Work Text:
There’s a joke that goes something like this:
An angel and a woman walk out of a garden [1]. The angel turns to the woman and asks, “Why did you do it? Eat the apple, I mean.”
The woman thinks on it for a moment. The angel expects her to say a variety of things: I was tricked, I didn’t know any better, I just wanted to see what would happen. All unforgivable, at this hour, but reasonable.
The woman lets out a self-conscious chuckle. “In all honesty,” she says, “I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and I was feeling a bit peckish.”
The angel doesn’t laugh, because he doesn’t get the joke. He doesn’t get it for a long, long time.
After the whole business with Job, Aziraphale finds human food to be something else entirely. What he once regarded as nothing but gross matter, as fuel to be consumed and excreted and consumed again, has become a whole new sensation he didn’t know existed.
The warmth of flatbread, fresh and smoky from the pot as it dissolved in one's mouth, the burnt bits sticking to one's tongue. The tartness found in the lacy flesh of fresh lemons. The messy, decadent dance of oil and vinegar trailing down one’s fingers. And that was nothing on the spices, or the presentation, or the simple pleasure of biting into something after a long day's work. To taste was to create a small world in one’s mouth, a world that had its own history, and memories, and lingered. Oh, it lingered.
He finds such delight in it. To be wanting for something so bad your body aches, and then to become sated—there’s nothing like it. It feels almost too good to be true.
And it is, of course, too good to be true, because he shouldn’t be hungry at all. He’s an angel. Angels are forever and always Fed On the Nourishing Wine of God’s Love. To be found lacking meant…
...well, it meant. Aziraphale doesn’t let himself get much farther than that.
But with time, Aziraphale finds that the pros outweigh the cons. What’s a few hundred lovely dinners to an existential crisis? God wants joy on Earth, and isn’t Aziraphale spreading that a little bit every time he visits his favorite stall for a nibble?
And, besides. It isn’t his fault.
“You really like those oysters, don’t you?” Crowley asks in Rome. He scratches his long fingers up and down his neck.
Aziraphale stops, oyster shell halfway to his mouth, and scowls. “Well I don’t see you having any.”
“More of a bevvie guy, me,” Crowley says, swirling his wine with a smug smile. He spills a little on his robes and swears. Aziraphale huffs, setting the oyster back down on his plate. He was beginning to feel full anyway, thank you. Crowley groans. “Oh, no, no. Don’t…don’t stop on my part.”
“You know, you’re the reason for this,” Aziraphale tells him.
“What—me? What did I do?”
“You—” Aziraphale stops himself, lowering his voice. “You tempted me. You tricked me into eating.”
“I didn’t trick you. Temptation’s not about tricking. Not if you do it right.”
“But you admit it! You did tempt me!”
“I offered you warm food during a storm,” Crowley argues. “If you call that temptation, I’d hate to see you talk to an innkeeper.” Aziraphale scowls some more. Crowley shrugs. “Besides, no harm done. You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
He has Aziraphale there. “Still,” he says, spreading his hands wide. “It has to be said—” He glances up to the sky. “—for anyone listening, that I am not at fault for my appetite.”
“Never said you were,” Crowley says. “Just said you liked the oysters.”
Aziraphale realizes, belatedly, that what he’d mistaken for teasing was, in fact, a genuine comment. He settles a little, mollified. “Oh,” he says. “I do, yes. Sorry, for the—”
“All’s forgiven,” Crowley says, with the benediction of a conman. “And I’m sorry about the—well, no, I’m not sorry about teaching you to snack. But I am sorry I made you feel bad, before. Wasn’t my intention.”
Aziraphale gives the enemy a small smile. “All’s forgiven,” he says. He picks up the oyster, hesitates, then holds it out to Crowley. “Would you like a nibble?”
Crowley’s eyebrows raise. “Um,” he says. “Well, you know—” He gestures to the wine.
“Please?” Aziraphale says, pushing it out further. “For me? They really are divine.”
Crowley's Adam's apple bobs a little. He makes a face and shakes his head. “Not much for divinity, me.”
“Then they are absolutely sinful,” Aziraphale says, lowering his voice and doing his impression of the demon.
Crowley seems to react to that, leaning forward a little bit, mouth moving of its own accord before settling on a sentence. “Uh. Well, when in...um." He regards the oyster like it was a small bomb. "How do I..?”
“Oh, it’s very easy,” Aziraphale says, and with his other hand, beckons Crowley forward. He takes Crowley’s chin in his fingers, thumb on the dip below his lips, and pulls his mouth slightly ajar. “Here.” He brings the rim of the oyster shell to Crowley’s wine-stained lips. “Now, sip on the juice a little bit first. Always whets the appetite.”
Crowley makes a quiet, indiscernible nose, and does as he’s told. Aziraphale nods. “Good,” he says, throat suddenly rough. “Now open up.” Crowley’s mouth pops open, and Aziraphale angles the shell. The oyster slides out and onto his tongue. A bit like communion, Aziraphale thinks, and can’t quite name why that sends a shiver down his spine. He draws back. Crowley chews once, twice. “Really savor it before you swallow.”
And Crowley does. Crowley chews more than one should, eyes glassy behind his sunglasses, shoulders slack, before finally swallowing. He smacks his mouth.
“Good, isn’t it?” Aziraphale asks. He feels… very invested in Crowley’s opinions on oysters.
It takes a second for Crowley to find his voice. “I—y-yeah. ‘S good, ‘s good.”
His words come out wispy, almost from another place entirely. He almost sounds...well, happy.
He clears his throat, all his joints pulling back tight like a marionette. “Think I’ll stick to the wine, though,” he says, and dramatically gulps down the rest of his gup with a long ‘ahhhhh’.
Aziraphale tuts, but doesn’t protest. He holds up a hand to ask for another round, feeling much, much hungrier than he was a few minutes before.
Aziraphale keeps to the corners of the abbey, not wanting to disturb any of the monks. Of course, he could just become a ray of light, or perhaps a moth that flits from room to room until he finds his target, but he's been on Earth long enough to know that rays of light can get snuffed out and moths are easily squashed. No, it's best to do this the human way.
He skirts around the edges of the halls. None of the monks seem to pay him much mind, however. They are...quite involved in their studies. A very quiet bunch.
He's honestly ready to get this over and done with. He'd been having a lovely time in Alexandria when he'd received a summons to the Nitrian Desert to speak the contents of a scroll to one Evagrius Ponticus, and to not open the scroll beforehand for some reason. Something about Non-Divinical Annunciations.
So, anyway, now he's here, and missing the goat cheese and couscous-stuffed grape leaves he's had to leave behind. He's getting close to the tower the fellow lives in—what is it with monks and towers? Probably best not to ask—when he feels someone grab at his elbow.
He's about to go for his prepared response [2] when he catches a flash of smokey quartz and a ring of red that immediately pulls his attention.
"What on Earth have you done to your hair?" the angel asks his long-sworn enemy.
Crowley frowns. "What, this?" He nods up to his tonsure. "All the rage, this. Or will be." Aziraphale hums doubtfully. "Aren't you going to ask what I'm doing here?"
Oh. Oh! "Oh! Uh, yes." He clears his throat. "What are you doing here, you foul tempter from below?"
He tries to put a holy gravel into his voice, but with the close quarters it comes across as much more intimate. It may also have something to do with the fact that, despite the hereditary enemies bit, he really is quite pleased to see Crowley. It's been a couple decades since he last saw him, and he can feel his skin warming at the presence of the demon. Aziraphale tells himself it's got something to do with hellfire.
A high pitched noise comes from the back of Crowley's throat. He inhaled sharply. "Supposed to tempt the monks," Crowley says. "Ascetics, most of them, so it's a bit of an easy job. A dab of butter on their bread, an extra cup of water, so on." He sniffs, looking at the haggard men walking past them for a moment, before shrugging. "Also supposed to intercept a message."
He looks back to Aziraphale at that. "Wh—my message?" he asks.
"Yeah," Crowley says. "Well, not intercept. Moreso, um." He twirls his finger around, trying to think of the words. "Bear witness, or whatever."
Aziraphale regards him. "Is that so."
"Apparently what you've got in there is big news for thems downstairs. I've got to file a report." He spits out the word like anti-venom.
"I as well," Aziraphale grumbles.
Crowley makes a face, then another one. "'S funny, isn't it? Us showing up at the same place, just sort of doing the same thing? Bit redundant."
Aziraphale itches at this. Hell may be redundant, but Heaven surely isn't. Or it shouldn't be. It's beginning to feel that way now. "Well, I don't expect our sides to be in constant communication of the other's whereabouts, do you?" Crowley doesn't respond to this. He seems to be, ugh, formulating something. A nefarious plan, most likely. Aziraphale sighs. "Let's get this over with."
He steps out, only to realize he doesn't know where he's going. Crowley grumbles and stalks down the corridor. Aziraphale trails behind.
Once they get to the tower, the human way is out of the question entirely. Aziraphale slips into the room as a speck of dust dancing in between the door and the wall, and Crowley slinks in as a centipede. Once they get into the room, a small and empty thing, save for the small and unwashed man in the corner, they regain their forms.
Aziraphale surveys the man. "Right," he says, and turns on the lights, so to speak.
The man jumps at the sudden brightness, eyes going this way and that and babbling. You would be too, if the heavenly equivalent of floodlights appeared in your bedroom. "Heavenly Father—"
"Ah, not—not quite," says Aziraphale bashfully. He dims the lights a bit. "For one, not God. Two: the, the ‘Father’ thing. You see, there was a bit of translation error, on my part, back somewhere in Canaan. Slip of the tongue, you understand, but..." He trails off, realizing he's beginning to ramble. He shakes his head. "Anyway—"
The man has begun mumbling. It's prayers. Mostly forgiveness for a variety of things: lusting after another man's wife, having an extra cup of water, wearing robes that were too nice, etc. [3]
Aziraphale struggles to get back on track. He's already gotten the idea that, if he gets this done in twenty minutes, he can make back for those stuffed grape leaves. He can already taste the brine on his tongue, a touch too salty but offset by tart cheese and starchy grain and a host of other goodies. And by the wine. He’ll share a bottle with Crowley; not because they’re having a friendly meal, mind. He’ll just be…redirecting Crowley's wiles away from this monastery for a few hours. Or perhaps a few days, if the vintage is good.
But he might not get any grape leaves or wine at all if this man doesn’t stop confessing. Aziraphale tries to get his attention by patting him on the shoulder, but the man keeps repeating his barrage of frankly mild sins. "Oh, no,” Aziraphale whines, “this isn't—um. Could you just—oh, what's that phrase we use?"
"Be not afraid," Crowley mouths through cupped hands.
Aziraphale nods. "Right. Right." He clears his throat, tries to really project this time. "BE NOT AFRAID."
The man sniffles and goes quiet.
"Ah. That's better. Now, I have a message for you from upstairs," he says, and pulls out the scroll. "You are to write these down upon your, uh, ‘waking’, and spread these words across the land. Understood?"
"Of course," says Evagrius. "Of course, your Highest and Holiest."
Aziraphale preens. "Well, I certainly wouldn't call myself the highest, but—" Crowley makes a 'get on with it' motion. "Right." He breaks the seal with a pop, and the scroll unfurls. He reads out the words.
"Let it be known to all who are under God's loving embrace—" Crowley snorts. "—that here upon speaketh my angel those most cardinal of sins."
He looks up from the announcement. Evagrius is still staring at him in holy awe. Crowley has pulled out a bit of parchment and a pen.
"The first sin is that of wrath," Aziraphale says with gusto. Right, that makes sense. Anger begetting anger and so forth, all that violence. "For it begets harm to one's fellow man." Ah, just like he thought! He’s good at this. "The next is envy. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there shall be disorder.” Right, that also makes sense.
Crowley makes a teetering noise. “Probably good to be envious in certain situations. Inequalities, the whole—” He gestures vaguely from his corner in the room, whereupon he has blended into the shadows so well that no human can see or hear him or his color commentary. Aziraphale gives him a look, and goes back to Evagrius. He does his best to not be smug as he reads the next line, and fails.
“The next sin is greed.” Oh yes, Aziraphale thought, greed was a good one. No sense in hoarding anything. Except, of course, if one had to. You never knew what could happen to books if put in the wrong hands. "For no one shall put material possessions above God." Hm. Well, he would've reworded that differently. Better, a little less guilt-trippy.
He looks up, hoping to see Crowley properly chided. He is, instead, licking at his pen and still taking notes. Aziraphale observes the motion, trying not to be interested. The tonsure’s not helping as much as it should.
It’s just that Crowley is the very visual definition of interesting. From the curve of his nose, to the way his eyes dark behind those glasses, even the way his robes billow and fold over the crook of his elbow. It's no wonder he became the emissary for Earth. Temptation seeps from him like….like…well, Crowley’s better at metaphors than he is.
Crowley looks up, and Evagrius clears his throat. Aziraphale realizes that he's been staring. "The—the next one is…" Oh, God, really? "...is lust. For it—it corrodes the soul. And it ruins our ability to love.” He lowers the scroll down. “Well, that one might—I would say unwanted lust, or perhaps lust in excess, but those aren’t—the act of wanting mutual pleasure is a gift from the Almighty, is it not?”
“All wants should be directed to God,” Evagrius reasons. “Pleasures such as those are for the sake of creating new life.”
Aziraphale falters. “Well, I mean—if that were the case you’d see a lot more babies, don’t you think?” he asks. He looks to Crowley. Bad idea. He holds up the scroll. “Well, the next is sloth. Lazing about, idleness, and so on. It, uh, reflects a complete disinclination towards faith.” Aziraphale is reminded of the fact that he is, technically, supposed to be hanging about in Alexandria to bless people. Which he has been doing, but mostly between long stretches of Roman baths and sunbathing. “Though, what can one say about rest and reinvigoration and so forth, that’s—”
“I sleep as little as I can, so I can devote myself more to the study of God,” Evagrius says.
“Well, that’s all well and good for you,” Aziraphale snaps, “but not all of us are monks.”
“No,” Crowley says. “Some of us are angels.”
Aziraphale feels a pang of remorse, and looks back to Evagrius. “I—sorry, this has got me all out of sorts,” he says. “All of this is news to me. Back to it, hm?” He lifts up the scroll. “The next sin is…”
He trails off, feeling something cold grip his insides. Grip his stomach, if one were to be precise.
Evagrius shakes his head. “What? What is it?”
Aziraphale purses his lips. “Gluttony.”
From the shadows, a laugh emerges.
Aziraphale huffs and reads the next few lines with increasing incredulity. “For consuming in excess, and seeking delicacies strays from seeking the Lord and idolizes food before God!” He looks up. “Well!”
“I have seen it myself,” says Evagrius. “Living off of only what is needed brings you closer to God, it is true.”
“But—no, no, this can’t be right.” He looks down at the scroll again. “I mean, these are…hard stances that they are taking, there has to be room for interpretation!”
“Famous last words,” Crowley says.
“You are here to observe,” Aziraphale snaps.
“Who is here to observe?” asks the monk.
“The—” He nearly gestures to Crowley’s shadowy corner. He shakes his head, swallows his word. “You!” he lies. “You, you are here to observe. To listen, not comment.” He reads over the words once more. “These…no, no. This must be a, a first draft, surely.”
“Surely,” Crowley drawls.
Aziraphale looks at him, looking to start an argument, but only finds sympathy on Crowley’s features. He feels his anger simmer down into something more unsure. He’s trying not to whine and failing spectacularly. “It’s…I would have worded it differently, is all. Gluttony in excess, perhaps, is a sin. Everything in excess, that makes sense. But to indulge is to appreciate the divine, not deny it.”
Crowley doesn’t say anything. He simply looks at Aziraphale with a small smile on his face. Aziraphale gets the sense that he’s just done something very bad indeed. Still, he feels…comforted.
He redirects his attention to Evagrius, who is keeping schtum as per Aziraphale’s instructions. He looks like he’s holding back a lot, though.
Aziraphale lets out a few ragged breaths, tries to get back to getting this over with. “Um. Yes, well, there is one more and then this will all be over,” he says. And then he can return to his grape leaves. He holds up the scroll once more and reads out, clear and concise.
"The last is...is pride,” he says, and feels his voice break as his stomach drops to his feet. "It is the greatest of all sins. For...for it was the first, and arrogance puts oneself above God. And those that put themselves above God…”
He meticulously avoids eye contact with Crowley. "...will find themselves wallowing in the pit.” He swallows, feeling much smaller than himself, and sheepishly rolls up the scroll. Finding shameful interest in the ground, he nods. “This you shall proclaim to the world when you wake.”
“If I may speak—”
With a snap of his fingers, Evagrius falls into a deep sleep. Aziraphale regards the parchment in his hands, wondering if it will start burning him with the longer he stands there, before finally tucking it back into his robes.
He’s not…he’s not gluttonous. Nor prideful. He’s merely opinionated, and enjoys some of the finer things. Having good taste can’t be a sin, can it? And him asking that isn’t…it isn’t doubt, is it?
No. No, it’s just…critique. Which he will keep to himself.
When he looks up, Crowley is gone. Aziraphale feels a cold shiver course through him, and he leaves the room in a hurry. Perhaps he should cut down on the sweets, and the critiques. Go back to wandering the Earth as a gentle observer and not some, some gluttonous, ravenous—
“For my money, I think you’re right,” a voice says at the bottom of the stairs.
Aziraphale turns to see Crowley, still folded into the shadows, barely visible. It’s the sort of place light isn’t; not because it can’t reach, mind you, but because it suddenly has other places to be. His corner of darkness isn't scary or cold, however. It almost seems...warm. Tinged with red. Like thick covers on a cold night or the dark heat of an oven with the coals scraped out. Aziraphale finds himself drawn to it as the cold ache of guilt settles into him.
“You do?” Aziraphale asks.
“Definitely a first draft,” Crowley concedes. “Not peer reviewed at all. I mean, no eating, no sleeping, no fucking? What else are humans going to do? Sit up in their sad little towers all day?” He nods up the stairs. “Might work for this lot, but not for everybody else.”
It shouldn’t make Aziraphale feel better. Crowley is a demon. But like before: with Job, with the sword, with a thousand other small moments he won’t admit to, Aziraphale finds comfort in Crowley’s words.
“Thank you,” he says. “That…yes. It must be a first draft. I’ll probably get called around here next week.” His words aren’t convincing anyone, let alone himself.
“Heaven does like to be redundant,” Crowley says, going for snark but landing on something softer.
Aziraphale looks at him, suddenly tasting ox fat between his teeth. You’re just an angel, going along with Heaven as far as he can. “You know, all of this asceticism is making me hungry, isn’t that funny?” It’s not.
