Archive of Our Own

Nothing had changed between them since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't. It really hadn't. They still fed ducks at St James Park and gorged themselves silly at the Ritz and drank themselves sillier in the back of the bookshop, sometimes in that order, sometimes not. And those were all things they done before the Nonpocalypse. So really, when Crowley looked at it properly, nothing had changed.

And they'd always been...close. And they'd always flirted, although Crowley wasn't sure Aziraphale had ever counted it as flirting. Wasn't flirting a sin? Or was it? It was getting harder and harder to remember what was what these days.

But nevertheless, they were the same. The two of them. Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed except that everything had changed, every interaction they had between themselves was different in absolutely no way at all, and the whole thing was making Crowley go round the twist.

Take, for instance, their meetings. Their meetings had always gone the same, at least in the last few centuries of their acquaintance (the first few had involved drawn weapons, the next few had involved wings and hissing, the ones after that stilted nods – it had taken them until well after 1200AD before they actually shook hands). But lately they had been more than civilised – at least Aziraphale had. He would smile and nod and say something sickening like “Lovely to see you, my dear,” and Crowley would, as tradition dictated, ignore all of this and go on a rant about whatever was foremost in his mind. That was how it had worked. And that was how it still worked, except...

Well, except nothing. Crowley had just marched into the shop, and Aziraphale had looked up from his book and had smiled and nodded and said, “Lovely to see you, my dear,” and it had all been exactly the same except it wasn't, there was something different even though the angel had said exactly the same thing in exactly the same way he always said it, so everything was the same except -

Except, Crowley decided, it wasn't going to be. Not anymore.

“Lovely to see you too,” he said, just to try it out.

Aziraphale blinked twice. “Er,” he replied.

Crowley instantly wished he'd said nothing. “The Ritz?” he offered quickly, to salvage the situation.

Usually Aziraphale would put up a token argument about not possibly being able to leave the shop, my dear, not when there's so much work on and what if there's a customer who wants to buy something? and then Crowley would say something to mildly tempt him and they would go out. He waited for Aziraphale to protest and put them back on track.

Instead Aziraphale said, “I'd love to,” and promptly shut his book, standing up out of his chair.

This time it was Crowley's turn to blink – a much more uncommon occurrence. “Er,” it was his turn to say. “I mean, only if you're not too busy...”

“Never too busy for you,” the damned angel replied promptly and wrestled his coat on, sparing Crowley a sweet smile.

Crowley was once more lost. This was even worse than everything being the same but not. This was blatant, in-your-face difference. There was no solution for this except fleeing, and although it was just about acceptable to imagine a demon fleeing before a Principality, it was insane to imagine Crowley fleeing before Aziraphale.

All right, he decided grimly. Whatever game the angel was playing, he was sure he could play it better. He offered Aziraphale his arm, then smiled gamely when the angel hesitated. “Come on, I don't bite.”

Usually Aziraphale was as stiff and very-almost-English as they came. Crowley was the touchy-feely one, and only when said touching and feeling was rude, inappropriate and highly unwanted. Or when they were in danger, but that was one time – well, a few times – but it had been the Almost-Apocalypse and Aziraphale had done it too, so that made it okay. But usually that was how it went. Crowley invaded Aziraphale's personal space like a maggot on month-old meat and Aziraphale stayed as out of Crowley's way as it was possible to get without leaving the room entirely.

So Crowley actually offering personal contact was rare. Almost as rare as -

Aziraphale slipped his arm through the demon's, even going so far as to squeeze it. “I'm sure,” he answered angelically.

Crowley very nearly lost it then and there, but managed to go almost six full steps out of the shop and halfway across the road before he gave up. He flung away Aziraphale's arm and backed up onto the pavement. “All right, just what the He – Hea – what are you playing at?”

Aziraphale turned around, still in the middle of the road, and finally, finally his expression was the usual disgruntled one he wore when talking to a certain troublemaking demon. “Me?” he demanded. “You're the one who said it was lovely to see me, what was that all about?”

“You held onto my arm!” Crowley accused.

“You offered it!” Aziraphale shouted back. “Look Crowley, I don't know what you're trying to do, but I can tell you now I have absolutely no interest – ”

Which was precisely the moment when a bus shot round the corner and squashed the angel flat.

