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After 6000 years and the quite eventful almost-Armageddon, Crowley and Aziraphale stop all unnecessary pretenses concerning their relationship and settle down together.
Their apartment as well as their hobbies become a quite unique amalgam of devine and devilish. Crowley, who only ever read some of the better selling stories of a handful of writers he tempted, becomes fascinated by literature. Aziraphale, while not fascinated, warms up a little to beebop.
Their favourite pastime however is people. Especially lonely and/or complicated ones. Inspired by their success with not one but two Antichrists - well, you know how that went -, two witches - then again -, and two witchfinders, not to mention their own blooming albeit not exactly human relationship they set out to look for opportunities for more ineffable interventions.
Using a more mundane word, we could call it matchmaking, after all, apart from the Antichrists that’s what their ministrations turned out to be. As they set to find new future-couples, their enthusiasm and commitment remains unfaltering despite the considerable effort involved in the deed.
Finding one suitable candidate is not hard in and of itself, but since they have to agree about it, it can get complicated. Then, there’s the really tricky part of finding a match. They have fun though and the matches made in Soho usually turn out miraculously well.
One fine spring morning - fine as per British standards - Aziraphale utters an excited squeal over his morning newspaper. Crowley steps behind him and when he sees the photo of a tall dark stranger clad in surprisingly stylish clothes wreaking havoc in Stuttgart he kisses Aziraphale’s cheek happily.
“Excellent, my dear. Your taste is becoming excellent. He’ll be perfect for us,” he enthuses.
In the next few days they find out just how perfect a candidate Loki is. Crowley is beside himself with excitement. Aziraphale worries a bit, but can’t resist helping a soul in such a dire need of redemption. They both agree that Loki’s imprisonment for eternity on Asgard can’t last for more than a few years, so they don’t bother interfering. Anyway, it gives them some very much needed time to find a match for the god.
In the meantime they keep an eye on New York and the Avengers, after all the perfect companion is often some disregarded acquaintance. It turns out however that their attention is better be directed at Germany again. That is where Loki turned up and that is where they first notice the sweetest, most innocent superhero ever to live.
Crowley sneers a bit out of habit, but he doesn’t really fight Aziraphale on it.
“He’s almost as good as you,” he remarks, dismayed.
Aziraphale beams at him. “Well, seeing how Loki is almost as um… devious as you, it’s only fitting, don’t you think?”
They decide to wait for the man in New York to start a series of ineffable interventions, but they halt when they glimpse the boy exiting the elegant car driving him home.
“Oh,” Aziraphale sighs. “He’s much too young.”
Crowley just grimaces. “Ah, they start early these days. We just have to wait for a few years.”
“I know,” Aziraphale sighs, “it’s just that I got so excited…”
Crowley glances at him as he trails off, then steps closer to him to put an arm around his shoulder.
“I know.”
So, they wait, keeping an eye on both candidates. Although they agree that any intervention that actually helps the two to meet and know each other has to wait, they don’t resist some minor nudges in the right direction. It most often concerns Loki and preventing him from too serious hiccups as Aziraphale calls them despite Crowley’s relentless corrections to fuck ups, but sometimes it involves Peter, too.
Ragnarok and the ensuing chaos however finds them unprepared. They pop up here and there but too late to prevent any of it happening. They are already devastated by Loki’s demise and by the time they agree to miracle him back to life, they lose Peter, too.
Crowley and Aziraphale return home, grateful above all for not losing each other in the snap, but weighed down by grief. And it’s not just Loki and Peter. It’s Mr Shadwell, Anathema, Adam and even dog. Half of the benches are empty at St. James’ Park and half of the ducks are gone, too. It’s a miserable new world in which they have to find their place again.
They take care of their own before anyone else, but they can’t help feeling involved in the Avengers’ affairs, too. They visit each of them, though they can rarely agree on the best course of action.
Take Tony Stark for example. He got as lucky as they have, still having his wife and his best friends and now even a beautiful daughter, too. Aziraphale was all for helping him heal and move on, but Crowley insisted on letting him grieve.
“You were never such a non-interventionalist,” Aziraphale says raising an eyebrow as they stand under a tree, huddled together to stay under the leaves sheltering them from the rain.
“I just say, if he’s stuck, he’s stuck. Let him untangle it and move on if he can. We can’t show such favouritism. He already got lucky.”
