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“Well? What do you think?” Aziraphale pulled a coin out of thin air — or would have done so, only he fumbled it. The coin ended up on the bookshop floor instead.
Crowley miracled the coin into his pocket. He’d glue it to the pavement later on. For the moment, he had an abominable (but distractingly adorable) ethereal stage magician to cope with.
He groaned — unnecessarily dramatically, it could be argued, but then again, Aziraphale’s magic act was most definitely unnecessarily dramatic, so it was only fair. “What I think is, this is what you get up to while I’m asleep? Stage magic? Bad stage magic, at that? Remind me never to nap for a century again.”
Aziraphale’s eyes gleamed, irritatingly unfazed. “With pleasure, dear boy. Never nap for a century again, please.”
“Ergh.”
“I do apologize, though, Crowley. You are quite right to be annoyed, I know that. I really oughtn’t to have gone and taken that class while you were sleeping.”
“... Huh?” Crowley was briefly flabbergasted. He had expected the angel to argue and continue showing off his mortifyingly subpar sleight-of-hand skills. He had certainly not expected such ready agreement.
Aziraphale waited patiently for Crowley to finish floundering. After a bit the demon pulled himself together enough to manage a somewhat garbled, “I mean, yeah, ‘course. I mean, of course not. I mean, that’s what I said. You shouldn’t’ve done it.”
“Indeed. It was entirely unpardonable of me.”
“Erm. Yeah?” Now that the initial shock had mostly worn off, Aziraphale’s contrition was starting to make Crowley distinctly nervous.
“I am sorry.”
“Angel…”
“I really ought to have taken you with me to the class.”
“... You what?” Crowley did a double take. “No, you bloody well ought not! Bad enough you made a fool of yourself, and me by association. No way on Earth or any other plane of existence I’d’ve let you drag me along.”
“Oh, come now. I think you would have liked Johnny. He called me a pudding-head, do you know.”
Crowley leaned forward, momentarily interested, then remembered he was busy being annoyed. “He was right, if he was able to dupe you into this rubbish.”
“He invented the pay toilet,” Aziraphale coaxed.
“Well, he should have waited for me to finish napping first!” Crowley had really been quite peeved when he realized just how many evil inventions humanity had come up with during his snooze. “If he had, I could’ve taken credit for that one.”
Some twitch of Aziraphale’s face caught Crowley’s attention. He frowned, suddenly suspicious. “Hang on. Aziraphale? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Something,” Crowley countered.
“Er.” Aziraphale fidgeted. “Are you quite sure you didn’t claim credit for that one?”
“The pay toilet? One hundred percent sure, yep.”
“Are you quite sure?”
Crowley’s suspicion was growing. He wasn’t certain yet exactly what he was suspicious about, but he knew that he was very suspicious about it. “What are you on about? Hell’s paperwork isn’t exactly the kind you can do without noticing. Definitely not in your sleep.”
“Ah.”
“Aziraphale?”
“Er.” The angel looked shifty. “Well. If you look back in Hell’s paperwork records, there is a chance you may find that you did claim credit for the pay toilet.”
Crowley stared.
“And… ah. Possibly for a few other things that happened during the nineteenth century as well. All dreadfully demonic, of course.”
Crowley continued to stare.
“I do wish you wouldn’t stare so, my dear,” Aziraphale chided. “You know, it’s very rude.”
Crowley carried on staring, because if it was rude, he figured that meant it was appropriate demonic activity. “Aziraphale. Angel.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, disbelievingly. “Are you trying to tell me that you filed my paperwork while I was asleep?”
“Ah. Perhaps. Er. I wasn’t precisely trying to tell you. But yes, I may have done.”
“Ngk,” Crowley commented.
Aziraphale looked embarrassed. He compensated by saying, in a rather ineffectual attempt at crushing haughtiness, “In my defense, I couldn’t exactly report back to Heaven on my thwarting successes if there was no infernal activity to thwart, could I? I simply had no choice in the matter.”
There was a pause.
“Besides, there was the Arrangement. I was worried Hell might notice if they didn’t get any reports from you for so long. I didn’t know when you’d wake up.”
