Chapter Text
Books, tea, peonies, chocolate truffles.
Most people don’t think about this kind of things while doing their job. They probably think about the grocery trip long overdue, what they’ll have for dinner that night, various and creative ways to murder their boss and get away with it.
Aziraphale doesn’t think about any of it. Aziraphale thinks about books, tea, peonies, chocolate truffles. Aziraphale thinks about nice things, pretty things, good things while he does his job.
Detective Fell of Washington P.D., intelligence unit, 23rd District, badge number #54059, should think about the case his unit is working on, should think about the paperwork piling up on his desk, should think about all the therapy appointments he missed.
Aziraphale is thinking about books, tea, peonies, chocolate truffles instead. He’s driving towards an empty warehouse on the outskirts of the city, past Southwest, in the land of nowhere.
It’s the first alternative meeting point. He’s meeting with an informant.
Books, tea, peonies, chocolate truffles. Sunglasses when it’s raining. Black jeans. Red hair.
Detective Fell is not supposed to have a favorite informant. Aziraphale does. And he should drop him.
His informant is good: always on time, always precise and concise, always reliable. His unit solved many cases with the help of this particular informant. His Sergeant will have Aziraphale’s head if he even thinks about dropping him.
He really, really should though.
When Aziraphale is on the job, he thinks about his favorite things to get through the day. It’s the only way he can drag his tired, burned out body through yet another kidnapping, yet another suspicious overdose, yet another armed robbery. He thinks about books, tea, peonies, chocolate truffles.
Almost one year ago, he started thinking about a black leather jacket, worn combat boots, the reddest hair in Washington and a smoky voice saying angel.
He should have dropped Anthony Crowley as an informant right that second. Instead, he decided to be selfish. And oh, this selfishness is backfiring on him quite spectacularly.
He parks where he usually parks, on the east side of the building. He gets out of his car and leans against the door, waiting. He’s five minutes early.
No one takes a look at Aziraphale Fell and guesses what he does for a living. Blond curls, soft body, gray eyes, rosy cheeks: he looks like a librarian, or a History Professor, or a classical musician.
You kind of look cherubic, has anyone ever told you that? A proper angel, I’ll be damned.
It worked wonders for him, this body and face of his, when he was younger and used to do undercover gigs. No one ever suspected a thing.
At night, when Aziraphale gets home and looks at himself in the mirror, he sees a librarian, or a History Professor, or a classical musician. He wishes it was true. The badge in his pocket weighs tremendously, at night.
Five minutes later, another car parks beside him. A sleek, classic black Bentley, screeching to a halt way too close to Aziraphale’s and for his own comfort.
Aziraphale rolls his eyes. “Always so discreet, Crowley, thank you.”
The man in question saunters over to Aziraphale, leaning beside him. He smells like cigarettes and he looks so beautiful it makes Aziraphale’s mouth dry, as usual. “Wouldn’t want to bore our audience. Dead rats are demanding, you know?”
Aziraphale rolls his eyes again. “Sorry this place isn’t up to your standards.”
“One of these days,” Crowley says as he lights up another cigarette, “I’ll choose the meeting point. Could take you to Le Diplomate, Nobu.” He leans closer, huffing a puff of smoke right in Aziraphale’s face. “The Four Seasons, even. Better than your options.”
The first time Detective Aziraphale Fell met Criminal Informant Anthony J. Crowley he had one single, simple thought, so sudden and so unexpected he still remembers it with clarity: I wish I met you in a park. He pictured Crowley on a bench, the cold winter air messing up his artfully tousled hair and reddening his sharp cheekbones. He pictured himself with two hot chocolates in hand, sitting down beside him, asking him out for dinner, telling him he was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. Countless and countless nights he pictured this scenario.
It never made it true.
The first time Detective Aziraphale Fell met Criminal Informant Anthony J. Crowley, he told him he would end up in jail if he didn’t give him any useful information. Crowley had smirked, devastating and irresistible, and called him angel for the first time.
“Crowley, I don’t have all day,” he huffs, tapping his foot impatiently on the ground.
Crowley pouts. “I’m starting to feel neglected, angel. You always flee after fifteen minutes.” He’s teasing, Aziraphale knows he’s teasing. Still, when Crowley speaks again he knows there’s some truth underneath the facade. “We never go out for drinks anymore.”
Twice, that happened. Beers the first time in a somewhat shitty pub near Aziraphale’s district (much, much too close); then fancy cocktails at a hotel bar in a part of the city Aziraphale usually visits to arrest corrupt politicians.
They hadn’t been dates. They were just outings for work related reasons. At least, that’s what Aziraphale had told his boss.
He left out how he saw Crowley’s eyes for the first time, a brown so light it almost looked golden, and promptly choked on the beer he was sipping. He left out how Crowley’s voice squeaked once he'd gotten him to talk about his house plants. He left out how Crowley had bitten his lip to stifle a laugh when Aziraphale attempted to pull a coin out of his ear, with questionable results.
He left out how the outings were the best nights he had in years. I can’t believe you’re part of that, Crowley had told, four fancy cocktails later. You’re way too good for it.
And Aziraphale had confessed. Five cocktails later he had whispered, I never wanted any of it.
Then, he told the whole story. Then, he fled. There had been no more outings after.
