Chapter Text
Crowley had lied. Which, considering that he was a demon, wasn’t all that surprising. What was surprising was that he hadn’t meant to. He really had thought, however naively, that Heaven and Hell would back off after their little performance, and at least leave them alone for a couple hundred years before trying anything. He’d even told Aziraphale as much, and the angel had believed him.
A couple hundred years was, as it turned out, a terrible estimate. In reality, they’d only had the Earth to themselves for just under a week — six days and nineteen hours — when someone had knocked on the door to the bookstore. Three quick knocks in succession. Aziraphale had known who it was without as much as looking through the peephole.
He’d called Crowley, who hadn’t picked up.
“We know you’re in there, Aziraphale,” Gabriel’s voice had been clear through the thick wood of the door. “We just want to talk.”
Oh, I’m sure you do, Aziraphale had thought, as he tried, in vain, to fit a fifth book into his bag. Awful lot of talking you did last time.
Crowley had been overly optimistic with all his ideas of being left alone, but luckily Aziraphale considered himself a realist. And he’d had a plan.
Less luckily, this plan involved Crowley and his death-trap of a car.
When he’d come back to the bookstore after almost-Armageddon, the first thing Aziraphale had done was clear the way to the back door (or rather, it was the second thing he’d done, right after a mildly embarrassing celebratory dance when he discovered that the store was still intact). The door was meant for deliveries, though he’d never needed it (Aziraphale took a lot of pride in his collection, which had been slowly and meticulously acquired over many centuries, not ordered online). Now, it served as an escape route on the basis that, theoretically, one could just about fit a Bentley into the space between the buildings and drive away without anyone noticing.
That was, of course, if the owner of said Bentley would pick up the damn phone.
“Listen, Aziraphale.” Gabriel had tried to put on his most diplomatic voice, though it only thinly veiled the rage beneath it. “Just open up.”
Aziraphale had tried the phone again. “Come on, Crowley,” he mumbled.
Still nothing.
“Last chance,” Gabriel had yelled, dropping the act.
Last chance, yes. Aziraphale figured he’d need to use the backdoor anyway — it was the only other way out — maybe he could make a run for it, or catch a bus or a cab or something , anything really, other than facing Gabriel and the angels.
He’d only just opened the door when a black car pulled into the courtyard, Under Pressure blaring from the speakers.
Crowley leaned over the passenger seat and threw open the door. “Get in, angel.”
That didn’t need saying twice. Aziraphale hauled his bag into the back, noting only briefly the sound of crashing inside the shop, and got into the passenger seat. “Drive.”
And Crowley obeyed, without so much as a sarcastic comment.
They’d driven in silence (and at 190 mph) for the better part of an hour, which was unusual for them. Aziraphale almost always had something to say, whether it was a complaint about a persistent customer or praise for some cafe he’d been to — and even when he ran out of conversational topics, Crowley usually had a question ready to keep him going. But not today. Something was different about Crowley’s whole demeanour, like he was scared, properly scared, of something. It didn’t take much imagination to think of what.
The angel broke the silence first, with a question he’d been pondering for the past fifteen minutes. “Where exactly are we going?”
Crowley had gestured vaguely towards the road ahead, which was taking them out of the city, towards the countryside. “I know a place,” he’d said. “Somewhere to lay low for a while.”
“And where might this place be?” Aziraphale inquired. Not that it mattered much, as long as it was sufficiently far away, but the silence bothered him.
“’S in the mountains.”
“Right.”
“And angel?”
“Yes?”
“No more miracles,” he said. “Just in case they— they can track us, or something.”
And then they’d been quiet again. Occasionally, if a particularly good song came on, Crowley would sing along under his breath, and Aziraphale would try his best to enjoy it, guitar solos and everything but, aside from that, the next three hours were perfectly silent.
The landscape was beautiful, though, and Aziraphale quickly got lost in the grandeur of it. To think that none of this would have existed anymore if they — or rather if Adam — hadn’t saved it was rather overwhelming. It felt ridiculous that it had only been a week. It was one of those things, like vacation or a nice dream, that seemed simultaneously to have happened forever ago and just yesterday.
It was dark by the time they reached the mountains Crowley had been talking about, and they’d cycled through the Best of Queen album nearly eight times when the Bentley finally pulled up to a small cottage.
Aziraphale didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. It was… well, quaint was one word for it. The cottage was tiny, made of brick walls and a straw roof, covered almost entirely in ivy and shaded by a huge tree. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place he could imagine Crowley staying at.
