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Crowley had never been particularly fond of rain. It wasn't anywhere near a phobia – in fact, compared to the average human on any normal, dreary overcast day in, say, the West Midlands, his level of aversion would be considered completely normal – but for as long as he could remember being, he had never been particularly fond of rain. He put it down to a completely natural and totally healthy fear of death. All that water falling from Heaven, and any drop of it could have been blessed? Oh no, that was a situation best avoided.
Sometimes the demon wondered if it was obvious. Aziraphale was always so quick to shelter him beneath a wing...
The advent of drinkable alcohol proved both a hellish blessing and a heavenly curse. Aziraphale enjoyed a rare treat of tawny port as much as the next angel, and politeness dictated the angel offer him a glass even before their Arrangement had been fully negotiated, but while Crowley appreciated the temptation of intoxication, he had enough trouble with the feeling of wetness on the outside of his body and did not particularly relish knowing that liquids were slipping their way through his insides into his stomach as well.
For Crowley, the boom in the fizzy drinks market was both a personal achievement (the addition of caffeine to help so many thousands of impressionable children on their way to addiction was, he thought proudly to himself, truly inspired) and a great relief. Finally, he could enjoy mortal levels of hydration without a latent fear of internal combustion or the mild nuisance of intoxication; there was no way in hell heaven that anything that sugary could be considered Holy.
It was a good thing, he thought to himself sometimes, that he had found something he not only tolerated but somewhat enjoyed consuming. Sharing a table with Aziraphale at a local eatery after a hard day's tempting (or obstinate guidance, in the angel's case), was far more satisfactory when he had something non-alcoholic to wet his mouth with. Previously, he had settled for watching, far too closely, how much Aziraphale enjoyed every single bite he ate. The angel had a charming habit of smacking his lips with delight, regardless of the food's freshness or palatability. It was far, far too endearing, and no demon should be tempted with such a brazen display of perfect corruptibility. No, the likes of Coke and Vimto had been a welcome distraction.
Leisurely, Crowley sipped at his Orangina, his chair tilted jauntily back on two legs. The smell of smoke and burnt-out filament filled the air as behind him a chair leg shattered a lighting fixture.
“Oughtn't we stop them?”
Aziraphale's eyes swished back and forth, following the movement of the glass-encrusted chair as its bearer brandished it like a club. Crowley shrugged, distracted by the still unfamiliar feeling of edibles sliding down the inside of his body.
“I don't see why. Let 'em get it out of their systems. They'll be fine.”
Half of a broken bottle bounced off the table next to them. Aziraphale cut a neat slice from his barm, his attention still divided between his several (regrettably empty) plates of food and the evolving melee surrounding them.
“I really rather wish that you hadn't done this, Crowley.”
“Sorry,” said Crowley, with an impish expression that did not make him look very sorry at all.
With a long-suffering sigh, Aziraphale pushed his plate away. The meal wasn't bad, per se, it was just rather difficult to properly appreciate while a full-blown bar fight was happening in the background.
“You owe me a free blessing.”
The demon could not keep the smirk from his face. It was a miracle that he kept himself from bursting into laughter.
“Ok. Promise.”
A butter knife flew past his vision, miraculously missing his nose. Aziraphale, a connoisseur of many things, allowed himself a smile. “You've done rather well, though. What was it exactly that you said?”
Crowley's grin widened. “City are better than United.”
The angel looked around the sea of United t-shirts. “Ah,” he said.
To his great credit, Aziraphale continued trying to enjoy his meal, moving on from the truly delectable pie barm to make a start on the sloe gin and wild boar sausage roll, but even though patience was a Heavenly virtue, Aziraphale's was far from unlimited. After a while, even the most pious would be unable to cope with eating while bits of crockery and wall paintings were thrown back and forth and any conversation was drowned out by the sounds of furious screaming.
At last, at the end of his tether, Aziraphale pushed his plate away and stretched his back, announcing, “I think I'm done.”
“Finally.”
“Do you have anywhere to be?”
“Hm.” Crowley swigged back the last of his orangeade and set the glass down decisively. “Not really. I'm done on temptations for the week, I reckon. You?”
