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It was his own fault, of course. Aziraphale probably had something with that whole ‘evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction’ thing he was on about, but dammit this time Crowley had not been scheming or even wiling. He had been being perfectly thoughtful thank you, and the blasted mobile had... it had...
It had gone a bit wrong, is what.
Not that he minded entirely. But it was a lot, and Crowley was having feelings about it, and he was not used to being allowed to have feelings about things and it was just A Lot, he thought.
His mobile dinged yet again just as he was getting off to sleep. I should ask you to dinner the next time you’re here. There’s a lovely Indian place that’s just opened up and I’d very much like to try them out, but it’s no fun without you.
Crowley groaned, shoved his head under a pillow, thought better of it, and shoved his mobile under a pillow instead.
The thing was, it was the twenty-first century, now. And it was just the two of them, and there had been one too many times when he couldn’t get hold of Aziraphale-- or when Aziraphale couldn’t get hold of him-- because the angel was stuck in the technological middle ages, for the love of Belial.
It had been one thing when they were, at least nominally, backed up by their factions. It was a different thing entirely now that they were each other’s only possible backup.
So, solution! Crowley got Aziraphale a mobile.
He’d looked at Apple devices, but decided it was a little too on-the-nose even for him. No, a nice simple mobile for starters, talk and text and not too much else. (The very nice young woman at the counter had asked if he was getting it for an older relative and he had frozen for a moment while the words well he’s 6024 but only because nobody was counting before that and also we prefer not to get into the idea of exactly what ‘relative’ means here had barrelled toward his lips. He finally managed a curt “Just a bit technophobic” and the young woman nodded understandingly.)
He’d put in his own number, then Book Girl’s, Tracy’s, and several local restaurants. Then he’d handed it over, wrapped up in a bow, and braced himself for the inevitable talking-Aziraphale-into-something-new discussion.
And been very surprised when Aziraphale, bastard that he was, had opened it with every evidence of delight. “Oh! So I can send you textual messages!”
“Texts, angel. Just call them texts and you knew that, didn’t you?”
Aziraphale beamed at him. And just what the hell was he supposed to say to that?
ding! It was quieter through several pillows, but Crowley still fished it out to look. Because he had to. Because he knew it wasn’t important, but the thing was, always, that it might be.
I found the chocolates you left, you wily thing.
Crowley groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.
ding! He pulled off the pillow to look. I promise I shall save you some.
Okay, fine. Fine. This was fine. He just needed to be reasonable and write back. Thx angel looking forward to it
He looked at the screen for another second and tapped out, gonna nap now
Oh! Of course! I shall leave you alone to sleep, my dear.
Thank Someone for that, anyway. Crowley flopped back onto the bed.
ding!
Don’t sleep too long! Remember we’re going to the theatre tomorrow evening.
He watched, horrified, as a reminder popped up that said ‘Take Aziraphale to the theatre, 4:00 pm tomorrow’ and the alarm opened itself and set itself for two.
Crowley tossed his mobile across the room.
The problem, he decided later, was that he had handed a fairly stupid device to an extremely smart angel. He’d bought the mobile for the fussy bowtied Aziraphale who wore the same coat for nearly two centuries and refused to give up his ancient bakelite monstrosity of a landline.
But the mobile had actually been received by the clever, precise Aziraphale who simply upgraded or recoded his lumbering, prehistoric beige beast of a computer until it did anything he wanted just because he wanted it to.
Which meant in practice that very shortly after he’d handed off the mobile, he’d started getting texts whenever Aziraphale wanted to tell him something. A few while they were together (and at no point had Crowley seen the mobile in the angel’s hands or even general vicinity) pointed toward the inescapable conclusion that Aziraphale didn’t even actually have to type anything.
And when he’d typed back a response to one of them, there had been a cheery ‘bing-bong!’ from an entirely different part of the shop and Aziraphale had beamed at him and told him that Oh, yes, ice cream was a fabulous idea!
Crowley listened to the silence and tried to go back to sleep.
Now he wasn’t sure whether Aziraphale actually had done all of this deliberately, or whether the mobile just behaved that way because he believed that it should, but...
Well...
He had never known how many times a day Aziraphale thought about him, before.
He would never have thought to ask.
The silence continued on, feeling more and more oppressive.
He hoisted himself out of bed to retrieve his mobile. Because even with the constant ding! it turned out that knowing how often his angel thought of him every day was less annoying than not knowing.
If this is working it won’t wake you, but you’ll see it when you get up.
Really if you just tell me I will be silent for you. I promise you won’t miss an important message!
Crowley smiled, and drifted off to sleep watching words write themselves silently across his screen.