Evidently I like to keep breaking my own heart, but you know, I don't think Crowley was about to say:
"And I would like to spent the rest of my life with you."
If you skip the "I mean, the last few years not really" parenthesis, I believe his full confession/proposal was going to be:
"We're a team, a group. Group of the two of us. And we've spent our existence pretending that we arent. [...] And I would like to spend it not pretending anymore."
And that's because he had prepared his little speach before Aziraphale came back, he had rehearsed it in his mind, taking their togetherness for granted. They had always been together, they had already spent their lives together and they were surely going to spend them together anyway forever.
Being together was not the point, because not being together was simply unthinkable. The point was stop pretending and finally become "an us" - openly, honestly, fully. The possibility of being separated never crossed his mind, it would not make sense for him to ask Aziraphale to be together, it would imply the existence of a reality in which they are not.
So when he pushed through and decided to say what he was going to say, he got to that part and the realization started to creep in that he might actually have been too much of an optimist. The possibility of them not being together did exist, it was coming into existence in that very moment, in front of his eyes, making the "stop pretending" part suddenly incongruous. And all the rest of his speach fell apart.
Now the point was "are you going away?", "what about us if you go?", "what is happening?", "why is this happening?", "how can this be happening?". Now the important thing that needed to be said was "let's be together, if you don't feel like stop pretending because it's dangerous then we can run off somewhere, far from Heaven and Hell and their threats, but just please let's stick together."
That's, I think, why he chocked on his words.
He was ready to take a little step forward, and he found himself falling a thousand steps backwards.
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