Aziraphale blinks, shakes himself into a more conscious state. “It smells like rain,” he says. Crowley nods. Those two nights are still the only two times Aziraphale saw his eyes. “You said you had something for me.”
Crowley takes a long drag, tilts his head back. Aziraphale tries not to stare at the curve of his neck too much. “What if I just wanted to see you?”
“Crowley.” It’s an admonishment. It’s a pleading. Aziraphale turns sharply, and his gaze is met by the usual black holes. But the crease between the brows is there: Aziraphale has become fairly good in reading Crowley’s expression behind the shades, he knows now all the different ways his brows crease, his lips twitch, his nose scrunches up. Perhaps it’s a bit obsessive, on his part. Yet another reason why he should put a stop to this.
And yet, and yet. And yet he can’t.
He can’t because when he thinks about the things he loves the most to get through the day he sees flashes of red hair and dark glasses and sleek cars. He can’t because then Crowley says I just wanted to see you and Aziraphale wants to say he wanted it too, so badly, too much.
“I know, Aziraphale, I know.” Crowley sighs and cards a hand through his hair. Aziraphale stares, eyes wide as saucers. “You don’t survive living the way I do if you’re not selfish.”
Aziraphale tries to still his shaking hands by closing them into fists. His nails dig into his palms, and he hopes they’ll leave half-moon shaped marks, as a reminder.
“Crowley, this is a professional arrangement.” He starts his well rehearsed speech, staring down at his feet. “This only works one way: you give me intel, I keep you out of King County.”
He doesn’t say: if I touch you I will be the one ending up in jail and you’ll end up dead. He doesn’t need to, they both know it. Might as well say the grass is green.
“I know it, angel, trust me.” Crowley chuckles mirthlessly. “Selfish, remember? I wanted to see you.”
“Why?” What a stupid question. Why does Aziraphale keep dreaming about a different version of the two of them meeting in the most mundane of circumstances?
Crowley scoffs. “Take a wild guess.”
Aziraphale reluctantly smiles, just for a moment, before scolding his features into the previous frown. “Crowley,” he starts, once again lamely, but Crowley stops him, turning to face him properly and placing both of his hands on Aziraphale’s forearms.
Aziraphale swallows. They’ve never touched before. Not like this, at least. Not intentionally.
His cheeks are probably ablaze, but he keeps his eyes firmly on the ground.
“When we went out for beers that first time you smiled at me, remember? It was the first time I ever saw you smile.” Aziraphale remembers; Crowley had said something about ducks, and it was so adorably grumpy he couldn’t help but smile. “And I thought well shit, of fucking course he’s a cop. Seems likely to happen to me.”
Aziraphale may have whimpered, he’s not really sure. He knows that his shoes have started to look blurry and that Crowley’s thumbs are now tracing circles onto his forearms.
“Listen I’m not - asking you for anything. Just, dinner sometimes, yeah? I can find ways to give you intel so that you don’t get in trouble-”
“Crowley-”
“- and you know my intel’s good, but I know you don’t keep me around just because of it -”
“Crowley, please stop -”
“No one ever has to know. We’ll meet for work and then, then we could talk about something else. Anything you want. Just - just that. Nothing…more.”
Aziraphale Fell’s father had three rules. First, Fell men become cops; second, Fell men don’t cry; third, Fell men don’t develop a slight British accent just because they grow up with their very British grandmother. Aziraphale broke rule number three before it even became a rule, so he had no choice but to follow the other two.
Well, he broke rule number two a good amount of times, but his father never knew. Just like he didn’t know his only son liked books, or peonies, or tea, or other men.
In hindsight, he only followed rule number one, but it was still enough to ruin his life.
Now, as he lifts his gaze to look at Crowley’s beautiful face (the face of a criminal, the face of his CI, the face of the only person who made him laugh in the last year), he’s not breaking rule number two by some minor miracle.
He takes a shaky breath, trying really hard not to let the moisture collecting in his eyes fall. The tears are there, but they won’t fall. He can’t let them.
“I can’t.” It’s simple, and it’s the truth. “We can’t. You know we can’t.”
“No one ever has to know,” Crowley says, head shaking just south of frantically. “It’s nothing illegal or - or wrong, I won’t try anything, I swear-”
Aziraphale wonders if someone ever fought this hard just to keep his company. The answer is, frankly, a bit depressing. Idiotically, he has to fight a smile at the mere thought of this man willing to be this vulnerable, this soft in front of him. “I know you won’t, but I can’t.”
Crowley’s thumbs, still tracing circles into Aziraphale’s forearms, still completely. “Why?”
Aziraphale sniffs, then huffs out a laugh. He wants to say because knowing I’m not alone in my fantasy will kill me or because every time I look at you I feel like something is burning me from the inside out or even because they’ll destroy you and me both and I can’t do that to you.
Instead, what comes out of his mouth is, “Sometimes I wish I’d met you in a park.”
Which, well it’s true, but it isn’t exactly something people say in the middle of nowhere, outside an abandoned warehouse surrounded by dead rats and God knows what else. It’s not something people say period, except maybe in movies or in those romances Aziraphale is ashamed to admit he reads voraciously.
Crowley’s hands move lower, down, down until he reaches Aziraphale’s palms and intertwines their fingers. There isn’t a single chance this gesture can fall under the umbrella of ‘plausible deniability’. Though, Aziraphale muses, nothing about this sort of impromptu confession could.
