziraphale's chest swelled with love to pair with the confusion. They never said these things out loud to one another - at least Crowley didn't.
The demon went on. "You could always rely on me. We're a team - a group. A group of the two of us. And we spend our existence pretending that we aren't." His voice broke and he looked away.
Pretending that we aren't? A group of the two of us? Like...a couple? Aziraphale's heart began to race, and he felt as though an eternity passed before the demon spoke again.
"I mean - the last few years - not really-" Crowley broke off again, his reptilian eyes turning to the ceiling as if praying for the right words. He was taking deep, shaky breaths.
"And I would like to spend-" Crowley cut himself off again, grunting, looking towards the window.
"I mean if - Gabriel and Beelzebub can do it - go off together - then we can." He kept speaking, but Aziraphale didn't hear. He had grabbed Crowley's arm earlier when this same realization hit him, and had not for a moment imagined that Crowley would actually say it. He heard Crowley say, "You and me - what do you say?"
Delight filled him - joy he had never allowed himself to hope for. This demon, this man-shaped being that he had loved since the beginning of the universe, wanted to be a you-and-me with him.
Aziraphale stepped closer, smiling at his dearest friend. "Come with me," he said softly. "To heaven. I'll run it - you can be my second in command." It was perfect, it was even better than the news he had shared. They could be angels in heaven together - really together.
For some reason, the demon's face fell, his round, yellow eyes drilling into Aziraphale's. He must not understand; Aziraphale had to make him understand. "We can make a difference," he explained.
"You can't leave this bookshop." Crowley's voice was pleading.
"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale said, smiling indulgently. Sweet Crowley. The angel loved the life they had built together, too - but this was so much bigger. "Nothing lasts forever."
Crowley looked as if he had been struck. "No," he said. He looked out the window as if contemplating. He must finally be seeing that things had to change, and this was the only way - the best way. "No, I don't suppose it does." The demon put his sunglasses on, then inexplicably, walked past him and said, "Good luck." He strode toward the door.
Confusion and panic struck Aziraphale like a sack of stones. "Good luck?" He whirled around. "Crowley! Crowley, come back!"
Blessedly, Crowley stopped and turned back toward him, though he didn't say anything. Aziraphale couldn't see the demon's eyes behind his dark glasses. What the devil was he playing at? They were so close to everything that Aziraphale now knew they both wanted.
"Come back to heaven. Work with me! We can be together!"
His face flushed as he said it - the closest he had ever come to admitting his feelings out loud - and Crowley looked away. Aziraphale's certainty that he knew what Crowley had been saying to him was now pricked by doubt. The demon said nothing.
"Angels," he explained, in a full panic now, "doing good. I need you!" He no longer bothered trying to keep the desperation from his voice.
Crowley didn't respond.
He clearly wasn't explaining himself well. Crowley could be an angel again - in the good graces of the almighty, no longer beholden to Hell - no longer sullied by the Fall. They both could be. "I don't think you understand what I'm offering you." He was handing the demon a precious gift, the most precious of giftst, and in return, he was... walking away?
"I understand," Crowley finally said, and looked at him. "I think I understand a whole lot better than you do."
After six thousand years, still that maddening condescension. Crowley always thought Aziraphale naive, even stupid, that he couldn't see the forest for the trees, that he needed rescuing. Even after the victory they had just shared, the words that Crowley had said to him, that obviously hadn't changed. Aziraphale's mouth tightened. The difference was, this time, he knew he was right - Crowley was the one who didn't understand. He smiled sadly at his friend.
"Well," he said. He tore his eyes away from the face that he knew better than his own. "Then there's nothing more to say." His heart wrenched.
"Listen," the demon said, and Aziraphale looked at him. Crowley raised a finger to point upwards. "You hear that?"
Aziraphale listened, but the only sound in the bookshop was the ticking of the clock. Could the demon not take anything seriously? "I don't hear anything!" He heard the consternation in his voice and regretted it; he looked away again.
"That's the point. No nightingales."
No nightingales, no happy ending.