Crowley snorts, pushing off the wall and out of the shadows. The cold feeling vanishes. “What say you and I skip town and indulge in a non-gluttonous amount of wine then?”
Aziraphale smiles and nods.
There's another joke that goes something like this: an angel and a demon walk into a restaurant—
No, no. That's not quite correct. Not right now, at least. The way it goes right now is: an angel walks into a restaurant. A demon also walks into a restaurant, completely separate from the angel. Coincidentally, they end up sitting at the same table. They have a lovely meal. They chat idly. They leave.
There: setup. No punchline, though. Not yet. The punchline takes a few years to get right.
Aziraphale’s wig itches. That’s the first thing he’s got on his mind. He supposes he could just turn off the sensation, but there’s something frightfully enjoyable about suffering and getting to complain about it. And he is looking forward to complaining about it. He is looking forward to complaining about the itch, and the weight, and the style. He is looking forward to the person he’s complaining to telling him that he should simply not wear it, and he’s looking forward to pouting and saying he just wanted to try it out for size, and will be for the next few weeks simply to incite a fond yet disgruntled look from said person’s face.
That’s the second thing on his mind—said person. Or, said not-person. Crowley. Aziraphale’s been standing here on this busy London street corner, scratching at his hairline, for well over an hour waiting for the demon. Nothing—nothing friendly, mind you, though you would assume that from his thoughts about the complaining, wouldn’t you? No, this is strictly business. Arrangement stuff, you understand. There’s a copy of the Dabestan-e Mazaheb being held in Delhi with his name on it, along with some saag aloo and bowl of kheer, and he can’t exactly be there to get all of that if he’s expected to go and bless yet another Holy Roman Emperor.
So Aziraphale stands on the street corner, getting antsy, until he spots a tower of red hair coming towards him. "There you are!" he yells. "Finally."
“Didn’t hold you up, did I?” Crowley says, dodging horse dung. Aziraphale doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Crowley eventually reaches him, smoothing out her skirts and tilting her fontage back to straight with a puff of relief. "Would’ve come sooner, but I got held up at a temptation."
"Oh,” says Aziraphale. “Oh, I see. Is that why you're...?" He looks her up and down—she really has outdone herself this time. Large sack-back dress, an intricate display of black and red with jewelry to match. Everything is quite…accentuating, to say the least.
"Hm?” Crowley asks, frowning. She looks down. “Oh, no. No, not that.” She smiles proudly. “I created a traffic jam on London Bridge. Did it with a piece of string and a loose orange.” She looks down at her outfit and sniffs. “This...just sort of felt like it." She appraises him as well, her eyebrows raising higher and higher over her sunglasses as her eye’s crawl up the wig. She looks him in the eye. "You should try it. Been a while for you, hasn't it?"
"Hm,” Airaphale concedes. It has been a while—he did enjoy the dresses of the 15th century. This decade, though…his eyebrows, too, raise higher and higher as his eyes climb up her fontage. "All the extra bits, just seems like a lot of work, you know?"
Crowley gives him a doubtful look. "Extra bits are what make it fun, angel,” Crowley says. She adjusts her corset, bringing attention to her cleavage. Aziraphale can only make a vague noise, suddenly vexed by the sight. He can't help but think of a certain Sicilian pastry. Crowley grins at him. "The fashion's nice, too."
She starts to walk off, as if to seal the joke, but it’s hindered by the fact that she a) is going the wrong way and b) immediately skids on a loose pile of horse dung.
Aziraphale catches her by the back, righting her and miracling away the mess. Crowley jolts, as if stung. "Oh, really," Aziraphale says, worried she’ll teeter into another pile of shit, and loops his arm around hers.
For the sake of propriety, of course. A lady walking around unattended would be scandalous. He turns them around and they start walking to the inn. He checks his watch and sighs irritably. "We're going to lose our reservation."
"Our reservation?” Crowley asks with a frown. “You made a reservation? Why not just...?" She flutters her fingers.
"Well, I certainly couldn’t have Heaven asking why I’ve freed up a table for two off duty, now could I?” Aziraphale asks.
“I don’t think they’ll notice, do you?”
“No, but they’ve been…tetchy, lately,” Aziraphale explains, remembering the note he got earlier this week. Further frivolous use of miracles shall result in a reprimand. Crowley makes a sympathetic noise. "So I did things the human way. Just to keep them off my back. I didn't think it would be a problem, only now you've decided to show up a half an hour late."
Crowley sniffs. "Right, well. I…apologize,” she bites out the last word, then puts a finger in his face. “No dancing! Not dancing in this dress.”
He imagines Crowley doing the apology dance, the graceful bend in her spine as she would dip, and puts that away for another day. "It's no matter,” he says airly. “To err is human. To forgive is divine."
Crowley’s face scrunches up. "Who told you that?"
"A fellow in the paper did. I find it to be rather clever, don't you?"
"Could be, yeah. Could be accurate, if you didn't say it like that."
Aziraphale’s eyebrows draw together. "Like what?"
"'To err is human. To forgive is divine,’” parrots Crowley, with an affected falsetto and a lisp. She drops it. "To be sanctimonious is entirely angelic."
"To be sardonic is to be demonic, then,” Aziraphale fires back.
"And anyway, shouldn't it be the other way around?" Crowley asks as they round a corner.
"We don't err,” Aziraphale says. Crowley gives him a Look. "Well we don't err often."
"’To forgive is human’—see, I like that more, don't you?” Crowley continues. “Because they are a bit more adept at it, aren't they? I mean, look at 'em.” She gestures to the throngs of people passing them by. Aziraphale is rather stuck on Crowley. He does so enjoy it when she gets going like this. Even if she is incorrect. “A thousand small mistakes that everybody sees and forgives like it's nothing. Makes my job harder, tell you that much.”
Aziraphale has to admit she’s right. "A gift from the Almighty,” he reasons.
"The Almighty is not so forgiving, I'll have you remember,” Crowley says, still looking out at the crowd. It’s said absently, but quietly. When she does look back, her shades have slipped down her nose a bit. Aziraphale holds eye contact with her for a moment, feeling his pulse jump where their elbows are linked.
It does perplex him, sometimes, how Crowley got to be cast out. He remembers the angel she was, the brightness of her eyes, the joy in her voice.
The thing is, Aziraphale thinks for a moment, I don’t think there’s anything about you that needs to be forgiven.
He opens his mouth, almost says it. Realizes the kind of blasphemy that would be.
He swallows, then looks away. Gets back to business, because this is what this is. Strictly business. "Ah,” he says, spying the inn. “Here we are."
He leads them both inside, where it looks frightfully busy. Crowley pulls out a fan and casts her eyes about the room. There’s a sudden wave of demonic energy, and half the chair legs in the inn suddenly lose a centimeter. Crowley hides a smile behind her fan. Aziraphale tuts, suddenly feeling a little hot under the collar, and pulls his eyes away. Business. Arrangement. Interesting books. Little bits of cardamom in between globs of rice pudding. Right.
He straightens his wig and brings them up to the host, who is looking a bit harried. “Um, I had a reservation for two at six-thirty but we hit a bit of a snag,” he says. “I was hoping you’d still have a table? I’m terribly sorry.”
The man looks him up and down. Eyes Crowley up and down as well. “Mr. Fell?”
“Ah, yes,” he says. “Again, terribly, terribly sorry.”
The host smiles. “All’s forgiven,” the host says. “Everyone’s a little late now and then, aren’t they? Why don’t you and your, uh…” He leans back, eyeing Crowley in a way that suggests he might ask for her ‘services’ the next time he sees her. Crowley gives him a faux innocent smile, slightly seething. “...your wife take that table in the corner, there, hm? Very romantic.”
Before either of them can correct him, he’s off to tend to a patron that’s fallen out of her wobbly chair. He helps her up, apologizing. She forgives him, saying it was no trouble, really, and goes to sit back down.
"They are rather good at it,” Aziraphale admits, and leads them off to their table.
There’s a feeling Aziraphale gets when Crowley hands over the briefcase. It overrides everything: the smoke in the air, the sirens calling out. Everything goes into tunnel vision, focusing on this one great emotion that seems to burst over his body like a wave on a rocky shore. He’d seen it coming from a mile away, of course. He’d have been blind not to. He just didn’t expect for it to be so…large.
The love he feels is different from the Love, capitals necessary, he’s felt before. This isn’t built in. It’s not a reward for good behavior. It became itself, and now it is. And Aziraphale doesn’t know how he lived without it. Perhaps he never has. Perhaps this has always been a part of him, the same as blinking and breathing are a part of the human body, and he's only now become aware of it. Perhaps he’s only now discovering new corners of himself that have long gathered dust, waiting to be stepped into.
He’s only ever felt this way once before. As they slip into the automobile Crowley has proudly claimed his own, complete with a bit of peacocking, Aziraphale licks his lips and tastes jellied marrow sucked out of the bone.
Like before, once he knows what he wants, he has to have it. Now.
“You know…” Aziraphale says, hands tightening on the handle of the briefcase. “...that was a very nice thing you did for me.”
“Shut up,” Crowley says.
Right, okay. He has to be delicate, yet direct. He can’t just go in with “It seems I’m voraciously in love with you, and I want to show you how much I appreciate you by taking you in my mouth and making you forget all the words to ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’”. Crowley’s driving, and they've only just saved themselves from discorporation. It would be a pity for that to be in vain.
Aziraphale eyes him. “There must be something I can do for you…in return?” he asks, putting a lilt in his voice and a look in his eye that he’s read about in books before. He hopes he’s getting it right.
Crowley keeps his eyes on the road. “Forget it, will you?” he asks. Not a rejection, per se. Just…a delay. Right. Aziraphale can work with a delay. He can keep himself hungry all day if he knows there's a feast come evening.
There is no feast. There is instead, this: a bullet in his mouth. A stolen photograph. The knowledge that they are being watched. And finally, a toast.
When Crowley leaves, Aziraphale pulls out the photo again. He thumbs the corner of it. They look so…nervous. Vulnerable.
They were nearly found out tonight, and they haven’t even…and what if they had? What small touches would he have done that gave them away? What gestures, what words? What evidence of this…this mountainous feeling, this monstrous appetite he’s acquired, would have damned him? More importantly, would have doubly damned Crowley?
He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.
Aziraphale goes to one of his shelves and pulls out a thick, old copy of the Summa Theologica. He puts it on a nearby table, opens it. He slips the photo under the Derringer just so.
From his pocket, he also slips out the bullet. Puts it to his mouth. It tastes like lead; why wouldn't it? Why would he expect it to taste any different?
He drops it in as well, and closes the book. He puts it back on the shelf.
He keeps tasting lead for a while after that. Every so often, when the feeling rises up again, he’ll pull it out, note the bitter metal on his tongue. It's as effective an appetite suppressant as one can get.
Ok, let’s have a go at this joke again. An angel and a demon walk into a restaurant. They walk into the Ritz, actually. They have a toast, and the first round of courses is served. Only the angel eats.
“You know,” says the demon, watching him, “you really do let yourself hunger for it. I thought it was all for show, until I was in your body. I didn’t know you could do that.”
That’s funny, the angel wants to say, and tracks the demon’s eyes behind his sunglasses. I could say the same for you.
He doesn't say that, though. He can’t quite parse out why. Maybe it's because he’s afraid of the wandering eyes and ears around them. Maybe it's because the demon won’t tell him what happened when he got dragged upstairs. Maybe it's because the angel has gotten very good at not wanting, and he’s afraid of the deluge that will happen once he breaks that dam. He’s seen floods before and knows you can only stay alive if you keep on top of them, and maybe he’s afraid he won’t be able to. Maybe it’s because his mouth is full.
He keeps not saying it. The punchline, needing momentum, hangs heavy in the air. It starts becoming less and less of a punchline, the more it hangs there. Starts becoming less and less funny.
The joke still needs a few more years, it seems. That’s the thing about comedy: it’s all about the timing.
He asks Crowley what it was like, once, working directly under God. It’s something he never would have asked Before, but now it’s After, and they can talk about big things now without fear or prejudice. Of course, the more they talk about big things, the more it becomes evident that they are talking around one Big Thing, capitals necessary, that keeps growing bigger and bigger the more they keep ignoring it.
But that’s a problem for a later Aziraphale and Crowley, isn’t it? At the moment, all they can really focus on is the wine.
Crowley ponders the question. He’s somehow posted his legs up on the chair at a 45 degree angle, his head leaning towards the floor, his glasses lovingly cradled in the statue that Aziraphale discreetly bought for that intended purpose. “It’s like…okay, imagine you’re working at a startup, and—”
“What’s a startup?” Aziraphale asks from the couch.
“Thing where rich humans start businesses and sit on bean bag chairs,” Crowley tells him. “So, imagine you’re—”
“I never und’rstood bean bag chairs,” Aziraphale slurs. It is important to note he is particularly sloshed.
Crowley plows forward. “You’re working—”
“No support,” Aziraphale continues. “Hell on the back. And then you try to get up and—” He waves a hand. “Pew.”
Crowley stares at him a moment. “Can I get back to what I was saying?”
“Hm?” asked Aziraphale, still thinking about beanbags. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, dear, do go on.” He settles further into the couch.
Crowley reclines back further, if such a thing is possible. “Right. So.” He nods a few times, as if to jumpstart his memory through sheer kinesis. “Right. So, imagine you’re working at a startup, and it’s the first job you’ve ever had. Still getting used to the whole…existence, thing, and all that. And then your Boss strides down one morning and brings over all these schematics and writes the word ‘UNIVERSE’ on the white board and says, ‘Here you go, guys. I expect this all to be done in a week. Chop chop.’”
“Did the Almighty really say ‘chop chop’?”
“Paraphrasing. Something like it.” Crowley shakes his head. “Gets a bit all…fuzzy, ‘round the edges, I—'' Aziraphale waits for Crowley to start speaking again. It takes a moment. “So She dumps all this on you. You, you know, who’s never done anything like this before in your life. Barely’ve even had a life. And then She leaves before you can ask what a, a star is even supposed to be, much less how to make one.” He turns over and reaches for a bottle of wine, just out of his reach. Aziraphale gestures and it slides into his hand. Crowley takes a sip. “It was frustrating, really. I mean, Satan wasn’t exactly a good boss, but at least he knew where you were coming from.”
Aziraphale hums. “You did a beautiful job, I must say.” He tilts his head to the side, looks at Crowley through his lashes. “On the stars, I mean.”
There’s a noise, something caught in the back of a throat, and Crowley shifts in his seat like it was made of Holy Leather. “Did I?” Crowley asks quietly, voice pitching up at an angle.
“Shame you can’t see them in the city nowadays,” Aziraphale says. “Always is such a nice sight, the stars. Every time I see them I feel…” At home, he means to say, which gets choked up in the context of at home with you, then does a rolling somersault and vaults out as: “...very, very happy.”
Crowley makes another interesting noise. The Big Thing grows a couple inches but hangs out there, unacknowledged as Crowley asks an ethical question about coleslaw machines that ends up taking the better part of the night to debate on. When they settle upon an answer (“Only on Sundays, unless of course you live in Mountain Time.” “Yes, yes. Gets a bit messy if that's the case.”) so many hours have passed that they begin to feel the warnings of a hangover come on. Crowley departs to his flat, mumbling something about notices in the mail he’s been ignoring, and Aziraphale attempts the Olympic Feat of ignoring both Crowley’s Absence and the Big Thing.
He is struggling a bit, definitely getting a point docked from his scorecard, when Crowley storms in six hours later with an Aldi bag and an agenda. “You’d have a picnic basket, wouldn't you?” he asks instead of a simple ‘hello'.
Aziraphale blinks. “Why do you—?”
“Aha!” Crowley says, breezing past Aziraphale and going for a pile of books that’s been collecting dust since the nineties. He pulls out a picnic basket Aziraphale has never seen before in his life. “Right where I thought it was.”
Aziraphale frowns. “Where did—” Crowley rounds into the back room, making a triumphant noise while holding up two wine glasses and a dusty bottle of red, and ceremoniously stuffs them into the basket. “Are we having a picnic?”
Crowley skitters to a stop, looks a bit caught out. “No,” says Crowley. “Yes. Not…it’s sort of an auxiliary picnic.”
“Is it?” Aziraphale asks. “To what?”
Crowley points up. “Stars. You. Me. The whole…seeing them. Tonight?” Which Aziraphale quickly translates to I thought we’d do a bit of stargazing, if you want. “If…I was bored. Thought you might be, too. Get out of the city for a bit.” I have been planning this since I got home, please say yes.
Well, what else can he say? “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll get us a blanket.”
The car ride should be long. Aziraphale can’t tell if it goes by so quickly because of the speed or because of the company. They argue over the radio until the stereo gives up and refuses to play anything other than car insurance commercials. Aziraphale regales Crowley of his recent discovery of something called ‘dee-vee-dees’ and all their apparent uses. Crowley tells Aziraphale about a time in the 60s where he holed up in a back of a comedy club in Soho tearing the last pages out of Agatha Christie novels and pre-scratching records. He also mentions something about two men named Dudley and Peter and not getting any of the royalties he’d been promised.
The Bentley takes them southwards, towards the coast but not quite, until it rolls to a stop on an ill-kept road at the top of a hill. The sun has just set, and everything’s still a wooly pink, settling into the quiet blue of twilight. A few stars are already beginning to poke out of the woodworks, so to speak, by the time they’ve got the blanket down and the wine out. Crowley sprawls out and Aziraphale makes himself as small as possible.
Somewhere in the middle of their conversation, which has not ended since getting in the car, Crowley takes off his glasses. He’s been doing that more often, as of late. He’s talking now about the constellations popping up, telling little stories he’s made up about them. He thinks the Big Dipper looks more like a great big question mark, he makes the claim that Cassiopeia is actually an M, not a W. He also purports that he accidentally invented astrology some two thousand years ago due to a spelling error.
“Arse, not Aries,” he says. “I meant to call him an arse and then, whaddaya know, he’s Alexander the Great. Can't call Alexander the Great an arse. So I made it all up on the fly. And now everyone thinks if you’re born on May 6th you shouldn't have gazpacho on Tuesdays.”
Aziraphale watches with rapt attention. He’s usually the one waxing poetic about something, but it's nice to be on the other side. Crowley in motion is Crowley at his base setting, in his natural element. Aziraphale watches the intricate fluttering of his hands, the way his eyes are almost orange in the dark and isn't that the most delightful thing, and wonders idly what he would be like if he were to be rendered still. What it would take to get him there.
Mouth suddenly too dry, he turns to pour them another glass of wine. When he hands Crowley his glass, he’s stopped talking, but still holds that giddiness. It's a specter of someone else. Someone Aziraphale hasn’t thought about in a long time.
