Chapter Text
In many ways, the world has changed.
After the apocalypse, Atlantis became a new holiday destination. Its visitors had to go by ship- all major airlines were shut down due to global warming riots. The sky turned bluer, not a single stream of airplane fumes in sight. The dodo reemerged from extinction. Australia suddenly saw its wildlife population replenished. Debates over that giant, solar energy power-plant in the Sahra were finally put to an end, petrol becoming increasingly redundant. Oxfordshire suddenly had a much more reliable (zero carbon-footprint) public transport system.
Jeremy Clarkson stopped writing memoirs. Piers Morgan woke up one morning and decided he didn’t need to share his opinion anymore. Greta Thunberg won. Lost remains of the library of Alexandria were found, Malaria treatment became immediately available for everyone who needed it, and for a moment- just for a moment- the echo of bullets and bombs rang silent.
Amazon started paying its taxes.
The world almost came to an end, and in many ways, it did change. In the biggest ways possible, it changed. The smaller things, however- many of those things stayed the same.
Aziraphale sits at his desk. Despite all that he’s learned from Agnes Nutter, he has let his cocoa grow cold. He stares at the spines of a set of children’s books. They had miraculously appeared on his shelves when he returned to his shop that day- a series that he hadn’t owned before the apocalypse. He stares at those books now, one hand gripping his knee, one hand on the receiver of his phone.
The monotone ring of the line fills the gap between his ear and the phone.
It’s almost six pm. Which means that he and Crowley will soon have their customary phone conversation, deciding on a place to meet and have dinner together. They’ll talk, they’ll eat (Aziraphale will, at least) and they’ll drink (they’ll both certainly be doing that). They’ll sober up. Yes, they’ll part ways, just as it has always been.
Aziraphale holds the phone away from his ear. He hesitates.
He almost jumps out of his corporeal form when he hears the door open, the bell above it tinkling cheerily.
“Erm- I’m sorry, but we’re closed!” He calls out.
Footsteps echo somewhere to his left, their author concealed by walls of books.
The irritation in his voice couldn’t be clearer when he says, “I’m sorry, but we really are closed.”
“Aziraphale.”
The sound of his name, the way he says it; it bobs around nauseously in his stomach like an ice-cube in a glass of water. He stands up abruptly from his desk. “Gabriel.”
The archangel Gabriel, looking as clinical as ever, purple eyes as measuring as ever. Aziraphale tries to resist the urge to straighten out his waistcoat, and fails.
There was a time, when Gabriel would pay his visits, that he would stride in and announce his business unabashedly, voice loud and presence jolly-well known. There would be idle pleasantries, heavy-handed methods of avoiding a human audience. Now, Gabriel simply comes to a stop a few feet away from Aziraphale, puts his hands in his pockets, and rocks on the balls of his feet like a disappointed line-manager who’s been ordered to give him a disciplinary.
It makes Aziraphale suddenly, foreignly, furious.
“Aziraphale. You need to come up to the office.”
Aziraphale opens his mouth, shuts it again and frowns. “You need me?”
“We don’t need you, it’s-” Gabriel presses his lips together and tilts his head in annoyance. “Semantics. But then, I suppose you were always obsessed with the little details, weren’t you.” Aziraphale tries to retort. But he allows himself to be silenced, out of habit, by the hand that Gabriel raises to stop him. “Anyway, the, er, higher-ups requested that all angels be present for a meeting. Archangels, principalities and… traitors alike.”
“I…”
A grandfather clock ticks, and it chimes six times.
It’s sort of unbelievable. Unbelievable that after the millennia that Aziraphale was faithful to Heaven, they should forget it all so quickly. Unbelievable that he should take it so personally when they call him a traitor- when, in the cold light of day, he is. He betrayed their plan, quite consciously, after much debate. Unbelievable that he should still feel vulnerable to their sway, when they have so ceremoniously rejected him, and he them.
But it’s the small acts of rebellion that make Aziraphale feel better, more whole again. He’s learned that from humans.
“I…” he tries again, “...I resent that.”