Eric Jones of Clapton was a father of three and a grandfather of one, and overall too nice a person to be a London bus driver. Even after thirty-eight years in the business he still felt a pang of remorse when he was forced to close the doors on someone running at them, but rules were rules, and if the Man told you to close the doors on latecomers, you closed the doors on them. Because the Man was the Man, and if you didn't do what they demanded, you wouldn't have a job and then what would happen to your family? And the Man had rules about everything.

The Man even had rules about knocking people down, specifically that it was a very bad thing to do. But for the first time in his life Eric Jones didn't care what the Man thought because he was too busy feeling shock and then, very quickly, crushing guilt.

He screeched on the brakes, but one glance in the rear view mirror told him it was too late – the blond man was already so much pigeon food and the dark-haired man in sunglasses who had been standing near him was shouting and screaming.

The Man also had rules about leaving the bus when passengers were on it, but for once Eric Jones ignored them. He got out of the bus on shaky legs.

At first the dark haired man didn't notice him, he was too busy shouting the strangest things at the unmoving mess in the road. “Hit by a bus, are you kidding me, angel?! Of all the pedestrian – you – you stupid short-sighted sod! I know you can hear me you moron, what do you expect me to do now, drink alone? You selfish twat! You'd better come back quickly – you – you complete waste of space!”

Grief, Eric Jones decided numbly, did weird things to a person. He took a trembling step forward, which was when the man noticed him. He looked quickly from Eric Jones to the bus of shocked passengers, said, “Oh for God's sake,” and waved his hand.

And Eric Jones promptly forgot everything.

The next thing he knew, he was standing outside his front door with the strangest feeling that he'd done something quite interesting that day without really knowing what it was.

He entered his house. The kids were visiting, watching his granddaughter climb around on the dining room table.

“Hi dad,” one of the kids said. “Good day at work?”

Eric Jones blinked. “I don't know.” He paused. “You know – I think I might finally stick it to the Man. Take early retirement, you know. I'm getting too old for this anyway.”

He smiled down at his granddaughter, at his children. There were, after all, more important things in life.

Crowley spent his first Aziraphale-less year getting drunk in Las Vegas. There was no point hanging around London – it took a decade at the very least to get a new body off the boys Upstairs, probably fifteen if you'd done something as thick as get hit by a bloody bus. Plus Las Vegas was a great place to do barely any work but get tons of recognition – all he needed to do was rig a few casinos and the humans created enough sin to get Crowley a year's full of commendations.

Round about year seven, he moved on to Rome and went around tempting archbishops and cardinals before it got boring. That was the problem with the discorporation of your archnemesis/only friend – it made everything that bit more dull. There was no one to thwart you, and if there was no one thwarting you, where was the fun in doing anything at all? No thwarting meant no enthusiasm in one's work and no enthusiasm in one's work meant a noticeable drop in one's work, which raised questions that neither liked answering. They'd both realised this around 1100AD and thus had stopped actively trying to discorporate each other – it even became part of the Arrangement. Then somewhere along the line – round about the time that Crowley fell into a meat-grinder and spent thirty years waiting for Hell to find an attractive enough body – this agreement changed from passively not killing each other to actively trying to stop each other from being killed. Which had now left Crowley with the guilty feeling that he should have stopped the bus somehow.

And what had that damned angel even meant by 'I have absolutely no interest - '? Absolutely no interest in...what?

Round about year twelve, it occurred to Crowley that maybe the angel had meant he had no interest in Crowley himself. Which was just impossible, wasn't it? He had to like Crowley, he spent time with him. That meant you liked someone, right? Or at least it meant you didn't hate them. Didn't it?

What if the angel hated him?

This was the other bad thing about your only friend being discorporated – it made you question things. Things that didn't get questioned when said friend was with you all the time.

On the sixteenth year, Crowley returned to London, his Bentley (which of course hadn't been touched), his flat and his plants (which had, against all the odds, kept growing steadily. Just in case he ever came back). He didn't visit the Ritz, or St James Park, because those were Crowley-Aziraphale things and you didn't visit Crowley-Aziraphale places unless there were two of you.