“You say it's fuzzy,” he says. Crowley looks at him, makes a questioning noise. “Your time in Heaven. Fuzzy how?”
Crowley shrugs. “Fuzzy like…” He blows some air out. “...well, like static, I guess. Watching telly with bad reception. Get the general idea, but not a lot of specifics…why do you ask?”
Aziraphale has the decency to be embarrassed. “Well. I was hoping you might remember, um…” He gestures to himself, giving a small smile.
Crowley raises his eyebrows. “You?” he asks. Aziraphale nods. Crowley stares out at the scenery and thinks for a minute, then two, before looking him in the eye. “No. No, I don't.”
Aziraphale deflates. “Oh.”
“Not—I mean, I’d like to!” Crowley says, sitting up a bit. “I would, but—here, gimme some details, angel. Places, names. Maybe it’ll jumpstart something.”
Aziraphale gives a little huff. “I was there when you put together all of—” He gestures up to the sky. “All of that.”
Crowley frowns, points up to the sky. Doesn't break eye contact. “All of that?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really. Lever, light.” He replicates Crowley’s little gesture he made, careful not to actually snap his fingers. “Stars, galaxies, the full Monty.”
Crowley blinks and sits up straight. “Huh,” he says, almost to himself. “You know, I always thought I was talking to a—” He stops, clears his throat, and goes to take a sip of wine.
“To a what?” asks Aziraphale, imagining all sorts of things. Thinking Aziraphale was some sort of Scrivener, maybe, or perhaps a rubber duck.
Crowley waves him off. “No, no. I don't wanna…”
“No, really, what?” Aziraphale begs.
Crowley mumbles something into his wine.
“What was that?”
“A star! I thought I was talking to a star.”
Aziraphale feels something bright stir in his chest. “Oh.”
“Don't read into it,” Crowley says, even though it’s a little too late for that. He starts off on a couple sentences, finds them wanting, and recalibrates. “It got…lonely up there, so I would—would talk to them. The stars, the protoplanets. Tell them about my day. Give them….ugh.” He makes a face that's half disgust, half embarrassment. “Words of encouragement, blech.”
“So like your plants.”
Crowley points a finger at him. “That is completely different, angel. That is…interrogation techniques, is what it is.”
Aziraphale’s face is starting to hurt from smiling too much. “You thought I was a star.”
“A white dwarf star,” Crowley corrects. “Must’ve gotten mixed up with all the, the light and the—shortness.” Aziraphale doesn't take the bait. He’s far too flattered and elated. Crowley finishes off his wine and sniffs. His voice comes out much quieter. “What did we talk about?”
“Not much,” Aziraphale admits. “Your new creation, it’s…longevity. You weren't happy about that.”
“Mnyeah.”
“You wanted to create a suggestion box.”
The corner of Crowley’s mouth ticks up, and he goes back to lying down, hands behind his head. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“How did that go, by the way?” Aziraphale asks. Crowley gives him a look. Aziraphale puts two and two together to create a shameful four. “Ah.”
He turns back to the dark landscape before them, feeling like he’s just said something out of turn. The Fall is still something they skirt around. Not the level of the Big Thing, but close enough. Not for Crowley's benefit, though.
No, it's mostly for Aziraphale’s. Because as much as he has lost faith in Heaven, he still holds faith in God. And the idea that She would have cast Crowley out, for something as simple as a suggestion box and choice of friends, doesn't quite click with the solid view he has of Her. Heaven can be obtuse and one-minded, but God…well God has to have a bit of nuance, doesn't She? She doesn't make mistakes. Maybe Heaven did a whoopsie somewhere along the way. Maybe this is all part of some greater plan with an amazing conclusion. It has to be.
“Biscuit?” Crowley asks, breaking Aziraphale’s internal reckoning. He vaults up, holding a Tupperware. “You always eat when you’re uncomfortable.”
Crowley looks to the container, then Crowley. “Thank you,” he says, and takes it. As he pries the lid open, he remembers the Aldi bag from earlier and does some quick math. “Are these homemade?”
Crowley freezes. “...no.”
“They are!”
“They’re in a plastic food container, that doesn’t mean—”
“Did you make these?” Aziraphale asks. Crowley makes an aborted excuse as Aziraphale picks one up and notes their lack of uniformity with a gasp. “You did!”
“They were a gift from someone else,” Crowley lies. “I’m re-gifting them.” Aziraphale sniffs the cookie. “Just leave it, would you?”
Aziraphale takes a bite. Chews a bit. They are…well, quite frankly, they're terrible. Entirely too much baking powder, and there’s some pepper in there instead of salt. They’re burnt on the sides, and somehow in the middle as well, as if the biscuit decided to spite its consumer with every bite. Which isn’t to say there aren’t softer parts. There’s a bit of mushy, unbaked dough in between the burnt bits. He can still taste a bit of egg yolk in there.
“Are they…are they any good?” Crowley asks.
They are completely and utterly horrible. And yet…they are also completely and utterly Crowley. Aziraphale has never seen the demon microwave a cup of noodles, much less bake something. He imagines Crowley slaving over them in his industrial kitchen, balancing out the ingredients wrong and getting frustrated and setting the dough on fire and adding in random spices to try to make up for it. He imagines this and wonders why anyone would go through the trouble.
The Big Thing grows exponentially. It's practically a health and safety hazard, the way it's obstructing everyone’s vision and getting too close for comfort. Something clicks in Aziraphale, something he hasn’t let click in decades.
Aziraphale sets the container down. “Crowley…”
Crowley, lolls his head towards the Aziraphale. “Mmyes?”
Aziraphale kicks his lips and tries to find the right words. They are suddenly escaping him. No matter, though, they talk all the time. Perhaps…perhaps now is not the time for words.
Aziraphale lifts a hand from the blanket and flexes it, as if it's brand new. He leans in closer, brings his hand up higher, higher. Crowley looks at him like he’s a ticking time bomb.
“Crowley…”
There’s a great blast of white light. Aziraphale jumps away, thinking that Heaven’s found them again, that maybe God’s found them and found him wanting. Just what do you think you’re doing? he imagines She’ll say. He wishes, badly, to have something to fight back with. The only thing he can come up with are excuses.
The light fades and angles off to the left. The light is coming from a truck, also traversing the ill kept road and playing Kylie Minogue. It ambles over gravel bumps, slowing as if to stop, before Crowley snaps his fingers and its driver decides that there are other hills to smoke weed and watch the stars from.
Aziraphale, for all that he doesn’t need to, tries to catch his breath.
“High beams,” Crowley notes. “Mm. I invented those. Well, not them, but the switch that you forget to turn off.” He inhales and turns back to Aziraphale. “What were you going to say, angel?”
Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. He tries to retrieve that bravery he felt before, that allowing yourself to want, but finds that it has fled the premises. “What, something on my face?” Crowley asks, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s looking at Aziraphale’s still-raised hand. It’s an opening. A small one. It could go either way.
Aziraphale takes the bait. “Yes,” he lies, shakily. He takes his handkerchief out of his pocket. “Um, here. If you’d let me.”
Crowley hasn’t stopped looking at him. “Sure, yeah,” he says, which Aziraphale translates to I’ll always let you.
Aziraphale drags his clothed thumb over an imaginary spot on Crowley’s chin. The demon’s face is slack, his eyes drooping into a kind of stupor. It’s still an opening. He knows he could lose the handkerchief, slide closer to Crowley’s wine-stained lips. Push in.
But that would be acknowledging the Big Thing. Even as it suffocates him, Aziraphale can’t bring himself to look it in the eye. He fears what he’ll see when he looks back. He fears that it’ll be more blinding than God.
He pulls back. “There. All better.”
Sighing, he opts to lie down and look at the stars. Crowley follows him. In between them, their pinky fingers just grace each other.
The world turns.
“You happy, angel?” Crowley says after a while.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale. “Yes. Very, very happy.”
And he is. He really is. He can keep it on this careful balance. He can have his cake and…well, not eat it, but he can look at it and see it never spoil. Never run its course. Who’s to say this isn’t how they’re meant to be, always an almost? After all, him and Crowley have been like this for ages. It’ll keep.
And it does keep. It keeps for years.
Until it doesn’t.
The coffee is excellent, in theory.
It gives the impression of something grown on a Fair Trade farm, packaged and shipped and then lovingly roasted in the courtyard of some small cafe as the dawn hits and the sign is put out. It brings to mind the image of being brewed to perfection and then served in a pristine red cup balanced on a saucer, paired with the morning news where nothing bad has happened, and staying perpetually the exact temperature you prefer until you’ve drank the last drop. Ahhh. The perfect morning.
Again, the coffee is excellent…in theory. Only because the coffee is, to put it plainly, theoretical. It looks like coffee. It wafts like coffee. But it is not, in fact, coffee. Coffee is too physical for a place such as this, too solid and liquid and full of gaseous atoms that zip and zap all over the place, making a mess of things. “Not suitable for the ethereal plane,” the Metatron says, when Aziraphale asks.
“Ah,” Aziraphale says, then touches the side of his nose. He leans in conspiratorially. “Not yet, you mean.”
The Metatron hesitates, then gives a reassuring nod. “Come along,” he says. “There’s still much to see.”
Sandalphon is droning on and on about something. Aziraphale is attempting to pay attention, only…well, it’s the suit, you see. It’s brand new and completely ethereal, completely Heavenly. It’s the perfect idea of what wool should be, which is to say washed into softness and not a fiber out of place. Aziraphale keeps shifting, anticipating some imaginary itch by his elbow or to pluck an errant flyaway, but finds nothing there.
He should be paying attention to the meeting. It’s the first full meeting he’s been able to attend. Time in Heaven is measured in cubits, you see, so it’s all extremely subjective [4]. He’s missed three of these board meetings already and no one’s thought to give him the minutes.
Not that he’s lacking in reading material, though he wishes he had a wider selection. Crowley wasn’t lying about God’s annotations. Aziraphale has been given the raw files to interpret and execute, scrolls that go for miles and miles and mostly contain various doodles, vague scrawls that could mean one thing or the opposite, and a lot of question marks. The only clear thing on any of it is the words ‘SECOND COMING OF JESUS CHRIST’, and even that has a barely-legible, hastily erased question mark next to it. Aziraphale would almost say he thinks the Almighty is having similar doubts about this whole venture, but he’s yet to gain an audience due to always missing his appointment times.
Which is to say he really, really should be paying attention to these meetings when he can get to them. But he can’t, because of the suit. And the fact that he is, for some reason, in need of lunch. Not in the way he’s been before, where it was born of sheer delight and wanting something fun to do with…well, with someone he thought was a friend. No, no. This is a very human need. He feels like his stomach is eating itself, even after he turns it off. His head is swimming. His lips are experiencing a horrible tingling sensation that hasn’t gone away since…
It’s nothing, though. It’s probably his body readjusting. He’ll get used to it.
If only Crowley had come along. Really, it would make all of this so much easier. He wouldn’t be going through this alone. They’d be a team, a dynamic duo. He can almost imagine Crowley by his side—still wearing the sunglasses, of course, and an all-white suit—lounging and stretching and leaning in close to whisper something like I’ll bet you that he uses the phrase ‘core values’ in the next ten sort-of minutes. Drawing up notes and annoying the other angels with his good ideas. At his desk, next to Aziraphale, hunched and bending over some plan or another. His lips, desperate and hard against his, a little sigh out of his nose—
“Supreme Archangel?” a voice asks.
Aziraphale starts, absently wiping at his mouth. “Yes?”
“Do you agree?” Saraqael asks again.
Aziraphale looks upon this council of angels—Sandalphon, Michael, Uriel, Saraqael, and the Metatron—and clears his throat. “Um. Yes,” he says, with falsified confidence. “Yes, that all sounds…tickety-boo. Right as rain. Yes.”
Michael looks at him a moment longer before scrolling on her glass pad. “Right,” she says. “Next on the docket: the birth of the Christ Child.” She looks up and shrugs. “I would say we did a pretty good job with it the last time, so I see no trouble just doing a repeat. Moving on—”
“Well—” Aziraphale says, and immediately regrets it.
Uriel looks at him, barely suppressing an eyeroll. “Yes, Aziraphale?”
The whole room is looking at him, half expectant and half plainly uninterested. Aziraphale soldiers on. “It’s just…there were some things that might need updating.”
Michael frowns. “Like what?”
“The age of the mother, for one?”
“Humans tend to come into their reproductive cycle around thirteen—”
Aziraphale waves her off. “Ah, but that’s not…no,” he says. “I would suggest…twenty, at the very earliest. Perhaps thirty, actually, to be on the safe side. To expect a teenager to push out a child—”
“Man,” Sandalphon corrects.
Aziraphale frowns. “What?”
“She’ll be birthing a man,” Sandalphon repeats.
Michael nods. “Yes, if you had been reading up on the memos, you would know that we’ve decided to forgo the whole baby…childhood bit and skip to the good part.” Aziraphale stares at her, mouth agape. “Don’t look so horrified. Humans have given birth to large humans before. You’ve seen it yourself.”
“I—” I was lying, he almost says, but he doesn’t think that would help him at this junction. He spreads his hands out in front of him and gives a fake, slightly nervous laugh. “I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. The Second Coming is a long…” There’s a few raised eyebrows. “...long way off. Centuries, millennia, even.” Or Never At All. “And we have more pressing matters at hand.”
Uriel stares at him. “Do we?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
He feels a thousand eyes on him. He looks to the Metatron for help, only to see him floating there expectantly. Aziraphale draws in a breath.
“Well, if you had been reading up on your memos,” he snips, “you would know that I have some changes to make around here.”
Saraqael frowns. “Do you?” they ask, genuinely curious.
“Yes,” Aziraphale tells them. Right. This is his big moment. He stands up and begins his well-practiced speech. “Now, I was thinking about the way that we structure things. It doesn’t offer a lot of upward movement. Well, me being the exception, I suppose.”
He pauses for the expected small chuckle. He gets none. Okay, moving on. “But I think offering lower level angels chances to really take on the big things would be really beneficial!” He gets a lot of confused, angry faces at that. “Offer a change in perspective?” he suggests. Still the same reaction. “And higher ranking angels can see what it’s like working in the lower tiers—”
“No,” says Uriel.
“But—”
“No,” repeats Sandalphon.
Aziraphale flounders, unsure of what to do.
“Perhaps we start with something a little less radical,” the Metatron suggests. It's the first thing he’s said all meeting. He nods, urging Aziraphale to go on.
Aziraphale nods back. “Right,” he says. “Of course.” He consults his little glass pad, fingers slipping on the surface for lack of buttons, and comes up with his list. He finds the next thing and is already getting excited about it. “Okay…how would you all feel about mandatory tours on Earth?”
He lets the question hang in the air. The other angels look at each other, but don't offer a response. “Think about it! Getting down there, really conversing and living in the Lord’s creation! Living amongst humans! Dressing, walking, eating…no?”
Michael looks visibly sick at the idea.
The Metatron winces. “Less radical than that.”
Aziraphale smiles nervously. Only one thing comes to mind. “We start a suggestion box.”
“Less—”
“It wouldn’t be radical, really,” he interrupts. “Just…getting other’s perspectives! Getting a sense of how everyone’s feeling. For example, maybe some…principality or, or virtue isn’t feeling one hundred percent on the whole…‘Second Coming ’ thing, so they write in—”
“And be cast out for disobedience,” Michael finishes, nodding along.
“Or executed,” Saraqael supplements.
“Or executed, yes,” Michael says. She seems to take a sudden liking to the idea. “It could work, as a means of weeding out the traitors—”
Aziraphale folds up a finger. “Well, no,” he says. “Because we wouldn’t know who they were. It would all be anonymous.” He does a grand gesture around the word ‘anonymous’.
Uriel shakes their head. “Then how would we know who to execute?”
“Well, we wouldn’t execute them. We would take their ideas into consideration instead.”
Wringing his hands nervously, Aziraphale is only met with confused, blank looks.
The Metatron is giving him a polite, if not slightly patronizing, smile. “Why don’t we table that for a later meeting, hm?” he suggests. “Did you have anything else? Anything doable?”
Aziraphale consults his list and feels his hopes begin to die a slow, quiet death. “Um.” He sets the glass pad down and clears his throat. “Well. I was thinking of getting us an espresso machine.”
Perhaps he does it because he is bored. He is finding himself bored most days. No music to entertain him up here, no local theater. The reading material is fascinating, but barely legible. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to get out of the office for a bit. Or…well, maybe it’s because he’s lonely, that he decides to call.
He sequesters himself into a staircase and whispers into his glass pad. “Call Crowley,” he says. The pad brings up INFERNAL DEMON CROWLEY on the call screen, and rings out before going to voicemail. This is Crowley. You know what to do. The voice is low, casual. Entirely different from a choked, angry ‘don’t bother’ and the slamming of a door.
He tries again. The phone rings out hesitantly, like it's not sure it should be taking this long, either.
He sighs, frustrated. Okay, he’s being difficult. That’s alright. They’ve had arguments before, Crowley and him. Real rows—about holy water, about divine wrath, about Sondheim vs. Webber and whose influence therein. Rows that lasted years, or even centuries. And every time, it’s nothing a little meal wouldn’t fix. And a dance—you can’t have dinner without a show.
Perhaps Crowley is just busy. Perhaps there’s already an invitation outstanding! Crowley has done that once or twice, storming out before leaving a voicemail as if nothing’s happened. Even though, this time, a thing has happened. Forcefully. With a bit of tongue, to boot.
Besides, Aziraphale is still hungry.
“Call bookshop,” he tells the pad. It brings up a list of bookshops. Aziraphale sighs. “Call my bookshop.” The pad gives out a small question mark, as it knows its owner to no longer be a bookseller. Aziraphale doesn’t know how to feel about that. “Call Heavenly Outpost 27,” he says, resigned, and the phone begins to glow an otherworldly white. “Not through the—through the phone. The little thing with the dial and the wires.”
The light is sucked back into the pad, and it starts to trill. Aziraphale brings it to his ear, hearing the receiver get picked up. He starts to get excited.
“Welcome to A.Z. Fell and Co.!” says a cheery voice. “If you are looking for a book, no you’re not!”
His excitement plummets. “Muriel?”
“Aziraphale!” yells Muriel. “I mean—Supreme Archangel! Hi! Was that you that was trying to get through the rug just now?”
“Ah, no,” says Aziraphale. “No. Well, yes, but…well, I was hoping to check my messages, so if you could get off the line—”
“Oh, but I already checked them for you!” Muriel says, and Aziraphale can imagine the affable, ‘you’re-so-silly’ eye roll they’ve just done. “I wrote them down, just in case.”