“A park, uh? Nice.” A squeeze. “I always imagine something like a library. Or a bookshop or, not sure, whatever place is full of books.”
Aziraphale remembers telling Crowley about him being a (not really) closeted bookworm. He told him about his favorite novels, endured endless teasing about having the literary taste of a Victorian maiden, he watched as Crowley’s eyes lit up when he lost himself in singing the praises of Anne Elliott.
“You’d be the rude owner who doesn’t give a fuck about customer service.”
It’s getting harder to blink back tears. This particular exercise is probably going to kill me. “Crowley, don’t.”
“Not getting rid of me, so shut up and let me play your game.”
Aziraphale ignores the first part. “My game?”
“Who said anything about parks? Not me. So, as I was saying, rude owner.” Crowley’s usual smirk is terrible, but this small, soft smile he’s sporting now is even worse. “I’d barge in with my coffee in hand and, don’t know, knock over some books. Perhaps even spill a bit. You’d come after me all angry and shit, a proper avenging angel.”
Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say he wanted to be a librarian when he was a kid; he doesn’t say he used to play a game with his grandmother in which she’d play the customer and he’d play the bookkeeper; he doesn’t say Crowley is spot on in his imaginary description and he would definitely be a terrible businessman.
He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at Crowley like maybe he’s grown a second head. “What are you doing?” He’s pleading, maybe. He’s not sure what for.
Mercy, mostly. He can endure feeling the way he does, he can live through this attraction, this connection and come out of it mostly unscathed. He cannot endure reciprocation, though.
That would be entirely too much of a cosmic joke. The one man he wants -
“Humor me and play your fucking game,” Crowley snarls, but there’s no bite. He looks sadder than anything else, really.
Aziraphale takes a deep breath, stares at Crowley some more. He really is terribly beautiful: that’s the first thing he thought about him, even as he was putting handcuffs on him. But then he got to know him, and it got even worse.
Crowley is witty, snarky, awfully smart; but he’s also a bit awkward, a lot nerdy, endearingly kind behind his aloof attitude and dangerous looks.
Aziraphale is a creature of habit, he finds comfort in predetermined patterns and well known rhythms. Crowley is nothing like he was supposed to be, like everyone told him he would be. Crowley is a paradox. Once Aziraphale found it out, he was doomed. He knew he should have put a stop to it. He should have given Crowley’s file to someone else, he should have never agreed to have him as a CI, he should have never accepted his invitations.
Yet every time Crowley calls, he comes. Aziraphale is weak; his father was right about that, at least.
“It’s simple, really,” he says, because he’s weak and because he can see Crowley’s eager eyes even from behind the maddening glasses. “There’s a bench and two hot drinks and then we talk.”
Crowley lifts an eyebrow. “Not much different than our actual first meeting.”
“Well, if you don’t count the interrogation room and the bunch of paperwork and the handcuffs.”
“I liked the handcuffs.” Crowley’s glasses slide down his nose and Aziraphale catches a glimpse of his golden eyes for the third time in his life. Crowley winks, but he winks like someone who doesn’t know how to wink and thinks closing one eye slightly more than the other one counts as a proper wink.
Aziraphale huffs out a laugh. “Stop it.”
“Made you laugh.”
Aziraphale stares down at their joined hands. If someone were to take a picture right now, nothing he could say or do could save the both of them. Impressing every callous and every bony knuckle onto his memory, he squeezes one last time and lets go. “I need to get back.”
“I know.” Crowley says. His fingers flex once, twice, closing around the nothingness. Aziraphale tries and fails not to read too much into it. He feels the same, at least. “They can’t get anything done without you.”
Aziraphale snorts. “Hardly. I just sit around at my desk all day, according to my colleagues.”
“Your colleagues are -”
“Fuckers. I know.”
Crowley smirks. “Hearing that word coming out of your mouth is definitely doing things to me.”
“Crowley,” once again, Aziraphale pleads. He already lost count of how many times he said the man’s name today.
Crowley gives him a long stare. Aziraphale hates how much more unreadable the glasses make him. Then again, he knows his line of work, and he gets it. “I wasn’t kidding you know? About the bookstore, and the park, and whatever the hell just left my mouth. I wasn’t kidding.”
Tilting his head, Aziraphale stares back. He could - no, he should get into his car, start the engine, drive away, and never answer a call from Crowley again. Any other normal professional in his position would do this, or he would leave the force altogether. Aziraphale, though, does nothing of the sort, because he’s been many things in his lifetime but a normal professional will never be one of them.
“You’d sit next to me on a bench, in the park,” he says. He doesn’t stop to think about it. “You would have two cups of coffee and you’d come up with some absolutely ridiculous pick up line and I would go along with it because it’d be you, and then we’d…click. We would click, just like that.”
“Just like that, eh?” Crowley echoes quietly, so quietly Aziraphale would have missed it had he not been completely focused on every microexpression on that usually guarded face, now so open and unguarded Aziraphale feels guilty for being the cause of that much vulnerability. As quickly as it dropped, the mask comes back. “Yeah, ‘course we would. Wouldn’t miss my chance with an angel, after all.” It’s said with Crowley’s familiar smirk, but now that Aziraphale has seen beyond it, he can sense the hidden depth in Crowley’s words.
