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Speaking to head office was not an enjoyable experience for angels and demons who knew that with a simple slip of the tongue, they could reveal a certain millennia-old arrangement they had with a certain hereditary enemy. And a revelation of that sort that would effectively end their time on earth, or possibly their existence altogether.
However, this particular angel and demon explained their progress with the five-year-old antichrist without any unfortunate slips of the tongue. Aziraphale assured Heaven that Warlock was growing to be a perfectly kind young boy and that he hadn’t, in fact, even encountered the demon Crowley who was supposedly also surveying the Antichrist. He’d only met the Dowling’s nanny in his time watching over the child, and she seemed to be an unconventional but perfectly nice woman :) — And in turn, Crowley assured Hell that Warlock was a terrifying specimen who would do quite well in bringing about the end of the world.
Relieved but not refreshed after meeting with Gabriel and the other archangels, Aziraphale boarded the bus just outside of the pearly gates and dropped into the seat against the window. He wasn’t sure if Crowley had finished and headed back to his flat already or not, but he decided he liked buses enough to not mind waiting. He rode the bus all the way through the line and when the driver stopped back in front of their offices’ entrances, Crowley boarded, taking the stairs two at a time until he wound around and saw Aziraphale.
He slumped down into the seat behind Aziraphale with a sigh. “He’s too normal,” he said.
After the driver had put some distance between them and their respective sides, and had pulled to a stop to let on a couple of students nearby the shopping center, Crowley stood up and moved to sit beside Aziraphale, rather than behind him.
“So, how was it?” Crowley asked, speaking low and close to Aziraphale’s ear.
“Fine, I suppose. They don’t believe me spending time around the child is worth anything. But they don’t believe anything I do on earth is worth anything, so I don’t really care.”
Crowley cracked a grin. “Nah, what do they know. You’re a Principality, no chance they know more about earth than you do.”
Aziraphale smiled. Though Crowley only referred to him as a Principality when he was teasing, it was still nice to be reminded that he did understand humans better than an archangel ever could. When the bus turned a corner, Aziraphale leaned so his arm pressed against Crowley’s “How was your side?”
“Hastur wants to know why he hasn’t killed anyone yet. Think next time they ask, I could pretend he killed the bird that flew into the window the other day?”
Aziraphale nearly commented sharply that No, you might just jinx it and he actually will kill a bird—after all, you did sneak that BB Gun into Harriet Dowling’s suggested items on Amazon to make sure he gets a weapon for his next birthday, but looking to his side, he saw that Crowley now rested with his head against the back of the seat and looked quite put out. “Crowley?” Aziraphale asked. “Did Hastur actually raise that concern with the higher-ups? I mean, even he has to know that no five-year-old is actually going to be killing anybody. Even if he is the Antichrist.”
“Well, he did mention it in front of Beelzebub,” he frowned. “But I don’t think anyone suspects any interference from Heaven.” It went without saying that the guys upstairs were rooting for the Antichrist to be evil just as much as Lucifer, his satanic father himself, was. “But they might suspect I’m not doing as well at my job as my reports suggest.”
Aziraphale nearly agreed to Crowley lying about the bird, but Crowley leaned over him to tug the wire and let the bus driver know their stop was approaching. Aziraphale, somewhat distracted by what Hell’s suspicions might entail, didn’t realize Crowley had gotten them off near Aziraphale’s bookshop until they were standing on the sidewalk and the bus had pulled off.
“Weeeell,” Crowley drawled out, sighed heavily, then started them walking towards the bookshop. He waited for Aziraphale to open the door, then strode inside, and up the stairs. Aziraphale took a little more time downstairs. He carefully closed the door, and drew the curtains, and he might have even willed the font on the Closed sign to be a little bit bigger to maybe dissuade the shoppers who liked to stop by only when he had company over—but who would notice such a small thing anyways.
Before heading upstairs, he grabbed a book that had been selected but abandoned on the wrong shelf by a shopper, and took it upstairs with him. He set it on the bed and, hearing the water running in his shower, approached the bathroom. He rapped his knuckles against the door and pushed it open slightly. “Tea, my dear?”
“Please,” Crowley said from behind the curtain. His voice was raspy and Aziraphale felt his shoulders sag. He really thought Heaven would be giving them more trouble than Hell, but he’d been wrong about Heaven before, he just didn’t know what this would mean, or how long their arrangement could be kept safe. He stepped inside the bathroom fully.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, close to the curtain. “Why don’t you get out. We can talk about it.”
He knew Crowley would like to sit and sulk in the shower, but also knew he would feel worse afterwards. Snakes did better sunning than bathing, and the heating blanket on the bed had just turned on all on its own. (It was on a timer. Sometimes, humans were clever enough to get things done even without little celestial miracles.)
