Chapter Text
It took Aziraphale one hour, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty-six seconds to crack Agnes’ prophecy, once they got back to Crowley’s and opened a bottle of celebratory we-stopped-the-apocalypse champagne. He would have been quicker at it, normally, but in his defense his brain had only recently been reconstituted, and he was still trying to shake off the unsettling sensation of wanting to dress himself up in a little pink negligee and snog Sergeant Shadwell senseless.1
“They’ll use holy water,” he pronounced, after Crowley recounted his melting of Ligur and they’d puzzled over the phrase ‘playing with fire’ for the length of two full flutes. “Holy water for you, hellfire for me. They didn’t get their war, so they’ll play it out in microcosm. Both getting to prove their tools are the mightiest.”
“They’re the tools,” muttered Crowley, tipping back the rest of his bubbly. “They have no imagination.”
“We’re lucky that they don’t. And we’re very lucky they’ll never suspect what we’re going to do.”
Crowley looked up, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “Which is?”
“Switch.”
The demon understood immediately. “You mean…?”
Aziraphale nodded. The metaphysics were clear, even if what Aziraphale suggested had no ordained methods. After all, there had never been precedent: the idea of an angel mixing molecules with a demon was so reprehensible, so taboo, that even the hypotheticals had failed to be recorded in gospel or apocrypha. But otherworldly beings had the power to manipulate matter, and these bodies of theirs were, in the end, only matter. If they switched their surfaces, the angelic and demonic core of each would remain the same. Crowley wouldn’t wither, and Aziraphale wouldn’t burn.
“It’s never been done, angel.”
“As far as I know, angelic possession had never been done either, until today.”
“It—” Crowley squirmed. “It’s not as simple as changing hats. They have an impact, bodies. It’s why I look like this, and you look like—” He waved a hand in a way Aziraphale found vaguely insulting. “That. Like it or not, matter makes us who we are. We’ll actually be inhabiting each other’s atoms. That’s not without consequence.”
“It won’t be for long,” Aziraphale said, trying to quash his own unease. “They’re not going to let us get away with this. They may even be on their way right now. I doubt we’ll be in each other more than twenty-four hours.”
Crowley choked on his champagne. “I cannot believe we’re having this conversation.”
“I welcome other suggestions, if you have any.”
“Alpha Centauri?”
“Because that went so well last time.”
Crowley sank back onto the sofa. “What if we’re stuck for weeks? Months? They’re sadistic bastards, you know. Both sides. They could draw this out just to torture us. Let us think we’re safe, and then—” He clapped his hands together as though squashing a bug. “What if I’m stuck in the body of a middle-aged angel for a full year?”
“I am not middle-aged, I am ageless—”
“You know what I mean.”
“Then we’ll need to talk about proper maintenance. Just in case.” Aziraphale looked down at his incorporation, feeling a rush of fondness for its roundness, its comfortable cushioning. “Mine, for instance, needs a walk in the park at least once a day. Twice if you can. Play it some Bach to soothe it if it gets stressed. Oh, and it gets hungry.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “It can’t possibly.”
“Well, no, it can’t, but it thinks it can, which is really the same in the end. It—look, just keep it well fed, would you? I’ll send you some menus and circle its favorites.” He clasped his hands in his lap. “Right. Anything I need to know about yours?”
Crowley shrugged. “Not really. If it gets antsy, play it some Queen to calm it down. Or wake it up. Or—really just keep some Freddie Mercury on hand in case of all possible scenarios, I suppose.” He glanced down at his skinny, swaggering form. “And please, for the love of Go—Sa—whoever—don’t put it in anything white. I think it might melt. Or have an aneurysm.”
“Unlikely to be a problem, as I’m certain you don’t own anything approaching that hue. And it’s not as though I’m going to go clothes shopping for you, dear boy.”
Crowley got a dangerous glint in his eye at that. He still had his sunglasses firmly in place, but you didn’t hang around a demon for six thousand years without developing a second sense for that glint, the glint that meant you’d probably have some considerable thwarting to do in a few minutes’ time. “Oh,” said Crowley, his voice somehow a hiss even in the complete absence of sibilance.2 “Now that’s an interesting idea. A very interesting idea.”
