Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1. Lust
why the bloody hell did you start with LUST

Aziraphale is incredibly red. He’s so red, in fact, that Crowley’s growing concerned.

“Do you—do you want—” Aziraphale stammers at Crowley’s feet.

“Woah, slow down. I can’t keep up.”

The joke works well enough—instead of looking like he’s about he discorporate from embarrassment, Aziraphale’s eyebrows twitch down into that best beloved expression of reproach. He darts a glance at Crowley from under his lashes and then takes such a deep breath Crowley can see his chest expand.

“Do you want a—a blo—”

“Blo—ody Mary? Blood of a virgin?” Crowley asks, since it it doesn’t look like Aziraphale is going to manage to get this out within the next century. “Thanks, mate, but I’m all full up.”

“No,” says Aziraphale, then slides a frustrated hand over his face. “A blow—”

Crowley stares in disbelief. If he didn’t know better—but no. Surely not his prim and proper angel. It just wasn’t possible.

“A blow—cycle ride,” Aziraphale finally says. For a moment, he looks wild with panic, and then, abruptly, utterly defeated. His shoulders sag and he tips his head back to glare at the Heavens, as if this were somehow their fault.

“A blowcycle ride,” repeats Crowley, blankly.

“It’s slang,” Aziraphale tells the ceiling.

Crowley really doesn’t think so, but Aziraphale does pick up the strangest turns of phrase, so he shrugs. “Okay, sure. Let’s hire some blowcycles and go for a blowcycle ride.”

“Wonderful,” says Aziraphale, miserably.

They hire a pair of bicycles but forego the helmets, since the bicycles wouldn’t dare topple over under Crowley’s threatening eye. Truthfully, although he was surprised that the angel would suggest something so—so active, Crowley is enjoying himself immensely. It’s a beautiful day: the sun is out, the birds are singing, and he’s put the fear of Crowley into ten tourists and one yappy dog by nearly running them over while simultaneously laughing maniacally.

Aziraphale doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself nearly as much. He’s struggling to keep up, sweat pouring down his red face and white-blond curls plastered to his forehead.

“Whoever invented these infernal contraptions—argh!” He stops by way of gently crashing into a signpost, and Crowley performs a quick miracle to prevent him from toppling off the bike and into the street. Aziraphale tries to swing his leg off the bike, somehow manages to get tangled, and almost tumbles into the street anyway, in spite of Crowley’s miracle. Aziraphale stumbles away from the bicycle with a huff, snapping his jacket back into place. The bicycle stands primly in place without its kickstand activated.

“Oh come now, angel,” says Crowley, circling his bike around to Aziraphale’s side. “This is fun! I thought you wanted to go for a blowcycle ride.”

Aziraphale pulls out a handkerchief from an inner pocket—because, really, he would have a hankie—and swipes it over his forehead. All the sweat dutifully disappears and his curls snap into place. His cheeks are still a little pink. It’s adorable.

Crowley, not one to carry around such luxury items, balances himself with one long leg and wipes the small amount of sweat that had beaded at his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. When he lowers it again, Aziraphale’s expression has gone apocalyptic, like Crowley has folded a page in his priceless first edition Pride and Prejudice.

“What? What did I do?” asks Crowley, holding up both his hands in supplication.

“I’m going to have a drink,” Aziraphale announces.

Crowley hops off his bike, nudging down the kickstand with his heel. “Where?”

Aziraphale looks around, then points at a bar with a sign identifying it as Tip Tops. It’s one of those trendy microbreweries that have been popping up all over the place within the last decade, and it’s exactly the sort of place Aziraphale hates. “There.” With the grim determination of a bulldog in need of a stiff drink, he starts towards the brewery, not even bothering to look both ways before crossing the street.

Crowley trots up to his side, then beetles away when their shoulders accidentally brush. He shrugs at Aziraphale’s perplexed glance. Ever since he’d asked Aziraphale to run away with him to Alpha Centauri and had been summarily rejected, he’s been keeping a respectful distance between himself and the angel—while simultaneously keeping him as close as possible, since he’d also lost him in a fire and has yet to properly recover. It’s a tricky dance. Sometimes, Crowley finds himself reaching out to Aziraphale unconsciously, before snatching his hand back and closing it into a fist at his side.

