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It took a lot to surprise Crowley.
Having been on the Earth since the very beginning and being older still, it would be an understatement to say he’d been ‘round the block a few times.
A more accurate description would be he’d been ‘round the area on which the block would eventually be built a few thousand times, eventually watched the construction of the block with a cup of tea, and then went around the newly constructed block a few hundred thousand times more; occasional stops for repairs notwithstanding. So, when one says that Crowley was taken by surprise when he opened his door to find a baby, in a basket, with a note attached, it is no small thing.
His first sinking feeling was it was another Anti-Christ after the last one had been a bust. He couldn’t imagine his superiors below would ever trust him with such a task again; part of the ineffable plan be damned. However, one look at the child told him otherwise.
It was human; from its tiny human dark-skinned toes to its tiny human wisps of black hair. One hundred percent, certified, distant relation to Adam and Eve, human. The next question was, who on Earth would place a human child in the care of a soldier of Hell?
He looked out into the hallway, hoping to catch a glimpse of who ever had dropped the child on his door step. Nothing came of it, of course, but Crowley felt he had to at least put in the effort. He looked down again.
The child was now staring up at him. Its large brown eyes didn’t blink once as they took turns examining each other.
“Right,” Crowley said. “You aren’t going to cause trouble if I check something, are you?”
The baby blinked, and Crowley took it as a yes.
Slowly, the demon crouched down and took the note off the basket. Unfortunately, it was indeed, addressed to one A. J. Crowley.
He grimaced and opened the letter, which read as follows;
Crowley,
I’m not sure if you remember me, but I remember you. The night we had together is one I could never forget, for, as I hope is apparent to you now, obvious reasons. I couldn’t bear to give her away. You hear such awful things about foster care and orphans in books and the like. I just knew she’d be safe with you.
Janet
Crowley stared at the letter for a good long while. She had been right; he couldn’t remember her.
But, the letter had managed to answer three things. One, the baby was female. Two, the mother clearly didn’t know who Crowley really was. And three, this clearly was a big mix-up, but not by the postman. It also answered a bonus forth question; the child was not his problem.
Without another thought on the matter, Crowley closed the door with a mild thud.
The child, however, would not allow Crowley to dismiss her without another thought on the matter.
Muffled wails came from the other side of the door. Crowley turned towards it, his lip tightening.
“Oh, so that’s how you’re going to play is it? Go ahead! I watched after the wrong Anti-Christ for eleven years, I can take it.”
The cries continued all the same as Crowley went about his morning routine. Or at least, as he tried to go about his morning routine.
He had hoped somebody else might hear the baby crying and take care of it themselves. Or maybe the baby would just stop when it realized it wasn’t going to get its way. He had no such luck on either front.
For one, he essentially lived alone on the top floor the apartment complex; so, the chances of a good Samaritan stopping in were slim to none. And for second, a new born human is as stubborn as a full-grown mule.
The baby cried as he prepped his coffee with a pressed lip. It continued on through his bedroom walls as he got dressed with gritted teeth. And finally got to him when he was about to water his plants.
“Fine!” he snapped, storming back towards the door. “Fine! Fine! Fine!”
He didn’t stop saying “fine” until the basket was placed on the dining room table just off the kitchen.
The child was still crying, but it had changed from the attention seeking wails to a more whimpering blubber.
Crowley let out an annoyed sigh, making a silent prayer to either side that nobody notice what he was about to do. With a snap of his fingers a bottle of warm milk appeared in his hand.
“Happy now?” he grumbled, as he held the bottle for the girl to drink.
The baby did so, staring up at him with wide eyes. She did not appear unhappy. The bottle had effectively stopped her cries. But, Crowley vaguely felt like she was threatening to start again should he try anything. He might have been impressed of her stubbornness if it wasn’t directed at him.
The moment’s quiet finally gave him time to think. And that time to think helped him to remember just how this mix up might have started.
He had been hearing more and more things on the news about sex, abortions, and if the government should or should not have a say in it. This was not a new topic of conversation. Sex had always been a hot button issue to humans; seven deadly sins and all that. But, what humans failed to realize was the sin wasn’t the lust itself, rather all the things humans were willing to do to satisfy it; anger, betrayal, jealousy, the lot. It came to the point where Crowley just had to know what all the fuss was about. He was a demon after all, it was his job to allow himself the occasional indulgence in sin.
So, one night, he went out, got drunk and indulged. One man, one woman, just to give each a fair shot.
It was good. He wouldn’t say he’d go out of his way to do it again. Or even if he could justify why humans were willing to kill each other over it; however, he could see why it might be done recreationally.
