Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Crowley has only been at work for five minutes, but he can already tell that today is going to be terrible.

First he’d woken up late and hungover, having been too drunk to remember to set his alarm the previous night. To make matters worse, his quick breakfast of toast had turned into a long breakfast of charcoal as he spent several minutes trying to quiet his screaming smoke alarm. Then halfway through watering all his plants he’d found one that was withering, and wasted precious time feeding each leaf through his garbage disposal as an example to the others. And that was before he’d spent more than an hour in stop-and-go traffic.

There were no parking spaces left when he’d arrived at the office (executive spaces aside, but you’d have to be suicidal to take Beelzebub’s), meaning Crowley had had to pay for parking across the street. Just like he’d had to pay for parking for the last week and a half. By the time he made his way through the front door, he could barely muster a polite greeting for Ms. Tracy, the secretary, faithfully sorting junk mail into the office mailboxes.

Crowley imagines that once upon a time, Brimstone Holdings ZLC—the world’s first Zero Liability Corporation—had probably been a decent place to work. No less meaningless or soul-sucking than any other white-collar tech-finance job, but no more meaningless or soul-sucking either. And then six years ago, right before Crowley was hired, the California office sent out a company-wide memo declaring that the days of cubicles were over, and everything was now going to be open concept. That moment, that memo, is when everything well and truly went to Hell^[1].

There are no cubicles in an open concept floor plan. There are certainly no corner offices, and there aren’t really any desks either. The use of the one remaining conference room is highly discouraged, reserved only for important staff meetings or managerial lunches. Instead of any of the traditional office trappings there are acres of oversized tables and mismatched ergonomic chairs. Perpetually underfoot is a grapevine tangle of charging cords attempting the rectify the office’s eighties-era outlet placement. In a better world, Crowley thinks through the haze of his hangover, he might’ve tripped on that mess of cords and snapped his neck before he had to check a single Slack notification. Instead he’d made it through the office to one of the few remaining open seats, where he now sits, squinting at the bright red dot telling him that he has at minimum, thirty emails to read before he can get any actual work done. A mysterious hand slides a paper cup across the table towards him.

“Rough morning?” says the voice attached to the hand. Crowley squints against the fluorescent lights, trying to piece together the voice and the hand and the shadowy shapes they’re emanating from. “Thought this might help. I finally got the kettle to work without spitting boiling water at me. I know it doesn’t look great, but I think it tastes okay.”

The shapes resolve themselves into one Newt Pulsifer. Crowley barely suppresses the urge to smash his face into his keyboard.

Newt has not been here as long as Crowley. In fact, exempting the Interns, he’s Brimstone’s newest hire—a gangly scarecrow stuffed with professional aspirations and near-lethal levels of cortisol. He is also a grim omen portending exactly how terrible the coffee in front of Crowley is going to taste.

“Uh. No, no, I’m okay, thank you very much actually. Perhaps one of the Interns would…?” Crowley flaps a hand towards a table of college students shoved into the far corner of the office.

The Interns shouldn’t really be sitting together. They are, nominally, in different departments—Wensleydale is supposed to be working in finance under Dagon, while Brian is technically a mechanical engineering major and should probably be at a different company altogether. On paper, Crowley, Adam, and Pepper are all coworkers, focused on the internal Brimstone server network which holds vast sums of other people’s money in lots of different legally fascinating places. Of course, in reality the Interns stick together like gazelles at the watering hole, partly for safety in numbers and partly to ensure that they get enough table space. They are, as per usual, parked on the opposite side of the room from Hastur and Ligur, each of whom are taking up one whole conference table by themselves.

“Oh don’t worry I already offered,” explains Newt with an uncalled-for degree of earnestness, “but Wensleydale is allergic to cayenne pepper.” Crowley feels that his hangover is, somehow, getting worse. He tries to make the emails in front of him resolve into something legible, but blinking rapidly just gives him a migraine.

“Why did you put cayenne pepper in your coffee.”

“My girlfriend said that adding spices to my coffee might help wake me up in the morning since I only drink decaf. The cayenne was just in the spice mix I found in my cabinet.” Oh, so this isn’t just cayenne pepper coffee, this is decaffeinated cayenne pepper coffee.

“Well,” says Crowley, “I don’t drink decaf. Sorry.” The declaration is enough to close that particular line of conversation, although Newt leaves the paper cup by Crowley’s elbow in case he has some sort of midmorning religious conversion and changes his mind. Crowley does his best to ignore the scent of burnt coffee and barbecue spice mix as he continues to dig through his unread emails.

Crowley’s current project is refactoring. Specifically, he’s rewriting the piece of software that moves money from client portfolios to the Brimstone servers which appear to be located in tax-friendly countries (and occasionally between different countries when they get slightly more or less tax-friendly)^[2]. This has been his project for the last six years, because every day he walks into work with a minimum of five new emails explaining how the requirements for the new software have changed. Today’s batch of emails asks him if they can go back to the previous plan of routing transactions through two different servers before money goes back to the client, and also if he can make his comments green instead of blue.

Sandwiched between these emails is one from his supervisor Beelzebub, with the subject line “THURSDAY MEETING. 3 PM. YOU MUST ATTEND.”

“Did you see Beelzebub’s email?” he whispers to Newt. It doesn’t do much of anything to stop the question from echoing across the bare walls of the office, because without cubicles there’s nothing to muffle any sounds. It’s the thought that counts though. He watches out of the corner of his eye as the Interns inch backwards in their chairs to be slightly more within earshot. Newt blinks as though coming out of a deep spreadsheet-induced trance.

“Huh,” he says, at a normal volume like a weirdo. “Do you know what it’s about?”

“No idea.”

“Maybe it’s another teleconference with the California office? I heard Dagon say last week that they were talking about restructuring. Do you think someone’s going to get—”

Newt’s speculations are cut off by the sharp ping of a Slack notification from Crowley’s laptop. It’s a message from Adam—a screenshot of several lines of code, an error message, and “Do you know why this keeps happening?”. Crowley spends a few moments squinting at his screen before replying “colon @ line 616 should b a semicolon”. From across the room he hears Adam’s head thump against the table in frustration. Adam and Pepper should technically be on his refactoring project, but Crowley had reassigned them to database maintenance two weeks into their internships. One person rewriting the same piece of software every day is bad enough. Three people is just unreasonable. Besides, database maintenance can be fun. Crowley would love to be doing database maintenance.

With Newt having once again returned to his spreadsheets, the office lapses into blessed quietude—at least, in comparison to most other days. There’s Ms. Tracy at her desk by the door, taking calls from what must be the last remaining landline phone in the building. From somewhere behind Crowley comes erratic volleys of notification chimes from Hastur’s computer. In front of him Newt’s laptop fan periodically awakens from its slumber, churning with such obscene power that Crowley can feel it gently ruffling his hair from across the table. For all of forty minutes, the satellite office of Brimstone Holdings ZLC feels like a normal work environment where one might have a chance at doing something meaningful, or if not meaningful, then at least marginally productive.

That is, until a great crashing sound comes from the printer.

“HOW DARE YOU, YOU BLASTED MISERABLE LUMP OF PLASTIC!” roars Shadwell. Crowley, in his alarm, nearly sends Newt’s now-stagnant cup of coffee flying across the room.

Shadwell and the printer are lifelong enemies. Or rather, everyone is enemies with the printer, but Shadwell seems to take it personally. Crowley’s pet theory is that this is because Shadwell preceded the printer, but he’s never been able to find out how true that is, because no one can actually remember how long Shadwell has been working at the office. Currently, he is hunched over the front of the machine with a death grip on the LCD monitor.

“What do you mean you’re out of paper?! You infernal engine of Satan, I ought to send you back to the depths of Tartarus where you belong—I’m sorry Ms. Tracy I know the coarseness of my speech can be offensive to those of a more delicate constitution—I ought to bring you out back and set you straight is what I ought to do—”

Crowley watches in the reflection of his laptop screen as Hastur and Ligur conduct a brief game of rock-paper-scissors. Ligur loses, but only because Hastur cheats. With a heaving sigh Ligur closes his laptop and begins to make his way over to Shadwell, while Hastur dials what must be tech support on his phone^[3].

Crowley checks his watch and decides that half past ten is a perfectly reasonable time for a lunch break. He closes his laptop, double-checks that he has his wallet, and meanders over to the Interns’ table as casually as he can. No one notices, because Shadwell has begun hitting the printer with a stapler. He subtly leans into the pack of Interns, speaking as quietly as he can without being drowned out by the din of his coworkers.

“If Beelzebub arrives while I’m gone, can you tell her that I went to take my lunch break? Just if she asks.”

“Only if you bring us some biscotti,” counters Pepper.

“Deal.” Crowley holds his fist out in the center of the table. After staring blankly for a moment, the Interns fistbump him one by one with an air of great solemnity. And then before anyone can see him leaving he ducks out the double glass doors into the blazing midday sun, ready to make the long journey across the carpark to the Heaven’s Gate Café and Biscotti Emporium.

¹At least, according to Shadwell, who tells some version of this story at least once a week to any person who will listen, and sometimes to people who won’t. ^{[return to text]}

²This particular piece of software needs to be refactored because it is written in Ada, the programming language specially created for the United States Department of Defense. Crowley’s professional opinion on this is “What the actual Hell.” ^{[return to text]}

³Although at this point it might be more like a tossup between tech support and building security. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

When Crowley arrives at the Heaven’s Gate Café and Biscotti Emporium, he doesn’t see anyone by the cash register. He does however hear some clanking and muffled curses coming from the espresso machine as he gets closer to the counter. It’s still well before the typical lunch rush—the only people here besides himself are a few laptop warriors hunkered down in their respective corners. There’s a bell on the counter reading “Ring for Assistance” but he doesn’t touch it. Instead he waits until a halo of bright curls pops up from behind the behemoth coffee maker.

“Crowley!” says Aziraphale brightly. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“You looked busy,” says Crowley, fishing his wallet out of his pocket. He can already feel a smile starting to tug at the corners of his mouth. “Espresso machine giving you trouble again?”

