Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Angels and demons don’t really need to wear perfume, or cologne, or anything of the sort^[1]. They just smell like whatever they happen to want, consciously or subconsciously, to smell like at the time; consider it a low-grade miracle constantly running in the background, the celestial equivalent of the human autonomic nervous system. Most demons are fairly unimaginative when it comes to choosing smells – brimstone and smoke and the occasional can’t-tell-if-it’s-alluring-or-disgusting musk feature heavily in the demonic fragrance repertoire. Angels are frankly not much better, tending to favor rather generic scents that evoke holiness, such as frankincense or Easter lilies^[2]. Aziraphale was a notable exception. Crowley knew exactly what he smelled like - a combination of bergamot, old books, cedar, and just a hint of incense. The last of these had always made Crowley want to sneeze.

***

Crowley had run into Aziraphale at the Royal Opera House sometime in the late 1940s, when the war had ended and the world had gone back to a more tolerable and less combustible state of commonplace temptations and everyday miracles, and the angel had been wearing a single pale gardenia in his buttonhole. Even though they had an entire box to themselves, Aziraphale, saying he did not want to be overheard discussing their arrangement and that the two seats at the rear of the box were obviously the most hidden from view, sat so close that his senses were filled with the fragrance of that single bloom. Afterward, Crowley could not remember a single thing about the opera they had seen or what temptation he had been supposed to perform, but could replay over and over in his head in perfect detail the way Aziraphale had leaned in to whisper softly, his warm breath brushing against Crowley’s cheek while the smell of gardenias surrounded them.

For some years thereafter, it seemed that Aziraphale was never without a gardenia on his lapel; Crowley figured that it was probably some Victorian fashion that the angel was, as usual, sixty years too late in adopting. He was well aware that the gardenia had a very specific meaning, symbolizing secret love, in the language of flowers - admittedly, he’d slept through much of the 19th century when the craze for floriography was at its peak, but then again he wasn’t born yesterday, and there was also all that time they’d spent hanging around with Will Shakespeare, who was frankly obsessed with flower symbolism - but since Aziraphale hadn’t ever demonstrated anything more than a reluctant friendship, he convinced himself that it was just wishful thinking born of sixty millennia of repressing his impossible love for his sometime adversary, sometime best friend. For all he knew, the sentiment could be real but directed at someone else entirely; after all, he’d until quite recently been asleep, and if Aziraphale had developed secret romantic feelings for someone, he didn’t really want to know. Gardenias could also symbolize purity, which might very well be a jab at his Fallen nature, although that kind of subtle cruelty did not seem like Aziraphale at all.

He remembered how, more than a hundred years ago, in a rare moment of hope, he’d been unable to stop himself from including a single white gardenia in the bouquet that he’d brought to the opening of Aziraphale’s bookshop. The bouquet that the angel had never seen, Crowley having been thwarted by the presence of Gabriel and Sandalphon in the shop; in fact, he’d been so distracted by the combination of the unexpected angels and the self-doubt that he’d been trying to quash all morning, that he’d forgotten himself and momentarily dropped the walls he’d been keeping around his love for many millennia. Aziraphale, like all angels, could sense love, but Crowley, like all demons, was a master of deception; he had thus spent the long years between Eden and the Flood building walls, smooth and carefully featureless, around his heart. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, ever let him know, and so he had fled in panic that day, tossing the bouquet into the Thames in despair.

He’d never really understood why that Proust fellow had gone so starry eyed about eating a pastry of all things^[3], but apparently all he needed was one whiff of a gardenia and he was right back in that bookshop, half drunk and accidentally brushing fingers with Aziraphale as he passed him a bottle of wine, or standing just a little closer to the angel than he needed to be and speaking in low tones to him on the bridge in Saint James Park. Less pleasantly, it also brought back a particular memory from 1962. The fragrance of gardenia had lingered in the Bentley for days, after Aziraphale had said, “you go too fast for me, Crowley,” and walked out of sight. He’d gone home, ranted and threatened his way through a fern, several cacti, a rubber tree, and two rhododendrons, before finding himself in front of the gardenia plant that he’d acquired in a moment of optimism some years earlier. The fragrance, rather than fueling his rage, somehow made it evaporate. He found himself talking to the plant, with a few admonitions to be sure, but mostly he just rambled at it about Aziraphale, and perversely he felt better. The scent continued to tweak at the newly raw and broken part of him that replayed over and over again Aziraphale’s small, sad smile right before he turned away, but somehow it was also comforting and evocative and reminded him of bookshops and Victorian waistcoats and white blond hair. It was the barest feather brush of Aziraphale’s wing against his back as he lifted it to shield Crowley from the first drops of rain either of them had ever seen. It was the look in his eyes when Crowley handed up the satchel of books, miraculously pristine and unharmed. It was all the messy and heartbreaking and wonderful moments in their six thousand years of knowing each other.

