Chapter Text
It was time for introspection, thought Crowley.
A gritty activity liked by no one, regardless of their status. Angels typically didn’t have the ability to engage in it, of course, so it was a practice that had primarily lent itself to the recently Fallen. It was a sort of tradition with demons, a self-imposed hazing ritual you suddenly had an aptitude for once you crawled out of the lake of boiling sulphur and had finished coughing up your ethereal guts on the lava rock and screaming about one thing or another.
It created a nice introductory Torture 101 Lesson: physical and mental. After you were done hurting on the outside, you got to hurt on the inside . And wasn’t that nice? Symmetry. A lovely mockup of all the things you lost once your metaphorical umbilical cord with Heaven and the Divine had been ripped out of your very core.
Humans, of course, had taken this practice and perfected it. Curse them - they always had to one-up Hell in some way or another. Immediately after the invention of Introspection as an extreme sport (or self-harm, depending on how you looked at it, but then again, in Hell the lines on those two things were not so much blurred as resembled a Möbius strip) the humans had taken the controls on that and cranked all the dials up to 11 and went on to very quickly think up such horrifying things as Anxiety and Self-Doubt, and then, on a level above that, Imposter Syndrome and the like. At this point in history the invention of specific sufferings brought about by Introspection had not slowed down at all, and in fact the forecast promised a spike of inspiration for even more variants somewhere in the early 21st century.
For the time being, though, Crowley decided to forgo these exciting, more complicated tortures, and settled on the classic version, with a bit of self-hatred sprinkled in (but really, that was just for flavor.)
So, without further ado...
He was an idiot.
Not only - oh, no, he couldn’t stop there.
He was emotional, he was insensitive, he was selfish. He had spoken out of anger instead of thinking about the words that had poured out of his mouth like a dam wall cracking open after straining under the pressure of 5000 years of wry, mischievous smiles.
He had misjudged - himself.
And he had probably made Aziraphale hate him, once and for all.
Excellent work, all in all, for a demon. In terms of spreading misery and doubt - and blasphemy, couldn’t forget that - he had done overtime. He could probably clock out now, crawl under a rock, and Hell wouldn’t even be able to bother him for the next 50 years at least .
Except that there was also the issue of why he would want to crawl under a rock in the first place, after such an accomplishment.
He could see the annual Hell periodicals now, pinned to the wall in the Head Office. Front and center: Great Serpent of Eden , tied into a knot because he insulted an angel... and immediately fled the scene of the crime to avoid having to face what he’d done .
Pathetic.
With an anguished cry that he tried to disguise as a snarl of fury and failed, Crowley jumped to his feet and began to walk along the edge of the crumbling wall he had been sitting on throughout his Introspection. This particular wall was very old. Some of the ancient rock tried to give under his feet but then immediately changed its mind, since Crowley needed it to stay together, at least for the next few hours of his nervous pacing.
It was night now, true night, not like the kind one might find in the city with all those lit street torches. He had gotten far enough away for that, brought himself to the edge of the desert where the dunes in the distance bled into a brilliant explosion of stars. The milky way, lighting up the void of space, arched over the earth in a scattering of distant galaxies.
Crowley craned his neck, eyes flitting over this display. He searched for the ones he had made and his gaze lingered on them longer. They burned bright. He allowed himself to feel a sliver of pride, to set off the bouquet of self-loathing.
Sometimes, he wondered why it had been THIS world. It didn’t have to be. There were others. They, too, had been beautiful in their own special way. They had sunsets, they had landscapes, they had seasons... They were all unique.
So why here? Why the Earth, specifically? Why had She--
No, that was pointless. He had already been down that road too many times, and it never helped to brighten his mood to Question things he already knew he would never get answers to. As a past-time it was fine, and it fit his hobbies as a demon, but that was the last thing he wanted to be now.
Not that he wanted to be an angel, either, but he wanted...
He wanted...
His lips thinned at the sudden realization.
That was the trouble.
He wanted . And what he wanted was, coincidentally, something that was the exact source of his agony.
Aziraphale. The angel. The Principality. The storyteller. The voice of reason. The kindness.
Another grunt rose up in his throat, but this one was tired. He already knew he was not helping things. He knew thinking of Aziraphale only brought about more of those same Feelings he was so keen on squashing. He was aware of this effect the angel had on him, and yet, time after time, he indulged. Natural as it was for a demon to indulge, the resulting, lingering tenderness somewhere under his rib was anything but.
And yet, and yet, and yet... right now, he wanted that. It would be a nice replacement for the hollow ache he had recently acquired.
Crowley brought his hand up to his chest, gripped the fabric there, and closed his eyes.
***
It was in Mesopotamia that it first happened. The great flood, specifically. Or, even more specifically, about a day or two after it had started.