He stared at Crowley. Could the demon be right...? No. Of course not. He was only being a cynic - and superstitious, at that.
"You idiot," Crowley said. Aziraphale stared at him.
Then he went on. "We could have been... us."
We could have been us. Hope and pain squeezed Aziraphale's heart between them like a pair of clasped hands.
He wanted to be us with Crowley, had wanted to be us with him since that moment in 1941, when Crowley had handed him the satchel of books outside the ruined church - a little demonic miracle of my own - such a kind and loving thing to do, just for him, just to make Aziraphale happy. If he were honest with himself, he had wanted it for much longer than that. Aziraphale looked away. He couldn't let Crowley see how close he was to changing his mind.
Before he knew what was happening, he felt Crowley's hands on him, grabbing the lapels of his jacket and pulling him close. He thought the demon was going to shake him in frustration, but instead, he kissed him.
Shock coursed through the angel - shock and lust and panic, love and arousal and confusion, combining and twisting into a plume of heat that threatened to overwhelm him. No! he thought. He had never felt anything like this, and it frightened him. He pushed at Crowley's chest, tried to pull away, but the demon only pulled him tighter, his lips moving against Aziraphale's.
And then it took him - it was everything, it was what he had longed for - the two of them, together, us. He felt himself gripping Crowley's shoulders, pulling him tighter, kissing him back, losing himself in the feel of the demon's lips hard against his. His scent of brimstone and leather filled Aziraphale's head, making him dizzy.
His lips parted, and Crowley slid his tongue against his. He heard himself moan into the demon's mouth, felt his body sinking into his, felt the heat and the light coursing through him. Their desperation for each other held them as tightly together as if they were wrapped in chains.
He would give up anything, everything for this to last forever, for this kiss and this hard need to consume them both until the sun exploded or the great battle commenced or whatever apocalypse was coming took everyone and everything, leaving only the two of them, wrapped in each other.
And of course, that was why Crowley was doing it. He knew that Aziraphale loved him, wanted him, needed him, that he would sacrifice everything for this.
He was tempting him.
Aziraphale stumbled back, shuddering, gasping.
He had almost given in.
He still wanted to.
Crowley was staring at him, his breaths hard and fast, waiting for something.
I love you, the angel almost said. I've wanted that since forever.
I'll stay here, with you. Be us.
But he didn't say any of that. He looked into the face of the being he had loved for centuries, millenia, and felt despair wash over him, felt tears welling in his eyes, felt his frightened breaths shaking his chest and his mouth quivering. He dug deep inside, searching for the conviction and the righteousness that had filled him only moments ago. He found resentment, and desperate longing, and love. And he found what he always found.
He said, "I forgive you."
And he did. He would always forgive Crowley.
Crowley released a deep breath. Aziraphale couldn't see his eyes - those damned glasses - as his oldest friend, the object of his love, the demon he had been side-by-side with for millenia turned away from him.
"Don't bother," Crowley said, and pushed out of the bookshop.
Aziraphale's heart felt like it was shattering. He gasped for breath, feeling as if the pain would destroy him, the tears filling his eyes. He raised a shaking hand to his lips - he could still feel the pressure from Crowley's kiss there, and the meaning it carried - everything that they were to each other, and everything they could no longer be.
Crowley had left him - truly left him, this time. Had rejected the future they could have together - a just future, a righteous future, a good future - because he couldn't let go of his resentment. And although Crowley had left him a thousand times, it had never felt final before.
The bell above the door jangled, and for a second of bone-deep relief, Aziraphale thought it was Crowley - come back, like he always had before, to apologize, to say that he was wrong, to be there for him.
But it wasn't Crowley. It was the Metatron.
Aziraphale turned away in anguish, unable to face him like this.
"How did he take it?" the Metatron asked cheerfully.
Aziraphale did his best to channel a sense of duty and respect for this leader of Heaven, but could only summon a desire not to let the Metatron see the state he was in. He took a shuddering breath, plastered a grin that he couldn't feel onto his face, and turned back.