Oh well, he thought, desperate times…
And now there they were, Crowley lounging on the couch — one leg hanging over the back, the other stretched out on the cushions, head dangling over the side a few inches from the floor — and Aziraphale quietly judging the bookcase from a leather chair a few meters away.
“So,” the demon said, his tone a little lighter than it had been in the car. “You don’t sleep, do you?”
Aziraphale shook his head. He’d tried it once or twice, but he couldn’t say he cared for it — it just seemed like a waste of time.
“Well, good,” Crowley stretched. “There’s only one bedroom.” He nodded towards a door at the far end of the room. Besides that, there was a small bathroom, a kitchen and the living room they were currently sitting in.
“It’s all yours,” Aziraphale assured him. Then, after a moment, “why do you have four copies of Twilight?”
“Not mine.”
“Whose are they then?” He asked. “Crowley, what is this place?”
The demon sat up. It was hard to tell what he was feeling behind those damn glasses, but Aziraphale sensed it was something severe. “It’s a place for us to stay, okay?” He spoke softly, exhausted. “I rented it a couple days before… everything. Just in case.”
Aziraphale nodded. He’d considered it too, getting a little place somewhere and riding it out. But he hadn’t done it, for a number of reasons.
They sat in silence, while Crowley restlessly rolled his shoulders and flexed the muscles in his back, almost as if they hurt.
They’d had a long day, and even though Aziraphale didn’t sleep, he could do with 8 hours of unconsciousness right about now. He was angry, he noticed with a pang of surprise, at Gabriel and at Hell and Heaven and at the world, but mostly at himself for allowing, even for a moment, for the hope that he could be free of it all.
He tried not to think too much about what would have happened, had Crowley not shown up. They’d talked briefly about their respective punishments, the hellfire and the holy water, and from what the demon had told him, it appeared that Garbriel and the others were more than ready to kill him without so much as a trial.
But then again, Crowley hadn’t really had a proper trial either, Aziraphale thought as he remembered the stale stench of Hell, the way it had persistently been a couple degrees too warm. He never wanted to go back there, and he certainly wasn’t going to let them take Crowley either.
“Crowley?” He found himself asking, because all these thoughts of the future were getting very overwhelming.
“Hm?”
“How did you— I mean, when you picked me up today, how did you know I— That Gabriel was— How did you know I needed you?”
The demon gave him a tired smile. Of course he knew, he always knew. He’d known during the Revolution and the Blitz and Armageddon and a million other times throughout their history. He always showed up, he was always there right when Aziraphale needed him.
“I just knew.”
“Yes, but how?” Aziraphale pressed.
The demon groaned. “I don’t know, I just… I can sense when you’re in trouble. Call it a gut instinct.”
Aziraphale didn’t want to call it that. There were a hundred things he wanted to call it, a hundred things he could call it, but he didn’t dare think of any of them. Instead, he just mumbled “well, thank you” and returned his gaze to the bookshelf. Four copies of Twilight really was too much.
“I can also sense,” Crowley said and pushed himself off the couch to rummage through a cabinet by the kitchen. After a moment, he pulled out a dusty bottle of wine. “When you need something to drink.”
Aziraphale smiled and found a bottle opener in the drawer of the sofa table which he used, with much difficulty, to get the cork out. Life really was difficult when one couldn’t use miracles — no wonder humans were so angry all the time.
The angel took the first swig, grimacing at the bitter taste of a wine that couldn’t have cost much more than £2, and handed the bottle to Crowley. The demon made a similar expression but took a second sip nonetheless.
“Music!” He blurted, shoving the bottle into Aziraphale’s hands. “We need music!”
“Oh please.” The angel took a large sip at the mere thought of having to sit through another, drunker rendition of Fat Bottomed Girls. “I can’t stand any more of your—“
“Don’t say bebop,” Crowley warned him. He’d spotted an old record player on a little table by the window and glared at it for a second to gauge how it worked. He’d always hated those things, and had heavily accelerated the invention of the digital speaker when he got sick of dealing with them.
“I wasn’t going to,” Aziraphale lied.
Crowley shuffled through the records. “Won’t be a problem actually,” he said sourly. “Whoever lived here before listened exclusively to,” he made a face, “Frank Sinatra.”
Aziraphale breathed a little sigh of relief. He’d known Mr Sinatra briefly back in the ‘60s and remembered fondly a night he’d spent beating him at cards.