Aziraphale harrumphed. “It is not. And you are not, under any circumstances, to put my body in any of your ‘greaser’ clothing. I have a reputation to uphold. I’m a local business owner, I’m a respected representative of the community—”
“Angel, everyone thinks you’re a Soho power bottom with kinks out the wazoo. The ‘respectable’ ones always are. Your regulars are all sure you’ve got a dungeon in the back of that buttoned-up bookshop. I hardly think they’re going to be surprised if you go in for a bit of leather.”
Leather. Aziraphale shuddered. The thought was utterly obscene. Oh, he’d donned leather boots and cloaks when there were no better options, when decent fabrics like linen and cotton weren’t easily obtainable, but since approximately 1705 he’d stayed as far away from its constricting confines as he could. Crowley, of course, had always favored it. There was a period of the mid-‘70s where he’d hardly worn anything else.3
“I beg you, fiend, keep that foul stuff off my flesh.” Crowley’s eyebrows rose in response to the phrasing, and Aziraphale blushed. “I only mean—I have a closet full of very nice suits. There’s no need to put me in anything else! Besides which, I’d like to point out, wouldn’t Heaven become terribly suspicious if I suddenly developed a penchant for dressing up like a demon?”
“Maybe they’d assume you’d just decided to live a little. Apocalypse averted and all that.” Crowley grinned, but relented when Aziraphale remained stoic. “All right, yes, it’s probably safest to have you continue dressing like a Mark Twain impersonator who’s read too much Oscar Wilde.”
“As if there’s such a thing as too much Oscar Wilde.”
“Spoken like someone who definitely doesn’t have a sex dungeon in the back of his bookshop.”
Aziraphale sniffed. “While I appreciate the endless witticisms at my expense, we are on a clock here, my dear. They could come for us at any time.” He extended a hand, letting it hang limply in the air between them. “Shall we?”
Crowley looked as though Aziraphale had just offered him a dead fish.4 “Shouldn’t we…take a moment? Say our goodbyes?”
“If all goes as planned, this isn’t goodbye.”
“Still.”
Aziraphale sighed, dropping his hand. “What do you want? They could nab you on a last drive if you’re planning to steal a car and go joyriding, Crowley. Pick me up the minute I step into Le Gavroche for a farewell soufflé. We must do this now.”
Crowley’s mouth contorted, and he whipped off his sunglasses. “Fine. One last request, then. To make the transition more…comfortable.”
“What, then?”
“Bubble bath.”
“Pardon me?”
Crowley crossed his arms. “Tonight. I want a bubble bath. A glass of wine. Silk pajamas. I’ve had a hard apocalypse.”
“So have I!”
“And? It’ll be pampering for you, too. My body will suffer from shock if it doesn’t carry on in the style to which it’s become accustomed. I can do whatever yours needs as a trade. Give it some vanilla pudding. Feed it some room temperature milk.”
“Oh, for the—“ Aziraphale threw up his hands. “All right. I agree to your terms. Now can we do this? Quickly.”
Crowley’s snake eyes flickered as he extended his fingers. Aziraphale took a deep breath, and stretched out his own. They laid their hands palm to palm, letting them hover in space for a moment. Then the air flexed around them, awakened by their mutual will, and Aziraphale felt the building blocks of his physical form shift. Not the consciousness; not the soul. But the body he’d known for millennia, the only material existence he’d ever experienced up until renting space in Madame Tracy’s questionably attired form—that body was now sitting in front of him, blinking at him with large, round-pupiled eyes.
Crowley’s voice, when he spoke, was almost too much of a croak for Aziraphale to feel disoriented by the sensation of his own voice coming out of another being’s mouth. Almost. “It worked.”
“You had doubtssss?”