“But it eats away at him. And after all he’s been through, he could be finally happy.”
“Do as you please,” Crowley shrugs. “But if you intervene, so will I.”
Aziraphale frowns. “All right, all right, there’s no need to go about it like that,” he says indignantly. “We’ll just keep observing then.”
And they do, which allows them to be prepared when things are set into motion by Scott Lang’s reappearance. Well, in complete honesty prepared may be going a bit too far. It’s more like that their only temporarily wavering attention to the events on the other side of the Atlantic gave them a chance to get their shit together just in time for the time heist.
“They are getting everybody back,” Crowley says with careful emphasis.
“Oh, yes, dear Adam…” Aziraphale muses, not quite catching up.
“Do you think they’d notice if one more came back?”
Aziraphale’s eyes go wide. “Oh… Oh!” He hugs Crowley with enthusiasm.
So, our ineffable matchmakers get involved in the time heist, a plan that would be altogether too complicated to explain - it even gave a lot of headache to those who came up with it -, but the result is a very confused Loki in the middle of what resembles quite closely how Crowley and Aziraphale imagined the big battle of Armageddon that they’ve once averted.
Peter Parker is one of the first to notice Loki.
“Mr. Loki,” he squeals, fighting off a monster attacking the god. “Mr. Thor is going to be so happy,” he yells before the battle sweeps him away.
“What have you just done?” Crowley asks Aziraphale noticing the mischievous twinkling of his eyes.
“Ah, just made sure Loki will remember this moment,” he replies with a wave of his hand.
They keep watching the battle unfold with only minor interventions. Both are heartbroken when Tony Stark sacrifices himself in the end, but they agree with a sad and solemn glance that if they hadn’t interfered before, it wouldn’t do to start questioning his decision now.
The aftermath of the battle is marked by grief and hope. The group as well as the rest of the world engage in reconstruction and they slowly start to heal. Aziraphale accompanied by a very reluctant Crowley busies himself with giving little helpful nudges to people who most need it. That is, when their duties as a shop owners, a matchmakers and a dedicated uncles to Adam allow them.
Peter and Loki’s case advances slowly. After Tony Stark’s funeral, Loki departs almost instantly to New Asgard with Thor and Peter goes back to school in Queens. It’s not until a few months later that a window of opportunity opens again when Thor invites the Stark family to spend their vacation in New Asgard. Crowley is already behind Pepper ready to make her invite Peter when little Morgan runs to her mother.
“Can Peter come, too? And Neb? And Harley? Please mum, can they come?”
Pepper smiles at her, wipes off a teardrop and says yes.
“Hm. I like that one,” Crowley admits following Morgan with his slit eyes as she climbs up on a kitchen stool and starts badgering the mysterious disembodied creature by the name of F.R.I.D.A.Y. to send out invitations quote a.p.a.s.
“She will definitely be able to give Loki a run for his money,” Aziraphale remarks as they sit perched on one of the lower clouds observing Morgan Stark single-handedly wreaking havoc in the celestial colony under the cover of vacationing.
“Definitely, especially if precious Peter Parker will really manage to soften him,” Crowley agrees.
“Oh, I think he’s making progress. Only yesterday Loki produced no less than ten different illusions for the single purpose of entertaining Morgan while the adults got some rest.”
By some curios trick of fate - you know who I mean - Loki finds himself stuck on baby sitting duty in the company of who he thinks about as the chatty one. But Peter’s insatiable curiosity and unrelenting friendliness starts to work on Loki over the weeks and he finds himself quite enjoying the attention. If only Peter would drop the mister before his name…
Soon, Crowley is getting rather impatient.
“Ugh, I almost managed to forget how annoyingly good you used to be. This boy is almost as bad. Good. I mean- You know what I mean.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Aziraphale smiles, “for both of us.”
“Take it as you will, but unless Peter starts to chill, we’ll have to admit our first failure,” Crowley warns.
“You worry too much,” Aziraphale chides, pressing a loving kiss to his husband’s cheek. “They still have two weeks on vacation.”
Crowley hums, then narrows his eyes. “What did you just do?”
“What? When?” Aziraphale asks putting on his most angelic expression.
“There, behind your back while you were distracting me with love,” he all but spits, but then leans in to kiss Aziraphale, adding in a small whisper, “no offence”.
