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When Aziraphale leaves, Crowley drives over to his old flat and gets drunk for two solid years. At some point in those two years, he realises Muriel has been blowing up his phone (how did they get his number? He has no idea), and on one drunken night he picks up and gets a stream of questions about books and bookshops and what even is money anyway, and then next thing he knows, he is back in his dusty Bentley and driving back to Soho, back to the bookshop, back to Muriel’s incessant questions, and he lies on a sofa in the shop and gets drunk there instead. He spends some time advising Muriel, snarling at customers any time they try to buy anything and stubbornly not questioning why he does this – he’s not sure how much time, but eventually Maggie and Nina get married so it must be fairly long. Crowley doesn’t attend the wedding. They don’t ask him to. This is fair enough, considering he’s now permanently drunk and always shouting at something. He has to keep doing miracles on his liver to keep it working.
At some point in those years at the shop, his phone starts ringing. It is an unknown number, but he knows who it is. He ignores it, and it never stops ringing. It rings far longer than a normal number would, and it rings repeatedly day and night, and when he finally gets fed up, smashes his phone with a Bible and makes Muriel buy him a new one, that one starts ringing too. He stubbornly ignores each and every call. Aziraphale will get the message eventually, surely.
Then, one day, must be years later, perhaps decades, Muriel says, “That’s odd. Are humans meant to fall out of the sky?”
Crowley eyes his nearly empty glass. He is three bottles down already. “What?”
Muriel is staring out of the shop window. “There’s people falling out of the sky. No, not people. Angels.”
For the first time in years, Crowley gets to his feet. His legs barely work underneath him. He wobbles to the window.
Muriel is right, there are angels falling out of the sky. Though they’re not angels by the time they land – they pop out of the clouds with their wings, but when they land on terra firma, their wings are gone, they are dressed in human clothes, and are unhurt but usually sobbing loudly or cursing violently.
“What,” he says.
“They’re everywhere.” Muriel points at the sky, where there’s angels appearing left right and centre. “This must be all the angels of Heaven!”
Crowley realises, vaguely, that he’s too drunk for this. He concentrates on sobering up – it’s the hardest sobering up he’s had to do because he’s gotten out of practise, but he manages it. The world is uncomfortably cold and clear and bright sober.
“I need sunglasses,” he says, and miracles himself a pair, shoving them on his nose. Has he just been drunk un-sunglassed for years? Must have been.
“Is it Aziraphale?” Muriel asks. “Did he do this?”
“Or had it done to him,” Crowley says, and then a very old, familiar, uncomfortable feeling settles into his stomach. It is worry. He hasn’t worried in years. “I need to find him,” his mouth says for him.
Muriel hums. “Well, apart from myself, there’s only one angel I can sense on Earth who’s staying an angel rather than – whatever these people are now.”
Crowley turns. “Where is he?”
Of course Aziraphale is in St James Park, where else would he be aside from the bookshop? He is by the pond, throwing frozen peas to the waiting ducks, because of course he is. Former angels are landing in the grass and on the pavement behind him willy-nilly, but he’s showing them no notice. He is dressed exactly the same as he was when he left Crowley, the absolute bastard.
Crowley approaches the pond and hovers. Aziraphale pauses in his duck feeding. They give each other some extreme side-eye.
It’s clear Aziraphale isn’t going to speak first. It’s clear he is going to act like angels dropping out of the sky is normal. It’s totally bloody typical.
So Crowley speaks first. He waves a hand at the former angels sobbing and swearing in the grass and says, eloquently, “What the fuck?”
“Ah.” Aziraphale looks around and oh Hell, has Crowley missed the sound of his voice. How he has missed the way Aziraphale stands so fucking awkwardly. “Yes. The, um, angel thing.”
“Yeah,” Crowley says. He wonders if Aziraphale has missed his voice too. “The angel thing. Specifically, all the angels crashing down to Earth!”
Aziraphale wrings his hands. “Well, I had to put them somewhere. After I, um, sort of…tore down Heaven.”
Crowley stares. “You what.”
“Well you weren’t answering your phone!”
“You what?”
Aziraphale stops wringing his hands and snaps, gesticulating wildly and even taking a full step towards Crowley, and then he goes on a proper rant, and Crowley can only stare.
