Crowley withdrew his mind from Aziraphale's, disentangling himself from the memory he'd been shown. He was stunned, by many things: how Aziraphale had spoken to God, how God had answered; the incalculable weight of the choice Aziraphale had been asked to make, and is complete faith, not in some great ineffable plan, but in Crowley. Crowley stared down at the cat in Aziraphale's lap, watching the faint expansion and contraction of Tug's sleeping chest. Aziraphale's hands dropped from Crowley's head.
"The next thing I can remember after that is waking up here," Aziraphale said, looking around at the cottage, "As Azariah, on the day I interviewed for the job at the library. It never occurred to me to try and remember anything before that, until you tried to tell me about myself. I suppose that was Her doing. She stopped me from seeing the past, the box, the book… set me up in a life to make my own."
"And She made you human."
"Yes," Aziraphale looked down at his hand again, rubbing the tips of thumb and fingers together, "I suppose I was expecting everything else to come back with my memories. But I did tell Her I didn't want to be an angel anymore," he looked up at Crowley, a crooked sort of smile on his face, "I suppose She took me at my word."
"Angel," Crowley took Aziraphale's hand, squeezing it in both his own, "angel, we'll figure this out. We'll figure it out together."
"I don't know what there is to figure out," Aziraphale replied, and Crowley could tell he was working not to let his voice shake, "Even though I haven't lived as a human for very long, it was as real and true as any other part of my existence. Being Azariah has been one of the best parts, Crowley," Aziraphale put his other hand on top of Crowley's, making a small pile of layered reassurance, "I don't see why going on with it would be so bad. I'll just have to rely on you for my miracles."
"Angel," Crowley began, but stopped abruptly when Aziraphale winced hard, pressing his hand to his temple.
"Oof," Aziraphale exhaled sharply, "still some rearranging going on up there I think." Anxiously, Crowley leaned forward, taking Aziraphale's face in both his hands and examining him closely, as if some sign might present itself of what was wrong, or of the angelic consciousness inside its human body becoming too much. Aziraphale's fingers fastened gently on his wrist. "I'm alright, Crowley," he said quietly, and Crowley's jaw clenched. Then it relaxed, and he said,
"Let me put you to bed, angel."
"Only if you come with me."
Crowley noddedand, hand in hand, they made their way upstairs, led by Tug's waving tail. They moved through a familiar nighttime routine, made foreign by circumstance. Every movement and word were ones they had exchanged dozens of times before, and yet, it was the first time. When it came time to slide beneath the covers of the bed, neither hesitated. They pulled together, warm and comfortable, arms wrapped around each other just as they had so many times before. But now the drowsy whispers were Aziraphale's; just as sweet and good-humoured as they had been before, but now with both aeons of history and a new freedom behind them. It overwhelmed Crowley, and for the first time in a long time the ache he felt in his chest was of love, not loss; a love too large for the ribs that tried to contain it. It hurt him in ways he'd never been hurt before, and which he wondered how he'd ever lived without. Aziraphale's pale curls brushed against Crowley's face as he settled into the crook of Crowley's shoulder, one arm stretched across his chest, barely awake as he murmured,
"Goodnight, Anthony."
Letting his hand come up to rest on the back of Aziraphale's head, Crowley pressed his lips into the curls and replied,
"Goodnight, Azi."
But Crowley did not sleep. Aziraphale needed to, now, just as he had before his memories returned, but Crowley did not. He stared up at the ceiling, watching the changing angle of the moonlight upon it as the hours passed. When Aziraphale rolled over in his sleep and moved off of him, Crowley propped himself up on his elbow and watched him. He watched the rise and fall of his ribs as Aziraphale breathed, studied the silhouette of his hair in the faint pale light from the window, listened to the air moving in and out of his lungs, felt the changing heat of him as he cycled through the phases of sleep. At some point shortly before dawn, Crowley felt the mattress depress slightly beside him, and looked to see Tug stepping delicately over his legs. The cat padded up to Crowley's chest and settled into a loaf before him, around which Crowley wrapped his arm.
"Oh Tug," he sighed, "What are we going to do?"
