Chapter Text
Aziraphale lifted his phone and brought it to his ear. “Hello,” he said, menacingly.
“Angel, what the fuck!”
“Crowley!” said Aziraphale, in a much different tone. “How are you, my dear?”
There was a long exhalation of breath over the other line, and Aziraphale didn’t need to see Crowley to know that he was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why,” he said slowly, “did Archangel-fucking-Gabriel give me a box full of sex toys?”
“Oh dear.”
“And why,” continued Crowley, “is there now an entire bloody chorus of angels serenading me in my kitchen?”
A beat of silence passed during which, yes, Aziraphale could hear the angels in the background, slightly muffled and singing their little hearts out. “Gabriel is up to something, isn’t he?” asked Crowley, deceptively calm.
“Well, er, yes,” Aziraphale admitted.
“I’m coming over.”
“Do you want me to go there?”
“If you think I’m going to stay here while these wing-wanks bung hallelujahs at my head, then you’re out of your bloody mind.”
“I’ll get out the Burgundy.”
“What was he trying to do anyway? Drive me out of my flat and into your arms?” Crowley asked an hour later, then paused. “Actually I supposed it worked.”
“I have no idea what he’s thinking,” sighed Aziraphale.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley lifted his head from where it had been resting over Aziraphale’s heart. He propped his chin on Aziraphale’s chest and looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Not that I would ever object to fucking with Archangel Gobshite, but were you ever planning on telling him that you’ve been, ah, ‘shagging me senseless’ for the past year?”
“He’s trying so hard,” said Aziraphale, running his hand down Crowley’s naked back. “I would so hate to disappoint him.”
Crowley, who had his own opinions about the I’m-Archangel-fucking-Gabriel and couldn’t care less about whether or not he was disappointed, wisely kept those thoughts to himself. “So, what were you planning to do?”
“Well, I was thinking,” said Aziraphale.
In his excitement, Gabriel blew the door off its hinges and into the bookshop.
“Aziraphale!” he bellowed.
Crowley slid one hand slowly down his face, reminding himself that it would all be over soon, and this freakishly beneficent Gabriel would skip back to heaven where he would, hopefully, die.
Gabriel strode across the bookshop, waving a telegram excitedly. “Is it true? Are you really shagging the demon?”
“Well,” Aziraphale muttered to Crowley, watching as the one stubborn customer that had been loitering around his first edition Murder on the Orient Express scrambled out of the shop. “At least he’s good for something.”
Gabriel stopped directly in front of Aziraphale, arms akimbo, the creepiest grin on his face, showing way more teeth than normal. “Well?” he demanded.
“It’s true!” said Aziraphale effusively. Maybe a little too effusively. Abruptly, Gabriel frowned. “Really, it is. We’re, er, shagging like bunnies!” He beamed, somehow making the truth sound like an absolute lie.
Gabriel folded his arms over his chest. “As much as it repulses me to say it, I’m going to need some evidence before I can consider my mission complete.”
He looked expectantly at Crowley.
Aziraphale looked expectantly at Crowley.
Crowley watched them with interest.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale hissed.
“Right right.” Crowley unfolded himself from Aziraphale’s hideously uncomfortable wingback chair, dusting off the front of his trousers. “Oh!” he said, casting himself into Aziraphale’s arms. “Take me now, you magnificent sex beast!”
Aziraphale caught him. “Really, my dear,” he murmured.
“Just going for realism, darling,” said Crowley, flashing a grin up at him.
Behind him, Gabriel clapped his hands together, like they were at some bloody pantomime. “Great! Now, according to human pornography, the next step is for you to kiss.”
Crowley looked at Aziraphale in horrified disbelief. Aziraphale gave him a helpless little shrug. “Er, Gabriel,” said Aziraphale. “You aren’t planning to stay here to, uh, monitor our progress, are you?”
“Of course not. I think I have better things to do than to watch you two losers bump uglies,” said Gabriel, scathingly, and in a the lady doth protest too much tone of voice, in Crowley’s opinion. “But I’ll at least make sure you don’t fuck things up during the home inning.”
“Home stretch,” corrected Crowley, long suffering.
Sighing, Aziraphale pressed a sweet kiss to Crowley’s lips. Despite it being a full year since they’d fallen into bed together, being kissed by Aziraphale, even chastely, still made Crowley’s toes curl. Fallen angel or not, he was so damn lucky. He smiled dopily at Aziraphale. Aziraphale smiled back, still shy, even though an hour ago he’d fucked Crowley so hard he’d forgot which century they were in.
“What the hell was that? You can’t seduce a demon with a schoolyard kiss. Put your back into it, Aziraphale!” Gabriel shouted.
Aziraphale jumped a little, and then, a trifle apologetically, wrapped one arm around Crowley’s lower back, the other around his shoulders, dipped him, and then snogged the life out of him. Birds sang. Fireworks exploded. The Horns of Heaven sounded (startling a handful of angels loitering at the water cooler near the music hall). When Aziraphale finally pulled him back up, Crowley clung to him, dizzy.
