Work Text:
The first time it happens, it's entirely accidental. Crowley is mooching along, occasionally stopping to glue a coin to the pavement, when he passes a bakery selling some of Aziraphale's favourite cakes. If Aziraphale was still in his bookshop, Crowley would have bought one (or two, or three) and delivered it to him.
But he isn't, and a wave of grief washes through him. He wants to be able to give his angel cake again, wants to set it on the desk in front of him, and watch his face light up at the sight. He wants it so much.
But his angel isn't in his bookshop anymore. He went back to Heaven, where Crowley can't just waltz in with a bag of goodies. The grief and wanting intensify, and Crowley forces himself to turn away and sulk his way back to the Bentley.
Behind him, in the window, one of the cakes disappears.
It reappears on Aziraphale's desk, in Heaven, shedding crumbs onto a pile of reports.
#
The radio in the Bentley crackles and Aziraphale's voice says, "The cake was simply scrumptious. If you sent it, Crowley, it's much appreciated."
Crowley stares at the radio for a long moment, and then stabs the off button with a shaking finger.
In Heaven, Aziraphale sighs silently, mutes the connection to the Bentley, but leaves it in place.
Three weeks later, when a minor angel places the CD soundtrack of the Sound of Music in the tannoy system and presses "play", what comes out is the Best of Queen.
#
The next time something odd appears on Aziraphale's desk, it's a scrap of paper with two lines in painfully familiar spiky handwriting.
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Even if the tannoy wasn't playing random bebop all the time, Aziraphale would have recognised the lines. That is, after all, what was belting from the Bentley's speakers when Crowley arrived at the airbase. That whole day is seared into his mind.
What he doesn't know is how that song continues. But he remembers a different song, one that was popular in the 1940 musichalls. He flips the paper over and writes neatly on the back:
We'll meet again.
Don't know where, don't know when.
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
He sends it back to Crowley. It's a promise, like the promise of a picnic someday.
#
Crowley holds the scrap of paper in trembling fingers. So, he can send things to his angel. Looks like being asked to come Upstairs by the new Supreme Archangel works like a standing invitation. Like a permanent access pass. Well, it won't be the first century they've spent mostly apart. He can work with that. If he wants to.
He tucks the tiny note in the glovebox next to an empty thermos and a stash of sunglasses, and starts lining up bottles of whisky. Now seems like a good time to get drunk.
Alone.
#
Later, Crowley finds a coffee shop where no one knows him. He gets a coffee for himself, and a hot chocolate labelled "Angel."
He frowns at the latter, focuses, and snaps his fingers. The cup vanishes.
It reappears on a bare corner of Aziraphale's desk, and the scent fills his office. He snaps the door closed, picks up the cup and inhales blissfully, tracing the love in every letter of the name with a manicured finger. "Oh," he breathes, " Crowley ." It's as close to a prayer as he has ever come.
When the cup is finally empty, Aziraphale snaps it clean, sets it back on his desk, and uses it to store pens, with the label placed where he can see it at all times.
Heaven doesn't supply much that is solid matter. But there are always reports to be made, so there is always paper. Aziraphale takes a sheet for himself, smoothes away the holiness on it, turns it black, and begins to fold.
It's been quite some time since he learned to do this, and it takes him a few attempts to remember how, but eventually he ends up with an origami snake coiled in his hands.
Outside his reopened office door, angels glide past, some humming bebop under the breath they don't need, a tribute to how much of an earworm the tunes can be. It's yet another gift of sorts from his fiend, a reminder of what he has left behind and why.
He used to dream they could be left alone, but that dream bit the dust along with all the others. Now he dreams of protecting Crowley, the way that Crowley has always protected him. His hands flex defensively and he miracles the paper snake down to earth before he ends up crushing that too.
#
Crowley wakes at the scent of an angelic miracle and looks frantically around. He's in the Bentley, which has parked itself outside the bookshop. He turns his head away from the painfully familiar sight, and catches movement, inside the car.
He jolts back, hissing, before he realises that there is now a little black origami snake swinging from the Bentley's rearview mirror. It smells like Aziraphale. It smells like Heaven.
It looks like home.
He leaves it where it is. For now.