Disclaimer: I don't own Good Omens in any of its incarnations. Duh. It'd have 900% more angst otherwise. A.N. For the prompt "Future." The idea bit me and wouldn't leave, so I had to bow.
Ineffable
Sometimes Crowley thinks back to the Armaggedon't. At how much Aziraphale and he had scrambled and panicked, extemporized and employed casuistry to avoid the end. Of their relationship and the world (in that order). These adrenaline-fuelled days are now as far back in the past as the Garden was when they were busy...mostly blundering, but perhaps that's what allowed the happy resolution.
Surprisingly, neither side has tried to put the Apocalypse back on the road yet. Oh, humans have come close to not needing any supernatural help for self-destruction a few times (if there's something all God's children have in common, it's being bloody idiots sometimes), but they haven't managed yet. What they have mastered – faster than light travel and terraforming – means that, by now, they have spread far and wide from Earth.
Crowley and Aziraphale are still on Earth. It holds too many bittersweet memories for them – and besides, despite the amount of terraforming, there's quite no other place bearing the ingredients (and the recipes) his angel is so fond of. Still, sometimes they'll swap with one of their colleagues' couples from another planet. It's a kind of holiday, and always amusing to see what people created with new environments at hand.
Fact is, Crowley doesn't use couple thoughtlessly. Oh, it's not obvious, much less open yet. But he's been there, done that for thousands of years before anyone else even imagined the possibility of it. He knows the signs, the excuses, the way they get annoyed at the prospect of an exchange until told that Aziraphale is making the very same request to the local angel. If at least a few of them haven't the beginning of an arrangement with their angelic counterpart (and some are way deeper mired than that), Crowley is a mongoose. Then again, having only one supernatural companion for thousands of years would encourage that, he supposes.
They're in a garden in Lamb, the first colonized planet in the Aries constellation, whose pioneers had a rather silly sense of humour. Teegarden b is no name for one's future home planet, no more than Sol c is for Earth. Belzeebub and a surprisingly meek Gabriel have agreed to the trade-off, and it's lying on black grass next to his beloved that the annoying questions suddenly solidify. "Angel. Angel, am I crazy?"
Aziraphale gives him the softest smile, from under a violet-leaved (each one protected by its own hard shell), oak-sized bush. "Possibly, love, but in the best way."
"Listen." Despite his beloved's nod, he swallows, barely able to believe his own thoughts, caught between shock and anger. "The universe. It's her idea, ok? And sure, we might have helped a bit, but she decided the main things, like – size. And she made us, and then she made people, and she's the one who insists she knows everything. Knew everything right from the start."
Aziraphale rises to a sitting position. "Careful." As happy as they've been for so long – if she wanted to smite them for their feelings she's frankly awfully late – Aziraphale will forever be an angel. Not that Crowley would want him any other way. God's plans might be analyzed to be sure about how to best obey them. If her plans are ineffable, they're obviously not written down for every silly angel to get incensed about, for example. But she's not to be questioned. Look where it got Crowley the first time around.
His angel is scared for him, and – fine. He'll rein himself in a bit. For Aziraphale's sake. He can't shut up entirely, though. "Anyway, she had to know people wouldn't sit still. She made them with legs...and that brain. She could have stuck to plants otherwise."
The angel huffs a laugh, fear forgotten. "I'm not sure if that would have been your heaven."
"You know what that is." Crowley's eyes say as loud as anything that he has his heaven right in front of him, and it has nothing to do with alien plants. "I'm just saying, if she knew everything –"
"Since," Aziraphale corrects him sharply.
He nods. "Since she knew everything, she could have made more of us."
She wanted this. Wanted them scattered and lonely...and then not lonely anymore. So why part them first? Why set them up against each other, too? If the end result is some weird form of space matchmaking, fucking why? He doesn't voice any of this, but he doesn't have to.
Aziraphale shrugs and gets up, only to circle around and envelope him in a bear hug from behind. "She must have thought it was a good idea. The end result is lovely, isn't it?"
No matter how annoyed he is with her manipulations, all Crowley can do is nod sharply and melt against his love. The results, he suspects to his frustration, will be total perfection.