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Historically, Aziraphale had always quite liked a little bit of pomp and circumstance. Marking achievements with some ceremony—perhaps a smattering of applause, a shiny medal or trophy, a new title. There ought to be an indulgent friend off in the corner with a bouquet of already-wilting flowers and a dinner invitation to tie it all up.
Ascending to Heaven had, woefully, been without any of that. Re-ascending? There was the Metatron, beatific and pleased, and there was the familiarity of it: light, warmth, the intangible and heavy atmosphere that Aziraphale always used to chalk up to, you know, a sort of ambient good-ness. There came the rustling of countless sets of wings, acknowledgement of his arrival, yes, and that was that. Aziraphale was installed in his new position, and wasn't that lovely? Welcome, and we've got four thousand and twenty-seven pages of documentation upon which we'd like your thoughts, sir. Implementation of the next Plan will begin at your leisure, or when the powers that be grow impatient, whichever comes first.
Aziraphale sat. (Well: no, he didn't. One didn't sit in Heaven, technically. Heaven's relationship with corporeality was largely considered inexplicable at best. It was, but in another, truer sense, it wasn't. Except for when it was. The layers of metaphor would have made Raymond Chandler dizzy. Regardless, Aziraphale's mouth felt the slightest bit bruised.)
Aziraphale sat and resolutely didn’t wonder whether Crowley would change his mind. No—surely he would change his mind. Surely he’d come along soon, having recognized the once-in-an-existence opportunity at hand. Aziraphale had not been blessed with forgetfulness when it came to the topic of his friend, and he could recall every second of Crowley’s lit-from-within delight at the outset of Creation. He would come along.
Crowley didn’t come along. At least, he failed to come along for the first seventy-three days (by a rough count—time, too, had a melty quality in Heaven, like an expensive cheese on a hot summer’s day) of Aziraphale’s appointment. It came to pass that the Second Coming was going to involve an absolute heap of paperwork, not to mention that the Metatron had become unaccountably busy and unavailable. It also came to pass that most of the day-to-day work of Heaven was done by the middling orders of angels, and that Aziraphale was expected largely to preside benignly over a considerable amount of nothing.
Heaven had a dearth of rainstorms, cotillion balls, and record players. Aziraphale began, not without a dash of guilt, to curate a list of other amenities it lacked: well-fitted waistcoats; the pleasure of the moment as a bottle of champagne is opening when an explosion seems unlikely but not impossible; a dear friend offering you a cup of tea and, without having to ask, knowing exactly how you take it.
The specifics of Christ’s impending return to Earth were vague. Ineffable, Aziraphale might have once called them. There was meant to be judgement, and in spades. As a function of His wisdom—and Hers, simultaneously; interrogating the Trinity aspect of the situation had never been recommended—some things would make the cut for the eternal kingdom of Heaven. (This may have been a working title.) And other things would not. Aziraphale had plenty of ideas for what he’d like to preserve, beginning with Camembert and ending at Anthony J. Crowley, in order of significance.
He needed Crowley’s help. Crowley knew Christ better than Aziraphale had ever done. They’d had their little road trip. Crowley would know best how to appeal for the bits of the world that had made the first go-round at Armageddon such a bad idea.
On day seventy-four, ish, Aziraphale stood back up.
“Listen,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley was reading The Daily Mail upside-down, and he did not deign to greet Aziraphale. He flipped a page, really rather snootily.
“Crowley,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley’s brow furrowed. “Oh dear,” he said, though no one was sitting next to him. The cafe was largely empty aside from two drably-dressed businessmen conferring in the opposite corner. “Pregnant? In her position?”
Aziraphale huffed a little, mostly for the enjoyment of it. “I know you can hear me,” he said, “given that you can hear things half the country away. I’m not a fool.”
At that, Crowley lowered his tabloid. He wrinkled his nose, which had the effect of pushing his sunglasses more securely up toward his eyes. “No,” he agreed, but in the sort of tone in which someone might say I’m so sorry for your loss, “you’re not a fool at all.”