Aziraphale nearly bit his own tongue trying to cut off the errant ‘s.’ Crowley laughed, which came out as a very undemonic, high-pitched giggle. They stared at each other, and Aziraphale tried to refrain from indulging in the sin of vanity. It wasn’t as though he never looked in mirrors—bowties needed straightening, after all—but he rarely lingered. He’d had the same body for six thousand years. He knew what it looked like.
Still, there was something different about seeing it like this. From the outside. Knowing Crowley was—inside it.
He swallowed. Crowley watched the movement as though the sight of Aziraphale’s Adam’s apple bobbing was just as fascinating as the pesky little fruit it was named for. “This…is going to take some getting used to.”
“Yesss.”
“Because—”
“I know.”
“I mean, I knew I was hot, angel, but—” Crowley waved Aziraphale’s own hand at him. “Just look at me!”
Aziraphale felt his lips attempting to press themselves into his usual prim expression, but they wouldn’t cooperate, somehow. They quirked, twisting into a grin. He clapped both hands over his—Crowley’s—whoever’s mouth, his next words coming through muffled as he tried not to react to the feel of Crowley’s hands on his face. “Stop that.”
Crowley smiled a mischievous smile that looked positively seraphic on his new chubbier cheeks. “Why? I’m not allowed to flirt with myself?”
“It’s not yourssself, it’s—” Aziraphale wasn’t sure why he got so tongue-tied trying to get out the word “me,” but to compensate he stood up abruptly. This didn’t help, as it gave Crowley an opportunity to not-so-discreetly check out his own ass.
“Right.” Aziraphale nodded as though he hadn’t noticed and wasn’t blushing with the fire of a thousand hells. “We should get some sleep. Be refreshed and vigilant for whatever fallout there should be, come the morning.”
Crowley was attempting to lounge on the sofa, a look that didn’t quite fit on an angelic body that was utterly allergic to insolence. “First—bubble bath. And a glass of 1945 Mouton Rothschild.” He snapped his fingers. “You’ll find it waiting by the tub. Upstairs, first door on the right. Next to the bedroom, which you should stay in tonight in case they show up.”
“Are you serious?”
“As the heart attack we’re both incapable of having, angel. All the better for you, considering your love of the sort of food that would have a human your age on the Lipitor, stat. Speaking of which—” He pulled out Aziraphale’s phone from his jacket. “Want me to order you a celebratory meal? I’m not about to let you profane the svelte temple of my perfect form with fatty foods, but I’m willing to choke down some of the stuff on your behalf, if it would make your body happy.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account,” Aziraphale responded, making his way towards the master bath. “Although…” He paused. “I wouldn’t say no to some Indian takeaway. Just a bite. Chicken tikka masala, bhindi bhaji, a few samosas, and perhaps some gulab jamun? Oh, and garlic naan, of course.”
Crowley tried to look disgusted, but couldn’t quite fight through the excitement lighting up Aziraphale’s face at the mention of his favorite dessert.5 “Done.” Aziraphale started to walk away, only to have Crowley shout out behind him, “Oi, and don’t forget—silk pajamas! Top drawer of the dresser.”
Aziraphale tightened his shoulders. Really, this was too much to ask. In the last few days, he’d been through discorporation, the loss of his beloved bookshop, and nearly the end of everything else in the universe he held dear. All he wanted was to curl up with a mug of tea and a volume of Whitman, but such dreams were not to be. Instead he had to give a demon a bubble bath.
He was not surprised to see that the Jacuzzi tub in Crowley’s bathroom was jet black and enormous. He was slightly more surprised to see that it was already filled to the brim with a steaming froth that gave off the fragrance of sandalwood and rosewater, a heady scent that reminded Aziraphale of a slower, more sensual world long since lost to the rush of this modern one. He’d been expecting Crowley to force him to bathe in liquid that smelled not unlike the terrible and ubiquitous body spray Crowley had invented a few years back, all synthetic sex appeal and minty aggression. But this was nice. This might even be pleasant.