Inside the bar is exactly what Crowley expects. It’s far too loud and smells far too strongly of hops. In the corner, a group of lads are loudly belting out a drinking song off key. “We like to drink with Fred cos Fred is our mate! And when we drink with Fred, he finishes in eight! Eight! Seven! Six!” In the opposite corner, another group has laid claim to a couple of beat up couches they really wouldn’t be sitting on had they known what those stains were, swiping away at their mobiles and completely ignoring each other except to occasionally wave a screen at a friend. It’s riotous, and full of the raucous energy Crowley normally delights in, since all it usually requires is a gentle push to send everything into chaos. But he’s here with Aziraphale, and it all rather feels like he’s a student shamefully introducing his rowdy footie team to his mate from Sunday school.

The door is momentarily blocked by Aziraphale, who stands frozen, taking in the full score with wide eyes.

“Makes you feel old, eh?” Crowley asks, slithering around the gobsmacked angel.

“Ancient,” Aziraphale admits, then strides up to the counter anyway.

Crowley trails after him, confused. He was about to suggest they head back to the more sedate atmosphere of The Ritz, but apparently Aziraphale has decided to slum it this evening.

The bartender’s a big, dark haired bloke with tattoos from his wrists to his neck and several piercings in both ears. He looks Aziraphale up and down, clearly wondering why an Oxford professor is staring up at the chalk-drawn menu with a small frown sketching the corners of his mouth. But it’s London, and the bartender must have seen stranger things than an out of place angel, and so he just smiles and says, “What can I get for you?”

“Yes-s-s,” says Aziraphale, drawing out the word in a hiss that’s more Crowley’s style. “I believe I’ll have the first one, followed by the second, and so on.”

The bartender blinks, then glances at Crowley to commiserate. He’s barking up the wrong tree. Crowley’s firmly in Aziraphale’s tree, and has been for six millennia. “Better make that two,” says Crowley.

“Ri-i-ight,” says the bartender, shaking his head and turning to the tap.

After the bartender gives them their drinks with a parting sideways glance, Crowley follows Aziraphale to a miraculously empty table in the corner. He pulls the chair out for him, and Aziraphale sinks gratefully into it, rubbing one thigh with a wounded expression. “I don’t know why anyone would subject themselves to those—those torture devices.”

“About that,” says Crowley, taking the chair across from him. The table is small, carved up by scads of drunk, accident-prone patrons, and covered with a protective layer of sticky residue. But it’s—intimate, and the noise around them acts like a bubble, keeping their conversation private. “If something even smells like exercise, you avoid it like the plague. And now—here? What’s going on?”

“I just—” says Aziraphale, and for a moment Crowley thinks he’s going to get a straight answer, but then Aziraphale smiles tightly at him. “I just wanted to try something new.”

“New. Right.”

Crowley lifts his pint, watching Aziraphale over the top of his glass. Normally, the angel carried the conversation for the first half of the night, babbling on about some new treasure he’s found for the bookshop, with Crowley listening contentedly on. Then, as the night progressed and Crowley got drunker and drunker, it would be his turn to chatter, usually with deliberately convoluted metaphors that were guaranteed to put that perplexed line between Aziraphale’s eyebrows. It was tradition. But for some reason, Aziraphale’s silent, frowning down at his beer like it’s betrayed him.

“I hate this stuff,” he says, then slugs back half his pint.

“Aziraphale,” says Crowley with concern. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine, my dear. Absolutely topping. Tip top, in fact, like this charming establishment.” Aziraphale carefully sets his pint back on the table, nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. He glances around for a napkin and then, finding none, pulls out his handkerchief again and dabs at his lips. “Crowley,” he says, slowly, “do you—”

“Do I...?”

“Have you ever—”

“Have I…?

“Can I—”

Crowley lifts his eyebrows. “Can you...?”

“Oh, never mind.” Aziraphale slumps in his chair, then picks up his pint and drains the rest in one gulp.

Strange. Well, if Aziraphale wants to tell him what’s bothering him so badly, Crowley figures he’ll get around to it when he’s ready.

Aziraphale stumbles into his bookshop, bumping roughly into the coat rack and nearly knocking it over. “Terribly sorry,” he tells it, yanking it back up and nearly overbalancing it. “Stay,” he orders. The coat rack wobbles disobediently for a moment, but at a disapproving frown from Aziraphale, seems to think better and stills.

