Chapter Text
“Are you just going to keep staring at the monitor?” Derek rudely interrupted his quiet time.
Asa startled, hand on the mouse on the table. He let out a sigh as he pitied himself. The more he read Red-hair Man’s – Professor Crowley’s – tweets, the more he fell for him, but he just could not bring himself to ‘slide into his DMs’ as Anathema so eloquently put it.
He did not think it was possible to be head over heels on someone over literal texts on a screen. But each word called out to him like a love virus, reeling him in.
(Which was an actual massively damaging computer virus that endangered many jobs all over the world, so perhaps making that metaphor wasn't very fitting nor appropriate.)
The clock read: 11:40 a.m.
He had been repeatedly scrolling through the professor's feed for about half an hour now. Reading his posts, that were posted in the most random times of the day, and his adorable replies, as he attempted to convey sarcasm without proper knowledge on the use of tone indicators.
James Archer @hi_im_jim - 5d
Wait, which half is the joke?
April 10, 2026
Anthony J Crowley @antjcrowley - 5d
@hi_im_jim I'm going to eat you and your family /hj
April 10, 2026
He smiled once more at the professor's humour, even more enamoured, before arriving at a decision. You Only Love Once (YOLO) – or something.
Asa took a deep breath. “How exactly am I supposed to ask him out?” He called out, still slightly embarrassed.
Anathema quickly came to the rescue. “Easy.” She turned up behind him, surprising him again. He held up his right hand to his chest to try and regulate his heart rate back to normal.
However, Anathema did not seem to notice his staggered breathing. “Open up his messages, introduce yourself like ‘hey! Not sure if you remember me. I'm the bookseller from earlier. Just wondering if I could ask you out, have some coffee..’.” She rambled on with a higher pitched voice.
“Anathema! I don't sound like that.” He raised his voice at her, offended.
But she just waved him off. “Or maybe dinner. You could ask him out to dinner. More romantic that way.”
“Yes, dinner sounds nice,” He hummed in agreement.
“And don't take him to some posh restaurant without asking him first if he even wants to eat there.”
“Why wouldn't he want to eat there?” He asked, genuinely confused.
“Not everyone has the same taste buds as you.”
“Well, I know that. But The Ritz-” He was rudely interrupted.
“Please, god. Not The Ritz, Azira. Not for a first date.”
After a while, Asa gave in. Alright. Perhaps that is too much. He remembered taking this one gentleman to an equally posh restaurant a night after they met. That was back when he had more nerves to go out asking folks to dine with him. Good ol’ times. It shall go without saying though, the dinner was an absolute disaster.
The food itself was not the problem. No. It was the man sitting opposite of him, who did not seem to be capable of eating with his mouth shut and kept commenting on Asa’s every bite being too much or rather ‘diabetes inducing’. And that is why one should never date doctors.
He can not afford to experience that again.
Nevertheless, there remained an inkling at the back of his head telling him that Professor Anthony J. Crowley deserved to dine at The Ritz. Maybe with a tremendous amount of alcohol whilst he ate crepes. Or vice versa. Who knows? The man might have a sweet tooth.
Oh, well. Anathema did not need to know his every move.
Suddenly, he heard Derek cackle. Like the witch he probably was in another life. Curious, he threw a glare at him. Because that's what you do when you are curious. Naturally.
“...Azira.” Anathema's worried voice called out.
“Yes?”
“Do you have a Twitter account?”
Oh, dear. Yes. There's always something.
Anthony sat in his office chair. Mixed feelings looming over him. Or enveloping him? Piercing him. Whatever complicated feelings liked to do in their free time.
As he relaxed and listened to Jim ramble on about the handsome bookseller, – Azira Fell, he learned his name was, allegedly – he felt his face getting redder and redder, heat creeping up his neck to his cheeks all whilst he tried to fight off fantasies of them getting together and doing… bookseller and professor… stuff. Nothing creepy of course.
On the other hand, the lack of notifications from his phone told him that perhaps he was being a tad bit too optimistic. That maybe the Angel was not at all interested in getting to know him.
Sure. He did ask for Anthony's Twitter handle. And he did get red in the face back in the cozy bookshop when they were talking. But what's stopping reality from punching Anthony in the jaw and going ‘he just asked for your user to know your political opinions, figure out what kind of moronic conspiracy you believe in’ and ‘he was blushing because it was just so damn hot in the back of the shop (hey, it's a natural response from the human body, FYI)’.