Crowley had already thrown aside his jacket before the body swap, so Aziraphale started his disrobing with Crowley’s shirt. Crowley’s fingers worked automatically, swiftly, their muscle memory overtaking Aziraphale’s slight apprehension at this current task. They stripped off Crowley’s undershirt, ghosting over his stomach and chest as they brought it overhead. They worked the button of his trousers, pulling them off, and then his socks. And when there remained no other obstacle to total nakedness, they reached for the waistband of Crowley’s black boxers, and that’s when Aziraphale noticed—
“Crowley!” He was bellowing out the demon name’s before he even meant to, surprised by the force of his voice, which had considerably more carry than the one that rightfully belonged to him.
Crowley took his sweet time getting to the door. “Yeah?”
“You—you—” Aziraphale sputtered, the boxers now pooled around his ankles as he tried not to look too closely at the appendage that caused all the fuss. “You made an effort.”
Crowley coughed. “Oh, right. That. I suppose I did do, yeah.”
“You didn’t think to warn me?”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d be so shocked! You lived through the ‘60s, didn’t you? They were everywhere those days. Remember Hair? You loved Hair! Saw it twelve times, didn’t you?”
“I—yes, but I—” Aziraphale stared down at his crotch, and then thought better of it and looked up at the ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut. “Did you just manifest it to annoy me?”
“What? No! Had it since the turn of the twentieth century, at least. I got up after sleeping through the nineteenth and thought I might as well try something new to amuse myself.”
Aziraphale knocked his head back against the door. “It’s not a toy!”
“Oh, angel, you really need to revisit your Oscar Wilde.”
A terrible thought occurred to Aziraphale then, and he turned towards the door, trying to convey his glare through the wood. “Crowley. Let me make one thing clear. While you are in my body, don’t—under absolutely no circumstance are you allowed to—”
There was a long moment of silence, and then disconcertingly gleeful laughter. “Oh, Aziraphale. You know, I hadn’t even thought of that, but now that you mention it—”
Aziraphale yanked open the bathroom door before he could think better of it. “Crowley. Don’t.”
Crowley, through Aziraphale’s eyes, took in the full length of him. Aziraphale was horrified to see a blush, pale pink and virginal as an unsullied sunrise, start to spread over Crowley’s cheeks. And he was equally horrified to feel himself—a very new and insistent part of himself—stand to attention as he took in the sight of his old body.
He’d never experienced the sensation himself, but the signs were clear enough: Crowley’s body was experiencing instant, throbbing arousal.
He quickly slammed the door. “Angel.” Crowley’s voice was softer now. “You’ll learn to control it. We shouldn’t be in this situation long, anyway. It’s not—it isn’t always like that. I promise.”
Aziraphale didn’t trust himself to reply. Instead he kicked off the boxers, walking to the tub to partake in the promised glass of wine Crowley had set by the tub. It didn’t help his plight; the rich, red liquid slid down his throat, an opulent swallow that sent frissons of bliss down every one of his nerve endings. It wasn’t as though he abstained from pleasures of the flesh: he ate, he drank. He’d even gotten massages.6 But this, all of this wanting and stimulation, was on a different level. He couldn’t fathom how Crowley functioned like this all the time.
He heard Crowley’s footsteps move away from the door. Gingerly, he lifted up a foot, plunging it carefully into the bubbling bath. He shivered as the foaming liquid, propelled by the jets Crowley had been sure to turn on, caressed his skin and tickled the hair on his leg, and moved to submerge other, sinking into the mixture with an irrepressible, full-body shudder of ecstasy.
Perhaps, he reflected as he indulged himself with the most wanton abandon he’d displayed in several eons of existence, this was the final step in the demon’s nefarious plan. Wait for the apocalypse to wear down Aziraphale’s defenses. Line up circumstances so that they exactly coincided with the prophecies of an eccentric 17th century witch. Tempt Aziraphale into Falling, and earn his way back into Hell’s good graces7 with an angel’s immortal soul in hand.
It seemed unlikely, but then, everything about this week had seemed unlikely. Everything about this universe seemed unlikely, when you came right down to it.
