Chapter Text
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says into the phone, hands gripping the steering wheel, “I’ve got a problem.”
“I don’t have time for a problem right now, Crowley, I’ve got a meeting with one of those dreadful men in the black glasses in just a few moments. They want to buy the bookshop.”
“You’re selling the bookshop?” Crowley sputters, veering around a car in front of him. He can hear the little basket in the back sliding across the seat, and he glances at it.
“No, no, of course not. Why would you think that?”
Crowley huffs, exasperated, as he hears a thin wail start up behind him. Why do people like babies? Why would anyone ever choose to have one? This one’s only been in his possession for a few hours, and already it’s making him want to climb out the window of his very fast-moving car. “I’m coming over, angel,” he says, and then hangs up the phone before Aziraphale can even think to protest.
It had all started at the nunnery, right after the switch had been made. He’d decided at the last moment to oversee the process, and couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of concern when the shorter nun, the tired looking one, said she would “dispose of the baby.”
“Sorry, erm, ma’am,” he’d said, rushing after her down the hallway, “what exactly is going to happen to the child?”
“We’re disposing of it. No adoption agencies nearby, and there’ve been whispers in the air that the nunnery is going to break apart soon. No time to raise the child ourselves, you understand.”
“And by dispose of, you mean…”
“We prefer the term dispose, but if you must know, we’re going to kill it.”
Crowley groans and ran his hands through his hair. This is ridiculous. This isn’t him. Or at least, this hasn’t been him, not since the fall.
Well, maybe there was a time, after the fall, that he still tried to be good. He didn’t become a demon because he was evil, after all. But.
And now there’s a baby, about to be murdered. “Why didn’t you lie to me? Why didn’t you say that you were going to get it adopted?” Crowley asked wretchedly.
“Excuse me?”
“Alright, here,” Crowley said, holding out his hands.
“What are you doing?” the nun asked, looking quite put out by all of this.
“I’ll take the baby.”
“What?”
“It’s part of,” he said, scrambling to come up with the right words to explain why a demon would ever want to rescue a child, “the er, the Grand Plan. The people up there, I mean. I’ve got strict orders.”
“Oh,” the nun said, eyes widening. “You mean I have to…” Crowley nodded meaningfully, and she jumped into action. “Oh, I’m so sorry. We had no idea you had orders, else we would never have—”
“Oh, it’s alright, it’s alright. Tell you what—the Head Office actually meant for this to be a small thing, secretive. Can’t have it getting out that we’re rescuing babies, am I right? If you don’t tell Sister—what’s it, Loquacious or something—then I won’t tell the people up there,” he looked upwards meaningfully, “about this little near-mistake.”
“May I ask—why are you rescuing babies anyway?”
“Oh, sorry—” he said, snapping his fingers and pulling his now loudly ringing phone out of his pocket, “phone call.” Then, “Hi, Crowley here,” and under his breath, “mind if I get a basket?”
And now he’s careening down a raging London road, and the baby is making a shrill shrieking noise Crowley has no idea how to deal with, and he’s regretting a very large portion of the last century.
“Angel!” he exclaims, throwing the bookshop door open.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale cries, standing up from his little mahogany desk. The shop is crowded with books, piled on every surface, even the ugly tartan couch. Crowley had tried to get Aziraphale to throw out that couch too many times, but he always insisted it was stylish. “Oh, I do hope you miracled that door open,” he says, wringing his hands, “it’s much too expensive for me to keep replacing it every time I come over.”
“Course I miracled it, angel,” Crowley says, placing the basket in Aziraphale’s arms. He receives it with a fair amount of reluctance.
“What is this?” Aziraphale asks, looking up at Crowley and down at the basket and back again.
“Sorry?” Crowley asks, hurrying over to the little door that he knows leads to the staircase, and then to Aziraphale’s apartment. “Do you have any extra blankets?”
“Blankets? For who—” The baby starts to wail again, a thin and weak sound, and Crowley looks back to see Aziraphale staring down at the basket, stricken. “Crowley, you didn’t—”
“Come on, follow me,” Crowley says, cocking his head in a come with me gesture.
“I can’t leave the baby!” Aziraphale cries, still standing as if he’s frozen.
“Then bring it with you!”
“I—yes. Fine. Alright.” And Aziraphale follows Crowley up the stairs.
“Sorry, did you say that you had spare blankets or not?”
“I’ve got a set, in the—the back cupboard, but could you—could you please tell me what is going on?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley can tell that he would be wringing his hands if they were available.
Crowley takes the box from Aziraphale’s hands and lays it on the bed. “Aziraphale, I need help,” he says.
“You need help—of course you need help. How did you get the baby?”
“Armageddon?”
“Armageddon?”
“Yes, angel, Armageddon. The whole world is melting into a pile of burning goo in eleven years, and I had to deliver it. I mean, not deliver Armageddon, but deliver the baby. Which is the antichrist.”
“You brought the antichrist into my bookshop?” Aziraphale cries, taking a step away from the now wailing basket.
“Oh—no, no. There were two—three babies. And one of them was with an American woman, and one of them went to one from Tadfield, or somewhere in that area. The one that the American woman got was the Antichrist.”
“Crowley, you’re not making any sense!”
“We had to switch out the babies, see? Quick little switcharoo.”
Aziraphale makes a little noise of horror, and Crowley presses on.
“But then we have an extra baby. You’ve got a baby, and then you replace it with Satan’s child,” (another noise of horror), “and now you’ve got an extra baby. So what’d’you do with that one? Where does it go? Down the garbage chute, according to the nuns.”
“They threw it away?”
“Well, no. They killed it. Well, no. I took it. See? Are you happy? I saved the baby!”
“But—Crowley—oh, could you make it be quiet?” Aziraphale asks, exhaustion and anxiety written all over his face.
Crowley grumbles something and snaps his fingers, then opens the basket and fiddles around a little. There’s a moment’s pause, and then the crying stops.
Aziraphale’s eyes go wide. “Did you—”
“Kill it? No. Why’d I go through all the trouble of saving it’s life just to kill it? I got it a drink.”
“A drink?”
“Food, Aziraphale, food. Do you even know how babies work?”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley can see him physically relax. He walks to Crowley’s side, peeking in. “So, erm. What exactly are you planning to do with this baby, now you have it?”
“Aaaand that’s where you come in,” Crowley says, wincing.
“Crowley, I am not taking care of that child!” Aziraphale cries, straightening again.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all! I mean, not alone. At least.”
“Are you really planning to raise it?”
“Of course not! Just keep it, y’know, until it’s of adoptable age, or something. Or until I have the papers together. This child doesn’t technically have parents, remember? And if we turn it over to the authorities they might figure out we switched the babies, and then we’re in a whole lot of trouble. We don’t want the people up there calling in, do we?” He points at the ceiling, but he knows Aziraphale can tell he’s really pointing at something much farther away than that.
“No, I suppose we don’t,” Aziraphale says, wringing his hands. Crowley waits, looking at him over his sunglasses. Finally, he takes in a breath and straightens. “You must stay here, though.”
“Here? Why? What do you mean?”
“You have to stay in my flat. Because let’s be honest, your apartment is no place to be raising a child. And I refuse to let you put this all on me.”
This could mean a lot of things. Crowley doubts strongly that he’ll end up moving into Aziraphale’s apartment permanently; he doesn’t really believe that this will last, for some reason. They’ll get out of it, they always do. And then it’s back to normal life, in their separate flats, only meeting up to discuss the Arrangement and have drinks. And that’s the only reason he says “Fine.”