But then again, there is also the possibility that the Angel might just be terribly busy at the present moment. The bookshop could be crowded with enthusiastic bookworms– oh, who is he kidding? No one reads anymore.
Or perchance, the Angel simply wasn't gay. Hey! Just because he was incredibly soft and jiggly and smiley and happy, and the fact that his voice leaned more on the higher pitch sound, and that his talking had a bit of this twang that you can only relate to openly homosexual men (or at least to those struggling to stay within the confinements of the closet), did not mean that he was in reality, without a doubt, and definitely, into men.
“Crowley? Are you still listening?”
He sighed.
“Yeah, Jim. Keep talking.”
“I should be paid for this. Azira, I'm doing you a favour right now. This is a favour.”
“I'm sure it is, darling,” Asa humphed. “Now, do keep going.”
He watched closely as Anathema pulled out her phone in order to make him a Twitter account. (“I can use shortcuts here. Then you can just sign in on the computer later.” “Uh huh.”) Apparently, the creating the account bit was easy. The figuring out what username was perfect for him was the slightly harder part.
“You need to have your name on the user. Obviously.” Anathema opened up her notes app and started jumbling Asa’s name, giving him multiple options to choose from. “That’s how people know that it's you who owns the account. Only it has to be unique ‘cause you might have some people using the same name as you and that gets confusing. Hold on, what's your middle name?” She asked, handing him the phone.
The list already had three combinations.
- azirafell
- that_azi_fella
- az_fell
Derek chuckled as he took a look from over his shoulder, a smug smile playing on his lips. Asa knew he was up to no good. “...You do know his name is not actually Azira, right?”
Asa let out a sigh. Oh, well. Cat's out the bag. He knew the old man would not be able to keep his mouth shut. Too late for the duct tape. Or the staple gun. Or the-
Anathema whipped her head around, so aggressively he's shocked she didn't accidentally rip a nerve. “What? Azi, what? What do you mean? Derek!” Derek shrugged, apparently choosing to just watch the situation unfold now.
“I'm sure there's no need for that kind of reaction, dear.” Asa tried to say.
“I have known you all of my-”
“Well…”
“Alright. Most of my life. I have always called you Azi and you have never corrected me. So you've got to be joking.”
“Mmm.”
“Az, you better be joking.”
“...”
“Azi.”
“Frankly, I don't mind being called Azira.”
“Azira Fell.”
“Hmm.” Asa grumbled. “Well, if you must know…” Anathema waited with a raised brow.
“It's Asa. With an S,” Derek answered for him.
Silence. “Asa?”
“Yep.” He answered, popping the p, glaring at Derek.
More silence. He turned to her to see that she's giving him The Stare. “What kind of name is that? Asa?”
“Hey, now. It is a perfectly normal name.” He replied, a bit insulted.
“Well, you're not exactly a normal individual..”
“Anathema!”
But she had already turned around. “Asa! I can't believe it. Fuckin’ Asa. Of all names… makes you sound like an Englishman…”
Meanwhile:
“...And he loves crepes. Allegedly. You never really know with my brother, he might just be exaggerating – But! He told me he once asked Mr. Fell how he'd been doing. Y’know, for formalities and such. And Mr. Fell went into this sort of trance where he just talked about crepes for hours! And. Allegedly, there was this one time when he went to Paris just so he could buy well-made crepes there. Gabriel also said that Mr. Fell always refers to them as ‘scrumptious’. I mean who really uses that word?”
Oh, lord…
“He would say that.”
“-What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“@aziraphale..?” Derek questioned the two.
“That. Is the best I can come up with.” Anathema sighed.
“Oh, don't worry, dear. It's lovely.”
“It's not even your name.”
“Derek?”
“Yes, Asa?”
“Shut up.”
“...And his favourite colour is yellow. I believe. I'm not too sure. Wait, haha, no that is funny, how I only got to his favourite colour just now. You know, normally that is the first thing I mention-”
“That's alright, Jim. Keep talking,” Crowley whispered to his phone. His hand reached up and rubbed at his eye, it seemed to have gotten teary from the way he kept zoning out.
The clock read: 12:20 p.m.
Crowley's paperworks lay on his tabletop right by his laptop, waiting for him to start shuffling through them. He doesn't. Instead, he sits back, relaxes, and encourages Jim to keep telling random anecdotes about the Angel. Sure, there was no way for him to know if any of the stories were actually true, given that they first gone through two of probably the stupidest people in London (for Jim, meant with love; for Gabriel, not so much).
