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In the Beginning, In the First War
The report goes: the demon Mammon raised their hands and a palace of Pandemonium rose from the lava flow deep in Hell. There, Satan will have a place to hold court, presiding over his Infernal Council, and all demons and evil things will hold it as a stronghold.
To Raphael, who has just returned to Heaven and the Garden from their previous Purpose, this report means almost nothing. They listen, the words and phrases collecting in their ears like lost quarks in the empty areas of space. The mood of their fellow angels, however, is grim and angry, both emotions that feel like foreign concepts to them.
“Raphael,” the Metatron says, and Raphael looks up at him, uncertain but trying very hard to be attentive, “you will command the remaining poetics and the cherubs and provide support to Michael’s company.”
“Yes,” Raphael says because the Metatron speaks Her Word, and, even if they don’t fully understand it, they must agree.
“Good,” the Metatron says, and he smiles, which should be reassuring; Raphael smiles back and feels worried. “Now, Sandalphon –”
Raphael is, effectively, dismissed. They sit for a while longer, listening to the orders to his fellows, but they gather in their mind and do not mean much of anything. It isn’t until the Metatron has left and everyone is milling around that Raphael rises. They twist their fingers together, feeling the cuticles and texture of the end of their nails.
“Raphael,” Uriel says, catching their attention with a serious expression on her face. “I have some time; I can introduce you to the cherubs.”
“Oh,” Raphael starts.
“Raphael can introduce themself,” Michael says, breaking from her conversation with Gabriel about something to do with ballistics, which Raphael does not understand at all.
“The cherubs aren’t going to just accept that you can’t deal with them anymore because you think they’re weird,” Uriel says with her characteristic bluntness. “Come, Raphael.”
Raphael goes because they need something to do, and they don’t really want to get involved with whatever has Michael and Uriel in a snit. They follow Uriel, twisting their fingers over each other as they walk from the south of the Garden to the north gate. The day is lovely as usual, and Raphael looks at the new river that runs through the land, fish big and small flitting among the rocks.
“Uriel,” they start, glancing at the dour expression on their fellow’s face, “what is the issue with the cherubs?”
“They don’t like being away from Her and the Garden,” Uriel says, looking straight ahead. “They do their job on the battlefield too efficiently. Michael prefers to use strategy. The demons we’ve taken alive have all been very useful.”
But there aren’t any demons alive in Heaven or Eden, they want to point out.
I don’t understand, Raphael wants to say.
The cherubs are guarding the main gate. They chirp and chitter, looking down at Uriel with no little dislike and then at Raphael with inoffensive disinterest. Uriel frowns at them, clearly already annoyed.
“This is the Archangel Raphael,” she says, blunt and cold. “They will command you in the action that will arrive.”
The cherubs don’t look enthused. Raphael does not feel enthused. Some of this must have shown in their body language because Uriel gives Raphael an intensely annoyed expression. A couple of cherubs snicker.
“Well,” she huffs before flicking out her wings and heading back the way she came.
Raphael didn’t expect her to stay, but they still feel unreasonably hurt, watching her fly off without a single glance back. They turn their attention to the gaggle of cherubs, who look at them, some thoughtful, others apprehensive. The latter are glancing at the Holy Spear resting at the ready on Raphael’s back.
Deep down in Raphael, there's a thin wound that aches.
“I am the Archangel Raphael,” they say, and the cherubs look at them, and it strikes Raphael for the first time that they’ve been rejected by Michael and Uriel, and they probably don’t feel very good about themselves; so Raphael says, “I heard you like efficiency.”
The cherubs look between themselves. After a long moment, they look back to Raphael. The one highest up on the gate leans forward.
“We do not like to cause suffering,” the cherub says, sweet voiced and very, very earnest. “We think efficiency is the best way to fight. We want the War to be over as soon as possible, so we can go back to attending Her.”
That sounds logical. Raphael nods. The cherubs stare at them. Less indifferent. More cautious.
“I do not like suffering,” Raphael says, and they find this is true. “Let us work together to ease it.”
They hold out their hand.