Because he still cannot and doesn’t want to stop and think about this whirlwind of a conversation, he rolls his eyes. He huffs out a laugh, a mirthless and empty one, and gets into his car. Crowley follows his every movement. As Aziraphale starts the engine, Crowley leans into his space, placing his arms on the rolled-down window.
His sunglasses are now gone, perched on the top of his head. The view of his unshielded eyes - for the fourth time in Aziraphale’s existence - makes Aziraphale’s breath hitch. He has never seen another pair of golden eyes. “I’ll still call you,” Crowley whispers, leaning in even closer. “I owe you another round of your game. Just wait and see what I can come up with.”
Aziraphale wants to kiss him. Lean into the remaining space between them and press his lips to Crowley’s, breathing him in, tasting him, feeling him all over. It’s not the first time. He always wants to, has wanted to since their first conversation, but the urge is stronger, sometimes. Specifically, when he gets the chance to look into his unshielded, beautiful eyes.
“I can’t promise you dinner,” though Aziraphale wants to so very, very bad. “But you know I will answer.”
When Crowley smiles his true smile, it’s a small, tight thing, but it lights up his whole face. “Then we’re gonna be okay.”
Aziraphale won’t. He suspects Crowley won’t either. “Stay safe, Crowley.”
As he drives away, he shuts every thought off. He only thinks of books, peonies, tea, golden eyes, leather, chocolate, cheap beers, overpriced drinks, a bench in a park and a bookstore that doesn’t exist.
It’s enough to take him back to the station without crashing his car.
Detective Fell should have been fired a long time ago, to be perfectly fair.
Sure, he did some pretty good things when he was younger and he passed all the written exams with the highest marks. On the practical side, though…
He’s a decent shooter and a fast thinker, but he can’t run to save his life and will never win a fight in a million years. He passed the physical tests by some miracle and nepotism.
Yet, he works in the most elite unit of the Department, and has been working there for roughly fifteen years.
Detective Fell is a profiler. He is the only profiler in the Department, actually.
In the hopes of delaying the inevitable (read: joining the Force), he went to University and majored in Psychology, then got his Master’s Degree in Criminal Psychology, and would have gotten another degree if dear old dad didn’t completely lose it during Christmas Eve’s dinner.
When he joined the Washington P.D., they didn’t know what to do with him. He was overqualified for any office job and underqualified for any job on the field. Then, they decided that if they had profilers in Quantico, they could have a profiler on the Intelligence Unit as well.
No one of the old guard ever believed in Aziraphale’s skills; they were used to a hands on approach, criminology and psychology never had any room in their investigation.
When they solved a cold case (that had been cold since 1997) thanks to his insights, many changed their minds. Who knew soft, lazy, beige-wearing Fell could catch a murderer just by thinking like him?
That’s what most of his colleagues think his job is, anyway. He gave up trying to explain it to them after a few years.
When Aziraphale draws up a profile, he doesn’t need to think like the perpetrator; he needs to understand their behavior, the reasons behind it, the choices they made and why they made them. He uses complex techniques, extensive knowledge of behavioral patterns, criminal or not, statistical data, forensic evidence; but sure, Larry from the front desk likes to think Aziraphale sits at his desk all day blabbering ‘ white man in his 30s, complex family history, a history of difficult relationships with peers and women especially ’’ just because he has a fancy degree to fall back on.
Well, Aziraphale (and the people on the Intelligence Unit who actually respect him) know better.
Speaking of people who respect him, Detective Nina Zolaya is one of them. Aziraphale lets out a sigh of relief when he spots her sitting at her desk, the one directly in front of his own one.
“Fell.” She greets him, quite curtly. Nina is a bit of an acquired taste: she’s snappy, a little rude, with a general aloof demeanor that can be quite off putting. Thankfully, Aziraphale reads people for a living. He didn’t take long to understand she was an incredible professional, and an even better friend.
“Good morning Nina,” he sits down at his desk with a heavy sigh, smiling lightly at the warm cup already waiting for him.
“Nice meeting with your favorite C.I.?”
His smile immediately drops. Nina doesn’t miss a beat, still typing away on her desk. “So? Was it useful?”
Yes, it was. He can’t possibly tell her, but it really was. He’s now aware that he’s not alone, and he hasn’t felt not alone in… in an embarrassingly long time. “Drop it, Nina.”
At this her dark eyes snap up. “No, you need to drop him.”
Aziraphale may be the profiler, but Nina has always been able to read him well. He suspects she knows about the feelings Aziraphale hides, or, at the very least, about the definitely unprofessional nights he and Crowley shared, but he never told her, because he knew what she would have said. Specifically, “You should have already dropped him, and you know it.”
Aziraphale doesn’t reply. He picks up a random manila folder on his desk and starts typing details on a report he should’ve completed at least a week ago. He hates paperwork, unless he can use it as an excuse to evade questions.
“Fell. Aziraphale.”
“Don’t you have work to do, Nina?”
She stares at him, unblinkingly. He feels like squirming under her judging gaze, but holds it regardless. “I don’t want to have to tell you ‘I told you so’.”
Aziraphale swallows. She can never know about this last meeting with Crowley. “I am a seasoned professional, Nina, I can handle a C.I. by myself.”
“Sure, a normal C.I. We both know there’s nothing normal about you and Anthony Crowley.”