“Y’know what? Fine,” Crowley hissed at the record player as if it was at fault. “Have it your way.”
He sat back down while I Fall In Love With You Ev’ry day played smoothly from the old machine and gestured for the wine. Aziraphale handed it to him.
“Don’t see what all the fuss is about,” he emptied the bottle. “It’s putting me to sleep.”
“I think it’s lovely,” Aziraphale said. “Very romantic.”
Crowley loudly cleared his throat and got up to find some more wine. There was an extra bottle somewhere in the kitchen, and he needed it very badly. Why did it have to be romantic ? He hadn't thought this through, not in the slightest. He was meant to do this every night, this entire wine and music thing, with Aziraphale of all people.
This was, he thought as he looked through the kitchen cabinets, going to be very very difficult. It had already been overwhelming to go from seeing the angel about once a century to once a year, and then eventually to multiple times a week while they were raising Warlock. It wasn’t a bad overwhelming, though, but it was rather annoying the way his corporeal form acted around Aziraphale, from that stupid feeling in his chest to the constant warmth in his face. He was in the middle of a thought about whether prolonged periods with an elevated heart rate were enough to kill him, when he found the wine he’d been looking for.
“Ha!” He brought the second bottle into the living room and let Aziraphale open it. He took a seat in the chair opposite the angel and put his legs up on the table. Aziraphale frowned but made no comment.
“Romantic?” Crowley wondered as Come Fly With Me came on.
“Mm.”
“What do you know about romantic?”
Aziraphale looked deeply offended. “I know plenty!” He’d watched almost every romance movie that came out in the 50s, and read the entire collected works of both Jane Austen and Shakespeare — in many ways, he considered himself an authority on the matter.
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ve…” Okay, the angel thought, maybe authority was a slight over-exaggeration. “I’ve read… books.”
Crowley laughed, properly laughed, for the first time since they’d arrived. Aziraphale figured he ought to feel embarrassed, but it was so difficult when the source of this embarrassment seemed so amusing to the demon across from him.
“Alright, fine,” he couldn’t help but smile. “But it’s not as if you’re some sort of expert either.”
That much was true, Crowley thought. Sure he’d tempted people — in fact, he was particularly good at that aspect of the job — but love and romance were completely separate, and foreign, concepts to him. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Aziraphale knew much more than him about that area of human life, though he’d never admit it out loud.
“I’m a demon,” he explained and helped himself to some more wine. “I’m not s’posed to know anything about it.”
Aziraphale scoffed. “Angels don’t get involved in interpersonal relationships either, you know. We just… Well, we’re meant to spread a more general sort of love, for all things. In fact, many of the most dramatic deviations from true goodness have been in the name of love.”
He thought of a young man he’d read about in the paper, who’d shot a member of Hell’s Angels in both kneecaps because he’d beaten up his boyfriend. He got sent to prison, though the real story had been focused on his (almost miraculous) escape, and all failed subsequent attempts to re-arrest him.
Crowley shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong, angel. Love makes humans dumb, it doesn’t make them evil. And if you believe Kant — nice guy, horrible dancer — the only thing that matters,” he took another swig of wine, “is that whatever dumb things they do for love are well-intentioned.”
Aziraphale sighed and rolled his eyes; he hated when Crowley started bringing human philosophers into it. Most of them didn’t know what they were talking about, and they all thought themselves so extremely clever for inventing systems of morality that fit their very limited worldview. Besides, the angel was at a disadvantage: Crowley had known most of the philosophers on a very personal level, given that they were the easiest people in the world to tempt. All one needed to do was get them into an argument, and from there it would take no more than ten minutes to coax some very controversial opinions out of them.
“You know that’s not how it works,” Aziraphale said.
The demon just shrugged. “’S a nice thought though. Imagine if you couldn’t do anything wrong ‘long as you meant well. Heaven would have to triple in size.”
“Well.” Aziraphale drank the last bit of alcohol and looked at the time. It was only a little past midnight. “I suppose it’s—”
“If you say ineffable , I’ll turn off the music.”
“Not for us to know,” the angel said instead.
Crowley just smiled and shook his head, before leaning back and stretching his arms as much as he could. The action made his shirt ride up a little, revealing a sliver of bare skin at his midriff. Aziraphale was certain he did things like these on purpose, just to make him blush (which, to be fair, was exactly what he was doing).
“’S cold up here,” the demon commented, because he had nothing else to say.