By this time, the intertwining braids of roads the humans trampled into the earth had all disappeared into the muck of the downpour. The water had risen over the gaping windows of clay houses until it eventually swallowed them whole, hiding their empty shells on a newly formed seabed. Currently, this new sea was busy lapping its angry waves at the tops of the highland trees.
About 60 feet above what used to be a city, a boat was weathering the neverending storm - though not due to any feat of engineering. Noah had never had a knack for this type of work. Like all other abrupt and highly questionable decisions made by the Almighty, this one was getting by mostly on Divine intervention instead of common sense.
Or at least, that was Crowley’s very blasphemous opinion. But he was allowed to have it. He was a demon. And what was more - he was a demon in a bad mood .
He was wet. Wet, and miserable. He was also nauseous from the continuous rocking (did snakes even get seasick?), and his clothes hung heavy on him, and everything was bad. Not the good kind of bad, either. Just plain bad.
And everything was about to get worse, or so he thought, when the wooden panel on the wall he was hiding behind groaned open under the pressure of an insistent pair of arms wrenching it aside.
Despite the weight and the exhaustion settling into his gut like the liter of sea water he’d consumed in place of dinner, Crowley sprung to his feet and skidded his ankles apart to throw out a ward that should have, under all circumstances, stopped anyone from coming further in.
Assuming they were human, of course, but, as was his luck, this wasn’t the case.
“You must be out of your mind,” a voice hissed in response and there was a sudden explosion of light to break the half-hearted ward clean in half. Crowley leaned back and squinted unhappily as the intruder, unbothered by the demon’s attempt to keep this a private quarters, wedged himself into the crevice. “Crawley, is that you in here?”
Crowley hissed in lieu of a greeting, and took a menacing step forward. “What do you want, Aziraphale?”
“For starters, I wanted to know why Noah’s arc had a sudden hidden compartment that stank of hellish magic,” the invading angel replied tensely. “But I suppose I have my answer to that question.”
“I suppose you have,” Crowley muttered. He was not in the mood for a chat right at that moment. Usually the angel was the least of his problems, but standing his ground seemed like the right thing to do, so he did.
“If you’re planning to ruin things for Noah, you’ve got another thing coming,” Aziraphale announced in a poor attempt at a threat. “I’m not letting you get away with anything.”
“A pity,” the demon quipped dryly. “All my plans of taste-testing this zoo species by species, foiled. Whatever shall I do.”
“Don’t you dare eat a single thing!” Aziraphale gasped. “These animals are meant to survive and bear progeny to continue the Animal Kingdom!”
“A rather small gene pool, but ah, that’s the tradition anyway, isn’t it?”
The angel merely glared, though it was a bit ineffective since he couldn’t see Crowley too well. The space between the walls which should not have existed was rather dark, and Aziraphale’s soft ethereal glow was not enough to light up much more than a few inches in front of him. He did not attempt to leave.
“There’s still that one single unicorn, I suppose. He’ll be better off put out of his misery before he realizes there’s naught to shag,” Crowley said, sensing the beginning of an awkward stand-off from a mile away. That had to be avoided at all costs. “I’d do the lonely bastard a favor myself, but something tells me the humans might get their teeth into it before I do.”
Aziraphale didn’t take the bait. He kept looking at Crowley suspiciously.
“You should go check on the unicorn,” Crowley reiterated. How much more obvious did he have to be? “Before they eat it.”
Still not getting the hint, the angel stepped a bit closer - not something Crowley expected to happen. The blue eyes, now barely an arm’s reach from his face, were piercing and a bit difficult to look at. They burned with Grace and Divinity and all the other things that usually elicited a proper allergic reaction in demons. “Why do you want me out of here so quickly?” Aziraphale asked.
Oh, so he’s not a complete idiot , thought Crowley. His face, unbenounced to him, was morphing into something resembling mild appreciation. He caught the expression quickly and banished it. It had no place in his repertoire, especially not when angels were involved.
“I have no idea what you mean,” he replied, hooking up his sarcasm and firing it up full blast. “Me, a demon, wanting you, an angel, to leave me alone? Whyever should I desire anything like that?” Crowley cranked his head to the side and smiled in the worst way possible, lips grimacing open his upper row of teeth. “On the contrary, stay here! Join me in my little hole, let’s get cosy, shall we?”
That did it. Aziraphale pulled back, clearly discomforted. “You’ve hardly any need to stay here,” he said, now avoiding the other’s gaze at all costs. “There’s a bottom level to house all the animals, you’d fit right in with them.”
“Oho,” Crowley crooned, once again realizing a second too late that he had accidentally let himself be endeared “That’s brilliant, calling me an animal, a very low blow. You really outdid yourself, angel. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“You are a demon, I’m meant to insult you,” Aziraphale protested, completely missing the point of the jab. He was also, for some reason, beginning to go pink at the ears - a fascinating quality, and a fascinating color, and a fascinating thing to look at. Crowley vowed to return to this observation at a later time. “Now tell me what it is you’re planning!” the angel demanded again.