“Huh,” Aziraphale huffs. All the answer he give is, “You shall see,” before he turns away in a dignified and slightly theatrical manner. The squeal he lets out when he checks his watch however is completely genuine. “We are going to be late from Adam’s scavenger hunt!”
“Oh, bugger,” Crowley curses.
The hurried teleportation combined with the excitements Adam had in store for his children and by consequence to the two celestials who so foolishly agreed to help him are enough to put the question of Aziraphale’s intervention out of the demon’s mind until late afternoon two days later, by which time they both regain enough energy to go near people again. Children, however are out of the question for at least another day.
When they arrive to New Asgard, the first thing they notice are Morgan’s crayons and drawings littering the garden. Frowning, Aziraphale magics them all into a pile, then puts them under a rock on the garden table.
“Why has no one told her off for that?” he wonders aloud.
“Spooky,” Crowley replies, uttering that word for the first time on his own volition in more than 6000 years - and meaning it.
They proceed towards the house and hurry their steps when they hear excited giggling coming from one of the open windows. They don’t need to go far to spot Morgan, covered from head to toe - as is the kitchen and the two supposedly adults next to her - in various baking ingredients.
“Now you need to let the dough rest for 6 hours,” Peter informs Morgan, reading off the phone pinched between his messy fingers.
Loki groans and Crowley is sure he knows what’s on his mind. Finding an entertainment that’ll keep Morgan Stark occupied for six hours when all the others seem to be gone - Crowley wouldn’t want to trade places if his life depended on it… or maybe only then.
Aziraphale reenters the kitchen at that moment. “Harley and Nebula are… what’s the term? geeking with Korg in Thor’s house.”
“What, playing that god awful game again?” Crowley asks, flinching.
“Yeah,” Aziraphale replies with a sigh. “But at least it gives some time for Loki and Peter to be… well, almost alone.”
“Huh, as if Morgan Stark could be easily ignored. What happened here, anyway?”
“I think, they might be trying to make pizza,” Aziraphale muses, walking over to the counter and checking the tablet laying there, after swiping off the flour covering it.
They watch on from a safe distance as Peter and Loki try to play board games, climb trees and find treasures with Morgan - all to no avail. The two celestials soon start spotting the telltale signs of the same exhaustion they experienced three days ago on Loki and Peter, who eventually resolve to the ultimate method and hand Morgan a phone with YouTube on autoplay. However, their hopes that it would hold her attention for more than 5 minutes are crushed as soon as Morgan pauses the video and starts explaining to them what the editors got wrong about space travel.
Peter groans and turns to Loki with a pleading expression. The gods looks back at him frowning, then smiles slightly as he has a new idea.
“Hey, Morgan,” he begins. “You know what? You are right. YouTube is shit-”
“That’s mommy’s word,” Morgan chides.
Loki shrugs and goes on. “So here’s what I thought. Do you want to hear about this really exciting adventure Thor and I had when we first visited another galaxy?”
“Stories,” Aziraphale breathes with amazement.
Crowley frowns. “That could work,” he admits cautiously.
“Oh, what do you mean it could work? That’s the strongest magic there is. Look at their eyes! They are shining.”
“Peter’s too,” Crowley observes, glancing at his husband.
They squeeze each other’s hands and leave for the afternoon.
When they check back in the evening, it’s still only the six of them in the cottage. They are preparing to eat the two pizzas that turned out surprisingly well and as Crowley watches the group’s movement around the table, a suspicion starts forming in his head. In the next few days he pays careful attention and when the adults return, his theory finally gets confirmed.
“You spelled them to be only able to sit next to each other?”
“Oh, did I?” Aziraphale asks with a smirk.
“You, bastard,” Crowley croons in an endeared voice. “It’s a method I often used to spark conflict. Very devious of you to turn it inside out.”
Aziraphale’s smile shines brighter than the sun.
When the time comes for the extended Stark family to return home at the end of summer, Pepper pulls Loki to the side and asks him to visit sometime.
“You were brilliant with Morgan. Wish Tony could have seen you becoming so…”
“Not-villainy?” Loki offers with an embarrassed smile.
“Yeah, not-villainy,” Pepper laughs. “Can’t help making up words around the children, can you?”