Aziraphale figured he ought to point out that perhaps it would be warmer if he hadn’t decided to dress like the frontman of some 70s rock band, and more than that he ought to point out that Crowley was an occult being who wasn’t really meant to have any concept of hot and cold. But rather than do either of those, he smiled softly and went to pull a couple of sweaters out of his bag. They were very large and inconveniently thick, with brown and beige argyle patterns.
“Here.” He handed one of them to Crowley, who took it tentatively and put it on. It looked a little ridiculous on him, both because it was much too large for his small frame and because Aziraphale had never seen him in cozy clothes before. He couldn’t say it didn’t suit him, though.
“Thanks,” the demon said reluctantly, and tried his best not to express how snug he felt. If it hadn’t been for his demonic reputation — which, of course, he had to uphold — he could’ve easily worn this sweater for the rest of time.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to Frank Sinatra croon his way through first My Love For You , then Yours is My Heart Alone .
By Too Romantic , Crowley had drifted off to sleep, mouth half open and arms around an old pillow, embroidered with the words “home is where the heart is”. He’d taken off the sunglasses and dropped them on the floor beside him. He could nearly have passed for human at times like these, Aziraphale thought, with his eyes closed and brows furrowed like he was dreaming. Did demons dream? He’d have to ask.
There was a mirror on the wall beside the bedroom door. Aziraphale had noticed it a few minutes after they’d entered.
It had taken him all evening to build up the courage, but now Crowley was asleep and the silence was almost deafening and he’d started to feel his pulse in his stomach. With a deep breath, he stood from the chair and unfolded his wings, taking great care not to make too much noise, or knock anything over. He faced his back to the mirror and turned his head until he could see the wings. They were still white. Unstained. Perfect.
The angel breathed a sigh of relief.
After this whole affair, after every way in which he’d gone against the wishes of Heaven (and Hell, for that matter), he’d been checking as often as his mind allowed. Just to make sure. He didn’t know what it was like to fall — he’d only asked Crowley about it once, and the expression on his face had been enough to banish any questions from Aziraphale’s mind forever. He didn’t know if it happened suddenly or gradually. If it hurt or if he wouldn’t feel a thing. Sometimes, if he was in an especially blasphemous mood, he even wondered if it might feel like a relief. Other times, he’d imagine it like a sickness, starting slow and worsening with time, growing, mutating, until his wings looked like the night outside.
And now, after his and Crowley’s little moral discussion, he felt even more uncertain. Would he Fall, even if hadn’t meant to do anything wrong? Even if the only thing he’d really wanted was more time, to spend eating French pastries and reading books and dining at the Ritz? There was no way of knowing, which was why he’d developed this habit of checking every so often. Just to make sure.
“I’d stop worrying if I were you,” Crowley’s voice woke Aziraphale from his daze. He quickly refolded the wings until they were gone.
“I wasn’t…” The angel wanted to argue, but he was too tired. “With all the things we’ve… Well, I suppose I just wanted to make sure.”
"You won’t fall.” Crowley sat up, eyes still cloudy with sleep. “You won’t.” He stood and took a step towards Aziraphale.
He looked exhausted — not in the human sense, but like someone who’d spent centuries running, who thought for a brief moment that they might be allowed to stop, only to have that moment ripped away from beneath them like a rug.
“You don’t know that.” Aziraphale couldn’t look at him.
“Yes, I do. I know because I won’t let you. You’re a million times better than all of those bastards up there, angel, and they haven’t Fallen yet.”
Aziraphale just shook his head. He knew he wasn’t better than anyone, not in the celestial sense. He was more human, that was for certain, but he most definitely wasn’t more angelic.
“I won’t let them get to you,” Crowley went on. There was something in his expression that looked like thunder. “Not in a million years. I saw what it was like up there, what they would’ve done if we hadn’t—“ He swallowed hard. “I won’t let them get to you.”
Aziraphale didn’t say anything. If he was honest with himself, he was extremely touched by the emotion in Crowley’s voice and, against his better judgement, he believed him. It was odd that he should feel so safe in the company of a demon.
The worst part of it all was that he agreed. He’d also seen Hell and, although he’d certainly had his fun pretending to be Crowley, it’d been an awful place. It scared him a little to think of the things he’d do to keep Crowley from ever going back there.
The demon inhaled sharply through his teeth and, as if nothing had happened, turned on his heel and headed towards the bedroom. “See you in the morning, angel.”