Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Aziraphale sat at his desk, pretending to read. His eyes were cast towards the pages of the book in front of him, but he wasn’t really seeing them at all. Every so often he turned a page just to keep up appearances (he’d been called out for not properly reading in the past, and he really didn’t want to be caught this time). His reading glasses were perched on his nose, and he looked every bit the scholar. But his gaze kept drifting to his friend on the sofa.
Crowley was as he often was, sprawled upside down on the sofa and scrolling through his phone, one foot gently swaying back and forth, his longish hair sweeping the floor. He had started growing it out after Aziraphale made a comment about preferring it longer. He hadn’t made it an actual request, but Crowley enjoyed humoring the angel’s whims, even if Aziraphale never seemed to notice.
Aziraphale noticed. Crowley hadn’t exactly been subtle, showing up with his hair slightly longer the day after Aziraphale had made the comment. Not long enough to be noticeable to the humans, but Aziraphale saw right away. Each day, Crowley lengthened his hair subtly, until now it was long enough to brush the dusty carpet as he sprawled upside down on the sofa.
So Aziraphale continued pretending to read and Crowley pretended to be distracted by his phone and now it was almost lunch time. With a sigh that wasn’t quite not relief, Aziraphale closed his book and looked up in earnest. “Fancy a spot of lunch?” he asked the demon on his sofa.
Crowley sat up immediately, disappeared his phone, and smiled. “Always, Angel! Whatever you want!”
I want YOU , they each thought about the other, individually schooling their faces to hide the thought.
Aziraphale moved to stand up, but froze mid-action. Crowley was suddenly standing ramrod straight, eyes big and mouth agape. “What. Was. That?”
They had both felt a wave, a pulse, a ripple of something , moving through them and the bookshop and beyond. It left a lingering tingle, not necessarily uncomfortable but not necessarily comfortable either.
Aziraphale sat back down, looking confused and thoughtful. Glancing up at Crowley, he spoke slowly. “I’m not sure… You felt that too, though?”
“Of course I did! What the bloody hell was it?! It absolutely REEKED of your side!”
“No, no, can’t be. I could definitely feel the occult in that.”
“Angel, my side doesn’t send out waves of lo-- whatever that was.”
“Well MY side isn’t exactly loving either, if you hadn’t noticed. They tried to execute me!”
Crowley flopped down with a huff. “Fair point,” he muttered.
All thoughts of going out to lunch were dismissed, though Aziraphale rarely forgot a meal. “Shall we order takeaway and see what we can come up with?”
Crowley was glaring at the floor. He didn’t like being confused. He had enough of being confused during Armageddon. There’s just God, moving in mysterious ways and not talking to any of us! He was absolutely not hungry, but it never occurred to him to deny the Angel anything, especially when it came to food. Forcing a smile and looking Aziraphale in the eyes, he responded in the affirmative. His fussing over menus and ordering will give me some time to process this, he thought. He didn’t know Aziraphale was thinking the same thing.
By the time food was ordered, their respective hearts had slowed to a more reasonable tempo. They sat in thoughtful silence until Aziraphale heard the knock at the door and went to answer it. “Uh, Crowley? Could you come here for a moment?” As Crowley rounded the corner, he caught a glimpse of what was happening at the door. Aziraphale looked a combination of wary and confused. He stood slightly back from the open door as the delivery kid gazed at him, obviously star struck and mooning.
Crowley walked quickly to Aziraphale’s side at the door, feeling a familiar tightening of protectiveness and jealousy in his middle. However, when he reached his Angel and looked out at the street, he saw what had really caught Aziraphale’s gaze. People up and down the block were grouped off into couples. It wasn’t unusual to see couples in love in SoHo, but it was unusual to see every single person on the block paired up and making heart eyes at each other. He could practically taste the lust in the air. No, he corrected himself. Not lust. What is this? “Right,” he said out loud. “So… that’s a thing…” He swiftly grabbed the takeaway, shut the door in the delivery kid’s face, and grabbed Aziraphale’s wrist to drag him back to the back room. He miracled a tip into the kid’s pocket, but nothing too generous. Wave of lust/love/whatever or not, I’m not rewarding him for looking at MY Angel that way!
The unexpected touch jolted Aziraphale out of his frozen state, but he didn’t resist as he was dragged along behind the demon. When they reached the back room, Crowley dropped his wrist and moved to set the food out on the coffee table. He gestured vaguely in the direction of the food and collapsed on the sofa with a dramatic sigh. “Please, Angel, eat. We gotta figure this out. Whatever it was we felt, the humans obviously did too. So now we have to solve this, right?” He was hoping the angel would tell him that it wasn’t their department, but Aziraphale didn’t give an immediate answer.
Aziraphale sat down next to him, miracled up two plates and started to fill his own. He didn’t mention it when Crowley made no move to do the same. The demon rarely ate as it was, and it was easy to believe that what they had just witnessed outside would take away any appetite he might have had. Aziraphale wasn’t hungry himself, but the ritual of selecting his portions and preparing to eat calmed him.
“Right,” Crowley started after the angel was settled. “At the risk of repeating myself, what the bloody hell was that?! You felt that too, right? All those humans out there, fawning over each other? It tasted like that wave we felt earlier, didn’t it?”
Aziraphale chewed thoughtfully, collecting his thoughts before answering. “I certainly felt something. Something not human. However, it didn’t feel celestial out there. Nor occult. I’m not sure what it was, but you’re right. We have to figure this out. Someone is playing with unnatural forces here, and it could get dangerous if left unchecked.”
Crowley groaned, not at all dramatically, while tossing his head back and shouting at the ceiling. “Can’t we get just one fucking break?! We already saved the world once this year! We deserve a vacation!” Aziraphale clucked in sympathy, and didn’t chastise him for his language.