It’s true, Aziraphale wants to say. Anthony Crowley is smart, witty, fun, kind, nothing like Nina or anyone else at the District can even imagine. Aziraphale is the only one who knows him like that, in this godforsaken place. “If you’re so worried about it you could just report me,” he says with a snarl, already knowing she would never do something like this.
“I’m your friend, you idiot.” Nina sighs in exasperation. “I worry about you -”
“I can handle it. I am handling it.” I’ll keep my distance. I’ll reject him, again, if I need to. Just another sacrifice for this job I already hate. Aziraphale has a touch of finality in his voice, and Nina doesn’t fail to pick it up. She stares at him some more, her eyes unblinking and unforgiving.
“If you say so, I trust you.” Nina lies, quite badly, but at least agrees to drop the topic for the time being.
Aziraphale tries a smile, landing just south of it. “Thank you. Now,” he scans the room with a furrowed brow. “Where’s everyone?”
Nina shrugs. “Adam and Pep are doing that firearm requalification thing, should be back in fifteen or so.”
Aziraphale nods. He likes Adam and Pepper (officer Young and Moonchild for everyone else); young, bold and ambitious, everything his father wanted him to be. Even though they’re both closer to thirty than to University, Aziraphale still calls them both kids, much to Pepper’s annoyance.
“What about the Sergeant?”
Nina graces him with an enormous eye roll. “Emergency meeting or something Downtown with the big bosses. He stormed out a while ago.”
Aziraphale nods, (not so) secretly relieved. He at least has some more time to come up with a good enough lie for his earlier meeting. Sergeant Gabriel Ward tolerates Aziraphale as long as he can use him to solve more cases than any other unit in the Department, and if that means accepting Anthony Crowley as a C.I., then so be it: as long as Crowley is useful to Aziraphale, Sergeant Ward will pat Aziraphale’s back with the grace of a black bear, with a way to go, sunshine on the side.
Hence the need for a lie, and a good one at that. He can’t go to his boss and tell him yes, the meeting with the C.I went very well, he confessed his feelings, which are very much reciprocated by the way, then I left him there and came back here to mope. Coffee? Gabriel would probably shoot him, and he would be right.
“Do you know what this meeting is about?” Aziraphale hopes it’s something budget related or something. Gabriel loves his paperworks, he will be in the best mood possible if he spends an hour or so talking about spending reviews and his immaculate accounting skills.
Really, he is not the worst boss he could have. He’s not the best, by a long shot: he’s loud, annoying, weirdly competitive, overly touchy, but he has a very analytical mind, he knows how to manage a team, and actually listens to Aziraphale’s input (most of the time).
“No idea,” Nina replies. “But he seemed worried. It was weird to see his eyebrows actually move.”
Aziraphale groans, head in his hands. Nina, unmerciful, snorts. “Oh no, now Detective Fell has to create an even more elaborate lie than he thought because the boss is upset.”
Aziraphale groans some more.
“Why does Detective Fell need to lie?” Adam and Pepper make their entrance, of course at the worst possible time. Aziraphale glares at Nina, who at least has the decency of looking a bit embarrassed.
“I took the morning off without notice for a personal matter I don’t want Gabriel to know of,” he says, hoping the smile he tries for looks genuine. Judging the look Pepper gives him, it’s not.
“Whatever, keep your secrets mister profiler.” She leans on his desk to snatch his barely touched cup of coffee. “I embarrassed Adam at the shooting range by the way.”
Nina fist bumps her, while Aziraphale gives her a more genuine smile, ignoring Adam’s protests. “I never doubted it.”
“Well thank you Azi,” Adam, the only person to ever call Aziraphale Azi, moans while plopping down his chair. “It wasn’t half as bad as she makes it sound.”
Their bickering keeps his mind occupied, at least.
At least, if he focuses on his colleagues’ nonsense, he gets a break from the endless stream of angel, I just wanted to see you, no one ever has to know, anything you want, angel, angel, angel-
“Ah, good, you’re all here.” As soon as Gabriel’s voice fills the room, everyone shuts up instantly. They all share a look: Gabriel is in Sergeant Ward mode, and it’s never a good sign.
“What’s up, boss?” Adam bravely asks.
Aziraphale takes one look at Gabriel: stone cold expression, jaw set almost painfully, left eye twitching, a heavy folder in a white knuckled grip, a big red CLASSIFIED stamp on all sides of it.
His stomach drops. As if his day hasn’t already been the absolute worst.
The white board in the Intelligence Unit office has seen many bad things. Crime scene photos are never a pleasant view, not to mention the smiling pictures of the victims right next to the images of their variously mutilated bodies and the written out details of their death.
The pictures Sergeant Gabriel Ward just put up on the white board are among the worst Detective Fell has ever seen. Even Pepper, usually the coldest of the team, sucks in a sharp breath.
“Sarah Thompson, Atticus Glover, Masha Petrov,” Gabriel lists as he puts up the pictures. The victims’ eyes are open, unnaturally so even in death, bloodshot. He must have used a stapler, Aziraphale thinks, weirdly numb. He doesn’t bother with gender neutral pronouns; this kind of crime is always the work of a man.