Timeline wise, it more or less coincided with the appearance of a one-month old baby on his doorstep. However, there was no conceivable way he was actually the father. Humans and demons couldn’t make children. It would be like an ape trying to have a baby with a snake, rather literally in this case. Which meant, she had a human father somewhere out there, but who or where he was was a question Crowley couldn’t answer.
Giving her back to her mother was out. She had cast her aside. The child had no home to be returned to. There was only one thing Crowley could do in this situation. He pulled the bottle away and picked up the phone.
“Sorry, we’re quite closed,” Aziraphale answered.
“It’s me,” Crowley said quickly. “I need you to come over.”
“Something’s happened?” the angel asked, immediately recognizing his friend’s tone.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Then, as if waiting for her cue, the baby began to cry once more.
“Is that a baby?” Aziraphale asked, alarmed. “Another Anti-Christ?!”
“No,” Crowley assured. “No, no Anti-Christ. Look, difficult to explain on the phone, just come over here.”
“I’m on my way.”
They both clicked off.
The baby cried, and Crowley was just about finished.
“Right,” he snapped, walking back towards her. With dramatic flair, he tore off his sunglasses, letting the child get full view of his slitted, yellow eyes.
“You are going to stop crying,” he growled in the same tone he used on his plants when one of them developed a spot. “You are going to sit there and behave until the angel figures out what do to with you. Do you understand?”
The baby blinked, and Crowley prepared himself for the cry of fear.
But, it never came. Instead, she out stretched her arms, brushing his nose with her tiny fingers.
“What are you doing?” he asked, suspiciously.
She didn’t answer. She just continued to swing her little arms around, trying to get a grip on his chin and face, and anywhere else she could manage to reach.
Crowley pulled back a hair but allowed his hand to come within her range flailing limbs.
She took hold of one of his fingers and let out a gurgle of satisfaction.
The demon stared down, not quite sure what to make of it. The sensation of having his hand look so monstrously large when compared to hers, made his stomach twist in a foreign, but not entirely unpleasant way.
She pulled his finger closer to her with no indication she was going to let go any time soon.
“You’ve got so sense of self-preservation, do you,” he asked, dismissively.
She batted his hand in response.
Before he even fully realized he was doing it, he picked her up, careful to let her chin rest against his shoulder as he held her. She started to drool on his jacket, but he found himself not really caring. He could always miracle it away later.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that,” he said. “Whoever ends up looking after you is going to have their work cut out for them.”
He walked through the flat towards the living room, not waiting for a response.
“Aziraphale will probably say to give you away. Make sure you’re picked up by some loving perfectly normal human family. Boring answer, really. But that would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
He sat down on the couch, adjusting so he was leaning back as the baby lay on his chest.
“God forbid an angel not to the right thing,” he continued, ironically. “But, I’m not an angel, am I? I’m not supposed to do the right thing.”
He let the thought stew for a moment before continuing.
“My lot would probably just leave you behind a dumpster. Or find some place out of a Charles Dicken’s novel to drop you. Basic set up for a miserable life; no real thought put into it. No imagination.”
The child let out a little yawn, gripping vaguely at the fabric of Crowley’s shirt.
He caught himself smiling at the action. “Serves you right, a full hour of wailing can really take it out of you.”
She didn’t make any more sounds one way or the other. Her eyes simply fell closed.
Crowley kept a hand on her to keep her from sliding off his chest before leaning fully back to stare at the ceiling. An idea was forming in his mind; one he was growing more and more keen to act on. He would just need to convince Aziraphale to go along with it.
When the angel arrived at the flat, Crowley was still on the couch, now with the baby safely cradled in his arms.
“Oh, thank God,” the angel said, breathing an audible sigh of relief. “It’s human.”
“I said as much, didn’t I,” Crowley defended.
“You said it wasn’t another Anti-Christ,” the angel replied. “That leaves plenty of other options open.”
Crowley didn’t really have a counter argument and opted for a general nod of the head from side to side.
“Well, either way, you’re here now. Take her for a moment, will you?”
He didn’t wait for Aziraphale to respond before practically shoving the girl into the angel’s arms.
Aziraphale took her, of course, cradling her head with the same care he might with his beloved books.
“Hello there,” he cooed only a little awkwardly.
The child opened its eyes with the same curiosity it did when examining Crowley. Perhaps it was his angelic nature, or maybe she was still tired from a good cry, but she cooed back, her hands grabbing vaguely in his direction.
Aziraphale smiled at the action, and gladly gave her one of his fingers to play with before addressing the demon in the room.