When Aziraphale woke, it was to an empty bed. For the briefest instant he panicked, jerking upright in a thrashing of sheets— then consciousness fully asserted itself, and he became aware of sounds coming from downstairs. Dropping his face into his hands, he took several deep breaths.It was both incredible and disorienting to be fully himself again, and the meshing of his memories seemed to have him a little on edge. Crowley appeared through the bedroom door, clad in pyjama trousers that were too short for him and a thin dressing down, holding two mugs.
"Alright?" he asked, pausing just inside the door.
"Yes," Aziraphale said, then, more confidently, looking up at Crowley, "yes! Is that tea?" Crowley sat down on the bed, handing over one of the mugs. Aziraphale took a deep drink, and Crowley joined him. Aziraphale smiled.
"You never used to drink tea."
"Your bad habits rubbed off on me."
They laughed, breaking the tension neither had realised was in the room. Then, they began to talk. God's mention of the Metatron in Aziraphale's memory had been the least of Crowley's concerns last night, but now he started asking questions, needing to know what had happened. Aziraphale explained, recounting his time in Heaven since he'd gotten in the lift with the Metatron. As it turned out, the Second Coming had never been God's plan at all, but the Metatron's. Aziraphale had uncovered the scheme, and with the aid of the other Archangels, managed to entrap the Metatron in a prison of celestial light, anchored by a quartet of distant stars. For the first time in memory, God had delivered Extreme Sanctions, and erased the Metatron from the Book of Life. When the tale finally concluded, Crowley was sprawled on the bed, the tepid remains of his second cup of tea all but forgotten, staring at Aziraphale.
"Got what he deserved, the old windbag," he said finally, "so, now what? No Second Coming. What's the plan now?" Aziraphale shrugged.
"It's—"
"If you say ineffable I will never make you tea again."
"—unknown, then," Aziraphale stifled a smile, "No one knows. I mean, perhaps God does, but if She does, She's not sharing. Apocalypse thwarted, times two. It seems like everyone's just left to their own devices now."
"How bizarre." Crowley absently lifted his mug and took a sip, then gagged and let the cold liquid fall back into it. Aziraphale snorted, and his stomach growled loudly.
"Right," Aziraphale said, pressing a hand to his belly, "right, still human! Actually needing to eat, how odd."
"You've been doing it for, well, I think we can safely say years now."
"Yes, but I didn't have aeons with of memories of not needing to, at the time."
"True," Crowley extracted himself from the bed, and gestured to Aziraphale to do the same. "Come on, I'll make you breakfast. Lunch. Whatever."
"You will not," Aziraphale pushed himself to the end of the bed and stood, striding to the bedroom door with a severe look at Crowley, "I remember what happened to my kitchen the last time you attempted bacon, Anthony."
The rest of the weekend was spent in similar fashion. Crowley and Aziraphale drank tea, coffee, and wine; cooked far too much food, as they'd planned, feeding the choicest morsels to an extremely satisfied Tug; they laughed and joked and played at cribbage, lounged in front of the fire, and most of all they talked, really talked, for the first time in the millions of years they'd been saying things to each other. They picked over the threads of their shared past, acknowledging the moments when they'd held back, been too afraid to say something, or not known what to do, with the benefit of hindsight and the young honesty between them. It wasn't exactly that they expressed regret over these things, more like pointing out what could have been had they not been beholden to causes and structures larger than themselves. And they could now look back on many of these moments with wry humour at the foibles of their younger selves, and exchange gentle, disbelieving kisses in the present.
When the end of the weekend rolled around, Crowley broached the subject of the library reopening the next day, and what to do about it.
"Well, I'll go in, of course," Aziraphale said, "I do work there, after all."
"Yes of course, but," Crowley shifted his position on the sofa, turning to better look at Aziraphale, "Won't it be strange"
"I'm sure it will be, somewhat," Aziraphale considered, "But I'm the same person I was when we closed for the weekend, the same person who's been working there. Just… a bit more now."
"A bit," Crowley snorted, but then nodded in agreement. "You're right. It's just, like you said, reconciling two lives. Should— do you think we should go see Muriel?" Aziraphale bit his lip.