“Oh for Satan’s sake... I’m planning to eat the unicorn!” Crowley snapped testily, switching strategies yet again and deciding to go for flat out unpleasant since all of his usual attempts were beginning to sound like merely poking fun and lacked their usual demonic sting. “But right now, I’m planning to stay here and hide! So if you want to foil my plans, I suggest you go away and keep watch over the blessed thing!”
Aziraphale bristled. “I’m not falling for your tricks!”
“It’s not a trick!”
“What else would it be?”
Crowley opened his mouth to answer, and then immediately stopped short when an unexpected hand on his thigh stopped him.
“Wa’s wrong?” a third voice cut in.
Aziraphale just about jumped out of his mortal vessel. As an apparent side effect, his angelic glow brightened considerably and became enough to illuminate the space down to Crowley’s knees, where a tiny girl was clinging to the edges of the demon’s robe. She rubbed her eyes and squinted up at the angel.
“Wow,” she gasped.
Aziraphale’s mouth was making a very similar sound. He looked - really looked - around the cavernous hole he had found himself in. It was a narrow space, but it was long. Behind Crowley, he could now see shapes - clothed lumps lined up against the wall, all curled around each other like tiny sacks of potatoes. “The children!” he exclaimed. “The ones you had with you when the rain started-- What are-- How did you-”
Before the questions could get properly voiced answers, Crowley suddenly leaned in, grabbing the angel by the front of his clothes and dragging him closer. “Shut it!” he hissed venomously. “Not another word, you hear?”
Aziraphale gaped at him. His eyes, once a brilliant cobalt blue, were now softening into a mild cerulian. Crowley did not like that look one bit. The hue was ill fitted to the way he was attempting to decorate the entire debacle. There was no Feng Shui to the warmth of it in a room which was supposed to be hung with dark, intimidating demonic acts of evil. That was to say: The angel was smart - perhaps too smart. That was a problem.
“These children,” he hissed. “Are going to be the worst of the worst. They will bear children eventually, and their children will also do that, and in five generation’s time they will become Hell’s most reliable agents.” He threw a glance down at the girl, who was still leaning her head against his thigh, thumb in her mouth. “That one’s going to become a witch.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale, like the demon had just told him some fascinating detail about the local fauna.
“Noah’s line will need some competition,” Crowley added.
“Right,” agreed Aziraphale. Again, very mildly. Not at all complaining.
Crowley tightened his grip and opened his mouth to come up with more convincing arguments which no one had asked for, but at that exact moment, footsteps thundered down the poorly-nailed-together stairs just outside of his precious hiding spot.
As if on cue, both angel and demon swerved their heads around to look at the opened panel in the wall. The voices were filtering through, coming closer. At that point, Crowley was already letting go and abandoning his plot to scare the other with haphazardly put together excuses which seemed to not be as convincing as he’d planned. He prioritized drawing his robe around the girl to get her out of the divine light, but by the time she was safely hidden in the folds of the black cloth, the glow illuminating the hiding spot had dimmed, and the only thing that remained was the gentle twinkle of blue from Aziraphale’s eyes.
The angel stepped back towards the entrance and then cast Crowley one last glance.
Crowley held it - daring him. Threatening.
Aziraphale did not look particularly threatened. Instead he looked... torn.
“What’s this?” a gruff voice just outside asked. “Who’s in there?”
The blue eyes hardened. Making an abrupt decision, he turned his body sideways and slipped out, one hand remaining on the edge of the wooden panel. “It’s me,” he said lightly. In response to his appearance, the voice dulled its edge and inquired immediately if something was wrong.
They knew him! Crowley realized. They trusted him. Of course. Leave it to the angels to travel in style on a makeshift cruise ship at the end of a humanity-ending flood while the rest of them had to hide as lowly stow-aways. The irony was entirely lost on them.
The demon scowled and raised his hand and preparing a much stronger curse. He wasn’t about to let his efforts go to waste. He didn’t go down without a fight.
And then the angel said: “No, no, nothing in there at all.”
Crowley froze.
“Just an empty storage compartment,” Aziraphale assured. He paused and then went on: “I was thinking - since we will need to keep provisions in good condition, you could bring some of the crates of food down. I’m sure they’ll keep nicely.”
“Oh?” asked the human man. “That’s an excellent idea. I hear the gourds are already beginning to rot...”
And then - then, the angel stepped out of the corridor completely, and the panel shut with a soft thud behind him.
And Crowley was left alone - with 13 sleeping children.
Safe.
***
Something remained in Crowley from that encounter.
It wasn’t gratitude - he had no capacity for that, as a demon, surely - but it wasn’t smugness, either. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that Aziraphale had felt sufficiently scared of him to lie to Noah’s family. Instead, he was... befuddled. Confused. It was a stupid itch, an unsatisfied, half-full feeling of not understanding why Aziraphale had done what he had. Of not knowing the reasoning behind the decision.
