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As far as potentially concerning things go, it might come as no surprise that Anthony J. Crowley (sometimes, he said the “J” stood for Jesus , just to watch the right feathers get ruffled) rarely heard a kind word while down Below. He was not the fussy sort of demon to care, exactly, that his Temptations and Deviances were never met with anything past a manic cackle of wicked glee, but there were times when he felt a nod of recognition and a “positively evil, Crowley, absolutely evil,” wouldn’t hurt.
A demon couldn’t just go out and ask for wicked compliments to be heaped upon them, and Crowley knew better than to ask — Hell didn’t exactly have a Comment Box, and if it did, he’s sure it would be full of comments more aligned with “ bit too chilly in Torture Chamber 3255, please increase the temp by 300 C by C.O.B. so I can finish torturing this venture capitalist, thank you very much ,” — but there were times when compliments found their way to him anyway, through the least expected channel.
It was the angel, Aziraphale, who turned to him with a pleased smile in the year 300 B.C., thirteen hundred years before the Arrangement even took place, and shone a light into a corner of Crowley’s existence, one he hadn’t known to be darkened in the first place.
A strong breeze blew off the Mediterranean that day, the calls of fisherman and traders carrying into the large room where they’d bumped into each other. Rather than snarl at him, the angel clutched one of thirteen volumes to his chest and beamed at Crowley.
“How did you make sure he finished?”
“I kept rolling oddly shaped bits of stone his way,” Crowley shrugged, smoothing out the lines of his shendyt, dyed a dark grey. “And shoving assistants into alcoves when they distracted him. Fit one of them into a vase. We had a bit of a conversation about the penultimate volume, oh, two months ago? He was struggling with writer’s block.”
“Why would you even care?” Aziraphale asked with a bit of a pout.
Crowley would have smacked a pout like that off of any other face in the known universe, but as it was, Aziraphale’s eyes were remarkably softened by the expression, and a soft expression on Aziraphale’s face should never be met with vexation, Crowley had found, no matter how much he wanted to curse the holy name of the being.
“You were off in Persia, and...and it didn’t seem like this would be wholly wicked or wholly good.” Crowley nodded at the volume nearest to him. “Geometry seems terrible enough that it’s bound to frustrate generations to come, no matter how useful it might be. Humans will remember Euclid for the rest of time.”
“I do hope so, he’s awfully clever.” Aziraphale seemed to be hugging the thick parchment closer to his chest, and then, in a rush of words so fast Crowley almost didn’t realize they were words, “And so are you. Clever, that is. Not … not awful.”
“I’m not awful?” Crowley repeated, a slow, teasing smile spreading across his face. He couldn’t help it. Thousands of years messing with the angel, and he’d grown a little fond.
“Well, not all the time.” Aziraphale huffed a little embarrassed laugh, managing to duck his head and glance up heavenward at the same time. “You’re not completely awful, no.”
“I’m blushing, angel.”
“And --” Aziraphale raised his voice, a strange look of determination crossing his round face. “And you are very clever. A very clever, frustrating...foe.”
“We’re foes now?” Crowley’s grin wasn’t lessened in the least. “Ooo, I’m really blushing.”
“Oh, stop it.” Aziraphale eyed him sneakily over the rolls of parchment in his arms and then honest to evilness giggled. “I … I need to go now. Be … be careful out there.”
“Are you telling me to take care?” Crowley asked, a little taken aback.
Aziraphale blinked and eyed the skies a little warily. “No, I am clearly threatening you. That was a threat!”
Crowley nodded. “Mhm. Very threatening, angel.”
With an exasperated sigh, the angel vanished from the open-air room, and the smell of lemons and palm lingered a little brighter than it had before. Crowley found that he was still smiling long after the angel was gone, the words clever and not awful rolling around his head louder than the horns of Jericho.
He didn’t see him again for three centuries.
***
They stood at the foot of the cross, the man in front of them gasping for breath, and Aziraphale watched with limpid, tear-filled eyes.
Words about the ineffability of the plan had already been exchanged, and Aziraphale seemed more ruffled than ever, his fingers tapping anxiously at his side as Jesus of Nazareth took another few dying gasps.
“It must be for a reason,” he whispered, almost to himself, and Crowley hummed at him, not quite hearing it for a few seconds.
“Why’s that?” Crowley turned from the man to look at the angel with a frown.
“For all this … suffering,” Aziraphale ducked his head and dragged a hand through the folds of his tunic. “There must be a reason, whether it’s the plan or not.”
“There isn’t always a reason,” Crowley said. He meant to snap it, meant for the words to roll of his forked tongue with barb and poison and vitriol, meant to shake the angel and get him to see sense, to realize the ruse he’d been forced through for thousands of years.
