Crowley’s been in love since Eden. Utterly smitten. He took one long look at Aziraphale as he justified giving Adam and Eve his sword and he was done for, and he’s been done for ever since.
Aziraphale has known, on some level, since Rome. I haven’t written the fic I want to write about this yet but it comes down to this: before Rome it was always Crowley who sought out Aziraphale, and it usually happens that way after, but Aziraphale just happened to bump into him when he was looking very glum and had just changed his hairstyle and started covering his eyes? Just accidentally? Nope, don’t buy it, more happened there.
So Crowley’s loved Aziraphale since Eden, and Aziraphale’s known it since Rome, and I think he’s always been aware, distantly, that he could love Crowley back if he let himself.
But he doesn’t. He lets Crowley do little favors for him and he gets himself into trouble so Crowley will rescue him and he’ll have an excuse— to look at him so fondly, to spend time with him. And he’s so painfully aware that Crowley keeps coming back because he love him.
Because the other side of Crowley knowing, because he fell, because God cast him out and stopped loving him? The other side of Crowley knowing that even God’s love is conditional is that Aziraphale knows that, too. And what in the world, in the universe, has he done to earn the sort of devotion Crowley has towards him?
Aziraphale is a mediocre angel. He’s never been able to muster up the sort of easy, solid Belief angels like Gabriel and Michael and Uriel and Sandalphon have, that unquestioning acceptance. He wonders in Eden if he did the right thing, laughs in relief with Crowley at the prospect he didn’t before the ramifications catch up with him. He’s selfish and stubborn and he enjoys the world far more than other angels seem to think is Good for him. And Crowley, fallen Crowley, who Aziraphale has to know cannot possibly have the same sort of relationship with the idea of “unconditional love” as Heaven does, loves him. The idea terrifies him (not because it’s a reminder that he’ll never be as Good as he’s supposed to, I think everything and everyone Aziraphale encounters reminds him of that and he’s used to it) because there’s nothing he could ever give Crowley back that could even begin to repay him for it.
And Aziraphale thinks if he doesn’t he’s going to lose him, and he clings, oh man, we make Crowley pretty clingy in fanon but it’s Aziraphale who brings up how Hell will punish him, Aziraphale who thinks Hell will destroy Crowley if they find out about their association, Aziraphale who brings up suicide when Crowley asks him for holy water. I’ve been threatening a meta on how Aziraphale jumping to the conclusion that Crowley wants to kill himself is purely guilt on his part and a faulty assumption to boot for weeks and this is that meta, I guess. Crowley doesn’t ask for holy water because he’s suicidal. Crowley asks for holy water because he’s cautious, and he’s clever, and he plans ahead, and Aziraphale just assuming he wants to kill himself smacks to me of the fear of abandonment. “It would destroy you/hell would destroy you” he says, but what he means is don’t leave me here, don’t make me do this alone. It’s why he looks so hurt about Alpha Centauri, because he finally knows that Crowley never would and it’s too late now. Because Crowley loves Aziraphale and Aziraphale loves Crowley but he’s never claimed it, never let himself, and he knows he has no right to Crowley’s affection and regard if he won’t even admit to him that it’s important and that he feels the same.
And so we come to 1941, where Crowley saves Aziraphale’s books, anticipates that he’d be upset about them and saves them at the same time he saves both their lives, and I think something just. Clicks. Aziraphale expression there has never struck me as anything as simple as realizing he’s in love. He looks devastated, somehow, not upset devastated but dazed, overwhelmed, struck dumb, and the reason is that it’s finally hit him that Crowley loves him the same way he loves Crowley. Without expectation or consequence or desire for reward. Crowley saved Aziraphale’s books as a selfless act because he knows him and he likes making him happy, and I think in that moment Aziraphale realizes that’s all it really has ever been, that Crowley loves him and likes making him happy. That Crowley doesn’t think Aziraphale owes him anything. And I think that stuns him, because he’s been so very, very wrong about the most important person in his world, and I just. I’m hugely sappy about this. To draw on the “the show is fanfiction” analogy, it’s the show’s emotional equivalent of all those fics where Aziraphale realizes that he was wrong about “especially not to you” in the book. Where Aziraphale realizes Crowley is capable of the kind of love that you can feel like that, and that he’s always felt it.
I dunno, I just. I cannot, I refuse to believe that Aziraphale didn’t know Crowley loved him. “You go too fast for me” are not the words of somebody who’s only realized in the last 26 years they’re in love. That only makes sense as a statement if it’s not about anything recent and is instead about Eden, and Mesopotamia, and Golgotha and Rome and Wessex and every time since then. Aziraphale and Crowley loved each other for a very, very long time, and I think it was partially a misjudgment of what that love meant to Crowley and partially his own insecurities about Heaven and his role as an angel that kept Aziraphale from acknowledging it to himself sooner.
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