Aziraphale perks up at this. “You did?”
“Yes,” says Muriel, and leaves it there.
“...could you tell me what they were?”
“Oh!” There’s a bit of shuffling on the other end. Muriel clears their throat again. “Well, one was from a woman, who said something about a limited warranty. And another was from a person named Scroggs asking about the building and saying something about kneecaps that I couldn't understand.” There’s the flipping of a page. “Aaaand then there was one from your barber. You missed your last appointment.”
Aziraphale blinks. “That's it?”
“Yup!”
Aziraphale feels a kind of dread settle in. “Oh,” he says.
“Did I do something wrong?” Muriel asks, voice small and concerned.
He swallows. “No, no,” he rasps out, trying to be reassuring and failing halfway through. “You did perfectly alright. I was just hoping…it’s nothing.”
“Were you hoping to talk to Mr. Crowley?”
He flushes. “I—”
“Because he’s here right now! Hold on a tick.” There’s the sound of the receiver being dropped, then picked back up again. “That's a new human expression I learned, by the way. You don't actually have to hold a tick, it turns out.” They drop the receiver again.
Aziraphale can hear a small scuffle happen in the background. He can make out Muriel’s cheery tone going up against a much more melancholy, irritable one. There’s a few words thrown out, things like ‘please’ and ‘not on my life’ and ‘in books they always—’ and ‘no, not ever, not in a—’ before the receiver is picked up again.
It’s silent. No breath, no movement. Just…static.
Aziraphale breaks the silence. “Crowley?”
Muriel, farther away, leans in and says, “You're supposed to speak into it.”
“I know how to—” says a low, gruff voice. It breaks off with a groan, then lets out a pained “...hi.”
Aziraphale feels something slot into pace at the sound of Crowley’s voice. Something that fills the gaps between his too-perfect suit and his too-big office. “Oh, is that really you?”
“Yup,” admits Crowley.
Aziraphale lets out a relieved sigh. “Oh, I'm so glad!” He grips the glass pad and whispers low. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day. I have something very important to ask of you.”
He can hear Crowley’s frown through the phone. “What? What is it, is something wrong? Where are you?”
Aziraphale shakes his head, realizing the misinterpretation. “No! No, everything's fine,” he says. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to that little cafe down by the fountain. You know the one.”
There’s a pregnant pause. “The little cafe.”
“Yes.”
“Down by the fountain.”
“Yes, yes, I just told you. I was thinking about one o'clock in two day’s time.” He thinks he’s still got a handle on Earth time.
“You—” A throat clears. “You're asking me to lunch?” Crowley asks.
“Well, yes,” Aziraphale says. “Or dinner! But I usually keep my lunch free. Even though we don’t really have lunch up here, but that's no matter. Supreme Archangel and all. Benefits of being the boss.” He adds in that smug, conspiratorial tone he knows Crowley likes more than he says he does. “I wanted to see if you’d reconsidered my offer.”
Another pregnant pause ensues, which ends up giving birth to three smaller pauses. “Aziraphale?” Crowley asks.
“Yes?”
“Fuck off.”
The line goes dead. Aziraphale listens to his droning tone until the glass pad gets annoyed with the sound and ends the call. He pockets the thing, feeling a creeping dread that can only come from realizing that something is well and truly over.
A Dominion passes him by, gives a nod. Aziraphale forces a smile and nods back. His stomach threatens to swallow him whole.
Right. If Crowley doesn’t want to join him, that’s alright. He’s dined alone for centuries. He’ll go, and forget about Crowley, and he’ll be fine. He’s always fine.
Okay, so here's the joke again.
You know this one: an angel walks into his favorite cafe, alone. He asks for a table, alone. He sits, alone. He peruses his menu, alone. Sometimes he sees something and moves as if to talk to someone, but he doesn’t. Because he is dining alone.
When the waiter asks what he’d like and where his friend has gotten off to, the angel chokes up and says something about a loss of appetite. He goes back to the office.
Hm, no. No, that's not funny. The setup’s all wrong again. Come back later.
He goes back. Of course he does. He’s surprised he hasn’t been caught out about it, but, then again, he is Supreme Archangel. Surely he has free reign to pop down whenever he likes. Especially if he’s supposed to bring that Earthly, human touch to things. Can’t do that without touching some earthly things. Falling back into human habits.
Coming back to Earth feels like putting on an old, comfy sweater once the weather starts getting cold. And it is getting colder. Every time he pops up in Soho it seems to be raining, or thundering, or just generally dreary. He avoids checking the Bentley’s designated parking spot and instead sets his sights on whatever he’s craving.
He goes everywhere. High-end pubs with fanciful charred burgers, little hole-in-the-wall places with succulent pork and fluffy rice, patisseries and boulangeries, gelaterias and taquerias. He goes. He sits. He orders.
Then the food comes, and Aziraphale is left with the sensation of being so hungry he feels sick. The sight of food pushes and pulls instantaneously. It is at once both seductive and repulsive. And when he does try to choke down something sweet, or salty, or some combination of the two, it ends up tasting bitter. It tastes like lead.
The hunger grows. The empty pit at the base of him has widened considerably, encasing his arms, his legs, his fingertips. All buzz with anticipation at something they cannot reach. His mind becomes a wash. He sits at this desk, attempting to draft memos or keep track of subjective time, and he thinks about trivial things. Eating oysters, mostly. Or apple cobblers. Or the long neck of a wine bottle, cradled loosely by a thin hand.
He does his best not to think about such things. He also, after so many failed ventures for lunch, tries to stay away from Earth. He doesn’t think about long necks, or a body draped over a couch, or small sentences with big words caught in the back of throats. He doesn’t think about mouths colliding, about colliding back, about the various culinary uses of beef tongue.
He does his very best in both of these areas.
Which is to say, he still goes back again. And he thinks about it all again. And again. And again. And again.
It’s Aziraphale's fifteenth visit to Earth when he thinks he might be going insane. At first it’s a whiff in the air, scented with the kind of new, all-too-heady cologne that a certain demon favors. Then it’s a certain drawl caught in the middle of a conversing dining room, there and gone in a second. And then it’s black suits, and snakeskin shoes, and flashes of red hair at the bar. All there for a second, and then gone.
And he has no one to talk to about it, which also smarts. He tries with Muriel, but they’re too busy showing off all the ways that they’ve ‘improved’ the bookshop for him to get a word in [5] . When he does manage to ask about Crowley, Muriel looks around very nervously.
“Um. Well, he definitely hasn’t been around at all!”
“He was here on the phone,” Aziraphale reminds them.
“Right! Yes! He was here, for the phone, but has definitely not been back since.” They put their hands behind their back, as if practicing for a spelling bee. “He has also, definitely , not been crying and/or watching something called ‘Beaches’. Or inventing new bad reality television. Or causing all this rain.”
Thunder claps outside. “Of course,” says Aziraphale. “Definitely not.”
“He also definitely hasn’t been to all those places,” Muriel adds. “And he definitely hasn’t told me about them. Or yelled about you. Or called you names that I can’t repeat. On that couch.” They nod to the couch behind Aziraphale.
Aziraphale stares at the furniture, feeling his heart break in two. “Right,” he says, turning back to Muriel. “He told you to tell me all of this, I imagine?”
Muriel shakes their head. Then nods. Then shakes their head again, frowning. “Um. Whatever’s the opposite of the truth, is what I’m supposed to say. But I got a bit lost.” A look passes their face, that of getting it wrong and being summarily punished for it.
Aziraphale, knowing that same feeling, gives them a gentle smile. “That’s alright,” he says. “You did wonderfully.”
Muriel beams. “I did?”
“Yes, you were perfect.” They nod, relieved. Aziraphale hangs around a bit longer before bidding them a polite farewell.
He goes to a small wine and cheese place across town, hoping something classic will finally ease his hunger pains. While he waits for his order, he looks about the room and spies Crowley, staring back at him.
Aziraphale tries to read the expression behind his sunglasses. Can’t. Crowley makes a move, as if to get up and walk over. Aziraphale finds himself feeling that same, gut-deep feeling of want and disgust.
He’s up and out the door, not so much a conscious decision but more like a flinch. He doesn’t look back.
This little dance goes on and on. Sometimes Crowley is there. Sometimes he isn’t, but Aziraphale is on edge the entire time. He keeps visiting restaurants. The paperwork on his desk grows higher and higher with each day. He keeps staring at it and longing for the days when he had better reading material.
It all comes to a head at this lovely French restaurant that they used to frequent, Before. The candles cast a warm glow and as he enters, the host instantly lights up at his face.
“Mr. Fell!” he says by way of greeting. “So nice to see you.”
“It’s nice to see you, Philip,” Aziraphale says. “I was hoping that my regular table might be available?” It will be, because he wants it to be, but it’s polite to ask.
“Of course!” says Philip, ushering him in. “All set up and ready to go for you and your partner.”
“My—?” Aziraphale asks, only to see Crowley already sitting at their table, right in the center of the restaurant, contemplating a very large glass of wine. He’s wearing his turtleneck again, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down through it like some sort of obscene striptease.
Crowley looks up, stops swirling his glass. Blinks up at Aziraphale, who blinks right back.
Philip glances between the two of them. “Is everything alright?”
Crowley doesn’t answer. Just keeps staring, his face impassibly blank. “It’s um…” Right. Aziraphale supposes he should bite the bullet, so to speak. His mouth tastes like lead anyways. He clears his throat. “...it’s fine. Everything is…picture perfect.” He forces a smile and looks at Crowley. “Unless, there’s any objections?”
Crowley stares for a moment longer, then gives Philip an equally fake smile. “No,” he schmoozes. “No objections.”
Aziraphale sits down, smiling. Crowley continues to sit, also smiling. They smile through Philip running through today’s specials, and the ordering (Aziraphale: Blanquette de Veau; Crowley: another bottle of wine), and the pouring of the rest of Crowley’s Chardonnay into Aziraphale’s wine glass. They smile so hard Aziraphale feels his cheeks get sore. Then, the minute Philip leaves, the smiles drop.
"Stop following me,” Aziraphale whispers harshly.
"Stop following me!" Crowley whispers back.
Aziraphale takes offense to this. "I'm not following you!”
"I'm not either!" Crowley says. "I just keep...happening to run into you. In every restaurant you visit. Against my will." He downs the rest of his glass.
“As do I,” says Aziraphale. "Bit strange."
Crowley shrugs, but it's not convincing. "Coincidence, probably.”
"Hm,” says Azraphale. Deciding he might as well try to enjoy the food, he unfolds his dinner napkin and starts fidgeting with his cutlery. "Well the Lord does work in mysterious ways.” Crowley huffs. “And I should know. I've been the one parsing out Her memos."
A fond smile graces Crowley’s lips, which is summarily executed by firing squad. "I take it that working for Her Holiness isn't exactly up to snuff,” he says, in the way that suggests he’s the smuggest bastard alive and that he’s very, very cool, actually.
"I didn't say that,” Aziraphale snaps. Crowley shrugs and continues to stare at him. Aziraphale fidgets with his cutlery until he mumbles, "Progress has been...slow."
Crolwey sits up, delighted. "Oh, slow, has it really? I wonder who could've told you that?"
Aziraphale doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he huffs and looks Crowley directly in the eye. "I've put in a suggestion box,” he announces.
Crowley raises his eyebrows. "A suggestion box?"
"Yes.” He puts his hands in his lap, unable to do anything else with them.
Crowley hums. “Where’d you think that up?”
“The idea came from—” He glances at Crowley. “—from a very old..." He swallows and looks down at his hands. "Someone I used to admire very much."
"Don't anymore?" Crowley asks, voice soft as if to lessen some blow.
Aziraphale looks up sharply. "I didn't say that."
Crowley blinks behind his sunglasses, surprised. His lips part slightly. The line of his shoulders relaxes.
The implication hangs in the air. The Big Thing, now that it’s been acknowledged, dances and waves its arms in the air. It’s gotten a taste for attention. That empty, cavernous feeling fills Aziraphale again, that tingling on his hands and lips.
"So you put in a suggestion box,” Crowley says, dancing around the Big Thing with bumbling grace. He’s had 6000 years to practice, but he’s never gotten good at it. He leans back. A bit of his neck peeks out from under the turtleneck.
Aziraphale swallows again. Goes to drink his wine. It tastes horrible, but he sips at it anyway. "Well, I proposed the suggestion box,” he says. “We're going to have a meeting about it soon. We’re also having a meeting about getting an espresso machine."
"So no suggestion box,” Crowley concludes. "No espresso machine. No anything."
Aziraphale huffs. "You don't have to—"
"What have you done up there exactly?" the demon asks. Aziraphale opens his mouth, tries to think of something. Closes it. Tries to tell a lie. Closes it again. "Didn't think it'd be a difficult question."
Aziraphale’s face goes hot. "It's not, it's—things take time.” He points. “Up there. Its—"
"Inefficient,” Crowley enunciates.
"Ineffable,” Aziraphale enunciates right back. He huffs again. This is going nowhere. "You know you don't have to sit here. I'm completely fine on my own, thank you."
"Oh, well, if you're so 'completely fine' then you can change tables,” Crowley says, voice pitching up in seething irritation. “I was here first, after all.”
Aziraphale looks at him with enough derision to kill a small rodent. "My dear—"
"Mmm don't,” Crowley says flatly, shaking his head. "Don't."
That stings. It stings enough that Aziraphale lays his hands on the table and sits at full height. "I found this table first,” he argues.
Crowley makes a ‘pff’ sound. "Only because I found this restaurant first!"
"You did not!”
"Did,” Crowley says with a nod. “Spring of '87."
Aziraphale shakes his head, poking the air. "No. It was winter."
"Was not,” Crowley says in disbelief.
"I distinctly remember the snow, it was winter—"
"It was a frosty spring!”
"—and I found it,” Aziraphale says definitively.
Crowley leans forward. "How?” he asks. “How did you find it?"
"In a magazine!"
"Oh, bullshit!"
"Not bull—not that, not that at! All!" He makes a definitive swipe through the air. "So if you'll just leave—"
"You leave!” Crowley interrupts. His face is properly angry now, inches away from Aziraphale’s. “It's becoming quite a habit for you, I'd hate to see you give it up!"
Aziraphale gapes. "Oh! Oh, well, if you want to talk about leaving—!"
"Gentleman."
Both look up to see Philip standing next to another waiter. They also see that the restaurant has gone silent at some point in their conversation, and everyone is looking at them.
Fifteen minutes later, after some firm words, a polite apology, another argument, a less polite apology, and then finally a threat to call authorities, Aziraphale finds himself on the pavement outside.
"Kicked out of a restaurant,” he says, mostly to himself. "I haven't been kicked out of a restaurant since—"
"Venice, 1822?” Crowley supplements. He stands six feet away, hands in his pockets. “The one with the clams, was it?"
It was. Aziraphale remembers it distinctly. He’d found them rancid and had gotten a bit…testy, with the chef, who had gotten testy right back. Crowley had made it a point to antagonize them both with a grin on his face. When they’d been asked to leave, Crowley did a minor miracle and gave their meat supply new life, so to speak. Aziraphale couldn’t argue it, figuring it was, in a way, divine punishment for rotten service. Then they’d gone to see a play at the theater and split an orange, one of the few times he remembers Crowley eating anything at all.
The memory brings up a well of fondness and crashes down into deep, aching melancholy. Even standing next to him, Aziraphale feels more awake than he has these last few months, and he wonders if he, perhaps, made a mistake.
Let’s discuss this somewhere else, he wants to say. Wants to take Crowley to one of their little holes in the wall, wants to take him back to the bookshop. Wants this all to be forgotten, and for them all to get along in the end. Happily ever after.
A car rushes past them, and Aziraphale remembers headlights. Bright lights. Divine punishment of a much more serious kind. Crowley steps forward, opens his mouth as if to say something. Aziraphale beats him to it.
"I must be getting back,” he says, another flinch.
Which is to say he needs to get back to make things better. To make things easier, one espresso machine at a time. Even if Crowley doesn’t believe anything good will come of it. Aziraphale will simply have to believe enough for the both of them. He always has.
"Y-yeah,” says Crowley, a bit choked. He clears his throat. “Sounds about right." He sniffs and looks down at the ground. Aziraphale moves to leave. "Just—if you would. Humor me."
Aziraphale turns back. "I suppose I owe you that much.”
Crowley levels his gaze. "What are you doing here, angel?"
It’s said so softly, with such genuine and desperate curiosity, that it knocks Aziraphale back a bit. He struggles to find an answer.
"I—I was trying to get lunch,” Aziraphale says, even though it’s dark out.
Crowley cocks his head. "Why? Hungry?"
Starved. "Old habit."
"Mm."
Crowley continues to stare at him. Aziraphale, for want of a way out, looks down at his hands. They’re shaking.
I’m doing what’s right, he thinks to himself. Does his best to believe it.
Aziraphale takes in a breath. "Well, I guess I should say goodbye..." He looks up, and sees that Crowley is already gone. The pit in his stomach grows. "...for now."
Aziraphale doesn’t go back to Earth for some time. He ignores the pangs in his stomach, and in his chest, and the small doubts flitting around mind. He’s doing what’s right. He has to be.
He sends out memos about assemblies of choirs and such. His suit continues to not-itch in a way that has him itching at it anyways, just to do something. God’s notes keep becoming more and more cryptic, and the more he deciphers them the less sense they make. He keeps missing meetings, despite getting the hang of cubit time, and starts to suspect they might be happening on purpose. He becomes so accustomed to missing them, that when he walks into the conference room one day, he’s surprised to see everybody already sitting down.
The Metatron gestures for him to sit down. He does—at the head of the table. Because he is the Boss, capitals necessary. Obviously.
“What is this about?” he asks, feeling dread. Which he shouldn’t, because he is the Boss. He is changing things.
There’s an exchange of looks. “We’ve noticed you’ve been making some visits lately,” Saraqael says. “To Earth.”
He feels a chill run down his spine. “Ah, yes, those.”
“Care to explain?” Michael asks, and slides a series of photos Aziraphale’s way. Him at a restaurant. Him admiring an antique clock. Him at another restaurant. Him waving goodbye to Muriel.
Nothing with Crowley. He holds back a sigh of relief.
“Well,” Aziraphale says, and the words fall out of him easily. Old habit, at this point. “You wanted a human touch to the Second Coming, yes?” The Metatron nods. “Yes, so I’ve been going and putting out some feelers.” He waggles his fingers.
Sandalphon and Uriel recoil in disgust. “Ew.”
“Didn’t know you could do that with the human body,” Michael says, equally disturbed.
“Not…I’ve been gathering intel,” Aziraphale clarifies.
“Ah.”
