Chapter Text
After the debacle that came to be called the Almostpocalypse, a certain angel and a certain demon became very close. It did not happen without an expected amount of awkwardness and miscommunication and disappointment followed by reversals and elation and a whole host of other occurrences that were probably very entertaining, but this story is not about that.
It’s about what happened afterwards. Becoming close progressed from an uptick in the frequency with which they saw each other in restaurants, to seeing more of each other drunk, to seeing more of each other naked, then seeing each other drunk and naked,* as these things sometimes do progress.
*Usually not also at restaurants, except for once when they had both been too drunk to realize they had been unsuccessful in miracling themselves back home before beginning their naughty activities. It was the only restaurant Aziraphale was now banned from, though not the only one Crowley was no longer allowed in.
So, while angels are generally sexless, Aziraphale and Crowley became progressively good at Making An Effort now that they had found someone they were interested in Making An Effort with after all this time in their corporations.
And, as they became increasingly good at it, they also began to get bored with the same thing over and over again, and they began to explore and find ways to introduce variety.
Both of them were making their Efforts as male, but they had both been in female corporations before, although they certainly hadn’t used them for anything like this before. Crowley was the first one to give it a shot, and she rather enjoyed it. Aziraphale liked it too.
She liked it so much that the morning after when she woke up and realized she was still in a female body, she decided to keep it that way for a little while. Although Hell was no longer giving her missions**, she still enjoyed causing a little trouble every now and again, although it was always of the non-supernatural kind nowadays to avoid infringing on an ambiguous statement from Adam that they shouldn’t “mess about” with people anymore. So she went about her day causing mischief and going to the cinema and teasingly flirting with people of any gender with no intent to follow through, in her female body.
**both Crowley and Aziraphale had never heard back from their respective sides after the Nopocalypse, and they both were operating under the assumption that Adam had set them off-limits somehow. Both were too scared to try and find out and were just fine with the way things were.
And when Aziraphale came home to the small house they now shared from a day of doing non-supernatural good deeds, he saw that Crowley was still in a female body, and liked it again, and then liked it in the same way that he had liked it the previous night, as did the demon.
Crowley and Aziraphale were not stupid. Crowley had spent much time convincing some human men that sex wasn’t worth having if you had to wear a condom, and Aziraphale was indirectly responsible for the proliferation of birth control in pill form, despite what many hold for the Church’s teachings. But for beings that could wish away illness and modify their bodies at will, they had never thought they would ever have use for such things. The thought had never entered their minds. And Crowley had never considered that there might be consequences to keeping her body anatomically female for a while longer because she liked it.
That was why Crowley now found herself on the bathroom floor, curled up in a ball, sobbing anxiously, with a slender white stick with two vertical lines on it sitting on the bathroom sink.
She had noticed it while she had been out and about; she was just walking down the street when she became aware of something small burning in her belly, and she immediately felt the weight of her thoughtlessness crashing into her, and had rushed to confirm it.
She left the multiple positive tests in the bathroom and sat down on the sofa in the living room, staring at the door and waiting for Aziraphale to come back.
He did, a few hours later, and found her waiting just like that, and sensed something was wrong.
“Oh, dear,” he said, setting his bag down and moving onto the couch with her. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
She nodded mutely.
“What is it then? Talk to me.”
She put her hand on her stomach, and he knew.
Both of them were thinking the same thing about the other person.
Crowley knew Aziraphale’s head was filled with visions of Nephilim and divine wrath and angels cleansing abominations. Crowley knew Aziraphale was thinking of how to get rid of it, possibly before it was born, possibly even regardless of what Crowley wanted. Crowley was picturing herself having to choose between keeping her partner and keeping this small, fragile, unknown thing that was growing inside of her and begging for protection and love before it could speak. She was picturing herself alone, hiding from Aziraphale and every angel in existence and every demon who would cause them harm*** just for survival.
***That is, every demon.
Aziraphale was not actually thinking any of those things. He was thinking about how scared Crowley must have been finding this out without him, and he was thinking about whether Crowley was even willing to host something like this inside her, and he was picturing himself hovering over Crowley every moment, waking or not, for nine months because he was picturing Crowley going behind his back to do something convenient but unpleasant, and he was rapidly going through every possible permutation their conversation might twist through in the next moments because Crowley was a demon and raising the Antichrist was one thing but this-
Aziraphale moved towards Crowley, and Crowley flinched away from him.