“You were right Crowley! I thought you were wrong but you weren’t! I wasn’t even up there that long before I started realising how right you are! All the Metatron and the other angels wanted was to use me to fuel this silly Second Coming plan, and then whenever I tried to protest on behalf of Earth they just cut me off! And then they started threatening me with losing my memory, same as Gabriel, and I realised they were going to do anything they wanted and there would be no defence – especially with Hell being so short staffed and all, and then I realised the Metratron just wanted us split up so we wouldn’t be a threat to their plan, and I saw how broken it all was, Crowley, and I tried to contact you but you wouldn’t answer your phone, so I just, well…”
Crowley picks up Aziraphale’s trailing sentence. “Tore down Heaven? With your own two hands?”
“Um.” Aziraphale clutches his hands again. “Well. Yes.”
Crowley crosses his arms. “Just another Tuesday in the office for you, right?”
“Well. Not entirely.” Aziraphale has the grace to blush. A former angel lands with a thump somewhere to his right, and he doesn’t even look at her. But he’s looking at Crowley like he can’t look away.
Crowley tries not to lose it. “Didn’t even know you could do that.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale shrugs. “Well it seems having almighty Archangel powers is something not to be sniffed at.”
“Apparently not.” Crowley looks around the park. Angels are still dropping and when he looks up, he swears the sky seems a little less brighter than usual. Perhaps it’s just his imagination, though. “But what about Hell? Power vacuum like this, they’ll just take over, surely?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so,” says Aziraphale, and he takes another step towards Crowley, casually, like they’re discussing the weather. “Short staffed remember? And honestly, I think some of them might just choose to come to Earth. Once they hear about all the happy angels here.”
Crowley looks over at a bench, where a former angel is sobbing hysterically into their hands. “Happy. Yeah.”
Aziraphale follows Crowley’s gaze and chews his lip. “Well, they’ll be happy eventually. Once they discover profiteroles.”
Aziraphale takes another step forward. He’s so close. He’s so close. Crowley should tell him to fuck off.
Instead, he says, “Angel.”
“Yes?” Aziraphale is staring at him with those big pale eyes.
“No offence,” says Crowley. His skin is prickling all over. “But I think you might be the worst Archangel in existence.”
Aziraphale smiles. It’s the first time either of them has smiled in this entire conversation. It’s like the sun just came out. Crowley fucking hates that he fucking loves it.
“I think you might be right,” Aziraphale says.
He’s too close. Crowley is going dizzy. “And that’s quite an achievement, considering Gabriel was one.”
“He wasn’t so bad. In the end.”
“Neither were you, apparently.”
Stupid thing to say. Aziraphale’s eyes get all watery. He leans into Crowley’s space, intentionally, it’s obviously so intentional, and yet Crowley doesn’t move.
“Does that mean you forgive me?” he says. His voice is watery too.
Crowley tries to keep himself together but he’s cracking and it’s pathetic, how he could be so angry drunk for so many years, and then one conversation with Aziraphale and it’s all over, all over again.
“Well, I hardly can’t when you’ve done all this, can I?” he reasons, trying to sound practical and not pissed off or smitten or pissed off whilst smitten. Talking of smitten. “Plus, you might smite me with those shiny new Archangel powers.”
Aziraphale blinks. “Oh. Powers, yes.” He pats himself down for a moment. “I’m not sure I have those powers anymore. Not sure I have any powers. I sort of forgot to check.”
And that, more than anything, makes Crowley laugh. It’s a bark of a laugh, it’s not an entirely happy laugh, but it’s a laugh. “Angel, you are completely and utterly barking mad. I’ve always known it.”
Aziraphale beams all over. “Oh Crowley. I’ve missed you so much.” And he’s moving forward, and Crowley is panicking at last, finally taking action, and that action is to draw back. He is terrified.
“Hang about, none of that.”
Aziraphale freezes, and Crowley feels like a bloody idiot. He should tell Aziraphale to fuck off. That’s what he’s been saying for years, or sort of saying whilst not picking up the phone. But Aziraphale just tore down Heaven. And without Heaven, there won’t really be a Hell, and without either Heaven or Hell there will just be Earth maybe and that means they can be us, because Aziraphale just gave himself, just gave both of them, no option.
It's a start, he thinks. It’s certainly lunch worthy.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “How about the Ritz?”
Aziraphale glows like a stupid sunlamp. “Oh Crowley. Really?”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up.” Crowley wants to take Aziraphale’s hand, stops himself at the last second and just sort of shuffles his hands in his pockets. “Is that a yes then?”
Aziraphale looks like he wants to take Crowley’s hand too. “Yes,” he says, so they wander off.
Behind them, angels land in the park.