Gabriel’s stare flickers. “Sure. Resent all you want.”
Aziraphale narrows his eyes.
Gabriel looks to the ceiling. He points upwards.
“Shall we?”
An imperious tilt of his chin, and he feels incrementally better. “If God has requested it, of course.”
He can practically hear Gabriel grinding his teeth at the disrespect- not many are so dismissive of an archangel’s authority- and Aziraphale smiles to himself as he follows him out the door.
Hell’s meeting room has always been too small. It means that Crowley’s stuffed at the back, behind crowds of bog-demons and slug-demons, everyone squished together. The floors are sticky, it smells and no one can move for all the demons. Sort of like a nightclub. That’s part of what makes this meeting room Hellish.
Over the heads of the crowd, he sees the glass pane that separates their kind from the high ranking demons. Hastur; Dagon; Beelzebub; Belphegor; Mammon; Berrith. Hastur is popping up a folding chair with little success, trying to kick the legs into place and screaming with mad fury as it won’t cooperate. There’s no Ligur to explain things like faulty Ikea furniture to him, now. Next to him, Beelzebub is reclined in their seat- one wouldn’t think such a relaxed lean were possible in a flimsy, fold-out chair.
Crowley used to occupy the chair between them.
He sighs. He tries to look at his watch but he can barely raise his arm in the tight space. Hastur said that everyone had to come, but Crowley sees no reason why he ought to be present, too. He has better things to do.
It must be past six now.
“Alright alright, we won’t keep you waiting any longer.”
That’s Dagon, of course. Rallying the troops, as they always do. Crowley can’t see them very well now that someone’s horns are in the way of the view, but he’s listened to them drone on and on long enough to recognise their voice anywhere. He leans against the wall of the meeting room and exhales between pursed lips, already bored rigid.
“In short- we’ve received word. From our Dark Lord Satan.”
A buzz of interest hums throughout the tightly packed corridor. Behind the glass pane, Crowley can make out Dagon holding their hands behind their back, Beelzebub drumming their fingers impatiently against their leg.
Crowley frowns to himself. “Interesting,” he mutters.
Because recently, Satan’s been about as M.I.A. as God. Since his son so sorely disappointed him, he decided he wasn’t worth the effort- and that he couldn’t be bothered with any of the rest of them, either. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, it seems. And Crowley knows his apple trees well.
But now that Satan’s got something to say- he has to admit, his curiosity is piqued.
Aziraphale takes his place at the back of the meeting room. The floor is polished marble. The ceilings seem endlessly high, and it is windowless, unlike the rest of Heaven. It resembles the Excel centre of East London. Aziraphale has only ever been in this room once, back in 33AD, and it didn’t look like this then. No- back then, it was an open field. He isn’t sure when Heaven lost its charm and became so clinical.
An angel he doesn’t recognise takes the empty seat next to him. Aziraphale winces a polite smile, shuffles his chair up a bit to give them room. He finds a white sheet of paper shoved directly under his nose.
Michael stands in front of him, curling their lip. “Here. The agenda for the day.”
How Michael still has a job here, Aziraphale doesn’t know. Probably because no one would believe him if he told anyone else what he saw in Hell at Crowley’s trial.
“Thank you,” he replies primly. And though he can’t believe it himself, he snatches it from Michael’s hand. Michael sneers, continues along the aisle. Aziraphale smiles, feeling a little smug; he’s enjoying this rebellious side to himself.
And then he reads what’s in front of him, and his hand flies to his chest in shock.
9:00AM Tea and Coffee
9:20AM Introductions from Gabriel and Sandalphon: What Does Heaven Mean to You?
9:45AM Past Apocalypses: Evaluating Our Work
10:15AM Rethinking the Apocalypse: What Went Wrong?
11:00AM Apocalypse Now: How Can We Make the Next One Smarter?
11:30AM: Tea break
Aziraphale sighs behind his hand. “Oh, no.”
“Silence!” Dagon orders, and the chaos hushes. “The Dark Lord has told us to stand firm… to be prepared... to take up arms once more!”
