The bandstand breakup hurts me because for me, it’s that gay moment of realization about a best friend: oh, I don’t just love you, I love-love you. And I’m not allowed to do that. (Michael Sheen said Az fell in love with him in the church. He didn’t say he realized it.) To me, the moment Crowley asks Aziraphale to go away with him is the very moment Azi realizes Crowley wants him like that, and that makes him realize he wants Crowley like that. To have and to hold, not to be a screaming romantic about it. Which is so, so much worse than fraternizing with the enemy for practical reasons and a little lunchtime conversation.
And what’s worst is all along he’s trusted himself. Crowley told him to, in the garden: you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do anything wrong. Which is bullshit, but he’s been building a life on earth on the strength of that idea for millennia: if I want it it must be innocent. It must be good. It must be what heaven says is good. Michael Sheen says Aziraphale likes being himself. He’s content with himself and his slightly sketchy Arrangement and his love of the world until Gabriel shows up to draft him back into the Army of Heaven, which he’s technically never left. And all at once he realizes he’s not like them any more. Oh, I’m soft. It’s the moment growing up gay when you realize you’ve turned into something they didn’t raise you to be and you’re not sure how—didn’t you come from them? How did you turn out so different?
He’s not like them any more, he’s like Crowley. But he can’t be. That turns the last six thousand years of certainties inside out. Crowley can’t do good—they agreed on that, too, back in the garden. (Still bullshit.) Crowley’s always insisted that he isn’t kind, he doesn’t care. They can’t be in love—at which point he begins shouting at Crowley, absurdly: we’re an angel and a demon! We’re not (can’t be, shouldn’t have been) friends (in love?)! I’m trying to save the world while you’re trying to save yourself! You don’t love me! And I don’t like you (because you make me want things I’m not supposed to want, you make me want to save myself). What they are isn’t moral or immoral according to heaven and hell’s strategic definition, it’s just natural. But he’s always been told it isn’t—and every gay kid knows that story.
Does he know it’s not true while he’s saying it? I don’t know, but Crowley does. He’s come to terms long and slow with the fact that heaven didn’t want him, and it’s given him practice: he’s coping quite clearly with the fact that now hell won’t want him either if he sticks with Aziraphale and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know why Aziraphale doesn’t see it too; there’s nothing for them better each other. If Aziraphale has internalized homophobia he can’t deal with, Crowley’s refused to hate himself for what they hate him for—he can’t let them have that. If Aziraphale’s the kid having a secret sexuality crisis Crowley’s the one whose brothers hated him for being gay before he even knew what that meant, who got yelled at for hanging around with those kinds of kids.
If they’d left it there maybe it really would have been a breakup. But Aziraphale, being the brave angel he is, has to go after the truth. So first he tests heaven—are you good? Did I get what’s good in me from you? Will you help me save the world? Can you see it’s worth it? And of course heaven’s answer is a resounding no. (God is quiet. God seems to be waiting to see what Aziraphale will do next.) Aziraphale’s love doesn’t belong to heaven, it belongs to him. (Our loves don’t belong to our families. They’re ours.)
And now that Azi has realized they are (can’t be) (are) in love everyone keeps bringing it back up. Crowley shows up again apologizing, pleading, shouting. A human passerby offers his sympathy on Azi’s heartbreak. Heaven informs him quite bluntly that they, at least, know exactly what Crowley is to him. They’ve been watching them date for millennia. Hell, humans and angels all agree: they’re in love. He’s like that. Azi is the only one who hadn’t seen it. So many of us realize late that our families knew we were gay long ago and hadn’t trusted us all along—had been waiting in fear for the day we recognized what they already saw.
I believe that’s the moment Aziraphale makes his decision—shortly after being held up against a brick wall by an archangel he thought he wanted to be like, who’s accusing him of being what he is. He decides he isn’t on their side. He lies to heaven and picks up the phone to tell Crowley instead—I trust you and only you to help me. I choose you. I choose me. I choose to trust myself. All of us who’ve come out to ourselves have had to make that choice—the moment we name to ourselves what we are, who we belong with.
That’s still a secret choice, though. The second big choice is the moment he gets sucked back up to heaven by accident. They’re handing out uniforms. He can rejoin the army and pretend he’s still what he always thought he was. He can leave earth and Crowley behind and be an angel. He doesn’t.
I’m not a very good angel, he says, and this time it’s not an apology, it’s not a regret. I’m soft. I’m not yours. I belong on earth. I am in love. He leaves heaven behind, and goes to Crowley. He doesn’t think it’s a happy ending—he thinks they’re going to die. He thinks Crowley will have already left earth—he doesn’t expect to be forgiven, let alone mourned. But he is, and that seals it—Crowley loves him in every way you can love somebody.
The next time Crowley asks him to come home with him, after it’s all over, Aziraphale has one more chance to make the choice: when it’s not a crisis, when it’s not Crowley or apocalypse, will he still risk it? He tells Crowley it’s still dangerous, nothing’s safe (are we ever safe being queer and in love? We never will be, not really), and Crowley says it doesn’t matter, they’re on their own side now. He’s not going to go back to denying he cares. He’s not going to let fear decide. And Aziraphale believes him.
He couldn’t believe him in the bandstand because he didn’t think “their side” was a solid reality the way heaven and hell were. He didn’t think Crowley could defend that reality if it came to a fight. He didn’t think it was something he could build a life on and still be himself, the person he’d always wanted to be. Now he knows he can. Heaven lied, and love is real. Love is love.
