Chapter Text
Aziraphale and Crowley were different, that much is clear. Aziraphale and Crowley were so astronomically different that there should be no universe where they worked so well together, Aziraphale and Crowley had never much been one for following rules and expectations.
Their differences however, did appear from time to time, and liked to get in the way of whatever they were attempting to do at that time
Today was Crowley's favourite day of the year, the spring equinox, he loved it for one reason only. Cleaning.
The demon had learned about spring cleaning early on in the 20th century, one unfortunate thing stood in the way of Crowley and his desire to tidy. Crowley did not own things.
But Aziraphale did!
It had been an exceptionally productive day thus far, at least, that was Aziraphale's explanation as to why he deserved a break "oh! And maybe an eccles cake! Or two!!" who was Crowley to tell him no?
While the angel was out of the shop (on a very important mission, mind you) Crowley began the hardest part of the clean. What on Satan's earth did Aziraphale possibly need all those boxes for?
Crowley eyed the tower of boxes suspiciously. There were twenty-three of them.
No one needed twenty-three boxes.
Especially not when sixteen of them appeared to contain smaller boxes.
Crowley had once witnessed Aziraphale purchase a hat because it came in a particularly nice box. The hat had disappeared sometime around 1934. The box remained. This, Crowley felt, was deeply representative of Aziraphale as a person.
He lifted another lid.
Books.
He lifted the next.
More books.
The third contained a single book, wrapped carefully in cloth and surrounded by packing straw as though it were a priceless archaeological discovery.
Crowley sighed.
The fourth box, however, proved interesting.
There was no label. No catalogue number. No neatly attached note in Aziraphale's handwriting explaining exactly why it absolutely could not be moved.
Inside was a leather-bound album.
"Oh, now that's suspicious."
Crowley settled himself on the floor and opened it.
The first page contained a photograph of a cat.
The second page contained another cat.
The third page also contained a cat.
Crowley frowned.
By page six he was beginning to suspect a pattern.
The cat on page six was black and white with one torn ear.
Beneath the photograph was written:
MR PICKLES
Fond of fireplaces. Dislikes French cheese. Very opinionated regarding curtains. Believes himself considerably larger than he is.
Crowley blinked.
One page simply read:
THOMAS
Bit of a bastard.
Crowley found himself unexpectedly fond of Thomas.
He turned the page.
Another cat.
LADY BEATRICE
Excellent listener. Once stole a bishop's lunch. Shows remarkable judgement of character.
The next page featured Aziraphale holding Lady Beatrice. The page after that featured Lady Beatrice asleep on Aziraphale's lap.
The page after that featured Lady Beatrice asleep on Crowley's chest.
Crowley stared.
"...What?
1827 AD
The thing about immortality, and there are quite a lot of things about immortality if one is unfortunate enough to possess it, is that one tends not to notice the passing of time until it has already passed.
A year, for an angel, is not especially different from a week. A decade can disappear remarkably quickly if one has enough books to read and enough humans to quietly intervene on behalf of. Even a century is not particularly intimidating once one has survived several dozen of them.
This is all very sensible in theory.
In practice, however, it transpired that twenty-seven years could feel astonishingly long if the person you usually spent them with was asleep on your sofa.
Not that Aziraphale was counting.
That would have been ridiculous.
He simply happened to know, with perfect accuracy, how many years, months, weeks and days had elapsed since Crowley had wandered into the bookshop smelling faintly of wine and poor decisions, announced that he was "having a bit of a nap", and promptly collapsed onto the sofa as though this were an entirely normal thing to do.
The whole affair had begun on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday evening.
Aziraphale had been reading. Crowley had been draped upside down over the sofa in a manner that suggested either a complete disregard for spinal anatomy or a personal grudge against gravity. Rain rattled gently against the windows and a half-finished bottle of wine sat abandoned on the table between them.
It was peaceful. And it was the sort of evening that had become increasingly common over the previous century (the sort of evening Aziraphale had become rather fond of).
Which was precisely why Crowley chose that moment to ruin it.
"I'm going to sleep."
Aziraphale continued reading.
"Mm."
"A proper sleep."
The angel turned a page.
"Very good."
"For a few decades."
The page stopped turning. Slowly, Aziraphale lowered the book.