"Not well," he said with a little chuckle that threatened to turn to a sob.
"Ah, well." The Metatron seemed unconcerned. "He always did want to go his own way. Always asking damn fool questions, too."
Aziraphale chuckled again, but his mind was still a desperate jumble, his thoughts still reeling, his body still lit like a bonfire with the passion of the kiss he had waited so long for, and which had been ripped away far too soon.
He looked out the window. Crowley was walking slowly to his car.
"Ready to start?"
He had almost forgotten the Metatron was there. Sudden alarm took him, and he stepped away from the Metatron, glancing out the window again. "I...." He couldn't do this. He couldn't leave things like this. He cast about for an excuse. "But, um... my bookshop."
"Ah, yes," said the Metatron. "Well - for now, I've entrusted it to Muriel." He pointed out the window, where the cheerful and painfully naive angel waved excitedly. "So, it should be in good hands."
"But..."
"Anything you need to take with you?"
Yes. Crowley, he thought immediately.
The Metatron's face was open and accommodating, but Aziraphale didn't feel ready; he needed more time. Heavens, what had he done? If he could just talk to the demon, they could sort things out-
He looked out the window again. Crowley still stood by his Bentley - a statue, but a living statue. One made of smooth flesh and slinky hips and soft breaths, one which had kissed him with a desperate passion that threatened to consume Aziraphale like hellfire.
A statue unmoving and, apparently, unmoved.
He wasn't coming back.
"No," he finally answered. "Nothing I can think of." He glanced out the window again.
"Ah." The Metatron began walking towards the door.
Another look out the window at the demon. His demon. He couldn't do it.
"I think I..." he began, following the Metatron, on the verge of calling the whole thing off. He couldn't leave Crowley.
But Crowley had left him. Crowley had said, "Don't bother." And this was the chance he had longed for - to return to Heaven, to help shape it into what he knew it could be. Crowley didn't want that because he didn't know any better, but this was an opportunity to make everything right.
One last look out the window, toward the car where Crowley stood as stiff and unyielding as stone - no give, no compromise. Why must Aziraphale always be the one to give in?
He took a deep breath to calm himself, and arranged his face into a smile.
"Nothing at all," he said, and chuckled.
The Metatron opened the door, and Aziraphale followed obediently.
He closed the door to the bookshop behind him. He should say goodbye to it in some way - he may never see it again, and he had spent so many years there - but all his thoughts and senses were locked on the demon standing behind him down the street. He knew Crowley's eyes were on him; he could feel them.
The Metatron crossed the street, toward the Dirty Donkey and the Heavenly elevator.
"I can't think of a better angel to wrap things up," he said, "and to set into motion the next steps in the Great Plan."
"Ah, yes," Aziraphale said. "You mentioned that. Can I... know what it is?"
"Well," said the Metatron, "it's something we need an angel of your talents to direct. An angel who is familiar with how they do things on Earth."
"Oh!" Aziraphale smiled, feeling a prickle of pleasure at having his value recognized by such a prominent leader of Heaven, even as his heart lay in tatters in his chest.
"We call it the Second Coming."
Shock hit him like a blunt object. The Second Coming? Even now, even after everything, instincts built over millennia nearly made him want to turn and run to where Crowley stood. The demon needed to know - they had to make a plan, to prepare -
No. There was no they, no us. Not anymore.They weren't a team any longer.
He pushed down the wave of despair as the Metatron stepped into the elevator and lifted his eyebrows, waiting for Aziraphale to join him.
He didn't want to - he shouldn't want to - but he couldn't help turning slowly for a last look at Crowley.
The demon's face was cold, impassive. He leaned against his Bentley as though he hadn't a care in the world. He couldn't see Crowley's eyes, but nevertheless he felt a jolt of electricity from the eye contact.
One last pleading look.
One last moment of no response.
Aziraphale turned back to the Metatron and smiled at him, entering the elevator. The Metatron hit the button, and a feminine, ethereal voice said, "Doors closing. Going up."
The doors closed on Earth, and the elevator ride up to Heaven began.