And he hated not knowing, hated it more than anything.
So it followed that he should hate Aziraphale. He should distrust Aziraphale, he should be suspicious of the angel of the Eastern Gate, like he should have been suspicious of him from the beginning, when he crawled up to join him on the edge of the wall the first time at the Garden.
It followed that...
Well.
Crowley had never been sufficiently good at following. And he wasn’t about to start now.
So instead, he skirted the edges. Lurked. Observed.
And waited, patiently, for an explanation.
It was in Dholavira that they met next. A marketplace, full of stands and food and drink, and people and din. A lovely place for all sorts of trouble, for all sorts of sinning, which he was itching to encourage.
Crowley had chosen it specifically for his next job, and he had a plan in place that involved a complex, Rube-Goldberg machine level plot of adultery - but at the exact moment that he leaned across the table to begin talking to the woman holding a large fold of cured meats and a larger grudge against her next door neighbor, a movement of white caught his eye on the other side of the street.
It was Aziraphale - standing next to a cart full of some sort of brown lumps that were probably supposed to be edible. The angel was currently talking to the seller with animated hand gestures to match, explaining something. The light caught his platinum curls, contrasting with the color of sun-kissed skin. He paused the conversation, searched himself for a leather pouch of coins which was definitely not there (until a second later, miraculously, it was) and then handed over two carved pieces of copper.
In return, the merchant handed him a lump wrapped in a piece of thin cloth.
Crowley watched from across the street, entranced, as the angel immediately unfurled the cloth and pushed his fingers into the crust of the thing he had recently purchased. Even from this distance, Crowley could imagine more than actually see the detail of the nails (too clean for this millenium) as they ripped the food apart. Inside, the texture seemed to be softer, almost porous. The angel brought it to his face, took a deep sniff, and smiled like God Herself had just breathed Grace into him. Then he parted his lips, exposed his teeth and, acting for all the world like a human submitting to the whims of simple animal hunger - bit down.
By the time the demon felt his elbow slip out from under him he had already gained enough momentum ground-wards to make recovery out of the question. That is to say he promptly tripped on absolutely nothing, nearly collapsing in an undignified heap by the side of the cured meats cart. He didn’t, of course - at the last moment he whipped his hips around to maneuver his bodyweight mostly upright again in a motion that tattled of a snake-like tendency to forget what legs were used for. It would have been a sufficient save had his facial expression been a little more ‘I meant to do that’ instead of ‘my brain is currently out to lunch watching someone else eat theirs’ but the damage was done. The lady he had been attempting to seduce was now looking at him with an expression of amusement, not lust.
He could remedy that later. Now, though, now - his priorities had shifted.
“Aziraphale,” he called, feet moving seemingly on their own.
Aziraphale’s eyebrows seemed to be doing the same thing - reaching up for his hairline before he had even spotted Crowley cutting through the crowd. Then his mouth did a strange sort of twitch - but since he had his cheeks full of bread, it was impossible to identify what the expression was supposed to be before the angel managed to get it under control.
“Oh, hello,” he mumbled, and hurriedly wiped some crumbs off of his chin. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? What are you doing?” Crowley countered. “Are you... eating?”
Guilt lit the angel up from inside. Crowey could see it on another plane as a demon, but he didn’t have to look that far. The angel’s own skin didn’t do much to hide the prompt rush of blood to his cheeks. He hurriedly swallowed the piece he had just been chewing and lowered the remaining bit to his side as if he was under the impression that demons might not have object permanence. “Just making sure the baker has enough money to feed his family,” he said. “His business has been suffering lately.”
“Hm,” Crowley said, valiantly fighting a knowing smirk. Then he wondered why he should and released it into the wild, allowing it to accost the angel’s own who-me? wide-eyed innocence.
Aziraphale blushed again - harder this time - and averted his eyes.
Oh , thought Crowley despite himself. This is fun .
“Taste good?” he inquired innocently.
Aziraphale looked at him again. Crowley waited for the next step, for the extra hit of guilt he was ready to inhale like a drug, and then--
Aziraphale smiled. Really smiled - his entire face was splitting in two like a pot of clay and golden glow was spilling, gushing from between the cracks.
“Oh, yes!” he said, and lifted the bread up to the demon’s nose. “It’s lovely, with sunflower seeds! My favorite, in fact. Would you like some?”
Crowley recoiled twice. First, from the angelic smile, then from the bread. A strange, unidentifiable event was unfolding in his lower gut, and he had a sneaking suspicion that it was in no way food related.
“You eat?” he managed to choke out, desperately steering the conversation back around to Not Good, Bad and Guilt Inducing topics. He would get good at steering eventually, but for now the mechanics eluded him. “An angel, eating?”