Another long moment of silence elapsed, in which Crowley tried to come to terms with the fact that Aziraphale had spent half a century covering his back while the demon practiced Sloth, with the pair of them not even on speaking terms.
With an effort, Crowley shook the ridiculously warm and fuzzy feeling away, and pulled himself together once again. “Right. So… which of our sides won the nineteenth century, then? Figured Heaven pulled way ahead on the celestial scoreboard. Never checked.”
“I fear it was very much a stalemate,” Aziraphale replied. All things considered, his voice, expression, and demeanor were really quite impressively solemn. “My adversary was extremely wily. You know how it is. I had my work cut out just to keep you in check. But be not afraid, the forces of Good made great strides as well. Your side may have the pay toilet, but we have the typewriter.”
Being at a loss as to whether the most appropriate course of action was to laugh, moan, continue staring, or perhaps even express appreciation (that last was, of course, immediately off the table almost before he’d thought of it), Crowley opted instead for saying petulantly, “Not fair your lot got the typewriter. What makes it yours?”
“The typewriter facilitates communication! And productivity! And— and—”
“And books?” Crowley suggested, grinning.
“Well, yes. And books.”
“Thought so.” Crowley leaned against a bookshelf. “’S a great tool for propaganda, y’know. Could just as easily’ve been mine.”
“Do you think so?” Aziraphale beamed, and some deep-seated intuition let Crowley know that he’d sown the seeds of his own destruction, even before the next words came out of the principality’s mouth. “Well then. It really is a pity you went to sleep for a century, now isn’t it, dear? You missed out on meeting John Maskelyne, and you missed out on trying to claim the typewriter. Such a terrible shame.”
Crowley had enough experience to know when he was thwarted. He made a fearsome face, sighed, and surrendered. “Fine. I won’t do it again. Not for a little while, at least. And if I do, I’ll talk to you about it first.”
Aziraphale looked genuinely pleased by this assurance. Then he said, “Have you ever thought about finding a rabbit in your hat?”
“I have not,” Crowley growled, “and I do not intend to.”
Aziraphale’s eyes widened, and his face brightened even further, this time just a shade too radiantly for the expression to conceivably be anything other than carefully calculated for maximum angelic bastard effect. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “it may be too late for the typewriter, but not for the magic! Why, I can teach you! Starting right this minute, if you like!”
Crowley choked.
Aziraphale shot him an offended glance. “There’s no need for you to be like that, Crowley. It wouldn’t be quite the same as Johnny’s excellent tutelage, of course, but I know I have one of his books somewhere. And I am certain we could find an audience with no trouble, if we look. We could even schedule an official show. Not in the bookshop, of course, that might bring in customers. But at the park, perhaps.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not, and I don’t want to know.”
“Quite serious!” Aziraphale smiled, thoughtfully enough that Crowley was rather afraid that the angel was, in fact, actually being somewhat serious. “Well, if you are going to be so stubborn about it, I suppose I shall just have to practice the art by myself. Perhaps I’ll perform at a children’s birthday party someday.”
Crowley buried his face in his hands. “Not ‘til the end of the world, you won’t. At least not while I’m on the same continent. It’s humiliating enough here in the bookshop, just the two of us. I flat-out refuse to be seen in public with you behaving like a— like a—” He couldn’t think of an insulting enough word, so he came to a lame halt.
“Like a pudding-head?” Aziraphale supplied.
“Yeah. That.”
“I do like pudding.”
“We could go get some,” Crowley proposed. “If you promise not to find any coins in people’s ears. Or noses. Or anywhere else.”
Aziraphale pouted. “If you insist.”
On the way to the Bentley, he discovered a checker behind Crowley’s sunglasses. The trick was actually well-executed this time. This did not prevent Crowley from removing said sunglasses in order to direct a proper demonic glare at his companion as they entered the vehicle.
“It’s not a coin,” Aziraphale pointed out, with an excessively innocent tilt of the head. He settled into the passenger seat.
“Pudding-head,” Crowley muttered, and started the car.