Crowley sighed but turned off the water. Aziraphale handed him a fresh towel as he pulled back the curtain. “We don’t have to talk about it.” Crowley said. Reaching up, he wrung some of the water out of his hair, then took the towel from Aziraphale. “Nothing to talk about, really. Just need to… fudge the memos a little more.” They both knew he’d already fudged too many memos, but when you’re going against the divine forces that may be in order to avert the apocalypse, you really can’t tell the truth.
“You can tell them he killed the bird. He just willed that window to existence right there; it was just a big hole in the wall before that.”
Crowley smiled. “Thanks, angel,” he said, and leaned into the kiss Aziraphale had been leading up to.
As Crowley dried his hair, Aziraphale made the tea. It was only afternoon, but the mood was somber and seemed better fit to a warm and moonless night, so the sky outside the window changed—a small miracle to make a small microclimate around the flat so that Crowley, when he came out of the bathroom, didn’t have to feel guilty about climbing into bed at half past three. When the tea was finished steeping, Aziraphale stepped back into the bedroom and found Crowley collapsed across the bed.
“Alright then, I suppose I’ll just take the chair,” Aziraphale teased. Crowley sat up to make room on Aziraphale’s side of the bed and took the tea. Aziraphale smiled and leaned back, picking up the book and finally taking a look at the cover. Ah, well, he supposed Nietzsche wasn’t a terrible night time read, though he couldn’t blame the patron for changing their mind about the purchase. It was just dull enough not to warrant buying, but also dull enough that he wouldn’t bounce his leg in excitement and bother Crowley as he sometimes did.
Crowley only had a few sips of his tea before he set it aside, pulling the cover over himself. Aziraphale set his hand in Crowley’s hair, dimming his light absentmindedly. Crowley seemed tense but Aziraphale’s fingers carding through his hair helped him doze off. Though once Aziraphale moved his hand to turn his page and forgot to put it back, Crowley shifted, curled up slowly, until his head was entirely off the pillow.
Aziraphale didn’t notice for a bit, but when he did, he had to laugh softly. He might’ve left him be, and not risk waking him up, if he hadn’t resembled ouroboros quite as much as he did. Crowley’s elbows were touching his knees, and his legs were jutting out of the circle he formed like the serpent’s wings. He was sheltering his head between his arms and he simply looked distressed, even in sleep.
So, Aziraphale slipped his hand beneath Crowley’s hair, miraculously dried before he even got into bed. He couldn’t help but rake his fingers through the short hair of his undercut before he lifted Crowley’s head up and pulled the pillow down beneath his cheek. Crowley groaned slightly, his eyes opening for a moment just long enough for Aziraphale to see his bright yellow eyes, and rolled over, pushing the pillow farther up so he could stretch out, laying on his stomach. Then he was back asleep, and Aziraphale had to watch the heavy rise and fall of Crowley’s stressed breathing.
At the beginning of their plan to godfather the Antichrist, Aziraphale had thought—surely Heaven would have the greater problem with it. Surely Hell would trust the Adversary, Prince of Darkness, etc., to grow up evil regardless of Crowley’s successes (or failures) in influencing him to the dark.
But that didn’t seem to be the case, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure if that bothered him or Crowley more.
But he supposed it didn’t really matter right now. Harriet Dowling would wake in the morning with the sudden desire to take Warlock to school on her own and tend to her own flowers, and she would call to let the gardener and the nanny know that they had the day off. So Aziraphale set his book down and turned the light off entirely before he laid down beside Crowley.
Crowley woke up the next day to the sun shining in through the window and the sound of families on the sidewalk beside the bookshop just under the flat. With a hissed, “Oh for Hell’s sake,” and a quick snap of his fingers, he was out of bed and dressed as the good nanny Ashtoreth.
Damn Aziraphale had probably left early to get a head start on bringing light to the Antichrist, as if he hadn’t already done a good enough job with that. A job done so well that Crowley might be yanked from his place on earth any day. He was getting himself all worked up, but when he opened the door, he saw Aziraphale—luckily not dressed as the gardener—standing in the kitchen, absentmindedly stirring a pot of oatmeal and reading from the book he’d grabbed last night. Before Aziraphale could look up, his Ashtoreth attire was gone, replaced with his usual worn sweat pants and t-shirt that Aziraphale had blessed to always smell clean but had neglected to take care of the decal plastered on the front.
When Aziraphale did look up to see Crowley in the doorway, he smiled and set his book down. “Good morning, dear. Mrs. Dowling called. She was feeling like quite the American mother today and decided to join the PTA for Warlock’s school. Said she didn’t need us, today so I thought I’d let you sleep in.”