“Well...” The knife and fork were set together meticulously on the half-emptied plate. “I was thinking of going for a walk on the moor before heading back down to London. Would you care to join me?”
Perking up while trying to disguise his enthusiasm, Crowley nonchalantly tilted his head. “Oh? Yeah, I guess so.”
Aziraphale smiled. “All right, you get ready to leave and I'll go and pay.”
When they had entered the pub, the bar had been managed by a burly youth who looked barely past his school-age years, not much older than Adam, but when Crowley's fight had started he had leapt in to the fray as eagerly as any hooligan. Now a middle-aged woman watched the taps, her amiable customer service punctuated by sporadic attempts at controlling the evolving melee.
“Wot'll do for you, love?” She asked, barely stopping her not-quite-here-not-quite-there Northern brogue to draw a breath before launching in to reprimand a particularly forward brawler who was busy putting his compatriot's head through the quiz machine, “Oi Norris getcher fackin hands off 'im or I'll cave yer 'ead in! If you're eating, m'duck, specials are on t' board and it's two courses for a tenner or a kiddy meal for eight.”
“Ah, no thank you,” Aziraphale smiled pleasantly and placed a note upon the counter. “We've already partaken of your fine cuisine. Just a glass of tonic water and then we shall settle our tab, if you please.”
“Oh,” she gave the sort of kindly, knowing smile usually reserved for foreigners and started speaking just a little bit slower. “You ain't local, are you, love? You from London?”
“Yes, in a way.”
“Here sightseein'?”
“Er –” Aziraphale glanced back at Crowley, who was standing by their table and fussily adjusting his neckscarf until it was
just so.
“No, on business.”
“Business, that what you say down in t' town?” Her eyes fell on to Crowley and she gave a sly smile. “Well, no need to be shy, love, you have fun doin' 'Business' over there, eh?”
Aziraphale gave a blank smile, feeling as though there was a layer of conversation he was completely missing but quite unable to interpret what she was saying. It was curious, how humans had managed to harness the power of inference and innuendo... all by themselves they had harnessed the power of words and refined it into a truly impressive weapon.
He was distracted by Crowley sidling up next to him, his scarf tied unevenly and flung casually back over his shoulder at the type of jaunty angle which screamed 'effortless chic.' “Ready?” asked the demon, obvlious to the barmaid's raised eyebrows.
As the woman drew up Aziraphale's receipt, alternating between friendly warmth to the eager angel and screeching threats at her brawling clientele, Crowley was sure he had seen her – or perhaps his doppelgänger – before. Perhaps she was one of the minor demons of duplicity who dwelt in the shallow Circles?
“Crowley.” He felt a small tug on his sleeve. “Coming?”
“Mm.”
Letting Aziraphale lead the way, Crowley followed the angel out of the pub on to the endless rolling plains of the moor. A Stella glass smashed against the door above Aziraphale's head as they left; a deft hand movement as the door shut behind them was all it took for even the most violent of the rioters to guiltily start pondering their life choices and consider donating to the local church restoration fund.
It was already early evening; the wind was picking up, dragging a heavy blanket of dark clouds across the sky. Despite being the middle of summer, there was a definite chill in the air, and it would rain before too long.
“What a grim, desolate place.” He adjusted his coat and looked out across the scrubby patches of heather.
“Mm.” Crowley quirked an eyebrow behind his sunglasses. “Would've been a perfect venue for the end of the world, wouldn't it? Much more fitting than that Tadley place.”
“Tadfield.”
“Yes, Tadfield. That's what I said.”
Stifling a smile behind his sleeve, Aziraphale inclined his head and together they set out across the mist-swept moor.
Sodden with earlier rain and with the midsummer fog still stubbornly lingering, the ground was soft beneath their feet but, no matter how many mud puddles they splashed through, their shoes remained stubbornly pristine. Gradually, the sloping hills gave lazy way to the flatter bogs, and the heather thinned out into long cottongrasses, interspersed with scant patches of cowslip. A patch of blackened, soot-scarred brush, the tangles of charred sticks grasping upwards like skeletal fingers, marked the boundaries of a late spring bushfire. Despite weeks having past since the blaze died out, the windswept ash hadn't fully dispersed, and there was still a faint smell of smoke in the air.