Eventually he steeled himself and went to Aziraphale's shop.

The shop was still there, because Crowley had made it so. It was part of their Agreement – if in case of discorporation, protect one's Bentley/bookshop. It was also still empty.

He waited two more years, then, one day, in a fit of abject boredom, contacted Hell.

YES CROWLEY? said his computer.

“Er,” Crowley said. “Er, hi, it's me.”

YES, said the computer. WE KNOW. WHAT DO YOU WANT, CROWLEY?

“Er,” said Crowley. “Well, I'm. I'm sort of missing an angel. I mean, here on Earth. I mean, not that I'm missing him, obviously I'm not missing missing him, what I mean is, there's no angel here on Earth, there's just me.”

A long pause. AND THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS...?

“Not a problem!” Crowley spluttered hastily. “No problem at all, no, no, Hell no. It's a relief to be honest. Well, no, not a relief, but more like a – well, it's a – it's a sort of freedom, y'know – ”

CROWLEY, WHAT DO YOU WANT?

“ - it's just,” Crowley scrambled desperately, “It makes you wonder. You know. What Heaven is planning. I mean, they're obviously plotting something, they wouldn't just leave a demon to wreak Hell on Earth by himself without some sort of plan behind it, right?”

There was a long pause. Crowley crossed his fingers behind his back.

WE WILL BE IN CONTACT, his computer said at last, menacingly, and turned itself off.

Crowley breathed out slowly and went to terrorize his plants to calm himself down.

Two weeks later he got a response.

CROWLEY, boomed Taylor Swift through his speakers and halfway through her rendition of Bad Blood, THIS IS HELL SPEAKING.

“Ah,” said Crowley, stopped his energetic dancing and sat down.

THE ANGEL IS NOT COMING BACK, CROWLEY.

Something painful happened in the region of his stomach. “Did something happen to him?” he blurted, then added quickly, “Because that would be fantastic. Obviously.”

NO, said Taylor Swift. HE IS IN HEAVEN. HE IS JUST NOT COMING BACK.

“Oh.” Shit. Shit shit shit. What did I do? Did I say something he really hated or - ? “Is another angel replacing him?”

NO. NO ONE IS REPLACING HIM. HIS DISCORPORATATION HAS CREATED...AN OPPORTUNITY. HE HAS BEEN RECALLED TO HEAVEN.

“Right. I mean, that's a bit – isn't it? You know – isn't it?”

CROWLEY. WE MAY BE RECALLING YOU TOO.

Crowley sat very still. He didn't have nightmares, he didn't even dream, but it was all too possible this was one anyway. Wasn't it? “Erm. Why?”

HE WANTS IT.

There was only one 'He'. At least, when Hell spoke about 'Him' like that. It wasn't the Him Upstairs with the long beard but the Him Downstairs with the goatee and the hooves.

“Right,” he said. That was all he could say.

WE WILL BE IN TOUCH, 'cuz you and me, we got bad blood...

Crowley turned off the speakers. Then he went into his bedroom and hid in the wardrobe for two days.

Three days later he was was recalled, his flat was promptly sold to a banker with too much money, the Bentley was broken into and taken for a joyride by a gang of punks and all his plants were sent to a garden centre, where they breathed a long awaited sigh of relief and praised their God for their deliverance.

Plants – especially those plants – also have a God.

“See, the thing is,” said Hastur as he turned the wheel and the human on the rack screamed and stretched a bit further, “You've just been out of the game a bit long, you know, Crowley?”

“Yeah.” Ligur stuck another pin under his human's fingernails as they writhed in their chair. “So we figured, why not throw you back in the deep end. You know, trial by fire and all that?”

He winked. Crowley looked around him despairingly. “Right, yeah, but the torture chambers? Really? It's just not me.”

Hastur gazed at him dispassionately. “Your human isn't screaming.”

Crowley glanced down at said human bound in his chair. Male, in his forties, had an affair and had a heart attack during said affair. The human smiled desperately up at him. Crowley wished, briefly, for sushi and wine and a ride in his Bentley.

He picked up a hammer. The human whimpered and begged for mercy.

His beautiful, beautiful Bentley, thought Crowley.