After a beat, thousands of cherubs descend from the gate. They take Raphael’s hand one by one. An Arrangement.
“I hope we work well together,” Raphael says, and they smile, and the cherubs smile back.
Later, in the Beginning, in the First War:
Raphael stands, Holy Spear in hand and coated with gore and blood, and gazes out over the mess, the smashed bodies of cherubs, the mutilated forms of the the last of the poetics, the smoke and fire and scorched earth and decapitated heads and severed limbs:
“Raphael,” Gabriel calls, far above and joyous, “we have much to praise! Lucifer will think twice to challenge us in the East again!”
They look up at their fellows. Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel beam. They wait eagerly to celebrate their victory.
Raphael wants to scream but cannot.
They understand now.
15 May 1957, Charing Cross Hospital, London
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, standing very awkwardly in Crowley’s box of an office, “I’m not entirely sure how to explain this, but I’ve become in possession of a child.”
There is an infant, approximately two days old, in the picnic basket now open on Crowley’s desk. Crowley, who had expected a great many things considering what Aziraphale gets in his shop, stares at it. The infant looks, from its secure swaddling in a blue cotton scarf and how it’s laid very carefully upon a pillow, healthy. Despite its strange accommodation, the babe’s colour is good, and it smells clean. It seems exceedingly normal.
“It’s a boy,” Aziraphale says, which is vaguely helpful.
“I didn’t know you knew how to swaddle a baby,” Crowley hears himself say.
“I’ve done it a few times,” Aziraphale says, and he reaches in and picks the baby up as he stirs slightly. “I don’t know where to hire a wet nurse nowadays, though.”
“Infant formula is fine,” Crowley says, very distantly, before he rubs his face and asks: “Where did you get a baby?”
“Someone left him on my doorstep,” Aziraphale says, rocking the infant, who is already falling back asleep. “I found him when I opened my shop this morning.”
Crowley opens his mouth. Realises that all of his questions are not useful. Shuts it. He chews on his nails as Aziraphale successfully soothes the baby back to sleep.
“I thought about taking him to a church,” Aziraphale says, looking at Crowley with a lopsided expression.
“I don’t think catching on fire would be helpful,” Crowley agrees around his ring fingernail. “I’m going to talk to Davies; I know that sometimes emergency gets unwanted babes. We will probably contact the police.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and he looks at the babe with such a soft expression. “Alright.”
Crowley stares.
“Don’t tell me you want to keep –”
“I mean,” Aziraphale says, and he looks at Crowley, smiling again, the most earnest one that shows his front, very pointed teeth, “kind of.”
“Zira.”
Aziraphale’s eyes are wide and pleading. “You could help me,” he says, with all the demonic persuasion he has. “You’re good at caring for humans.”
Crowley shuts his eyes briefly. Opens them. The scene has not changed at all. He pulls his hand away from his mouth with difficulty.
“I’m touched you have such faith in me,” Crowley says, and angels aren’t particularly good at sarcasm because it uses truth in a sideways manner, but Crowley has been on Earth for a very long time, “but do you really think I am emotionally stable enough to raise a child.”
Aziraphale grimaces. Crowley raises a finger in what doesn’t exactly classify as a victory but does make his point. He lowers it with a sigh. The babe sleeps peacefully in Aziraphale’s arms.
“Wait here,” he says, motioning to his desk chair. “I won’t be long.”
“I’ve meant to ask you,” Davies says much later after the infant is being checked over by the staff in the maternity ward and Aziraphale is giving the police information for their report in Crowley office; “Is Aziraphale also an angel?”
Crowley looks out the window of Davies’s office. It’s much larger than Crowley’s own, but that is appropriate because Davies has recently been promoted to head of surgery. The view of Margravine Cemetery is green and pleasant in the rare afternoon sun.
“No,” he says, to the dead and departed.
“But he is not human,” Davies says, low.
“No,” Crowley says, and he lets himself smile a bit as he looks over; Davies observes him with a very thoughtful expression. “I won’t speak for him, but he would find this line of questioning very entertaining.”
