Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wakes up. First he goes back to the bookshop and tears it apart looking for the Book, even though he can feel Aziraphale hasn’t been here in months. Muriel helps him, surprisingly enthusiastic, something that makes sense when they reveal to Crowley they’ve just finished Treasure Island. “Yeah,” he’d said to them. “It’s exactly like that.”

Except they find nothing. “It’s alright, it’s like that sometimes,” he says to them. “Carry on. And if anybody shows up here, you - you let me know, alright?” He’d given them a cell phone and showed them how to use it. They were particularly fond of Candy Crush.

“It’s not in the bookshop,” Crowley says in the next dream. They’re in Egypt. Aziraphale’s wearing the robe he’d looked perfectly angelic in, the sun bright on his face and shoulders, squinting slightly in the sun.

“Of course it’s not in the bookshop,” says Aziraphale, almost offended.

“Bookshop, book, would make sense,” Crowley says.

“Anyone could find it there!”


 “Anyone being me! Aziraphale, how the Heaven am I supposed to find this thing?”

“I’m terribly sorry thwarting the plans of a corrupt Heaven is so difficult for a wily demon such as yourself,” Aziraphale says, tartly. Satan, Crowley misses him. They look at each other. Maybe Aziraphale feels the same way, because he says, face softening - “You know, I remember this wine being particularly good,” as he hefts a jug that’s miraculously appeared by his side.

“Yeah, okay. Alright.”

They get drunk, spectacularly so, and it turns out you can’t really sober up in dreams, so Crowley’s hungover as Heaven when he wakes up. He’s not quite sure how that works. He wonders how Aziraphale feels, wherever he is. It doesn’t stop them from doing it again, and again. They get together in dreams as often as Crowley can slip away from real life, where he’s been tearing apart the world, looking in all the places he thinks Aziraphale might’ve hidden the Book: the Swiss National Bank, the Louvre, the Globe, the vague location of the shack Aziraphale had stayed in in the Rockies in 1858, the pyramids - that was a fun one - Beijing, every square inch of London, even Wales - but it’s never there.

In his dreams, they visit the Ritz, the West End, Babylon, Venice. They go for crepes. They go out for dinner. “Aziraphale,” Crowley says across the table from him one dinner, watching him carve away a blancmange piece by piece, “How is it you can eat in dreams?” He’s genuinely curious.

“You can get drunk in dreams, can’t you? Same thing.”

“Huh,” he says.

It feels almost like normal. Sometimes he forgets it’s just a dream. Aziraphale’s gaze lingers on him, Aziraphale keeps brushing their damn fingers together as he reaches for things: an umbrella, the last deviled egg. Crowley freezes, goes stiff every time he does, does everything short of pulling away, and it’s not fair, that wounded look on Aziraphale’s face when he does. He should know why.

After coming up empty in the twentieth country he’s been in, Crowley complains about the wild goose chase Aziraphale’s sent him on. They’re in Edinburgh. “Why this one again?” He says.

Aziraphale just smiles a little, sadly. He’s sitting this time, clutching the grotesque jar of tumor to his chest - no, Crowley blinks, it’s not a jar, it’s a brown leather briefcase.

“C’mon, give me a hint. You’ve got to be able to give me a hint.” He’s pacing, making the rounds of the mausoleum, this little stone cage.

“But Crowley, I have,” says Aziraphale.

It bothers Crowley for two days. He goes back to Soho. He even checks the coffee shop and the record shop, trying to avoid the prying questions coffee human and music human ask him as he tears the places apart, then put them back together. Frustrated, he stops by the bookshop to check on Muriel, who has apparently has stumbled upon Aziraphale’s collection of erotic novels, and asks Crowley a series of questions he feels exceedingly uncomfortable answering. In trying to bargain for time, he glances around the bookshop, at the familiar clutter of detritus: statues and theatre programs; the dusty chess set, a globe that had become outdated in the early 1900s. His gaze skips over the desk, where Aziraphale’s papers are mounded up, his diaries, drops down to the foot of the desk, where Aziraphale keeps his slippers ⁹ and his briefcase, which isn’t there.

The briefcase.

“Aziraphale,” he says that night, taking a brief kip in the Bentley on the way to Edinburgh. “What’s in the briefcase?”

“Ah,” says Aziraphale. His eyes are sparkling. “You see, I can’t - ”

“Tell me, right, got it. It’s the Book, isn’t it. It’s in Edinburgh.”