“Sod it,” he said, and put the hammer back down again.

His room was small and pokey and right over the sewage pit, and everything was decorated with red paint – well, hopefully paint anyway. Apparently all those commendations for causing Hell on Earth hadn't meant much in actual Hell. He was among the lowest of the low.

And he was only getting lower.

He just couldn't do it anymore. Torture was just not his scene. All this time spent torturing every single individual with weird apparatus and machines, it was so wasteful. All they had to do was lock all the humans in a room together and watch them torture each other. This way was so impractical and -

Cruel, said Aziraphale's voice in his head.

“Fuck off, angel,” said Crowley and put his hands over his ears.

Eventually Hastur and Ligur complained about him when he let a human run away as far as the door and he was henchforth relegated to a deskjob directly under Dagon, Lord of the Flies, so that he could be Monitored with a capital M.

Mostly he just sat there and stared at the desk and thought about the Ritz.

Eventually Beelzebub turned up to glower down at him all demon-king-like. After a while, it buzzed at him, “Some demonzz are zzaying you are having problemzz Crowley.”

Crowley shrugged. “I just don't get why I'm here.”

“Youzz let a human off the rack becauzze they cried about their daughterzz Crowley.”

“Not here,” Crowley said, “I know why I'm here in this job, I meant – why in Hell and not on Earth? I was more effective there and you know it.”

He glanced up at Beelzebub. The demon-king shrugged. “The matter of Earth hazz become...difficult.”

“Because of Adam Young,” said Crowley.

“Becauzze of the humanzz,” Beeblzebub corrected with a buzz. “It izz not like the old dayzz anymore, they are not juzzt good or evil, they can be both now. It complicatezz thingzz. Makezz it harder to see whozze fate it is to be saved and whozze it is to be damned.”

Crowley huffed. “So you're saying I did too good a job? Messed them up so much they don't even know what they are anymore.”

“I am zzsaying,” Beeblzebub hissed, “That you did the job too long. You and the angel. Thizz hazz gone on too long, it hazz confuzzed Heaven and Hell, and the only perzzon who could have stopped it all izz the anti-chrizzt and thankzz to you, Crowley, he doezzn't want to. That izz what I am zzsaying, got it?”

Crowley shrank in his seat. “Er. Yes.”

“Good.” Beezlebub leaned closer. “Enjoy your dezzzk job, Crowley. You'll be doing it forever.”

He marched off. Crowley put his head on the desk and tried not to think too much.

Crowley dreamed. He dreamed every time he slept. He dreamed that Aziraphale was standing in front of him saying 'Lovely to see you, my dear' but every time Crowley stepped forward, a bus came out of nowhere and the angel vanished from sight.

Crowley dreamed. Demons weren't meant to be able to dream, but Crowley did.

Eventually, and it had to be decades, surely it was decades, Dagon threw a file down on his desk. The file was labelled with his name and the word RECALL was stamped in red on it.

Crowley raised his head off the desk. It felt like he'd never lifted it until now. “What?” he said.

“You're being re-recalled,” Dagon said. “To Earth.”

Crowley stared at the file. “What about what Beeblzebub said?”

Dagon sniffed. “The antichrist is being...difficult.”

“Difficult,” echoed Crowley.

“He keeps doing the wrong thing,” said Dagon and motioned for Crowley to open the file.

Crowley did so. There was a list written down, bullet-pointed. One of them said: Antichrist is creating new whales but then more people are killing them??

“He's doing good things and bad things,” Crowley realised.

“Yes,” said Dagon. “He's up to something.”

“I don't understand,” Crowley frowned. “How is this our problem?”

“He's doing it wrong,” snapped Dagon. “He can't perform both miracles and sins. It's too – ”

“Human,” said Crowley, and then added, in wonderment, “He's trying to do our jobs. Mine and Aziraphale's.”

He hadn't said Aziraphale's name to anyone since he'd come to Hell. He quickly closed his mouth, but Dagon merely looked at him and continued. “We cannot have a human doing such things. We cannot have someone doing both good and evil. We need opposites.”

“Right,” Crowley said, heart hammering in his chest. “Opposites.”