And really, thought Aziraphale, his eyelids fluttering shut as he soaked in the warmth and intoxication suffusing his form, all things considered, if he had to go, he had to admit that this wasn’t a half-bad way to Fall.
The next morning was predictably awkward. It came both too soon and not soon enough: they barely got any rest, and Aziraphale, after following Crowley’s sleepwear instructions to the letter, found himself unable to change position without folds of onyx silk rubbing his skin in a disturbingly distracting fashion. He also hadn’t managed to will away Crowley’s body’s reaction to Aziraphale’s body, and couldn’t do much of anything about it: even if he’d been willing to consider the possibility of taking care of the problem himself, it would be a violation of Crowley’s consent, surely. And the thought of going downstairs to ask Crowley for his permission to—to—
Aziraphale’s brain refused the logical conclusion of the thought, even as the perversion seemed to heighten Crowley’s body’s own masochistic enjoyment of the quandary. The bedroom was of course absent of books, and so Aziraphale had no choice but to stare at the ceiling, half-hoping the Hellish and Heavenly authorities would show up to relieve him of his distress.
Once the dawn made it acceptable for him to get dressed and escape the bedroom, he went out to find Crowley on the sofa, already awake and, blessedly, fully clothed. “Sleep well?” he asked Aziraphale, and if he was teasing, none of his usual slyness came through via Aziraphale’s guileless form.
“Well enough.” Aziraphale stood awkwardly a few feet away from Crowley, unable to quite make eye contact. “I suppose we should—I mean, they might suspect if we spend too much longer here. So—”
“We go our separate ways.”
Aziraphale did meet his gaze at that. “Only for a little while. Enough so they don’t think we’re scheming.”
“How long?”
“A few days?” It was strange, he thought, to look at his own face and not be able to read exactly what was happening on it. He could tell, though, that it wasn’t good. “A few hours, then. Let’s meet at the park at 2. Make ourselves obvious targets. If we do it there, they might believe we really think ourselves in the clear.”
“All right.” Crowley got to his feet with unaccustomed clumsiness. “Well then.”
“Well.” Aziraphale felt like there was something else he should say. Something that eluded him. Some sentiment that was even harder to shape when he wasn’t even speaking with his own tongue.8 “See you later.”
Crowley nodded stiffly. “See you.” He turned on his heel, attempting to slink out of the flat in typical serpentine fashion, and promptly fell over his feet.
Aziraphale sighed. They were doomed.
Eventually, after a minor lesson in movement that felt like a dance class gone wrong,9 Crowley managed to make his way out of the flat. Aziraphale stood in the silence for a long moment, paralyzed by the surreality of the situation. He’d never set foot in Crowley’s flat before last night, always meeting the demon at the front door if they had an appointment. Now he was here alone, in Crowley’s body, no less.
He hadn’t done much of a tour last night, but now, with nothing else to do until their appointment in the afternoon, he let himself browse. The plants Crowley had often spoken of were just as lush and bountiful as promised, even if Aziraphale could feel their terror as he approached their shaking leaves. There was a curious statue of an angel and a demon that he tried not to linger over, because while he was certain it depicted a straightforward struggle between Good and Evil, something in the way it stirred Crowley’s loins made him feel the image wasn’t as innocently artistic as Aziraphale wanted to hope.
And upstairs, in Crowley’s closet, he found leather. He’d just been looking for outfit options. If he had to be in Crowley’s body for a week or two, he’d wanted to dress as decently as he could. He’d found Crowley’s familiar daytime garb, the low-key hipster look that he’d donned for the last couple of decades. But in the wardrobe’s extensive depths, and perhaps after opening some locked drawers, he found other items. A leather kilt. A collection of whips. And, dangling from a hook at the very back of the closet, studded, sturdy leather cuffs that he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of, picturing how they might look around an angel’s pale, unblemished wrist. He couldn’t tell anymore if the imagining was one of Crowley’s body’s devising, or his own.
He fled the room, leaving as little evidence of his snooping as he could, and considered whether he could conceivably stay in a freezing cold bath until 1:45 P.M precisely.