It had all been televised, of course. There was no need for Crowley to be there in person when it was announced. But he had been following it all so closely, put his phone on notifications for news and everything. It wasn't like him to not be involved, but (if he was to get the outcome he wanted without getting someone like Beelzebub or even Satan himself angry at him) he couldn't lay a single, solitary finger on the whole thing. Not that he cared about laws, of course, especially such ridiculous ones as this... but Aziraphale did. He new that Aziraphale wouldn't even start to listen to him without the whole thing being legal.

And now he found himself in a crowd of little humans who just wanted to be able to be able to declare their love for each other openly. He could feel the anticipation in the air, the anxiety in some cases as some were unsure whether or not it would go through. And then the announcement came. It was legal, and the cheers that swept the crowd were deafening.

Crowley didn't waste a second. He practically ran to his car, jumped in, and shouted "Call Aziraphale!" into the bluetooth.

The angel picked up immediately. "Hello, Aziraphale speaking," he said.

"It's me," Crowley said. He had mellowed considerably at the sound of the Aziraphale's voice. Couldn't sound too excited, he figured. Otherwise the angel might get suspicious. "I don't know if you've heard, but it's legal now."

"Oh, yes," Aziraphale answered. "I know. In fact, I might have put in a good word for it here and there. It's two thousand fourteen, after all... High time for it if you ask me."

Crowley could almost picture the conspicuous little smile on his friend's face. "Right," he answered. "Well, I'm coming over."

"Well, that's just perfect," Aziraphale said. "I'm just about to take some biscuits out of the oven, so they should be nice and warm by the time you arrive. How do you feel about Mr. Kiplings? I found a recipe for imitations, and I just thought I'd try them."

Crowley hung up. Aziraphale would have gone on forever about Mr. Kiplings if he had let him. Satan, he really was annoying sometimes. There were sometimes when Crowley just thought about him and rolled his eyes - involuntarily! He could be embarrassing, too; bordering on completely ridiculous. And yet...

Well, there was no more point in thinking it over. Crowley had quite made up his mind what he was going to to do. He just had to get it over with... for better or for worse. Getting to the bookshop was a complete hell with all the traffic. It took about thirty minutes longer to get there than normal. By that time, his brain had nearly pounded itself out of his head trying to remember what he planned on saying, and his stomach had tied itself up working up the nerve to actually do it.

He arrived at the shop, marched in like a man gone to war. No swagger, no sauntering, not even an extra second to poke around the shop like he tended to. He went straight to Aziraphale, ready to speak his mind.

And Aziraphale looked up at him and smiled. He was holding a cup of tea in his hand and a plate of warm biscuits were on the table next to him. He still smiles at me, Crowley thought. It was a good sign. Good enough that a sentence started building in his chest - a question really.

"Ah, there you are!" Aziraphale said. "Here to celebrate?"

Crowley swallowed whatever he had been about to say. It had waited for six-thousand years. It could wait for a few more hours. "I'm hardly gonna celebrate with oolong and Mr. Kiplings, am I?"

Aziraphale furrowed his eyebrows and pursed his lips. "Well..." he began thoughtfully. "I have some very nice bottles of chardonnay in the back. Or maybe champagne?"

Crowley blinked.

"Or some whiskey, I suppose?" Aziraphale relented finally.

"That'll do it."

Some hours later, Crowley was drunk and so was Aziraphale having been long since convinced to join his demon friend for a drink. They had made quite a lot of toasts to couples young and old and wished them all long and happy marriages. Crowley even slurred out a promise to keep all the power grids in the whole United Kingdom in tact for a month just to make sure the weddings were uneventful. Then Aziraphale returned some sort of slur about Crowley being truly good at heart and Crowley had responded to that by tuning him out for about thirty minutes.

"But I've got a question," Aziraphale said. "Weren't you supposed to be" - he hiccuped - "I don't know... working against it or something or another or another something else?"

"Well..." Crowley said with a grimace. The world was starting to spin, not entirely from the whiskey. "Technically... Uh, yeah... That was my job, my com-iss-ion. But! You know... sometimes thinks don't job out - work out! Props to you on this one, eh?"

Aziraphale allowed a brief smile... so brief it was almost uncatchable. "Odd thing for a demon to be celebrating, isn't it though? Love, I mean?"

Crowley was quiet for a moment, and stared in deep concentration at Aziraphale who was looking up at him with wide, curious eyes. "Let's sober up," he said, drunk enough to suggest such a thing. At the moment, he wanted all the working pieces of his brain working together. Dodging questions was easy enough. He'd been doing it for six-thousand years, after all. Answering questions would prove to take much more brain power.