Aziraphale moodily flops down on his desk chair, sinking all the way down so that his head rests on the chair’s back. After working his way through the entire menu (he would have gone for seconds, but the bartender had grown alarmed), Crowley had insisted they take something called a “Lyft” because if Aziraphale refused to sober up, then he certainly wouldn’t, and he couldn’t guarantee that he’d be able to keep their blowcycles upright in his state of total obliteration. Aziraphale had asked why on Earth they’d need an elevator to take them back to their respective homes, and Crowley had laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, and had said, “Never change, angel.” The touch had warmed Aziraphale all the way through, settling deep into his bones, and had almost made the farce of the blowcycle worth it.

In the top drawer of his desk, there’s a compartment only Aziraphale can access. He opens it now and pulls out a folded piece of paper. From another fussily ordered compartment, he grabs a pen.

Under the words 1. Lust, he writes, sloppily, why the bloody hell did you start with LUST. Then he sighs with his whole body and tosses the biro back onto his desk.

Foolish. Ridiculous. He’d gone from complaining about how Crowley moves too fast for him to jumping straight in, feet first, blindfolded, and directly into a pond full of snapping reptiles. What does he, an angel, know about lust? He might as well have started with—with—

Aziraphale frowns suddenly, sniffing the air. He struggles to his feet—for some reason, all his limbs feel as if they weigh about a million tonnes, but he absolutely refuses to sober up. Not for some weasley little toad of an intruder.

He slinks (well, more like bumbles) through his bookshelves, sniffing the air, until he comes to his back room. The door’s cracked open. Aziraphale sets his hand on the doorknob and pushes it open a smidge. There, squatting in the middle of his rug, is a football-shaped lesser imp, chewing on a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Aziraphale flings the door open so hard that the top hinges pop off. “Demon!” he roars.

“Oh, fuck,” the imp yelps, dropping the book. He looks around wildly and then, spotting a window, makes a lunge for freedom. Aziraphale snaps his fingers and freezes the demon mid-leap.

“And what,” says Aziraphale, striding up to the frozen demon (although the effect is somewhat ruined when he trips over the edge of his rug), “do you think you’re doing here?”

The imp watches him with bulging eyes. Aziraphale waits for a long moment for the imp to respond, and then says, “Oh, right.” He waves a hand and the imp drops to the ground with a startled oomph. “Now,” he looms over the imp, a little unsteadily. “What do you think you’re doing, coming in here and eating my books? You’re very lucky that wasn’t a first edition.”

The imp cowers and stutters and shuffles his feet. “S’just—you know, they hate you Down There.”

“Yes, yes,” says Aziraphale, waving a hand.

“I mean they re-e-eally hate you. Not as much as Crowley. Though maybe a close second. And so, I thought, maybe…”

“Yes?” says Aziraphale, with a little Holy emphasis.

The imp cringes. “I thought maybe if I killed you I could get a commendation or maybe a promotion,” he says, somehow managing to cram an entire sentence into one word.

Aziraphale blinks. He isn’t sure whether he should be offended or amused that this little imp thought he could take him. “Well, do go away. I don’t have the patie—the pat—I don’t want to deal with this crap right now.”

“Are you drunk?” the imp asks, squinting up at him.

“Now!” shouts Aziraphale. “Wait, hold on.”

The imp, who had crouched down in preparation to leap out of the window before Aziraphale smote him, freezes. “Y-yes?”

“Do you—do you know anything about lust?”

“Lust? Lust? You’re asking me about lust? You mean like—” the imp gyrates his hips and jerks his arms back and forth in what Aziraphale can only assume is his approximation of sex. “Ooo yeah baby, I know all about lust! Imagine that, an angel asking me about lust!” He whoops in delighted laughter.

Aziraphale smites the imp back to hell with a negligent wave of his hand. Then he frowns down at the scorch mark he’s left behind on his rug. Oh dear. He’s got carried away again. With a bone weary sigh, he stumbles back to his desk, picks up his pen, and puts a bold strikethrough over 1. Lust.

Chapter Text

2. Vanity
Success? Partial success? It did not actually result in He seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

Crowley sniffs the air, frowning. Something in the bookshop smells evil. Well, more evil than normal. A different evil. Even as Crowley bristles in territorial indignation, his stomach twists in panic. “Angel!” Crowley calls sharply, startling the few customers who braved the lingering scent of mildew and the quietly judgey owner scowling at them from the shadows. He ignores them, banging through the shop to put the fear of Crowley into the pestilential demon who would dare to lay one rotten finger on his angel.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s curly blond head pops out of the back room. There’s a marked lack of terror on his face, although he does look a little surprised at Crowley’s entrance.