"I'm sorry?"
Crowley removed his sunglasses just enough to peer over the top of them.
"I'm having a nap."
"A nap."
"Mm."
"For a few decades."
"Possibly."
The angel stared.
The demon stared back.
One of them appeared to recognise how absurd this conversation was. (The other was Crowley.)
"You can't simply decide to sleep for forty years."
"Course I can."
"Crowley…"
The demon waved a hand dismissively.
"I'm exhausted."
"You don't sleep."
"I do when humanity gets irritating."
Aziraphale frowned.
"But humanity is always irritating."
"Exactly."
The demon pointed triumphantly. (Aziraphale hated when he did that.)
For a moment neither spoke. Outside, a carriage rolled past.
The rain continued.
Crowley stretched languidly, cat-like in a way that would later prove ironically relevant to this story. Aziraphale found himself watching him.
"How long?" he asked eventually.
Crowley shrugged.
"Twenty years. Thirty. Fifty. See how I feel."
The angel set his book aside completely.
"Crowley."
"What?"
"You might miss something important."
The demon barked out a laugh.
"Angel, I've lived through the invention of writing. Twice, depending on your definition. If humanity manages to do something genuinely original in the next thirty years I'll personally apologise to every historian in Europe."
Aziraphale looked unconvinced. Crowley softened slightly as (though he wouldn’t admit it) the gentle lines of concern and apprehension stretched across his angel’s face.
"You'll be fine."
The words were casual (though Crowley did feel slightly sick as he said them, or guilty, but thats not something a demon particularly feels like confronting on a Tuesday. Crowley disliked Tuesdays).
Far too casual.
Aziraphale looked away.
"I know that."
Crowley hesitated.
Something flickered briefly across his face.
Something close to uncertainty. Then, as was often the case when confronted with an emotion he didn't particularly care to examine, he buried it beneath humour.
"Try not to miss me too much."
Aziraphale sniffed.
"Don't flatter yourself."
"Right."
"I have a bookshop to run."
"Of course."
"And several books I haven't read yet."
"A tragedy."
"And I certainly won't spend the next several decades waiting for you to wake up."
Crowley's smile widened (Unfortunately).
"Oh, definitely not."
"Crowley."
The smile lingered.
"See you soon, angel."
---
At first, Aziraphale did not notice the absence.
This was not because Crowley was unimportant (quite the opposite in fact). It was because Crowley had, over the course of several centuries, become something like a gravitational constant in the bookshop, a presence so assumed that its lack did not immediately register as absence so much as a subtle misalignment of the world.
The sofa was still there, after all.
The chairs still existed in pairs.
The second glass still sat in its habitual place on the table, waiting to be filled with wine that would never be poured.
It was only when Aziraphale reached for things that the absence revealed itself.
“Crowley, you simply must read this,” he said one afternoon without thinking, already halfway through turning a book toward the sofa.
The sentence completed itself into silence.
He paused.
Then, very gently, set the book down again.
“Quite.”
He did not speak to the empty space again for some time.
Not consciously, at least.
---
The first habit to fail him was reading aloud.
He had discovered, quite by accident, that reading was considerably more enjoyable when there was someone to read to.
Not that Crowley had ever asked.
The demon's participation in these literary evenings generally consisted of lying upside down in an armchair and interrupting every third chapter with increasingly outrageous commentary. Crowley maintained that this improved the experience. Aziraphale maintained that it did not. (Secretly they were both correct.)
Now, however, there were no interruptions.
And every evening, just as the daylight began to fade beyond the windows, the angel would lower his book and look across the room.
At first he had done so because he expected Crowley to wake up.
Then because he hoped Crowley would wake up.
Then because it had become habit.
So when Aziraphale found a particularly charming passage in a rather obscure volume of eighteenth-century philosophy, he turned toward the sofa.
“Now this is rather interesting, Crowley, because-”
He stopped.
The book remained open in his hands.
The sofa remained empty.
The words, however, did not.
After a moment, Aziraphale cleared his throat delicately.
“…because, as the author points out, moral certainty is often simply a matter of proximity to a loud enough argument.”
He paused again.
The sentence hung in the air, unreceived.
Aziraphale frowned faintly.