The crowd explodes. There’s the roar of beasts and the thudding of feet stomping against the floor. Crowley feels it vibrate through his body and not in the fun way.
“This can’t be happening,” Crowley says quietly, shaking his head. “Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no.”
“Ladies and gents.”
Gabriel’s cool voice echoes through the vast meeting room, and Aziraphale simply stares at the neat, typed-up agenda in his hand.
“Thank you all for being here- hey, Kamael, good to see you again, thanks for coming- first off, just to introduce ourselves, I know a few of the saints in here are new. Welcome to the club! I’m the Archangel Gabriel… thank you, thank you, aha… and this is Sandalphon, who, you know, I don’t know what I’d do without… no really, Sandalphon, you’re just great, you’re amazing. To all our newbies, don’t worry, we don’t bite.”
A round of polite titters. Aziraphale looks up in disbelief, dropping the agenda to the floor.
Back in Hell, Dagon holds up their hands in authority, and in praise.
“Demons! Incubi! Spectra! Our Dark Lord’s son, the Prince of Hell, may still come into his own! The prophecy may still be fulfilled, the word of John of Patmos may come to fruition, and our chance to take our place on Earth and make it the tenth circle of Hell may still be ours...!”
“Now, onto the important stuff,” Gabriel announces, standing behind a perfectly white lectern. “The apocalypse. Last time didn’t go so great, huh.”
Some more polite laughter, with a pointed ripple of awkward murmuring. Aziraphale feels his face burn. Either he’s imagining that everyone’s staring at him, or they really are turning around in their uncomfortable function-room seats to stare at him.
“Well, no matter, because the secret to a Happy Heaven is to learn from our mistakes. Am I right? Now, we’ve heard some intel recently that tells us that we’re in with another chance at getting this right. Which is why, today, we’re going back to the drawing board…”
“...For the age of our Prince of Hell, He-Who-Is-Merciless, has reached its solar eighteenth cycle- and his power is now stronger than ever before! So let us be vigilant! Let us be bold! And let us reclaim what is rightfully ours!”
Gabriel takes a little remote from his jacket pocket and a PowerPoint presentation starts up against the white-washed wall.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE: TAKE TWO!
Crowley doesn’t stay long enough to see if Dagon has any other rhetorical flourishes to peacock in front of their crowd. He winds through the zoo of demons and turns up his jacket collar in the damp, grimacing as he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders once more.
Aziraphale’s chair scrapes loudly against the floor as he stands up and leaves. He feels a thousand cold, gold eyes watching him. He pushes through the doors and takes the escalators back down to Earth, a cold sweat building.
Crowley kicks the apartment door down. It swings open and slams against the wall.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!” he yells to the empty apartment.
It’s been seven years since he’d last been summoned back down to Hell. Seven, blissful years of drinking, sleeping, and figuring out how Netflix works with Aziraphale. Seven, miraculous years without a boss. Self-employed for a while, as he was trying to figure out how to let a day go by without causing some minor, demonic annoyance. (For the first few weeks, Crowley kept on miracling the best dishes on menus out-of-stock, kept making builders do their work too early on Sunday mornings, purely out of force of habit.) These past seven years, he’s been enjoying an early retirement. Today, he’d only agreed to go back through pure curiosity; he really wishes he hadn’t.
It’s probably a good thing that he found out, though. Good for humanity, if they can figure out how to get through this. Crowley reckons he should feel more frightened, more angry, more incensed. But he doesn’t; he simply feels resigned.
He’s always felt that this is all too good to be true.
Hopping onto his desk, legs dangling, he reaches to pick up the phone. It rings before his hand get there.
Crowley recoils from it in confusion, wrinkling his nose. Then, eventually, picking up the receiver: “Who is it?”
“Crowley- it’s me. We, er- we have a situation.”
He has no idea why he asked who it was. There’s only one person who’d ever ring him, apart from cold-call centers. “You’re telling me. I just got back from Hell.”
“Oh, did you? Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“I just got back from Head Office myself.”
“Ah. So, you’ve heard.”
