Concerning Wild Hearts

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/48740923.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Relationship: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley (Good
Omens)
Character: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Arguing,
Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, Ineffable Husbands
(Good Omens)
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-07-21 Words: 3,459 Chapters: 1/1

Concerning Wild Hearts

by Mysti_Gayle

Summary

While watching an old film, Crowley and Aziraphale realize that they should probably talk
about certain things. Certain emotional things that neither of them are very good at.

Notes

I suck at summaries, but Crowley losing his temper as he speaks his mind to the one he
loves the most is probably my favorite thing to write.

Also there are spoilers to Wuthering Heights in this fic, so if you have wanted to read the
book or see the movie, please do so first. The film adaptation referenced here is from 1939.

I do not own these characters.

Crowley and Aziraphale sat up in Crowley’s bed watching an older feature presentation of
Wuthering Heights and sharing a bottle of red wine. It was a warm evening and Crowley had
cracked open the window above the bed to let in fresh air after their second round of lovemaking,
and now his angel was leaning against him, their naked bodies under the bed sheet as Crowley’s
leg rested on top of Aziraphale’s.

Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff appeared on the screen dressed in the finest clothes, a stark contrast
to the stable boy rags from earlier in the film. He was greeted by a smartly suited David Niven who
was playing the part of Edgar Linton and standing next to Merle Oberon’s Cathy, who was sewing.
“Hello, Heathcliff,” he said.

“Mister Linton.” Heathcliff held out his hand to shake his.

“How are you?” asked Mr. Linton.

Heathcliff didn’t answer but looked next to him and with a soft voice said, “Hello, Cathy.”

Aziraphale sighed and took a long sip of his wine. “That Olivier is elegant, even if he is playing a
brute in this.”

Crowley leaned into his ear and whispered, “You have a thing for brutes, though.” The delighted
giggle prompted him to kiss the spot on Aziraphale’s neck he had left the night before, and then he
turned his attention to the TV again. “So who’s dying first?”

“Just watch the film, dear. This is the part where Heathcliff comes back to the Grange where Cathy
and Edgar are already married. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Yeah, yeah. Heathcliff ran away again, and Cathy was sad about it until she marries money. Got
it.” Crowley leaned into Aziraphale’s neck again. “If you recall, I was distracted by your thighs
when the film started.”

“That’s hardly my fault, dear.”

“True, but it’s hard to pay attention when you’re in the nip next to me.” He looked at the TV again.
“What’s happened now?”

“Heathcliff just told Edgar and Cathy that he secretly paid off Hindley’s—”

“Cathy’s arsehole brother. See, I paid attention.”

“Yes, he paid off his gambling and drinking debt and while Heathcliff did that, he bought
Wuthering Heights so he could become master of the house.”

“Smooth move.”

“No, dear, it’s awful. Now that he’s master of the house he’s going to become a tyrant to everyone
in it. Including Isabella when he marries her.”

“Yeah but he’s getting revenge on Hindley, which he rightly deserves! Wait, who’s Isabella?”

“She’s Edgar’s sister. She’s going to fall madly in love with Heathcliff and he’s going to take
advantage of that, marry her, emotionally neglect her because she isn’t Cathy and—”

“You know, now that you’re explaining all this, how the bloody heavens is this a romance?
Everyone in it is awful.”

Aziraphale huffed. “If you would have gotten your head out of my thighs, you would know.
Crowley, the two main characters are the same free spirit. That’s why they met on the moors so
much; it was where they could rendezvous and love each other freely. Cathy wants to rebel with
Heathcliff, but doesn’t want to give up the chance she has for high society.”

Crowley felt a strange familiarity to this story. “Heathcliff wants her to run away with him, I got
that.”
“Yes, but Cathy was raised to become a lady but while her heart is only for Heathcliff she wants
the lavish parties and Heathcliff can’t give her that.”

“But he’s rich now. They can be together.”

“But they can’t, Crowley. She’s married to Edgar. You know what principles were like back then.
She can’t just divorce him. And Edgar is good to her, and it’s partly for this that Cathy becomes
more standoffish toward Heathcliff so he becomes even more of a brute to everyone.” Aziraphale
finished his glass of wine. “I can’t say I blame Cathy, really. Heathcliff ran away and never said
goodbye. He only breaks her heart over and over.”

Crowley frowned at Olivier on the screen. “Yeah, well I don’t blame Heathcliff for being such an
arse. Hindley treated him like shit while Cathy was the only one who was kind to him, so they
grow up and have a whirlwind affair until Cathy gets bitten by that dog and Edgar literally sweeps
her off her feet. And she tells Heathcliff to run away! ‘Bring back the world,’ she said!”

