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The year was 1941. An angel and a demon had just arrived at a Soho bookshop with an unwelcoming aura. The angel was carrying several nearly-demolished books. The demon, an air of well-executed heroism.
Crowley had blown the nazis to bits with an explosion, casually deployed his infernal abilities to prevent Aziraphale’s books from suffering the same fate, then drove them to the bookshop. He’d played the hero, Aziraphale had obliged for a bit and displayed just the right combination of admiration and fear when confronted with Crowley’s driving style, and Crowley had never been this ready for some more spy-related activities. It could very well be of use in the future, he figured, with how amazingly well it had gone this time.
Aziraphale, however, was thinking something entirely different. He invited Crowley in, yes, and poured him a glass of something that quickly turned itself into decent-quality wine. The angel then sat himself down in his armchair, put on his glasses, and started to carefully page through the first of his books.
“I do hope these are in proper shape. You saved them wonderfully, of course, but one never knows what the proximity of a nazi might have done. Let alone three of them.”
“The books are fine,” said Crowley. He’d draped himself over most of the back-room sofa. “Just don’t go trying to be sneaky ever again.”
“I’m never going near a nazi ever again,” Aziraphale said. His exploration of the books now more closely resembled a relieved caress. “I can only imagine how poorly it would have gone were it not for you.”
Crowley drained his glass of wine and leaned forward. “At least this time it wasn’t crepes,” he said, refilling both his own glass and Aziraphale’s, which had conveniently made its way from the cabinet onto the table. “Let’s drink to no not liking Nazis.”
“I’m not quite sure that’s what toasts are for,” said Aziraphale. “Shouldn’t we be celebrating something? But yes, nazis are awful. Terrible for business, for a start.”
“Usually you complain that there’s too much business in your shop,” said Crowley, an eyebrow raised daringly.
“Well yes. I support business in general. I don’t support business here.”
Two hours—and many, many bottles of several liquids that all turned out to be wine—later, they were still having mostly the same conversation. It now contained and increasing amount of slurring, hissing, and repetition.
“Wanna know what I think? Angel, do you wanna know?”
Aziraphale drained his glass and made a noise that could loosely be interpreted as an expression of assent.
“You don’t know what a shop is. You have all these— these books here. But no dictio—. Dictonia—. Book with word meanings. What’s the point of books if you don’t know what words mean!” Crowley felt very proud of himself.
“I know what words mean,” Aziraphale said. “I was there when they were invented!”
“Being there when words were invented doesn’t help understand every word. That’s like- like knowing how to make a watch because we were there when time started. I don’t know how to do that. You don’t know how to do that.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s obvious, angel. Obvious!”
“You’re awful.”
“I’m a demon. And I’m also right.”
Aziraphale generously ignored this and poured himself another drink. The proper course of action here must be to not engage. He would know: he was an angel and he was doing it.
Crowley had just had the greatest idea. He made several excited noises into his glass, keeled over to lie down on the couch, and nearly crushed his shades in the process. They only barely managed to relocate to the table in time.
“Are you quite alright?” Aziraphale asked.
“Yes, fine. You know what we need? Do you?” Crowley gave him an expectant look that lasted for nearly half a second. “We need a code.”
“A code?”
“Yes, a code.”
“What do I need a code for?” said Aziraphale, befuddled and alarmed. Never had he considered code to be for him. Heaven, of course, did not use it. A divine cause was righteous and filled with valour and could never be constrained by subterfuge. On the rare occasions that Gabriel, trying to conceal his identity from the humans in the bookshop when delivering a new assignment, approximated subtlety, he stood out like a door without a doorframe.
“There’s always a code. For when we need to meet in secret. For when you do something stupid and need me to save you again,” Crowley said reasonably.
“I don’t do stupid things. I’m an angel.”
“You do.”
“I do not.” Aziraphale miracled the contents of Crowley’s glass into his own. This was completely justifiable, of course, given that it was Aziraphale’s alcohol in the first place.
“I do not,” echoed Crowley. His drunken impression of Aziraphale was comparable to that of three children in a trench coat, impersonating their father to their teacher, while all three of them were varying degrees of intoxicated.
It suddenly occurred to Aziraphale that a secret code shared by two supernatural beings could be used by both of them. Immediately, its appeal increased massively. “Alright then. We’ll make a code.”
“Really?” said Crowley. “I mean, yes, of course. It’s a great plan. All my plans are. Obviously.”
It was at that moment that both angel and demon realized that they did not know anything about codes or how to create one.
“We need meeting locations,” Crowley finally said. “And we need other names for them.”
“We can meet in the bookshop,” said Aziraphale.
“No we can’t.”
“Why not? Are you leaving?”
“No! We can meet here. But not for the code. It needs to be a secret for the code. We need extra secret other locations for if it needs to be more secret.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t know of any places that I haven’t been to.”
“Me neither,” said Crowley. It appeared they had hit a wall. No further course of action presented itself and Crowley felt less like a cool spy by the second.
Eventually, he gave up. “Your lot invented the vacuum cleaners, didn’t they?”
“I thought it was you who made them too short to be usable without getting a crick in your back.”
Crowley was enamoured. “You’ve used one? How’d it go.”
And just like that, the idea of a code was shelved. It would stay on that imaginary shelf right up until Armageddon was nigh. Crowley would eventually take it down, shake of the hypothetical dust, and spend one of Nanny Ashtoreth’s free Friday afternoons staking out several Londen locations and coming up with code names.
Crowley could be imaginative. The stress of the approaching end of the planet, however, lead him to settle for a numbered list of alternative rendezvouses. He carefully wrote down his ideas on a piece of paper, and gave it to Aziraphale that weekend. The plan had been to do so before cracking open the alcohol, but this wile was unfortunately thwarted.
“Remember the code? From the church explio— Expol— When the church went boom?” He said when he finally got to it. The piece of paper came out of his pocket very rumpled but readable.
“Mm” said Aziraphale.
“I made one. Here, look!”
Aziraphale looked. He was impressed that Crowley had managed to fill two pages. Then he looked again and realized there was only one.
“Looks good,” he said. “Very code-y.”
“And we haven’t gotten to the best part yet.” Crowley said impatiently.
“Let’s see it,” Aziraphale said vaguely, while looking over the paper. What with the wavy quality of his intoxicated mind, he was having trouble linking the locations to the code names.
Crowley promptly set the paper on fire. “Now no-one but us can know.” He said.
“Right,” said Aziraphale, trying to recall what had been one it with little success. His thoughts landed instead on the events of the last week. “Warlock destroyed the tulips with his tricycle, you know,” he said. “How’d you accomplish that?”
Crowley grinned, “Easy.”