“Well it would be a waste otherwise, wouldn’t it?” Aziraphale defended. He lowered the bread a bit, but his smile faltered. Crowley’s stomach reacted unfavorably at the loss. “Don’t you eat?” he asked.
“Only sometimes,” Crowley admitted. Why was he saying this? He didn’t have to say this. “I prefer drinking, honestly. The alcohol is a much easier undertaking, and the aftereffects are much more fun.” He didn’t have to say that either.
“Alcohol?” Aziraphale asked and brought the bread back up to his lips, mouthing the crust idly as if he had forgotten to be properly ashamed of the practice already. “I haven’t tried that. Seemed a bit... inebriating.”
“Oh, it is,” Crowley agreed. “But that’s the good part. Also, the flavor isn’t too bad - they’ve gotten quite creative with it as of late. Lots of fruit involved these days.”
The angel looked up at him, interest clearly piqued. “Oh?” he asked, and the clay cracked again, basking the demon in a warm glow of a new, hopeful smile.
Without meaning to, Crowley found himself smiling back.
Oh , he thought. This is bad .
***
The trend became this - Crowley would bump into Aziraphale here and there. Every century. Sometimes, every few decades. Sometimes, sooner. When the time stretched to be too much, he would go and seek the angel out on purpose. (The purpose being, of course, that he was a demon, and Aziraphale was his enemy. He had to keep an eye on his enemy.)
Every time, things would go approximately like so:
They would find each other. Accuse one another of a recently witnessed good or bad deed. A specific amount of poking fun or scolding would ensue. Never too much. Some half-hearted insults would be exchanged. Then, without quite knowing how, they would end up where the food was. Then, where the drink was. They would eat and drink. They would relax. They would start talking.
And Crowley would... melt.
He was no stranger to melting. Falling into a lake of boiling sulphur lent itself to many experiences, melting being one of them. Crowley was no stranger to the agony of melting, but melting under Aziraphale’s annoyingly warm gaze or brilliant smiles was a torture of an entirely new caliber. Although initially the Grace and Goodness leaking out of the angel had nearly caused him to break out in a bout of hives he was sure was the result of a natural allergy to angels, eventually he got used to it. Eventually, he began to feel comfortable.
The tolerance of the divine wasn’t entirely bad for a demon. In fact, if he spun the Rubik's cube of excuses enough times (and if he peeled off and re-applied the stickers while no one was looking) such a result could look as if it favored him. It meant that he was, in one way or another, immune to his opposition. And that was bound to come in handy for some of his more dastardly schemes.
And schemes - he had schemes. He was good at what he did, and he was always eager to develop more complex plots. Temptations weren’t fun if they were simple; Crowley craved a challenge.
One of the challenges he had come up with was, unsurprisingly, the angel himself. It was a long-term project. An Angel of the Lord was not one that would be likely to fall for his wiles easily, but if any of them would, he thought it might be Aziraphale. The plump, curly-haired little thing practically oozed indulgence and vice in equal measure. From food to drink, to stories, to little human rituals - he partook in it all with the vigor of a starved animal set loose in a meat market. By all accounts, Tempting him to the other side should have been as simple as leaving a trail of sweet breads and cheeses in a long line all the way to Hell’s front door. (In fact, Crowley had considered just such an approach a few centuries earlier.)
And yet - as quickly as he had come up with this perfectly evil plan, he also realized how naive that assumption had been.
Because attempting to Fell Aziraphale - attempting to lead him to ruin - was like punching a huge pillow.
It might feel good at first as a form of exercise, but eventually you grew tired and realized that it was pointless and, at some point soon after that, you became aware that instead of punching the pillow you could bury your face in it and go to sleep, and that was much more comfortable and satisfying.
This specific metaphor of realization - that Aziraphale was a pillow - came to Crowley sometime in ancient Greece when he first came across such a thing. Prior to this discovery, he had only had run-ins with the other type of human pillows - hard, uncomfortable ones made of stone that the upper-class people used when they slept. It was dreadful, like hanging your head on a metal hook for the night. Crowley had never been a big fan of sleeping for that particular reason - but this new type of pillow promised to change things. It was soft and supportive, giving just enough to allow him to rest on it comfortably without ever completely breaking under the weight of his mental turbulence.
Coincidentally, this discovery was around the time that Aziraphale was doing the exact same thing to him. Being a pillow. Not literally, of course - but by that point Crowley was far enough gone to have been fine with that option as well.
It happened, as most things did for them, over dinner.
“I’m just saying,” Crowley was saying. “You like food, you like wine, you like reading, you like theatre - why not sleep?”
Aziraphale shook his head and raised his cup to his lips to take a hearty sip. “I’ve already told you,” he replied patiently. “Takes too much time.”