“And he came back to her, but she was being courted by Edgar.”

“Heathcliff came back empty-handed, angel,” said Crowley. “Still in rags. She spurned him for
money and then when he runs away for good the second time ‘round, she’s like ‘Oh god what have
I done? I’m Heathcliff!’ and all that rubbish. If there’s a brute in this film, it’s not Heathcliff. It’s
Cathy!”

“Explain, please. Because I find that hard to believe. Cathy at her core knows what is expected of
her and she is restrained by that. She has to spurn Heathcliff when he comes back, even if he is
wealthy now. She’s fighting back against her feelings for Heathcliff who has broken her heart and
—”

“Heathcliff is the heartbroken one, angel. Cathy is vain and selfish, and she was only in love with
the idea of being with Heathcliff because of his wild heart. She knows damn well that she and
Heathcliff belong together and she’s going to let her love of money get in the way of that.”

“It goes far beyond money, dear. Yes, Cathy wants the high life, but recognizes that no matter what
Heathcliff does he can’t give it to her. He comes back wealthy, but it’s too late, and now all he can
do is torment everyone else because Cathy has to reject him.”

Crowley turned his frown from the TV to Aziraphale. “She doesn’t have to! Angel, marriages were
treated like nothing more than a contract back then, binding families to bind wealth and land, there
were plenty of torrid affairs…why are Cathy and Heathcliff exempt? They could at least still have
an affair!”

“It wouldn’t go further than that. They would continue to be heartbroken because they can’t just go
tromping off to the moors anymore. Cathy got her wish of being high society; she has to adhere to
the rules of it and what’s expected of her.”

Crowley frown grew deeper. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Aziraphale’s gaze snapped from the TV to him. At first he was taken aback by his words until he
fully realized the implication. "Are you comparing my previous situation with that of Catherine
Earnshaw’s?”

“And why not? You seem to be best friends!”

“My situation with my former superiors was nothing like Cathy’s, so get that out of your head at
once! If I recall, your situation was no different than mine.”
“Your back-and-forth certainly didn’t help either of us, angel. There were times you blew hot and
cold with me and then blamed it on the wine. Was it really the wine every time, or was it because
you were expected to be pure like your associates upstairs?”

Aziraphale laughed. “The halls of Heaven are hardly pure anymore, Crowley. You saw that for
yourself at our trials! And don’t you dare call me hot-and-cold again; that really hurts, especially
since you know the restraint that was expected of me.”

Crowley pointed at him. “A-ha! So you admit it! You wanted to act out, but you also wanted the
privileges that came with being holier than thou! That sounds very Catherine Earnshaw to me.”

“Well, I am an angel! Holier-than-thou is part of the package! I don’t appreciate this distasteful
reminder of my past anxieties of wanting to love you the way I wanted!”

“I don’t give a shit if you don’t appreciate it, angel, but you could at least have the decency to
recognize what my own anxieties were. You think I didn’t want you all to myself? You think I
didn’t want to spend more than just one night with you then? My superiors didn’t dabble in
strongly-worded letters and ‘helpful’ reminders about…what did you call it once? Fraternizing!
No, I would have been blasted to Kingdom Come and back before disintegrating into a pool of
sulfur! Then you wouldn’t need to worry about your holier-than-thou status from being loved by
the likes of me!”

“That’s monstrous, Crowley!”

Crowley shot out of bed and miracled on a pair of black silk pajama bottoms. “I don’t mind playing
the monster! It’s what was expected of me after all, yes?!” When the angel didn’t respond and only
turned his frown back to his empty glass and TV, tears standing in his eyes, Crowley muttered,
“We might as well be on that fucking screen.”

He grabbed the empty wine bottle from the bedside table and stomped to the kitchen. He placed it
into the sink and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms and trying to wrap his mind around
their argument.

“Bloody Victorians…” he whispered.

He had known plenty back then who were hoity-toities who happened to get lucky in the early
years of the Industrial Revolution. Not much of a revolution since it made the upper-class
wealthier and the workers die young, especially the children. He remembered passing chimney
sweeps as young as three-years-old and could see into their souls that most of them wouldn’t make
it past their eighth year of life due to their bodies aging faster than they could. If consumption
didn’t kill them, a factory would.