He shrugs. “So it’s really nothing to worry about, you see,” he says. “Nothing going on. Just…keeping up to date with things. As I always do.” He clasps his hands and gives a pleasant smile.
There’s a pause as all the other angels look at each other, and then the Metatron. He floats there, staring at Aziraphale with a look he can’t quantify: something between alarm, frustration, and confusion. The look is quickly schooled back into a kind of fatherly warmth, and he smiles genially.
“Yes. Perfectly,” the Metatron says. Aziraphale feels uneasy, but reassured. The Metatron glances about the room. “Well, speaking of Earthly things, we have considered your espresso machine.”
Aziraphale preens. “Oh!” he says. “And the suggestion box?”
The Metatron glances about the room again, less genial. “We’re…still debating on that.” The other angels nod. “But we have decided to get one for the office. We’re getting it imported from Italy.”
“The best of the best, we heard,” Saraqael supplies.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale, realizing they’re still talking about the espresso machine. “Oh, that is nice.”
And it is nice. Its progress is what it is. He catches Saraqael seeming…well, not excited about the machine, but they’re never excited for anything. They seem enthused by it, though, which is a plus. And adding Earthly elements into the office is just the first step! Soon everyone will see how lovely material things are—coffee, wine, food, hardwood furniture, cashmere, creek beds, jazz records—and maybe…perhaps, maybe, they will reconsider their stance on the Earth and its end therein. And once they reconsider that…well, the mind boggles at what else can happen.
Aziraphale revels in this idea and catches the eye of the Metatron, who looks pleased. Not the normal, proud sort of pleased, though. This is a different kind of pleased. An ‘all-according-to-the-plan’ sort of pleased. And Aziraphale is given the brief impression that he has been played for a sucker. Which simply cannot be true. He’s the Boss, isn’t he?
Uriel brings up something about H.R. departments and divine ecstasy. Aziraphale does his best to shake off his unease, and itches at his suit.
Aziraphale starts diving into the Earth files. Just for research purposes, and to pass the time as that espresso machine gets installed. He offers to help—after all, it’s a simple matter of inserting A into B and plugging it in—but he’s told that he’s too high up to do such things. He should really stick to paperwork.
And the paperwork from the Earth files is indeed very interesting. There’s a lot going on down there: wars, for one, as well as some new inventions, and numerous apps that do not, in fact, have anything to do with birds or clocks. All things Aziraphale would be paying attention to, if he were keeping an eye on any of that. Instead he’s found himself keyed to one thing.
He tells himself it's for Crowley’s safety. That scare at the meeting means he must remain ever vigilant. Heaven is coming around, but it’s still slow going. They could still destroy Crowley if they got the wrong idea.
He gathers his intel from the files. He calls Muriel multiple times and gleans what he can from their cheerfully put ‘lies’. He knows that Crowley’s day looks a bit like this: he leaves his flat most days. Some days he leaves the bookshop. He gets a large cup of coffee. He stays at the coffee shop for many hours, which Nina apparently doesn’t mind because Crowley still tips, but he also tends to take up her attention by draping himself over the counter. After he’s done draping, he goes about town.
This is where it varies, according to Aziraphale’s notes. Some days Crowley is out and about changing the tap spot on cash points or suggesting podcast ideas to white men with facial hair. Other days he’s going into the cinema for hours. More than once Aziraphale gets photos of him sitting in the Bentley, staring straight ahead before the next shot shows him with his head in his hands. Aziraphale tends to stare at those ones the longest, fingers gracing over the picture as if to offer some comfort.
In any case, the days all end with him at a restaurant, or a bar, and sitting alone for a few hours. And then he goes home. Or to the bookshop. And the day starts anew.
Aziraphale decides to pay Crowley a visit. What with the espresso machine and everything, he wants to see Crowley’s face when he realizes that Heaven might not be so bad after all.
He decides to go down via the back channels, this time. Just to be on the safe side. It gives the night custodian at a certain building a bit of a scare, but that’s easily fixed.
From his files, he knows Crowley is most likely at a small basement club in Chelsea that has no name, no sign, and a line around the block every night. Aziraphale cuts the line and miraculously finds himself on the list.
Past the dark stairwell down, it’s all lights and sounds and bodies. It’s as if the goal of the club is to induce claustrophobia on all the senses. Aziraphale weaves through a heap of glitter and overpriced perfume, expecting to perhaps find Crowley in the center of it all. Writhing. Enjoying himself like the seducer he is.
Instead, he finds Crowley bent into a depressed trapezoid at the end of the bar. He’s got an arm curled around a bottle of Talisker.
“Ah,” Aziraphale says over the music. “There you are.”
Crowley disengages himself from the crook of his elbow and hazily looks up. His glasses are sliding off of nose. “Oh,” he says. “You.”
“Me,” admits Aziraphale. Crowley makes a noise and brings his lips back to the Talisker. Aziraphale attempts to pull his eyes away. Fails. “Listen, I know you think I’m wrong about Heaven, but—”
Crowley pulls off the bottle and gestures to his ears. “Can’t hear you!”
As he gestures, the music seems to get louder. Aziraphale huffs and speaks louder. “I know you think I’m wrong, but there’s been developments—”
“What?” Crowley yells. He twirls his finger and the music goes up another round of decibels. He grins.
“DE-VEL-OP-MENTS,” Aziraphale enunciates irritably.
Crowley’s grin grows wider. The music is starting to puncture ear drums. “Music, sorry, can’t—”
With an eye roll, Aziraphale reaches over and grabs Crowley’s wrist, tugging him off his stool. He drags Crowley through the crowd, which parts like the Red Sea, lowers the music with a snap of his fingers, and drags Crowley up the stairwell and out of the club. Crowley seems to forget his demonic strength and gets pulled along not unlike a child’s blanket.
“Right,” he says, walking them down the street, “I am going to tell you the good news I have, and you are—”
He suddenly becomes aware that, in between the crowd and stairs, he’s somehow shifted to holding hands with Crowley. He stops in his tracks. Crowley stops as well. They stare at this union, the pressing of their palms. For a second it feels nice. Then, remembering they aren’t on the best of terms right now, they collectively push away from each other. Aziraphale takes a step back. Crowley does as well, but then takes another step on accident. Then another. Then falls against a bike rack with a clang and small, “Whoopsie.”
Aziraphale rushes over. Crowley, bent into an unnamed shape involving gear shifts and a delivery basket, sits up with a groan. “Oh! Oh, I am sorry, I didn’t—” He takes Crowley’s hand again and pulls him up. He makes sure not to linger this time, and rubs his palm against his chest unconsciously. “Are you alright?”
Crowley sways a bit. “Peachy keen,” he announces. His smile matches his lopsided glasses.
Aziraphale looks him up and down. “You're drunk.”
“Meh.”
“Not going to sober up?” Azraphale asks.
Crowley shakes his head. “Noooooo.”
Aziraphale tuts. There’s no use bragging to Crowley when he’s like this. The last time he did, there was a defenestration in Prague. He spies the Bentley the next block over. “Let's get you home, then.”
“Maybe I don’t wanna go home,” Crowley slurs. “Ever think ‘f that?”
Aziraphale lets out a beleaguered sigh and grabs Crowley again, then time by the sleeve. Crowley, again, goes willingly.
There’s a bit of fuss when they get to the car. Crowley immediately goes for the driver’s side. Aziraphale has to take him by the shoulders and guide him to the passenger side. Crowley ignores said guidance and circles back around. This goes on for some time until Aziraphale gets Crowley firmly planted in the passenger seat, steals his car keys with a bit of sleight of hand, and turns the engine. The car, against its better judgment, purrs and begins to play a bit of Janáček.
After a minute, Crowley speaks from his slump against the passenger door. “I was'n followin' you,” he mumbles. “Just FYI.”
Aziraphale makes sure he’s at 10 and 2. “No, I know,” he says. “I was following you.”
Crowley frowns and sits up. “Were you?” Aziraphale flushes with embarrassment, but stays steady. When he glances at Crowley, the demon is smiling. Crowley makes a noise and tries to shake the grin off of his face. “No, no, don't do that.”
Aziraphale frowns. “I'm not doing anything!”
“You're making me—” Crowley chokes on an ‘L’ shaped word. He groans as if in pain. “You're making me like you, stop it. Sneaking out for lunch an', an' driving me home. Getting us kicked out of restaurants.
“You got us kicked out of—”
“I did not! And you know it.”
Aziraphale purses his lips. “Perhaps it was a joint effort.”
“Gah!” Crowley exclaims. “Stop! Be worse!” He crosses his arms and goes back to his slump. “'S easier when you're some pompous sanctimonious....mmsomething.”
“Arse?” Aziraphale supplies.
“No.”
“Bastard? That’s a favorite of yours.”
Crowley shakes his head. “No, no, 's harder when you're a bastard. Harder when you're yourself.”
He says it so simply, so irritably, so softly. Aziraphale has the sudden, fleeting notion of true unconditional love. It’s something he’s known in the back of his mind, the same way your joints know when it’s going to rain, the same way the hairs on the back of your head stand up in the dark. It’s all second nature. But to acknowledge it first hand brings him back to that day. To the hitch in Crowley’s voice, to the press of lips. He grips his hands tighter on the steering wheel to stop the shaking. It nearly makes him miss his turn.
“Well,” he says, “you’re making it difficult for me as well.”
Crowley lolls his head. “I’m making what difficult?”
Aziraphale fidgets in his seat. “You know.”
“No, no I don’t.”
Aziraphale swallows. His throat stays dry. “Surely, you must—you—you kissed me.”
“I did, yeah,” Crowley says. Like it’s that simple. He uncoils and leans forward, voice hissing. “And you forgave me for it. Like I needed it. Like it was somethin’ to forgive instead of somethin’, somethin’…”
He searches for the right word, trying out the first consonants of many others before eventually giving up. But Aziraphale knows it.
Something nice.
Aziraphale feels his heart plummet. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispers.
Crowley hums. “So how’d you mean it, then, hm?” he asks. Aziraphale glances at him, alarmed. Crowley leans back again, gestures widely. “Come on. Break my heart properly.”
Aziraphale looks back at the road. All the stop lights keep turning yellow. “No,” he says quietly. Mostly to himself.
“What?”
“No,” he repeats, louder this time. “I won’t…I won’t do that.”
“You’re already doing it,” Crowley tells him. It's going for casual but breaks at the end. There’s the sound of fabric shifting. A shrug. “No difference to me.”
Aziraphale doesn’t say anything, feeling his heart break with every second that passes by. He keeps stopping at all the yellow lights. What should have been a quick journey is now taking a small age. He is beginning to realize, with horrifying clarity, that he doesn’t actually know why he said what he said. That’s terrifying. To say something that hurt someone so much, without knowing why…Aziraphale has always been someone who chooses his words carefully. It disturbs him that he’d ever been so careless.
He thinks on a bit. Thinks about it some more. Then decides he’s going to be careless once again.
“I-I suppose I meant…I wanted to, to fix it,” he stutters out. He keeps his eyes on the road. “You didn’t. We wanted different things. And you…you used something very important, to try to convince me, without thinking of the repercussions.” He takes in a shaky breath. “Because there are repercussions, Crowley. To everything. And Heaven is not so forgiving yet.” He swallows. “But it will be, because I’ll make it so. For you. It’s all for you, can’t you see that?”
It’s a confession if there’s ever been one. And it’s met with absolute silence.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks, staring ahead. Nothing. He stops at another yellow light and turns. “Crowley, please speak to me, I—”
Crowley is slumped against the door, arms crossed, and lightly snoring. His face is half smushed against the window, his glasses up to his hairline. There’s a bit of drool falling out of his mouth, catching red against the stoplight. He’s the most beautiful thing Aziraphale has ever seen.
The light stays red for far longer than necessary. When it does change, reluctantly, Aziraphale eases the Bentley as gently as possible.
The rest of the car ride is punctuated by soft piano music and the gentle sound of Crowley’s breathing. When they do arrive at Crowley’s building, Aziraphale turns the key and feels the quiet fill the car. He looks at Crowley once more. He does this for a long, long time.
Eventually, he reaches over and plucks the glasses off of Crowley’s face. This causes Crowley to stir, with great force. He shakes his head with an inhale and blearily blinks at his surroundings. Aziraphale freezes.
“‘M dreaming,” he drunkenly mumbles. He blinks around again, hones in on Aziraphale. Smiles. He sits up a little and looks around at the car. “Is this the one with the backseat again? Because I don’t think my back is gonna let me do what we usually do.”
Aziraphale is momentarily swept up on what they might be doing in the backseat, and how to take Crowley’s back into consideration, that he takes a second to respond. “Yes,” he says, then mentally kicks himself. “Yes, you’re dreaming,” he corrects. “It’s not that one, though.”
Crowley deflates a little bit. “Oh? What is it?”
Aziraphale breathes deeply and puts Crowley’s glasses in his jacket pocket. “It’s the one where I take you home.”
Crowley’s grin grows wider, a mini supernova. “Oh, yeah? Like that one. ‘S a nice one, that.” He looks out the window and frowns. “Oh. Where’s the—the—?” He mimes opening books. “Trees with words. Stuff you like.”
Aziraphale’s chest constricts. “I’m afraid it isn’t that one, either.”
Crowley pouts. “Oh.”
Aziraphale hesitantly gets out of the car and walks over to the other side. He opens the door and offers Crowley a hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Crowley takes his hand. Aziraphale lifts him up, and doesn’t let go.
In the elevator, which groans and shakes with irritable demonic intervention, Crowley attempts to do something seductive. What that is, Aziraphale isn’t entirely certain. But it ends up with Crowley, drunk and half-asleep, burying his nose into the side of the angel’s neck and mumbling what may or may not be a stream of consciousness narrative on the softness of Aziraphale’s jacket. His breath tickles. He fiddles with the buttons, not undoing them but just toying at them with drunken grace. His shoulder digs into Aziraphale’s chest.
Aziraphale, for his part, takes it all on the chin. Keeps squeezing Crowley’s hand. There is a moment, somewhere between floors 5 and 7, that he leans his cheek on the top of Crowley’s head and just…breathes. He inhales trendy new cologne, designer hair products, and something older. Something like campfire on your clothes the morning after a cold night.
He feels something well up into his throat. His teeth go numb.
He’s gotten very good at not wanting. Or wanting in the margins, where no one can see. But this…he’s starting to feel like it might be worth it, to want out loud. To take something red and inviting. To bite.
The elevator dings. The door to Crowley’s penthouse comes into view. There is the distant, familiar smell of a garden.
Crowley inhales sharply and catapults himself away. Aziraphale lets his grip go slack, then empty.
A few steps into the hallway, Crowley turns around. “Comin’, angel?” he asks. It’s the first time Aziraphale has heard him say that in a long, long time. It comes out slurred.
He’s drunk. And half-asleep. And Aziraphale isn’t even supposed to be here in the first place. “No,” he says thickly. “No, I better stay here for a bit.” Crowley pouts. Aziraphale gives him a reassuring, damp smile. “Don’t worry. Just go to bed.”
Crowley’s eyebrows raise at this, eyes hooded. “Ten-four,” he says, full of innuendo. “Understood.” He opens the door with a salute, tripping as he goes.
Aziraphale watches him go and, once the door falls shut, presses the ground floor button with a shaky finger. It eases him down slowly. Aziraphale thinks it might be taking pity on him.
To say that Heaven is devoid of color is a lie on two fronts.
One: technically it’s full of all colors, all at once. Pinks, purple, oranges. Colors that shrimp wear on Sundays. Colors that have never seen a physical eye, yet exist nonetheless [6]. But, to soothe the odd celestial headache, all of those wavelengths have been pared down to a simple white.
Two: they are the proud owners of an art gallery.
Now, to say that it is a good art gallery is up for debate. Heaven’s taste hasn’t evolved much past the Middle Ages and they tend to stick to the classics. Biblical scenes, the occasional workplace motivational poster labeled as ‘modern art’, etc. But the room is lovely—lush burgundy carpeting, deep royal blue walls, gold-gilded frames. All still ethereal, and lacking in the bustle of busy crowds or the smell of carpet cleaner, but close enough.
It has limited access; Aziraphale was granted entry once, sometime around 1326 for apparently blessing some rock in Ireland. But now, as Supreme Archangel, he views whatever he likes, whenever he likes.
Take for example, the painting in front of him. It’s a simple one, painted by some holy monk from the 1400s. It depicts a man and a woman…well, not accurately , per se. The skin’s completely wrong, for one, and Adam’s beard was never that impressive, but it depicts them nonetheless. It depicts them in a very familiar garden, under a very familiar tree. The monk got that right. He also got the look in Eve’s eyes right, somehow. The gentle, curious kindness about them, wherever she looked. Right now those eyes are directed at the large serpent coiled around the tree, nodding at the apple in her hand.
Aziraphale gazes at the painting and remembers a stormy night and a platter of ox ribs. Remembers tearing at flesh under his fingers ached. Remembers a joke told a long, long time ago and thinks he might be starting to get it, now.
“Ah, Aziraphale,” says a voice.
Aziraphale jumps, putting a hand on his chest, and realizes Crowley’s glasses are still in there from the night before. He quickly brings his hand down. “Metatron,” he says. The angel’s opted for a body again. He’s holding two styrofoam cups of coffee. “Hello.”
The Metatron smiles at him, then regards the painting. “Ah, Eve,” he says, tutting. “What a pity.”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale, glancing at it. He wrings his hands. “I was hoping to talk to her, actually. We’re old friends. You wouldn’t happen to know where…?”
The Metatron frowns. “Where…?” he asks. “She’s not here, if that’s what you mean.”
“She…she isn’t?”
The Metatron laughs. “No,” he says, like Aziraphale just asked him what color the sky typically is. “She committed the first sin. Of course she’s not here.”
“But she was so nice,” Aziraphale says in disbelief.
The Metatron hums. “Nice does not beget good,” he lectures. “And to commit such an act of pride isn’t very good, now is it?”
Aziraphale flounders a bit. “Well, I mean…she was hungry,” he reasons. “And pregnant. And…curious.” He regards her eyes again, feeling a well of affection. “Just as the Lord made her.”
“Hm,” huffs the Metatron. “Then she was gluttonous as well as prideful.”
A coldness Aziraphale left in a monastery creeps back into him. “She just wanted…”
“Ah, ah, but that’s the thing,” the Metatron interrupts, still lecturing. “She wanted. Who could want in a garden of bounty, hm? That’s what it all boils down to, all those bad eggs.” He chuckles to himself. “The goats, you might say. It’s the want.” He turns to regard Aziraphale. “You know the Seven Deadly Sins, don’t you?”
Aziraphale wrings his hands some more. “I announced them.”