“Not a bad observation, really.”
He turned a page and continued reading aloud anyway.
The room, he decided, was simply being unhelpful.
---
The second habit was worse.
Wine.
Crowley had always been irritatingly particular about wine, which meant Aziraphale had, over time, developed opinions of his own. Not strong ones, necessarily, but informed ones. There were bottles Crowley approved of, bottles Crowley tolerated, and bottles Crowley had once stared at for an uncomfortably long time before declaring them “personally offensive to fermentation.”
So Aziraphale poure two glasses.
One for himself.
And one for-
He hesitated.
Looked at the empty chair.
Then, after a moment, filled the second glass anyway.
“It would be a shame,” he said to no one in particular, “to let it breathe alone.”
He drank both glasses in turn.
One after the other.
Aziraphale was lonely.
(Although, this is unusual because he was usually quite fond of his own company. So it would be rather more appropriate to say that Aziraphale missed his demon. But for the sake of his dignity, we won’t.)
---
The third habit was books.
Crowley had never asked for books, exactly, but he had always taken them. Flipped through them. Pretended disinterest. Occasionally asked questions that suggested he had, in fact, read the entire thing in the time it had taken Aziraphale to blink.
So Aziraphale began saving passages.
Then, one afternoon, he found himself standing in front of a particularly amusing engraving in a natural history volume.
“Oh,” he said immediately. “Crowley would find that rather ridiculous.”
He turned.
The sofa did not respond.
Aziraphale stared at it for a long moment.
Then gently said, “Yes, I suppose he would.”
And returned to his chair.
---
Then came winter.
The first winter after Crowley’s sleep settled into the shop like something heavier than weather.
Aziraphale noticed it in small ways.
The way he lingered near the fire longer than strictly necessary.
The way he found himself adjusting the blankets on the sofa without thinking.
The way his gaze drifted, always, to the same still shape.
Crowley felt cold far more keenly than humans did. (One of the many inconveniences of having spent several thousand years masquerading as something only vaguely mammalian).
Aziraphale had learned this gradually over the centuries: through overheated restaurants, aggressively stoked fireplaces, and Crowley's tendency to complain bitterly about temperatures that everyone else considered perfectly reasonable.
Winter, in particular, was an affront.
So Aziraphale began covering him properly.
“You do tend to get chilly,” Aziraphale murmured once, adjusting the edge of the fabric near Crowley’s shoulder. “It is very inconsiderate of you, honestly.”
Crowley did not respond.
Of course.
Still, Aziraphale lingered a moment longer than necessary.
As though waiting for a complaint.
Or a remark.
Or anything at all.
---
Eventually, Aziraphale stopped sitting only in his own chair.
He began sitting on the floor.
Just beside the sofa.
Not touching it at first.
Just near it.
Crowley’s hair, when it fell over the edge of the cushions, sometimes brushed his sleeve.
Aziraphale did not move it.
He found he rather liked it there.
---
Slowly, he began talking.
Not formally, not as though delivering anything important nor reading a book.
Just… speaking.
“There was a rather interesting dispute in the parish this morning,” he would say quietly, leaning back against the sofa near Crowley’s head. “Something to do with whether miracles should be taxed. Can you imagine? Taxed.”
A pause.
Crowley remained asleep.
Aziraphale nodded as though receiving a reply.
“Yes, I thought you might agree.”
Another pause.
The fire crackled.
Outside, the city continued.
“And I found a new edition of the Iliad,” he added later. “Rather badly translated, I’m afraid. I do think you would have been terribly rude about it.”
He smiled faintly at that.
“Which would have been rather helpful, actually.”
He did not say everything.
He never said everything.
In fact he said anything but what he considered to be ‘everything’
Things like:
I think I have forgotten what it is like when you answer me immediately.
Things like:
It is quieter than I expected.
Things like:
I miss you.
Instead, he adjusted the blanket again and laid his head against the sofa for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
---
The first cat arrived on a Thursday.
It was, Aziraphale thought later, a rather unremarkable Thursday in every respect except for the small, furious interruption of it.
The rain had been doing that persistent, morally questionable drizzle London specialised in, the kind that did not quite justify an umbrella but absolutely justified complaint. Aziraphale had been halfway through reshelving a particularly argumentative edition of Milton when he heard the noise.