Aziraphale sighs on the other end of the line, his voice crackling a little with poor reception. “Yes. Gabriel seems to think that there’s another opportunity to try the apocalypse again. Four Horsemen and all. He argued that the plan wasn’t destined to be fulfilled the first time, that maybe that was God’s way of giving us a trial run.”
“Bollocks.”
“It was utter rot, Crowley, and I simply couldn’t stay. I left after the third slide of his presentation.”
Crowley grimaces. Heaven do love their technology, he’s heard. He wonders whether they realise that Crowley was the one who invented long, unnecessary PowerPoints. “We got a rousing speech ourselves. Taking up arms once more, all- all that sort of thing.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“How- it’s- I mean, this is-” Crowley stumbles over his words at the best of times. But right now, when he’s feeling so helpless, face in his hands- “Angel, I don’t know what the solution to this is.”
Aziraphale fumbles on the other end.
“It- it’s all-” Crowley growls at his inarticulacy. “It feels to fast, feels out of nowhere, feels weird. It’s all hot air, isn’t it? Really? I mean, everyone’s all just bobbing along and then Satan suddenly thinks, ‘oh, you know what, I think I’ll actually start giving a shit suddenly’?”
“I agree it does seem a little… unconvincing.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s fine, it’ll blow over I reckon,” Crowley babbles, ever the optimist. He’d always been the one to come up with the plans, and he’d been the one to tell Aziraphale it was all going fine when they were raising the wrong bloody-well child, so it’s not as if that optimism has brought him much joy. “It’s fine. Yeah.”
“I do think there’s evidence of everyone overreacting just a little,” Aziraphale agrees. “Adam turning eighteen- there’s no real reason why he should be more powerful or suddenly more likely to cause a war now than when he was at eleven.”
“Or at thirteen, when he moved school.”
“Or sixteen, when he had to revise for his GCSEs.”
“That wasn’t great.”
“No. Anathema called me and told me all about how his garden had turned brown because he was bored of revising chlorophyll and photosynthesis.”
That does make Crowley just a little sad; for some reason, he’d sort of hoped Adam would have grown up with a touch of the green fingers. But then, he wasn’t the child that Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis raised.
“Yes, anyway, didn’t blow up the world then, he won’t now. What’s so different now?”
The line goes quiet.
“Aziraphale?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“What is it?” he asks slowly, cautiously.
“Nothing. No, nothing, I’m sure.”
“Spit it out, Aziraphale.”
A pause. “I was just thinking- all I can tell has happened is that Lucifer is interested in keeping an eye on Adam, yes? And, really, everyone’s just getting a bit excited and deciding it’s time to try Armageddon again, and… well, it seems like Gabriel’s interpreted it that way for his own agenda.”
“Yes, we’ve covered that, hadn’t we?”
There’s a tut, and Crowley can just imagine him roll his eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m simply saying it all to myself as a run up to the plan that I’m beginning to formulate. I think it might just work.”
“Right. A plan. Look at you, coming up with a plan.”
“I can come up with plans too, sometimes, you know,” he complains, too whiny for it to be assertive.
“Go on then. What do you think?”
“I think that we need to keep an eye on Adam ourselves. I think we should return to… plan A.”
It takes Crowley a moment to translate. “Godfathers.”
“Perhaps we can do what we originally intended all those years ago and watch over him. We’d let him know we’re coming, of course. But it might be easiest this way, just to make sure he doesn’t accidentally trigger something, if the rumours are true. Then, hopefully, when Heaven and Hell realise it’s a false alarm… it will all fall back into place.”
Crowley exhales slowly, pinches the bridge of his nose so his sunglasses are nudged up his face.