Aziraphale’s eyes are pinned on his, full of hope.

It’s in Edinburgh. Crowley goes to the graveyard, opens the mausoleum with a twist of his hand. He’d expected it to smell stale, mildewed, damp, but instead he’s hit with a blast of Aziraphale, the angel’s scent overlaying all of the above, plus something else, something entirely ethereal, entirely wrong for that place. Crowley finds the briefcase inside one of the tombs. He snatches it.

It’s the Book alright, the same big dusty tome he’d been seeing in the dream. “Aziraphale, you clever bastard,” he breathes. He doesn’t dare put a miracle on it, not there, doesn’t want to be traced before he can get someplace safe, so he puts it back in the briefcase, puts the briefcase on his lap and drives as fast as he can back to Soho, back to the bookshop. Muriel’s out across the road, and Crowley, looking over his shoulder, does a quick miracle on the Book to hide it. Doesn’t matter if Hell traces him here. They can’t get it. The Book ripples, and shifts, and the cover changes to Mrs. Breton’s Guide to Household Management. When he flips through the pages, quickly, there’s a miracle on top of them, shimmering. The pages look like - well, pornography.

Huh. He frowns to himself. He’s pretty sure he didn’t mean to do that.

Anyway, he settles the Book under a pillow on the sofa, then stretches out in the afternoon sunlight and goes to sleep as fast as he can.

“Aziraphale,” he says, “I’ve got it. I’ve got the book.” They’re in the bookshop, as they so often are. It’s night, and they’re in the backroom, and the soles of Crowley’s feet ache, tender and raw. Must be 1941. Crowley raises his glass in a toast. Aziraphale meets it, glasses clinking gently.

“Oh, well done,” he says. “But Crowley - now you’re in terrible danger.”

“Relax,” he says. “No one even knows I have it. Look, let’s go out. Let’s celebrate. Who’s controlling this, me or you?”

“Both, I think,” Aziraphale says.

“Then what about we go out? There’s a new sushi restaurant round the corner I think you’d like. Popped up in the last month.”

“Oh Crowley, that sounds lovely. But I’m afraid we both needed to be there together.”

Needed to - “You’re - where are you?” Crowley looks around, like the dream might help him. But there’s nothing different, nothing other than how he’d remembered it. “You’re not in my memories. You’re just using them as, as a template - a pattern - aren’t you?”

“Pocket world,” Aziraphale says, breathlessly. Apparently Crowley’d gotten close enough Aziraphale can tell him about it, now. “I made a pocket world out of our memories, tied it into your dreams.”

“Aziraphale, you clever bastard,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale flushes with pleasure, beaming. Then his face falls, and he twists his hands together.

“Not clever enough, I’m afraid. It’s not going to last, you see. It’s terribly unstable. Dreams are such finicky things.”

“Yes,” says Crowley. He’s always known that. “How long?”

Aziraphale shrugs, smiling that helpless little smile.

“How long, angel?”

“Time doesn’t really - I don’t know how long I’ve been here, Crowley.”

“Two hundred forty-five days,” Crowley says promptly. “In real time, anyway.”

“Ah,” says Aziraphale.

“Ah. What does that mean, ah?”

“Any moment now, really,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley’s stomach sinks. “We need to get you out of here.”

“Book first,” Aziraphale says, and smiles, weakly.

Crowley doesn’t do it right away. He’s scared, really, that’s what it is. It’s the - it’s the damn Book of Life, and finding out that it really does exist, and what’s more, has all of their names in it - Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s and Muriel’s, Beelzebub and Gabriel and Satan - just feels. He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t want to mess with it, is what he knows.

He doesn’t leave the bookshop. Muriel doesn’t seem to mind; they’ve got someone to direct all their questions at, and Crowley finds he doesn’t mind answering them. It gives him something else to do, to think about, helps him squash down the mounting panic rising in his chest.

The panic that reaches a fever pitch when he feels something materialize outside the bookshop door. Angels, and a lot of them.

The lot of them only turns out to be Michael ¹⁰, Uriel ¹¹, Sandalphon ¹², and Saraqael ¹³. Still, that’s enough for Crowley.

“You,” says Uriel. “What are you doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on the place,” Crowley says. “Making sure it doesn’t all go to Hell.” He winks.

“Muriel,” says Michael. “Why is he - here.”

Muriel shrugs. “Keeping an eye on the place?”

“No, I mean, why did you let him in here?”

