It happened in a garden. It happened when his hereditary enemy slithered up beside him and they watched human history unfold for the very first time in front of their eyes and out of their reach, wondering about Right And Wrong when really they ought to have been wondering why they were standing side by side.
As the first rain drops fell they huddled together, one Fallen Angel and one About To Fall but in a different way, hovering on a precipe he did not see until centuries later. The snake’s yellow, amused eyes had burned themsleves into his being, and Aziraphale had known back then that they would never quite leave him. He extended one wing, and with it an unspoken invitation.
It happened in Rome, when against his better judgement he approached the demon he should have been thwarting only to offer him temptation, of all things, and to rejoice when he received a smile and dinner company. Aziraphale had loved oysters before, but that day they had tasted sweeter. He’d credited Petronius.
It happened in London–where it would happen many times more–when Crowley did Good for his sake and Aziraphale betrayed Heaven for logic; when he could no longer deny that they were opposing forces complementing each other as shadow complements light. Maybe they weren’t cancelling each other out. Maybe they were completing each other.
They came to agree on an Arrangement, a transgression that felt far too right to be so very wrong, not when it was him he was transgressing with (and when it changed nothing of the outcome, Aziraphale reminded himself, almost as an afterthought). And not when he suspected that a part of Crowley was rejoicing in the reverse betrayal of Hell, in doing good for Goodness’ sake.
It happened in France, when Aziraphale had been supposed to die and found himself, crêpe in hand, beside an old friend who had saved his life for the hell of it, expecting nothing in return. The sound of Crowley’s voice made his heart beat faster, even if he tried blaming it on the guillotine outside.
It happened in a church, when a demon tread on holy ground to rescue an angel. When Crowley handed him a bag of old books saved by a demonic miracle while Heaven was silent and Aziraphale toppled off that precipe he had been balancing on for thousands of years. The church was gone but Crowley was still there, waiting for him, and Aziraphale was standing in between rubble but Falling, and his heart ached at the impossibility of it.
It happened in a car–not in a car, in the car, the same one that had driven him home through the Blitz and in which he was now handing his best friend the tool for his destruction because he could not bear to think of a world without Crowley. They had been together since the Beginning, and he needed to know he’d be there with him until the End.
It happened at the End Of All Things, when all was lost and still they could not give up, not the world and not each other. Aziraphale had not been able to run away because he knew there was nowhere to run, but as human history folded in on itself as they stood side by side one last time he realized that Until The End was not enough.
It happened when Aziraphale no longer wondered about Right And Wrong because he knew. It had always been them, side by side, without question. At a bus stop, on a park bench, in a quiet flat, a bustling bookshop, at the Ritz. In a garden. He understood, now. It had happened when they’d started it, and when they had refused to let it end. It had been happening all along, slowly and all at once. And it was still happening.
Aziraphale had not exactly fallen in love: he had sauntered vaguely downwards.