When they’d sat in Aziraphale’s bookshop all those years ago and gotten uproariously drunk, it was because they knew Armageddon was looming. And Crowley had been the one to suggest the nanny and gardener idea. And that plan might have gone splendidly if they weren’t so hilariously inept. The problem of doing such a thing again is this- Crowley will have to spend every day in the same vicinity as Aziraphale. The first time he’d come up with the idea, he hadn’t anticipated how hard that would be. Now, Crowley knows how that sort of situation can take his feelings for Aziraphale, light them up in bright, neon bulbs and shove them directly in his face so he can’t ignore them, can’t help but be painfully aware of them. It’s the sort of situation that makes him daydream of gardening together; coming home from the shops and calling out ‘honey I’m home’; playing scrabble; falling asleep in front of an episode of Pointless together.
It’s pathetic. What’s more pathetic is that he doesn’t argue. Crowley has the self-preservation instinct of a lemming.
“Right,” he agrees. “That’s probably our best option. Right- know where he is?”
Aziraphale sighs, and it makes Crowley’s stomach twist. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
Oxford has earned its reputation for being beautiful. Matthew Arnold was right about the ‘dreaming spires’; the silhouettes of the buildings scrape the blue winter sky, heavenly in the way they seem to stretch out towards the clouds. Like they’re a part of Heaven’s architecture. Even if Aziraphale knows for a fact that they’re not.
Aziraphale has miracled most of his belongings to his new flat in Oxford. He stands at the stone steps of the entrance, on the street. Bicycles ring their bells, people pour out of the adjacent coffee shop, students chatter about their Christmas holidays. Across the road is a cafe, young people sat in window-seats with their laptops and scratching their heads. Tourists pour around Aziraphale, a river around a bemused stone. He tries to draw his thoughts together and wraps his scarf closer around his neck.
The old, wide roads are filled with zero-carbon buses and bicycles. Aziraphale crosses a little haphazardly, throwing up an apologetic hand for holding up the traffic. The wind is being funnelled down the High Street, and as soon as he dives into the narrower, cobbled Turl Street, it’s more sheltered.
It takes Aziraphale a moment to get his bearings; when he finds the cafe Crowley recommended, he sees the windows steamed up from the inside. Stepping in, the heat hits his skin immediately and the cold tingles away. The noise level is what he notices next- it’s extraordinarily loud. Filled with students working and talking. And there’s absolutely nowhere to sit.
Then he spots him- Crowley, in the back left hand corner, waving nonchalantly and leaning against the wall. When Aziraphale goes over to meet him, he finds that the noise level suddenly drops: Crowley must have performed a little miracle to make their conversation private and more easily heard for the both of them.
Aziraphale pulls off his scarf as he greets him. “When did Oxford get so…?”
“Hideously busy? Dunno. Got touristy in the last century or so, like everywhere else. I haven’t been back since 1116.”
“It’s been a long time for me, too.”
Crowley remains reclined, one leg bouncing over the other, displaying a classic, Crowley fidget. There’s a small heel to his ankle boots- a pair Aziraphale doesn’t recognise. He drums his fingers against the table, a plain, white shirt rolled up to his sleeves. Over the top of said shirt, a pair of suspenders; and, yes, those look like pinstriped black trousers. What an extraordinary outfit. His sunglasses have changed shape, too- a circular style, similar to the ones he wore in the 60s. And his hair; his hair is long. Shoulder-length and wavy, tucked behind his ears, save a flickering strand of red that pours around his face. It reminds Aziraphale of that very first meeting. It reminds him of all the years they’ve shared. It makes him tongue tied and warm, and wonder why things between them are still the way they are; makes him wonder desperately why they hadn’t changed after the apocalypse.
If only things had changed between them. Then he could lean over and tuck that loose strand behind his ear.
“Your hair,” he remarks stupidly.
“Well spotted. Thought I’d grow it out for the, er,” he waves his hand as he tries to find the words, “professor aesthetic.” Aziraphale can see his throat move as he swallows. “Your outfit.”
Aziraphale merely holds onto his scarf, still standing behind his chair. Then, looking down at his outfit, he understands. Crowley is referring to his own new ‘look’, though it is nowhere near as sophisticated; a dark green, cable knit cardigan; cream corduroys; a blue shirt with the ubiquitous tartan bow-tie. And on top of it all, a camel coloured duffle coat. “Oh, yes. I felt the same urge to change things up a little.”