“Where did she come from?
“Now angel, it’s been six thousand years. You really need me to explain the bird and the bees?”
“You know what I mean,” Aziraphale said, trying to place more indignity than embarrassment in his tone.
Crowley rolled his eyes behind his glasses, handed Aziraphale the note, and leaned against the island countertop as the angel read.
Aziraphale finished the note, his brows furrowing in confusion. “This is clearly some sort of mistake.”
“That’s what I said,” Crowley said, taking back the note.
“You can’t possibly be the father.”
“Obviously.”
“So why does she think you are?”
Crowley crossed his arms, doing his best to say the words as casually as possible. “Probably because I had sex with her.”
Aziraphale blinked. “You what?”
“I. Had. Sex. With. Her.” The demon repeated, slowly.
Aziraphale blinked again. There wasn’t any judgement on his part that Crowley could detect, just a general confusion as if he had just confessed, he liked peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches.
“But, why?” the angel finally asked.
“Curiosity,” Crowley answered, this time with genuine casualness.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“There was nothing to tell. It was a one-off thing. Well, two off,” he said, with a shrug. “Different person, nice man.”
Aziraphale stared at him for a long while before letting out a tired sigh.
“I will never fully understand you Crowley.”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But, I doubt we’d be friends if you did.”
The angel didn’t argue, looking back down at the human baby in his arms.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter where she came from,” he said. “The simple fact is she’s here, and she needs a home.”
The child’s eyes were beginning the close again as Aziraphale swayed gently back and forth, her grip still tight around his finger.
“I suppose we’ll have to find some adoption agency,” Aziraphale said, his voice sounding almost melancholy at the prospect. “There are plenty here doing good work.”
“Yeah, about that,” Crowley said, taking a stride towards him. “I was thinking, we could try something else.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I was thinking about keeping her.”
“What?!”
“Shh! Not so loud. She’s going to sleep.”
“You can’t keep her, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. His voice, though a whisper, lost none of its edge. “She’s a human being, not a plant you can terrorize.”
“So, she’s a human being, I’ve taken care of a human being before.”
“As a nanny, for a handful of years, and that was for work.”
Crowley could see the frustration rising in Aziraphale’s temples as the angel took a breath.
“This isn’t a one-off thing,” he continued. “This is a life. A human life. She should be with other humans.”
“And humans can do better than us, can they?”
“They were able to handle the Anti-Christ much better than us, if I recall.”
Crowley floundered for a moment before recovering. “Yeah, well, we helped.”
“By being incompetent.”
The demon let out a huff of frustration. “Fine, you don’t want in. You don’t want in. But then what happens to her after this is on you.”
“Excuse me?”
Crowley’s eyes narrowed making a point to circle the angel, as he put special care into his next few sentences.
“Let’s say you take her to an adoption agency. Maybe even go so far as to miracle her a nice normal family. Then what? Forget? Let the world do with her as it likes? This cold, careless world that so often let’s bad things happen to good people. If a child were left on your doorstep, would you really just let her go?”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to answer but stopped as the child made another small cooing sound. He looked down again, his eyes softening at the odd little bundle even as conflict still raged back and forth.
“We can’t,” he said, with no real conviction.
“Maybe you can’t. I’m keeping her whether you say yes or no.” He then took another step forward and pulled the child out of the angel’s arms.
Aziraphale floundered, completely shocked by his friend’s actions. “But—"
“Let’s see,” Crowley said, speculatively. “Girls names. Girls names. Let’s go with –”
“No!” Aziraphale interrupted. “No! You can’t just name her. Once you name her, we’re sunk.”
“We? You just said yourself angel, you can’t.”
“Well, you’re forcing my hand,” he countered. “I can’t very well stand by and watch you create your own personal foot soldier of hell now can I?”
Crowley grinned, knowing full well the excuse was just that, an excuse. “Good, it’s settled, we’ll raise Izzie together.”
“Izzie?” Aziraphale said, doubtfully.
“Short for Isabelle.”
The angel raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Crowley asked. “You think I’m going to name my kid after some demon or something cruel like Bobbi Jean?” He shook his head. “No. I think Izzie is just wrong enough. Izzies are always crazy.”
Izzie raised no objections to this as she gurgled peacefully.
Aziraphale assessed the reaction carefully, before taking a small step closer.
Izzie spotted him and her hands reached out for the angel’s finger once more. He let her take without hesitation.
“Well for my money, I think Belle suits her much better,” Aziraphale said.
“Whatever you say angel.”