“Mm. Some of my finest work, that.”
Something starts to connect. Synapses start firing. Hands give pause. “Your work?”
“Oh, yes,” says the Metatron, almost bragging. “Took ages. But I think I got it right in the end.”
I would have worded it differently, Aziraphale thinks. Which is to say: I would’ve never written the damned thing at all.
Aziraphale’s eyes move from Eve to the serpent. He absently raises his hand to his chest and feels the brittle glass and metal underneath.
You’re just an angel, going along with Heaven as far as he can. He feels he might be reaching his limit.
“How goes the Second Coming?” the Metatron asks.
Aziraphale gazes at the serpent a moment longer. “It goes,” he says, which is to say it isn’t going at all, and he doesn’t like the expectant tone of that question. An idea seizes him. “Actually, since Eve is, um… otherwise occupied, I was hoping to have an audience with the Almighty soon. About all of the, uh…all of that.”
The Metatron looks him up and down. “Were you?”
“Yes. Just to decipher her notes, really. I’ve been trying to get penciled in, but…”
“Well, I am God’s voice. Anything you wish to say to her, you can tell me. You know this.”
Aziraphale scoffs. “Yes, but that before—” He gestures to his new suit. “I mean, it’s not much. Some clarifications. Some…critiques.” The Metatron raises his eyebrows at that. “Mostly on the whole ‘ending things’ bit. I think…I think we can workshop that. Maybe go for something less…f-final.”
The Metatron heaves a heavy sigh. “Aziraphale,” he says. He doesn’t pronounce his name quite right. ‘Azira-fell’. If Aziraphale didn’t know any better, he’d call it a threat. “I should tell you that Gabriel was having similar doubts about the Great Plan before he was summarily…let go.”
That’s…news. “W-Was he?”
“And I don’t want what happened to him to happen to you,” the Metatron continues.
He regards the painting again, eyeing the serpent with some contempt before making steady eye contact with Aziraphale. He steps in closer. The glasses in Aziraphale’s jacket feel heavy. “I know you can do good for this place,” he says. “I mean, look! You already got us the espresso machine.” He holds up his two cups of coffee.
Aziraphale feels his heart sink. “That I did.”
“Which reminds me. I believe…” He looks between the two identical cups, then holds out the left one. “Ah! This one's for you.” Aziraphale takes it. The Metatron taps their drinks together, seemingly smug about the human gesture. “Come along. We have great work to do, yes?”
Aziraphale nods reluctantly. As they leave the gallery, he takes a sip of the coffee.
It’s real, he can tell. And it’s perfect. It's perfect like the last cup: early morning, nice shop, good news on the paper, etc. It’s a cup of coffee chosen exactly to Heaven’s specifications. It’s completely free of grinds, of too much roasting, too little roasting. It’s not too hot nor too cold. It’s never been in the hands of a tired barista, or an angry customer. It’ll never cause a caffeine addiction and it will never hurt your stomach. It is heavenly. It is coffee without sin.
It tastes horrible.
“I need to talk to you.”
Crowley stares at him, wide-eyed. “Uh-huh.”
Aziraphale’s eyes rake over him. He can’t be helped, the demon is wearing silk pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He’s practically naked, save for the glasses. But there is business to attend to. “I know we're not on the best of terms right now, but it's something very important,” he says. “You're the only one I can talk to about this.”
“Oh, they put in that espresso machine, did they?” Crowley asks with a smug grin.
“Yes,” Aziraphale says truthfully. He shakes his head. “And no. Oh, it's terrible, Crowley!”
Crowley’s eyebrows knit together. “What, the espresso?”
“Yes!” he languishes. “And other things. Mainly the whole bit about the Second Coming.”
Crowley blinks. “The—the what?”
Aziraphale glances around the gray halls, then up at the gray ceiling. “This is really—” He wrings his hands and points past Crowley’s shoulder. “May I?”
Crowley looks at him a moment, as if having some great internal tug-of-war, before waving him in.
Aziraphale takes off his coat and his shoes as he enters. The last time he was here, Crowley had insisted the floors stay pristine and asked Aziraphale, reluctantly, to miracle away a rather large puddle of Ligur in his study.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says when they enter the living room. “You've redecorated.”
What was once all concrete and steel has transformed into something softer around the edges. The floors are now a chic, muted walnut. The walls are plaster, and still gray, but more blue-gray than black-gray. The decoration is still sparse, but there’s furniture now. A leather couch with a matching chair. A glass coffee table. There’s even a fireplace in the corner, surrounded by slate and keeping the room toasty.
Crowley starts to deny it, throat making half-syllabes, but it’s hard when the evidence is all around them. “Yeah,” he says. “Shax's taste leant more towards slime than mine. Had to effectively irradiate the place before it was workable again.”
Hindsight is 20/20 and, being an angel, Aziraphale finds even further clarity in the past few years. He thinks about Crowley mentioning notices on his doorstep, about how a few months into their relatively peaceful existence he’d suddenly started complaining about his neck. About the plants in his car—honestly, Aziraphale thought he’d been trying to expand his collection. Give the car a little joie de vivre. He remembers, once, asking if they could watch a new film on Crowley’s fancy flat television, and Crowley saying it’d just come out in the cinema, actually, despite said film being Singin' in the Rain.
He should have seen all the signs, but he didn’t. He’s angry at himself for that, yes, but he finds the anger extends farther than that.
“I do wish you'd told me,” Aziraphale says without thinking. “About your living situation.”
Crowley shrugs, too casual. “Didn't seem relevant,” he says, taking off his glasses and putting them on the coffee table. “And you would've gotten all...well, would've gotten all what you are now, really. Besides, what good would it've done? You'd be all sad about it, and showing me....I dunno, ads for places with that face of yours. And I'd be saying I'd get round to it and never actually doing anything. Just...cut out the middleman, really.”
“You could have stayed with me,” Aziraphale says. He can’t believe Crowley would think of any other option.
“Yeah, for a couple of months maybe,” Crowley says. “Until you got sick of me.”
As if Aziraphale could ever be sick of him. He’s gotten sicker from the distance. Even now they stand four feet away from each other, and it’s too far. “You could've stayed longer than that,” he confesses.
Crowley blinks. “Could I have?” he asks, voice soft.
Aziraphale swallows thickly. He smiles ruefully. “Yes,” he says. “I imagine I would have been happy spending the rest of my life with you.”
The confession hangs heavy in the air. It fills the room until it’s all there is, aside from the occasional pop and snap from the fireplace. Crowley looks at him, properly speechless. He looks like the world is ending again. It certainly feels like it is. And like the last time, there are only two options ahead: dying with the old world or abandoning it completely [7].
Aziraphale feels a thrumming that shouldn’t exist working its way into his chest, his mouth, his fingertips. He watches as Crowley seems to take the words in and digest them. He swallows and takes in a deep breath, as if to center himself.
“Well,” he says. “What's done is done. Can't go back, can we?”
It sounds as much like a mantra as it does a proclamation. Still, something breaks in Aziraphale's chest; some sort of last hope that’s been holding on so tightly that it leaves fingerprints as it goes.
“No,” Aziraphale says, heart in his throat. “No I suppose not.” He clasps his hands, unclasps them. Puts on his most polite smile. After all, they’re only talking about flats and furniture, aren’t they? The fire pops again. Aziraphale gravitates towards it, suddenly cold. “Well, I do like what you've done with the place. Very cozy. And this fireplace—”
“Oh, no, no, don't—” Crowley takes a hurried step forward.
Aziraphale stops in his tracks, confused. “I was just—”
Crowley grimaces. “Yeah, but. Hellfire. One spark and…just take a step back, would you?” Aziraphale does, confused. Crowley turns pink. “It's...I had a, a moment, a few weeks back, after you—well, um. Let's just say you're not getting one of your Austens back. But, you know, cozy. Warm. Weather's been shit for some reason, lately, so.” He blows air out of his lips. “Wine?”
The moment passed, Aziraphale nods. “Yes,” he says. “Please.”
A few minutes later, he’s seated on the couch and being handed a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Crowley’s fingers graze his, both of them lingering a little too long, before he goes and falls into the leather chair. Aziraphale thumbs the rim of the glass. “This is...I do appreciate you letting me barge in like this. It's very kind of you.”
Crowley makes a face. “No, no,” he says. “Not kind at all.” He’s opted for the whole bottle, and takes a pull. “This is purely selfish. Love a good bottle of red and a kvetch, me. “
“Do you?” Aziraphale asks, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah, yeah. Cabernet, kvetching, cavorting. The three kuh’s for a cracking life.” He takes another pull and gestures of Aziraphale to start talking.
And Aziraphale does, about everything. Or almost everything. He complains about cubit time, about the coffee, about the unearthly softness of his suit. He complains about things he’d chosen to ignore: the fact that all he has to read is God’s horribly taken notes, that he once hummed a bit of Beethoven and got dirty looks for ages, that his office is too big and too empty and absolutely dustless.
They have to crack open a new bottle by the time he gets to the Second Coming, which Crowley brings up in the middle of Aziraphale ranting about Heaven’s ghastly minimalism, and from there he gets into the real meat of it. He describes the meetings about it, and his attempts to postpone it, and his whole conversation with the Metatron in the gallery. He doesn’t tell Crowley that he believes his whole promotion may have just been a way to keep him a happy, useless figurehead, but only because he’s sure Crowley came to that conclusion ages before he did.
He goes and he goes and he goes, and Crowley just sits there, taking it, until he finally runs out of steam.
“It's just—” Aziraphale sighs and pours off the last of the wine. He gulps it down, and belatedly realizes that it actually tastes quite good. “Just that, really. That I needed to tell you.”
Crowley inhales through his teeth. “Wow,” he says, nodding. “That is…well, I knew some of that already.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows draw together. “What?”
“Well, the thing with Gabriel, yeah,” Crowley admits. “And the thing with God’s shitty notes, obviously. Rest is new, though. Eve’s really down in Hell?” He takes an absent sip of the empty bottle. “I should’ve paid her a visit. We could’ve gotten drinks together.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Aziraphale asks, a bit peeved.
Crowley scoffs, equally peeved. Aziraphale is offended by this. “Well you were a bit busy, weren’t you? Barely let me get in a sentence. Couldn’t even tell you that I—couldn’t tell you anything. Had to resort to action.”
“Yes, I remember you did,” Aziraphale says, testily. “Rather forcefully.”
“And then you forgave me,” Crowley fires back. “Rather forcefully.”
That hits. Aziraphale swallows and looks down at the bit of flame reflecting in his glass. “I do regret that,” he confesses quietly.
Again, they fall into silence. When Aziraphale finally looks up again, Crowley’s throat is bobbing up and down, words dying a few deaths before finally making their way out rough and unpolished.
“Same. For me, with—I didn’t…I didn’t mean for it to go like that. The…” He gestures between the two of them, looking almost embarrassed. He runs his tongue along his bottom teeth. “When I imagined it, it wasn’t anything like how it was. Wasn’t angry. Was…”
“...nice,” Aziraphale finishes.
Crowley nods. “Yeah.”
Aziraphale tries to smile, but it doesn’t stick. “Maybe some things are best left to the imagination,” he says. “To the margins.”
The leather squeaks as Crowley leans back, drawing his chin up. “You really think that?”
“I have to,” Aziraphale confesses.
“You really think we could’ve kept going, as we were? All…?” He makes some vague motion. “Wasn’t that torture for you? Was for me.”
“I can be patient.”
Crowley snorts. “You? No, you’re Mr. Instant Gratification, you are Mr. Now is what you are.”
He’s right, but Aziraphale isn’t going to give him that. “Oh, really.”
“Really.”
He doesn’t know if it’s the wine, or the naturally goading nature that Crowley carries about him, but Aziraphale feels something start to creak within him. Something like a dam.
“How did you imagine it, then?” he asks.
“What?” asks Crowley.
“The…us,” Aziraphale clarifies. “How did you imagine it?” Crowley starts to sputter out some denial. “I know you dreamt about it. You told me so.”
Crowley turns pink and sits up. “When…? Actually, don’t.” He’s properly squirming now. “That—um. I don’t think—”
“Tell me,” Aziraphale demands, a little desperately.
And just like that, he stills. And the room gets very, very quiet. When Crowley speaks, all the sharpness has been taken out of his voice. All that’s left are the soft, blunt edges.
“We’re in a garden,” he says. “Or a park bench. Or…or your shop. Anywhere, really, but mostly your shop. And we’re talking about…whatever we usually talk about. Whales, Locke, those little umbrellas you get with cocktails and then…then something just shifts, I dunno. We stop talking. And you look at me, like…” His teeth wrap around the words, but don’t find purchase.
Aziraphale, burning, goads them to bite. “Like what?”
Crowley swallows. His eyes shine. “Like you love me. And then you, you take my face into your hands, and you kiss me. And I kiss you. Simple as that.”
Something yawns within Aziraphale. Something threatens to break. “What happens after?” he asks roughly, and Crowley gives him the gentlest, saddest smile he’s ever seen.
“Whatever you want.”
The honesty of the sentence sends shockwaves. Aziraphale digs his fingers into the leather, and starts to imagine digging them in elsewhere. The dam groans under the weight. Crowley is still looking at him, a kind of raw hope sparking in his eyes. Aziraphale knows because he feels the same thing within him. He feels it growing, feels it clawing at his throat and gnawing at his fingernails.
Aziraphale leans forward—to do what, he’s not entirely sure of yet—when there is a loud and shrill noise from down the hall. Both of them jump.
“What is that?” asks Aziraphale after a moment.
Crowley, recovering, groans and stands. “That is cake,” he proclaims.
Perhaps the shrilling of the timer has him mishearing things. “Cake?”
Crowley, having made an astonishing series of embarrassing admissions in the last hour alone, takes this one in stride. “Yeah, ‘s another one of the kuh’s,” he says dismissively. Aziraphale stares, still confused. “I’ve been baking, a bit. Muriel read a book about…anger management. ‘M not eating anything, mind you, just…beating ingredients and setting them on fire, a bit.” He snaps at the shrilling of the timer halts. “Back in a tick.”
Crowley storms off. There’s some banging noises, and a string of insults Aziraphale thinks might be directed at the cake, and some passive aggressive muttering about bad timing. There is the sudden aroma of spices and citrus that travels through the room and straight to Aziraphale’s stomach.
There’s the sound of trudging footsteps, then a sudden halt. Aziraphale turns to see Crowley contemplating the dish in his hands before, in a fit of impulsivity, resuming his trudging and placing the plate squarely on the coffee table.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale.
It isn’t pretty. The sponge has fallen apart, like Crowley had a particularly rough time getting it out of the pan. It’s practically scalped in some places. There’s a marmalade glaze that’s dripped everywhere. The top is just slightly burnt, as is the plate itself.
Crowley clears his throat. “Yeah, like I said. Beating, fire, boom.” He gestures lamely. “Cake.”
It’s hideous. A presentational nightmare. But Aziraphale sees the dripping marmalade and the pale sponge freckled with cinnamon and feels his mouth water.
“May I, um?” he asks, pointing to it.
Crowley shrugs, then summons a fork out of nowhere. “Go ahead,” he says, handing him the fork. “It’s going in the bin anyway.”
He digs the fork into the side of the cake and pulls out a sizable bit of sponge. He holds it up to his mouth and pauses. The nausea threatens to take over, and he worries it’ll taste of lead like everything else he’s tried. But his teeth ache and his head swims and he takes a bite anyway.
It’s…
It’s the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten. Not just because Crowley made it, it’s actually good. He’s been practicing. And the recipe is…it’s a shared orange on a long journey, pillowed in a light sponge that melts in the mouth and is punctuated by the spices. Oh, the spices! Cinnamon like a warm fire on a cold night, cardamom like a dessert handed to you by kind hands after a hard day, ginger that rolls alive off the tongue and into the back of your throat.
It creates a world in Aziraphale’s mouth, a rather small one. One with a roaring fire and leather couches and new furniture, one with old bookshelves and dust in all the corners and a closet full of electric candles. He moans, stomach aching as he swallows. Dear Lord, he’s starving.
He works on autopilot, chasing the sensation as far as he can go. He takes one bite, then another. Then another. Abandons his sense of propriety first, then the fork. His fingers become sticky with marmalade, his body alive with a pleasure he hasn’t been able to indulge in for months. He makes vague sounds, trying to congratulate Crowley on making something so delicious but getting caught up with consuming too much to get past ‘Good Lord’ and ‘This is’ or just the appreciative groan.
He doesn’t lick the plate clean, but it’s a near thing. And when he’s done, he realizes that there are crumbs all over his nice suit and he’s got marmalade all over him, and he is full. Properly full. Achingly sated kind of full. And yet the craving remains.
Crowley is staring at him, eyes blown. Aziraphale stares right back.
“Haven’t seen you do that in a while,” Crowley notes. He slowly jabs his thumb back towards the kitchen. “I’ve got a cracked cheesecake, if you…?”
Aziraphale takes in a few breaths. He feels a bit like a rabid animal. He feels flayed open, showing all the sticky, horrid bits of himself. He’s supposed to be Feeding On the Nourishing Wine of God’s Love, after all, and he’s just found it not only lacking, but wanting. He wants . God, how he wants. He wants endless spice cake, he wants nights amongst the stars, and mouths on skin. He wants to consume and take and bite in a way that he hasn’t felt since he was in Job’s cellar however many millennia ago.
He wants Crowley. He wants Crowley in a way that’s unbecoming of him, and he feels the flinch of shame hit him with full force. He fights back on it, holds onto the way Crowley is staring at him, slack jawed and more than a little hungry himself. It doesn’t stick, no matter how hard he wants it to.
He miracles the crumbs and marmalade off somewhere else. He can still feel them, though. Knows that when he goes back—because he has to, because he wants to try—the angels will sense it on him like a pack of dogs.
“No, I—I think I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Aziraphale says, brushing off the invisible debris.
“You really haven’t,” Crowley tells him truthfully.
Aziraphale shakes his head. “I need to get going, before they think something’s wrong,” he says, and he means it. He smiles sadly. “Thank you, though, really. For the wine. And the cake. And the kvetching. You really didn’t have to.”
Crowley gives him a regretful smile that says I really did.
“I’m still angry,” Crowley says, leaning against the wall as Aziraphale slides into his shoes.
Aziraphale pauses. “Of course. I understand.”
“Over the moon pissed off.”
Aziraphale takes his coat off of the rack and puts it on. “As is your right,” he says, and goes to leave.
Crowley’s throat works, eyes studying the ground. “Still,” he says. Aziraphale stops on the threshold. Crowley looks up. “Despite that. You know Heaven doesn’t deserve you, right?”