“No false teeth this time, though.”
Aziraphale tilts his head as an affirmative, and takes his seat. “I don’t think the disguise needs to go quite that far this time. Unless- do you?”
“No, no,” Crowley frowns. A waitress appears with two cups of tea, and Crowley mutters a quiet cheers in sync with Aziraphale’s thank you. The demon starts to drop sugar lump after sugar lump into his mug. “So. Adam’s in Corpus Christi College.”
“Yes.”
“And he should be there by how- I texted him to let him know we’d be, er, making an appearance, so he knows we’re around.”
Aziraphale’s relieved. He’s refused to buy a mobile telephone, and he can’t imagine he’ll ever get one. “He’ll getting back into the swing of uni life, I should think.”
Crowley picks up his teacup, lets it hover in front of his mouth as he frowns above his sunglasses.
Aziraphale watches him, hands around his own mug. “What is it?” he asks with a bit of apprehension.
“Uni life,” Crowley mutters. “‘Spose that’s what all the fuss is about.”
“How do you mean?”
Crowley tilts his head back. Aziraphale finds himself suddenly transfixed by the way his hair pours down his neck, by the landscape of his profile. In this small, quaint tearoom, Crowley appears so out of place. And yet, this new look suits him, too. His lips part as he formulates his response, and it’s as if Aziraphale is watching this short moment in slow motion; Crowley drawing a breath to speak; the steam of his tea curling around his face; gold eyes visible through the peripheral gap of his sunglasses.
Aziraphale clears his throat, for his own benefit. Someone needs to snap him out of it.
“University. It’s when things tend to go a bit tits up, isn’t it. For humans.”
Aziraphale blinks. Looks down at his earl gray tea. “Yes, those were my thoughts when I found out Adam was attending university at Oxford. It’s a stressful time, as far as I can tell, to leave home and be thrown into the academic lifestyle.”
“It’s also when they tend to drink stupid amounts of alcohol and make stupid decisions.”
“Well… yes, that’s also very true. But that’s why we’re here, Crowley, to help him if he’s struggling, let him know we’re here for him.”
“We can’t be there for him for all of it, though, can we?” Crowley argues, clicking his nails against his mug. “I mean, it’s not like Warlock. I can’t be changing his nappies and wiping up dribble- depends on how drunk he gets, I suppose…”
Aziraphale huffs and puts down his teacup decisively. “I thought you agreed that this was the best plan?”
“I did, I did. But there’s only so much support two university lecturers can give, isn’t there? I mean, if Lucifer thinks that Adam might suddenly become even more all-powerful and trigger Armageddon for real, then how are we meant to be there to stop it? How are we meant to help him like this?”
Outside of their bubble of conversation, beyond Crowley’s miracle, the coffee shop customers chatter and clack on their keyboards. A bell rings as someone’s order comes up ready, and a child draws a smiley face in the condensation of the window.
“I don’t know,” Aziraphale admits, hands clasped in his lap. Crowley sighs slowly, balances his teacup precariously on his knee. “But- the fact that Adam is older is a benefit. He knows what he’s capable of, and he knows what’s right. He’s less impressionable. And he has friends. More than that- he knows us. And I should hope, after what we went through when he was eleven, that he should trust us if we tell him he’s in trouble.”
Crowley nods to himself, spinning the tea in his cup to make a little whirlpool.
“And,” Aziraphale continues, “he’s missed us. You know he has.”
That conjures just the smallest smile from Crowley. Both of them have sat down and read the hand-written letters that Adam has posted to the bookshop over the years. Somehow, the boy had known that Aziraphale wouldn’t touch a phone or a computer, and had decided that addressing letters to them both at the bookshop would be a preferred form of contact. Aziraphale always recognises a letter from Adam- his scratchy, tiny handwriting on the envelope. He and Crowley will sit in the armchairs beside the fire together and read them, find out how he’s enjoying school, how his friends are, how life in rural Oxfordshire is.