Davies snorts, sitting back and crossing his arms. He looks at the piles of work on his desktop for a long moment before his gaze strays to the picture of his wife on his desk. At seventy, Davies is in very good health, still as broad, hale, and strong as a man half his age. A month past, he had shocked the ambulance crew that came to pick up his wife after she had a fall by carrying her down their home’s steep stairwell. Not for the first time in the past few years, Crowley wonders if Davies has caught on that he may have the unusually long lifespan of others favoured by Her.
“How is she?”
“Oh,” Davies says, and he looks up at Crowley with a twist of lips halfway between a rueful smile and a grimace, “Kitty is doing as well as can be expected. She was asking about you last night, actually. Wanted to know if you would be interested in using some of her garden, since she won’t be tending it any time soon.”
“That’s very kind of her,” Crowley says, and he’s careful to hide his own sadness because that means she’s going further into decline. “I’m sure I can make some use of it.”
“Come with me for a drink after work on Friday,” Davies says, relaxing somewhat. “Aziraphale is also invited.”
“I’ll let him know,” Crowley says, thinking about how Aziraphale had hesitated, glancing at Crowley before handing the baby over to the maternity staff. “Should I tell him what happened to Kitty?”
“Might as well,” Davies says.
His expression is complicated in a way that humans mastered as soon as Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. For humans, death is inevitable. They are mortal, and coming to terms with their mortality and that of those around them is simply part of their journey. To live among them and not just exist, Crowley had to come to understand that. It is against Her to try to change the path that all humanity must take.
Outside, in the cemetery, the sun shines.
1 June 1957, Kew Gardens, London
Davies is wheeling Kitty through the Temperate House, head bent forward to listen to her happily tell him about each plant that catches her eye. Crowley stands, hands on her Spear in its walking cane disguise. Aziraphale stands beside her, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his light day coat.
“Not long now,” he says, very softly, as Davies and Kitty laugh together over the shape of a flower.
Crowley does not need to respond. Aziraphale slips his hand into his vest pocket and pulls out his pocket watch. He adjusts the hands and winds it.
“I’ve reached a decade running the bookshop,” he says, looking at the time.
“You have,” Crowley acknowledges, looking up to the second floor walkways.
“I think the baby appearing was a warning,” Aziraphale says as Crowley considers the closest winding stairwell. “Not intentional but… I really did think for a moment there I could keep him.”
Getting too comfortable in one place. Becoming too interconnected with individual humans. In all their years of knowing each other, this has usually been Crowley’s problem. She lowers her chin, looking at the large fern growing beside them. Some of the leaves are yellowed on the edges.
“You still have time,” Crowley says, reaching out and placing her fingertips on the closest fern leaf. “The business itself is stable and in good financial standing. Hire a few people you trust and hand it off in a couple of years.”
“Is that what you did,” Aziraphale whispers, too low for humans to hear, “when you left Aachen?”
Crowley stares at the fern.
For a moment, she lets herself remember that lovely shop where she had a garden full of herbs and vegetables, and the many apprentices who she let touch and even hug her, the first friendly touch she’d allowed since she didn’t know the way flesh cleaves open beneath her Spear. She remembers how Aziraphale was often there, regular for the first time in their acquaintance, and how he laughed and shouted and defended Crowley and showed her what love really was.
The fern stands straighter, reaching for the thin English sun.
“Yes,” she says, drawing her hand back and looking at Aziraphale, who is watching Davies and Kitty again, off in their own world, his expression drawn. “Zira –”
“You tried to warn me,” he says, still very quiet.
Crowley reaches over, offering Aziraphale her palm. He takes it, twining their fingers together. His shoulders relax. A part of Crowley clenches.
“I knew staying in one place for so long forces you to become attached to people,” Aziraphale says, and he is so gentle and loving and earnest, murky eyes so soft as he looks upon their entwined fingers, “but I didn’t really get it.”
Angels are not built to have dreams. They were not made to have doubts. They were not Created to ask questions, or to fight wars, or feel all the breadth of love and hate. They weren’t meant to have the capacity for these things, and Crowley looks at Aziraphale and knows:
“Zira,” she says, and, as he looks to her, she kisses him.