Nonetheless, he found pleasure in imagining his Angel in those different instances, predicting how he would react to each of them, and then silently celebrating to himself whenever he got them right, feeling as though he had known the bookseller for longer than four to five hours.
It didn't take him that long to realise that the other end of the line had gone silent.
“Jim?” He called, confused.
There were sounds of clothing rubbing on the receiver. “Crowley…”
“Yeah?”
Jim coughed. “...I ran out of stories,” his voice sheepishly came through.
“No, you didn't,” Crowley retorted incredulously. “Have ye really??”
“Well, yeah,” sounds like pages turning, “no yeah. That was all.”
Crowley sat up. Wow, yeah… There were lots to discuss there. He took one look at his watch and grimaced. He and Jim have been conversing for a little more than an hour. That's an hour longer than their average call duration…time. Conversing might also be the wrong term to use there since it was mostly one-sided anyway.
One other thing, he spent the entirety of that call with one fist under his chin, staring wistfully at who knows where. Well, because his eyes just sort of wandered around the room. And no, that wasn't exactly the weird bit. It was the fact that he found himself totally fine hearing Jim stumble on his words. As long as the topic was the bookseller, he didn't seem to mind his friend’s mindless, direction-less, rambling. Seriously. For a Professor with his level of experience, he was confident that he learned more about himself today than any other day of the past decade. Hmm. The more you know, I guess.
Suddenly, Jim’s voice came through the line once more. Not that Crowley minded. “So, was that enough to convince you? Are you ready?”
“Ready..?” He felt a lump on his throat.
“To go meet him, of course.” Jim added, all too happily.
Crowley let out a deep breath. Oh, was he.
Crowley strutted his way out of the schoolgrounds. His work bag in one hand, the other empty but currently hailing for a cab.
He had walked right out of there the moment Jim ended the call, fully and wholeheartedly determined to go back and fetch his Angel. Of course, the actual leaving bit was not the easiest of tasks for he needed to do the whole routine of asking Hastur to call off his afternoon classes for him, sending an e-mail to Dr. Beelzebub (with a well thought-out excuse as for his early exit), and signing the daily attendance sheet by the guards’ house, before he could actually set foot on the pavement outside.
Still, he believed that everything would be worth-it by the end of the day.
If he had forgotten to check his phone one last time before seating himself in the cab, completely missing the Twitter notification indicating a new follow from some man under the user of ‘@aziraphale’, – oh, well, poor him. But that barely meant anything now. He was in for the real deal.
@Aziraphale tried to work up the courage to, once and for all, ‘D.M.’ the red-haired professor. Surely, enough hours have passed between the moment the man sauntered out of the bookshop, and him now fighting off his truly embarrassing dilemma, to pass that threshold he called ‘having a reasonable reaction’.
Anathema had long gone.
She berated him a bit after his account had been successfully created. Hilariously for Derek, the girl went on and on about not letting opportunities like this go to waste. However, he only just sat there not saying a thing in response to any of it until she finally got fed up, ate his neatly packed sandwich – without permission, mind you – and stomped right out, the door chiming to follow her departure way too loudly for his liking.
Now, he sat in front of the damned computer. Hands wringing, itching to… do something, goddamn it!
He took notice of Derek lounging not four meters away from him, seemingly reading a book about a Martian, or rather The Martian. Just from the title alone, Asa deduced that the man was indeed not actually reading a single printed word on the page he held open, only waiting.
He grunted. “Alright. Derek, do you mind giving me a hand?” He asked kindly.
The figure in his peripheral abruptly sat up in attention, positively beaming. “My, my. I thought you'd never ask.”
When Asa finally turned to face him, Derek was already throwing himself out of his seat and jogging his way to the desk with a big annoying smile plastered on his face, that only left Asa feeling uneasy and seriously questioning his earlier decision of even acknowledging the other’s existence.
He sputtered with a laugh, “Well, don't look so excited!” But it only made Derek grin wider.
Crowley peered out the foggy window of the cab he was in. Just a few minutes ago, he was shaking with adrenaline. Now, he was still shaking but for a whole other reason.
Well-, still adrenaline. If you want to be scientifically precise about it. But right at that moment, he would describe it as nerves simply getting to him. It was times like this when his ‘author’ side got a stronger hold of Crowley, causing him to refer to things with a more creative flair in their names, as opposed to his usual straight forward approach.
He only hoped that when he arrives at the bookshop and finally faces his muse once again, he does not end up going on a tangent about angels and other heavenly iconographies and how the bookseller was probably one of the best images to pull up when discussing religion to his students, with a caption stating that one does not always have to picture angels as great white beasts with indescribable forms and horrifying eyes of millions.