“Alright, he looks suitably seduced,” said Gabriel, scrutinizing Crowley’s face. “Now make sure to screw him so hard he can’t walk for a week.”
“Yes yes,” said Aziraphale, quickly. “Thank you for all your help, can’t imagine how I would have managed without you. Please do go away now.”
“You’re welcome,” said Gabriel, with all the selfless candor of an archangel of his rank. “Do not mess this up.”
“I will make sure to shag him into next week,” agreed Aziraphale gravely.
Gabriel clapped his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Good man.” He shook Aziraphale’s shoulder, flashed a vaguely threatening grin at Crowley, and then whirled out of the room.
Crowley stared after him thoughtfully. “I can’t decide whether or not I’m still turned on by that kiss or horrified by your ex-boss.”
“Turned on,” Aziraphale decided for him, hugging him close.
Breaking into a grin, Crowley made quick work of Aziraphale’s bow tie, spun around so that he was holding the ends over his shoulder with both hands, and hauled him towards the stairs. “Come on, then. You have your marching orders. Gotta shag me so hard I can’t walk for a week.”
“What a terrible hardship,” said Aziraphale, laughing happily.
Certificate of Commendation
presented to
Archangel Gabriel
for
Preventing the Eternal Damnation of One (1) Principality
Signed by
Archangel Gabriel
“What are you doing,” said Michael.
“Michael!” Gabriel leaned back in his leather desk chair to grin up at her. God may have spoken to her, but he was the one who fulfilled Her command. “I’m pleased to tell you that Aziraphale and the demon are successfully shagging, all thanks to me.”
Michael slowly cocked her head to the side, like some sort of creepy doll. She never really had got the hang of human bodies, not like Gabriel had.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“God’s Second Great Plan.” He smiled smugly. “I thought of the name myself. It sounds so much better than God’s Great Plan Part Two.”
Michael narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at him. Then she smiled. “Oh. I see. You’re referring to God’s request.”
Gabriel, who had instinctively reared back at the smile, straightened his cuffs and lounged back in his chair. Clearly, she was still writhing with jealousy. “The request where She asked you to have me tell Aziraphale to shtup the snake? Yes, that request.”
Michael braced her hands on the table and leaned forward, her awful smile stretching into a blood chilling grin. “Gabriel.” She paused, clearly relishing her next words. “They were already having sex.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said, clearing out his ear with his pinky. “I don’t think I heard you right.”
“They’re already shtupping. Shagging. Screwing each other silly. Since right after the Event,” said Michael, using the preferred angelic title for the failed Armageddon. “She just wanted you to tell them She approves of their relationship.”
“You—you’re—” Gabriel stuttered, for the first time in millennia.
If possible, Michael’s grin widened. “Since you, technically, failed your mission, I suppose you won’t be needing this.” She plucked the commendation from his desk and, staring him directly in the eye, ripped it in half.
The ensuing battle (i.e. angelic slap-fight) between the two archangels lasted for the equivalent of three human weeks.
Gabriel sat on a bench in St. James’s Park, scowling ferociously at the ducks. He couldn’t believe Michael tore up his commendation. He hadn’t failed. It was hardly his fault Uriel had given him the wrong information. As soon as Michael had so kindly corrected him, he’d marched over to Aziraphale’s damp little hellhole and told Aziraphale and his wormy little butt-buddy that God was just so thrilled that they were super duper in love or whatever.
Well, at least Aziraphale was happy. He’d looked so disgustingly thrilled that God gave Her stamp of approval that Gabriel would have puked all over him if he’d had a digestive tract.
Now here he was, without a commendation, even though he had successfully completed his mission, feeling like the butt of a really lame joke. He briefly entertained the idea of trying the whole hellfire shtick again, maybe on Michael this time, then sighed and slumped his elbows on his knees.
A fly buzzed past his nose.
“Why the long face?” said Beezlebub.
Gabriel glared at her out of the corner of his eye. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“Is that what you’re pouting about?” She shrugged. “‘Course I did.”
“Well I’ll have you know that I was still able to complete God’s Second Great Plan,” he said. “It was very important to let Aziraphale and Crowley know that She approved of their relationship. If I hadn’t, I’m sure it would have been the end of days.”
“It would’ve, would it?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel, with all the certainty of a man lying to himself to spare his own ego.
“Ri-ight.”
They watched the ducks. One very surprised drake quacked out a great blue fireball, incinerating a park bench.
Gabriel sighed and changed the duck back. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Funny ol’ world, innit,” Beezlebub said, “when She approves of a relationship between an angel and a demon.”
“Yeah.”
“Remember all that shite with the nephilim? It’s just wrong, is all I’m saying.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel considered her thoughtfully.
Then he plucked The Angelic Seduction Instruction Manual from the air and flipped through it until he found a suitable line. He turned to her, plastering on his most charming grin.
“If you were a chicken,” he said, “you’d be impeccable.”
Beezlebub ripped the manual out of his hands and smacked him with it, and Gabriel surprised them both by laughing.