Dagon sighed. “You may be a useless demon, but you're still a demon. The antichrist is human, which makes him – ”

“An amateur,” said Crowley out loud, then laughed. “You don't want some amateur human mucking things up, you'd rather have a professional demon on the job.”

“Even if that so-called professional,” Dagon sniffed, “Can't keep his mouth shut and never gives his reports in on time.”

Crowley glanced at Dagon quickly enough to see the smile flicker on and off his face. “Piss off back to Earth where you belong, Crowley,” he said.

Crowley went to Tadfield first. Of course Adam still lived in Tadfield, there was nowhere else he would ever be.

When he knocked on the door, he wasn't quite ready for the sight of a 41 year old Adam opening it. “Bloody hell,” he said.

Adam grinned his eleven year old grin. “Hello demon.”

“I must have been away longer than I thought,” said Crowley, then recovered himself and shook the file in the antichrist's face. “Recall?”

Adam shrugged. “Things were gettin' boring. Way I saw it, there's been too much blendin' of Heaven and Hell on Earth without some human gettin' actively involved in it too. An' they couldn't stop me, of course, the only people who could stop me are you two, and only by doin' this stuff before I do. And you got t' have a proper demon and a proper angel for that job.”

Crowley frowned. “You know I'm a terrible demon.”

“Still a demon,” Adam stated. “That counts to them.”

Crowley looked down at the file and asked the question he'd been too terrified to even think about until now. “The angel they recruited...?”

There was a pause. He looked up. Adam was grinning. “Got here five years 'fore you,” he said. “Your lot are slovenly.”

“Comes with the job,” Crowley said, but he was only vaguely listening to himself speak. He started back down the garden path.

“Hey,” Adam called behind his back. “Want your Bentley?”

Crowley turned. “Yes.”

Adam blinked once, then grinned. “Down the street.”

Crowley would never admit, not even under any torture that Hastur or Ligur could devise, that he ran down that street. But he absolutely did.

It was like Heaven, being in the Bentley, and that wasn't blasphemy against Hell, that was the simple truth. It was like waking up from a nightmare. Crowley did 90mph down Oxford Street and never felt better.

It was only when he parked outside a very familiar bookshop that he realised something absolutely awful, and the nightmare was back.

He sat outside the bookshop for an hour. Then he went inside.

A very familiar person – an achingly familiar person – was sitting in the bookshop, on a chair, nose in a flaking old book. He looked up.

There was a long pause. Then Aziraphale nodded and said, “Lovely to see you, my dear.”

And that was the moment when Crowley knew he was in trouble, that he was in cast iron trouble and there was no way out of it. “Lovely to see you too,” he said.

A smile that had been clearly bursting to escape from inside Aziraphale finally broke free and spread across his face – it was like looking into the sun. He put down the book. “The Ritz?” he offered.

Crowley tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “No,” he said. “I won't be here long.”

Aziraphale's smile faltered. Crowley desperately tried to press on. “See, the thing is. The thing is, angel...”

Aziraphale stood up. “The thing is?” he prompted gently.

Crowley took in a breath. “You know they're watching us. Yes?”

He waited. Eventually Aziraphale said, “Yes.”

“And that we have to do our jobs properly now if we want to keep them? You know, I do really awful things, you do really good things. None of this doing things for each other, creating minor annoyances instead of proper catastrophes. Yes?”

“Yes,” murmured Aziraphale. He was staring hard at Crowley.

“Well, then,” Crowley continued. “I have to do really awful things. Don't I. I mean, really awful, terrible things, worthy of a demon. And you have to see me do them.”

There was a long pause. “Crowley,” Aziraphale said at last. “You're a demon. I know that. I've seen you do awful things in the past.”

“Long ago,” said Crowley.

“Yes.”

“When I didn't – ” He stopped.

Aziraphale said, “When you didn't what, Crowley?”

Crowley ploughed on, though the lump in his throat was tripling in size. “Aziraphale. Angel. Demons aren't.”

“Aren't?”

“Aren't meant to care. About anything. Not really. I mean, sure, they can care about the sinful things in life but nothing good. Nothing pure. They can't feel good things about anything.” He took in a deep breath. “Which means when I say my next sentence, they're going to re-recall me. Or re-re-recall me, I suppose. Back to Hell. Because of what I'm about to say.”