He moved the plant into his bedroom, with much blustering about committing it to “solitary confinement”. He told himself it was because he didn’t want the other plants getting any ideas, but really it was because he wanted to keep talking to it. It was cathartic to finally confess out loud his feelings for Aziraphale, even if it was only to a plant that couldn’t really talk back^[4]. Besides, he found the fragrance soothing, for much the same reason as he occasionally made Earl Grey tea not because he particularly wanted to drink it but because he liked the way it smelled. Sometimes he would fall asleep while monologuing at the plant, and awaken surrounded by the scent of gardenias, still half-dreaming of Aziraphale’s breath soft upon his cheek.

He didn’t realize that he’d subconsciously been manifesting the smell of gardenias on his own person for quite some time. It might have been years, even. It only came to light when he’d been called back down to Hell for some meeting or other and Hastur had mocked him for smelling “like a bloody flowery angel” and he’d had to hastily come up with an excuse that he’d been busy seducing innocent young ladies just prior to the meeting. After that, he’d taken pains to change his smell, playing up the woodsmoke and pepper notes, any time he’d been down in hell, but he didn’t see any reason to do so while on Earth. It wasn’t like Aziraphale was even speaking to him.

When he finally saw Aziraphale again, ten years later, the angel no longer wore anything on his lapel, and did not mention the gardenia smell, and so it stayed.

^[1]Although it goes without saying that body spray is a demonic invention. ^{[return to text ]}

^[2]Sandalphon smells like sandalwood. He’s not as clever as he thinks he is. ^{[return to text]}

^[3]Aziraphale, on the other hand, understood this sentiment perfectly. ^{[return to text]}

^[4]Over the years, however, that particular plant got very good at conveying exasperated sighs by rustling its leaves. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

London, 1800.

Gabriel and Sandalphon had unexpectedly appeared at the bookshop, well overstaying their welcome^[1]. Crowley’s face had appeared briefly at the window while Gabriel was pontificating about something or the other and Sandalphon was glowering behind him, but it appeared that the demon had for once chosen discretion over discord and had not entered the shop. He pulled open the door and stepped outside to clear his head – the scents of frankincense and sandalwood that the two angels had brought with them were rather overpowering and not at all subtle. Crowley was no longer anywhere in sight, but on his doorstep he caught the faint scent of flowers, rose and jasmine and a tiny trace of gardenia. There was a strong sense of romantic love too, which was curious as he walked in and out of the bookshop daily and had not heretofore noticed it. That meant that someone exuding a great deal of love must have passed by recently. This was remarkable, as he had found that most human love was fleeting enough that it didn’t leave much trace after the person had gone, unless they spent long enough in a single place that it began to soak into the walls or the soil. He smiled to himself, thinking that whomever it was that had walked by must have been very deeply and very completely in love. He had really only felt a love like that once before, at the beginning of it all, in Eden. It had been strange, that he had felt it hit him suddenly, like a flowerbud bursting into full bloom, as he and Crowley, standing side by side, watched Adam and Eve leave the garden. He imagined it must have been some sympathetic echo of the place, that they must have been so very much in love that the Garden itself remembered. Being as they were the first humans, he didn't really have anything to compare it to after all. Perhaps he was romanticizing, but it seemed to him that all the other human love he’d sensed since then could only aspire to that first, and greatest, love.

*** 

Aziraphale couldn’t stop thinking about the way their hands had brushed, momentarily, as the dust from the bombed church drifted down around them. A feather touch of fingertips on knuckles. It was a tiny thing even among the events of that particular night, not to mention the events of six thousand years, but it had still felt like a beginning, something vast opening up in the quiet darkness.