Crowley wants to sag against one of the bookshelves in relief, but since he has an audience, he takes refuge in furious bluster. “What’s the meaning of this!”

Aziraphale frowns up at Crowley from under scrunched eyebrows. “What do you mean, ‘what’s the meaning of this?’ What’s the meaning of you coming into my shop like you’re storming the Bastille? You startled me.”

“Oh, so we’re joking about the French Revolution now,” Crowley snaps back. Impotent adrenaline still rages through his veins. His eyes dart around the room, trying to find the intruder so that he can squash him like a bug. “I startled you? Oh that’s just bloody typical.”

Aziraphale shoots an apologetic smile at his customers, and then remembers to scowl at them, and then gives up the battle between his inherent Good Will to All and his instinctive Get the Hell Out of My Precious Shop, You Thieving Bastards and strides up to Crowley. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

“Aziraphale,” says Crowley, with exaggerated patience. “Why does it smell evil in here?”

Aziraphale’s brow clears. “Oh that.” He straightens his jacket, unconcerned. “Not to worry, my dear. I took care of that days ago.”

“But what isss ‘that’?” demands Crowley, hissing with prickly defensiveness. “Who daress to ssset foot in my territory?”

“Oh my god,” one girl whispers to her friend; an American tourist, by the sound of her accent. “You never told me London was this awesome.”

“Merely a minor run in with an imp,” Aziraphale soothes, watching him keenly, the corners of his mouth twitching up in a small, secret smile.

An imp? An imp? An imp dared to come into his territory? Who did he think he was? “I’ll rend him apart with my bare handsss if he shows hisss face here again.”

“My dear,” says Aziraphale, smiling as if Crowley has just given him a bottle of some extraordinarily expensive vintage red wine and tickets to the LSO. “You really are fundamentally good.”

Crowley surges back as if he’s been slapped. “What!”

“Oh dear,” mutters Aziraphale.

“There’s no need to be insulting,” says Crowley, wounded. “I was legitimately worried about you—”

“Yes yes, and of course you don’t see how one would lead to the other,” sighs Aziraphale. “I quite like your eyes?”

“You—like my eyes?” Crowley repeats, not sure how he should take this and wondering why the hell the angel is bringing up his eyes in the first place. They’re the only part of him that are outwardly demonic, and the whole reason why he wears his sunglasses in the bookshop is because he doesn’t want to continuously remind Aziraphale about how unangelic he is. Was Aziraphale having him on? It would be a first, but after the whole thing with the blowcycles, it’s a strange new world Crowley’s living in.

“Er,” he says, not sure if he should thank him or be affronted. Deciding the best course of action is inaction, he returns to his original outrage. “Why is an imp visiting you, anyway?”

“Oh, he just wanted to kill me,” says Aziraphale, waving his hand dismissively.

“I motherfucking love London and am moving here immediately,” the American tourist whispers to her friend.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley bellows.

Aziraphale claps his hands together. “Wings!”

Crowley staggers back a step. “Wings?” he repeats, stricken, and feeling a bit like he’s walked into a Sunday morning church service at a retirement community and found a raucous orgy in its place. Or maybe the other way around.

Aziraphale whirls back toward his customers, waving both his hands. “Dreadfully sorry everyone, we’re closed for the afternoon. There’s been a family emergency.”

He meets some resistance from a determined older gentleman who’s insisting that, “I know you have a copy, Mr Fell, I’ve seen it here before—if you’ll just name your price—” who Aziraphle summarily gets rid of by saying, “Oh look, I believe your car is on fire,” and shoving him out the door. With a quick wave of his hand, the blinds snap shut, and several bookshelves jump to the side, leaving an empty circle in the center of the shop.

Aziraphale pulls out a sturdy looking stool out from under his desk and sets it up in the circle. “Let there be light!” he says, flinging up his hands, and all the lights in the shop joyously blaze on. Satisfied, he turns back to Crowley, who has been watching the entire affair with his mouth hanging open. “Alright, out with them.”

“Out with what?” demands Crowley, feeling like one of them has gone completely mad, and he’s pretty sure it’s not him.

“Your wings! I’d like to groom them for you.”

Silence blankets the room. Aziraphale presses his hands together, face radiating joy and hope. Crowley gapes at him.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, after several seconds of Crowley’s dumbfounded silence. The joy fades first, followed closely by the hope, and then it’s all rapidly replaced ashamed embarrassment. “Oh dear. If I’ve made you uncomfortable—that is—of course we don’t have to—oh, I am dreadfully sorry—”

“No! Crowley shouts, loud enough that Aziraphale jumps. “I mean, yes! I mean—I mean—” He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to calm his riotous heart. “I would like that. For you to—to groom me—my wings.”