Aziraphale gives an affectionate scoff, ready to chalk it up to Crowley’s teasing. But there’s something in the way Crowley looks at him, like he means it fully. Despite his pride, or his greediness, or his gluttony, Crowley doesn’t believe that Heaven is too good for Aziraphale. Quite the other way around, actually. And Aziraphale has to give pause to this.
Because this is them in a nutshell, isn't it? Crowley already ahead of him, an arm outstretched, waiting patiently. And him, in the doorway, always waiting for someone to call him back and say hello, we got it wrong actually, could you forgive us for our indiscretion? We'll get it right this time. Bring your friend, too. Come back, and you can feel like you’re good enough for us finally. We’ll love you both, finally. Love you properly. We'll make you cocoa.
And they had. And he did. And they can't even make a good cup of coffee.
Aziraphale makes a decision then. A terrifying decision, and not even the one he wanted to make at this juncture, but a decision nonetheless.
The idea comes quickly. He almost asks Crowley for permission, before realizing how that will quickly go south. Positions reversed, it took him nearly 80 years to give in. He doesn’t have that kind of time.
He pats at his pockets absently. “I—I seem to have left my pocket watch in your living room,” he says.
“Oh, well, I can just—”
“No need,” Aziraphale says, rushing down the hall. “Be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
He then proceeds to do something very, very stupid. Incredibly stupid. Monumentally hairbrained, as a certain demon might say in the future. But he does it very quickly, and very carefully. And he prepares, with some consternation, to do something even more stupid. And, possibly, even more deadly.
“Find it?” Crowley asks when Aziraphale returns.
“Oh! Yes,” Aziraphale says, and pulls out a pocket watch that has been with him the entire time.
Crowley follows him to the doorway this time. He opens his mouth, as if to say something, but then closes it and just nods. There’s an air of ‘I guess I’ll be seeing you around’ about his demeanor. Aziraphale doesn’t have that.
In the doorway, Aziraphale steps forward and pulls Crowley into a hug. He doesn’t know what he’s saying with it—thank you for everything. I love you very, very much. Goodbye.
He feels Crowley stiffen under the sudden contact, before relaxing around him. He’s always been a much braver person than Aziraphale in that respect. Crowley’s torso holds solid and boney under his arms, his shirt soft against his finger tips. He’s breathing too fast. Both of them are.
Aziraphale sighs into the collar of Crowley’s shirt and inhales that campfire scent. He takes it all in. He presses himself in further, until he can’t anymore. He slips a note, hastily written not two minutes prior, into the pocket of Crowley’s silk pajama bottoms.
Then, in a fit of impulse, he turns his head and places a feather-light kiss on Crowley’s jaw. He tastes like himself. Aziraphale is surprised he thought he’d ever taste like anything different.
He pulls away first, because he has to. He has to be the one, or else they’ll just keep standing there. “Goodnight, Crowley,” he says, trying to put all that meaning in there. Thank you. I love you very, very much. Goodbye.
“Right,” Crowley says, not without a bit of confusion. Aziraphale nods and heads for the elevator.
He gets to work.
At about 08:00 cubit time, a memo is sent to all angels that goes as follows:
Hello!
This is the Supreme Archangel, Formerly Principality, Aziraphale here. I am dictating this on my glass tablet thingy, so I hope this is coming across clearly. In any case, this is to inform all angels both high and low of my absolute refusal to go along with the Great Plan. Specifically the ending the world bit, as I find it wholly unnecessary.
Anyone disagreeing with this will find that all documents relating to the Almighty’s plans re: The Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ have been destroyed. As has the espresso machine. Not to worry on the latter front, though: I have chosen a perfectly acceptable replacement, as well as some fine coffee and apple strudel courtesy of a dear friend. I highly recommend that those who wish to partake do so. Anyone in need of instruction will find pamphlets at their desks.
Anybody who has questions and concerns about this memo—or anything else, really—is welcome to come visit me in my office.
Best Regards and Much Love,
Aziraphale
The memo causes quite a stir. It causes such a ruckus, in fact, that the council, midmeeting, immediately storms off to the Supreme Archangel’s office to put the record straight. Which they will, through any means necessary.
What they find is this:
- A supreme lack of one Supreme Archangel in said office, or any office in particular.
- A tower of Hellfire containing as follows:
- Documents relating to the Almighty’s plans re: The Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
- Documents relating to any of the Almighty’s plan re: The End Of The World As We Know It.
- Documents pertaining to the Seven Deadly Sins.
- One pristine white suit.
(After some dousing, investigations will conclude the fire came from a single coal lovingly plucked out with some tongs and transported, somehow, via a single marmalade-crusted dinner plate.)
3. A box. A small one at that, butter yellow, with a sticker on it that says MAKE A SUGGESTION! YOUR IDEA COUNTS and a small stack of paper and pencil beside it. It is already stuffed full. None of the handwriting matches.
The air still smells of dust. The book has moved to the other side of the store—the product of multiple re-organizations—but is easy to find anyways. He knows all the books here like the back of his hand, and this one he knows like the back of Crowley’s. When he opens it, he’s greeted by its contents: a photo, a gun, and a bullet.
The first thing Aziraphale regards is the gun. You read too many books, Crowley had said. He supposes he was right. It’s still unused. It isn’t even loaded. He’d imagined that if he wanted bullets, there would be.
The gun is put to the side. Next is the magic bullet. It’s such a simple thing. It’s mottled in places, damaged by saliva and soft press of lips every few years. Each bit of pitting denotes an event: a daring act, a thermos passed between shaking hands, a stolen glance or two. A thousand moments are condensed into these small erosions.
When Aziraphale puts the bullets to his lips now, it doesn’t taste like lead. It tastes like a car peeling out of a burning church. It tastes like…like the sawdust that’s ever-present behind stages. You know the kind, the dust that settles into the corners and never leaves. It might be swept up from time to time, but as it floats in the air, it’ll always find its way back there. It just might take a while.
It tastes like wine, more than anything. No lead. He doesn’t want to taste like lead, and so it doesn’t. It never will again. He puts the bullet to the side as well.
The last is the photograph, the one where they look terrified out of their minds and their hands cradle something deadly. Aziraphale looks at it closer, and remembers a little harder, and realizes that he’s been reading it wrong this whole time. They’re not terrified. Surprised, yes. Stupified, yes, but not terrified. That didn’t happen until later. Right now, in the photograph, they’re just excited and confused at what they’ve done. Easy to mistake for fear, if one’s judgment is clouded.
It isn’t now.
Aziraphale is in his old clothes again. His shirt itches at the back of the neck and his waistcoat is falling apart, and he’s never felt more at home. He pulls a few things out of his pocket and is delighted to find a hole at the bottom. It needs mending, isn’t that wonderful? The pocket’s given all it's got and now he needs to take care of it.
Well. He needs to take care of a lot of things. The pocket will come later, hopefully. He checks the time. Right. If Crowley had wanted to come here, he would’ve been here by now.
He takes out a pair of sunglasses and a note explaining everything. Absolutely everything. And where to find him, if need be. He places them inside the book, alongside the photograph. The gun and bullet he leaves on the desk. Just in case.
He starts to pack.
Somewhere between the first suitcase and the fourth, a sort of frenzy takes over Aziraphale. The reality of what he’s done hasn’t crashed over him just yet, but the tide is rising. For now he just feels antsy, like there’s too much to do and not enough time. Which is true, he supposes. So maybe he’s just feeling realistic about the whole thing.
He’s halfway through packing the fifth suitcase when the door creaks open. Aziraphale looks up sharply. A shape, skinny and swaying, comes into view and Aziraphale feels his heart leap at the sight of it.
“You came,” he marvels. “I was beginning to wonder if…”
“Yeah, well, not much to go off of,” Crowley says. He holds up a slip of paper and reads it. “Bookshop, evening. Not very specific.” He pockets it again. “Not late, am I?”
“No, no,” Aziraphale says, marveling at him. “Right on time.”
“So it seems,” Crowley says. He looks around, taking in the mess. Or the heightened mess: suitcases thrown everywhere, the summoning circle on the floor scratched and scrubbed into oblivion. Crowley frowns. “Angel, what’s going on? What is this? The—why are you dressed like that? Where’s Muriel?”
Aziraphale swallows, suddenly nervous. “I sent them off to a safe place,” he explains. “A cottage down south, near where we—” His hands itch, remembering their night of stargazing. His fingers, looking for purchase, hook onto the hollowed out book. “I’m supposed to go meet them there, once I'm wrapped up here. And you were supposed to find this, and then…well. Then we’d figure it out.”
Crowley takes the book, but doesn’t open it. "Figure what out?” Aziraphale doesn’t answer. “What did you do?”
“Something bad,” Aziraphale confesses. “Or something good, but not…Good.” He swallows. “I stopped it.”
Crowley stares at him. “You what?”
Aziraphale decides to keep packing. “I stopped the Second Coming,” he repeats, shoving his waistcoats into an old boxy suitcase. They’re not fitting. “And maybe—if things went right—incited a, a small rebellion.” He pinches his fingers. Crowley blinks. “And now Heaven is…well, I imagine they’re none too happy. I didn’t stick around. “
“You incited a…?” Crowley asks, then nods to himself. He sniffs and sets the book down. “Right, okay. Car. Now.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Aziraphale says. Crowley lets out a noise like a stalled engine, gesturing the—well, everything. Aziraphale puts his hands up. “I’ve put measurements in place. Our miracle on Jim— Gabriel is still in the air here. It was merely a matter of tweaking things. It covers here and the safe house, for now.”
He does not mention that it is stretched a bit thin, and ready to snap. He’s trying not to focus on that right now. He’s also not focusing on the way he feels like he’s on fire, a bit, and being pulled in all directions. No, he just has to focus on packing. Focus on his old waistcoats, try to squash them further in. Focus on Crowley.
Speaking of which: “Safe house?”
“South Downs,” Aziraphale clarifies. “Where we…there’s lots of stars there. A spot of ocean. I thought that, if you chose to come along, you might like it. It’s very nice. Muriel told me so.” The latch isn't working right. There’s too much to get it to shut properly. He shoves it down. “Come on.”
Crowley doesn’t say anything to that.
“They still don’t know,” Aziraphale continues. It’s automatic. He can’t stop confessing. “What’s happened upstairs, I mean. What I’ve done. I told them we were going for a trip. It’s just to keep them safe, mind. They didn’t know what I was going to do with the bit of Hellfire I miracled to them—
“You—Hellfire? My Hellfire?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Aziraphale says, now really leaning onto the suitcase. He tries to click it shut. No dice. “I borrowed it.” Crowley gives him a look that would kill a field mouse. “I was very careful. I used tongs.”
“Oh,” says Crowley and nods. Keeps nodding. “Oh, yeah, no. I don’t mind.” He sounds like he does mind, very much. “One touch that could light you up like a Roman candle, but you used tongs, so yeah, it's fine. Not monumentally stupid or, or dangerous at all! Nooooo.”
Aziraphale gives him a Look.
Crowley swallows. “I’m being hypocritical, aren’t I?”
“A bit, dear.”
“But Muriel—”
“They were careful,” Aziraphale explains. “I made sure they were. They didn’t even know they had it, I’d had it stuffed into the backroom.” A heavy guilt settles on him. He stops trying to shut the suitcase. “They…they weren’t even involved, really. But Heaven will think so, and they’re…”
“They’re not so forgiving,” Crowley concludes.
“No,” Aziraphale agrees. All frenzied energy leaves him, sucked out in a vacuum and replaced by the big, dawning realization of what he’s done. “No, they aren’t at all.”
The worry hits him first. It’s been waiting in the wings for a small age already. He tries to pace it out of him, but the more he paces, the more he worries. He worries if he’s even made a difference, if the world will still end. He worries about Muriel, alone in that house. Are they frightened? They must be. They must know something’s wrong.
Mostly he worries about Crowley. For once, Aziraphale has managed to be the one to raise hell and drag Crowley down with him. Usually it’s the other way around. Or, mostly usually. Maybe it happens more than he’d care to admit, looking back on it.
The pacing isn’t helping. His knees are going to jelly. He sits down on the couch and digs his fingers into the soft fabric. He lets himself feel at home, and then realizes that this is his home. His only home. Which shouldn’t be a surprise. Heaven has always been more of a stopping point for him, a house you go for the holidays and never quite fit into and ache to leave after a day. But it’s just him now, isn’t it? No Heaven. No Hell. Not even Crowley, not in the way it used to be. All because of a thousand misplaced decisions he thought were right leading him to here, now. No, it’s just him and this bookshop, and even that is up in the air.
He remembers Uz, and that kind of aching loneliness that welled up inside him. And when he feels the cushions dip next to him, and a hand is laid gently upon his back, it all spills out.
It is not pretty. He holds his face in his hands as if to contain it, but the sounds still bleed through the gaps in his fingers. Crowley’s hand makes soothing trips up and down his spine. He says—something. Aziraphale’s not sure, but the tone is low and repetitive, almost like a lullaby.
They stay like that for a time. Eventually the loneliness…well, it doesn’t fade. There is a sense that it never will, but it retreats. Things balance out, even though Aziraphale is still in the aftershocks of a particularly good cry. His fingers are wetand his breath catches and his skin feels like it’s dissolving from the inside out; yet, still. Still. There is the hand on his back and soft spoken words.
When he finally lifts his head out of his hands, all that’s left is Crowley. His glasses are hanging loose in his other hand, his eyes are not hard or judgmental but…soft. Perhaps a little tired. The hand on Aziraphale’s back stills as they lock eyes and slowly retreats back to Crowley’s lap. Aziraphale watches the gesture and feels like he might start crying again.
“Oh,” he says. “I’ve been so foolish.”
Crowley shakes his head. “You haven’t,” he says. His voice is all suede, no gravel. “With Heaven. Look, you tried and—”
“Oh, no. No, Crowley. Not Heaven.” Crowley blinks, confused. Aziraphale turns towards him. “I’ve been foolish with you.”
“With me?”
Shakily, Aziraphale reaches out and cups Crowley’s hand in his own. “For not being brave enough. For loving you too quietly, too hesitantly.” He looks down, unable to meet Crowley’s gaze. He rubs his thumb over the demon’s knuckles. “I know I can’t go back, and I know I’ve hurt you, but…you should know, if I could go back, I would have loved…” The word breaks a little in his mouth. He looks at Crowley, vision blurring and throat thick. “I would have loved you so brightly.”
Crowley’s mouth opens a little. He blinks rapidly, eyebrows unsure if they should raise or pinch together. “Angel…” he croaks out.
“And I do,” Aziraphale whispers. “I do love you, still. You have to know that. Even if it’s too late. Even if it’s past everything.” He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. For everything.”
And then Crowley, still blinking, mouth still open and breath unsteady, says, “I forgive you.”
He says it like he’s in shock; he might be. The words come out a bit distant, with a dreamlike certainty reserved for sleepwalkers. A sort of steadfast knowing, verbalized past circumstance, past logic, past self-preservation or dignity. It’s spoken as plain truth. No caveats. No threat of it being taken away.
It is pure, unconditional forgiveness, born out of unconditional love. True unconditional love.
Crowley loves him. Crowley loves him. Still.
Aziraphale kisses him. It’s the only thing to do; has been, for ages, and he’s just now gotten the memo. He does so gently at first. It’s a simple desire to feel Crowley’s lips on his, to recreate that moment and chase that feeling. And then Crowley makes a sound in the back of his throat—something like a whimper—and starts kissing back.
Aziraphale’s mouth waters. It aches to taste, to chase. He cups Crowley’s face in his hands and urges him closer still. Crowley goes willingly, hands scrabbling for the angel’s lapels and dragging him in just as he did the last time. There’s the scramble of opened lips, the taste of his teeth. Aziraphale moans at the taste of it.
“Mmph,” Crowley says, breath tickling Aziraphale’s face. He pulls Aziraphale down, lying back against the cushions and refusing to break the kiss even as his head knocks against the arm of the couch. Aziraphale goes willingly, straddling Crowley without a second thought and pressing into every line of contact between them. His fingers hunger for all of it: Crowley’s hair, Crowley’s neck, the soft skin at the side of his stomach.
Crowley is much the same, though he seems to focus on his lower back the most. He’s having a small war with the tails of Aziraphale’s shirt. When he finally wins, his hands snake up his back and continue to do the same soothing motions as before. His hips start to make half-aborted motions, half-hard, small noises being pushed into the space between their lips.
Aziraphale presses kisses into Crowley’s cheek, into the snake tattoo, into the hinge of his jaw. He laps up the sweat on Crowley’s neck with utmost determination. Crowley still tastes like Crowley. Crowley tastes wonderful . He takes the skin covering a strained bit of neck muscle and nips at it, inciting a surprised jolt, before sinking his teeth in and sucking at it like an orange wedge.
A cascade of sounds fall out of Crowley’s mouth. “Oh, ohhhh g—” Aziraphale continues to suck before moving to another spot. Crowley let’s a shaky taught sigh, before gripping Aziraphale’s shoulders and pushing him off. “Addresssss.”
Aziraphale looks down at Crowley, who is by now thoroughly wrecked. Hair is all directions, eyes blown, red marks on his neck, tie on vacation in the speculative fiction section, etc. It takes Aziraphale a moment to process that he’s said anything. “Address?” he repeats.
Crowley nods, swallows. Aziraphale gets distracted again. “Sssafe house,” he breathes out. “Now.”
Right. There is a divine threat, isn’t there? And in the process of their embrace, Aziraphale’s miracle-keeping isn’t exactly holding up well.
All good reasons to keep moving. And yet he cares for none of them. “But—you wanted it in a bookshop…”
Crowley looks at him, full of love, and rises up to meet him. The kiss is soft, Crowley’s hands holding Aziraphale’s head shakily but fiercely, before it is gone. Aziraphale whines a bit, a complaint more than anything. “Address,” Crowley repeats, though he sounds less sure this go round. “Let’s not risk it.”
They part, unsticking from each other in slow, reluctant movements. Aziraphale tells Crowley the address for the house, getting ready for what he imagines to be a very, very charged car ride, when a snap rings out.
The air shifts from stuffy and page-scented to salty and a bit cold. It is very dark, until there’s another snap. Warm light fills the room, which Aziraphale now sees as the master bedroom of the cottage. It is the standard beach fair: outdated, but cozy. The light comes from two small lamps on two small nightstands. An open window reveals a pin pricked sky and an ocean horizon. There is the sound of distant waves.
There is also the sound of commotion in the living room. Aziraphale turns to Crowley, who reflects his worry. Silently, slowly, they open the door and tiptoe down the hallway. The noises get louder, more solid. Bangs and crashes, cries of help and—
A whistle?
