Work Text:
“…and so, in short, I expect those reports on my desk filled out in full by – “ Gabriel stopped talking. “Aziraphale? Are you listening?”
Aziraphale tried to straighten up his already perfect posture by another few inches. “Yes,” he said, resisting the urge to rub the edges of his vest between his fingers. Tucking his hands behind his back, he continued, cutting off Gabriel’s next question. “Reports. On your desk by Monday?” he hazarded a guess.
“Monday will do nicely,” Gabriel said with a smile on his face. “Now, why don’t you head on back to Earth since you’re so eager to get started, hmm?”
He didn’t set a deadline yet, Aziraphale groaned internally as he went through the motions of thanking Gabriel and transporting himself back to Soho. Why can’t I just do things right?
Inside the bookstore, it was bright and cheerful and entirely too noisy. The quiet classical music Aziraphale had left playing when he was summoned to Heaven was jangling against his senses, and the cozy lamplight was flooding his eyes. Feeling a bit like he was standing in the middle of one of the underground clubs Crowley had enjoyed in the sixties, Aziraphale bit back a moan. It was loud so loud why so loud and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Angel?”
The knock at the door that accompanied the question would have been entirely innocuous under most circumstances but now it scraped along the back of Aziraphale’s neck like a set of claws. “What is it?” he asked, trying not to let the strain he was feeling slip through into his voice.
Crowley opened the door, the jingle of the bell adding to the cacophony of noise in Aziraphale’s head. “Figured I’d stop by for a bit,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “See if you wanted any company?”
“Why would I want that?” Aziraphale asked peevishly, only just able to keep himself from snapping.
Crowley raised an eyebrow above the frame of his sunglasses. “Today’s your annual check-in with Heaven.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. The added information: why does he keep track of that? Does he care? Why would he care? I didn’t know he cares. Why does he keep track of that??? landed on top of the stack of sensation and confusion in his mind. He could feel himself coming close to the breaking point; all he needed was a single tipping point, one pebble to start the avalanche.
“ – gel? Oi, Aziraphale!”
Crowley’s shout (normally nothing much, just slightly above speaking volume) was deafening. Almost without thinking, Aziraphale clamped his hands over his ears. It helped reduce the noise from but everything still felt loudloudloud toomuchtoomuch and he wanted to scream except that wouldn’t do any good. Instead he groaned, feeling the noise vibrate up through his vocal cords. It helped, was slightly grounding, but it wasn’t enough, not even close.
Keeping his hands tucked over his ears, Aziraphale took a staggering step towards the sofa and then another. He needed to sit down, needed to curl up in a ball and block out all the bad sounds and light and noise. He couldn’t do that unless he was on the sofa, though, so step by step he made it over there. He didn’t realize until he was seated that Crowley had followed him.
“Angel, can you – can you tell me what’s wrong?” the demon asked, his normally laid-back voice on edge. “Are you okay?” Crowley’s hands fluttered nervously at his sides, and Aziraphale watched them, the movement oddly calming.
“Noise,” the angel finally managed to get out.
Crowley’s left hand moved in a familiar swoop and the music ceased as well as the sound of traffic from outside the bookshop. Aziraphale almost moaned in relief. It was so quiet now, the noise in his head dulling significantly.
“Thank you,” he managed to get out.
Above his head, Crowley chuckled. “Only you would think to thank someone in the midst of a meltdown, angel.”
Aziraphale stiffened. Meltdowns, that’s what the other angels had called them. They had told him to go away, find somewhere else to be, told him to sequester himself ostensibly for his own good but really so they wouldn’t have to deal with him. It was a word that meant bad, wrong, unwanted. Aziraphale moved his hands away from his ears and wrapped them around himself, squeezing tight as he closed his eyes. Meltdowns were bad, and he only had them when he was doing something wrong.
“Oh shit,” Crowley murmured somewhere far away, “bad word,” and then, “hey, angel, can you hear me?”
Aziraphale managed a small, shaky nod.
“Can I sit next to you?”
Another nod, and the couch cushions moved with the weight of another person next to him.
“Can I touch you?”
Aziraphale hesitated and then shook his head. A light touch would feel bad, like it was crawling along his skin and stinging as it went. He tried folding his arms even closer to his body, like he could hold himself the way he wanted another person to hold him.
There was a pause from beside him and then: “Do you want to be squeezed?”
Aziraphale would have felt shocked but he couldn’t process that right now so instead he just nodded again.
“Okay,” Crowley said quietly. “Now, I’m going to try something so, uh, don’t worry, okay?”
Another nod. Aziraphale couldn’t have worried about anything if he’d wanted to at the moment.
Crowley’s presence shifted at his side and then it shrank and changed. Aziraphale opened one eye and saw a large black snake coiled where Crowley had just been. It hissed and nosed at the air beside Aziraphale’s hand.
Guessing what the snake was going to attempt to do, Aziraphale nodded again and sat back slightly. The snake slithered into his lap and then up around his rib cage and onto his shoulder. It felt good, heavy enough that it pressed into Aziraphale’s skin. When the snake was positioned where it wanted to be, it hissed one more time and began to squeeze gently.
It was like a hug, only it was the most all-encompassing hug Aziraphale had ever felt. He breathed deeply. The stream of noise in his head had faded to a trickle and he felt almost relaxed. “Thank you,” he whispered into the snake’s scales. It hissed, almost sounding self-satisfied.
They stayed like that for a while, minutes or hours Aziraphale couldn’t tell, and then finally he breathed deeply one last time. “You can shift back now, darling,” he told the snake.
Hissing, it slithered back to the cushion beside him and turned back into the demonic approximation of a man it had been before. “Hey,” Crowley said quietly. “Good to see you’re back.”
Aziraphale looked down, hands fluttering at the hem of his vest. “I’m so sorry you had to see that,” he apologized. “It was extremely uncouth of me and honestly – “
“Hey, no, that wasn’t what I meant,” Crowley protested. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just meant that it’s nice. To see you not having a meltdown.”
That word again… Aziraphale felt a sudden flash of annoyance. “That wasn’t what happened,” he said coldly.
“Well, what do you want to call it?” Crowley responded.
“A meltdown is when I lash out, have a temper tantrum, make everyone else’s lives worse with my violent temper,” Aziraphale continued, having barely heard Crowley’s question. “I don’t do that anymore.” He scowled at nothing in particular. “I got overwhelmed today, that’s all that happened.”
Crowley shrugged. “Okay.”
Aziraphale looked at Crowley. “Really?” he asked. “I mean, I was awfully – “
“You were nothing of the sort,” Crowley interrupted.
“I just snapped at you!” Aziraphale protested.
“You got overwhelmed,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale had the distinct impression that he was being winked at through the demon’s sunglasses.
“Well, all right then,” Aziraphale sighed. “As long as you don’t mind.”
Crowley took a long breath and a longer pause. “I don’t mind,” he said with finality, hidden depths lurking in his words.
Aziraphale looked around, taking in his bookshop. It was back to being the warm, cosy place he knew. Outside, the sky was dark and inside there was welcoming light in the form of the lamp in the corner. He breathed in deeply, taking in the smell of old books and the faintest hint of sulfur. He looked over at Crowley. “Would you care to stay for a drink?”
Slipping off his sunglasses, Crowley smiled affectionately at him. “Absolutely, angel.”