Without hesitation, and with such a warm smile, Aziraphale wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her back.
Crowley understands.
She is an anomaly.
In the Beginning, before the Garden, Before:
Lucifer held Raphael’s hands and taught them how to weave muscle and nerves, how to connect them around and within bones and skin. With his golden hair shining as bright as a sun, he showed Raphael how to make animals, snakes and elephants and possums, and Raphael helped him raise gigantic mushrooms and ferns from the damp, rich earth. Under the heat of the Holy Light, Lucifer guided Raphael’s hands over nests of gigantic eggs and tiny aged mice and taught them how to peer into the young and the old and know when their mortal lives began and stopped.
In the interim years, Crowley has tried very hard not to think very much about Lucifer. It wasn’t until the First World War that something became unstuck within them and these memories would bubble up. Crowley sometimes feels like they will turn while doing rounds in the wards or be stopped at an intersection and see Lucifer as he once was, simply standing and waiting with a new creature in need of healing in his arms. It is, of course, impossible because Lucifer may no longer may take a fair form, and there is none of the gentle healing touch left in him.
These are their thoughts as Crowley stands, hands on the Spear in its cane form in the Davies’ garden, looking at Death, who stands at the gate. The moon is hidden behind clouds. In the pale glow of the street lamp, Death seems long and tall. Crowley, dressed in shirtsleeves and hat left at Kitty’s bedside, thinks of the ebb and flow of life.
YOU AGAIN, Death says, not particularly surprised.
“Yes,” Crowley says because Aziraphale is consoling Davies, who wanted to come out and fight Death when the Horseperson appeared in the street. “The master of this house is favoured by Her, so I beg you to give us a little extra time to explain things.”
SHE’S GOING TO YOURS, Death says, more conversational than anything.
“That’s good, I suppose,” Crowley says because they haven’t been back to Heaven since well before Jesus opened the Gates to human souls and has little to no idea of what the state of souls in Heaven currently is.
Death chuckles. ARE YOU STILL USING THE NAME OF A CROW, ARCHANGEL?
“My name is Crowley,” they answer, tapping their Spear on the ground for emphasis but devoid of annoyance. “We see each other enough, you should know.”
This makes Death smile, bone-white teeth in thin, bloodless lips. I DO NOT DEAL OFTEN WITH ANGELS, the Horseperson says, amused in a sideways manner. THEY ARE A VIOLENT, DISAGREEABLE LOT. YOU ARE VERY DIFFERENT FROM YOUR FELLOWS.
Crowley taps their Spear as Death steps forward. Death stops. Crowley doesn’t know if their Spear would have any affect on someone like Death, but they don’t intend to use it.
“The master of this house will be able to see you,” Crowley says, and Death looks at them, focused. “Let me enter before you.”
This is how Death and Crowley join Aziraphale and Davies by Kitty’s bedside. Aziraphale and Davies both stand, gaze sweeping over Crowley, who shifts the Spear into its true form, before they stand to the side for Death to step through the doorway. Davies swallows but stands straight and tall, instinctively defending Kitty’s body. Aziraphale stuffs his hands into his trouser pockets and looks away. His gaze falls on Kitty’s embroidery basket, still open for rarely idle hands.
KATHLEEN “KITTY” DAVIES, BORN ADAMS, Death announces, holding out a skeletal hand. YOUR SOUL IS READY TO LEAVE THE MORTAL PLANE.
Davies swallows. He looks at his wife’s body, to Aziraphale, to Crowley, and then to Death. Crowley holds their Spear and meets Davies’s gaze as it returns to them.
“Is she ready?” he asks, small and fragile.
Aziraphale looks at them. “I can’t see this soul,” he says, blunt and very sorry.
Crowley blinks and Looks.
Kitty’s soul is bright and peaceful, hovering above Death’s palm.
“Yes,” Crowley says.