“Explain,” demanded the demon, reaching across his elbow and snagging a bunch of grapes off of the angel’s plate. This earned him a glare, but it was not intense enough to even inspire an itch of Divine Discomfort.
“I can do my job while eating,” Aziraphale said. “I can do it while drinking. Doing so allows me to get closer to the humans I am to influence. Going to the theatre, reading, knowing them - all these things help me do my angelic duties! But sleep - sleep takes too long. I can’t do anything else if I’m asleep, and it means I’ll have wasted that time when I could just as easily be doing something else. Doing good.” He gently batted Crowley’s fingers away from his plate and eyed a dripping golden honeycomb on the demon’s own side of the table as if planning a retaliation. “There’s no merits to sleep.”
“Sure there are,” said Crowley, leaning back in his seat. He popped a grape into his mouth. “All humans sleep. If you never do, they’ll get suspicious.”
“I can fake sleep well enough when I need to,” Aziraphale said. “And if I need to pretend for a longer time, I just read.”
“But you haven’t really tried it, have you? What if you like it?”
The angel glanced up at him. “I have tried plenty, I assure you. I didn’t enjoy the experience, and I didn’t enjoy the arrangements. Those sleeping bricks they rest their heads on - pillows? - are dreadful, for a start-”
“Ah,” Crowley interrupted, tightening his grip on the conversation like a fisherman on a carefully strung net. “But that’s the thing. They’ve got new ones. New pillows. Very soft. Very comfortable. Top of the line. Made of cloth, these pillows. Straw in them! They’re supposed to be all the rage.”
“That’s lovely,” Aziraphale remarked, but his attention was still on the food. He was eyeing the honeycomb again. “Good for them, I suppose.”
Crowley reached out and pulled the platter that housed the sugary treat a little further out of the angel’s reach. “It is good. That’s why you ought to give it another go.”
“Maybe another time,” Aziraphale said. He had casual stubbornness down to a science, it would seem. “Besides, I’m not particularly tired right now.”
“But you will be after you drink.”
“That’s because I’ll be drunk. When I sober up, it stops being an issue.” Aziraphale wiggled his shoulders impatiently and his gaze flipped like a switch from Crowley to the honeycomb and then back to Crowley again. “Are you by chance going to...?”
The demon ignored him. “The reason I’m asking,” he explained, although Aziraphale had long ago given up on the practice of requesting explanations for his array of odd suggestions, “is that I have this room for the night, and I was planning to test out the new pillows myself.”
Aziraphale reluctantly released the honeycomb from his predatory stare. “Oh?”
“Yes, and, well, I thought, if you were interested in drinking a bit longer than an hour, I could certainly let you stay... but if someone comes in to clean up, you see, we’d both have to at least pretend to be sleeping. To not raise suspicions, you see.” Crowley was aware, on some level, that this wasn’t entirely convincing. (The level to which this was an understatement escaped him because he was currently focusing very hard .) To distract them both from it, he reached out and ran his fingers along the rim of the platter in front of him. “And I could use the company.” One of his fingers slipped into the golden stuff oozing out of the waxen hexagons. He lifted his hand up to his mouth and pressed his honey-stained pinky to his tongue. It was far too sweet for him, but he dipped it into his mouth regardless and then extracted it just as smoothly, now licked clean.
Aziraphale watched. His eyes were changing colors again, like something very intense was going on just beneath the surface. At the beginning of the dinner they had been a powdery blue, but they were now shifting into a much sharper cobalt. “It would be a pity not to take advantage of the full course meal,” he admitted reluctantly.
Crowley smiled, feeling something stirring in his own gut. That same, rolling feeling of triumph of Temptation. “Indeed,” he agreed.
“And I suppose it’s better if I stay here to thwart your wiles,” Aziraphale added, quite suddenly, of his own accord.
Crowley tensed. “My wiles? Which ones?” he asked, practically ready to check behind his own shoulder for comedic effect. Wiles? No wiles here. Who saw a wile?
Aziraphale eyed him, unimpressed. “Really, Crowley. A room, all to yourself? On a warm night like this? In this city?”
The demon felt his chest tighten. Had Aziraphale caught on...? That quickly?
“As if you’d really be alone,” the angel said with a soft snort. “I know you, you old serpent. You must have big plans: seeding vices and all that. I know you’ll have Tempted someone into bed with you within five minutes of my leaving.”
Crowley jerked up from his relaxed slouch, suffering a jolt of offence which was in no way justified. “Would not !” he protested immediately, and then, before he’d realized it, blurted out the tail-end of the thought that slipped out through momentum: “It’s you I’m after, you idiot!”
Immediately after the confession dropped unceremoniously from his teeth, Crowley clicked them shut and waited. Waited for-- for something. For righteous fury, perhaps? Some honest attempt at smiting?
For a split second, he was actually scared. All the previous 4000 odd years of meeting up and talking and sharing wine flashed before his eyes. Is this what humans saw before they died? A reminder of all they would be losing?
