Chapter Text
Crowley bumped the door of A. Z. Fell and Co. open with his hip, little shop bell singing as he did so. His hands were occupied and his vision obscured by the pile of books he was cradling in his arms. He made it barely a meter into the shop and was about to call for his angel when he kicked something. Craning his neck, he took a look. Somebody had left a box of blankets or something right in the middle of the floor. It was a serious hazard[1]. That wasn’t the most troubling thing about this situation, though.
No. The box had mewled at him.
Crowley gaped at it, shifting around it in as wide an arch as he could manage as he tried to get further into the shop. He only succeeded in ramming his lower back into particularly violent reading table, letting out a low hissing curse.
“Language, dear!” Aziraphale’s light voice drifted from somewhere back in the stacks.
Crowley looked for somewhere to put the books down. “Er. Angel?”
“Yes, my love?” he called innocently. Too innocently. He was still nowhere to be seen.
Crowley decided that the table would be strong enough to hold the tombs in his arms. The table agreed amiably and didn’t so much as tremble as he sloughed them from his arms.“What… is this?”
His angel tutted from some hidden nook. “You’ll have to be more specific than that. There are many objects in this shop.”
“The box, the box with the…” Crowley crouched down cautiously, lifting the cardboard flap to get a better look.
Two bright yellow eyes stared up at him. Then, with only a tiny hiss as a warning, the creature slashed out at Crowley’s hand.
“Hackgh!” Crowley said, too surprised to think of a decent swear. He put his finger in his mouth; it stung just a bit. “It attacked me!”
"Really, now, dear,” Aziraphale tutted, finally coming out onto the main floor of the shop. He had his little gold rimmed reading glasses, and if Crowley wasn’t so irritated by their unexpected guest, he would have admitted that he found them quite fetching. “There’s no need to be so hostile.”
“Hostile!” Crowley spat indignantly. The angel patted his arm gently and placed a kiss on the demon’s cheek. All the pain from Crowley’s cut disappeared. His temper was still simmering, though. “I haven’t done anything!”
Aziraphale shot him a puzzled look, then bent down and reached into the box. “I wasn’t talking to you, my love.”
“Oh,” Crowley said brilliantly, watching as Aziraphale scooped a… a kitten, out of the box. It was tiny, small enough to fit comfortably between Aziraphale’s hands, with long fluffy black fur and those owlish yellow eyes. It mewled at Crowley irritably, then clambered up onto his angel’s shoulder and perched there. Aziraphale just let it.
“Crowley, meet Jophiel.” He watched the demon’s face closely.
Crowley grimaced. “Jophiel, really?” Named after a bloody archangel?
Aziraphale made a thoughtful noise, then shook his head slightly. “No, not really. Just trying to catch your reaction.”
Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Wut?”
Aziraphale shrugged. The kitten clung onto his jumper with its little claws, otherwise unbothered by the motion. It was trying to leverage its vantage point to the top of the angel’s head, in fact. “I’m still trying to figure out what the J stands for.”
Despite himself, Crowley laughed brightly, before remembering that he was trying to be irritated. He scowled.
Aziraphale smiled, one of those bright smiles that made Crowley’s heart melt[2]. “No, I actually haven’t named her yet. I was hoping you would help me pick one out for her.” He reached up, gently coaxing the kitten from his curls and bringing it down to his chest. It settled down right between his forearm and his jumper, tail twitching. Crowley could hear it purring from here. Disgusting.
“Eh, I don’t think so, angel. Creatures and I don’t really…” He made a wiggly motion with his hands, crunching his shoulders up. “Jive.” He sauntered over to his armchair, slumping into it with the kind of nonchalance that took years of practice. “How long’s that thing gonna be here, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m not entirely sure,” Aziraphale mused in his far off way that usually spelled trouble. “A decade or two?”
Crowley choked on a spot of particularly thick air. “Hacghk. Twenty years?”
Aziraphale shrugged, leaning slightly against one of the sturdier bookshelves[3]. “That’s how long they can live, my love.” He frowned slightly. “You know, I was hoping that you’d take a little better to her. You did do all that work with the cat videos on the… what’s it called? The World Wide Web?”
Crowley gaped. “My work? I thought your lot made those up.”
The two occultish beings looked at each other, then shrugged.
“Anyways,” Crowley pushed on, “It’s not so much that I don’t like those creatures. They can’t seem to stand me.”
“Well,” Airaphale said primly, walking back towards his office with the parasitic little creature still cradled in his arms. “I suppose you two will just have to figure that out, won’t you? No need to rush these sorts of things.” And the angel was gone again, calling over his shoulder, “Dinner at 9, don’t forget.”
Crowley only huffed in response, squirming a bit in his chair. He pulled his phone out, intending to scroll through it and maybe post a few flaming comments on choice Facebook posts[4] to burn some time and energy before their date. Unfortunately, the first thing that popped up was some blasted video of a cat chasing a laser or something. It was not, as Lorie something-or-other commented under the video, ‘So cute!’ It was downright offensive.
Crowley scowled up at the ceiling, tossing his phone across the room. This would not do. It would not do at all.
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Footnotes
1 Okay, the whole place was a serious hazard. What with the precariously piled books and the mysterious liquids that oozed up from the floor boards under any individual that seemed a little too interested in one of Aziraphale’s books, the box was probably the least of their concerns.[return to text]
2 Well, perhaps they all made Crowley’s heart melt. Now hush up about it.[return to text]
3 Since the Anti-Pocalypse, Aziraphale had seemed a bit more relaxed in general, even slouching about ever so slightly on occasion. Crowley prided himself with the idea that he’d had something to do with it; perhaps he was rubbing off on the angel after all.[return to text]
4 Crowley hadn’t actually invented ‘trolling,’ but he certainly did enjoy partaking in it.[return to text]