They’ve learned that Adam set up a debate club at his school in year 12. He managed to persuade his parents to get a second dog, who is called Mutt. Dog and Mutt get along wonderfully. They’ve learned that he enjoys camping and crickett, and that, unsurprisingly, he always does extraordinarily well in his exams. They’ve learned that he remembers them, and that he always will. It makes Aziraphale feel, truly, like his Godfather- like he’d raised Adam from the very start, too.
They both ponder this in relative quiet for a long moment. And then, Crowley sits up in his seat, stretches till his back clicks, and leans towards Aziraphale, elbows on the table. Biting his lip. Aziraphale shouldn’t really be aware that Crowley’s biting his lip, but it’s hard not to be, hard not to look.
“So,” he says. “What’s your story?”
Aziraphale is still too stunned by the lip-biting thing to respond intelligently. “Sorry?”
“What’re you going to tell the university? The lecturers at the college, when they ask why you’re suddenly teaching?”
“Oh. Yes, well,” Aziraphale shuffles up straighter in his chair, enthused by the opportunity to share this. “My name is Ezra Fell.”
“Ezra,” Crowley remarks, brows shooting upwards. “Interesting choice.”
“Oh?”
“Your bookshop is A. Z. Fell- figured you’d pick a name beginning with A.”
That is a very good point, but he doesn’t want Crowley to know that this hadn’t crossed his mind at all, not even once. “Yes, well, even so. Ezra Fell- I attended Oxford myself, in the 1880s-”
“1980s, angel. Wrong century.”
“Oof- yes, I really must remember not to get that wrong. Anyway, I studied Classics and Ancient History in the 1980s, in Hartford college. And after I left, I went abroad and worked in Bologna, where I fell deeply in love with a very rich man who looked after me for many years whilst I studied for my doctorate.”
“How dramatic,” Crowley comments with an amused smile, licking the sugar off his teaspoon.
“And then he left he for someone younger and more handsome, so I travelled the world alone for some time, lecturing at various universities before winding up here, where I have been editing my book on the Ancient Greek philosophy on love.”
Crowley sits back in his seat, looks Aziraphale up and down with an appreciative smile. It makes him self-conscious, but not in a bad way. Bizarrely, he enjoys it. “Yeah,” Crowley says eventually. “Yeah, I’d buy that.”
Now, it’s Aziraphale’s turn to lean forward, elbows on table, hand cupping his face. As if they’re on a romantic date; as if they hadn’t simply gone back to the way things were before Armageddon, as if Crowley ever noticed Aziraphale attempting to flirt with puppy-dog eyes and side-glances. “And you, Crowley? What about your disguise?”
“Oh, this- it’s nothing,” he waves the teaspoon dismissively. “I couldn’t be bothered with an entire backstory, so I figured I’d explain any huge gaps in time between now and when I got my own degree- in 1982, of course,” he adds, pointing the spoon at Aziraphale, “by acting incredibly mysterious and dropping subtle hints that I worked for MI5.”
“Oh, how spectacular,” Aziraphale grins, clapping a little. “Oh, oh- if anyone asks, you must sprinkle in lots of romantic locations around the world that you had to visit for, ’work’,” Aziraphale says, adding inverted commas with his fingers.
Crowley laughs, head tilted back. “You were always so invested in the disguises.”
“My dear boy, so were you! Or have you forgotten the pencil skirts and lilting Scottish accent?”
He hums a happy laugh. “Oh, no, I haven’t forgotten. Still got those dress suits. Tailor made, those were.”
Aziraphale smiles, refills his cup with fresh tea. Taps the teaspoon against the rim. Then, with a small frown, “What will you be teaching?”
Crowley examines his nails. “Philosophy. Obviously. Adam’s taking it this term.”
“Of course,” Aziraphale nods. “I’ll be focusing on Classical literature. Naturally. Since Latin and Greek is Adam’s main degree subject.”
“Iliad?”
“Not this term, I’m afraid.”
“Shame. People need to set the record straight with the Achilles-Patroclus thing. Remember when everyone kept translating it so they were cousins?”
“Yes, dear,” Aziraphale smiles against the rim of his teacup.