Aziraphale put his hands on his own legs instead, then, and they sat in silence for a moment before Crowley burst out, “I don’t want to kill it, Aziraphale, please, please don’t make me, I don’t want...”
Aziraphale moved again, then, and put one arm around her shoulders, and took her hand with his other, and squeezed her. “No one’s going to make you do anything, Crowley. It’s okay. Calm down.”
That seemed to mollify her a bit, and she leaned into him, just letting him hold her for a while.
“I can’t raise this thing, Aziraphale,” she said. “I can’t...”
Aziraphale squeezed her again. “Why ever not? You just said you didn’t want-”
“Because in case you couldn’t tell-” she snapped, suddenly angry, “I don’t always make the best decisions. Warlock was one thing. We were trying to avert the apocalypse and we messed him up, Aziraphale, we messed all of that up.”
Aziraphale’s lips gently brushed her head. “Humans don’t make good decisions, either, and they manage it successfully quite often.”
She stared at the floor morosely, her hands around her midsection.
“They won’t let us,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale knew what she meant. While it was rare, he knew it wasn’t the first time an angel and a demon had done something like this, although this was probably the first time it had been consensual, if he was honest with himself. No one had ever found out what the results might have been, because both parents and child had been killed not long after discovery; Heaven had been the first to get to them as far as he had heard, but he knew Hell wouldn’t have stood complacently by either.
No one was quite sure what a child with this particular parentage might be like, but Aziraphale had a suspicion. Angelic sex is--well, rather more complicated than sex between two human bodies inhabited by nothing more than humans. There is a whole other metaphysical level to the interaction, including temporary merging of angelic essences when they sync. It would work the same way with a demon, whose grace was tainted but still functional in this matter. And Aziraphale had felt part of their merged grace--sort of drip off, but had taken no notice of it at the time. And the thing he could feel inside Crowley was softly glowing--only metaphorically, of course--like an angel’s or a demon’s grace. There hadn’t been anywhere for it to go before, but this time, when they had been in the middle of what could rightly be called procreation, a new, empty vessel had existed for it to escape into, and so it had. He knew it wasn’t going to be human, and Crowley would be foolish if she didn’t realize that too.
The Nephilim had been bad enough, and that was only angel mixed with human. That was the reason why such offspring with a demon had always been killed, along with the ones who dared to try and create them, because no one knew what they would be, which would raise troubling questions, and because they shouldn’t exist at all and could cause havoc and suffering and who knows what other manner of chaos, and there was one in Crowley’s belly right now, and they were both shaking with fear but holding each other and becoming gradually more determined that it should survive to receive their love.
“They don’t need to know,” said Aziraphale. “They haven’t taken any notice of us before. There’s no reason they would now.”
“We’re already in everyone’s bad books,” said Crowley. “This is just going to make it worse.”
“I’m not really sure it can get any worse.” They were in, literally, everyone’s bad books, except Adam’s and the hordes of humans who didn’t know they existed. Few supernatural beings that existed were uninterested in punishing them in some way. Except for, perhaps, God himself, because if He had been, it would have happened by now. They had both been lying low, and neither were sure if their skills at staying under the radar or Adam’s potential meddling had kept them safe from retribution for their disobedience.
Disobedience. Well, there was about to be a lot more of that.
Crowley and Aziraphale both agreed that God’s design for the human body during pregnancy was something they should not tamper with for fear of hurting the child, so they both swore off cheating for it in any way for nine months. Crowley did this only reluctantly, because it seemed like admitting God was right about something, but ultimately her knowledge of biology was limited and relented to letting nature take its course without interference.
She regretted this decision when she discovered that human women had not been exaggerating about the phenomenon of morning sickness. Aziraphale’s job description quickly changed from “undress me slowly and fuck me senseless” to “hold my hair back as I vomit into the toilet.”
Crowley’s belly continued to grow, and she sprawled out on the couch. Aziraphale came back with a carton of ice cream, and she supposed she should have been offended at his assumption that ice cream was what she needed to feel better, but it was in fact what she needed to feel better, so she took it without complaint, and ate the whole thing in one sitting, comforting herself with the fact that she would be able to put her destroyed figure back together after giving birth.
Oh, god. Giving birth.
“Aziraphale,” said Crowley.
“Hm?”
“Are we going to go to a human hospital when the time comes?”
“I suppose so,” said Aziraphale.