Instead, he spoke softly, as though in comfort. He couldn’t offer it to the man dying on the cross, but he could offer it to his … not his friend, exactly. His equal. He thought of Aziraphale as an equal, his balancing force, his companion.
“There has to be,” Aziraphale insisted, clearly forcing himself to look on as the guards made the dying man drink from a sponge soaked in sour liquid. “There has to…I tried to save him. It … it wasn’t enough, but there has to be a reason I failed.”
“You want a reason?” Crowley said, “Not everyone is as kind as you.”
And why he had said that, he didn’t know. The words slipped out of him, quicker and easier and more painful than they would have been under the duress of torture. He offered them freely. He meant them.
So much for the silvertongued serpent.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re kind, angel.” Crowley shrugged and smirked at him. “Not necessarily a compliment, coming from me. But that’s why it failed. Not because you made a mistake, but because not everyone is as kind as you. And I’m including the rest of the upstairs in that figure.”
“Crowley.” It sounded like a plea for mercy, and the large blue eyes of Aziraphale were too much for him in that moment. Crowley’s name had never been said like that, like it meant something, like he was something helpful, not just the serpent striking at the heels of generations who’d been trained to hate him since the cradle.
It sounded like forgiveness; it sounded like Aziraphale was asking him for absolution.
“I have to go.” He turned his back on the three men dying on the hill and nodded at Aziraphale. “I hear there’s trouble in Rome.”
Absolution was only one thing he couldn’t offer to an angel.
***
It became easier, after the Arrangement, to whisper encouragements to the angel, and thrillingly enough, for the angel to whisper them back.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” Crowley asked, half in amusement, half-impressed, after Aziraphale emerged unscathed from a nasty bout of the War of the Roses. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“No one noticed a thing,” Crowley hissed after Bastille. “ Fantastic, angel. Absolutely fantastic.”
It was easier, more fitting, to offer compliments after the angel had somewhat dirtied his hands. Aziraphale always put more good into the world than he took out, the ledger always balancing in his favor to the point where the folks Upstairs didn’t seem to give a shit this way or that if a few civilians died along the way.
Crowley reassured himself that while he certainly wasn’t temping the angel to darkness with his hissed compliments, he was, at least, recognizing the flaw inherent even in a being as light and good as Aziraphale, and that was its own kind of wicked pleasure.
Aziraphale was not nearly as discerning.
As soon as Crowley made any sort of attempt to cooperate with the angel, Aziraphale started to grow effusive in his commentary on Crowley’s supposed good works. He’d caught half a mind to tell the angel off more than once, and he often gave into the urge, snarling and barking about how he wasn’t being good, he was just trying to fill out less paperwork, can’t you see that, angel, I’m not any better than I was before your holier-than-thou self got involved, and Aziraphale’s smile would dim ever so slightly, just enough to hurt Crowley somewhere deep in his gut, and he’d nod in supposed agreement.
After those outbursts, Crowley would go a few decades without seeing the angel, and a few more decades without hearing a positive word from the angel. It got bad enough in the 1600s that he went out of his way to perform his own kind of miracle to make the angel smile again.
With the floor of the Globe packed and Hamlet dragging on onstage, Crowley appeared at Aziraphale’s side, one floor up and on the hard, narrow bench. Aziraphale was gripping the banister in front of him, staring down with a look of rapture on his face.
“Well, that won’t end well,” Crowley commented drily as Hamlet stabbed the eavesdropping Polonius viciously.
Aziraphale startled and then turned to him with a laugh. “I wasn’t even watching, just between you and me,” he confessed.
“Come off it.” Crowley leaned back and draped his arm over the back of the bench. It was cramped up in the box -- why it cost more to sit up here, he’d never know, especially as this piece of shit building had burned down so often, he’d assume people would want to be closer to the exits if they could -- so he ended up draping his arm close to Aziraphale. “You weren’t even blinking!”
“I was,” Aziraphale threaded his fingers together and shrugged his shoulders slightly, suddenly looking very small. Crowley frowned, not understanding the change in his body posture. “I was looking at the people.”
“The people?” Crowley peered over into the standing room section, at the people pushing at each other, trying to get a better angle on the stage, at a small boy on his father’s shoulders, at the grubby, grimy mess of humans underneath. “Why?’
“Because they’re watching the play,” Aziraphale sighed wistfully. He leaned back on the bench, and if he noticed Crowley’s arm pressing into his shoulders, right where his wings would sprout, he didn’t say. Crowley’s throat felt unbearably tight. He wondered if the building actually was on fire, as it was harder to breathe than before. “They’re actually watching it, and Will thought it would be a flop, and--” Aziraphale turned to him, and it felt like he was staring into the bloody sun, he smiled so brightly. “Thank you, Crowley.”
