Work Text:
It all happened so fast, and yet, so slowly. That was what Aziraphale mainly remembered. One moment, he was steering a raving Crowley through his laudanum haze, the next moment, he was being pressed up against a tombstone. Crowley’s hands held him somehow outside of time, for a second that stretched on eternally.
Every time Crowley had kissed him during their long, long association, it had happened fast. That seemed to be Crowley’s preferred method of attack. Strike without warning, then run, never to speak of it again. Sometimes he'd be gone for months afterward, even once Aziraphale had gotten the message, and stopped trying to Talk to him about it.
That graveyard in Edinburgh had begun like many other kisses they’d shared. Crowley held him by the collar, crowding into his personal space. He slammed Aziraphale hard enough against the tombstone to knock the wind out of the angel’s heavenly lungs. Aziraphale wheezed. Crowley panted. They stared into each other’s eyes. The usual business.
“I love you,” Crowley said, and kissed him.
Aziraphale didn’t process it at first. For one thing, Crowley’s lips were hot, and tempting. For another, Crowley’s waist fitted in his hands quite distractingly. For a moment, physical pleasure overcame thought. Then the words slammed through the lust and penetrated his brain.
He pushed Crowley back a few steps. The demon staggered. A thousand thoughts rushed through Aziraphale’s mind in the space of a second. Forget how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, try how many thoughts can scream through the head of an angel.
Crowley was intoxicated. Very intoxicated. He mightn’t even know what he was saying. Crowley was not himself. Crowley had saved the mortal girl’s life. Crowley had been terribly kind. He was always terribly kind, beneath all the demon bluster. Perhaps he was himself. Perhaps that was the problem. Crowley was saying foolish things. Things that would change everything. Things Aziraphale wasn’t ready for. Perhaps Aziraphale could stand to be a little bit less himself, for just a moment.
His brain was moving fast. His mouth, as is so often the case, moved much faster.
“What do you mean you love me?” he said.
Crowley stood stock still for thirty uninterrupted seconds, then somehow managed to trip without moving. He pitched forward, looking around as if to see who had pushed him. Again, without thinking, Aziraphale caught him around the upper arms before he fell.
“What?” Crowley said groggily, showing entirely more teeth than the pronunciation of the word really warranted.
“You just said,” Aziraphale stammered, “you just said ‘I love you’ to me.”
“Did not.”
“You did!”
“Didn’t.”
“Crowley, please! What exactly do you expect me to say to you right now?”
“Not my problem,” Crowley said. “Off my head on laudanum. Not responsible for my actions.”
He swayed right in and kissed Aziraphale again. Strangely enough, this kiss was not notable for its great speed. It was slower, sweeter, kinder. Aziraphale’s heart squeezed in his chest, which was not hugely comfortable. He clutched Crowley’s arms. He felt Crowley’s hands spidering their way up his back. He shivered.
“Crowley,” he tried to say into the kiss. Crowley, however, took this as an invitation to open his own mouth. Things rather sped up again. Aziraphale tasted brimstone and honey as a forked tongue met his own. All the many thoughts plaguing him were suddenly burned from his mind. His body burned. They were both burning, a cosmic conflagration in the cold night air of the graveyard.
Things did eventually slow down again. Neither of them technically needed to breathe, but when they broke apart for air, Aziraphale found himself gasping. Crowley held Aziraphale’s face tenderly between his gloved hands.
“I love you,” he said again.
Aziraphale was having a devil of a time keeping up with the situation.
“Stop saying that, please,” he managed. “We’ll get in trouble.”
Crowley shook his head vigorously.
“Trust me,” he slurred, “if Hell noticed that little display, I’d already be-”
He stopped with a noise that sounded like “gah”. Aziraphale studied his face. It was impossible to read in the darkness, behind those twice blessed tinted glasses.
“I’d already be-” Crowley said again, his words coming out sticky and strange.
It all happened so fast, and yet, so slowly. The Earth shook beneath Aziraphale’s feet. It seemed an age before he realised the tremors were coming from without, not within. In that brief second, Crowley was already slipping away. He cried out as a pit opened below him. He seemed to fall in slow motion, but somehow, Aziraphale didn’t react fast enough. Crowley was gone in a heartbeat.
And that was the last Aziraphale was to see of Crowley for quite some time.