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“You’re making an AWFUL mistake by letting me do this,” Crowley says as he walks into the bookshop, arms full of plants.
“Nonsense, my dear. Just find room for them wherever, and don’t forget you can put some upstairs as well.”
After Armagedidn’t, Crowley did not want to be in his flat anymore. His excuse was, of course, that he killed Ligur there. At least, that was what he said when Aziraphale confronted him after Crowley fell asleep on the couch. Again. The whole truth was that the bookshop always felt more like home than his flat ever did.
Crowley strategically placed his plants around the bookshop – the larger ones went to the flat upstairs, while the smaller ones dotted the tables on the ground floor, sharing the space with Aziraphale’s books, but placed so they would be out of Aziraphale’s way.
They would be roommates is all. Nothing wrong with that. All the humans did it nowadays – moving in with friends to help cover costs or so that they don’t live alone. He even heard that some people in American Universities would share a bedroom with a complete stranger. This was not the case for Crowley, though. He has known Aziraphale since the Beginning, so they were quite the opposite of strangers. The only person who might know them more than they know each other is God herself. They made sure to get Crowley a separate bed though, even if Aziraphale hardly ever uses his.
No harm could be done from them moving in together. Heaven and Hell no longer cared about their earthly agents; they might even be scared of them, actually. So what if Crowley’s pined for Aziraphale for millennia? He would hide it like he always has.
Nothing changed much after Crowley moved in. Due to raising the wrong boy together for the last eleven years, they had grown quite used to the other being around. Crowley had always spent the occasional drinking session at the shop before everything happened anyway, so to them, it was like a permanent visit from Crowley.
Aziraphale found Crowley was quite good at helping to scare off the customers too. With Crowley’s knack for sleeping, he found it easy to nap, reverting to his snake form and slithering into the nooks and crannies of the bookshelves, waking up to the screams of customers who found him dozing.
“Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale calls out into the shop, around a month after Crowley moved in. “Where are you?”
Crowley opens one of his slitted-yellow eyes and lifts his head off of the coils of his body, flicking his tongue out into the air to see if he can smell where Aziraphale is. The scent of old books and ink is heavy on his tongue, but the familiar scent of cocoa and cinnamon that always surrounds the angel is there too, if not faintly. He uncoils as he slithers his way to the top of the bookshelves, finding it easier to cross the empty tops than the cluttered floor to traverse the shop.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale repeats.
Crowley spots him examining one of the bookshelves, so he slithers over behind the angel and slides across his shoulders.
“Oh! There you are, dear.” Aziraphale smiles even as Crowley continues to wind around him, pulling the rest of his body off of the shelf.
“Isss everything alright?” Crowley says.
“Oh, yes, everything is quite alright. I just closed up is all, and wanted to see if you were up to a dinner at the Ritz?”
“Alwayssss.”
Their usual table is miraculously available when they arrive, so they can wine and dine in their regular spot. Aziraphale eats his way through most of the desserts available, along with his fair share of drinks. It’s nothing out of the ordinary; Crowley is used to sitting around the table as he sips his drinks, watching Aziraphale talk animatedly between bites. It was always nice to have a break from everything, and he's glad that, even though neither of them really have to do anything anymore, Aziraphale still insisted on coming out to dinner at least once a week.
When dinner is over, they retire to the bookshop once again, and Crowley raids their kitchen for liquor as Aziraphale browses his classical music records. The usual chatting resumes once they settle into the furniture and each have a glass in hand; as if nothing had ever interrupted their routine. And in a way, nothing really had. When Adam reset the world, hardly anyone remembered Armageddon had nearly happened in the first place. The human brain yearns for logical explanations, so whenever the opportunity for one to cover up a supernatural event arises, the old memory is replaced, sliding out of mind like – whatever it is water slides off.
The only two discernible changes that happened are Heaven and Hell ignoring the existence of Aziraphale and Crowley, and that the two have now moved in. Nothing has to change, nothing needs to change – but a small part of Crowley wants it to. He makes sure to bury that feeling – the last thing he needs while he’s drunk us to have an emotional, heart-pouring event that could scare Aziraphale away for good.
What Crowley hadn’t realized was just how much Aziraphale had drank at the restaurant. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until there was a lull in their conversation, and he promptly passed out in the chair.
Crowley quickly sobers up, standing and stretching his arms out in front of him as he arches his back. He then walks over to the sleeping angel and tuts, “Had a little too much to drink, huh? You are not going to like yourself when you wake up, let me tell you. Hangovers are not fun.” He gently pulls the glass out of Aziraphale’s hand, resting it on the table. "Let's get you upstairs." He carefully wraps an arm around Aziraphale's legs and snakes his hand between Aziraphale’s shoulders and the chair, lifting him with ease.
The doorways and stairs had never been this wide before, but now, Crowley can comfortably carry Aziraphale up to his bed without worrying about accidentally hitting him with the wall. The covers on the bed spring back on their own accord and Crowley places Aziraphale down in their absence. He looks at Aziraphale and frowns – the angel would hate for his suit to wrinkle because he fell asleep in it. With a snap of his fingers, Aziraphale’s clothes sit neatly folded on a nearby chair, while Aziraphale himself is now wearing a full set of light blue tartan pajamas. Apparently, even though it was Crowley’s doing, the angel can’t help but wear tartan all the time.