“Oh, always. I swear that thing is going to burst a pipe any day now. And Gabriel still refuses to order a a single new part for it.” Aziraphale smooths a hand over his buttercup-yellow apron. “What can I get for you today?”

“One large oat milk latte, a protein box, and four chocolate biscotti, please.” Heaven’s Gate, in living up to the other half of its name, boasts thirty-nine different flavors of biscotti. Having sampled all thirty-nine over the course of the last six years, Crowley can safely recommend three of them.^[1] Over the years, many an intern has been bribed into this or that menial task with the promise of a crisp almond cookie to dunk into their burnt break room coffee. He dreads the day Brimstone hires an intern with a tree nut allergy.

Aziraphale hands his food over the counter and rings up the purchase.

“Latte will be along in a minute. The usual table?”

“Yep.” Crowley pretends not to notice the fifth biscotti poking out of the wax paper bag.

The usual table is a two-person by the window, with a spectacular view of the car park and some scrubby vegetation hiding a dusty vacant lot. It’s one of a mere handful of tables which doesn’t have a direct line of sight to the front entrance of Brimstone Holdings ZLC. Crowley takes his seat and commences sorting through the gentrified GORP which passes as a protein box. It’s quiet in the café except for the wheezing of the espresso machine and the faint strains of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”, until Aziraphale reappears at Crowley’s elbow with a pink teacup on a green saucer. In the midday sunshine he seems to be glowing, hair fluffy as a bowl of newly-beaten meringue.

Crowley knows that he shouldn’t really romanticize Aziraphale’s work, but on days when he has a headache from staring at a screen for six hours he envies the physicality of it. Aziraphale looks like someone who works at a bakery—soft and round, with cheeks flushed pink from the hot kitchen and thick biceps from years of sawing through massive slabs of biscotti. More than once, Crowley has spent his lunch break watching careful hands braiding ropes of dough or scoring loaves with flowers that bloom golden-brown in the oven. He knows it’s a lopsided admiration. While Aziraphale is strong and sure, he looks, well, like someone who spends all day in a windowless office building.

“One large oat milk latte?” asks Aziraphale, as if there’s any doubt about who it belongs to. As per usual, there’s a heart carefully sketched in the foam, threatening to spill out onto the saucer.

“Thanks.” Crowley sets down the coffee and nudges the chair on the other side of the table with his foot. “Fancy a break?”

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, glancing over his shoulder, “I don’t know. I mean, I’d love to, but Gabriel—”

“Just went out for a smoke break and we both know that means he won’t be back for another twenty minutes.” Crowley takes a long sip of coffee. He can already feel the caffeine working its magic, easing the headache which has been gnawing at his temples since he merged onto the highway this morning.

“Well, if you insist,” says Aziraphale, before all but collapsing into the offered chair.

It’s the same dance they’ve been doing every week, if not every day, since Crowley started working at Brimstone six years ago. He arrives, orders his food, and entreats Aziraphale to sit with him until the lunch rush descends. Usually Aziraphale frets over what his supervisor will think, or how much work there is to do in the back, but Crowley can always persuade him to stay at least a few minutes. Crowley’s job may be Hell, but as least he can sit through it. Aziraphale has to stand.

In the background, “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” bleeds through the tinny café speakers.

“So,” says Aziraphale, elbows propped up on the table, “how are the Interns?”

“About the same, I guess.” Crowley begins to pick all the chocolate-covered almonds out of his protein box. “They’ve got about four weeks left, I think. They’re supposed to be writing up reports on their summer projects so they have something nice for their resume or graduate school or whatever.”

“Graduate school? Don’t people usually wait for that sort of thing? They seem a bit young, from what you’ve told me.” Crowley shrugs.

“Competitive job market, everyone’s looking for an edge—especially for the entry-level stuff. Gotta have experience to get experience, make sure you know the right people to put a good word in. It’s why you never kids taking tickets or waiting tables anymore. Sorry,” he adds, just in case Aziraphale takes offense. He’s still listening earnestly, as if recent developments in the tech sector job market is an utterly fascinating topic, instead of a grim indication that something in society is fundamentally broken. “So I really should be helping Adam and Pepper with all that, but I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. Also, we’re supposed to have some sort of special meeting this afternoon.”

“What about?”

“Haven’t got a clue.” Crowley takes another long pull from his latte. “Newt says he thinks it might be restructuring, but that could really mean anything.”

“You don’t think anyone’s about to lose their job, do you?” Aziraphale, bless him, sounds genuinely worried.

“No idea.” He slides the napkin full of chocolate covered almonds over to Aziraphale, who somehow still looks pleasantly surprised even though Crowley has been doing this ever since Heaven’s Gate started carrying protein boxes. “No more work talk though, seriously. How’re the books?”

Aziraphale’s eyes are suddenly alight with the sort of affection parents typically direct at their favorite child.

“Oh, they’re wonderful. I went to an estate sale last weekend and found two different Renaissance drama anthologies—a hot commodity as they say, expensive new and hard-to-find used. I think I’ll have to rebind one, but the other is in very good shape.”

Aziraphale, of course, does not in his heart of hearts care all that much about wiping down tables and hot-wiring espresso machines. His real passion is books—specifically his collection of used books which makes up the stock of an online bookstore. He buys them cheap, sells them slightly less cheap, and does repairs when necessary. Crowley isn’t quite sure how the math works out^[2], but it’s always been clear to him that most of Aziraphale’s psyche at this point is held together by book glue and binding tape.

“Renaissance drama? Like…Shakespeare?” Crowley doesn’t know half as much about literature as Aziraphale (one-tenth would probably be a generous estimate), but he does his best to hold up his end of the conversation.

“Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dekker, Webster, Ford—all sorts of wonderful things. All anyone puts on these days is the Shakespeare, which is quite a shame. His contemporaries are tragically overlooked. They’re just a good as him, and some were quite frankly more popular he was in their day. And their work is just fascinating—demons and werewolves, spousal murder, crossdressing vigilantes, church corruption…”

Aziraphale is in full bibliophile mode now, occasionally pausing the deluge of words to devour a few more chocolate-covered almonds. Every so often he trails off, anxiously, as if Crowley might somehow be bored with him, but a short question or a few affirmations is all it takes to nudge him back on track. Once Aziraphale properly starts, it takes an act of God or middle management to actually make him stop.

Crowley imagines that if this were his job, he would never want to leave work. Even with the overpriced protein boxes and the endlessly looping choir of nuns, there’s something undeniably calming about these little lunch break visits to Heaven’s Gate. Over the last six years Crowley has learned about World War I poets and relative paper acidity, textbook pricing patterns and the paradigm-shifting impact of Chinua Achebe’s novels. At a certain point around year two he’d begun to wonder what it might be like if he spent time with Aziraphale outside of their respective work environments. It had been a carefully-managed line of wondering—a crowded cinema, a public park, opposite sides of a restaurant booth; talking about books and petty workplace drama. But by year three he’d dismissed the idea. If he screwed that up, he’d never be able to come back here. So he settles back into his chair, finishing off the last of his protein box as Aziraphale’s warm enthusiasm meanders from love sonnets to bloody hearts on daggers.

The bell above the door chimes, heralding the entrance of two people Crowley doesn’t recognize—a man and a woman, both smartly dressed, wielding briefcases which where probably once living animals (although it’s difficult to say what kind). They’re not any of the usual coworkers or laptop warriors that typically haunt Heaven’s Gate, and they have absolutely no reservations about striding over to the register and ringing the bell. Twice.

Aziraphale is on his feet in an instant, wrapping the last few almonds in a napkin and stuffing them into his pocket.

“I’m so sorry, it seems I have to go—oh I do hope I haven’t kept you.” Crowley checks his watch and discovers that his lunch break technically ended fifteen minutes ago.

“No, no not at all,” he says quickly. “Good seeing you. Thanks for the biscotti.” But Aziraphale is already hurrying towards the counter, stumbling over the beginning of his usual customer-service script.

Without Aziraphale, there’s no real reason for Crowley to avoid the office any longer. He piles his trash together and tosses it into the bin on his way out the door, glancing up at the “Please Bus Your Own Table :)” sign. His first gift to Aziraphale, printed and laminated in the office copy room after Aziraphale had offhandedly mentioned Gabriel yelling at him about cleaning up all the leftover cups and napkins from the laptop warriors.

“What if Gabriel notices?” he’d asked, glancing between the kitchen entrance and the spectacle of Crowley standing on a café chair wielding a roll of masking tape. And Crowley remembers simply shrugging and saying:

“Then tell Gabriel some troublemakers from Brimstone must have put it up while you were busy fixing the espresso machine.”

The memory is enough to keep him smiling all the way back to the office.

¹ Four if you’re open-minded about sauerkraut.^{[return to text]}

² He suspects that it doesn’t, given that Aziraphale has been working at the same dead-end café job for the better part of a decade.^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

By the time Crowley makes it back to Brimstone, Beelzebub has arrived and installed herself in her office—a seven-thousand-dollar phone booth given to them by the California office eight months ago as some sort of perverse end-of-year bonus. In theory, it allows employees to do things like make phone calls without broadcasting the details of their root canal appointment to the entire floor, since there are no cubicles to muffle any noise. In reality it serves as Beelzebub’s corner office, especially now that she’s soldered a padlock to the outside so no one can use it when she isn’t there. With her rather creative take on office wear, the whole setup gives the impression of a display case for a rare and enormous beetle.

It takes a bit of searching to find the Interns, who have chosen to take their lunch break in the large supply closet which functions as the office’s outdated technology graveyard. Once he hands over the biscotti Crowley finds himself with little to do except find another workspace and keep grinding away at the refactoring project. It’s hard to make any real headway with Newt asking for his feedback on button colors every ten minutes, but Crowley figured out around year four that if he kept all his old versions of the program he could just recycle previously-written code as the requirements oscillated back and fourth. Copy-pasting code is mind-numbing, but it keeps him looking busy—or at least, busy enough to keep Ligur from standing behind him and sniffing disdainfully every time Crowley makes a typo.