Loki just shrugs and they part with a hug.
Although Pepper’s invitation bodes well for Peter and Loki’s relationship, Aziraphale remains worried.
“It’s almost time for them to leave and they haven’t said goodbye yet!”
Crowley puts an arm around him. “We didn’t hurry either, did we?”
“No,” Aziraphale admits, “but they are running out of time.”
“We were, too, weren’t we?”
“Oh, all right, all right,” Aziraphale sighs, stepping closer to his husband.
“Look. They are getting there,” Crowley points at Peter eyeing Loki from the other end of the room.
It takes another quarter of an hour for Peter and Loki to go upstairs to what served as Peter’s room for the time of the vacation and talk.
“A bit dismal, now it’s empty,” Loki remarks.
“Yeah, tell me about it… I had to pack everything.”
They remain silent, looking around at every corner in the room except the spot where the other stands. Then, they start speaking at the same time.
“You go first,” Loki hurries to say.
“You can go, too, really,” Peter assures, blushing.
Loki just rolls his eyes.
So, taking a deep breath, Peter begins. “So… I was thinking… Since we… um… I think we got along really well and um… not just because Morgan… well, I thought…,” he begins, then gulps and walks to the chest of drawers. “Here,” he says, extending his hand towards Loki with a small box in it. “I thought that we could, um keep in touch. Thor is supposed to know how to use one,” he adds.
Loki takes the phone with a tinge of blue on his cheeks. “Thank you, Peter. And I think I can manage after watching Tony Stark’s four kids all summer.”
Peter laughs and watches eagerly as Loki unwraps the device. “I… It’s not brand new. I already switched it on and installed a few apps. Added some contacts,” he shrugs, worrying his lip as he waits for Loki’s answer.
“It’s perfect. Tops my gift, to be sure,” Loki admits, not meeting Peter’s eyes.
“What?” Peter gapes.
“I charmed these bracelets, so that you can alert me if you need me,” Loki murmurs, cheeks a deep indigo now. “But your solution is definitely more… um… advanced.”
Peter steps closer to Loki and when the god finally meets his eyes, he asks, “Can I still have it?”
“Tell me I was never this clumsy,” Crowley groans, dismayed.
“You weren’t,” Aziraphale lies and watches with a soft smile as Peter and Loki fix the bracelets on each other, both blushing and trying to hide the giddy grins tugging at the corners of their mouths.
Epilogue
3 years, 3 months and 24 days later Crowley and Aziraphale are hovering over the Christmas tree - much to the demon’s dismay - watching the extended Stark family and guests having dinner. Peter is happily chatting with Harley who sits in front of him. On his left is Happy and on his right - inevitably - Loki. It’s not only that - what with Aziraphale forgetting to remove his spell - they still can’t sit next to anyone else at meals - they wouldn’t ever want to.
The reason for that is that Loki and Peter are dating. Have been dating since… Well, opinions differ largely on the matter. Morgan is convinced that it’s at least since before her 8th birthday, because they’d given her a joint present. Loki insists that it was only in memory of their summer shenanigans. Thor is convinced that it’s at least since Peter’s graduation, because he was the one who suffered through Loki’s search for the perfect outfit. Peter insists that Loki has always been like that when it came to clothes.
Aziraphale prefers to date their relationship since their exchange of gifts at the end of the first summer they’d spent together, because neither has looked at anybody else since. Crowley, disagrees, saying that their ridiculous pining doesn’t count and insists on dating Peter and Loki’s relationship from the first time that blustering idiot - he means Loki, of whom he grew quite fond of - confessed his love to Peter.
They watch the party go on, and when Loki invites Peter for a walk outside, the celestials know that the moment that called for their visit has finally come. They follow Loki and Peter, but stop beneath a tree well out of earshot. Even though he knows what’s to come, Aziraphale can’t help gesticulating excitedly when Loki kneels down in front of Peter. Crowley’s just grateful that Loki didn’t hesitate and carried around the ring in his pocket for Hell only knows how long.
“Aww, after three years,” Aziraphale sighs as he watches Peter kiss Loki in the distance.
“One and a half,” Crowley corrects but there’s not much heat in it.
“Well, if you think about it…” Aziraphale begins.
Crowley silences him with a kiss, then adds, “You are right. Agreeing is for amateurs.”