“Wrong. Just wrong. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with people? Christ, if they’d been there, they’d never deny it, silly bastards couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
“Crowley?”
He looks up at him with slightly raised eyebrows, expectant and relaxed and hair down and just too beautiful in this silly little tearoom for Aziraphale to function- just for a moment.
“Crowley,” he tries again. “Where are you living at the moment?”
He stares, like Aziraphale’s just said the stupidest thing in the world. “London, angel.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’re commuting in for work every morning?”
“Bus to Oxford’s easy. And regular.”
“But it’s a coach.” Aziraphale stares in horror as Crowley shrugs. “A coach, Crowley.”
“Point?”
“You’ll be sat on a coach for two hours there and back, every day!”
“You- it’s- calm down, angel, you’re acting like I’ve agreed to saw my hands and feet off every morning.”
“You’ll- Crowley, you’ll be in the most terrible mood every morning. A coach will only make you even more bad tempered than usual. You know you’ll hate it, because I know for a fact that you invented the concept of long-distance coach journeys.”
Crowley hangs his head back and moans. “I don’t want to move flat, though. I like my flat.”
Aziraphale purses his lips. He’s never liked Crowley’s flat, and he’s always made that quite clear by the way he’ll huff and puff when he sits on the uncomfortable sofa, or cast judgemental glances at the decor. The only things he likes about that place are the lovely houseplants, whom he gives lots of warm encouragement when he visits.
“You could-” Aziraphale begins. And then he realises, with horror, what he’s about to suggest.
He’s catapulted back to that moment on the bench in Tadfield. Crowley offering him a place to stay. I don’t think my side would like that.
But now- things haven’t changed since then, not even a bit. And it’s now that Aziraphale realises that that might be a lot to do with his own cowardice.
“You could stay at mine. Temporarily,” he finally says. Quickly. Clears his throat. Looks at Crowley, looks at the cash register and the long queue snaking out the door- then back at Crowley, who’s staring at him, eyes unfortunately hidden.
“Stay,” Crowley says. “With you.”
“Just for the time being. I’ve found a delightful little apartment on the High Street, quite a rare find, I believe. A nice view of the Camera and- Crowley, stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what,” he says, expression slack, looking strangely drunk.
“Like... Just stop staring,” Aziraphale argues ineffectually. “You don’t have to take up the offer if you don’t want to, it’s not as if I’m forcing you.”
Crowley gapes. “I know. Yes. Yes- I’ll stay with you. For a bit. Just till I...”
There’s a huge, cavernous pause between Crowley’s words. Aziraphale stares and feels his heartbeat fighting against his chest. Crowley swallows.
“Just,” Crowley tries again, voice breaking. “Just till I find my feet. No big deal.”
“Of course not.”
“What’s- what’s- you know- what’s two friends sharing a flat together? Everyone does it.”
“Precisely.”
“Nothing unusual about it.”
“Quite.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
Aziraphale looks up. “Why would there be?”
“No reason- you don’t mind me, you know, lurking around. Getting in the way-”
“You couldn’t possibly.”
He can just about see Crowley’s eyes widen behind the veneer of his glasses. “You might not want me there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You might change your mind.”
“I would never.”
“Having people hanging about in your home can be annoying…”
“You’re not people.”
They look at each other. Their words had come so quickly to the surface, so unexpectedly. Like they’d both been speaking in streams of consciousness. Aziraphale is dizzy from it. The sincerity, the painful emergence of his feelings into the cold light of day- it’s giving him vertigo. He’s horrified. It’s as if his love for Crowley, which he’s worked so hard to bury, has simply crawled out from under its trap, wrestled its way into his mouth and jumped into existence. He hadn’t realised that those feelings had gotten free. And now they’ve been said- the damage is done.
But Crowley doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t frown or scoff or mock; he stares, a gentle look of surprise.
“I’ll stay, then,” he says. “I’ll. I’ll stay.”
Aziraphale nods shakily, peers into his empty teacup. “Good.” He clears his throat, manages a wobbly smile. “I’ll set up the futon, then.”