"Maybe not just yet. I don't know yet what to do about the bookshop, and I don't want them to get overexcited when I don't have the answers."
"Fair enough," Crowley said, then paused as he remembered something. "Hmm. We don't have the car."
"Oh. Right."
"Suppose we could go back to town the way we came. Er. I wasn't exactly thinking when I brought us here." Aziraphale grinned.
"Or we could take the bus."
They had agreed that Crowley wouldn't come in to the library that day, just to give Aziraphale a chance to reorient himself without any distractions. This resulted in Crowley being extremely distracted, holed up in his flat all day, wondering how it was going. He didn't even have Tug to distract him, as they'd planned to go back out to the cottage that night. Crowley's day was spent rotating between laying on the couch staring at the ceiling, stress-cleaning, stress-reading, stress-napping, and making and consuming many cups of coffee. He was in the stress-napping phase when his buzzer sounded, and the resultant flail into wakefulness caused him to crash off the couch and onto the floor. Scrambling across the room, Crowley hit the button that would allow Aziraphale up and hovered by the door until he could hear footsteps coming down the hall, then scampered over to lean against the kitchen counter. When the door opened, he was sipping from his last, half-abandoned, cup of coffee, looking extremely casual.
"Well?" Crowley said at once, "How was it?"
"It was perfectly ordinary," Aziraphale said, hanging up his coat, "Another lovely day in the library."
"Reeaallyyyy," Crowley said, sceptically.
"Really! Well, Sandra noticed something was different—"
"Damn that woman and her unreasonable sharpness," Crowley muttered. Aziraphale ignored him.
"—but I just told her we'd had a simply lovely long weekend and let her infer the rest. There may have been a number of inappropriate comments."
"Oh well done angel," Crowley cackled, and Aziraphale drew himself up primly.
"Thank you. Now I'm going to go have a shower, if you don't mind." Aziraphale disappeared into the bathroom, and Crowley returned to the couch, flopping down in a sprawl that could finally be considered relaxed. He dozed off to the background noise of the shower and the sound of something classical or other being hummed, and only roused when Aziraphale's voice called,
"Anthony, come in here!"
Crowley rose blearily, rubbing his eyes. The shower had stopped, and as he walked back towards where the voice had come from, he glanced in the bathroom. Empty. He walked by the bedroom, and its door was closed. Curiously, he moved further back through the flat, into his office. There was Aziraphale, who turned to face him as he came in,
"Well? What do you think?" Crowley froze on the spot. On the desk was the large garment box, where he had left it, but with its lid off to the side. And Aziraphale, gleaming with freshly-scrubbed and slightly nervous shine, had put on his old suit. The sight was so achingly familiar, a comforting constant Crowley had thought he would never see again. At the same time, it stirred something in him; something he'd felt before, but never allowed himself to acknowledge. Coming back to himself, Crowley crossed over to the desk and sat on its edge, crossing his arms across his chest.
"Give us a twirl, then," he said. Ever the fashionista, Aziraphale obliged, making a tight circle in the centre of the room, finish with a flourishing flip of the jacket. "Very nice," Crowley said, nodding approvingly. Then, "Angel," Crowley spoke slowly, feeling out the words, "when you say you remember everything… you mean everything… right?" Aziraphale flushed under Crowley's hungry stare.
"Er, yes," he said, starting to turn away in embarrassment. But before he knew it, Aziraphale had been enveloped by an enormous black wing, pulled across the room until he stood right in front of Crowley at the desk.
"So do I, angel," Crowley's voice was low and husky, and he slid his hands beneath Aziraphale's jacket, encircling his waist. "I'd like to make more memories like that. Would you?" One of Crowley's hands slid back around to the top of Aziraphale's waistcoat, where it hovered over the buttons, waiting. Aziraphale could barely breathe as he looked at Crowley, until all the familiar-yet-strange feelings and sensations swirling inside him coalesced into a single word:
"Yes."
Aziraphale seized Crowley's lips in a heated kiss, his fingers tangling in the scarlet hair, as Crowley's wings surrounded them.