Muscle memory prompted Aziraphale to seat himself across from Crowley, but, with manful effort, he hovered instead. It wasn’t the triumphant reunion he could have hoped for. Pomp and circumstance, indeed. “You’re needed. Upstairs.”
Crowley sighed. “I think you’ll find I’m not, actually,” he said, spinning his empty coffee cup on its chipped saucer. “I think you’ll find there was a whole to-do about my presence up there being permanently not-needed. Actually.” He stretched his legs out under the table and crossed his ankles atop the chair Aziraphale hadn’t taken.
“If you’re with me—”
“I was,” said Crowley, sharp in a way he habitually reserved for other demons and people who got to the front of the queue without deciding on their order. “With you.”
Aziraphale exhaled through his nose. It felt satisfyingly petty. “I can wait,” he told Crowley, drawing himself up a bit. Height was an abstraction to an angel; he could have made himself taller, if he’d really wanted, but that would have felt gaudy, if not downright cheap. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”
“Hmm.” Crowley picked his newspaper, if you could call it that, up again. “Prudentius. Not a lot of fun, Prudentius.”
“Right,” said Aziraphale. As he watched and waited, Crowley finished his reading, slipped the cup into the inside pocket of his jacket, and left the premises. Petty theft: so he wasn’t entirely above trying to get Aziraphale’s attention after all.
On the ninety-second day, Aziraphale found his way to the Bentley’s passenger seat. This wasn’t, he reasoned, a show of impatience. He was only checking on the car that, by some accounts, was partly his own. It was convenient that Crowley happened to be occupying the driver’s seat at Aziraphale’s chosen moment.
Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “My car,” he said.
“She likes me,” said Aziraphale. Demonstratively, he patted the dashboard. The engine purred in response, an agreeable rumble.
“Prudentius let you down?” Crowley asked. He was deflecting, Aziraphale noted with muted triumph. “You’ve waited longer for curry takeaway.”
Aziraphale bristled reflexively, after which he patted down a nonexistent wrinkle on the front of his waistcoat. “You love helping me,” he said. Not being a fool, as previously noted, he was aware of the extent to which his tone resembled the whining of a petulant child. He tried to recalibrate. “Don’t tell me you’re not—” He caught himself, a half-step too late: “—tempted.”
Crowley made a sibilant little noise that would’ve been a laugh had his mood been better. “Who tempts the tempter?” He drummed his fingers against the Bentley’s steering wheel. They weren’t going anywhere, but Crowley adjusted the rear-view mirror regardless.
Stubbornly, Aziraphale let a beat pass in case Crowley felt inclined to answer the prompt. He didn’t, it seemed. The Bentley’s engine remained quiet as well. They sat, immobile, until Aziraphale slipped back into the firmament.
“No,” said Aziraphale.
The Metatron cocked his head ever so slightly. “No?” he said.
“That is—” Aziraphale paused. “The time isn’t right.”
The Metatron’s eyebrows rose, his expression mild in a terrible way. “The time is right if we will it to be right,” he said.
Stalling was one of Aziraphale’s talents; it was a necessity for a bookseller who intended to sell as few books as possible. Truly phenomenal stalling, however, required premeditation and tactics. He was abruptly short on both. He held up a finger, one moment, please, and then he tucked his wings tightly to him and took the quick way down to Earth. It was like going down a fireman’s pole, only much brighter and more dizzying.
It had been, were anyone counting, three weeks and two days since he had last spoken with Crowley. Aziraphale found him easily, given only brief pause by the sight of a demon in swim trunks with his skinny legs taking up about ninety percent of a poolside lounge chair.
“Ah,” said Aziraphale, perhaps a tad deflated.
Crowley pushed his sunglasses up to his forehead. “You’re overdressed,” he said before letting them drop back to his nose.
Aziraphale glanced to his left, then to his right. He was wearing considerably more clothing than any of the humans in his line of sight, but he wasn’t overfond of the way trends had shifted regarding bathing costumes. “I really do need your assistance,” he said stoutly.