“Besides the eyes, they have all been stabbed multiple times, never in the major arteries or near internal organs. Cause of death ruled as strangulation -”
“With a wire, right?” Aziraphale hears himself ask. Four pairs of eyes turn in his direction. He coughs. “The staples, the non life-threatening wounds,” he says, gesturing at the victim’s pictures. He walks closer to the board, looking into the bloodshot eyes of Sarah Thompson. She was 21 years old. “The killer’s main goal is not killing for the sake of it. He enjoys the suffering. ”
He’s not even talking to the rest of his team anymore. “They all have signs of handcuffs on their wrist and ankles, right? He wants them to stay still and take whatever he does to them. He doesn’t wound them mortally, he wants to drag it out. He gets off on the torture, the actual killing is just a side effect.”
When he comes back to himself, he realizes the four people in the room are still staring at him, with various degrees of concern. They’re all used to Aziraphale getting lost in the job, focusing so hard on a case he sometimes doesn’t even hear whatever they’re saying to him. It doesn’t make it any less creepy, he suspects.
“Jesus Christ, Azi.” Adam says. Pepper and Nina are looking at him with crossed arms and furrowed brows. Gabriel’s eyes are wide. “Right,” he starts. “This is the reason why they gave the case to us.” He points at Aziraphale, who embarrassingly flushes. “We’re the only unit with an actual profiler. Homicides wanted to nick him from us, but I refused.”
Aziraphale flushes some more. “This is a serial killer. Why isn’t the FBI involved?” He asks, hoping to shift the room’s attention on anything but him.
“They’re swamped and don’t believe three victims is enough to be bothered.”
Aziraphale shivers. Perhaps they’re right, in the grand scheme of things, three victims are not much. Given the amount of violence though, whoever this is needs to be stopped.
“He will escalate,” he says, “the first victim is a test run. Second and third is him building confidence. It will get worse.”
Pepper mutters a blasphemy under her breath, while Nina sighs. “How can it get worse than this?”
No one replies. They all know it can always get worse.
“There’s more.” Gabriel picks us a blue marker and starts writing. “There is one single video from a security camera of one of the kidnappings.” He writes video evidence under Atticus’ picture. “Face covered, hands gloved, not a glimpse of a car or other vehicle.”
“Fucker’s good.” Adam mutters. Aziraphale doesn’t even nod. He already suspected as much.
“Nothing for the other two kidnappings. Nothing on the victims’ phones, nothing on any security or traffic camera near their jobs, schools and homes. They vanished into thin air and were discovered three days later in the same place, in a barrel under a bench in the East side of Georgetown Waterfront Park.”
Hysterically, Aziraphale wants to laugh. A bench in a park, really? What has he even done to the Universe?
“And we have nothing?” Nina’s voice manages to keep him anchored to the pretty dire situation. “Who is this guy, some psycho-killing ghost?”
Gabriel looks at Aziraphale kind of expectantly. He sighs. “He’s calculating, and obviously smart. He probably knows the location of all security and traffic cameras of the areas he chooses his victims from, extensively. He studies every detail and every move, he’s probably an educated individual, possibly with a higher than average I.Q. He’s young, physically in good shape, seeing as he picks up the second victim almost effortlessly in the video. Most importantly, he is familiar with how police work. That’s how he manages to stay one step ahead of us.”
The silence after his little speech is tense, as per usual. Gabriel weirdly looks… proud, Pepper is impressed, Nina is a bit weirded out and Adam is, well, Adam is awed.
Nina always tells him the boy kind of worships him, but Aziraphale always shushes her. Then there are times like these when Adam looks at him like he’s the sun and Aziraphale’s heart clenches.
“Fuck Azi,” he breathes. “You’re so smart.”
“Language Young. And focus.” Gabriel is back to Sergeant Ward mode. “Thank you, Fell. I’ll leave you the whole file so you can offer us some more of your insights.”
Obviously. This is how Gabriel Ward works: he only praises Aziraphale when he needs him to overwork himself to death.
As he was saying, not the best boss ever.
“The rest of you, I want you to dig into every detail of the victims’ life. I want to know where they grew up, where they went to school, where their parents did grocery shopping. If there is a single connection between them, we’ll find it. Understood?”
Adam and Pepper nod and launch themselves into work with a definitive “Yes, sir.”
Nina lingers for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth between Aziraphale and the Sergeant. “Alright then,” she finally says, starting to drag her chair next to Pepper’s. “Shout if you need a break,” she tells Aziraphale, which is code for don’t lose yourself into this folder or I’ll drag you to your therapist’s office kicking and screaming , which is, unfortunately for Aziraphale’s pride, something that really happened. 2021 was a terrible year.
“Of course,” he replies, before turning his attention back onto Gabriel. “Anything else I need to know?” He asks as the heavy and CLASSIFIED folder is unceremoniously deposited into his hands. Gabriel offers him his kind of creepy, all teeth smile. “This is some heavy stuff, but I know you can handle it.”
Aziraphale doesn’t even try for a smile. He sits back down at his desk, and concedes himself a moment to rub his temples and just float. Books, he thinks, books and peonies and chocolate truffles and angel and red hair and anything you want and golden eyes and I just wanted to see you and tea. Deep breath. He opens the folder.
No one knocks on Aziraphale’s flat door at night (if he hasn’t ordered food).
No one has knocked on his door in approximately two years, at least, not even Nina, not since they got so drunk they missed work the next day and they didn’t answer their phones for hours and the team had sent a search and rescue team who kicked his door down. They didn’t have any more wine nights.