Each step sent tiny clouds of dust floating upwards. It reminded Crowley of the shallow Circles' barren horizons, or perhaps even Purgatory's vast nothingness.
The lonely pub was, by now, a speck on the horizon, catching the last golden rays that the sun was valiantly trying to push through before the clouds swallowed it up.
“Hey,” Crowley stopped without warning, and Aziraphale almost tripped over as he tried to pause mid-step. “Happy anniversary.”
It was, thought the demon to himself, worth absolutely every ill he had ever suffered, just seeing that bright red blush spread across the angel's pale cheeks.
“What?”
“It's a year ago today that it all happened, angel. Since the Not-Quite-End Of The World. The Un-Mageddon. The Antipocalypse. Since we were big damn heroes.”
“The Un-Mageddon?” Aziraphale's raised eyebrow quirked with amusement. “The Antipocalypse?”
“When we saved the world!”
“Ah yes.” Aziraphale seemed to remember it rather differently – his recollection had far less heroism and far more happenstance – but Crowley was always so excited at any chance to be perceived as 'cool,' let alone 'heroic,' and the angel hardly had the heart to shoot him down. “I remember.” A sudden bright smile light his face. “Fitting we should be here today, then!”
“Hm? Why's that?”
“Why, we can have a me-moor-ial.”
There was a pause.
“Angel,” said Crowley very seriously as Aziraphale beamed at him, “I know I started the damn puns, but I have seen the error of my ways and if you ever say that again I'll discorporate you myself.”
“Oh, you.” Slowly, Aziraphale's chuckles died away, the last one lost to the wind as the light blue gaze lit upon the stark, endless peatlands. He sighed wistfully. “Already a year, eh? Nothing has changed, of course.” A snide sideways glance was thrown towards Crowley's black-clad body. “Except your fashion sense. Again. What is it you call those?”
“Skinny jeans.”
“Well... at least they're better than those awful bell-bottoms you used to have.”
“Hey! You said you liked my flares!”
“Well,” Aziraphale gestured helplessly, “you did ask, and I didn't want to hurt your feelings!”
Crowley brought his face in close to Aziraphale's and smirked. “So it was a lie? Did you lie to me, holy boy?” His elbow dug lightly into Aziraphale's side, just below his ribcage. “Is that allowed?”
“Oh, stop!” muttered Aziraphale, shying away from Crowley's boisterous teasing but with a coy smile on his face nonetheless. “It was only a little white lie, my dear, and it's hardly as though I shall Fall because of a little moral ambiguity.”
As the other celestial being pulled away from him, Crowley straightened up. Aziraphale's comment made him pause. A weak ray of light from the setting sun forced its way through the cloud cover, bathing a nearby patch of scratty heather shrub in a sickly copper light as, looming in the near distance, the oppressive bulks of the low tors rose like harbingers of ill portent surveying the wild landscape beneath them.
Perhaps it was the lonely and diseased feeling of contradiction that rose from the moor, barren despite the abundance of life, but Crowley was put in mind of how close everyone had come to an eternity in the Pit (after all, no matter what Aziraphale said about the Ethereal Army, everyone knew that Hell would have won the war in the end – angels were far too prissy and regimented , which made for a good show of force on parade but could never have defeated a demon fighting dirty.) How close they had come to losing this... mundane perfection. And for what? If that had happened, would the angels have been destroyed? Would they be able to stop the next Apocalypse? The one after?
Six thousand years had gone in the blink of an eye. Would the next six thousand disappear so fast?
The demon silently watched a small adder wind its way through the heather's semi-exposed roots, its diamond markings almost completely invisible against the tangle of wood-stem. Its reptilian determination steeled his own resolve.
“Hey,” he said, looking anywhere except his companion. “What do you call an angel who's Fallen?”
“Oh,” Aziraphale flashed a reproachful look at him, caught partway between the dwindling joy of playful banter, the ease of the question, and wondering whether this was a wily conversational trap he was about to be lured into, tempered with the deep discomfort of someone who has been exposed to something that hits far too close to home. “Must we?”
“Answer me, angel.”