Eventually though, the mysterious three pm meeting arrives. Crowley tucks his laptop under his arm and heads down the hall to the one remaining conference room. Near the doorway the Interns are huddled around the main office printer, as per usual. Interns used to be able to bring laptops into meetings, until one of last year’s interns by the name of Warlock had been caught using his to photoshop unflattering candids of Hastur into even more unflattering Renaissance paintings^[1]. Beelzebub, in her infinite wisdom, now makes the Interns print their notes out.

Next to the printer, Wensleydale looks close to tears. Crowley wanders over to investigate. It’s not an unusual sight, necessarily, but typically the crying comes after the meetings. Before is a bad sign.

“What’s going on?”

“The printer ate his meeting notes,” explains Brian. He places sympathetic hand on Wensleydale’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you can borrow mine. I’ll just tell Beelzebub I forgot—I’m sure running laps around the building won’t be that bad.” Despite his brave face, he doesn’t sound terribly convinced.

Crowley moves to inspect the printer. It’s still humming along, with the occasional faint crunching like a cat which has caught a particularly large bug. The LCD display reads “PAPER MISFEED. PLEASE CONTACT IT FOR ASSISTANCE.”

Bugger IT.

He hands Adam his laptop so he can fish a credit card out of his wallet—one of those fancy new ones which is basically just a sheet of metal—and begins picking at some screws on the side of the printer. It only takes a few turns before the side panel is loose enough to remove, yielding a sudden blast of warm air. Inside the guts of the printer reveal a winding path from the paper drawer to the output tray, with little metal gears and conveyor belts twitching erratically. Trapped in the plastic fibers near the exit are a few sheets of paper—wrinkled, with a some chewed edges, but on the whole intact. Gingerly, Crowley frees the two pages, yanking his hand back as a few smaller, pinching bits make a leap for his fingers. Getting the panel back in place is as easy as unscrewing it. He stands up, brushing dust from his trousers with one hand and smoothing out the papers with the other.

The first page is meeting notes, mostly blank since Beelzebub has been characteristically cryptic about this meeting. The second appears to be…a bingo board? Crowley tries to catch a second, more subtle glance as he hands the papers back to Wensleydale. The only square he manages to read is the one in the middle of the board, which reads “FREE SPACE: Crowley is a Big Mood™”. He wonders, briefly, if this is the sort of thing he should be going to HR about.

“Where did you learn to do that?” asks Adam as he hands Crowley his laptop back.

“Used to be a girl guide.” The Interns, bless them, don’t even blink (although Pepper does nod a tacit approval of Crowley’s resourcefulness).

“Thank you Mr. Crowley.” Wensleydale has stopped sniffling and moved on to trying to smooth out the more crumpled areas of his notes, which is exactly a futile as one imagines uncrumpling paper would be.

“You really can just call me Crowley.” He shoves his wallet back into his pocket and turns back towards the conference room. “Let’s get this meeting over with, yeah?”^[2]

It’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting, which isn’t all that unusual because Beelzebub likes an audience. What is unusual is the two people standing next to each other at the front of the conference room. Crowley recognizes them as the two strangers from Heaven’s Gate, although thankfully they don’t seem to return the favor.

“Everyone,” says Beelzebub as people finish taking their seats, “meet Carmine Zuigiber and Raven Sable. They’re consultants with Four Horsemen Resources. California sent them out here as part of the new restructuring efforts, to help us—” she checks her phone “—reorient ourselves towards a new company mission and elevated community consciousness.”

Zuigiber and Sable looked like two pieces on opposite sides of the same novelty chess set. They’re both wearing suits so well-tailored the Crowley thinks they must be sewn into them. Where Sable has a skinny black tie Zuigiber has some frilly red cravat spilling out of her collar, which gives the uneasy suggestion of blood pouring from a slashed throat. Their white shirts are starched to perfection, and their shoes gleam in the fluorescent light. The whole thing technically falls under the purview of “appropriate office wear”, except for the part where they look so criminally good that Crowley wants to burn every pair of ill-fitting slacks that he owns out of shame. Next to them, Beelzebub looks like if Margaret Thatcher had had an unfortunate run-in with a local metal band.

“Anyway, I’ll let you guys take it from here.” Beelzebub sits down at the head of the conference table, before apparently realizing this puts her back to the guests of honor. The subtleness of her shuffling closer to Dagon is decidedly undercut by the wounded squeak of her swivel chair, made even louder by the fact that the consultants haven’t actually started talking yet. Crowley fights the urge to crawl under the table until this ordeal of a meeting is over.

“Thank you,” says Sable, smiling with far too many teeth for an office environment. He rubs his hands together, turning to barrel the length of the conference room table.^[3] “As Beelzebub said, we’re here to help this company turn itself around. The times, they are a-changing, and if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. And if you’re shrinking, you’re dying, and if you’re dying, you’re definitely not winning. Brimstone Holdings ZLC needs to get back to winning, and we’ve figured out how to do that—in nine easy steps. Carmine?”

Zuigiber clicks a button on a remote which looks at least fifteen years younger than the rest of the conference room’s tech. The fluorescent lights dim and a projector flares to life, splashing an austere powerpoint onto the wall. Crisp monospaced text reads BRIMSTONE HOLDINGS ZLC: OUR MISSION, OUR VALUES, OUR STRATEGIES.

“While satellite office like this one were once keystones of the global-local mission,” says Zuigiber, “strategies are shifting going forward in order to elevate company-wide interdepartmental synergy. The first step in this process is to streamline the existing management system in order to increase efficiency and accelerate higher margin revenue growth over the next three fiscal years.”

“We understand that radical growth can be uncomfortable and challenging in an established workplace environment,” adds Sable, “but it’s important to understand that we’re all just little cogs in the great machine that is Brimstone Holdings ZLC. The name of the game is to move fast and break things, ask forgiveness instead of permission, redefine not just the company but the industry. It’s like Steve Jobs said: stay hungry, stay foolish.”

“Except don’t stay foolish,” Zuigiber cuts in sharply, “because foolishness is how mistakes are made, and mistakes are not conducive to a productive office environment.”

Sable’s grin has yet to falter. His teeth are as shiny as his well-polished shoes.

Crowley gives up on following after the first three slides. His eyes wander to the Interns, who seem to be paying closer attention than anyone else in the room. He watches as Wensleydale neatly crosses out a box on his bingo board labeled “Beelzebub is on her phone” and looks over to see that Beelzebub is indeed scrolling through Twitter under the table. He glances back at Wensleydale’s board. If Hastur falls asleep or Dagon implies that they should try tax evasion he’ll have a bingo.

The gist of the presentation isn’t hard to follow, once you start reading between the lines of “increasing cash flow through greater platform monetization” and “creating flexible and lightweight business units”. It’s a classic corporate shakeup—they’ll reorganize a few departments, let one or two people go, hire some kid straight out of business school to fill in the gap if they decide the problem is low turnover instead of managerial bloat. Crowley remembers the last meeting like this, two or three years ago. There weren’t any consultants at that time, just Beelzebub reciting some California office memos which could just as easily have been emailed to everyone. Dagon had been bumped to VP of finance, but Newt was hired to fill the newly-minted web design position, so on balance Crowley feels that it all sort of worked out fine in the end. Maybe this reshuffle will net him a promotion.

He tunes back in when Beelzebub starts speaking again. The slide on the wall reads A HOLISTIC PERSONAL CAPITAL PLATFORM WHICH ELEVATES THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE.

“Over the next few days Zuigiber and Sable will be spending time here in the office, conducting one-on-one interviews and analyzing workflow efficiency. Any questions?”

There are, of course, no questions. Crowley can only remember one day where any Brimstone meeting ending with someone having a question, which was Newt’s first day on the job. It’s the sort of mistake that you only make once.

“Okay, well, if anyone thinks of anything later you can just email me I guess.” Beelzebub spares a glance around the table, taking in her two dozen glassy-eyed employees. “Ligur, give Hastur a shake there would you?”

Wensleydale crosses out his last bingo square and flashes Crowley a grin.

¹ Crowley had been quite partial to the one of Hastur as Holofernes in “Judith Beheading Holofernes”. If he’d had a cubicle, he might’ve hung it on the wall. ^{[return to text]}

² If Crowley had been paying attention, he might have noticed all the Interns crossing off the free space on their boards as they piled into the room. ^{[return to text]}

³ This means, unfortunately, that he makes direct eye contact with Newt, who probably would have fainted if not for Adam kicking him under the table. Pepper crosses out the square labeled “Newt looks ready to collapse” on her bingo board. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

The rest of the day goes fine. Really, it’s like any other day, minus the two consultants prowling through the rows of chairs like stylish dingos sniffing out unattended children. Every so often Zuigiber or Sable will politely tap someone on the shoulder and ask if they can take just a few minute of their time to learn a little more about their current role in the company? And two supermodel consultants and one very nervous financial analyst will disappear into the office’s only conference room, damning Crowley to another forty-five minutes of open concept hell.

At one point Newt gets pulled aside for the better part of an hour, and emerges looking a little green.

“How’d it go?” Crowley aims for impassive, given that Newt appears to be close to toppling over.

“I, um, don’t think I’m supposed to tell you,” says Newt.

“Oh?” says Crowley, mostly stalling for time until Newt unscrambles his loyalties. Newt is slightly more susceptible to managerial deference than the rest of the office, but he usually makes a quick recovery.

“Since they haven’t talked to you yet.” Crowley doesn’t like the sound of that word, “yet”. “They mostly asked me a lot of questions. About my job, and whether or not I get along with people.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“That I like my job? What else would I say?” says Newt, which, fair, it’s not exactly a situation rich in dialog options. At least, if you don’t want to be left in the dust while corporate restructures you right out of the office.

Crowley finally decides to take another break around three, wandering back across the car park to Heaven’s Gate. But when he gets there Aziraphale’s shift is apparently over—Uriel’s behind the counter, eyeing him cooly over the trays of biscotti. He buys another coffee and one of those overpriced chocolates in a glass jar by the register, with some vague idea of giving it to Wensleydale as a bingo prize^[1]. The Interns are gone when he gets back though, off on some team building exercise orchestrated by the consultants. In the end he leaves it on Ms. Tracy’s desk as he walks out to his car.