“I--”
“It means...so much to me, that you would…” Aziraphale laughed and seemed to fold in on himself, his face shuttering off slightly. “I don’t mean to blather at you. It’s only...this was...magnificent. What you did was magnificent.”
“Wasn’t much,” Crowley lied.
He’d bribed over two hundred people to come see this show, promised them more if they saw it more than once. It took him over twenty hours in two days to convince even three dozen of the wealthy upper class to show up and fill out benches exactly like the one they sat on.
If Aziraphale heard the lie, he didn’t comment.
Instead, he leaned like Juliet out over the balcony and sighed again; Crowley found himself wishing he could see his expression. “The love. Waves and waves of it—can’t you feel it, Crowley?”
He thought that he very much could, and it scared him senseless.
“A very remarkable thing indeed,” Aziraphale hummed.
He moved to sit back in the bench, back against Crowley’s arm, but the demon was gone before he could.
***
And there was the rub:
Aziraphale handed out kind words the way a dithering old lady on a park bench would hand out breadcrumbs to pigeons.
And Crowley was the greediest fucking pigeon that had ever lived; if he got a crumb, he’d want the whole loaf.
Nothing he’d ever done felt as perverse as craving an angel and his words.
***
Over the centuries, Aziraphale complimented him on his tattoo -- so striking! -- his hairstyle -- so red! -- his taste in music -- so entertaining! -- and his car -- absolutely stunning, such a fantastic pick, I don’t know how you found it!
And if the compliment grew too large in size, showed too much animation on Aziraphale’s face -- Crowley loved it when his face came alight -- something would shutter behind his eyes, and he curled in on himself, as though enthusiasm was a four letter word.
Crowley couldn’t make sense of it.
At least, not until a few months before the Apocalypse.
***
They’d avoided the other angels and demons well enough, but Aziraphale was still beholden to regular visits from the celestial guard of assholes, whether or not Crowley liked it. He dealt with Hastur, after all. They all had their problems.
One day, Crowley appeared at the bandstand, intending to drop off some interesting information on Warlock -- he hated snakes? Fucking ridiculous -- when he saw that Aziraphale was not alone.
There were two other angels there, dressed crisply in the grey of cumulus clouds, their hair perfect, their makeup chilling, and they were both smirking at his angel.
At Aziraphale.
Dangerous thought, there.
He leaned in and did what snakes did best: lurk.
“...honestly, I don’t know why you do it,” one was saying, and Aziraphale mumbled something that was quickly cut off with a sharp laugh.
“Update your wardrobe,” the other snapped. “It’s pathetic, running around like a Victorian gentleman. We have appearances to keep!”
Crowley quite liked how Aziraphale dressed, and liked that he hadn’t subjected himself to the changing whims of the twentieth century fashion scene. He frowned as Aziraphale stumbled through a halting explanation that he’d kept the coat in pristine condition, and --
“You look ridiculous.” Crowley’s blood ran cold at the declaration, colder than it should have as a serpent. “Utterly ridiculous. But that’s nothing new to you is it?”
“N-no,” Aziraphale answered, a soft laugh escaping his lips. “I suppose not.”
You’re not ridiculous, Crowley wanted to shout. He wanted to surge out of the shadows, scare the celestial shit out of those angels— who dared speak to Aziraphale like that? They didn’t know, they didn’t see —
“It’s bad enough that you have to be such a bumbling fool,” one sighed. “You have to look the part too. We’ll be in touch. Try not to muck it up any more than you already have.”
There was the faint pop and smell of ozone, and Crowley knew they were gone.
He crept around the side of the bandstand, and his heart clenched at the sight of the angel, holding his hat, rocking back and forth slightly as his eyes stared out, unseeing, across the park.
“How long have they been talking to you like that?”
Aziraphale jumped slightly, and then glanced his way, a nervous smile on his full mouth. “Like what?’
“Like … like you’re unimportant?” Words turned to ash in Crowley’s throat; if this were the other way around, he would have already ripped Aziraphale’s head off for eavesdropping, would have shouted him down for daring to assume anything about the confrontation.
Aziraphale just looked sad.
Crowley was certain that was much more painful.
“Hmm?” Aziraphale lowered his lashes and shrugged, his fingers fiddling with his slightly tattered Victorian hat, the one Crowley had watched him buy a century ago. The sight of it in his hands made Crowley’s heart ache with no explanation, made him want to wail and gnash his teeth at Heaven’s gate for the minions who’d mocked it. “Oh. Well. Always, I suppose.”