At first he ignored it.
He had, over the centuries, become quite accomplished at ignoring small disturbances. Heaven, after all, had trained him in the art of selective attention.
The noise did not improve.
In fact, it acquired character.
Aziraphale sighed, closed his eyes briefly, and said to no one in particular, “If that is another pamphleteer I shall be forced to reconsider my patience with the modern age.” The noise proceeded to hiss.
That was new.
The alley behind the bookshop was damp in a way that suggested it had never once in its existence been properly warm. Crates leaned against walls like exhausted witnesses. The air smelled faintly of wet stone and forgotten things.
And there, beneath one of the overturned wooden boxes, was a creature that appeared to have decided the world was personally offensive (much like Crowley).
It was small.
Black.
So thoroughly soaked that it seemed almost offended by its own existence.
It looked at Aziraphale with a level of suspicion usually reserved for lawyers and certain categories of angel.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly.
The cat hissed.
“Yes, I see,” he said, as though this were a reasonable opening to a conversation. “That is quite a strong opinion for something of your size.”
The cat did not respond.
Aziraphale crouched carefully, hands folded as though approaching a particularly delicate theological disagreement.
“I am afraid I do not have anything particularly useful to offer you in terms of negotiation,” he continued. “However, I do have warmth. And food. And a rather alarming surplus of patience, which I am told is one of my more irritating qualities.”
The cat blinked.
Aziraphale extended one hand.
The cat did not move.
Several seconds passed.
Then, with the reluctant dignity of something that had decided survival was temporarily more important than pride, it stepped forward.
Aziraphale smiled.
“Oh dear,” he murmured.
And lifted it into his arms.
It immediately attempted to murder him.
Inside, the bookshop was warm in the way only old buildings with too many books and too much opinion could manage.
The cat began to relax.
Aziraphale wrapped it in a towel with the same meticulous care he usually reserved for rare first editions, set a small saucer of milk on the floor, and observed.
The cat, now damply incandescent with rage, stared back.
“You are very dramatic,” Aziraphale informed it gently.
The cat sneezed.
Aziraphale frowned.
“That was unnecessary.”
He glanced, without thinking, toward the sofa.
Crowley lay exactly as he had for years.
Unmoving.
Unchanging.
“You would find this amusing,” he said.
The cat climbed into his lap.
Aziraphale did not move it.
---
One could not simply keep a cat. This much Aziraphale knew, and considered quite important.
One fostered. One assisted. One ensured appropriate transition into responsible ownership elsewhere.
That was the correct procedure.
He was, after all, an angel. So he made inquiries.
He wrote small notices.
He spoke to suitable households.
He even, on one occasion, very nearly succeeded.
And then the cat slept on his book.
And purred.
And Aziraphale found he did not, in fact, wish to remove it.
“Oh,” he said again, quieter this time. (this seemed to have become an irritatingly common part of his vocabulary in the short time Crowley had been asleep)
---
The second cat arrived because the first was lonely (that is the story he was telling himself, thus the story we will take as at least somewhat true).
Aziraphale realised this not through observation of the cat itself, but through the sudden and inconvenient feeling that the bookshop was still too quiet.
He found the second one in a doorway two streets over, arguing loudly with the rain.
It was smaller.
Braver.
Ruder.
It immediately attempted to steal his cuff.
“I see,” Aziraphale said, holding it at arm’s length while it expressed its opinions at considerable volume. “You are also going to be a problem.”
He took it home.
The first cat approved.
This was, Aziraphale discovered, how decisions were now being made.
---
By the third cat, he had stopped pretending this was accidental.
By the fifth, he had begun assigning names. (Not immediately, obviously. One had to observe first. One had to understand temperament. One had to respect the individuality of the creature in question.)
The first was, after considerable thought, named Mr Pickles, on account of his deeply unreasonable attitude toward furniture (read: on account of being slightly and most insignificantly, a bitch).
The second became Lady Beatrice, despite obvious objections she never voiced but absolutely communicated through violence.
The third was Thomas, because Aziraphale suspected, privately, that it was a bit of a bastard.
He grew rather fond of Thomas.
---
Then came the photographs.
