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Crowley was a few hours into a satisfyingly dark and dreamless sleep when he was shaken awake by a hand on his shoulder.
“Meurfhphhhhhhhhhhh,” he said.
“Good morning, Crowley,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley pulled up his sleeping mask and creaked one eye open. Sure enough, there the angel was, staring down at him. It was so good to see his face after months apart that Crowley allowed himself a tiny moment to simply bask (or whatever the demonic equivalent was). Yes, all right, they’d gone the occasional century without interacting, but that had been before. Now it was—well, it was no way to live, especially in times like these, and wasn’t that what the two of them were all about now? Living?
“Oh,” he said casually. “’S you.”
“It is,” Aziraphale confirmed gravely.
“Is it July, then? How’s the world?” Something about the angel’s tone made him suddenly nervous. “Have the humans made any headway on the virus? Oh, bloody hell, has it gotten worse—”
“No, no,” Aziraphale said, looking abashed. “It’s, er, a bit sooner.”
Crowley allowed his other eye to squint open. “How much?”
“May second,” Aziraphale said with great dignity to the lamp left of Crowley’s head. (Magnificent demonic invention, the bedside lamp. Sowed discord between bedfellows by giving one the power to stay up reading and deprive the other of a good night’s zzz’s. Granted, Crowley had never had a bedfellow before, save for a few nights over the millennia where he and Aziraphale had shared in a pinch, and it had been all candles back then, but he still had a bedside lamp on either side of his bed, for reasons he cared not to examine.)
For other reasons he cared not to examine, Crowley felt a surge of profound gladness at this calendar news. He decided to hide it by taking the piss out of his beloved eternal companion.
“May second?? What happened to not breaking the rules?” He put on fancy, angel-ish tones for the last four words.
“Well, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the rules don’t quite apply to us. After all, we cannot get sick. And I was listening to the radio earlier, and the host said something about the importance of checking in on the mental health of your loved ones, as opposed to focusing merely on the physical. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you here, all alone and unhappy.”
“I said bored. Not unhappy. Bored’s a whole different thing.”
“And so here I am,” Aziraphale finished with an abashed, sweet smile. “Ready to hunker down with you for the foreseeable future, if you’ll have me.”
It wasn’t even remotely a question. Crowley paused only for the sake of his dignity.
“Ahhh, all right then,” he capitulated.
Aziraphale beamed. “Wonderful! Now, do go back to sleep if you wish. Don’t let me intrude. I’ll let you know when we’ve hit June, if you like.”
Crowley considered the bedside lamp on the unoccupied side of his bed, and wondered how many books Aziraphale had brought with him. Loads, probably. At least a library and a half.
“No, no, I’m up,” he said instead, and tossed the sleeping mask to the floor. Aziraphale tutted and picked it up. Crowley reached for his robe, pulling it on over his black silky pyjamas. “Fancy breakfast? I don’t have any food, as it were, but I’m sure we can think of something.”
“Er, as it happens, that won’t be necessary—”
They stepped together out into Crowley’s sitting room, and Crowley discovered that every available surface was covered in brightly colored cakes. And that was saying something, since Aziraphale had miracled up at least a dozen more tables than were normally there, all covered in quaint gingham cloths and gorgeously decorated baked goods. It was like stepping into the opening credits of The Great British Bake-Off. Crowley half-expected Mary Berry to jump out from behind a plant.
It was hell for the flat’s aesthetic.
“I may have gone a tad overboard,” said Aziraphale.
“Nahhh,” said Crowley, who wasn’t a particular fan of cake under normal circumstances. An angel baking—well, those weren’t normal circumstances, were they? Exactly.
“Oh, good,” Aziraphale said glowingly. He gestured to a little table by the window, perfectly set for breakfast, that Crowley was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Tuck in.”
“I’m not sure where to start, if I’m honest.”
“Obviously I’m biased, but I am partial to the angel food cake.”
“Oh, yeah. That looks good—”
“Then again, if you want coffee, there’s a marvelous coffee cake that will accompany it to perfection on Table 7—”
“You’ve numbered the tables?”
“Or if you’re feeling the desire for a more traditional breakfast, I recently perfected the art of the fluffy pancake. Not quite a cake, I know, but when I’m cooped up, I do get a bit unruly.”
“Angel?”
“Hmm?”
Having you here is infinite cakes to me made no sense and, frankly, didn’t really jive with the air of effortless cool that Crowley strove to always maintain. Instead, he said, “Surprise me.”
Aziraphale’s eyes lit up.
And so it was that Crowley spent the second day of May not lost in the numb depths of a fathomless slumber, but eating slices of every single cake Aziraphale had brought over. (And the unruly pancakes. It was true: they were fluffy perfection, like little clouds from the version of heaven that humans believed in. Crowley was forced, for the first time in six thousand years, to reconsider his stance on breakfast.)
The whole situation was a pretty thinly veiled excuse for Aziraphale to steal portions off Crowley’s plate while they talked animatedly about all the little nothings they hadn’t been able to share with each other while they were apart. Occasionally, their forks collided on the plate, letting out soft clangs like music.
There were worse ways to spend a time like this, Crowley reasoned. In fact, try as he might, he couldn’t think of a better one.