“It’s not right.” Crowley’s voice didn’t even sound like his own. It was shivery. Hurt, where Aziraphale should be hurt; embarrassed, where Aziraphale should be embarrassed.
“I’m just a footsoldier in the Almighty’s army, how I’m spoken to has nothing to do with the ineffable--”
“--I swear, if you say the word plan, I’ll scream--”
“Because I am unimportant in the grand scheme of things, Crowley. I am.”
A moment later, Crowley had pinned him to the nearest supporting column. He shook his head, his hands trembling, half from the rage that snarled in his gut, half from the act of touching something sacrosanct in such a rough way.
“Listen to me --”
“--I already am--” The angel didn’t even have the common sense to look scared, only exasperated and resigned.
“ No. Listen. To. Me. You are, and always have been, the most important thing ever Created.”
Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “I am not--”
“You’re more important than the Creator Herself—” The words wouldn’t stop now, nor would they until the angel agreed.
“Stop, it’s blasphemy,” Aziraphale pleaded, wincing and gripping Crowley’s wrist in some attempt at intercession.
“Then I’ll blaspheme all bloody day long, angel.” Crowley snarled, and he felt Aziraphale tense up even more under his palms; it was wrong, touching something so holy like this, to snarl words of heresy in his face, but Crowley wouldn’t, couldn’t be stopped. “No one gets to talk to you like that ever again. You hear me?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Aziraphale’s mouth twitched into a sad half-smile, and Crowley knew it wasn’t a rhetorical question but a legitimate one. “How can I get them to stop?”
“I’ll stop them.” Crowley blinked slowly, not realizing the promise for what it was until it was out — an oath. He meant it.
Thousands of years rejecting Heaven and Its whims, and here he was, swearing what was left of his soul to a tattered angel in St. James Park, all because he couldn’t stand to see blue eyes filled with tears.
“You can’t mean that,” Aziraphale whispered. “You can’t mean any of this.”
“And why not?” Crowley licked his bottom lip, his mind racing. “Why not believe me?”
“Because you’re a - you’re a —“
Demon.
He didn’t say it, but Crowley could hear it, and he roared through clenched teeth. Still, Aziraphale didn’t flinch.
“Here’s where you listen to me, angel.” Crowley released him slowly, and neither made a move past that. “I’m not the snake in the garden whispering in your ear to eat from the tree.”
Aziraphale shook his head sadly, opened his mouth to retort, closed his mouth. Crowley’s voice was impossibly gentle the next he spoke.
“I’m telling you that you are the tree, angel.”
A blush on an angel was a very interesting sight: to some, it might be reminiscent of a glorious sunburn they acquired in their youth, a glowing and spectacular reminder of a beautiful day, a stunningly painful reminder that left scars; others, ones that perished under the executioner in the Reign of Terror, could compare the brightness to the flash of the sun on the blade before it swung, the last thing they ever saw, blinding and eternal.
Crowley didn’t fare much better; later, he’d reflect that he was lucky not to discorporate right then and there.
“If they come round again,” he began, when he regained the ability of speech.
“You won’t interfere.” Aziraphale timidly patted his arm, offering a trembling smile. “It’s very — very noble of you to offer to, to defend me, but…”
“But,” Crowley agreed, shoving his hands in his pockets before he could do something stupid like hold the angel, hold him and never let go.
They stood in a more comfortable quiet than they had previously, Crowley staring out at the park and the sky above Aziraphale’s shoulder, Aziraphale studying the floorboards beneath their feet. Crowley knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t go to war with all of Heaven, not when it would call attention to the other half of the Arrangement, but he knew that he could combat what they had done in other ways — he could let Aziraphale know when he’d done something good, for starters. Offer him a good word, not only when it benefitted Crowley. That’d show those parasitic arseholes up Above.
“Would you care for a spot of lunch?” Aziraphale asked softly after a few minutes of silence.
“I —“ Crowley bit back the snarky comment he’d intended.
It felt wrong, now, to tease the angel, to make him doubt. He’d never stop teasing him altogether, not when banter formed so much of their conversation, but he again he felt that strange urge, one he’d never felt before, an urge for tenderness, a softness in his heart more fertile than the soil in the Garden had been.
“I’d love to. Your pick, angel. I trust your judgment.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale straightened up, and in a fit of self punishment, Crowley let himself imagine the vastness of his wings, the ones he hadn’t seen the angel wear in millennia, shaking out with feathers gleaming in the afternoon sun. “Alright then.”
“After you,” Crowley gestured to the path that stretched out before them, and on some uncontrollable instinct, offered his arm to Aziraphale.
He didn’t have any words to describe how it felt when the angel accepted.