“Luxury hotels,” said Crowley, as if Aziraphale hadn’t spoken. He stuck a straw between his lips and slurped at a violently orange rum-scented concoction. “One of ours.” As though Aziraphale didn’t know that. A handful of feet to their left, a family was bickering; Crowley cocked his head towards it and smiled. Aziraphale wanted to kick him for the crime of putting on airs.
“Well,” started Aziraphale, “if you’re so attached to your—” He gestured at Crowley’s beverage.
“Mai tai,” said Crowley helpfully.
“Your mai tai! If you love your mai tai so very much, then come along upstairs and help me make sure that—that—”
Crowley flicked at his straw with a fingernail. It spun round in the bowl of the glass. “We’ve done this before.”
“This is…” The end of Aziraphale’s sentence wandered away from him, slithering into the deep end of the pool and drowning without fanfare. Was he a fool? This is different, he’d been about to say, but the words stuck in his craw. Maybe if he was a fool he’d be able to say them.
“If you’re waiting for me to do—whatever it is you’re doing…” Crowley leaned back. The sun was pinkening the tip of his nose. At the sight, something lepidopteran made itself known in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach. “Don’t. You’ve proven your patience, if that’s what you need to hear. Run along, angel.”
The return to Heaven felt like climbing a long, winding staircase without any landings.
Crowley wasn’t going to come around. Aziraphale wasn’t a fool, but he wished, only a little, that he was. If he was stupid, he might have kept believing that any day now, Crowley would breeze into Aziraphale’s office like he’d been there the whole time.
This wretched office, for all the paperwork he’d been given, didn’t even have a desk. There was nowhere to store collected scraps of sentimental paperwork that might one day prove important, nowhere to tuck a charming handmade inkwell, nowhere to pen letters or diary entries. There were no muted sounds of traffic outside, nor the murmur of humans exchanging pleasantries, nor even the play of afternoon sun across shelves of meticulously-dusted first editions.
Aziraphale inhaled, although the air smelled like nothing in Heaven. Well, then. He would have left a letter of resignation, but someone had neglected to give him a desk, did he mention that?
“Well, then,” said Aziraphale, aloud this time. Crowley was poised outside the bookshop, leaning in an angular fashion against the side of the Bentley. He looked the tiniest bit embarrassed to have been caught.
“You haven’t given up yet,” observed Crowley.
Aziraphale thought about that. He had waited, but not for half as long as he’d have insisted he could. He could have kept going; angels could wait infinitely, or so they say. Virtues, and all that. He didn’t want to anymore. “I have,” said Aziraphale, “given up. But! Not on you.” That was the crucial part.
The stillness that settled over Crowley was so utter that Aziraphale wondered if he’d been caught in another of Heaven or Hell’s infernal plots. He took off his sunglasses and squinted at Aziraphale. “What happened to patience, you self-righteous wanker?”
Aziraphale breathed in again. He smelled motor oil and coffee. He was hungry, he was fairly certain, and he felt a certain thrilling weightlessness that shouldn’t have meant anything to a winged being as he said, “My dear, don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”
“Aha,” said Crowley. His eyes gleamed like coins at the bottom of a wishing well. Aziraphale kissed him, human-shaped hands curling into the lapels of Crowley’s jacket, and Crowley unfolded into it, all contentment and warmth, a boa constrictor sunning itself on hot tiles. He had hands fit for shaping galaxies, and all their lovely cleverness went into holding Aziraphale’s face, which was doing something unruly as it tried to smile and laugh and kiss Crowley all at the very same moment.
“Mm,” said Aziraphale, at least five-sixths unraveled in the middle of this London street.
“Quite,” said Crowley. He was flushed, which made Aziraphale want to take an unrestrained bite out of him. “Don’t think you’re forgiven! You’ve got work to do.”
Aziraphale tugged at Crowley’s jacket. It was an experiment, and a successful one; he was pleased with the result, an armful of breathless, semi-irritated demon. “I wouldn’t dream of presuming,” he said, and then he kissed Crowley again. Forgiveness: for that, Aziraphale could wait, and he was ready to prove it. He had plenty to occupy his time.