He didn’t seem to notice the whiplash he’d given Crowley, who’d gone from thinking Aziraphale had left for work without him to knowing Aziraphale had manipulated the wife of the American Diplomat and foster mother of the Antichrist into giving them the day off.
“Do you feel any better?” he asked.
Crowley, still recovering from one thing and not ready to move onto the next said, “Huh?”
Aziraphale’s smile was gentle, cautious. “You were anxious yesterday.”
“Was not,” Crowley scowled, settling down at the little table in the corner of the kitchen.
“No, of course not,” Aziraphale indulged. He poured Crowley a cup of coffee and handed it to him, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. Crowley put his hand over Aziraphale’s, clutching the mug, so Aziraphale stayed put.
“I do feel better, angel.”
“I’m very glad to hear that, my dear boy.”
“Why Nietzsche?”
“You know very well how I pick my night-time reads. Someone misplaced—”
“That’s not how you pick your morning reads, though.”
Aziraphale frowned. “No. I suppose it’s not.” He slipped his hand out from under Crowley’s, whose scowl deepened. However, he just grabbed the book from the far counter, then returned to Crowley. He’d underlined something deeply on the page he’d opened the book to, and Crowley’s eyes were drawn there immediately.
Crowley turned his face away. He’d read it already, but looked up to Aziraphale. “You know blessed well I’m illiterate,” he said, with a grin—since they both knew blessed well that Crowley could read just fine, but the also both knew that Aziraphale adored reading out loud.
Though his grin was met with some pause before Aziraphale picked up the book, cleared his throat and read: “And the one himself upon whom the punishment afterwards fell again, like a piece of fate, had no other ‘inner pain’ than he would have had at the sudden occurrence of something unanticipated, of a frightful natural event, of plummeting, crushing boulder against which one can no longer fight”
Nietzsche, for being an atheist, might’ve understood a little too well what it felt like for someone like Crowley to face Heaven’s damnation, then to have to consider what a damnation from Hell might be like.
“Crowley, I understand how difficult it is to face what we’re facing. But I think it must be difficult for us in different ways.” Aziraphale didn’t want to bring up Crowley’s Fall, since he couldn’t have known how badly Crowley wanted Aziraphale to recognize what he’d gone through, and what he was willing to go through again in order to save this planet and spend all of his mornings waking up in the bookshop rather than just the mornings after visits or dinners or drinks.
When Aziraphale didn’t continue, Crowley nudged him on. “Different how, angel?” He spoke so softly, even Aziraphale couldn’t misinterpret that he wasn’t teasing, he really did want to know.
“I never Fell. I’ve rebelled countless times, but I haven’t Fallen. I can only imagine what it’s like to be cast out, Crowley. I’m facing this with my loopholes and excuses of Oh I’m simply thwarting the wiles of my impressive demon counterpart. You’re facing this having already suffered expulsion once.” Aziraphale sighed heavily. “I just want you to know how brave I think you are.”
“I wouldn’t call it brave,” Crowley said after a while. “Afterall, I have done this before.”
“Call it whatever you must. Just know that I think you’re brave. And I might be tempted to lie in a few of my own memos telling them, my wily adversary has surfaced and is doing a terrific job—and might I add, he looks great in a skirt.” Crowley cut him off with a laugh. “If that would help,” Aziraphale tacked on, now smiling as well.
“Yes, I think it would. Heaven might as well know what they’re up against. Do you think Mary Poppins could’ve stopped Armageddon? Or does she not have what it takes.” Aziraphale had settled into the chair next to him and Crowley pulled him closer by hooking his ankle around the leg of the chair.
Aziraphale was startled for a moment, but recovered quickly so he could raise his hand and brush Crowley’s hair from his face. “Oh, you really are a fearsome being,” he said softly. “Whatever shall I do with you, my dear.”
Crowley took a deep breath and recalled the first time he had met Nietzsche. Then just as Aziraphale was leaning in for a kiss—“Grant me just one glimpse of something perfect, completely formed—in which there is still something to fear! Of a human being who justifies man himself,” Crowley crooned. Aziraphale laughed and Crowley could no longer find it in him to be afraid of punishment or fate or the plummeting crushing boulder of retribution that had cast him from Heaven and could possibly cast him even from Hell.
“Really, Aziraphale,” he said, finally taking on the serious tone Aziraphale had expected to be met with for the entirety of the conversation. “I wouldn’t call it brave because I was alone the first time. Now I'm not.”
“No,” Aziraphale said, “Now you're not.”