The commute home is always, unfailingly, worse than the commute to the office. Crowley has had a lot of time to contemplate why this might be, and has come to conclusion that it boils down to the nine hours worth of workplace despair festering in people’s souls. In the morning, everyone is too tired to do anything except drive in unpredictably sleep-addled ways. In the evening, everyone is full of pent-up rage and still wired from their afternoon coffee break. Unable to unleash themselves on incompetent coworkers and tyrannical managers they pour onto the highway like starving wolves, out for the blood of their follow commuters.

Fortunately Crowley is experienced denizen of the evening commute. The Bentley is a behemoth of a car, and even the slightest nudge can reroute the traffic around him as smoothly as a school of fish wriggling away from a hungry seal. Unfortunately there is also an accident on the highway, cutting traffic down to one lane and adding forty minutes to his drive. There’s something which disgusts Crowley on a fundamental level about accident holdups—the fact that his commute is elongated by people so thirsty for entertainment that they feel compelled to slow down and gawk at car fires and herds of paramedics.

But finally he’s outside his flat, digging out his keys and dreaming of the Thai leftovers waiting for him in his fridge.

“Rough day? Those consultants sound like a real piece of work.”

Crowley jumps, keys rattling as they leap out of his hand onto the hallway carpet.

“Jesus Christ Anathema.”

Anathema Device is Crowley’s neighbor across the hall. Two years in, he’s stopped wondering at the fact that she always seems to know what’s going on at Brimstone. She’s probably a witch, scrying into the flower vase that Ms. Tracy keeps on her desk. The crystals and wind chimes and weird decks of cards certainly support that notion.

“Do you think you’re gonna get restructured?” she presses as Crowley retrieves his keys.

“No idea. They haven’t even talked to me yet.”

“Excited?”

“Not even remotely.”

She laughs at that, and the sound manages to trim up some of his fraying nerves. Witch or no witch, Anathema’s more clear-eyed perspectives never fail to make him feel at least a bit better. He doesn’t understand half her complaints about the trials and tribulations of the academic world, but it usual makes him feel better about his own situation. Brimstone Holdings ZLC, for all its flaws, isn’t bleeding its budget dry to keep some despised athletics program alive, and unlike Anathema none of his coworkers are Formalists. Anathema, in turn, appreciates that her job has some modicum of real meaning compared to his. Their neighborly relationship is primarily built on cheap wine and mutual workplace aggravation, and seems to be keeping both of them more or less sane.

“Here,” says Anathema, reaching into her pocket^[2], “try this. It’ll make you feel better.” She hands Crowley a lumpy teabag with a tag reading “Handmade with Love by Agnes”.

“Tea? How, pray tell, is tea going to solve my problems.”

“It’s my one of my grandmother’s blends,” says Anathema indignantly. “It’ll improve your outlook. Put a spring back in your step. You know.”

Crowley had met Grandma Agnes once, when she’d come up with the rest of the family to celebrate Anathema’s thesis defense. The evening had ended with Crowley sprawled in Anathema’s bathtub, blubbering incoherently about his aloe plants while Agnes carded sympathetic fingers through his hair.

“If this is Agnes giving me mescaline again I want absolutely no part of it.” ^[3]

“Are you ever going to get over that?”

“She literally had to carry me back to my apartment.” Anathema laughs, which Crowley thinks is a little uncalled for, given that he had humiliated himself in front of her entire extended family, and also lost his second-favorite shoes.

“No mescaline,” she promises. “Look, you can read all the ingredients on the tag. Perfectly safe as long as you don’t let it steep for too long.”

Crowley doesn’t drink tea. He does, however, understand basic courtesy, as well as fairy tales moralizing about the dangers of refusing gifts from witches. So he takes the teabag, bids Anathema good evening, and unlocks his flat to tune out the rest of the world.

It’s good to be home, even if half the evening has already been eaten up by his commute. Crowley kicks off his shoes and heads straight to the kitchen, pulling the half empty carton of Thai food out of the fridge and throwing it in the microwave without bothering to transfer it to a plate. While that hums away he waders around and checks his plants, watering the thirsty ones and scrutinizing the rest for yellowing patches and dry spots. All is well—it seems this morning’s performance has done its job. Once the day-old takeaway is reheated to satisfaction he parks himself on the couch and resumes his Golden Girls marathon. The only interruption over the next few hours is when he gets up to put his fork in the dishwasher^[4]. On the way back to the couch he checks the fridge again for alcohol, before remembering last night’s cider bender. Damn it.

It’s an evening much like every other evening since his started working at Brimstone Holdings ZLC. Some observers might even say it’s exactly like every other evening, with the exception of which episodes he’s watching. Those observers should probably shut up if they know what’s good for them. Besides, it’s not a bad setup. He’s perfectly happy with it. Well not happy, more like content. Maybe okay. Or fine. It’s fine. It is an absolutely, perfectly, fine way to spend every single one of his evenings, weekends included.

He wonders sometimes what it would be like if Aziraphale was next to him on the couch. Does he like Thai food? They wouldn’t have to get Thai food. There’s a pizza place nearby too. They could get a large pizza and split it down the middle, or Aziraphale could pick the toppings because Aziraphale has good taste. He would probably think of something just a little bit strange that Crowley would raise his eyebrows at and then try anyway, discovering his new favorite dish in the process. Yes, he would ask Aziraphale to pick the toppings and then they could sit on the couch together and eat pizza and half-watch stupid sitcoms and then afterwords…

Aziraphale would go home, because they are friends.

Crowley has almost fallen asleep on the couch when he remembers the tea that Anathema gave him. Perhaps that will cure his cider-less woes. It takes a bit of digging to find a mug, mainly because he only has two, shoved behind a set of twelve crystal wine glasses. The first is a plain white mug from Ikea. He selects the other, larger one, which bears the inscription “THIS MIGHT BE WINE” in loopy gold cursive^[5]. Anathema’s (or rather Agnes’s) directions are hopelessly complex, and the type on the tag is so small he can barely make out any of the ingredients. He decides to just keep it simple—bring some water to a boil, start the mug of tea brewing, and set a timer for five minutes in case he falls asleep for real. It’s been a while since he made tea, but it can’t be all that hard.

When his alarm goes off though it isn’t to tell him that his tea is done, but that he needs to inject his next T shot before the end of the day. He silences his phone and heads to the bathroom, digging through the bottom drawer of the vanity until he finds the needles along with the rest of his kit. Once upon a time, Crowley had been squeamish about needles. After regularly giving himself shots for ten-plus years, he’s gotten used to it. Compared to the excruciating experience of stop-and-go traffic or hour-long meetings, stabbing himself in the leg is pretty-much a non-issue.

Administering the shot turns into brushing his teeth turns into falling face-first into bed, ready to be done with the day already. Not that he wants tomorrow to come either, with those consultants circling the office like overdressed business vultures. He hadn’t lied to Anathema—he’s not worried about getting restructured—but that doesn’t means he looks forward to being interrogated about the minutia of his job. What would he say, anyway? That he’s been doing the same thing for six years and has nothing to show for it? That he’d rather work in the sweltering car park than the open concept office? That 90% of his coworkers appear to actively dislike him? That it’s mutual? Honestly if they really wanted to restructure the office they ought to just burn the damn place to the ground and start from scratch.

Crowley tosses and turns in his bed, twisting and untwisting the covers as he tries to get comfortable. Maybe he’ll see Aziraphale tomorrow. Maybe he’ll see Aziraphale and they can laugh at the nonsense corporate lingo and the boring slideshows and the way everyone’s getting so worked up over what’s probably just another stunt by the California Office anyway. Crowley’s been there for six years and fundamentally speaking, nothing has changed. It seems absurd to think that a few Silicon Valley types with designer office wear could really change anything.

When he finally falls asleep he dreams that he’s drowning in a bathtub of burnt break room coffee, and then he dreams of nothing at all.

¹ The Interns, of course, already have their own prize system unknown to Crowley, consisting mainly of White Claw six-packs and campus printing credits. You can only eat so many biscotti in the space of one summer. ^{[return to text]}

² Further points towards Anathema being a witch: she has never owned a dress without pockets. ^{[return to text]}

³ In Agnes’s defense, Crowley had asked for it. Literally. Being around that many academics for more than an hour can be taxing, especially if you don’t know what “pedagogy” means. ^{[return to text]}

⁴ He doesn’t start the dishwasher though. It generally takes him about ten days to accumulate enough dishes to actually run it, and even then it’s mostly utensils. He could hand wash, of course, but honestly it’s easier to just buy a lot of forks. ^{[return to text]}

⁵ A gift from Warlock when his internship ended. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Crowley hasn’t even gotten off the highway yet, and he can already tell that today is going to be awesome.

It hadn’t been looking awesome when he woke up. His phone was on silent for some reason, which meant that he slept through his alarm on account of it not being audible. He’d woken up six minutes before he needed to leave: barely enough time to put on some fresh clothes, and certainly no time for breakfast. In the end the only thing in Crowley’s stomach was the mug of tea he’d found lying untouched on his coffee table, lightly scalding his tongue after a brief stint in the microwave. The scalding wasn’t so bad though—it helped mask the weird metallic-floral taste. Where the hell had that come from, anyway? At the time it just seemed like yet another omen of a terrible morning.

But then Crowley had gotten into his car and started driving to work, and by the time he was merging onto the highway his day was already looking better. Sleeping through his alarm apparently also meant sleeping through most of rush hour, and he found himself speeding along the highway at a nearly unprecedented pace. Any other morning he’d be stuck in nearly standstill traffic, flicking talk radio on and off and on again as boredom warred with irritation, but not today. Today it’s just him, with space enough for the Bentley and then some, passing cars left and right to the sounds of the greatest hits of the 80s.

That’s when the expected glower of his mood breaks, and the euphoria sets in. Who could be mad when the greatest hits of the 80s are playing?

When Crowley pulls into the car park, he spots exactly one space left near the building. The sign at the end of it reads: PARKING RESERVED FOR VICE PRESIDENT BEELZEBUB ONLY. VIOLATERS WILL BE “TOWED.” He backs into the parking space, thanking his lucky stars that he’d arrived before the last spot was taken. This day is really turning out to be something else.