“Oh! I mean, I couldn’t stop him? He’s keyed into all the wards, you see.”


 “He’s what?” Saraqael says. The angels are all moving through the bookshop, looking at the shelves, pretending they’re not looking. Michael cranes her head to the side, reading titles. Crowley’s smirking on the inside. He’s sitting on the book; it’s under the sofa cushion, and he can feel it bulky and hard and pointy under his bony butt. Sandalphon isn’t pretending, is just pulling books off the shelves and throwing them when they’re clearly not what he wants. Crowley’s glad Aziraphale isn’t here to see it.

“Well, he’s the Co. A. Z. Fell and Co.?” Muriel says, as if it’s perfectly obvious. Everybody gapes at them, Crowley included.

The angels go through the whole bookshop and come up empty. “Cheers,” says Crowley to them as they leave, telling Muriel to call them if the traitor Aziraphale shows his face. Sandalphon gets in his face as he lounges on the sofa, suddenly close, too close. Crowley doesn’t move. “We will find him,” he says.

“Oh, I bet you won’t,” Crowley says, and shows his fangs.

When he sees Aziraphale again, Aziraphale says, immediately, “What’s happened.” They’re in the bookshop. Even in dreams, it seems this is Aziraphale’s default, his favorite place.

“Nng. Nothing.”

“Crowley, don’t lie to me.”

That’s rich, coming from him. “Demon,” says Crowley. “Liar.”

“And why- why do you smell like Heaven?” Aziraphale says, getting closer, sniffing. He sounds dismayed.

“Mmrgh. Got paid a little visit today. All the usual crew. Don’t worry, they didn’t find it.”

“This is exactly what I was talking about!” Which is exactly why Crowley didn’t want to tell him. “Crowley, you have to destroy the book!”

“Alright!” he says. “And you’re sure it won’t wipe us all out?”


 Aziraphale looks troubled. “No, not at all. I’ve given it a lot of thought and, there’s really only two options.”

“Right. Which are?”

“Either it works…” he trails off.

“Or it wipes us all out. Right.” He spins away, nervous. He’d known it was coming to this, all along, could feel the dread in the pit of his stomach following him through the days.

He takes a deep breath, then another. He can feel Aziraphale watching him. He turns around.

“Angel - I just want to say. If this all goes wrong.” He feels tongue-tied. He doesn’t know if he can do this again. He has to do this again. Aziraphale deserves this much.

“Yes?” Aziraphale tilts his head up. His eyes are bright. When did they get so close?

“I don’t. I don’t blame you. For leaving, you know.”

Aziraphale’s face crumples in relief.

“Oh, Crowley,” he says. “I thought - I thought if we went to Heaven you’d be safe.” And Crowley knows that, knew it even at the time.

“Angel,” he says. “Nowhere’s safe.”

Aziraphale nods, mouth clamped shut, eyes sparkling. “I wish,” he says, and drifts impossibly closer. His hand flutters, about to reach out.

“What,” Crowley says, softly.

“I wish you’d do it again.” His face, upturned to Crowley’s. His eyes are shining so bright, lips parted, just a little. Crowley feels like he’s been punched in the chest. Again. He opens his mouth, but doesn’t speak, can’t.

“You’re just so full of forgiveness,” Crowley says, and he can’t help it: this nasty, twisting bitterness. He’s had it with him for so long.

“Crowley, please!” Aziraphale bursts out with. He looks desperate. And Crowley can’t deny him, could never deny him anything, so he reaches out, grabs him, has him in his hands and kisses him, hard and angry. And Aziraphale -

Aziraphale kisses him back, just as hard, not angry at all. Instead of nervous fluttering, his hands settle and clamp. He pulls Crowley to him until they’re pressed together, chest to hip to thighs, their legs tangling together, and with one arm around Crowley’s waist and the other on the back of his neck he opens up and his mouth is so sweet and Crowley, okay, Crowley could discorporate right now and be just fine with that.

They kiss for ages. Crowley doesn’t really know how dream time works, doesn’t really care, he thinks. Aziraphale pulls away first. Of course he does. He always does. Crowley does’t lift his eyes, can’t take his gaze off Aziraphale’s swollen lips, slick and pink.

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, so soft and tender. He’s still holding Crowley. “Crowley, dear, please look at me.”

See above, never, deny, anything. Crowley looks up slowly, hesitantly. Aziraphale presses his lips together, then they curve up, very slightly.