London in the post-war years, despite the arduous and often painful task of rebuilding the devastated city, was nevertheless suffused by a relieved and buoyant optimism in which all things seemed possible^[2]. Aziraphale himself was not immune to such hope, and so he began wearing a single gardenia on his lapel. A gardenia to symbolize secret love, a bald-faced confession to someone who understood the language. It had felt almost unbearably bold to him, as had his choice to sit in the seat directly next to Crowley’s in their large and empty box at the opera, but after several encounters with Crowley with naught more response than a glib “the flower suits you, angel,” he’d had to conclude that either Crowley did not understand floriography or understood perfectly and did not care to reciprocate. In any case, he could detect love. He knew Crowley felt at least some fondness for the world, for his plants, even for the ducks in Saint James Park, but where he himself was concerned all he’d ever sensed was a curious, smooth, inorganic blankness.

He’d given up on the gardenias for good after 1962, after he’d handed Crowley a thermos of liquid destruction and had had to get out of the car before he burst into tears. The thought that he might have done something terribly wrong in giving Crowley what could very possibly be the cause of his permanent undoing was unbearable. In the long, lonely years that followed, the smell of gardenias only served to remind him of how he had blurted out something he immediately regretted about going too fast, turned his back on Crowley, and walked away.

Crowley, infuriatingly, seemed to always smell of gardenias when they’d finally made contact again after a decade and tentatively resumed their friendship, both taking care not to speak of holy water or of the incident in the car. To be sure, his original scent of cedar, woodsmoke, pepper, and a hint of apple of all things, was still there – Aziraphale would have recognized it from across a crowded room – but there was also a floral note mixed in there now. He’d spent enough time wearing gardenias that he recognized the smell immediately. He resolved, however, not to mention it to Crowley, primarily because thinking about it still made the barely repaired (but not by any means healed) wounds from 1962 sting.

And then Nanny Ashtoreth came along; she wore a tasteful, understated, feminine but not too girlish, fragrance in which gardenias were the top note. Crowley had apparently decided that Nanny needed to have a signature perfume, one that, he explained, smelled comforting. The fragrance was, of course, miracled and irreproducible, which resulted in a rather disgruntled Mrs. Dowling, who couldn’t understand why Nanny wouldn’t disclose the name of her quite pleasant perfume, and necessitated a small miracle to make her conveniently forget about it. Aziraphale could work no such miracles on himself.

Brother Francis was, for all his soft words and kind encouragements, a middling gardener at best, but the gardenia shrubs along the front walkway of the Dowlings’ house were always lush, verdant, and seemed to be constantly in bloom, which was no small feat in rainy England. This display of horticultural prowess went a long way toward convincing his employers that he was, in fact, a competent gardener, even though the rose bushes in the back yard were frankly an overgrown disaster and there were far more snails and slugs in the garden than there really should be. And if anyone noticed that Nanny seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time stalking up and down the front walkway muttering sternly under her breath, well, that Warlock sure was a handful so who could blame her for escaping momentarily to enjoy some lovely, fragrant blossoms and let off some steam while she was at it?

When they’d left the Dowlings’, Crowley had stopped manifesting Nanny’s perfume, and his original underlying scents came to the forefront again. The gardenia smell was still there, and although it still reminded him of his own unrequited and impossible love, Aziraphale now found it oddly comforting. He even thought he could detect a faint hint of bergamot that reminded him of home, of shared pots of Earl Grey in the back room of his bookshop. He did not have time to ruminate on what that might mean, however, as they were then very rapidly and unceremoniously thrown headlong into the flurry that inevitably precedes the End of Days.