His stomach chooses that moment to remind him that he hasn’t eaten breakfast, except for that tea on his counter, whatever that was. Tea doesn’t count as breakfast. He should get a real breakfast. He’s already late isn’t he? What difference could a few more minutes make…

Crowley doesn’t realize that he’s walking to Heaven’s Gate until the air conditioning hits, and his ears are suddenly filled with sound of Austrian children explicating musical scales. It’s earlier than he usually visits, but the café looks more or less the same, with the exception of a few more staff, plus Gabriel in the back. Aziraphale is behind the register, carefully portioning out loose leaf tea.

“Aziraphale! Good morning.” Crowley all but skids to a stop in front of the register. He sways slightly, grabs the edge of the counter for support until he stops feeling faintly dizzy. Weird.

“Good morning, one moment please,” Aziraphale’s greeting is reflexive, until he looks up from his tea and notices Crowley. He smiles, and then frowns, and then makes a face which suggests that his brain is processing several questions at once, or maybe a piece of clove has just gone up his nose. “Crowley! You’re…earlier than usual.”

“Decided to pop in for a quick breakfast before work today.” He squints up a the chalkboard, which looks further away than usual, though the letters sort themselves out with a little squinting. “I’ll have the number three combo please, and an oat milk latte.”

“Trying something new?” Aziraphale’s hand hovers over the register, not quite ready to commit to the order. “No protein box or biscotti?”

“I suppose I’m just in an adventurous sort of mood today. You should join me,” Crowley adds, doing his best to smile at Aziraphale even though his face is starting to feel a bit numb.

“Join you? You know I can’t—” Aziraphale glances over his shoulder towards the kitchen. “Gabriel is right here! I have to be at the register.”

“Fuck Gabriel,” says Crowley, before wincing slightly at the volume.

“Crowley!” A few laptop warriors poke their heads up at the commotion, or at least the possibility of one.

“Right, right, sorry. I’m sorry.” He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of his usual table. “Well, if you want to join me you know where I’ll be.”

It’s a bit of a disappointment when Michael is the one to bring Crowley’s food out, Aziraphale remaining trapped behind the counter. Even the loss of a dining companion can’t sink his mood though, especially in the face of such a feast. The coffee is dark and rich. The toast is crisp. The eggs are fried to a golden-yolked perfection. In the background a convent of nuns breaks into a sparkling Alleluia chorus. It’s the best brunch that Crowley has ever had.

Really, it could only be improved by Aziraphale, still stuck behind the register while Gabriel remains in the vicinity. It would be so nice if he could talk to Aziraphale without worrying about Gabriel. Why can’t they have a meal together where they don’t have to worry about anybody’s boss or coworkers or creepy outside consultants? Just the two of them, at a restaurant somewhere, talking as long as they please about whatever they want, like a date. Why doesn’t he just ask Aziraphale to go on a date with him?

Wait.

Holy shit.

He should ask Aziraphale to go on a date with him.

The thought boots Crowley’s brain from leisurely munching to proper devouring—before long the remains of his scrumptious breakfast are gone, transmogrified into empty cups and plates. It takes a bit of work to get all of them together—Crowley’s arms seems to be having some trouble getting the message from his brain to his hands—but with some effort he manages to get everything into a pile and deposit it into the bin for dirty dishes. There’s a clamor that makes half the laptop warriors blink out of their stupor, but nothing appears broken, and besides he’s already headed back to the counter. Crowley’s thoughts have started to become strangely slippery, like eels drinking too much Xanax water, and he hopes he can make it to the register before they escape him entirely.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, blinking at his approach from behind endless rows of biscotti. “Would you, er, like something else?”

“I was thinking,” says Crowley, before he loses his train of thought “that the two of us might want to go out together some time.” He tries very hard to make normal eye contact with Aziraphale, which is tricky because it feels like his eyeballs are trying to slide in two different directions. Maybe smiling will make things better. ^[1]

“Go…out?” Aziraphale asks.

“Like a date,” offers Crowley helpfully. He tries smiling wider, but it’s hard to move his lips and his eyeballs at the same time. He decides to stick with the eyeballs.

“A date,” Aziraphale echoes, as if this is a slightly foreign concept. He keeps glancing over his shoulder into the kitchen, where Gabriel is inspecting slabs of biscotti dough resting on sheet trays.

“Yeah, like, go out for dinner, or a movie, or—or—dinner and then a movie?” Distantly, Crowley recalls that he hasn’t actually been on a date in about five years. Hopefully he’s not too much out of practice. “And then afterwards if you wanted we could go do something else. Wouldn’t have to get dinner actually, I just think it might be fun.”

“Fun, yes—Crowley, are you sure you’re alright?” Aziraphale won’t stop looking over his shoulder. A blast of warm air cuts through the air conditioning as Gabriel opens three of the kitchen’s industrial ovens.

“What? Yeah, positive, right as rain.” Except for the fact that most of the muscles in his face seem to have gone rogue, but Aziraphale doesn’t need to know that.^[2] “Look, if you don’t want to, you can say no.” He watches over Aziraphale’s shoulder as Gabriel puts the last tray into the oven and turns towards the kitchen door.

“That’s not what I—here,” Aziraphale grabs an old receipt from next to the register and scribbles something on the back. “How about we work out the details later?” Crowley takes the receipt with some caution, squinting at the jumble of numbers.

“Is this a Bitcoin key?” He didn’t think Aziraphale knew about Bitcoin, but apparently today is full of surprises.

“…It’s a phone number. My phone number.” Aziraphale is starting to look stressed. Poor thing. Gabriel shouldn’t schedule him for so many shifts. “Just—call me later, alright?”

“Oh! Sure sure, no problem.” Gabriel is nearly at the kitchen door, which Crowley takes as his cue to leave. “Later then. Ciao!”

Aziraphale didn’t specify how much later, so Crowley ends up texting him from halfway across the car park. He tries not to feel stung what Aziraphale doesn’t immediately respond the his “heyyy” until he remembers that Gabriel was standing like, right there. Oh well.

It takes a bit of work to get across the car park to the office, because Crowley’s legs are starting to feel a bit soft around the edges. No matter though—he spends all day sitting anyway, doesn’t he? And besides, the day is warm and mild, and he’s just had he best brunch of his life, and oh yeah he also has Aziraphale’s freaking phone number, so there’s no way the lower half his body going offline can even come close to dampening his mood. He makes it to the office without incident, waving to his coworker as he passes by—Ms. Tracy, the Interns, even Dagon, who pauses her phone conversation long enough to give him one inscrutable look as he slides into a seat at a table sort of next too but also sort of across from a desk where Newt sits.

Newt does not seem to have gotten the memo about what an awesome day Crowley is having.

“Are you…okay?” Newt says, or rather stage-whispers across the eight feet separating their workspaces.

“Okay? I’m doing great.” Crowley starts setting up camp at his table, connecting his laptop with his eighty dollar ergonomic mouse. He’s never been more excited to check his email.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure. What is everyone so worried about this morning?”

Newt gives him a pointed look he can’t decipher, but that’s thankfully the end of the conversation. Crowley may have rolled in late, but he’s still got work to do.

Of course, no good mood can last in an open floor plan—even a good mood buoyed by, he’s starting to suspect, something distinctly chemical in nature. Crowley can hear everything: the chattering clicks of Newt’s ergonomic keyboard. Dagon on her cell phone in the corner yelling something about invoices. Ligur crunching his way through an oversized bag of crisps. Hastur cursing yet another malfunctioning spreadsheet. Beelzebub in her phone booth office editing their next thirty-second advert, playing the same two seconds over and over and over again.

“How can you sleep at night knowing your money might be in danger? Brimstone Holdings ZLC—”

“How can you sleep at night knowing your money might be in danger?—”

“How can you sleep at night knowing your money—”

“How can you sleep at night knowing you—”

“How can you sleep at night—”

“How can you sleep at night—”

“How can you sleep at night—”

Crowley slams his laptop shut. No one notices, because they’re too busy ignoring Dagon’s increasing graphic descriptions of what she’ll do with a customer’s spleen if Brimstone Holdings ZLC is not paid in a timely manner. With one fell swoop Crowley gathers his papers and laptop and dumps them all onto the floor, before grabbing the now-empty table and heaving it over onto its side. It reverberates across the stylishly flat white walls of the office with a dull thud.

If Crowley hadn’t been quite so focused might have noticed two figures coming in the double glass doors, wearing impeccably tailored blazers and holding matching Heaven’s Gate to-go cups. They linger in the doorway, not talking, but occasionally sharing a questioning glance or a knowing nod.

But Crowley would be hard-pressed to notice anything right now beyond office furniture. He unplugs the most hated copier from the wall, dragging it over to block off one side of the table.. The other side he encircles with stray chairs. A quick trip to the supply closest yields a roof: a worn plastic banner reading “Brimstone Holdings ZLC says ‘Thank You Interns!’”, thrown over the top of the furniture heap. It’s like a beaver dam, if the beavers were all over-caffeinated middle-managers. Crowley grabs his supplies and crawls between two chairs, the plastic banner falling down behind him.

Inside his cave is blessedly quiet. This is mostly because everyone in the office has stopped to stare dumbly at Crowley’s semi-manic construction project. Crowley can’t tell, of course, because his coworkers are now obscured by an assortment of scavenged office furniture. He’s whistling as he opens up his laptop again. In the peace of his new abode the code seems to unscramble before his eyes, bugs practically leaping off the screen and begging to be squashed. He burns though the last batch of email requests in a matter of minutes. Who knew what difference a little peace and quiet could make? Imagine what an office could do if everyone had their own space like this…

It takes some digging, but soon Crowley finds himself a sharpie and a sheaf of printer paper. It’s been a few years since he’s really had to draw anything, but he gets back into the swing of it pretty soon, sketching rows of thumbnail designs across the page. This must be what divine inspiration feels like, like the Oracle of Delphi or those saints who think they’ve had sex with angels.