“Crowley,” he says, and moves his hand, slowly, from the back of Crowley’s neck to his cheek. He brushes the snake again and oh - oh.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, roughly. “Come back.”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, and his face twists. “I’m trying.”

Crowley takes the book back to his flat, wards the flat more than he’s warded anything in his life. He’s exhausted, sweating, and trembling by the end of it. There’s natural protection in the bookshop, of course, but he refuses to light a fire in there. ¹⁴

Then he opens the Book. He pages through dozens, hundred of pages, stops on his own name, the first one, now crossed out, then a succession of names, crossed out: Crawley, then Crowley, then Anthony J. Crowley, the last, alone, unobscured. He brushes his fingertips over it.

He moves on, flipping through the pages, skimming down the lists. Angel’s names, clear and unobscured; demon’s names, the first crossed out, the second clear. He reaches the end of the Book without finding what he’s looking for, panics, then starts rifling through pages, faster now. He can’t find Aziraphale’s name anywhere. But that can’t be right, Aziraphale’s real, he’s alive, Crowley remembers him, Crowley’s seeing him every day in dreams.

Unless it’s just Crowley. Unless Crowley’s gone mental, finally, round the bend, so torn up from losing Aziraphale that he’s completely hallucinating an angel that no longer exists anywhere but in his own dreams.

No. Crowley forces himself to breathe. To go back to the beginning, and go slowly.

He finds it a third of the way through. He’s skipped right past it the first time, and he sees why. Aziraphale’s name is smudged, blurred, a smear of ink, like somebody’d tried to wipe it out and couldn’t. Crowley stares at it, gripping the book hard, fury rising up in him. How dare they.

Crowley grabs a pen from his desk, sleek and expensive, and goes to rewrite Aziraphale’s name, to trace the blurred letters he can just make out, and then he - stops. Thinks. Shakes out his wings, and carefully selects a feather, black and glossy, the quill long and sharp. But ink, what to use for ink?

Right. He grimaces, holds out his left arm, and pierces it with the tip of the quill. Lets the blood well up. Then, when he’s got enough, he slowly, painstakingly writes Aziraphale’s name in his own handwriting, with his own feather, in his own blood. His hand is trembling. When he finishes, he leaves the page open to dry.

He’s about to close the book when he reconsiders. He’ll be twice damned if he leaves Aziraphale to face whatever mess they might leave on his own. He goes to the Mona Lisa on the wall, opens the safe - almost entirely empty now, except for - he reaches into the back, fingertips scrabbling, and pulls out -

a white feather. One of Aziraphale’s. He can feel the angel on it, feel the holiness, and it makes his fingers tingle a little. It’d be better if he had Aziraphale’s blood, too, for symmetry, but his own will have to do. He flips through until he finds his name, and traces over it again, matching point for point, swoop for swoop: Anthony J. Crowley. And he adds a little snake, for style.

Then he pours himself a few neat drinks of whisky, because ending the world shouldn’t be done sober, after all.

He goes into the plant room. It’s got the most space, the best light. He draws a circle on the floor in chalk, and wards it, then places the book in the center. Then, glancing over his shoulder at it, he moves every single plant out of the room and into the rest of the flat. They crowd the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, because there are some things plants shouldn’t see. Some things they really don’t need to get ideas about.

He takes a deep breath, then another, then another. Unconsciously, he looks up to the ceiling. He’s as ready as he’s ever going to be, he guesses.

Then he burns it. Not hellfire, he doesn’t want to think what that might do to the fabric of the universe, but regular, old fashioned elemental fire. Earth fire. Human fire.

The flames lick at the edge of the cover, and Mrs. Breton’s Guide to Household Management shivers, then melts away, and it’s just the Book: old, plain and dusty. Unmistakably old, and powerful, and the cover begins to catch, and crumple. Everything begins to quiver, very subtly, very slowly, but it jars Crowley’s senses, and he grits his teeth. I’ve done it, he thinks, I’ve ruined it all. A brief horrible part of him wants to see it all crumble. If it’s gotta go, why not do it with style?

But, he thinks. Aziraphale.

So he grits his teeth and he focuses, really focuses - on the world, on all the humans he can feel milling around outside, billions of names not written in the book, and there’s no conceivable way a stupid old moldering book ¹⁵ could bring it all down, could destroy a whole world, destroy hundreds of billions of living creatures, not only humans but birds and insects and yes, okay, even the kraken, great big bugger that it is -

And everything just…settles. Panting, Crowley steps forward, looks in the center of the circle. His eyes are burning. He can smell smoke, and something burned. There’s - nothing. Just a pile of ash where the book had been. A drop, gleaming and dark, that just might possibly be blood.