What he couldn’t stand was the romanticization of that period of time, but his angel was a fan of
domestic romances, especially from the likes of Jane Austen. At least the Brontës had the balls to
push the effects of the Industrial Revolution in everyone’s faces, or so he had later realized after
going to the premiere of Jane Eyre in 1943. He liked Orson Welles but in this one he was playing
another broody self-righteous bastard that seemed to be the anti-hero in all Victorian dramas. The
film was entertaining, though, with Jane Eyre herself being a bit of a rebel while Rochester sulked.
Bloke locked his mad wife in the attic, and he feels sorry for himself.

The Victorian period was when Aziraphale rubbed more than shoulders with a few cultural phonies
at the gentlemen’s clubs, or so Crowley assumed. He never cared to hear much of those antics, and
it wasn’t because he slept most of that time. He could picture Aziraphale picking the brains of
authors and statesmen, meeting bloody Oscar Wilde and having a fling or two with him and that
Robbie fellow that hung around him. Even though it never went further than sex and they remained
friends until Oscar’s death, Crowley still couldn’t help feeling jealous. So what if he wasn’t
cultured? He always made the angel laugh and they still had walks in the park. But his evenings
were lonely, and Aziraphale was having the time of his life with those so-called gentlemen.

He couldn’t quite figure out if what set him off just now was the plot of the film, the reminder of
the societal expectations of that time, or how both of these things triggered that pain that came
from suppressing his true feelings? How could Aziraphale not connect the dots to his own past
situation? They had brief romances before, nothing whirlwind and nothing past kissing and
whispers over wine glasses, but then the angel would end it abruptly and Crowley would mope all
the way back to his flat. He would empty a bottle of Scotch, contemplating yet another notion of
running away and pining over what could be if it wasn’t for their blasted…

…wait a tick.

Aziraphale was suddenly standing in front of him dressed in a thin tartan dressing gown and
clutching their empty wine glasses. His eyes were red from holding back his tears and he managed
to whisper, “We can watch something else.”

Crowley took the glasses and set them on the counter. He pulled Aziraphale close and embraced
him in a tight hug as the angel’s tears fell onto his bare shoulder.

“Baby…I think I’m Heathcliff.”

Aziraphale gasped. “What? Never! Darling, you’re nothing like him. You’re good, my love.”

“Some good I am…losing my head and making you cry.”

“Crowley…I do see why you made the comparison of me to Cathy, and perhaps you’re right. I was
held back; I couldn’t truly be free. It hurt me so much that I, in turn, broke your heart. If anyone is
a monster in all of this, it’s me.”

Crowley kissed his cheek hard. “Don’t ever call yourself that again. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I
never want to hurt you, love, but you must know what I went through. And the times you ignored
me, pushed me away…”

Aziraphale moved to gaze into his eyes. “I think…we need to talk more about this, then. What
happened in the past, all those unsaid words and unnecessary tension. We don’t have to push
anything down anymore.”

“I’m afraid to hurt you further.”

“We need to talk, Crowley. I know you love me and could never intentionally break my heart. But
we’re obviously still all bottled up.”

Crowley bit his lip and sighed, dreading the next words that would be leaving him. However, if
this is what his angel wanted then he would at least try.

“I didn’t like you hanging around Wilde.”

Aziraphale’s lips parted in surprise. “You never met him.”

“I know…I still didn’t like him.”

“Why?”
He averted the genuine curiosity in his eyes. “Because you were able to be free with him.”

“Not in public, dear.”

“Doesn’t matter. You could be with him; he could give you the affection I wanted to give you. He
could make love to you. I couldn’t. So I slept to avoid thinking about you two being together.”

Aziraphale took his hands. “Crowley, it wasn’t serious with him. I didn’t love Oscar…well, not in
the way I love you, that is. He was a good friend to me and—”

“I know.” Crowley smoothed back his hair. “I felt bad when he died. Felt bad for you, and knew he
meant a lot to you.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Crowley huffed. “You know why, angel.”

Aziraphale smirked and leaned into him, resting his head on his shoulder. He felt his lover’s arms
around him once more. “Yes…I do.”

“Ah, damn,” sighed Crowley. “Thought that would make me feel better.”

“I don’t want you to feel bad about not liking Oscar.” He giggled. “Not a lot of people did. He
could be an arse sometimes.”

“Demons can’t help but feel jealous, especially when we want something we can’t have.”

Aziraphale lifted his eyes to him and brushed his cheek with his thumb. “You have me now,
darling. Should I still expect jealousy?”

Crowley grinned. “Only over old film stars like Olivier.”

Aziraphale laughed as Crowley wiped the tears from his cheeks. “You know, there’s another
version of Wuthering Heights you might like better. It’s got that fellow you like from James Bond.”