Davies nods. He doesn’t speak. Can’t. Death inclines its head to them all and turns. Crowley watches it cross the threshold into the hall, and then it is gone.
Crowley recognises the soft, hitching sobs and knows, as they turn back, that Aziraphale is crying.
Everyone always thinks that they have more time.
“Crowley,” Davies says, and he isn’t crying but will once the shock has worn off. “Where did she go?”
“Heaven,” Crowley says.
It is true. It is not a reassurance. Aziraphale wipes at his face with his handkerchief. Davies breathes in. Out.
“If I pray,” Davies says, very slowly, and he is not a praying man, “will she hear me?”
Crowley closes their eyes. Opens them. They look upon their Holy Spear, crafted from the Tree of Knowledge that bore the fruit that cast Adam and Eve from Eden. Crowley never thought to even pick the fruit. They never would have dreamed up a Spear, let alone all the good and evil that came to be.
“I don’t know,” they say because angels do not lie; Davies looks at them, and it is clear he prefers Crowley’s admission than anything else; he is, at his heart, a man of science as much as his great faith. “I haven’t been back to Heaven since the Great Flood.”
The way both Aziraphale and Davies look at them:
Crowley feels something slot into place.
19 July 1957, Warwick Street, London
Gabriel stands at the altar, looking around the church with an air of haughty appreciation. He’s dressed neatly, like a banker but in white and cream. Crowley sits in the first left pew, picking the dry edge of their right forefinger’s cuticle. Their suit has seen better days, but it’s been a long week at work, and Crowley hasn’t gotten to see Aziraphale since Sunday. It’s Friday.
“This is a good place to meet,” Gabriel says, smiling at Crowley. “I will admit: when I got your letter, it was a bit of a shock.”
“You are very obvious, Gabriel,” Crowley says, motioning for Gabriel to sit next to them on the pew. “I saw you look at the painting of Edinburgh in my home. You need to use another name than ‘Gabriel A. Angel’, if you don’t want someone just looking you up in the phone book.”
“I didn’t want to get a phone,” Gabriel grumbles, sitting down neat and proper next to Crowley.
“You need a phone,” Crowley sighs, half-regretting having this conversation. “You should probably move farther away, if you want to be ‘off-grid’.”
“Like where?” Gabriel asks, oddly earnest with his eyebrows drawn together.
Crowley opens his mouth. Shuts it. They reach up and rub their face, very tired.
“To be fair, I doubt any of our siblings know how to use a phone book,” they say, and Gabriel smiles, like this is an actual olive branch. “I’ve gotten off track.”
“Your letter mentioned business,” Gabriel says, serious now.
Crowley nods. They lift their Staff in its cane disguise from where it rests over their knees and sets it against the ground. It makes a hollow noise over the stone.
Gabriel is very quiet.
“Death said something interesting to me recently.”
A beat.
“Death?”
Quiet. Frightened. Crowley looks at their brother. Gabriel’s expression is wide-eyed and worried.
“I interact with Death fairly regularly,” Crowley says, and he points at the bas-relief of the Assumption. “Most humans don’t get to do that.”
Gabriel stares up at Mary as she ascends to Heaven. Crowley was elsewhere, treating plague and all manner of disease, when Gabriel was sent to Mary in Nazareth with the good news she would bear a son. The first they had heard of Jesus was when miracles of healing reached their ears through the grapevine.
Crowley remembers a little boy with eyes filled with Light, and how he laughed as his parents watched him from afar with worried, knowing eyes.
“They don’t,” Gabriel agrees, very quietly, and then, even quieter, “and that isn’t what she looked like.”
“I remember,” Crowley says because the fair and demure depiction does not look like the fiery woman who screamed for her son as only a mother can as they nailed Jesus to the cross.
Gabriel grits his teeth. “Your point is taken,” he says, tearing his gaze from the bas-relief to glare mulishly at Crowley. “What did Death say that you had to call me all the way here for?”
Crowley looks up at the depiction of Mary. “It called angels ‘a violent, disagreeable lot’.”
Gabriel is very still. Crowley looks at him and finds he looks hurt.
“You agree.”