Crowley sags back against the wall. It’s done, it’s over.

Now, he’s got to go get his angel.

Crowley collapses in his bed, plants quivering gently around him as if in a soft breeze, as if in the garden, and he works on putting himself into a deep sleep. It’s not hard. He’s exhausted, somehow, and when he rolls over -

They’re in the Garden. All around them it’s green and rich and lush and beautiful. He’s barefoot, in his ragged robes, and he wriggles his bare feet into the grass and just breathes in. Another breath, then another.

“Well?” says Aziraphale. He looks like when Crowley had first seen him in Eden, all that time ago. So fresh-faced. So pure.

“I did it,” Crowley says. “It’s done. Gone. Burnt to a crisp.”

Aziraphale’s shoulders sag in relief. “Crowley, you’re wonderful,” he says. Crowley’s feeling so exhilarated that they haven’t both mysteriously disappeared that he doesn’t even argue.

“Now,” he says, “We get you out of here.”

“As soon as you get me out, they’ll be able to find me. They’ll come for us.”

“Let em,” Crowley snarls, and Aziraphale smiles, sudden and bright.

Crowley wakes up. Time’s passed; it’s dark now in the flat, night outside, he can tell. His pupils dilate to take in what he can. He can just make out the shape of the bed, the walls, the plants, quivering softly in the darkness. They’re glad he’s back, despite themselves.

Crowley slides off the bed to kneel on the floor. Puts his hands together, bows his head, and focuses on Aziraphale. He can just feel the edges of the angel, the borders of him. He’s out there, somewhere, Crowley can tell, can feel. But he can’t quite get ahold of him. He thinks about the dreams, thinks about how close Aziraphale felt then, how real.

Right. That’s it, then.

Crowley reaches into himself, and pulls. He recalls Aziraphale to himself, slowly, lingering, like he’s numbering every star in a constellation. He recalls Aziraphale’s face, his voice, his hand firm around Crowley’s waist, half-felt through the laudanum. He recalls his smell, so sharp and strong to Crowley throughout the years. Recalls the very taste of him, the way he’d gasped, just a little, under Crowley’s mouth. And Crowley feels something rippling and changing, can feel Aziraphale, stronger and stronger, until it’s almost overpowering, AziraphaleAziraphaleAziraphale -

There’s a noise in front of him, a soft noise, like breath, like feathers. The rustle of clothing. Crowley doesn’t dare open his eyes.

“Crowley,” breathes Aziraphale, soft and reverent.

Crowley opens his eyes. Aziraphale’s a dark shape in a darker room, but he can just see the curl of his hair, the glints of his eyes.

“Aziraphale,” he says, and he doesn’t mean it to be, but his voice is the same.

They fall into each other at the same time, a joint collapse. “My beloved,” says Aziraphale, heavily petting anything he can reach - Crowley’s hair, matted and damp, his cheek, his shoulders. He’s almost frantic, breath coming quick in his chest. For his part, Crowley just holds on tight, arms around Aziraphale’s waist, head buried in his chest. He’s trying not to sob. He can hear Aziraphale breathe, quick and rough, can feel his chest expanding and falling in his arms.

“I never want to sleep again,” he mumbles into Aziraphale’s chest.

Aziraphale chokes out a laugh. “Shame,” he says. “I rather think I was just beginning to get the hang of it.”

Crowley looks up. This close, even in the dark, he can see Aziraphale’s cheeky little smile.

“Angel,” he says, and it sticks in his throat.

Aziraphale takes his hand gently and turns it over, kisses his palm, his eyes on Crowley the whole time. Crowley swallows, helplessly.

“Darling,” he says. “Let’s go to bed.”

And they do.

9. Novelty bunny slippers Crowley had gifted him some twenty years ago. “Look!” Aziraphale had cried out, opening them. “It’s Harry the Rabbit!” Crowley had had to turn away to hide his smile. return to text

10. Wanker. return to text

11. Wanker. return to text

12. Wanker, and absolute pustule. return to text

13. Alright. return to text

14. He and Aziraphale had gotten into quite the row over candles after the fire. Aziraphale must’ve seen something in face, because he finally acquiesced to electric candles after that. return to text

15. Don’t tell Aziraphale. return to text