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It was a quiet afternoon. Much like every day and afternoon since Aziraphale had decided Heaven wasn’t exactly for him. Not anymore.
Instead, he missed his books too much, the friends he had made here, the regulars for his shop. He missed Crowley too much. There was too much on Earth for him to feel comfortable in Heaven like he thought he would. He thought he could have made a change while he was there, but instead he felt too alone to do anything that could be considered helpful. Instead, he desperately missed the home and life he had made for himself over such a long period of time.
And that’s what led him back to his bookshop, back to everything he left behind, everything he let fall apart when he left.
Back to Crowley and what had been done before he left.
So here they were, sitting in Aziraphale’s bookshop, both doing their own thing but enjoying the presence of the other. They liked it this way. They liked being able to do their own thing while knowing there was that familiar presence of a familiar person sitting near them. It was comforting in a way that nothing else felt comparable.
Until one of them got bored. Usually Crowley.
He would get up from the couch, start wandering around the shop, cleaning up little places that needed cleaning, and then go over to where Aziraphale was to bother him into giving him attention. Which was something that worked every time.
So that’s how, today, Crowley ended up on Aziraphale’s lap.
He had grabbed the book out of Aziraphale’s hands, put in a bookmark, and placed it on the desk. The whole time, Aziraphale only waited to see what Crowley wanted today, and kept watching his face as Crowley maneuvered himself to sit on his lap.
Crowley’s hands were gripped in curls, keeping himself steady so he wouldn’t lose his balance on the chair. Both of them taking glances between the others’ lips to their eyes; neither of them knowing quite where to look, but knowing where they wanted tonight to go.
They wanted it to go exactly how it was going, with them wrapped in each others’ presence, not caring about the world around them. Not caring that people walking by could probably see them through the window, staring at each other before Aziraphale finally pushed his head towards Crowley, meeting his lips on his own while he held on tightly to Crowley’s waist.
Passersby did in fact see them through the window, but if either of them noticed, they didn’t care. They were both far too wrapped up in what they were doing, what they wanted to do, to care at all what people outside were seeing, and what they might be thinking.
Both of them were lost in the feeling, lost in the fact that they were both here, doing what seemed to be inevitable since the beginning of time itself. Neither of them cared much about anything else in that moment other than how the other felt against their own mouth, against their own chest.
Aziraphale was desperately clasping to the back of Crowley’s shirt, his hands having snaked under his jacket in the midst of everything. He was desperate to keep him there, keep him close, scared that at any given moment he could leave. Scared that at any given moment, all of this could come crashing down around them without either of them being prepared. And that was the last thing either of them wanted after everything else that had happened.
Eventually, after a few minutes of being wrapped in each other’s warmth, Crowley broke their kiss, leaning back ever so slightly so their noses were barely brushing against each other.
Neither of them wanted to move, and so they didn’t. Instead, they opted to stay in each other’s presence just a while longer while composing themselves enough to deal with the rest of reality.
“You know,” Aziraphale started. “That always feels so much different from when it happened the first time.”
Humming, Crowley leaned back a little more, turning his head upward, and twirling his fingers in Aziraphale’s hair. “How so?”
He thought for a minute, knowing what he wanted to say, but not how to say it. “Well, the first time wasn’t - it was only a tactic, wasn’t it? A last attempt to keep me from going back to Heaven.” Aziraphale watched Crowley’s head turn to one side as his eyebrows furrowed. “Was it… something else?”
Crowley’s face dropped as he took in exactly what he was hearing. His mouth opened and closed a few times, before he leaned back as far as he comfortably could while still being sat on Aziraphale’s lap. “You thought… it was a tactic?”
“Wasn’t it? I mean why else - after all that time, you couldn’t have just in the moment decided…” Aziraphale trailed off. He thought for sure that Crowley was only trying to do whatever he could to keep him on Earth, keep him from leaving whatever kind of life they had built there. He didn’t think for a second that there was anything else to what he had done. If anything, he thought it was a mistake, or something that he did impulsively without any thought behind it.
Aziraphale didn't think there was any meaning behind that first kiss, other than Crowley being desperate for the life they built not to change.
But now he was second guessing his initial thoughts.
Could he have been wrong?
Crowley stayed staring at him, his eyes wandering his face while the wheels turned in Aziraphale’s head. He stayed silent, for the most part, waiting for anything to click in Aziraphale’s head over what that kiss meant to him. “You can’t seriously think that.”
Aziraphale’s mouth opened and stayed like that, silent, for a minute before he stuttered out “I don’t really know anymore.”
“It was more than a tactic, if that helps any.” Crowley’s hands had moved from Aziraphale’s hair to his shoulders, still keeping himself on his lap, but keeping himself a little further than what he was before. “It was desperate, sure, but I didn’t have much intent behind it other than wanting you to know something that wasn’t clicking before. I meant it in a way to show you how I… er… felt? I guess? I couldn’t, at the moment, think of a better way to tell you, so I guess I took the route to show you instead. A last ditch attempt to make sure you knew before you… left.”
Aziraphale stared at him, mouth agape. In the moment, and after, he never got his hopes up about that being anything more than what he immediately thought it was. He didn’t think that was really a possibility, so any time he had those kinds of thoughts, he shut them down immediately.
There was a small part of him through all of that that hoped that the kiss meant more, but the largest part of his being couldn’t let him believe that. He didn’t want to think it was one thing when there was any kind of chance that it could have been anything else. The largest part of his being won out, convincing him that that kiss meant nothing, and that Crowley was just using anything he could so he didn’t have to be completely alone.
He continued staring, head flooding with the memory while he tried to adjust to what that first kiss actually was, and what it actually meant. Part of him still couldn’t believe that it was anything more than what he thought before, but he was at least now opening up to changing his ideas about it.
“So…” Aziraphale started. “It wasn’t just a tactic to make me stay?”
“Far from it.”
“I see.” His head was still reeling, trying to fully grasp what was being told to him. “Well that makes the situation quite different, doesn’t it?” He let out a laugh, but stopped quickly when he noticed Crowley wasn’t even close to smiling anymore.
Instead, Crowley was nodding, sorting out his own thoughts on what happened that day. “It doesn’t really change much for me. I knew at the time it wasn’t taken well, and I guess, even if now the context for why it wasn’t taken well has changed, I know it still wasn’t.” Crowley hesitated before continuing, knowing he had something he needed to ask, but unsure if he wanted the answer. “Does it - does anything change for you?”
Aziraphale looked behind Crowley, thinking, trying to decide if anything had in fact changed. “I’m not sure. On one hand, yes things feel quite different now, but it doesn’t feel like anything should have changed. No events have changed, so really, I’m not sure why it does feel different.”
“Well your perception of arguably our first intimate moment is different. So technically that has changed, if you look at it that way.” Crowley paused, letting what he said sink in before moving on. “But what I’m asking is if anything has changed between us now. If your perception changing has changed what we have now.”
“Oh, no. No, nothing has changed that. I still like what we have now and I don’t want that to change, even if what you could argue was the beginning of it all wasn’t exactly what I knew of it.” Aziraphale rushed out, all while Crowley let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding.
“And we’re still… us?”
“Of course we are.”
Finally, Crowley allowed himself to smile ever so slightly before adjusting himself on Aziraphale’s lap to get closer to him again. Once he was back where he started at the beginning of this all, he moved his hands back up to play with Aziraphale’s curls. He allowed himself to get comfortable again, realizing quickly that his body had stiffened up throughout their conversation.
Once he was relaxed again, he dropped his head onto Aziraphale’s shoulder, placing quick kisses along his neck.