At first, they were simple.
Cats on chairs.
Cats in windows.
Cats in very inappropriate places.
Aziraphale holding cats with the careful expression of someone handling volatile theological doctrine.
And always, always, the sofa.
Crowley in the background.
Unaware.
Or perhaps aware in some deeper sense Aziraphale did not let himself examine too closely.
The cats, however, had opinions.
They slept on him.
On Crowley.
On books.
On anything that suggested permanence (or anything that if it gained sudden consciousness, could be considered to have ‘looked at them funny’).
One particularly ambitious individual once managed to occupy Crowley’s chest entirely, as though claiming territory.
Aziraphale had laughed at that.
---
He began talking to them.
At first, about small things.
The weather, the shop, the inconvenience of certain customers.
Then, gradually, about other things.
Books he had read, arguments he had lost, arguments he had won but felt no satisfaction from.
And eventually, without meaning to, about Crowley.
“I believe he would have been very rude about this,” he said once, watching Thomas attempt to disassemble a curtain. “Which is not, in fact, a criticism. It is a quality.”
The cat ignored him.
Aziraphale nodded anyway.
“Yes. Quite.”
---
He would sit beside the sofa.
Cats scattered around him in varying states of moral superiority.
And speak into the space where Crowley’s head would have been if Crowley had not decided, with maddening casualness, to stop existing in time for a while.
“I found a rather interesting theological treatise today,” Aziraphale would say.
A pause.
A cat would sneeze.
“I think you would have found it absurd.”
Another pause.
The fire crackled.
Aziraphale adjusted the blanket on Crowley’s still form out of instinct more than need.
“I rather miss your opinions,” he admitted, almost offhand.
The cats did not respond.
They never did.
Which, in its own way, was the point.
---
The first cat died in the winter.
It was not dramatic.
It simply stopped being warm.
Aziraphale buried it himself, because it seemed wrong to delegate such things.
He stood for a long time afterward in the cold air, hands folded, listening to a silence that had changed shape without warning.
When he returned to the bookshop, he sat on the floor beside the sofa, vague tear tracks still clinging to his fair skin.
Crowley did not move.
“I believe,” Aziraphale said quietly, “you would have found that rather poorly handled.”
A pause.
“Yes. I think you would have been very rude about it.”
He nodded once.
“Which would have been rather helpful.”
And then, after a moment, he reached for another cat that had curled itself into the hollow space beside him, and held it a little closer than strictly necessary.
Just to check.
That something still stayed warm.
THE PRESENT DAY
The shop bell rang.
"Ah! Crowley, my dear, I found the eccles cakes and-"
Aziraphale froze.
Crowley slowly looked up from the album.
Aziraphale immediately looked like a man who had just realised he had left a classified government document on a public bus.
"Oh."
"Oh?" Crowley repeated.
"It appears you've found the cats."
"The cats."
"Yes."
Crowley glanced down. Then back up. Then down again.
"There were cats."
"There were."
"There were many cats."
Aziraphale shifted slightly.
"There were perhaps... several."
"Cats, Aziraphale."
"Yes."
"Entirely without my knowledge."
"Well, you were asleep for a significant portion of it."
Crowley stared.
Aziraphale had the decency to look embarrassed (Which, unfortunately, made him look rather adorable.)
Crowley's annoyance suffered a critical setback.
"Explain."
Aziraphale sat beside him carefully, and for a small moment his smile softened.
"Oh."
Crowley knew that expression.
It was an old expression, a memory expression even.
"It was the eighteen hundreds," Aziraphale said quietly. "You were sleeping."
Crowley felt something uncomfortable twist in his chest.
The Long Nap.
He remembered deciding to disappear for a few decades and naturally he remembered the inconvenient point where he had decided waking up was probably the best course of action for his career and the terrible future of Earth.
He had never really considered what those decades looked like from Aziraphale's side.
"I got lonely."
The words were spoken lightly, Crowley swore he heard his angel's voice break.
Three days later, a cat appeared in the bookshop.
Neither Heaven nor Hell ever discovered exactly where it came from.
Crowley claimed ignorance.
Aziraphale looked suspiciously close to tears.
The cat was named Anthony.
And that was rather difficult to explain away.