They couldn’t all be caves like this of course, you’d have to give people little modules, or pods, or…something. Enclosed on three sides with a doorway on the fourth, with a desk and a chair—not a common chair, invested with everyone else’s flu germs, but one just for you. There could even be a set of drawers so that you could leave things in your desk instead of carrying them everywhere. No more worrying about you stuff going missing or getting covered in greasy fingerprints and crumbs. A space for everyone in the office, all their own, where no one else can bother them. It’s genius.

Crowley’s only visitor over the next few hours is Shadwell, crawling in on his stomach between the legs of one supporting chair which bears a suspicious resemblance to the chairs typically found in Heaven’s Gate. There’s not enough room for both of them, of course, which leaves most of Shadwell’s lower half outside the little compound, but he manages to lever himself up on his elbows so he can actually make eye contact with Crowley.

“I see you’ve built fortifications,” he says by way of greeting.

“Shadwell!” says Crowley. “What brings you here?” There’s an offbeat warmth radiating through his chest, which he can’t identify, but assumes must be the feeling of true workplace camaraderie. What a blessing, to have such wonderful coworkers.

“Dodging those two vampires in the corner. I don’t trust ‘em one bit. Smells like corporate espionage if you ask me.”

“Sure, sure,” says Crowley, having missed every other word. “Hey, wanna see what I’ve been working on?”

“A complex and multifaceted scheme to remove those two nefarious interlopers from their positions of authority, restoring this office to its former glory?”

“Even better.” Crowley brandishes his papers. “Individual work modules for every employee. Your own chair, your own desk, your own space, with walls to keep the bad thoughts out and the good thoughts in.^[3]” Shadwell squints at the paper.

“Have you got any solutions to the problems of unnecessarily managerial interference into the lives of the average worker at a great expense to employee well-being?”

“Well,” says Crowley, “er, I suppose the wall—”

“Because that, let me tell you, the most serious problem plaguing this workplace and workplaces all across the world today,” Shadwell barrels on. “And believe me, it’s only going to get worse. Those two snakes out there are just the beginning. Soon this place will be crawling with middle managers and paid consultants who want us to do their trainings and go to their seminars instead of doing the work we want to do. If you want change—if you want real change—we’ve got to work together. We’ve got to burn down everything that isn’t working for us and—”

There’s a surprised grunt as Shadwell abruptly disappears from whence he came, almost as if someone has grabbed his legs and given them a swift tug. One minute he’s inside Crowley’s hutch and the next there’s nothing but a stream of muffled cursing from outside the tarp. The void left by Shadwell is quickly filled by the face of Beelzebub, crouching so she can see between the chair legs. Her smile shows all her incisors.

“Crowley, my office, please, now.”

“Oh.” Crowley blinks at the slightly disorienting change of face. “Sure thing.”

The transition from work cave to phone booth to office is something of a blur, mostly because Crowley has to concentrate very hard of making sure his feet land on the floor correctly. The chatter of the office all bleeds together into one frothing buzz, like a million bees putting a million kettles on for a million cups of tea. He realizes as he wedges himself into the phone booth that he’s still clutching his module blueprints—which, actually, great idea. Beelzebub should totally see this. As soon as she’s done talking about—

“I noticed when I came in to work this morning that there was another car in my parking space.” Beelzebub looks up a Crowley, leaning slightly backwards over her desk with one foot against the opposite wall for balance.

“Another car?”

“Yes, another car. A large black Bentley, if I’m not mistaken, which looked an awful lot like yours.” Oh, so that’s what this is about. What a relief.

“Yeah, sorry about that. It was the only space left.” Beelzebub blinks at him, so he adds: “I can buy you a coffee or whatever to make up for it if you like.”

The silence in the phone booth is stifling. Or maybe that’s the carbon dioxide buildup. Either way, Beelzebub is just standing there, blinking and not saying much at all. Maybe that means that conversation is over. That would be pretty good, since Crowley is starting to feel just a touch dizzy, although admittedly if he’s going to faint there are much worse places than a room designed to keep you upright.

“Anyway,” Crowley shuffles his papers around before finding one where the diagram is slightly more legible. “Check this out. I think you’ll really like it.” Beelzebub shakes herself out of her trance and squints at the sharpie-covered paper.

“Check what out?”

“Modules!” says Crowley proudly, before remembering that Beelzebub likes things better when they have corporate buzzwords. “Er, productivity pods. See, in an open concept office, nobody gets any work done because everyone has to haul all their stuff around and also it’s so goddamn loud all the time. But, if you give every employee their own little pod—productivity pod—you’ll get more, well, productivity!”

“…What?”

It’s not a ringing endorsement, but try to find a genius inventor who hasn’t had to pitch revolutionary ideas to a disbelieving public. Crowley forges ahead.

“Call it my solution to our workplace woes. No more getting distracted by all the conversations going on around you, no more carrying all your stuff to lunch just so you don’t lose it, no more race to get the best chair in the morning. You could even, I dunno, personalize it a bit, let people hang things on their wall and such.”

“Crowley—”

“California office wants us to become more productive, right? This is how we do it! Imagine how much we’d actually get done here if we could just—”

There’s a knock on the plexiglass door of the phone booth. Beelzebub nudges the door open with her foot, revealing two figures in immaculately ironed suits, though the reveal is made somewhat less dramatic by the fact that the door is clear.

“Beelzebub, Crowley,” says Sable.

“Sable, Zuigiber,” says Beelzebub.

“Heyyyyyyyy,” says Crowley, feeling a little left out now that all the names have been taken. He tries to wave to Zuigiber without dropping all his papers, and ends up with a gesture which probably qualifies as profanity in ASL. Zuigiber nods back, unsmiling. Tough crowd.

The two consults attempt to squeeze themselves into the phone booth, but neither quite manages to get all their limbs inside. An important feature to think about for the modules, if Crowley could reach his pen to write it down.

“We were wondering,” Sable continues, “if we might be able to borrow Crowley for a few minutes? We haven’t met with him yet, and we’d really love to talk to him.”

“We noticed him taking some unusual initiative earlier today,” Zuigiber adds. “We have some thoughts about what his future as this company could look like, and we’d just love to share them.”

Crowley’s phone, unfortunately, chooses that particular moment to start buzzing in his pocket, uncomfortably loud in the cramped phone booth. He’s almost ignores it, ready to hear whatever it is these consultants have to say, until he realizes that holy shit, what if it’s Aziraphale. What if Aziraphale’s calling him. What if it’s Aziraphale calling him to say yes.

“Sorry,” says Crowley, trying to figure out if he can get his phone out of his back pocket without elbowing anyone in the face. “I think I’m kinda busy at the moment.”

A stunned hush which ripples through the open floor plan office. Coworkers pause in their harried typing to stare agog at the phone booth crammed with four people, one of whom has just asked two consultants hired by the California office if they can schedule a meeting to a more convenient time—a more convenient time for him. Even the flowers on Ms. Tracy’s desk are quivering with anticipation. Crowley doesn’t notice any of this, because he’s figure out that if he puts his sheaf of papers between his teeth and uses one hand to brace himself on the ceiling, he can reach his free arm around Beelzebub and retrieve his buzzing phone.

“Busy?” says Zuigiber, in the tone that somehow manages to be completely devoid of emotion or judgement, a vacuous husk of human communication. Crowley takes the papers out of his mouth.

“Yeah…” Dammit, the call’s already gone to voicemail. He considers putting it back in his pocket, but that feels like a lot of effort. “Maybe we could meet tomorrow?”

Even Beelzebub is holding her breath as the two consultants look at each other ^[4], terabytes of data transferred in a single glance.

“Tomorrow,” says Sable carefully. And then—“yes, tomorrow works for us.”

“We’ll email you,” Zuigiber adds as she begins the slow process of extracting herself from the phone booth. Sable follows, falling backwards into his partner’s arms like a scuba diver rather than bothering with balance. When the plexiglass door slams shut it’s just Crowley and Beelzebub again.

“Er,” says Crowley, “anything else for the good of the order?” Beelzebub just heaves a sighs and says—

“Get the hell out of my office, Crowley,” which sounds like a great plan if he’s ever heard one.

A quick glance at his phone as he wanders back to his desk-cave reveals a missed call from Aziraphale, as well as a paragraph-long text.

Hello Crowley, this is Aziraphale. I am available this weekend if you would like to have dinner together. Please call me back at your earliest convenience so that we can make the necessary arrangements.

Perfect.

¹ It doesn’t. ^{[return to text]}

² Aziraphale already knows that. ^{[return to text]}

³ Hey, that would actually be a pretty great tagline. ^{[return to text]}

⁴ Although that may simply be a reaction to the fact that four people are trying to stand inside one phone booth. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Anathema Device (Neighbor)

what have you done to me

???????
If this is about the tupperware I melted I
already told you I’d buy you a new set.

THE TEA, ANATHEMA

Oh, right.
Did it not work?

you could say that

How long did you let it steep for?
If you let it sit for more than 10/15 minutes
you should probably toss it and make a new
one. The chemistry gets kind of weird if you
leave it for too long.
Crowley?
Crowley?????

Missed Called from Anathema Device (Neighbor) 
Missed Called from Anathema Device (Neighbor) 
Missed Called from Anathema Device (Neighbor) 

Crowley is going to be fired. Crowley is going to be fired, and he is never going to have another lunch break with Aziraphale again.

He almost wishes that he’s just stayed at home. Not just because of the whole getting fired thing—he’d woken up so sick that he’d barely remembered to water his plants. A hangover from mind-altering tea isn’t contagious, obviously, but if you’re trying to make the case that you didn’t show up to your workplace yesterday high out of your mind, the easiest way to do that is to not skip out the next day. And besides, there’s a distinct risk that if he called in sick he’d be asked to work from home, or worse, to Zoom in. God, imagine being fired over Zoom.

So instead when Crowley rolled out of bed this morning, all traces of yesterday’s good vibes replaced by what felt like a woodpecker to the skull, he’d popped three painkillers and dragged himself to work. On any other day he would’ve taken refuge in Heaven’s Gate, asked Aziraphale to furnish him with enough caffeine tand company to keep his nerves from shattering to pieces, but the thought of facing him like this is nothing short of mortifying. Not just because of the fact that even the thought of biscotti is making him nauseous, but because of his genuinely nightmarish behavior yesterday. What was he thinking, just waltzing in like that and making such a scene. Ordering a whole breakfast? Insulting Gabriel? Asking Aziraphale on a date? He’s about to be fired, and Aziraphale’s last memory of him is going to be “Ciao!”