“Dalton? As Heathcliff?”

“Oh yes, and he’s quite good. If you want pure Victorian drama, we can watch that one.”

Crowley thought on it and shook his head. “To be honest, I think I’m done with the Victorians for
a while, love.”

They walked back to the bedroom. “I should have remembered,” said Aziraphale as he climbed
back into bed, “that you weren’t keen on that time.”

Crowley joined him and slid under the sheet. “I watched a lot of young souls wither away, tempted
a few statesmen and factory bosses into shady dealings…even sat at the bedside of a vicar as he
went mad from syphilis.”

“What were you doing with a vicar?”

“I was standing in for Ligur. He loved tempting men of the cloth with young girls. This one fell for
a prostitute and caught the disease. He was out of his mind in no time, it hit him that hard. He had
no time to worry about his soul.”

“You were there to collect it.”

Crowley nodded. “Didn’t want to. Didn’t think it very fair since his mind was gone and he didn’t
have a chance to repent. None of his colleagues would go near him. Only me.”

He put his arm around him and noticed the TV was turned off, so he snapped his fingers and the
clock radio on his bedside table came to life and played soft jazz at a low volume. “Your turn.”

“Hm?”

“I told you something…your turn.”

“Oh. Well…since you brought up Oscar…” He heard Crowley exhale and he put his hand on his
thigh. “We used to talk about you.”

Crowley’s heart thumped. “Oh, yeah?”

“I told him about…my feelings for you. And that I couldn’t tell you about them. Oscar thought that
was rubbish, which was very like him. After our brief affair, he would ask about us. ‘Any news,
old chap? Any goings on? Any mischief?’” He paused to giggle as if he could hear Oscar’s voice
again. “He meant well even if he was being nosy. Our talks helped me, and I was going to tell you
everything. I felt good about it, too. There was relief in me.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Oscar was imprisoned for his affair with Bosie Douglas. I warned him about that boy.”

“I see.”

“It’s why I avoided you, dear. I wanted to keep that happy feeling of fully loving you inside me,
but I was a coward. I would have done more than hard labor…at least I assumed.”

Crowley sighed and pressed his lips against his temple. “Is that what held us back these millennia?
Assumptions?”

“You saw what they were capable of…”

Crowley kissed his cheek and the angel settled into him. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore,
darling.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Sometimes I can’t help it. It’s always in the back of my mind.”

It was in the back of Crowley’s, too, but he would not say. Not right now. Not while he held the
only thing that ever mattered to him in this entire universe.

He let out a yawn. “I think the wine’s catching up.”

Aziraphale eased under the sheet with his lover and put his arm around Crowley as he rested his
head on his chest. He stroked his short crimson hair and felt the calm return to him as his eyelids
grew heavy. The soft jazz continued on the clock radio as they relaxed into their own form of
silence, a knowing one they allowed themselves to indulge in as they held each other. It was a
comfort only they could make together, a mutual relief every time they made love at night to greet
a new day tomorrow.

Crowley shifted against him. “How does it all end?”

The question made Aziraphale’s heart thump in his chest and he squeezed him closer. “I hope it
never does.”
Crowley lifted his head and gave him a grin. “The film, angel. How does it end?”

Aziraphale exhaled and laughed. “Oh, right! The film…” He caught Crowley’s smile again and
said, “Well, Cathy becomes ill and Heathcliff rushes to her side. He tells Edgar to go to the moors
and gather heather for her because she loved it. While Edgar is away, Cathy confesses her love to
him for the final time…and asks him to carry her to the window to look out at the moors.” New
tears began to form in his eyes. “They hold each other at the open window and gaze out over the
moors, to the crag where their imaginary castle is, the castle they claimed as children. She tells
him, ‘I’ll wait for you till you come.’ And she dies in his arms.”

Crowley sighed against him and Aziraphale stroked his hair again as he continued, “He takes her
back to the bed and as everyone prays around her, Heathcliff exclaims, ‘Catherine Earnshaw, may
you not rest so long as I live on.’ He begs her to haunt him, so she does for many years. It ends
back at the beginning as Ellen ends her story to Mister Lockwood. It’s then that Heathcliff’s body
is found near the crag, dead from exposure in the blizzard after chasing Cathy’s ghost. They live
on in the afterlife.”

Crowley turned away from him and settled into his pillow. Aziraphale could swear there was a soft
glisten on his cheek. He scooted closer to him and put his arm around his waist. As he gently
kissed the nape of his neck, he felt Crowley take his hand and clutch it to his chest.

“Bloody Victorians.”

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