*** 

They sat beside each other on the bus from Tadfield to London. They were on their own side now, after all; his bookshop had burnt down, and tomorrow was the first day of a new world and possibly the last day they’d be there to enjoy it. Aziraphale was reminded suddenly of sitting next to Crowley at the opera in 1946, using the need for discretion as an excuse to breathe the same air, to feel his breath across his cheek. Now, in the aftermath of the averted apocalypse, he swung himself into the seat next to Crowley, quickly, before he could second-guess himself. He exhaled and shifted closer, so that their sides were pressed against each other each time the bus turned a corner a little too fast. He inhaled the comforting scent of gardenia and cedar and closed his eyes; something brushed against the edges of his angelic senses, a familiar flicker of something long locked behind impenetrable walls. He’d last felt it when he’d been an incorporeal spirit and he’d found Crowley drunk and despairing in a bar mere hours before the world was supposed to end; it turned out that when one temporarily didn’t have a body with human senses, one’s angelic senses were somewhat heightened[3]. He turned his palm upwards and felt Crowley’s hand settle into his, the fingers intertwining and holding fast.

^[1]This occurred approximately three minutes after they entered. ^{[return to text ]}

^[2]It was a good time for miracles. ^{[return to text]}

^[3]Also, self-control, even for a demon, is very hard to keep up when one is well into one’s second bottle of 80-proof Scotch. Just ask anyone who’s ever been extremely drunk. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Crowley awoke in his own bed, surrounded by the scent of gardenias. Light streamed through the high windows, sunrise softening the austere walls and high ceilings of the room and rendering it almost cathedral-like. The gardenia plant, still the only plant he’d ever brought into his bedroom, rustled its shiny, green, spotless leaves at him; it sounded almost satisfied or perhaps even smug. He felt pleasantly, happily warm. Something soft brushed against his face. Aziraphale, asleep a hairsbreadth away from him, his curls the barest hint of gold against the white pillow, his breath ghosting across Crowley’s face, his lips. He could smell Aziraphale on his own skin: gardenias, bergamot, cedar, pepper, a ghost of apple and old books.

He remembered the feel of Aziraphale’s hand in his as they sat side by side on the bus, as it slowly made its way into London. It would have been only a small miracle, hardly an effort, even for a tired demon, to have made it go faster, but whatever was happening between them had felt so fragile, so new, that he'd wanted to prolong it for as long as he could. Agnes’ last prophecy loomed over them, and it was something they’d have to unravel and quickly, but for now this was enough, the feeling of Aziraphale’s hand in his, solid and real and warm. They hadn’t spoken, the cool, quiet darkness a balm after the chaos of the day. But eventually the bus had pulled up in front of his flat, and Aziraphale had stood, still clinging to his hand, and pulled him along with him up the front steps. They stood there, in the halo of a streetlamp, and Aziraphale had finally let go of his hand. He had felt oddly bereft then, as if an essential part of him had suddenly been pulled away, but only momentarily. Aziraphale’s hand caressed his cheek, cupped his chin, and pulled him toward himself. For a moment there was a tiny sliver of space between their lips, in which Aziraphale murmured, “oh my darling, my dearest, my love” and then they were kissing, lips brushing together softly at first and then urgently.

Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered open. His smile was soft, and sleepy, and so unguarded that it made Crowley’s heart stutter. He laid his head on Crowley’s chest, directly over his heart. Sometime during the night, all the walls Crowley had built around his love had come crashing down with a great finality, and the room was awash in love, angelic and demonic, uncontained and uncontainable, beating like great wings. It was a marvel that walls could ever have been built to contain such love. Aziraphale would tell him later that it was like the sun to the flickering candle of human love, that it was like seeing in three or even four dimensions when before you had only known two, that he didn’t know how he could ever have confused the two, even in rare, brief, unintended flashes over six thousand years. Even Crowley could feel it, and he was a demon. It shone like a flaming sword. He trailed his fingers idly down his angel’s bare back, tracing complex, wiggly swirls across his impossibly soft skin. Aziraphale hummed in pleasure, his face pressed into Crowley’s chest, and said fondly, “I love the way you smell. Gardenia and cedar and bergamot and pepper. And a little like the bookshop, I think, and apples. I’ve always thought that was very clever of you, love.”

Crowley felt a sudden lightness, a silver-bright flash of absolute certainty, and laughed aloud.

“I know what the prophecy means, angel,” he said, “Choose your faces wisely. We wear each other’s faces. It’ll be a piece of cake. We already smell like each other, after all. We’ll fool them all.”

***

A nightingale sang in Berkeley square, champagne glasses clinked, and all the gardenia bushes in London suddenly burst into glorious, riotous bloom.