But then, in the most mysterious way - and the way which would come to be the most standard for Aziraphale over the next 2000 years - none of that happened.
Instead, the angel hummed into his glass of wine, set it down and frowned disapprovingly. “Me? Whatever for?” He even had the gall to shake his head and tut. “That won’t work, Crowley, and you know it.” And then, even more incredibly, the angel sighed and said: “I suppose it can’t be helped, as that is your job after all. But if it comes between letting you trick me into going unconscious for a few hours and letting you spread some Lust around these streets which - just in my humble opinion - does not need any help from supernatural influences such as yourself... well, I’ll gladly take the lesser of two evils.”
There was a beat of silence, during which Crowley struggled to reconcile his confession with the nonchalant reaction. Here he was, being his usual demonic self - Tempting, being enticing, a little bit sexual... and the best he’d gotten out of an Angel of the Lord was a finger-wag and a soft ‘oh you ’?
Imagine reaching for a jug full of water.
You stretch out your hand, open your fingers, and grasp the handle. All of your muscles strain in preparation for a specific amount of weight, calculating the strain necessary to lift the thing you are looking at. You know it must be heavy, because you have lifted these jugs before. You are armed with the knowledge of a precise amount of strength to exert, and you act accordingly.
But instead, when you pull the jug up against gravity, it turns out to be empty. And before you even realize your error, you have sent the thing flying across the room because you’d yanked it from the table too damn hard.
That was rather how Crowley felt at this moment.
He had gone out on a limb for this one! He’d gathered all of his evil-doing intent for the year and pooled it into this one encounter, psyching himself up, telling himself it would be worth it, that his irresistible urge to bother the hell-or, er, heaven, rather-out of the angel was surely a side-effect of a vice he was picking up on. He had aimed his punch, lined it up, and gave it his best shot and instead--instead...!
Aziraphale had taken the blow: softly. Without even seeming bothered. And instead of hitting a wall of divine resistance that Crowley had been prepared to shatter, he had lost step and had fallen into a soft.... something.
Not a wall. Aziraphale didn’t have walls. He had-- He was... A pillow.
“Something the matter?” Aziraphale asked. His gaze had not lost its brilliant color, but his voice was still just as warm and inviting, as if they were two old friends chatting over wine. About Tempting. And Lust. And testing pillows.
Crowley threw his head back, shoved the heel of his hand into his eyes for a moment, and allowed himself a groan of frustration that resonated, he hoped, in the deepest parts of Hell. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Glad you’re down for the pillow testing.”
Across the table, he could hear Aziraphale chuckling knowingly. “Anytime.”
When he looked back down, he realized the honeycomb was gone. It wasn’t on the other side of the table either, but there was a condemning drop of gold on the corner of the angel’s lip. He looked very pleased with himself.
“I was going to eat that,” Crowley lied.
Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled just a bit, and his next smile was positively impish. “Very sorry, my dear,” he lied back.
Crowley burned.
***
The next time Aziraphale called to him at the crest of a hill and Crowley announced he would be changing his name, the angel had asked him wryly if he would be called Asmodeus. The quip, although it was quickly overshadowed by a much darker conversation, did not go unnoticed. It also did not go unnoticed when Aziraphale very smoothly invited him to eat oysters less than a decade after that.
Their dance - the only dance they would ever be good at in all their time on earth - grew more complex. They met more. Talked more. Sought each other out after significant events. And all the while, Crowley, having abandoned his previous plan to drag Aziraphale to Hell just to see if he could, instead took up a far more architecturally minded work of building a shelter from Heaven and Hell’s annoying assignments.
The Arrangement.
Because, really, if there was one thing he’d learned over the years on his bloody planet is that he didn’t quite enjoy all the blood. In fact, it was much more fun to stretch out the Temptations, to stop and smell the roses, to eat the occasional local dish, and to get piss drunk with the only being he’d ever felt close to in his entire immortal lifetime.
Oh, he still did his work as a demon, of course, that was a given. But what sort of demon would he be if he was devoted to his work? Devotion, after all, was a virtue. And if he really wanted to go all out, be demonic about things, why not be demonic towards everything - including Hell itself? If rebelling against Heaven was good - er, bad - surely rebelling against Hell was a logical next step.
As for how attached he was getting to a certain angel in the process... that was beside the point, really. Unimportant. Their relationship was an organic byproduct, not anything significant, not anything to be paid any mind to.
He liked fun. Aziraphale was fun. He liked Aziraphale.
He liked Aziraphale.
Liked him enough to go eat dinner with him, even after everything. Liked him enough to get drunk with him. Liked him enough to stupidly begin to blabber Ye Olde Good And Evil discussion at him, like he was still on duty in the Garden and he had just decided to reinstate himself as a landlord of the Apple Tree You Should Not Eat From.
