Gonna be real, my first time watching THAT scene I honestly wasn’t sure how they were ever gonna patch things up because I can’t even imagine the pain of standing in Crowley’s place after 6,000 years of loving someone in silence, trying to show them who you are at every opportunity, painstakingly chipping away at the delusion they’ve bought into since the beginning (more than you ever did) in order to show them the truth—to show them who you are (who the two of you could be together) —and then just as you’ve finally worked up the courage to lay it all out there and toss the dice hoping (with what, for the first time, you’re starting to believe are less than doomed odds) that they’ll love you back and that it will be enough—only for all of it to be dragged out from under you because they look you in the eye and all but tell you that they never understood you at all. They weren’t listening. And, sure they want what you want (to be together), they love you back (still unspoken but legible in the way they glow at the thought that they might still save you) (as if you need saving) (as if you’d want it)—but not as you are. They think the change they ask of you would be received as a grace and the betrayal of that is gut wrenching in a way that no flat out rejection could be, I think. If I were Crowley, I can’t imagine how I’d come back from that.
But then I watched the scene again. The moments after that betrayal. Once Crowley’s put his glasses back on, raised his defenses and sounded the retreat. I wondered, watching the scene again, how it could ever reach the point where the kiss made sense when they were already so torn apart. But the thing is that no matter how wrong Aziraphale was to want things to go back to the “way they were”, everything that led him to that conclusion comes from the thing Crowley loves most about him: his goodness. Aziraphale is good in a way that heaven is not, and Crowley knows that, but Aziraphale still hasn’t learned that lesson. He wants so desperately still to believe in god and heaven and the ineffable plan and even though it’s that desire that’s led him to hurt Crowley, I don’t think Crowley can completely begrudge him. By the time Crowley’s walking out of the book shop, the betrayal has already faded—not gone, but less than when compared to his sadness for Aziraphale and what his angel is going to go through when heaven lets him down (again)—assuming that it doesn’t just break him.
And the kiss—that fucking kiss (be still my beating heart)—that was Crowley planting a seed. “I know better than you do” he says and he does because Crowley has always been more honest with himself than Mr. “Master class in self delusion” A. Z. Fell. Aziraphale is about to be more alone and more lost than he has been in 6,000 years, so Crowley needed to make 100% clear to him where solid ground was. Aziraphale won’t be able to rationalize this away or hide behind propriety because it can only mean one thing and that is that he is in love with a demon whose on his own side with no interest in ever rejoining the heavenly host because heaven is not the epitome of goodness or love that he so desperately wants to believe it is. It’s not even capable of being that—no matter how hard Aziraphale tries to bend it back into what he thinks is it’s natural shape (because isn’t that what he wants so desperately to do as chief archangel? To make heaven the place he’s always thought it was?). Crowley really said “whatever you do next, do it knowing I love you”. He said “I’m done letting you ignore this.” And I get it. Cards on the table means cards on the table. No more half measures no more dancing around it—any of it. If Aziraphale wants to walk into the belly of the beast, then the least Crowley can do is make sure he’s doing it with his eyes wide open.
germansingergirl
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
jacobvanloon
izzy806