It’s just that means—quite a lot of touching. Of his wings. By Aziraphale. Crowley’s mind should be forgiven for packing up and taking a short mental vacation.

“Oh wonderful!” says Aziraphale, all smiles again.

“Brilliant,” Crowley agrees weakly, wondering why he hates himself so much that he’d agree to this torture session.

Aziraphale folds his hands together, still with the smiles. After several seconds of inaction, he clears his throat expectantly. Because, right, Crowley should be letting his wings out right about now. Funny how easy it had been in the face of imminent destruction. Well, best to do it quick, like ripping off a plaster. Looking down—because if he catches even a glimpse of disgust or loathing on Aziraphale’s face, he really wouldn’t ever recover—he unfolds his wings and stretches them out. It does feel rather good, actually, to free them like this. They get rather cramped after a decade or two.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale. Crowley sneaks a look at his face. His eyes are wide and shining, and there’s a faint blush high on his cheeks. Crowley frowns at him, cocking his head to the side. “R-right!” says Aziraphale, blinking rapidly, and then swings around Crowley and crowds him towards the stool. “Let’s get this started, shall we?”

Crowley’s hands fidget on his knees. He doesn’t like having his wings out like this. It makes him feel—vulnerable. Exposed.

He’s not ashamed of being a demon. Especially not now. Better than mixing with the uptight bastards Upstairs or the downright bastards Downstairs, as far as he’s concerned. Really, he has it made on Earth, rubbing shoulders with the humans, dining at The Ritz with a certain angel. It’s just that—displaying his wings like this feels like the equivalent of a human baring his soul. If it were anyone but Aziraphale standing behind him, Crowley would have stormed out of the bookshop at the mere suggestion of wing grooming. But it is Aziraphale, and so even though Crowley’s tempted to skip off the stool and run for the hills, he remains seated.

Crowley squeezes his eyes shut. For all his show about wanting to groom him, Aziraphale sure as hell is taking his time. “Well? Get on with it.”

“I’m sorry, my dear,” says Aziraphale. “I was just thinking—your wings are quite beautiful, aren’t they?”

Crowley’s wings flutter at the compliment. “Of course they are,” he says, brusquely, glad that Aziraphale can’t see his face. Anyway, he’s just being kind. Crowley’s under no illusions about what his wings look like. He hasn’t been groomed since—well, since before his Fall. Like he’d ever let another demon put their grubby hands on his wings. Every century or so he’ll dust them off, but there are places he can’t reach that he’s been steadfastly ignoring for the past, oh, six millennia. He’s aware of how ratty they are; when he concentrates, he can feel how his feathers fold over each other, or stick together, or are flat out broken.

At the first gentle touch, fingers just barely skimming the down where feathers meet his skin, Crowley nearly flies off the stool. It’s—it’s—

Aziraphale draws his hand back, which is not at all what Crowley wants. “Alright, Crowley?”

Not trusting himself to speak, Crowley nods once, jerky.

Aziraphale smooths his hand over Crowley’s left wing, which snaps out convulsively, knocking over a small table.

“I’m sorry,” says Aziraphale. Crowley can feel him step away. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea—”

“No!” Crowley shouts, then clears his throat. “I mean, it’s a good idea. Just—give me a second. To—to get used to—to adjust.”

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, softly. Crowley bows his head. Damn him. And damn his own stupid body for mistaking a simple act of kindness as affection.

He manages to control himself when Aziraphale sets his hand back on the arch of his left wing, but a full body shiver works its way down from the base of his skull to his toes. He thinks, wildly, that if he were to make an Effort right now, he might actually humiliate himself.

“This might sting,” warns Aziraphale, but then he very carefully works a damaged feather out from his wing, then hands it over to Crowley. It’s irreparable, snapped in half, hunks missing from the shaft. Crowley tries to straighten it out, fidgety, while Aziraphale goes back to touching his wings. No, not just touching. Adjusting. Plucking. Carressing.

He can’t afford to read into this. Aziraphale is just acting like an angel, with an endless supply of Good Will towards all of God’s Creatures, even the ones who have been Damned.

“Are you alright, my dear?” Aziraphale murmurs into his ear.