In the living room, Muriel sits on the couch, watching an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. They regard the television with a singular focus usually reserved for political documentaries.
Aziraphale and Crowley silently, slowly, tiptoe back down the hallway and into the bedroom. Aziraphale regards the room again with amazement. He lets the miracle snap and pull tightly around the cottage. Crowley puts his hands in his pockets and goes to look out the window. “How did you…? Without a permit, or, or—”
“Old privileges,” Crowley explains. “They never bothered to check. Might be a bit…meh in the morning, but…” He lets out a long breath. A heavy feeling descends on them both, and Crowley turns his attention to the decor, obviously nervous. “This is…a nice place. Quaint. Got quilts. Quaint with quilts, that’s…well, that’s…”
Aziraphale locks the door. Crowley stops talking. “I’m going to kiss you again,” he says, marching over.
Crowley relaxes. “Oh, thank—”
Aziraphale captures his mouth again, still marching until Crowley hits the bed and they fall onto it. Crowley wraps his legs around him readily, pulling him in tight. They resume where they left off, much more frenzied and desperate. A waistcoat is tossed off, then a shoe. Aziraphale has an argument with Crowley’s belt before finally snapping his fingers and relocating their clothes into neatly folded piles on a nearby chair [8].
Crowley runs warm. He is hot, and squirmy, and freckled under Aziraphale. Aziraphale nips at all the moles he can find, licking the sweat prickling on his body before taking a nipple into his mouth and lapping at it desperately. Crowley keens, rutting a bit against the angel’s stomach. Aziraphale is trying his best to not rut back, and failing spectacularly.
“I want…” Aziraphale says, and can’t be bothered to finish the sentence. He goes to the other nipple, and Crowley’s fingernails dig into his shoulder. “I want—”
“Whatever you want,” Crowley croaks, full of devotion. Aziraphale hums and takes Crowley’s cock in his hand, pulling slowly but surely. “Whatever you w—f…uck . Angel, angel, you’ve got to…I’m going to…”
He really is. Aziraphale can feel it. He grips the base of Crowley’s cock and kisses him. “No, you’re not,” he says, looking him in the eye.
Crowley looks at him, mouth pink and open. “Okay,” he whispers, nodding frantically. “Okay, I’m not. I never…never was. Never will, that’s fine.”
Aziraphale takes a moment to marvel at him. He skates a thumb over Crowley’s cheekbones and feels his chest constrict with affection. “Here’s what I want to do, if you’re amenable—”
“Mr. Amenable, that’s me,” Crowley says, still nodding.
“I haven’t told you yet.”
“Oh.”
Aziraphale pauses a moment. It’s one thing to desire something. It’s another to say it aloud and let someone else carry it. “I want to get my mouth on you,” he says. “And then I want to be inside you.”
Crowley closes his eyes and moans. His cock twitches in Aziraphale’s hand and his fingernails dig in deeper. After a few moments and some steadying breaths, he opens his eyes again. “And…and then can I…?”
Aziraphale smiles and pecks him softly on the lips. “If I do it right, you’ll be doing it often.”
Crowley stares at him, obviously thrilled at the idea, before realizing how uncool he probably looks. He snorts. “Well, I don’t think….biology and, and—I mean you can tr—”
Aziraphale kisses him again, letting go of his prick. Crowley whines into his mouth before Aziraphale seeks brighter tastes for the palate. A mark already covered in spit on Crowley’s neck, a peaked nipple, the dip between his ribs where his breath is coming out funny. All exquisite, all whetting the appetite. Then he moves to his quivering stomach, teeth brushing against wiry red hair, until he finally gets to the main course, so to speak.
Crowley lets out a string of curses as Aziraphale takes him in hand and swallows him. Hands go for his hair and pull , and thighs try to wrap around his ears. Aziraphale has to lay firm hands to keep Crowley where he is, focusing on the salty taste of him and the small movements of his hips.
He pulls off and admires Crowley, who is now glassy eyed and speechless. “Oh, look at you,” he says. He kisses his hip bone. “So lovely.”
Crowley responds with some vowels and maybe a consonant. Hm. Still too coherent. He takes one of Crowley’s thighs and hikes it onto his shoulder. Crowley props himself up on his elbows, about to ask what he’s doing when a tongue meets a pucker of skin, and the demon abandons thought in favor of an arousing squeak.
“Ha. Haaaa,” Crowley vocalizes. Aziraphale takes his prick in hand and starts to stroke him faster, circling his tongue. He treats Crowley like he would a peach galette or a poached pear with creme anglaise. Crowley’s hands scrabble for the quilted bedding. “Holy Jeeeeahhh…Jiminy Christmas,” he says, squirming with arousal and, undoubtedly, embarrassment.
Aziraphale pulls away and sucks a bruise into Crowley’s thigh. “Indeed,” he says, and goes back to sucking him.
Crowley’s fingernails find his scalp. His small thrusts start to get larger, uncoordinated. His thighs shake. “Oh,” he says. “Oh. Aziraphale. Angel. I think I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”
Aziraphale picks up the pace. Crowley keens and spills into his mouth. Aziraphale swallows it all down until Crowley goes boneless. He makes a slow journey back up to Crowley’s mouth, muttering little endearments into his twitching skin.
When he finally gets back to Crowley’s face, he looks at him with adoration through hooded eyes and wet lips. The look strikes Aziraphale square in the heart.
Slowly, he presses his thumb against his lips. Pushes in . First there is the hard line of Crowley’s teeth, and then the warm wetness of his mouth. He takes him in, sucking at his thumb slowly, that look of adoration still heady in his eyes. It reminds him of an evening with oysters. A punched sound falls out of Aziraphale’s mouth.
They kiss slowly, languidly, for a bit. Crowley takes him in hand. Aziraphale tries to keep his patience, but he hungers for satisfaction. He is, as Crowley said, Mr. Now. He starts to buck against in earnest, chasing the sensation building in his groin, when Crowley makes a noise and attempts to snap his fingers. It’s on the fourth try that it catches, and his whole body shivers under the angel. Something goes wet. He’s already hard again.
There is a small interlude of rearranging themselves. Aziraphale enters Crowley as slowly as he can. The arousal crawls up his back, curls his toes and wraps around his throat. They grip onto each other in a way that’ll leave marks the next morning. All is quiet.
“Oh,” Aziraphale gasps when he’s fully seated, and rides through the waves of pleasure as best he can. He finds he’s losing his words. He waits a minute. “Can I—? I need to—”
“Whatever you want,” Crowley rasps out. Aziraphale starts to move slowly, savoring each bit of friction and the look on Crowley’s face. “Whatever you want. This. Moon. Stars. Fuck. Little…little pastries with chocolate and, and jam and—”
Aziraphale kisses him again, and starts to pick up the pace. “You,” he says. “You, just you, dear. If you’ll have me.”
He changes the angle and feels Crowley tighten around him, throwing his head back. “I love you,” Crowley grinds out. “I love you.”
“I know,” says Aziraphale. “I know.”
Crowley swallows. “I just realized…never told you properly,” he says. “Just…please…” He wraps a hand around Aziraphale’s wrist and brings it up to the side of his face, eyes pleading. “Please.”
Aziraphale feels arousal and affection surge with him. He fucks into Crowley until the bed starts squeaking and they begin to move and closer to the headboard. He grips onto it for leverage, and starts to feel the last of his control slip away.
“I love you too,” Aziraphale says. His brain is going to jelly. All he can focus on is the hot tight feeling around him, and their syncopated breathing. “Oh, Crowley, you…fuck. Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Crowley agrees.
Desire floods him, and he lets out something between a grunt and a sob. “I can’t—I have to—”
“Me too,” Crowley says. “Me too. It’sss okay.”
Aziraphale hikes Crowley’s legs up higher and starts fucking him into the mattress. It’s all craving, all chase. He feels flayed open. “We’re okay,” he says into Crowley’s shoulder, and he can’t say why. “We’re okay. We’re…”
Alright. Unforgivable. Together, together, together.
Crowley captures Aziraphale’s mouth and takes himself in hand. There’s a few more uncoordinated, messy thrusts before he comes, tightening hard around Aziraphale’s cock and moaning into his mouth. Aziraphale chases the sensation until he tips over the edge with a broken off shout. He rides through the aftershocks until it all leaves him, and he goes utterly slack with pleasure.
They like that for a while, until Crowley starts to squirm under him. Aziraphale lets out a noise and wishes the mess away, peeling himself away with a sigh.
“For you,” Aziraphale says, once they’re settled under the quilt and the lights are turned off.
Crowley lifts his head up slightly. He’s nothing but a shape and a solid line of warmth against Aziraphale’s body. Still, his eyes catch the starlight outside. “Hm?”
“It was all for you,” Aziraphale repeats. “I just…I wanted to make it nice. For you.”
Crowley smiles softly. “You did,” Crowley says simply. “You have. You are. You’re perfect.” He punctuates each statement with a kiss.
In the salty dark, warm under the covers, Aziraphale believes him.
The light shifts. The dark turns from solid black to blue. The waves still crash outside and there are a few squawks of freshly awoken seagulls, somewhere out in the distance.
Crowley is still. Aziraphale has been watching him sleep for some time now, and he’s fascinated by it. He’s fascinated by all of Crowley, really. The demon has latched onto him like a mollusk in a storm. His breath disturbs the hairs on Aziraphale’s chest, his hands have a lax grip on his side, and he is so completely still. The worry lines have been smoothed out of his face.
A thousand misplaced decisions he thought were right leading him to here, now. He wishes he could’ve gotten here sooner, but it doesn’t do well to dwell on the past. Or the future, for that matter, as imposing and uncertain as it is. No, he thinks the world can spare a few hours.
He runs his fingers through Crowley’s hair. It’s softer without the gel and product. Crowley stirs, rubbing his nose into Aziraphale’s chest before freezing. He lifts his head up slowly, a shocked look on his face, and raises his eyebrows as if to say This is real?
Azraphale raises his eyebrows right back, as if to say Yes, I do believe so. Isn’t that wonderful?
A giggle bubbles out of him. Crowley quickly follows suit. There’s no pinpointing what they’re laughing about; it’s just pure joy and amazement. Like watching someone pull off a really good magic trick.
Eventually the laughter dies down, and all that’s left in the space between them. Aziraphale considers what to say; in novels the first words after a night of passion are often of the utmost importance.
“Crowley…” he starts.
There’s a great blast of white light.
It accompanied with the appropriate amount of trumpets, and possibly a bassoon, it’s hard to say. Both of them scramble at the sight and sound, pulling the quilt up higher over their naked bodies. A feeling of divinity washes over Aziraphale, and he quickly grabs onto Crowley, who grabs right back.
The light dies down to something viewable. Its shape is nothing and everything.
Aziraphale, says God.
“Oh, Lord,” Aziraphale shudders out.
The light shifts. Crowley.
Crowley looks as if he wishes to say something very clever, but all that comes out is a simple, “Hi.”
Just what do you think you’re doing?
It’s a moment Aziraphale would have had nightmares about, if he slept. He’s come up with a thousand excuses before. I was trying to thwart this demon or We are engaged in a kind of battle of wills, as it were. Or the even simpler Nothing! I don’t know him.
“Um,” Aziraphale says, before a calm comes over him. “Just having a bit of a lie in, actually. Why, is there a problem?”
The last time this happened—two people covering up their nudity, God asking a very direct question—it caused quite a stir. So Aziraphale’s prepared for anything, really, or he thinks he is.
I don't know, says God. You tell me. I get word from a very angry group of angels that something has happened, and you are to blame. So. I would like for you to explain.
Crowley frowns. “Well don't you know already?” he asks. “Omniscience, et cetera?”
I know and I don't know, God says, sounding a bit exasperated. Humanity was built in my image, Crowley. Have you ever seen them handle multitasking well?
“Ah.”
Exactly. The light shifts itself towards Aziraphale, and an expectant pause. Well?
Azraphale suddenly feels like he’s 6,000 years younger and one sword short. “W-Well, there was an um. An incident with your plans regarding the Second Coming of the uh, Christ Child.” He laughs nervously. “Wherein they got destroyed. A-A bit.”
A pause. Who destroyed them? God asks, sounding frightfully neutral.
Aziraphale swallows. This is the moment of truth. He’s going to get erased for this, wiped from existence. He looks to Crowley, fear mirroring in his eyes. Crowley takes in a deep breath, turning to God, and Aziraphale knows he’s about to take the fall for him. He’d probably say something about it being an old habit.
In a split second, there is a choice to make. Aziraphale, for the second time today, makes the braver one.
“Me,” he says, before Crowley can speak. “I did. I destroyed them.”
God regards him. You did.
“Yes,” Aziraphale says. He sits up a bit. The words burst out of him. “I found them very objectionable, actually. O-On many fronts. For one, the end of the world as a whole I found to be completely egregious. For two, I am sorry, but your handwriting is atrocious . For three, the decision to have the child be born in Cincinnati, Ohio —”
I agree.
Aziraphale sputters. “W-What?”
“Yeah, what ?”
I said I agree, says God. And I'm glad you got rid of those plans. I'd been meaning to do that. Aziraphale and Crowley look to each other, then to God. She hums. Yes, I thought it over and realized it was a bum deal some time around...what year is it now? I'm everywhere at all times, so I get my dates mixed up. 502, or 1991. Maybe 2038. One of those. Meant to do away with it entirely.
“Well, why didn't you?” Crowley asks irritably.
I was going to get around to it. I've got a lot on my plate.
“So you...you made a mistake,” Aziraphale concludes, and feels some solid foundations of his belief system crumble underfoot.
Technically, everything has gone the way it's supposed to, she says with the surety of a tech startup CEO. I didn't want the Second Coming. You insured that. I'm sure I'll figure out how I did it in the future. Or the past. I work in mysterious ways.
Or maybe you didn't do anything at all, Aziraphale thinks, wondering about so many small moments that not even God could squeeze into.
I heard that, says God. That’s blasphemy, you know. Aziraphale does. He nods, and Crowley’s hand tightens around his. There is a tense… tense moment of deliberation. But I shall let that go. For now.
There is a collective sigh. Crowley’s grip lessens, but only slightly. “So...are we...in trouble?” Aziraphale asks. “For the plans? For...?” He gestures to their current state of dress, or lack thereof.
There is another pause. No.
“Oh,” Aziraphale sighs in relief.
But you are fired.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale. “Like....?” He points to Crowley, who also points at himself with a questioning look.
No, says God. You will continue to be just as I made you. The light shifts, and God sounds tired. I heard that as well, Crowley.
Crowley grins. “And I'm not apologizing.”
God gives the self-satisfied sigh of a job well done. Well, I think that about covers it. Is there anything else?
“Yes, actually,” says Aziraphale, feeling bold. He wants to ask about human suffering, and what the deal was with that first Apocalypse anyway, and what’s going to happen going forward. “I—”
The light disappears. All that’s left is the room, and the sound of a few hungry seagulls.
Aziraphale deflates. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” says Crowley, patting Aziraphale on the back. “She tends to do that.”
There is a hand on his back, and salt in the air. The sheets are soft, and nothing has broken. “We're free,” he says with amazement.
“Always have been.”
“Yes. Yes I suppose so. It just feels...Her showing up, it all feels so...I had a plan [9]. To fight, and then she—”
“They don't call it God in the machine for nothing, Angel.” Crowley’s nose scrunches. “She tends to throw wrenches.”
“I suppose so,” Aziraphale says, and smiles. “This is a rather nice one.”
Crowley snorts. “Let's not give Her the credit,” he says. “We did this all ourselves.”
Aziraphale cups his face. “That we did,” he says, and kisses him soundly. Quite soundly.
As they fall back, sheets twisting around their limbs, Aziraphale has to step outside of it for a moment to really appreciate it. The world isn’t ending. They’re all safe here. Nobody is getting punished: not him, not Crowley, not—
“Muriel!” Aziraphale realizes, mid-kiss.
Crowley pulls away. “Don’t—Don't say that when we're—”
“No, Muriel! I forgot to ask what they were going to do with Muriel!” Crowley goes wide-eyed, and they pull apart.
After some commotion and a couple snaps of fingers, Aziraphale and Crowley run out of the room, fully dressed and ready to fight, only to find Muriel exactly where they’d left them: on the couch, watching cartoons.
They stand there, sputtering. Crowley croaks something unintelligible, and Muriel turns to them with a cheerful smile.
“Hello!” they say, waving. “You two were very loud.”
Crowley slowly jabs a thumb towards the bedroom. “We—we were, uh—”
“Making love,” Aziraphale supplies.
“Making—” Crowley chokes a little. “Yeah, that. Have you just been sitting here this whole time? Watching…” He peers at the television. “ Shaun the Sheep ?
“Yup!” they chirp. “Well, almost. God came to visit.”
A Look is exchanged. “And what...what did you do?” Aziraphale asks.
Muriel snorts. “I did what you did! I offered Her a seat and a nice cupperty.”
“And?” Aziraphale presses.
“And we had a lovely conversation.” They frown. “Or I think we did. Mostly we watched Shaun the Sheep [10].” They smile. “Is everything okay? Only, I was a bit worried that something might have happened, if God came to visit.”
“Yes. Yes, we’re…” Aziraphale looks at Crowley and smiles. “We’re okay.” Muriel beams. “You don’t have to stay here, if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I think I will,” Muriel says. “I like the stories.”
“We meant Earth, Muriel,” says Crowley.
“I know,” they say, and go back to watching their cartoons.
Aziraphale and Crowley leave Muriel to their stories. They opt for going outside. The back of the cottage offers a lovely view; the ocean off in the distance, the wide sky around. It’s just rained, possibly, or maybe it’s just dewy. Hard to tell. The sun is rising, the wind is bracing, the birds are calling.
The world turns.
“Right,” says Aziraphale. “Well, what do we do now?”
Crowley smiles at him gently, beautifully. “Whatever we want, angel.”
Let’s try this one last time.
An angel and a demon walk into a restaurant together. They sit down, order their food, and make polite conversation. Well, not completely polite. Flirty conversation.
They get oysters for appetizers and a bottle of Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux. The demon asks if the angel can teach him how to eat these things again. He does.
At some point, the waiter comes by and says they’ve been drinking the wrong bottle, and he’s just realized his mistake. He apologizes profusely and offers to give them a bottle for free.
“It’s alright,” says the angel. “To err is divine. To forgive is human.”
Okay, so it’s not a very funny joke. Still, the angel and the demon find it very funny. They laugh themselves silly about it, actually: through the meal, through getting the check, through the car ride home. They keep falling into silence only to start giggling about it again. They laugh and laugh and laugh until one of them shuts the other up with a kiss, and even then they laugh through that.
This goes on for some time. And it keeps on going. And going and going and going…