Crowley opens his mouth.
“I know you do,” Gabriel says, and his lips twist as he lowers his gaze to where Crowley’s hand rests on their Spear. “I don’t blame you. You were never the same after we lost the cherubs and poetics. I remember. How you looked at us afterwards. You closed yourself off to us, and I could never figure out how to get you back.”
“I had no battle or command experience,” Crowley says, even though they don’t want to; it comes out distant and injured; this isn’t how they wanted this to go; this isn’t what they called Gabriel to here for; but it’s happening anyways; “I didn’t even know what a demon looked like. It was obvious to everyone but me that it would be a slaughter.”
“It was a strategic victory,” Gabriel says, and he is so sorry, hunched and sad, but he is an angel, and he has to tell the truth. “And you were good at it. You are good at it. No one is able to reassure shock troops like you, and they respect you because you will go all the way with them and ease their suffering.”
Like in Verdun. Like in Loos. Like in Arnhem. Like a thousand and one horrible nights that have all coagulated together to haunt the edges of every waking moment of Crowley’s existence.
You used me, Crowley admits.
You’ll never stop using me, Crowley is forced to realise.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel says, very earnest.
“I don’t forgive you,” Crowley says because they can’t; it’s not their Purpose; they ease the suffering of the sick and injured and dying, and Gabriel is none of those things. “I have an Arrangement for you.”
Gabriel blinks. He gazes at Crowley, both wary and hopeful. Crowley knows they cannot trust their brother, and they know definitely now that Gabriel will use this opportunity to use them again, but Crowley has lived among humans for a very long time. They have become good at gambling.
“Yes?”
Crowley fishes out a paper from their vest pocket. Gabriel accepts it, unfolding the scratch paper to find the address of an orphanage in the south of London and the description of the infant that Aziraphale had brought to the hospital. Gabriel considers the information before looking back to Crowley, brows drawn together in confusion.
“A baby?”
“I have reason to believe the babe is favoured either by Heaven or by Hell,” Crowley says because it’s hard to think of any other reason that the infant would have passed through both his and Aziraphale’s care, even if it was for such a brief time. “I would like you and your demon to care for him until either his nature is revealed or he comes of age.”
Gabriel’s mouth opens. Shuts. He rereads the information on the paper, not because he’s forgotten but to buy time to think.
“Fine,” he says, meeting Crowley’s eyes again with a determined expression. “In exchange, I would like you to consider forgiving me. Not for everything. Just a little bit is enough.”
It’s a massive ask. Crowley closes their eyes. Opens them.
The Staff is warm beneath their palm.
“I will consider forgiving you for clubbing me in the face before the Great Flood,” Crowley says because that they can do.
Gabriel winces. “Alright,” he says because that had been an awful fight; Uriel was never the same, more reserved and less willing to collaborate with anyone; Crowley had never returned to Heaven, at first because they hadn’t felt safe and later because they no longer saw it as a home. “That’s fair.”
“An Arrangement,” Crowley says, to be sure.
“An Arrangement,” Gabriel agrees.
Crowley offers their hand, and Gabriel takes it.
Aziraphale’s shop is always busy on Fridays. Crowley parks the Bentley on the east corner and spends a long moment sitting and watching the steady flow of people through the market and shops. Children, out of school for the summer and armed with their paper route and sewing money, make a steady stream in and out of A. Z. Fell & Co. Antiquarian and Unusual Books. They run past the Bentley, clutching flashy comics and fantastic adventures and filling the air with glee.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale calls as Crowley, squeezing into the shop with the help of his disguised Spear, “I’m –”
“It’s fine!” Crowley says, loud enough to be heard over the throngs of children, catering young couples among the romance serials, and the gaggle of older men by the periodicals talking horses. “Do you want me in the front or back?”
“Here, please,” Aziraphale says, so Crowley settles himself at the register but not before stealing a tap of his shoe against Aziraphale’s right ankle; it earns him a very brief, very hot glance.
