Ready
They don’t touch right away.
Not a hand hold, not a hug, not a brush of the hair.
They don’t even discuss it.
Even after 6000 years of coming so close, 6000 years of significant looks, 6000 years of walking within arm’s reach, and more recently, sitting beside one another in a car in such close proximity that a sharp turn would unintentionally toss them together, they keep their distance.
So much has happened to the both of them, things that would positively skewer humans, and even though they handle those things better than most, they’re still difficult to get over.
They don’t talk about those things right away, either.
There’s a quiet consensus among them that they’d rather forget those things ever happened.
After Crowley tells Aziraphale that his bookshop is back in order, not a single smudge remaining of the devastating fire that brought him to his knees; and Aziraphale tells Crowley that his Bentley has risen from the dead without a scratch, not even a bubble in the paint left to remind them of their faceoff with the Devil, one where they both had to admit that, other than offering moral support, neither of them had the power to do anything – the subject is dropped.
And why not? In retrospect, the past is the past. What happened there will stay there whether they choose to bring it up or not.
But the bulk of their relationship is the past. 6000 years of it - complicated thoughts and memories and arguments and rescues and unspoken feelings.
How do they move forward from seventy-five mortal lifetimes of history?
They drink in Aziraphale’s shop, go to movies and art galleries and concerts and lunch, but always with that gap between them, just large enough to fit their hands through.
They’re sitting on a bench in front of the duck pond when it finally happens, and entirely by accident.
They move at the same time – Crowley resting his right hand on the hard wood while Aziraphale reaches into his coat pocket for a small bag of seed he’d brought with him to feed the ducks. Crowley’s finger brushes Aziraphale’s pinky. Startled, Aziraphale jerks away.
“Oh!” he yelps. “I’m sorry. I …” When he glances over at Crowley, he doesn’t seem hurt or offended.
After thirty seconds spent staring expectantly at Aziraphale’s terrified face, he chuckles.
“Wha—what’s so funny?” Aziraphale asks.
Crowley shakes his head. “I seem to remember a day when I threw you up against a wall in anger and you didn’t even flinch. I just accidentally touched your hand and you acted like I was going to bite it off.”
Aziraphale sniffs, his stiff-set posture returning. “You … you surprised me. That’s all.”
“It’s all right,” Crowley says. “I understand. I won’t until you’re ready.”
Aziraphale side-eyes him, fiddling with the bag in his pocket, silently cursing himself for pulling away. “Won’t … what?”
“Won’t touch you. I won’t until you’re ready.”
“Well, I won’t until you’re ready.”
“All right then. But just so you know,” Crowley continues after a beat, “I’m ready.”
Aziraphale turns his head, his gaze meeting Crowley’s sharp silhouette. “You … you are?”
“Yes,” Crowley replies, much softer than Aziraphale has ever heard him utter any other word before it. “I’ve been ready for a while.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale swallows hard. “So … so have I.”
“That’s good to know.” Crowley readjusts himself on the bench, sitting up and sliding an inch or two in Aziraphale’s direction. Aziraphale creeps his hand closer until he can feel the fabric of Crowley’s jeans against his skin. Crowley rolls onto his hip, but he doesn’t take Aziraphale’s hand. He reaches out slowly, deliberately, eyes on Aziraphale’s face, gauging his reaction … and wraps an arm around him. He pulls Aziraphale close and hugs him, hand caressing his shoulder, his face buried in his neck.
He even takes off his glasses to do it.
Crowley breathes in, and for the briefest of seconds, Aziraphale feels him shudder. After the shock of being held bleeds away, Aziraphale hugs him back much in the same way. It feels natural, familiar, as if they’ve actually been doing this all along.
When Aziraphale shielded a demon he’d just met from the rain.
When Crowley rescued Aziraphale from the Bastille.
Every time Aziraphale feared Crowley was on the brink of ending his own existence.
When Crowley begged Aziraphale to run away with him.
When they switched bodies and saved one another’s life.
All the car rides, all the lunches, all the drinking, all the smiles - those were all hugs in disguise, veiled ways of telling one another that they were loved, that they’d be missed.
That this world they lived on, that they fought hard to remain a part of, would be so much emptier without the other on it.
In the uncharacteristic silence of the mid-afternoon, when children should be running about followed by nannies and mums screaming from behind reminding them to slow down, Aziraphale wonders if Crowley has stopped time for them.
Time has humored Crowley’s whims on many an occasion. But this time, it has decided to stop itself, to set them aside and give them more of it.
Because when an angel and a demon have waited as long as they have for a single hug, time does the honors all its own.