This specific night, he hasn’t ordered any food, it’s way too late for Nina to be awake, and the knocks are far too aggressive to be from someone he knows. He ignores them for a while, trying to focus on finishing up his profile, after having spent the entire afternoon and evening memorizing and analyzing every detail on the folder.
The knocks don’t stop though, and Aziraphale groans. Figuring it must be a neighbor with a… burst pipe or something, he gets up from his sofa and goes to look through his peephole.
He very nearly falls over. He yanks the door open with such force it’s a miracle it even stays in place. “Have you completely lost your mind?” He drags Anthony Crowley inside his flat, and the image is so impossible a laugh bubbles up and dies down in his chest in the span of three seconds.
“Do you want to die?” Aziraphale is furious. “Do you want me to die? How did you even know where I lived? I should arrest you right this second, actually I will -”
“Your unit is working on the serial killer case?” Crowley stops him with a hand on his chest, which abruptly leaves as Aziraphale frowns even further. Crowley is panting, his cheeks flushed and hair in unusual disarray. Did he run here? “That is highly classified - do you want to be arrested?”
“It’s literally my job to find out things. I was at this cops' bar-”
“You’re insane.”
“- and I’ve heard this gorilla talking about Intelligence getting this big thing so I asked a few questions -”
“Do you want to be killed? Tell me, is this some kind of kink?”
Crowley actually stops his rambling to quirk an eyebrow. Aziraphale wants to strangle him. “They said it’s the staples serial killer. Is it true?”
“You knew about it?” Aziraphale hides his face in his hands. It’s not even furious anymore. This feels like a betrayal.
“I hear things, it’s what I do.” Crowley just shrugs. He doesn’t have his glasses on, Aziraphale notices. His eyes are darting all around the room, almost as if he’s imprinting every detail to his memory. He’s looking at anything but Aziraphale’s eyes.
“You need to drop the case.”
Aziraphale scoffs. “What?”
Finally, Crowley looks at him. “They said they gave the case to your unit because of you. Listen, you already know this, but this guy is one step ahead of the police, and has been one step ahead of you. Why do you think that is?”
Aziraphale is furious again. Without even thinking, he grabs Crowley’s wrist and leads him out the foyer and into his living room, shoving him down on the couch next to him, in front of his still opened laptop. He angrily scrolls for a bit before reading out loud: “Subject appears to be extremely in tuned and accustomed with police work; he probably runs in the same social circles, or has had previous or (possibly, if unlikely) current direct experience in the Force. Must keep every detail about the investigation highly classified.”
Crowley finally looks at him, just to stare unblinkingly for a moment. “You’re so clever.”
“It’s my job.” Aziraphale replies, blushing a little. Then, he remembers he’s furious with Crowley.
“So, did you run across the city, risking your life and mine, just to tell me something I already know?”
“What?” Crowley finally blinks and shakes his head. The movement makes some of his hair fall down onto his forehead. Aziraphale wants to push them back. “Don’t you get it? It’s already out, your name is out, and if he doesn’t know it already he will, and soon. You need to drop it.”
This time, it’s Aziraphale who stares into those wild eyes. “Why? Because it’s dangerous? Do I need to remind you what my job is?”
“It’s not just dangerous - this, this guy is a full blown psychopath, I heard what he did to those three kids.” Crowley shakes his head again, closes his eyes. “How do you think I can live knowing that he knows your name and that everyone believes you’ll be the one to catch him?”
Aziraphale stops breathing. Oh, he thinks. Crowley is worried about him. He ran across the city to knock on a cop’s door, risking his life, just to ask - no, to beg him to drop the most dangerous case of his career.
Aziraphale knows what this means. Heavens, if this morning wasn’t clear enough, now Crowley has basically a lit up billboard on his head. Deliriously, Aziraphale seriously considers kissing him again, square on the mouth.
“Crowley,” he says instead, not knowing where he’s going with this sentence but speaking anyway, just to keep his mouth occupied. “I - I get it. I do.” In another world, this means I love you, too. “You can’t ask me to drop this.”
The hopeful, barely there smile that was starting to bloom on Crowley’s face dies down. “You don’t get it-”
“You didn’t see what he did.”
Sarah Thompson was 21. Rough childhood, rougher teenage years, she was putting herself through community college by dancing at a nightclub in Deanwood. She left behind a two year old son.
Atticus Glover was 19. He was disowned by his parents after coming out, and moved to Washington DC after a sheltered upbringing in rural Utah. He lived in a shelter for homeless queer youth, and they took five days to notice he was missing (he’d been dead for two).
Masha Petrov was 24. She was the orphaned daughter of two Serbian immigrants, working as a waitress in a diner in Northwestern DC during the day and as a food delivery rider by night to support her two younger brothers, aged 15 and 17.
“I found more victims. Two in Atlanta, three in Chicago. Same M.O., well - more or less, but it’s him.”
Crowley scoffs. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you understand.” Aziraphale wrings his hands. “You can’t ask me to drop this because I can’t. They asked for me specifically -” He bites his lip, already bracing himself for Crowley’s reaction. He could pretend the slip up wasn’t intentional, but honestly? He should stop lying to himself, at least.
Predictably, Crowley straightens up. “They - Wait. Wait wait wait.” He scrubs his face with his hands, frantically. Aziraphale just waits, biting his lip until he can taste blood.
“You’d drop this? But you care about your idiotic bosses too much?”