But that, they could also imagine a supermodel being the softest, cuddliest, and prettiest human version of Winnie The Pooh, and just be a hundred percent satisfied with that.
Oh, Angel.
Asa typed and typed.
Derek stood behind him, dictating every word. A satisfied smile playing on his lips.
Asa pretended not to notice.
“Jesus Christ! What's taking so long??”
“Sir! Calm down a bit. We've just hit a bit of traffic.”
He grunted in aggravation. This wouldn't do.
“Ahh, fuck it. Take the damn money.” He scrambled for cash in his wallet, not even bothering to check if he had accidentally gotten way too much out, and handed it over to the driver. “I'm walking.” He added with finality.
With that, he took hold of the door handle and pulled.
He jumped out of the vehicle, ignoring the cabbie’s insistent yelling for him to head back inside immediately, and headed for the pavement. I'm too lovesick for this bullshit.
Asa stared at the drafted message, scrutiny clear in his eyes.
He hummed. “Mmm. Are you sure about this?” He directed to the only other man within the shop.
“Oh, yes. Don't you worry, Asa,” Derek assured him. “Just hit send.”
Asa stared some more.
The clock read: 12:55 p.m.
Only there was no way Crowley knew that. He was, anyway, focused on far more important things. Like dodging other civilians as he tried to navigate his way to the Angel’s bookshop. Or familiarising with his surroundings as he desperately convinced himself that he had not unknowingly run in the wrong direction.
Or. Or formulating a whole speech as a way of asking the bookseller out for dinner.
Or lunch, probably. Yes. He was getting a tad bit hungry now and he wasn't averse to having company. In fact, he would welcome such intrusion if only the Angel had been it.
He abruptly stopped in his tracks. Eyes landing on a familiar establishment. It was just as angelic as before. If not more, now that he actually knew the ethereal being that resided in it.
His movement started again. And his pace quickened increasingly by each step.
Hullo! I'm Aziraphale!
Not sure if you remember me. I'm the bookseller from earlier. D.T. Meta & Co. Books? My friend Derek owns it and I'm only his employee.
Well, I just wanted to let you know how lovely you were back in the shop and I hate that I made a fool out of myself trying to ask for your telephone information without telling you my honest intention in doing so.
Um, I was wondering, if you have not totally convinced yourself that I was being a total creep, if I could ask you out to… dinner? |
Asa clicked send, already cringing to himself. But then, out of the blue, the door chimed. For only the fourth time that day.
He turned around to observe who had walked in and his heart leaped at who he saw. There, standing awkwardly by the door was Red-hair Man himself. Phone in his hand as he probably surveyed the notification he just received, his brow arched up in his forehead – which Asa noticed had a slight sheen of sweat.
Asa watched the man’s eyes as well as he could from behind the glasses as they rapidly paced through his phone screen, worried for the reaction he was about to get. He saw Derek from the corner of his eye discreetly and smoothly making his way to the back of the shop, possibly giving them their well-deserved privacy. His heart warmed at that.
He once again returned his focus to the professor standing five meters away from him. Asa noted that he was still holding onto his phone, only now his gaze was set on something else. Someone else.
Their eyes met and it was as if he was drained of all the nerves in his body responsible for movement for he just stood there frozen for minutes. Perhaps hours. He wasn't sure.
Then, the professor’s face suddenly broke into an amazed grin. He opened his mouth a few times in an attempt to say something but no sound came out, and he resorted to giggling. “Well, you certainly beat me to it,” he finally croaked out after he gathered himself, with an underlying hint of amusement. And Asa did not need explanation as to what he meant by that. He understood.
He smiled in return, shockingly calm. “So… Is that a yes?”
Crowley chuckled again because he was out of control. “Yes,” and then because he was feeling brave, “yes, angel.”
“Oh,” Asa replied sheepishly, getting red at the nickname. Then, he couldn't help but take a few steps forward. Closer to Crowley, who also stepped closer in reply and they met in the middle. Their hands hung awkwardly between them until Asa reached and took Crowley’s in his, making a mental note to ask later about why it was so cold, and he cradled them there.
They stood there holding hands quietly, neither clear-headed enough nor stupid enough to ruin such a sweet moment.
After a while, Asa looked up from where he was tracing Crowley’s precious fingertips, up to his face and stared longingly for a few seconds. And a few seconds more. And a bit more.
Then, very predictably, he said in a soft whisper, “This is my lucky day, after all.”
And Crowley couldn't agree more.