Aziraphale nodded, and once all of the alcohol was purged from their systems, Crowley settled into his armchair and sighed deeply.

"The truth is..." Crowley began. "I didn't work that hard against it. Or against it at all."

Crowley shook his head. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised, Crowley. You never really have cared all too much about your work. Now, you see where it's gotten you? I've accomplished my goal, and you'll have to answer to your side for failing."

"Oh, shut up," Crowley growled. "I'll take care of things on my end. They love me down there. I mean, it wasn't like the normal sloughing off, not giving a gargoyle's balls what happens sort of thing. I actively put a lot of effort into ignoring it completely."

Aziraphale offered a raspberry. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Aziraphale, I mean I made absolutely sure I didn't touch the entire thing, not even on accident."

The angel furrowed his eyebrows and opened his mouth. He sputtered around with words a moment before finally landing on, "Why would you do something like that?"

At this, Crowley looked away from Aziraphale, unable to meet his eyes. Six-thousand years he had thought about what to say... It used to come out in long, detailed speeches that were defended better than even the best lawyer could manage. Or sometimes, it was smooth, and cocky, and arrogant, and perfect and just what it took to get Aziraphale to melt. Now, he struggled to get a single word out. Not even a syllable. He settled for a shrug.

Then a phrase came to him. Finally, something. Anything at all.

"I don't know."

Then another phrase, this one more damning than the first. He still refused to even look at Aziraphale.

"I thought you and I might give it a try?"

Aziraphale blinked a few times. "You what?" It came out quietly, and it wasn't exactly the reaction Crowley had envisioned.

"Well, I don't know!" That damned phrase again. "I thought that maybe - maybe - you and I would like to get married... sometime."

Poor Aziraphale... The confusion that immediately washed over his face would have been laughable if Crowley was in a laughing mood. "What a thing to suggest..." the angel said, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. Then he grabbed his tea cup and stood up, turning either direction before opting to sit down again. "You're just trying to get at me, aren't you? Another one of your silly pranks, isn't it, Crowley?"

"Oh, please, give me some credit," Crowley sighed. "I may be a demon, but I'm not that cruel. No, I..." He took a deep breath. "I think I want to marry you, that's all."

"That's all..." Aziraphale repeated, and he didn't say another word for a long while.

Desperate to save the situation, Crowley's previously incapable mouth shot off at full speed. "I mean, it seems the human thing to do, doesn't it? We're trying to fit in here, aren't we? Bloody hell, Aziraphale, half the neighborhood already thinks we're together! And besides..."

"Besides what?" Aziraphale snapped.

"Besides! It gets tedious driving back and forth all the time. My house, bookshop, my house, bookshop, my house, bookshop. I've got petroleum bills to think of here!"

Aziraphale snapped his eyes onto Crowley and gave him a scandalized once-over. "Oh, so now you're suggesting that we live together?"

"That's typically what married people do, yes!"

With a shake of his head, Crowley leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. When it became apparent that that was where he intended to remain, Crowley rose from his seat and crouched in front of him.

"Aziraphale, angel, look at me." With that, he took Aziraphale's hands and brought them down from his face, keeping a tight grip on both of them. The aforementioned angel's eyes were wide and watery. He looked at Crowley with such a sadness on his face that the demon was unsure whether he would be able to keep his footing.

"Crowley," he began. "It can't happen. I'm an angel, and you're a demon. Do you think that this is what either of our sides would want for us?"

It was nearly impossible to keep back the string of curses and cusses and swears that burned in the back of his throat, but somehow Crowley managed. "Satan, Aziraphale, have a selfish thought every once in a while! Damn what Satan wants for me, and damn what the Almighty wants for you! What do you want? Because, I decided six-thousand years ago that I wanted to marry you and I've kept that with me ever since. Almost from the minute we met, and I'll be blasted out of eternity before I let anyone take that away from me."

"Crowley, I don't-"

"Do you love me?" Crowley interrupted. It was a miracle the question managed to interrupt anything, given how quietly it came out. He certainly hadn't intended it to leave his throat so quiet, but had it been any louder, his voice would've cracked. That would have been unacceptable. However, his grip on Aziraphale's hands did tighten, which was enough to shock the angel out of his chair.

The angel took two long strides into the center of the room.

"Angel?"

"Don't call me that."

"Well, it's what you are, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

He didn't add anything else after that and another long silence followed.

"Well?" Crowley finally dared to ask.

"Well, what?"