Crowley shakes his head and grabs the end of the covers, sliding them over Aziraphale’s sleeping form, up to his chin. A glass of water appears on the nightstand as Crowley reaches over it to turn the lamp off, hesitating. As the room goes dark, he looks at Aziraphale one last time before leaning over and pressing a soft kiss against his cheek. “Goodnight, angel.”
Their drinks and all the empty bottles still littered the bookshop, so Crowley sees to it that everything gets cleaned up and put back just the way it was. He may like to sleep, but just this once, he thinks he’d rather stay up. He doesn’t want anything to happen without either of them awake.
While Crowley is asleep, Aziraphale would read. It’s really all he seems to do – read, eat, and collect old books that he won’t let anyone buy. Crowley had never really found a hobby though. His hobby was spreading low levels of evil across the city. He still occasionally does but opts for more of a chaotic event than an evil one. Now, however, stuck in the bookshop as Aziraphale sleeps upstairs, he’s faced with nothing to do. He could pull out his phone and download some kind of game, but he has resisted the urge to give in to his creation for this long, and he was determined not to let this one get him as well. There were his social media accounts, but there’s only so much scrolling you can do before it gets boring.
He sprawls across the couch, phone in hands, determined to think of something before he grows bored of twitter. Post after post goes by, and he refuses to like any of them. He likes making people mad when they looked at the statistics on a tweet, and it has people who viewed but didn’t interact with the post. He had inadvertently helped to create that one, too, if his memory is correct. He blinks a couple of times as his eyes grow tired of looking at the screen. That was the thing about snake eyes; they might be attached to a human body, but they don’t like to function normally. He lets his phone fall to his chest as he leans his head back. He blinks a few more times before deciding to just close them altogether. A few minutes couldn't hurt, right?
The next thing he knows, something is dragging itself across his body. He groans and shifts slightly, and the feeling stops. Once he’s stopped moving, the feeling starts again, until it reaches his chin.
“I was close to waking you there,” Aziraphale says. Crowley mentally kicks himself for falling asleep. Before he can move again to show Aziraphale that he’s awake, the angel says, “I do think I’ll have to thank you for last night once you do wake.”
Crowley decides to pretend he’s still sleeping. He’d rather not mess up Aziraphale’s seemingly good mood by letting him know that he woke Crowley. There’s a creaking noise from across the couch, and Crowley now knows Aziraphale sat down in his usual chair.
“I guess I should pay more attention to my drinking, huh?” he chuckles to himself. “Silly old me, falling asleep on you. Now I understand why you’re always so groggy when you wake. I’m glad I could miracle away the hangover.” There’s a pause before he continues, “You really didn’t have to move me to the bed though, dear. It makes me feel bad for just draping this blanket over you. I’ll never forget the time I tried to move you upstairs, though.”
Crowley is suddenly paying very close attention to his every word. He doesn’t remember ever being moved, or at least that there was an attempt to move him.
“You had done something similar. Drinking too much, I mean. You just looked awfully uncomfortable on that couch. When I moved your legs to pick you up was when you woke, startled. For as much as you like to sleep, it’s very easy to wake you up. I had to cover myself and say I had dropped something to save me from the embarrassment.”
It’s silent for a while after that, and Crowley hears the telltale sign of a book opening. In the sudden silence interspersed with the occasional page turn, Crowley almost falls asleep again.
“You know, I think I had a dream last night,” Aziraphale says suddenly, and Crowley’s suddenly extremely alert. “At least, I think it was a dream. Though I wish it were true.” The chair creaks again before Aziraphale’s warmth is right next to Crowley. Soft lips brush the coiled snake mark in front of Crowley’s ear. “Sleep well, my dear.”
Aziraphale walks away, which Crowley can tell from the loss of his warmth. It doesn’t take long to be replaced, however, as Crowley can feel his cheeks growing hot with a mixture of embarrassment and love. The sudden flood of emotions becomes too much for him, so before he knows it, he’s accidentally turned into a snake and tangled himself up in the blanket.
He thrashes around, trying to get out, but the astonished “Crowley?” that leaves Aziraphale’s lips causes him to freeze.
Sticking his head out of the blanket knot, he tries for a casual, “Morning, angel.” It doesn’t go very well.
Aziraphale hastily sets his freshly made cocoa down on the table before rushing to Crowley’s aid, carefully separating blanket from snake. “How the hell did you change forms while asleep?”
Crowley doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t want to tell Aziraphale the truth at the moment. But, as his tail is still stuck in the blanket Aziraphale is holding, and he can’t escape his inquiring glances, he mumbles, “I wassn’t.”
Aziraphale freezes. “Do you mean…”
Without a proper way to answer Aziraphale’s question, he reaches over with his head in a fit of adrenaline and bumps his snout on Aziraphale’s cheek. “It wassn’t a dream.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says with a small smile, gently rubbing the spot Crowley had just touched him. He starts to laugh. “I guess we’ve both been pretty silly then, haven’t we?”
“Crowley tries to pull the rest of himself free. “Pretty ssssilly sssseemss like an undersstatement.”
Aziraphale gently pulls the blanket off of Crowley and smiles at him as he starts to wrap himself around Aziraphale. He leaves most of his coil in the angel's lap, so that once he turns back to a human, his arms are around Aziraphale’s neck and is sitting firmly in Aziraphale’s lap. “Kiss me,” he says.
Aziraphale leans in and obliges, connecting their lips as they both sigh with relief. If Crowley’s plants stretch their leaves out as far as they can to keep the kiss private from prying eyes, they’d deny ever doing such a thing. But, for as long as they’ve spent watching the pair pine for each other, they deserve a moment alone.