Well, except for the part where they still have a dinner date planned for tomorrow. And he wants money to pay for that dinner badly enough that he’s here in the office’s one remaining conference room, with two impeccably dressed consultants, trying to figure out if his severance package will still allow him a peek at the dessert menu.

Crowley was hoping he might get to sit down, so that it won’t matter if his gelatinous legs spontaneously betray him, but Sable is halfway through an explanation of why the three of them will, in fact, remain standing.

“It’s all about incentives, you see.” His teeth are very, very white, as though his toothpaste contains scouring powder, or maybe bleach. “You sit down, you start to relax, and then suddenly people are talking about their kids, or what they did last weekend, and your whole meeting is wasted on pointless unproductive chatter. You hold a meeting standing up, people don’t waste any time!”

“At our offices, we sometimes have jogging meetings to keep everyone on track,” Zuigiber adds. Crowley really needs to ask these people where they buy their toothpaste. “You’d be amazed at how much you can get done on the go. Plus the health benefits! Healthy employees are the most productive, you know.”

“You know what they say, no profit in dead employees!” Sable chuckles as his own joke before regaining the point. “But we’re not here to revolutionize the modern meeting: we’re here to talk about you, Crowley.”

“Me?” Crowley shoves his hands deep into his pockets before either of the consultants notice how badly they’re shaking.

“Yes, you.” Zuigiber gives him a slightly incredulous look. “What, did you think we called this meeting just to talk about ourselves for fifteen minutes?”

Crowley casts around for a polite way of saying “yes,” or “I hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility given that you just told me that you hold meetings while jogging, which borders on the kind of psychopathic narcissism which would prompt someone to hold meetings where they only talk about themselves,” or maybe even “have you met my boss yet” but finding none, he settles for shaking his head. The movement makes black spots dance in front of his eyes. His vision comes back just in time to see Sable grin, impossibly, even wider.

“We have to say Crowley: we like your attitude!”

Crowley has two thoughts simultaneously, and the collision leaves his ears ringing so loudly that he misses whatever it is that Sable says next.

The first thought is: I’m not getting fired.

The second thought is: Oh shit, I am really, really going to be sick.

A third thought shoves its way between the two and says that Zuigiber and Sable are both smiling at him like eight-year-olds facing down a piñata so he’d better come up with a response now, if not sooner.

“Thank you?”

They both laugh. It sounds like bone china shattering against drywall.

“Oh don’t thank us,” says Zuigiber, “thank yourself!”

“You’re a real go-getter,” adds Sable. “Initiative is one of the most valuable things an employee has to offer their workplace. Everyone thinks they want little minions at their beck and a call, but hire too many worker bees before you know it’s all ‘what’s this project’ and ‘what do I do now?’ and ‘how was I supposed to know if you didn’t tell me?’…”

The two consultants voices begin to bleed in an out of focus, drowned out but the buzz of the fluorescent lights. Crowley wonders if smashing his head into the the table would relieve the headache squeezing his temples.

“—which means we’ve got some confidential news to share with you. Can you keep a secret Crowley?” Zuigiber is still grinning. Perhaps her face is simply stuck that way.^[1]

“I—yeah, yeah. ‘Course. Full of secrets, me.” Wait, no, that’s not—

“In two weeks, this whole office will be gone.”

The magnetic poles must have shifted. That’s the only explanation Crowley can give for why the floor is suddenly listing from side to side under his feet. He grips the back of the closest chair for support, only to find that it’s a rolling chair, which mostly just makes everything worse. He lets go. The floor keeps rolling.

“Like, everyone?” Crowley had never wondered before if a person could get seasick nowhere near the sea, but it’s starting to look like he’ll get to find out anyway if this meeting doesn’t end soon.

“Well, not all of them,” says Zuigiber. “Beelzebub will be heading to California—you can never have enough quality managers. Who else could do such a phenomenal job of fostering interdepartmental community while simultaneously enhancing global partnerships?” Crowley is certain that if he hears another word more than three syllables long he is going to throw up all over the consultants’ shiny, shiny shoes.

“Obviously, ninety percent of this office is deadweight,” says Sable, with such candor that Crowley has to wonder for a moment if the two consultants have forgotten he works here. He tries putting a sentence together, just to see what happens.

“Uh…sure, yeah of course. I mean, who needs, uh, interns, right?”

“Now you’re talking!” Sable claps him on the shoulder. Crowley grabs the edge of the conference table to keep from faceplanting into the carpet. “Did you know that we’ve visited over a hundred workplaces and you guys are the only ones paying interns this much? It’s crazy! Kids these days, it’s all about experiences. You know: social media, putting it on your resume, doing it for the Vine—experience! College credit is more than enough. Throw in a Starbucks gift card and that’s all it takes to be employer of the year.”

Crowley’s overworked brain is still struggling to find a horticultural connection. God what he wouldn’t give to be home with his own plants right now, instead of here, getting screamed at like a common begonia. He wonders if he even still has knees anymore, or if they’re melted into the rest of his legs. Sable, improbably, is still talking.

“Crowley, we’ve called this meeting to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Of a lifetime?” That can’t be good.

“Of a lifetime,” Sable says, as if said lifetime is perhaps conditional upon the acceptance of the offer.

“We think you’d be a great fit at the main office in California,” says Zuigiber, “so we talked with your high-ups, told them everything we’d seen here, and there’s an open position with your name on it ready for you to make the transfer.”

“Oh.” Crowley wracks his brain, if not for the right question, than at least the right arrangement of his face. As far as opportunities of a lifetime go that’s…not bad, maybe. Far away though. And Aziraphale doesn’t live in California. But having a job in California is probably better than no job here. Maybe.

He really wants to ask what happens if he says no, but that makes it sounds like he’s not a team player, and people who aren’t team players don’t get opportunities of a lifetime.

“We’ll email you the full details,” continues Zuigiber, “along with the contact information for your new supervisor. You have two weeks to accept the offer, although of course that’s just a formality.”

“Of course,” echoes Crowley. He needs to get out of this meeting, like, yesterday. “Uh. Awesome. Great. Wow. Thank you? See you around, then.” He winces. Sable and Zuigiber wave, in unison.

“Ciao!”

Crowley stumbles out of the conference room. His conscious brain says he should walk back to his desk and try to get some more work done, maybe keep an eye out for that magic transfer email, but his legs have other plans. Instead they carry him down the hall, past Ms. Tracy’s desk, through the double glass doors at the front of the office and onto the steps, where he leans over the railing and promptly empties his guts into the dried-out flowerbed. The metal burns through his shirt as he stands there, hunched over and panting, waiting for his breath to come back.

He hasn’t been fired. He isn’t even in trouble—he’s getting a promotion. Which, okay, he definitely deserves one—has for about three years, at least—but he sort of assumed a promotion would have limited horizontal movement.

He’s so preoccupied with calming the discotheque in his stomach that he almost misses Newt hovering at his elbow, nervously eyeing the remains of Crowley’s breakfast now fertilizing the dead daisies.

“Are you, uh, okay?”

“No,” groans Crowley, head still spinning. Newt looks like slightly panicked, as if he’d really been hoping Crowley would lie to him.

“Oh. Do you…need to leave?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. Think I just ate something weird.” Drunk, more like. He’s never going consume anything from Anathema again.

“Well. That’s alright I guess.” There’s a faint clattering noise as Newt fidgets with his badge. “So…did your meeting go okay?”

“I think so,” says Crowley, though his memory of the meeting is fading fast. “I still have a job. So that’s good. They said they liked my attitude.”

Newt looks like he’s about to ask exactly what that means when the door to the office swings open. It’s Adam, holding a plastic water bottle.

“Here.” He holds the bottle out to Crowley. “Ms. Tracy said to bring you this.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Crowley breaks the seal and drinks, albeit carefully, just in case his intestines are still feeling groovy. The water is warm and plasticky, but settles in his stomach without making a sudden reappearance. He swishes and spits a few times to get the sour taste out of his mouth, while Newt politely looks away. Adam, present-day dorm denizen, seems completely unfazed by the scene.

“They make you do team-building exercises? Those were the worst. Brian had a massive allergic reaction to the iguanas.”

“No team-building.” Crowley shakes his head. The motion immediately has him bent over the railing again, vomiting up the plasticky water. Newt grimaces. “Just some updates. They’re recommending a transfer to California.”

“Recommending or ‘recommending,’” asks Adam, somehow managing to convey the air quotes without actually sketching them out in the air.

“No idea. They’re sending me the paperwork later.”

“Well,” says Newt, already sounding wistful, “it’s probably the right career move. We’d miss having you here though.”

Crowley makes another attempt at rehydration just in time to catch a glimpse of the new commotion inside. He watches though the double glass doors as Zuigiber and Sable herd Shadwell down the hallway towards the conference room. Shadwell catches Crowley watching and stops to salute him, until a brogue to the ankle pushes him around the corner and out of sight.

“Yeah,” says Crowley softly. “I’d miss you guys too.”

¹ It’s not. Zuigiber and Sable have both completed the Four Horseman Consulting mandatory training session Forming and Maintaining Appropriate Business Expression for All Occasions, which includes a free booklet of exercises you can do to improve facial musculature at home and on the go. They both practiced on the flight here. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Tragically, Crowley has little time to occupy himself with the impending lifestyle overhaul. Saturday is supposed to be a day off, but instead he spends it bouncing back and forth between paying bills, tending plants, and staring blankly at his closet. It’s been five or six years since he’s been on a date, and somehow in that time his entire wardrobe has transmogrified into sensible slacks and business casual blazers. He briefly considers going across the hall and asking Anathema for help, especially given that a solid third of his clothes are pre-E hand-me-downs from the back of her closet, but he ultimately decides against it. He’s still trying to figure out how to explain exactly what dear old Agnes’s tea did to his brain, body, love life, and most importantly, employment prospects.