"Do you love me?" Crowley repeated. By the second time he asked, the weight of the question made his tongue heavy, and he didn't feel like talking anymore.

Now it was Aziraphale's turn to avoid eye-contact. "I can't answer that."

"So, you do love me," Crowley inferred.

"I said nothing of the sort. Do you know what might happen to me if I ever said such a thing?" Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley let out a bitter laugh. "Well, you'd get better treatment than I would for it. But I really don't care. And you know why?"

Aziraphale wet his lips nervously before glancing over his shoulder at Crowley. "Why?"

"Because I love you, angel. I loved you back in the Garden of Eden and I'll love you at Armageddon. And more than anything I want to marry you and live out the rest of our days here with you and only you."

Aziraphale seemed to be comprised of long, uncomfortable quiet spells. "It would never work out, don't you see?" he finally questioned.

"Why not? Because I'm a demon?" Crowley questioned in a patronizing tone.

"Yes, exactly."

Crowley nodded. "You're going to be hung up on that one for a while, aren't you?" When Aziraphale didn't answer, he stood. "Right. I'll see myself out."

And so he did, without a glance backwards, not even when Aziraphale called his name. He drove home without any music playing. There were still celebrations in the streets. The minute he walked through his door, he broke everything that could break - threw it all onto the stone floor. He could fix it when he was feeling less furious. Of course, there were many people to be furious with.

First there was Aziraphale. The stupid, moronic angel. Couldn't think about anything beside angels versus demons. Heaven versus Hell. Couldn't look inside himself for a second to see if he could find it in his big, old, saintly heart to love a filthy, low, odious demon. Ridiculous. Stupid, stupid angel.

Next there was Lucifer - Satan. If he'd never roped him into the whole "falling" business none of this would have happened. Maybe he would've met Aziraphale up in Heaven and they would've hit it off. Satan was the one who made him a demon in the first place, damn him to hell. Of course God had already beat him to that.

But of course he had to be angry at himself. What did he think was going to happen? That he would swoop in like some dashing, Byronic hero and sweep Aziraphale off of his feet? He was a fool to think that just because it was legal on earth that Aziraphale would be open to doing something that might upset Gabriel. Satan, that was the only thing the angel ever talked about wasn't it? Gabriel, this. Gabriel, that.

He hated Gabriel, too, for no particular reason.

Crowley went to bed. Couldn't sleep for his life. He stayed wide-awake until the sun appeared over the horizon.

Mid-afternoon there was a knock on the door. Further inspection revealed that it was the postman. Strange... he almost never received male.

Crowley threw open the door. "What do you want?" he demanded.

"Package for a Mr. Anthony J. Crowley? From a Mr. Aziraphale?"

Crowley made a grab for the package. "Give it here," he ordered.

The postman pulled it away just in time. "You'll have to sign for it first."

When it was all signed for and the postman left (with a curse of inconvenience, unbeknownst to him), Crowley tore off the envelope that was taped to the top of the box and opened it. It was all in Aziraphale's familiar handwriting. It read:

Dearest Crowley,

I'm so sorry. Of course, of course, I love you. I do hope you realize that. I can't say it out loud. Trees and ducks have ears, I've been told. I have a feeling you knew anyway. But, as much as I may want to, I cannot marry you. I don't want to have to fight you when it comes down to the end. Besides, I shudder to think of what your side would do to you if they ever found out. Well, I can't really make speeches. Not like you can anyway. I'll just put it the way Jane Austen did: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

Anyway, enough of all that. I've gotten you a small present. I know how much you like to raise them. I do hope you'll think of me whenever you look at it and remember that I do love you even though I may not act like it in person. Speaking of which, I'd like to go to lunch with you tomorrow. The usual time. You decide where.

Yours,

Aziraphale

Crowley read the letter a few dozen times before folding it gently and sticking it in his pocket. Inside the box was a small houseplant. It was a hideous little thing, really. Spots in obvious places, ghastly. The angel wouldn't know a good plant when he saw one. Nonetheless, the demon carried it to his bedroom and put it very prettily in the corner and watered it.

It was an ugly business, this whole loving Aziraphale. It was obvious that nothing would ever come of it. And then, once their purposes were completed, they would be separated for the rest of eternity. And that was a thought that Crowley could not bear.

But then an idea struck between his two ears. Because of course, if there was no rest of eternity, there couldn't be any separation. But that was an idea for the future.

In the meantime, he didn't have any other ideas. All he had was a love note, a horrible-looking houseplant, and a promise of lunch tomorrow. With luck, lunch would bring about some better ideas.