A horrible, painful expression crossed Aziraphale's face. “Then don't say it,” he said, and there was real urgency in his voice, and this was the worst, it really was. “Crowley, don't say it and we'll carry on as before, just – I don't know, just worse and better, but we can keep – just – ”

“No,” Crowley said. “I have to. So, you know. Goodbye.”

“No,” Aziraphale echoed and crossed the room and took Crowley's hand and that was a big, big mistake because it made Crowley want to say it more than anything, so he did.

“I love you.”

Aziraphale took in a quick, pained breath. Crowley waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After about five minutes, Aziraphale's iron-tight grip on his hand loosened somewhat.

After ten minutes, Crowley said, “Er.”

Aziraphale stared at him, wide-eyed. “Do you think they heard?” he whispered.

“Don't know,” Crowley mumbled.

They waited another five minutes. Nothing happened.

“Say it again,” Aziraphale suggested.

“What?” snapped Crowley. “Are you out of your mind? I don't want to go back to Hell!”

“You were perfectly prepared to twenty minutes ago!” Aziraphale snapped back. “Crowley – ”

“No. No. I'm not going back. It's awful there, angel, they made me do so much paperwork, and everything they do is so inefficient, it takes twice as long, and they told me off because I didn't hit a man with a hammer, and they have this thing with maggots, everyone has a real thing with maggots – ”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted. “Just trust me. And say it again.”

“No!”

“Trust me.” And Aziraphale's hand clutched at his.

Crowley sighed. “For Go – Sata – pity's sake. I love you.”

Nothing happened again, except Aziraphale started grinning like he was never going to stop. Crowley groaned. “Stop it, stop smiling.”

“You love me,” Aziraphale said, beaming, “And no one seems to care. This is the best thing that's ever happened.”

“Maybe it's because I said it,” Crowley decided, a brainwave hitting him. “You know, words can be lies and all that. Maybe I'm saying it, but not meaning it. Maybe I'm saying it just to mess with you, you know, tempt you and stuff.”

He vaguely expected Aziraphale to stop smiling, or for the smile to dim just a little, but it didn't. Instead, Aziraphale said, “So, you mean, you'd have to show it? To prove you mean it?”

Crowley's heart started hammering again. He was fairly sure demon hearts weren't meant to do that. “Yeah,” he said.

“All right,” Aziraphale replied quickly.

They stared at each other, hand-clasped.

“All right then, goodbye,” said Crowley and kissed Aziraphale on the lips.

He pulled away almost immediately, but the meaning was there. The meaning and the emotion and oh god, the caring. It was all there, and by rights that meant he should be being cast back down to Hell, or possibly out of existence, for being such an absolutely awful demon. And yet.

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said, moving forward, his mouth against Crowley's lips, and that was distracting, that was truly distracting, “They've got too much invested in you.”

“Mmm,” said Crowley. “You mean, even a demon in love miracling things is better than a human miracling things?”

“Mmm,” echoed Aziraphale and kissed him.

This kiss was deeper, longer, and far more angelic. It would have gotten him years on the rack. “I s'pose,” he said, once Aziraphale's lips had moved from his and were wandering down his neck, “If we let humans miracle things, that kind of makes us redundant, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” agreed Aziraphale against his neck, making him shiver. “Heaven and Hell, both redundant. Unless we stay in charge.”

“And that,” Crowley said, tilting Aziraphale's chin up and guiding their lips back together, “Means we can pretty much do whatever the Hell we like.”

Aziraphale made a desperate sound deep in his throat and pressed closer, and Crowley decided that maybe it was time to stop talking. “Of course, could just be a delayed reaction,” he continued, shakily. “Something will change soon.”

“Better get on with it then,” said Aziraphale and pressed his advantage.

Nothing changed after ten minutes, except that they moved from the middle of the room to up against a bookcase. Nothing changed half an hour after that, except that they moved to the back of the shop. Nothing changed two hours later, except they were fully undressed whereas before they had been fully dressed. And nothing changed the next morning, except Crowley woke up to find himself with an armful of angel.

Nothing changed the day after, or the next, or the next. Eventually they forgot to wait for anything to change at all.