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Crowley lets out a groan as he drops the last of the boxes from the bookshop in the study. He thinks about sorting out the books in it, but he still has no bloody idea of how Aziraphale’s system works. Besides, Aziraphale likes doing it himself.
“You didn’t have to bring these yourself, dear,” he hears Aziraphale tell Muriel by the front door.
“Oh, it was no trouble, really!” Muriel says, and Crowley can almost see the grin on their face and the excited set of their shoulders.
He turns to the hallway outside the study and heads to the living room. And suddenly, he stops short in his tracks.
It’s the first time he’s seen the room—properly seen it, that is—since they moved in. They’ve been so busy with the whole process that he hadn’t noticed just how different the cottage looks now that they’re nearly done.
It’s… slowly become warmer, brighter.
Homier.
Crowley knew it would at some point, of course he did, that’s what buildings do when they become a home, but… Well, in a way, part of him still can’t believe that this is their home. Even with the books scattered in little piles around the living room, and the plants basking in the sunlight streaming through the glass of the conservatory, and the bedroom upstairs with a walk-in closet where they stored all their knickknacks and mementos from their incredibly long existence, and the sigils they carved on the threshold of the main door…
There’s the sofa they brought from the bookshop. The absolutely hideous kitchen isle stools they picked because of how comfortable they are, too. The photographs and paintings on the walls of every room. Aziraphale’s gramophone in the corner. Their mugs on the coffee table, half-full with Crowley’s coffee and Aziraphale’s cocoa.
He sees Aziraphale’s back as he stands at the doorframe, talking to Muriel, his posture completely relaxed, exactly as someone who’s home would be.
Because he is. Home. This cottage is their home now.
Theirs. His and Aziraphale’s. Theirs.
Goodness fucking gracious.
Out by the porch, Aziraphale and Muriel exchange goodbyes, and then the angel closes the door and turns to Crowley, and his eyes go soft with a love Crowley wants to drown in. It steals his breath, sometimes, the way Aziraphale looks at him.
Crowley clears his throat. “So. That was the last of ‘em?”
“It was,” Aziraphale says, and when he closes the distance between them, he reaches out to grab Crowley’s hand like he can’t bear not to, almost like it’s ingrained in him now: Hold Crowley’s hand whenever you’re close enough to do so. Crowley has found that he doesn’t mind at all. In fact, his fingers curl around Aziraphale’s, and the angel’s smile widens.
It’s still a bit of a miracle, Crowley thinks, that they’re here at long last. That Aziraphale loves him like he loves Aziraphale.
He’s about to say something else—if Aziraphale needs help with that last box in the study, or if he wants a bite to eat, or if he just wants to stay right here for the rest of their lives—but then Aziraphale sighs. A soft, quiet, contented kind of sound, the kind of sound that stays with you forever. His free hand cups Crowley’s jaw, his thumb running over the skin of his cheek.
“My dear heart,” Aziraphale says, devotion dripping from his every word, and Crowley feels tears springing to his eyes and does his blessed best to blink them away, he’s so fucking in love.
“Mmh,” he hums, not trusting his voice to behave.
The gramophone in the corner begins playing something he doesn’t recognize. A gift from Maggie, maybe. Or maybe something Aziraphale picked up from the market they went to last week, while Crowley was buying those toffee puddings the angel likes so much.
Aziraphale tugs Crowley closer (somehow), until their chests are pressed together. When he begins to slowly sway to the music, Crowley brings their held hands up to the height of their shoulders and wraps his other hand around Aziraphale’s waist.
“I thought you said we didn’t dance,” Aziraphale teases him, his eyes twinkling. He’s so bloody beautiful. Crowley could stare at him forever.
“We didn’t,” he agrees. But then he spins Aziraphale around, and he listens to the absolutely smitten giggle the angel lets out and engraves it in his demonic heart. “We do now.”
Oh, the way Aziraphale’s face lights up at that, how the twist of his lips shines brighter than the stars Crowley watched being born—he doesn’t know how his human body is meant to contain everything he’s feeling.
Aziraphale moves the hand he has on Crowley’s cheek to the back of his neck and leans his forehead against the demon’s and squeezes their entwined fingers. They’re such slight touches, so gentle they’re almost barely there, and yet they ground Crowley in this place, in this moment, in this blink in the life span of the universe.
It hits him, all of a sudden. They’re slow dancing in the middle of the living room of the cottage they bought to live together in. They live here. They’re safe here. This is their home. They made it.
After everything, Crowley thought that… well. That this would never happen. That their paths would never cross again, that he would be miserable for eternity, that Aziraphale would forget about him, that this love, their love, would never be.
That they would never get to have this.
Aziraphale presses his fingers tighter to Crowley’s nape, noses his cheekbone.
“My love,” he whispers in the space between their mouths.
“Angel,” Crowley mutters, feeling Aziraphale’s breath as he exhales a laugh.
The music changes into something more familiar, the soft notes of a piano filling the air around them. It’s a song they both know, a song that Crowley once played in the Bentley under completely different circumstances.
Aziraphale grins, and Crowley memorizes the lines around his lips.
“Do you hear that?” the angel asks.
Crowley tilts his head. There’s no sound other than the song from the gramophone.
“I don’t hear anything.”
That, for some reason, makes Aziraphale’s smile grow and his eyes crinkle.
“There’s a nightingale singing,” he says quietly, like a secret.
And something just… falls into place inside Crowley.
All the pain and anguish and heartbreak he’s been carrying since he watched Aziraphale step into an elevator—what remained of it after the apologies and forgiveness and hours spent talking—it all melts out of his corporation, drips down his feet onto the floor beneath them as though washed away by that first rain on Earth, so many thousands of years ago. Relief rushes over him like waves crashing to shore.
Aziraphale kisses him, his mouth parted just slightly, and Crowley savors him, drinks him in, rests his palm on the dip of his spine to feel the angel arch into him, to kiss him deeper. They pull back, but only for a second before they dive back in, exchanging short, sweet kisses that perhaps turn into one single, everlasting kiss, and when Aziraphale threads his fingers through Crowley’s hair and breathes against his lips, it finally sinks into his bones, in the core of his very essence:
This is the rest of their lives. Kisses, and dancing, and going to bed together, and waking up together, and building their future together.
Crowley presses his temple to Aziraphale’s and brings their joined hands between them, where their too-human hearts beat in sync, as they continue to sway to the music. Aziraphale kisses his jaw and buries his face in Crowley’s neck.
This, right here, is where they’ve been meant to be all along, and there is nowhere else Crowley would rather be.
After all, the box of books in the study will still be there tomorrow.