Crowley had already offered to make at reservation at some restaurant yesterday before realizing he had absolutely no idea where to go. He could’ve take Aziraphale to the pizza place around the corner from his building, but that doesn’t feel very romantic. Also, he’d already gotten dinner there three times this week. So instead Aziraphale sends him a few places and he picks one at random, calls, and makes a reservation for two, still staring at his closet and wondering if a checkerboard print is too aggressive for a first date. ^[1]

In the end, time decides his outfit for him—with two minutes left until he has to leave Crowley just reaches in and grabs the two closest items. Twenty minutes later finds him pulling up outside a red and green storefront, with Aziraphale waiting on a bench next to the door. He positively beams when he sees Crowley.

“Crowley! Hello!” Aziraphale stands, gathering his coat from the bench. For a minute the sight of him sans pastel apron is truly disorienting. “You shirt is…very colorful.”

“Hm?” says Crowley, glancing down at his shirt which is, he now realizes, covered in enormous yellow and blue flowers. “Oh, yeah, guess it is a bit, isn’t it. Er. Thanks for the uh. For recommending the restaurant.”

“My pleasure,” says Aziraphale, before a moment of hesitation. “Are we, ah…should we have a conversation about Thursday, or…?” Crowley feels the tips of his ears turning red.

“Just a bit a of mix up with…some medication. Wasn’t right in the head for a minute. It’s all sorted now though.”

“Alright, ” says Aziraphale. And then—“Look if you don’t…want to do this anymore, I understand. I know people do all sorts of things they later regret under the influence.”

“No!” Crowley is seized by the sudden urge to grab Aziraphale in case he tries to bolt out of some misdirected guilt. “No, absolutely not. I want to do this. Should’ve done it a while ago probably.” Before the conversation can get any more out of hand he hauls open the door to the restaurant and ushers Aziraphale inside.

The restaurant is a long and skinny building, like a shoebox tipped on its side. One side has a bar and a kitchen, the other a string of small tables tucked against the wall. It’s not empty, but it’s not crowded either—the young people, perhaps, have their dates a bit later than 6pm on a Saturday.

“Uh, hi,” Crowley says to the hostess, trying to figure out how people who go to restaurants all the time sound. “We’ve got a reservation for two?”

“Sure, what was the name?” The hostess scrolls through the tablet on her little stand, oblivious to Crowley’s nerves.

“Crowley. Er, Anthony Crowley.” He’s suddenly acutely aware of Aziraphale’s gaze fixed on him. He feels the question building before the hostess saves him.

“Alright, gentleman,” the hostess cuts through his self-absorption, “this way please.” The three of them make their way to the back of the restaurant, to one of the little tables. The hostess sets down a few menus, rattles off the specials, and then leaves them, sitting across from each other. Crowley grabs a menu, bracing himself for what he knows will be Aziraphale’s conversational opener.

“Anthony?” Aziraphale sounds delighted, as if he’s discovered some wonderful secret. “I didn’t know your name was Anthony.”

“Nobody really uses it.” Crowley tries very hard to concentrate on his menu. The place that Aziraphale (well, Crowley) picked is apparently Spanish-Portuguese, and most dish names are either not English or so sophisticated that Crowley has simply never heard of them. Oh God, Aziraphale is going to think he’s an idiot.

“But why?” asks Aziraphale. He hasn’t even touched his menu. “It’s a perfectly nice name.”

“I guess so.” Crowley wonders if he can get away with looking up whatever “Bacalao” on his phone under the table. “I started going by my last name when I was…I dunno twelve, thirteen—before I came out. And then I came out, and as soon as I turned eighteen I went to get all my documents changed. I was an edgy teenager fresh out of Catholic school, so when they asked me for a first name I said ‘Anthony’.” He can see the gears turning in Aziraphale’s head as he tries to put the pieces together. Then his face lights up.

“The patron saint of lost things. Or people.”

“Like I said, edgy teenager fresh out of Catholic school.” Crowley flips the menu over in case there’s any translations on the back. There aren’t. “Never really used it much, just kept going by Crowley.”

Aziraphale still has that softly surprised look on his face.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know. Six years, and I had no idea.”

“I mean, you had no reason to.”

“I suppose I just sort of assumed you were mononymous, like Molière or the Pope.”

“Pope Crowley? I’m sure that would go over well.”

“Well it’s not impossible, is it? Any man baptized Catholic technically qualifies, if I remember correctly.”

“Technically, yeah, but the Cardinals still have to elect you.” Crowley finally admits defeat and sets his menu down. “Do you have any idea what to order because I cannot read this menu to save my life.”

Aziraphale, of course, is full of ideas. He’s torn between the Bacalao—which turns out to be cod—and the veal stew, and has nothing but praise for the roasted fig salad. They end up ordering all three, with Crowley promising he’ll share whatever he doesn’t finish of the veal.

Crowley’s phone pings as the waiter is pouring their wine, and then pings three more times in the space of a minute. He pulls his phone out to silence it and sees that the pings are a string of emails forwarded from the consultants, because of course the consultants are sending out work emails during the weekend.

“Everything alright?” says Aziraphale, cutting through his reverie. “You, er, made a face.”

“Yeah, yeah, just—” Crowley shoves his phone back into his pocket “—work stuff.” And then, because complaining about work to Aziraphale is apparently hardwired into him: “There’s some kind of restructuring going on, and it looks like I might be the only one left standing at the end. Managed to impress head office’s outside consultants or something, and now they’re keeping me and laying off almost everyone else.” He decided not to mention that his continued employment is contingent on moving. Feels like a weird vibe for a first date.

“Oh my,” says Aziraphale, looking slightly startled at the corporate bloodbath. “That must be hard for your coworkers, to be out of a job so suddenly.”

“That’s the worst part—they don’t even know yet. I’m the only one who knows about any of this.” Crowley twists a finger around the stem of this wineglass. “I feel so bad about it y’know? Newt’s a nice guy. And now the Interns are getting shafted out of four week’s pay, not to mention it won’t look good on their resumes. I wasn’t even trying to impress the consultants either. Dumb luck on my part that I still even have a job.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale thoughtfully, “perhaps there’s something you can do to help?”

“I haven’t got any authority here—I’m not even a manager, technically, just working with two of them.”

“Perhaps there’s something you can do in…a different capacity?” asks Aziraphale. Crowley shrugs.

“Maybe. I dunno. It’s just so crazy to think about.” He takes another long sip of his wine. “Let’s not talk about work though, yeah? Too depressing.”

“We do talk about work a lot don’t we,” says Aziraphale sagely. Crowley hasn’t really thought about it until this moment but it’s true. They’ve spent the past six years meeting at Aziraphale’s workplace and discussing their various jobs, to the point where Aziraphale doesn’t know his first name, and he can barely recognize Aziraphale without come garish pastel apron. He starts to wonder, a little frantically, if they can actually actually make it through this without talking about work.

Fortunately, it’s at that moment that dinner arrives at the table, oversized plates crowded between the two of them. The veal stew turns out to be an excellent choice, as is the roasted fig salad. At Aziraphale’s urging he samples a bit of bacalao, and finds that he enjoys the fish just as much as he enjoys the quiet thrill of taking a food straight from Aziraphale’s plate. It’s not all that different from their usual lunches together, in some ways—sharing food and talking about Aziraphale’s latest book finds—but without the looming presence of supervisors and the time crunch of lunch breaks. Aziraphale seems more relaxed that Crowley’s ever seen him, away from the café’s watchful eye, and he realizes that he, too, feels better than he has in weeks, if not months. It’s not the loopy euphoria of Anathema’s tea or the sharp relief of keeping his job but something deeper, a calm that reaches to his core, so long as he doesn’t think too hard about everything else going on in his life outside of this little bubble.

Their waitress offers the dessert menu as the last of the dinner plates are cleared. Aziraphale leans across the table, nearly conspiratorial in his glee.

“Shall we?” he asks, with a little wiggle of excitement, and Crowley can’t stifle his smile.

Dessert ends up being a strawberry-rhubarb tart with basil ice cream. It’s mostly for Aziraphale, but Crowley obligingly tries a few bites in between sips of his cava. The rhubarb is bright and tart, and the basil ice cream is better than expected. The best part though is the look of rapture on Aziraphale’s face as he chases down the last few crumbs with his fork.

“I’m so glad this was on the menu. It’s all seasonal, you know, and when I was last here it was winter—no strawberries around then of course.”

“Mm,” Crowley concurs, trying not to settle too deeply into his chair. The sleepiness the follows a good meal is starting to pull him in, some combination of alcohol and a rich dinner. Aziraphale by this point seems happy enough to shoulder most of the conversation, nudged along by the occasional response from Crowley, who finds himself more than content to watch and listen. The warm restaurant lights give Aziraphale an almost ethereal glow, haloed by the soft pendent lighting. The only thing that interrupts his reverie is the appearance of the cheque, which Crowley intercepts before Aziraphale can get to it.

“I’ll get it,” he says, tucking his credit card^[2]

into the leatherette folder.

“Oh! You don’t have to.” Aziraphale sounds slightly overwhelmed. “I assumed that we would go Dutch.”

“I know,” says Crowley. “But I’m the one who asked. And besides, I’ve seen the state of that Heaven’s Gate tip jar.” Perhaps talking about money is a little uncouth on a first date, but it has been six years. And besides, it’s also true. True enough to make Aziraphale relax back into his chair.

“Fair enough I suppose. But only if you let me pay part of the next one.”

Something in Crowley’s heart catches on that phrase, “the next one,” and he nearly drops his credit card in the dregs of the basil ice cream. Aziraphale seems completely unperturbed by his own assumption that there will be a next one, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Of course there will a next one, another meal shared not at the café but somewhere else entirely, just the two of them. Perhaps, Crowley thinks idly as they head back out into the night, there might be more than one, multiple future meetings spanning over weeks and months, sharing food and conversation and maybe even more together.

Unless, of course, he moves to California.

¹ Probably. ^{[return to text]}

² Only slightly bent from its earlier stint as an emergency printer scalpel. ^{[return to text]}