“Perfectly fine,” says Crowley, through clenched teeth. He will not project demonic motivations onto an angel, especially not when that angel is Aziraphale.

It takes an effort not to give in and make an Effort, but eventually, and by slow degrees, Crowley’s body relaxes. He tracks a line of sunlight peeping in through the blinds as it makes its way across the floor, mind fixed on the gentle press and pull of Aziraphale’s fingers as he susses out every feather Crowley hadn’t even realized were bothering him. Since he’s pointedly not making an Effort, the warmth that fills him as Aziraphale gently grooms his wings makes his stomach go oddly—fluttery.

Butterflies, he thinks, despairingly.

It hurts, too, because Aziraphale is touching him like—like he’s precious. Like he’s something to be worshipped. Like he’s lov—no. Best not travel down that road. It’s too dangerous.

Although Aziraphale’s hands are steady as he works, he is ridiculously happy.

His territory. Crowley sees Aziraphale’s bookshop as his territory. What’s more, the normal instinctive displeasure at someone daring to lay claim on Aziraphale’s bookshop is curiously absent, which means that, deep down, Aziraphale thinks of the shop as Crowley’s territory, too.

Or rather, their territory.

Aziraphale smoothes one hand down Crowley’s left wing, not quite ready to stop touching him, but never willing to overstep his boundaries. He steps back. “Done,” he murmurs, not wanting to break the peaceful silence that’s draped over them like a cosy blanket.

Crowley doesn’t get off the stool immediately. He doesn’t even move.

“You’ll probably want to see them,” says Aziraphale, suddenly all aflutter. He quickly miracles up the ornate mirror that the previous owner had left with the store well over a century ago. It appears with a poof of dust, though thankfully not getting on Crowley’s freshly groomed wings. (Although if Aziraphale is being entirely honest with himself, he wouldn’t say no to another couple more hours of grooming.) Aziraphale waves a hand. The dust dutifully vanishes and the glass gleams, polished and shiny.

“Crowley?” says Aziraphale.

Crowley’s shoulder’s lift and fall, his wings rustling like a sigh. “Yeah,” he says, voice gruff. He gets to his feet. When he turns to Aziraphale, his normally animated expression is so composed it’s almost flat.

Aziraphale twists his hands together. Perhaps this was a bad idea. Too much, too soon. Again, he’s leapt in without considering the repercussions. He’s Crowley’s best friend—or, or he thinks he is, since Crowley’s lost his real best friend during the Armageddon—but it must have been dreadful for Crowley to be touched for so long by an angel—

“Oh,” says Crowley, stepping up to the mirror. He takes off his sunglasses, and Aziraphale can see the stunned look in his eyes. He flexes his wings, then stretches them out. The ink black feathers shine so brightly under Aziraphale’s overenthusiastic ceiling lights that they look almost—white. But then Crowley flaps them once, and they’re black again, and honestly—honestly, Aziraphale loves them just the way they are.

“Wow, angel,” Crowley says, twisting around to look at his wings from the back. “My wings haven’t looked this good since before—well, Before.”

“They’re stunning.”

Crowley tears his eyes away from his reflection to look at Aziraphale, surprised, and for a moment—for a moment—

Then Crowley abruptly jerks back to the mirror. “Yeah, well. Thanks. Remind me to return the favor one day.”

I’d like that, Aziraphale almost says, but for some reason, Crowley’s mood has turned. This isn’t that unusual; Crowley’s prone to slip into maudlin moods, although it’s usually late into the night, after a couple bottles of well-aged Burgundy.

Crowley stares at himself for a moment longer, then tucks his wings away. “Well!” he says, brightly, unfolding his sunglasses and popping then back onto his face with one well-practiced slide. “Best be off. Need to”—he falters, clearly not having an excuse ready at hand—“Well. People to see, places to go.”

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, voice small. What places? What people?

Crowley glances at him, but his eyes are hidden by his sunglasses again, and his expression is inscrutable. Aziraphale drops his eyes, not wanting Crowley to see the disappointment that’s likely writ large all over his face.

“We’ll grab dinner tomorrow, yeah?” says Crowley, his voice softening.

“Sure,” says Aziraphale.

When Crowley doesn’t immediately sprint out of the bookshop like he so clearly wants to do, Aziraphale looks up questioningly. Crowley’s mouth works for a second, then he spins on his heel. “Ciao,” he says, tossing a wave over his shoulder, and strides out of the bookshop.