“Well...” Aziraphale pursed his lips with distaste, “they become demons, I suppose.”
Crowley nodded in satisfaction. “And what about a demon who is redeemed?”
There was a long pause. Neither one looked at the other. The air was heavy with anticipation and the weight of a fiend's held breath, oppressive as the heavy clouds hanging low over the bleak expanse of peat-bog and heather.
“We-ell...” Aziraphale's murmured slowly, his voice lowering, “I imagine I would call him 'Crowley,' it seems to be what he goes by these days.”
“Wh–!” Seven levels of hellfire burned beneath Crowley's cheeks, searing his embarrassment into visible crimson beneath his yellow eyes. “You can't say that! For goodn– for Heav– Hell's bells and bottles of blood, angel, that's slander, that is!”
One of Aziraphale's short, familiar mischievous smiles flitted its way across his round face. “Oh dear, have I upset your rhetoric?”
Crowley desperately wanted to wipe that expression off Aziraphale's face with a clever retort, but it was as though the heat from his cheeks had melted away all coherent thought from his mind, and that look the angel was giving him... Ah, when had he started allowing himself to be tempted by an angel? Had it really been all those thousands of years ago, when a freely-offered canopy of pure white feathers kept the rain from his head?
“What I was getting at,” he grumbled petulantly, “was. Look. What happens to demons who fall in love, do you think?”
“That... is that a trick question?” Aziraphale tilted his head to the side, painfully oblivious to Crowley's desperately raised eyebrows. “I don't think demons can fall in love, can they?”
“Angel, I'm serious.” And, silently, he screamed take the Hellforsaken hint!
“But... Well, love, it... it's one of those sanctified purities, isn't it? I don't think love can be sinful - it can't be sinful, right?”
“We-eell,” and, despite himself, Crowley grinned, winking behind his sunglasses, “in some cases it's nothing but sinful, like when a –”
“Crowley!” moaned the angel, “that was a rhetorical question; it did not need your input!”
Finally, Crowley had revenge for earlier; the angel was blushing as hard as Crowley ever had, his red cheeks hidden in both hands. The demon did not have time to appreciate the moment, however – for better or for worse, he was determined to see this through.
“Are you saying that demons can't feel pure love? Do you think we can feel lust instead then?” He arched an eyebrow slyly. “Do angels feel lust?”
As the heat slowly receded from his poor cheeks, Aziraphale peeked awkwardly through his fingers and shook his head. If he gave it some thought, he once again became aware of the warm, rich scent of love surrounding him. It was strong, almost tangible enough to taste, but he had become so used to its latent presence that it had receded almost into background noise unless he really focussed. Aziraphale had come to associate it with the Bentley; he'd thought he was feeling Crowley's feelings for the old car, but...
But there was no car here, and the emotion was still there, strong and clear. Aziraphale had just never cared to pay it any mind before.
“Oh,” he whispered. Have fun doing Business, the woman in the pub had said, and now he had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what she had meant. “Oh dear.”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Absolutely,” Aziraphale sighed. “But not, I would hope, about this. Oh dear, oh dear... you've made a tempter of me, haven't you? You're supposed to be the one who corrupts people, Crowley!”
“I thought you were supposed to corrupt demons? Don't your lot call it repenting?”
The unseasonably cool wind picked up, whistling harshly through the bracken scrubs. A flicker of some unreadable emotion distorting his face, Aziraphale stepped towards Crowley, who did not move away.
“I think,” mumbled the angel, “I would like to kiss you.”
Crowley's heart soared. “Go ahead.”
“Don't tempt me...”
The half-hearted attempt at an embarrassed joke eased the nerves of both. Relieved that Aziraphale had not fled immediately, Crowley quickly returned to his familiar and comforting confidence, posturing like a displaying peacock as the angel, apparently taking leave of his reservations, stepped forward again into a semi-embrace.
“But angel,” he muttered into soft tufts of platinum hair. “It's my job.”
Behind its cover of cloud, the sun slowly dipped beneath the horizon, leaving nothing on the moor but the dim glow of dusk and a threat of rain that, for the first time in millennia, a certain hellspawn was far too distracted to mind.