Aziraphale is many things, but not stupid. He doesn’t have a choice; if he drops out of this case, he will be out of a job in minutes. And really, he’s many things, but apparently not a good person: he should be eager to catch this monster, he should be working day and night to fight for these victims no one else ever has fought and no one else will ever fight for, it should be his duty, to protect and serve.
But - but. Aziraphale is tired. He is so tired he doesn’t even know why he’s dragging himself to work everyday for, and he most definitely doesn’t know why he’s still risking his life for a system he doesn’t believe in anymore (he probably has never believed in it, not really).
Yet, he still does it. He doesn’t know who he is without this job. It’s a shitty reason, an even worse excuse for it, but it’s the truth. He’s not sure what to do when he’s not doing what he’s supposed to.
Belatedly, he realizes Crowley is still waiting for a reply. “I… I -” How much of the truth should he disclose? How much should he say to Crowley, who he wasn’t even supposed to meet, let alone like; to Crowley who listened and stayed and talked and ran half across the city to get to him?
“I don’t know how to do anything else.” Apparently, he goes for the whole of it. “And I’m not a good person, but I - I have to do this.”
Crowley doesn’t reply for a while, expression unreadable. Then he blinks once, twice, and Aziraphale knows he got it. Somehow, he always gets it. “You’re an angel,” he says at last, and Aziraphale scoffs. “Of course you’re good. And by the way -” he reaches forward, putting one hand on Aziraphale’s one. Not squeezing, not intertwining their fingers, just there, touching.
“If you ever want to run away, you have my number.”
Aziraphale moves his hand away, effectively breaking the moment. “You distracted me. What were you thinking, coming here?”
“Eh.” Crowley shrugs. “Wasn’t really thinking.”
“You should maybe start thinking, one of these days.” Aziraphale isn’t even angry anymore, but he still needs to keep up the act. He groans. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I have a few suggestions you wouldn’t like,” Crowley says, his devastating smirk making a tiny appearance.
Aziraphale sighs, getting up with a grimace. Since he grew up with a very British woman, there is only one thing he can think of right now. “I’m making a cup of tea.”
Crowley makes a face. “Alright King Charles. I’ll pass.”
Aziraphale rolls his eyes and goes to his kitchen, trying really hard not to think about the fact that he’s making himself some tea while Anthony Crowley is sitting on his couch. He laughs, a bit hysterically. This has truly been a day.
Tea made and poured into his favorite mug (because he deserves it), he goes back to his living room to find Crowley inspecting his bookshelves, his nose almost pressed into the hardbacks.
“Are you going to steal something?”
Crowley snorts. “God, you do like your gays.” Aziraphale makes an indignant sound. So what if he enjoys his Wilde and other examples of queer literature?
“By the way, I’ve just decided I’m not letting you do it. Either you shoot me right now or you work with me.”
The mug doesn’t fall just because Aziraphale had the clairvoyance to put it down on the small coffee table. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, choosing his next words carefully while contemplating Crowley’s offer to just shoot him.
“Crowley,” he starts, “what are you even talking about?”
“You do this alone, you die, I’m pretty sure.”
“You decided this?”
“Yeah.” He is still looking at the books, now inspecting the back of a poetry collection by Richard Silken. Aziraphale hopes he won’t get to the Georgette Hayer stash. “So I’m not letting you do it.”
Aziraphale would like to say a lot of things, but can’t for the life of him utter one. This has really been a hell of a day. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I have a whole team -”
“They’re not the fucking target of a highly skilled serial killer.”
“You decided I’m a target!”
Crowley puts the book down with more force than necessary. Aziraphale winces. “Are you going to tell me I’m wrong? No, you’re not, because I’m not.”
“You’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Aziraphale says, because he’s also as stubborn as Crowley is. “What’s your plan then? Stay parked right outside my office to be my guard dog?”
Crowley’s mouth twitches in a way that makes Aziraphale think that it was really the plan.
“Ask questions. Hang around some people I know. Hang around you. Make sure you don’t get into trouble.” His words are purposefully nonchalant, his shrug perfectly rehearsed. Aziraphale can hear the worry, the tightness in them. His heart clenches.
He takes one good look at Crowley, so out of place in Aziraphale’s cozy living room yet looking so right, with his sharp angles and dark clothes melting into the general ambience as if he’s never lived anywhere else.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Aziraphale starts, slowly and carefully, “that I’m just as worried about you as you are about me?”
Crowley shifts in place, seemingly at war with himself while deciding whether to move or not. His golden eyes, that Aziraphale is seeing for the fifth time, are darting all over his face.
“Then we have an agreement. I don’t let you die, you don’t let me die.”
It seems so wonderfully simple. An arrangement. As if it could ever be that easy. “And then?”
Crowley finally decides to move, coming over to Aziraphale in one long stride. The hand is back on top of his. “Then, as I told you before, you have my number.”
For a fleeting second, Aziraphale lets himself imagine it, running away with Crowley. In another world, a world in which Aziraphale is not a cop and Crowley is not an cybercriminal staying out of jail merely because of an agreement with the Washington P.D., they could do it: leave it all behind, start anew somewhere else, perhaps even on the other side of the Atlantic, away from everything and everyone part of their old life.
Aziraphale sighs. As if it could ever be that easy. “I’ll catch him, you know?”
“Oh, I do.” Crowley smiles, for the first time in this crazy evening. “And I’m not letting him catch you.”