It’s the time of the year that the sun is still at the edges of the sky as Aziraphale closes up shop. Crowley talks to a few of the men about his Bentley as Aziraphale sweeps the foyer, and they happily tell him about the latest car club rivalries and gossip. As usual, Crowley lets them do a recruitment spiel.
“We’ve got a couple other blokes who were at Arnhem,” one says as Crowley politely inspects their club card. “But that’s not all they’re on about, of course; they’re into racing, and I know they’d love to see your modifications. I’m sure you’d get on with them.”
“Did Fell put you up to this,” Crowley jests.
“Of course not!” the man says, although he is clearly trying not to laugh.
“You need a hobby,” Aziraphale says, shaking out the foyer welcoming mat, “even if it’s your death trap of a vehicle.”
“Zira,” Crowley says after everyone has headed off, and they are up in the flat above the shop; Aziraphale is filling the bath and Crowley is stuffing their clothes into the wicker basket, “you don’t need to be setting me up like that.”
“And what are you going to do, when I’m not around regularly?” Aziraphale says, and he frowns as Crowley sighs. “Last time, you decided to sleep for nearly eighty years, and then we had a war.”
“That was a specific circumstance,” Crowley says, tossing their socks into the basket. “There’s Davies and the child to keep tabs on now. I’m not planning to sleep more than a night at a time.”
“I spoke to Davies about the shop earlier,” Aziraphale says, measuring bath salts. “He’s not disinterested, although he said he doesn’t know the first thing about running a business.”
“Kitty always handled the money,” Crowley agrees, sitting down at the lip of the tub. “Did he say anything else?”
“We talked about hiring a couple of youngsters,” Aziraphale says, putting the salts away. “Since he doesn’t know anything about the comics and serials and that’s about thirty percent of the day to day profit.”
Crowley laughs. Aziraphale climbs into the tub and Crowley follows. They soak for a long moment, enjoying the steaming water. The bath salts are lavender scented.
“How did it go with Gabriel?”
At some point eight years ago, Aziraphale hired an artist to paint an out of fashion pastoral scene on the ceiling. Most of the animals depicted are sheep and their lambs, and there are a couple of herding dogs and small gaggles of geese. Above the dressing table, there’s a crow eyeing ripe purple-red grapes on a vine. When Crowley first noticed that, they’d laughed about it for weeks.
“I trust him and his demon to raise the child,” Crowley says, considering the sheep directly above his head. “I don’t know if Gabriel will take the hint to move out of a major city, and I still have no idea who the demon is, but Gabriel agreed to an Arrangement: they’ll keep the child safe either until their nature is revealed or they come of age as a normal human.”
“I don’t think the child has a chance at being normal,” Aziraphale mutters, groping around at the bath caddy to find his bag of wrapped sweeties.
Crowley sighs. They trace their fingertips over the surface of the water. It doesn’t ripple. Aziraphale unwraps a sweet and pops it into his mouth, dropping the wrapper over the edge of the bath.
“What’s your end.”
Slowly, Crowley pulls their fingertips back. The water and salt follows, tiny little spears. A little molecular manipulation.
“I will consider forgiving Gabriel for our argument about Noah.”
Silence. Crowley returns the water. Aziraphale chews the taffy, slow, methodical gnashing of his teeth.
“I hate that,” Aziraphale growls.
Crowley smiles. They don’t hate it, but they weren’t made to hate. They weren’t made to love. They weren’t made to be many things.
Once upon a time, Crowley was meant to craft the Heavens. They didn’t know suffering, or Death, or grief.
Once upon a time:
“Zira.”
They shift. Lean forward. Brace their hands on Aziraphale’s chest. When they kiss, Aziraphale’s mouth tastes like sugar and very faintly of lemon.
“Bleh.”
Aziraphale grins. He wraps his arms around Crowley’s waist and slots them together. They thread their hands through each other’s hair and smile.
“You really hate lemons,” Aziraphale murmurs.
“It tastes weird,” Crowley says because it pleases Aziraphale. “Reminds me of cleaning products.”
Aziraphale laughs, and Crowley loves him so much.
Together, they ease each other’s suffering.