He had liked the angel enough to get angry when Aziraphale suggested he was merely a collection of demonic chain reactions. A snowball which could not stop its trajectory. A limp puppet in the hands of Morningstar.
And that was the pinnacle of the worst of it - who was to say he wasn’t? The problem was, Falling had never gotten him the answers to the questions he had risked everything for. There wasn’t ever any resolution. He thought for a hot second there might be - but those were the last phantom limb pains of Heaven’s Grand Design, the expectation of something being there which he had specifically cut himself off from.
Hell had no design; that was the whole point. It wasn’t just a mirror side - wasn’t just a Heaven with a Goth lean (although over the millenia, some occupants had made a damn good pass of making it just that). That was what it had all been about. Everything was open ended. Vast. Limitless. Meaningless. No System, No Commandments, No Pillars, No Outlines or Blueprints. Empty.
For angels which had not known such a concept, it had been too much to grasp.
He wondered sometimes if it was really the Fall itself that ruined them. Perhaps it was the Landing that did them in. Coming to and realizing that there was Stuff - or the lack of it, more precisely - that was beyond what you ever thought possible. The nothingness of everything you knew and had thought was integral, like Structure and Connection and Trust - was actually just a box you had been living in that whole time, and now you were out of the box, and you rather thought ‘ no, this is too much, I’d like to crawl back in there now, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed, thank you ’.
And he had been stupid enough to try to communicate that to an Angel - even though he knew, he knew ! it could never be possible. It would be like trying to explain the concept of colors to a deep sea creature which had evolved specifically not to have eyes anymore. The best case scenario was that even if you somehow succeeded, you would only make things worse for that specific creature. It would be stuck on the bottom of the ocean with nothing but black for miles and miles, and suddenly aware of its utterly dreary situation with a specific lack of the very thing you’d made it aware of.
Even if it wasn’t Falling, it was very close to it. Possibly worse. And would he wish that upon Aziraphale?
No. He was loathe to admit it, but lying to himself was pointless.
Because over his 5000 years of being on Earth, the very purpose of which was to make life difficult for the angel, he had failed to ever summon enough motivation to do that very thing. He enjoyed Aziraphale’s company more than his suffering. He couldn’t even stand to see the bloody bastard pouting for longer than two minutes and thirty four seconds (that was the current record, and it had not been challenged for the past 800 years). He enjoyed Aziraphale’s company, and Aziraphale - he (very quietly) hoped - enjoyed his company in kind.
Would all of that come to an end now? he wondered, back on the edge of the crumbling wall. It reminded him a bit of Eden. That didn’t help the internal turmoil much.
He looked east. Somewhere beyond the desert, beyond the mountains, was the unfurling Liao Dynasty. He’d heard good things about the life there, heard of some interesting philosophies he could really dig his nose into and go wild. It would be fun, and it might take his mind off of his colossal failure for a while.
But it also meant running away from Aziraphale and leaving him with Nanael and the consequences of that particular debacle, which was
Fine.
It was Fine.
He was Fine with it.
He was a demon. Leaving an Angel to deal with the embarrassing aftermath of letting his prisoner escape out from right under his very nose would be the perfect ending to his temper tantrum back at the restaurant. Surely it was the cherry on top of the metaphorical cake of disappointment and hurt Aziraphale must be feeling at this moment. Betrayal - utter betrayal, even after the promise to stick around and help out - would be a great epilogue to this particular chapter of his life. He would be absolutely broken up about it. He might even cry. It would be excellent. Crowley would be the cause of all of that... bad stuff.
And that was what Crowley did, wasn’t it? Bad things. Because he was a demon.
He kicked a rock off of the wall absentmindedly and curled his upper lip. He also glared at a very small animal skittering along the dune to his left, and then glared up at the stars, for good measure.
They did not glare back.
The chain around his left wrist, which had now lost its connection with its other half, itched guiltily. He reached down and ran his fingers over the loop, and then down to the severed link that he had easily wrenched apart during his dramatic disappearing act.
Aziraphale didn’t even try to hold him back. What a stupid charade it had been. They were acting like children, playing pretend with magic and spells that weren’t even there. Now all he had left was the feeling that something - probably his conscience, curse it - was tugging him back, as if the chain’s fake connection somehow held strong across the miles and miles of sand back in Bukhara.
No, hold on , thought Crowley. I don’t have a conscience. And it really is quite itchy .
He looked down at the bracelet and first thought that the moonlight was reflecting off of it in a particularly effective way. But there was no moonlight - it was a new moon. On the contrary, the chain seemed to be producing some sort of glow of its own. It was a very dim one for now, but the longer he stared at it with a confounded expression, the brighter it shined. And then it began vibrating.
“That can’t be good,” said Crowley to no one in particular, right before he was yoinked across 1000 kilometers in the exact direction he would have eventually ended up going anyway.