They went about in this manner all along the way.
“Hey, angel.”
“Hm?”
“Are we going to have a nursery? With a crib?”
“I suppose so.”
Are we going to get an ultrasound? Are we going to ask what sex it is? I suppose so. Are we going to pick out its name ahead of time? I suppose so. Am I going to be a stay-at-home Mom? I suppose so, if that’s what you want.
Eventually, Crowley got too big for her suits, and this irritated her very much, because nothing in the maternity section was stylish, she reported. They also weren’t warm enough, and she shivered, and Aziraphale pestered her into wearing sweaters, which were warm enough but were still ugly, and she wore her ugly sweaters and ugly sweatpants and ate ice cream and threw up into the toilet and generally complained about the ache in her body, which was clearly poorly designed for this task, and about how she couldn’t drink or use her own abilities on herself. She generally complained a lot, and Aziraphale let her with good humor, which was something that only one of them had at the moment. And she was generally cold and bundled up in sweaters or warm blankets and Aziraphale was reminded of a picture he had seen of a snake coiled around a pile of eggs buried in warm sand while watching a nature program with Crowley.
And there was one day, when they were both sitting on the couch curled up together, when there was a pounding on the door, and they both sensed who it was, and Crowley skittered away as fast as her weighted body would move, and Aziraphale pushed her into the closet just a second before the door collapsed inwards.
It was the archangel Michael.
Aziraphale whipped around and moved away from the closet, hoping Crowley could sufficiently hide her aura.
“Aziraphale,” said Michael, and Aziraphale was alarmed to see him draw his sword as soon as he stepped into the room.
“Now, hold on just a moment!” said Aziraphale. He congratulated himself for sounding only like he was mildly terrified, and not like he knew he was in deep shit. Michael would do worse than discorporate Crowley if he had come because he knew, and he couldn’t keep that thought out of his mind. “You can’t just come bursting in here!”
“I’ve waited long enough!” said Michael. “Every one else is too afraid to take action, but I am God’s mightiest warrior, and I know when something needs done, and I am not afraid of anyone. Where is that foul creature? The both of you will pay for what you’ve done.”
Aziraphale could practically hear Crowley shaking with fear from her hiding spot. “How did you find out?”
“That is not important. Tell me where it is!”
“’scuse me?”
Michael whirled around, then looked down to about four feet off the ground where a blond child in a grubby white t-shirt had materialized.
“You!” said Michael fiercely, but he stepped backwards away from Adam.
“I thought we had talked about this,” said Adam, his voice a tad stern.
“You have no authority over me!” said Michael. “You cannot stop me from carrying out my sacred duty. He has spawned an abomination with an unclean-- I was the one who destroyed the Nephilim, I was the one who cleansed the others when they-”
“Yeah, but,” interrupted Adam. “That was then. These two are mine. I thought I told you, you can’t just go ‘round hurting other people’s friends and ‘xpect them not to get upset with you.”
“As if it matters to me whether or not you are upset with me!”
Adam glowered, then, and even Aziraphale shrunk away from him.
“I can make you do what I want,” said Adam. “Not even my father could tell me what to do.”
“I was the one who cast Lucifer out of Heaven. I am greater than he is. You can overtake him, but not me.”
Adam stuck his hands in his pockets. “Wanna bet?”
That was all it took. The total nonchalant confidence of a child who was so confident that he could utterly destroy Michael, and the archangel was shaken, visibly.
He lowered his sword, scowling, then disappeared.
“Adam,” Aziraphale stuttered, beyond words.
Adam waved weakly. “Hiya. Gosh, what a clod. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” said Aziraphale, seeing Crowley peeking out from the closet amidst a pile of clothes. “Er. Thank you. We honestly weren’t sure if you had-”
“I was trying not to mess about too much,” said Adam. “I thought I had made it clear they shouldn’t. Well. I just want the world to go on without them--you know. Well, anyway, I ought to get back, I was watching telly and the adverts are almost over.”
He was gone.
There didn’t seem anything else to do besides sit back down on the couch as they had been before, but neither of them could quite remember what activity they had been engaged in.
There could be much written about their son, who was born in a human hospital perfectly happy and healthy, and who was--as only his parents could sense--a perfect chimera of his parents’ grace in a perfectly healthy baby corporation that neither Heaven nor Hell had handed out, but that had come from their love. And much could be written about how he discovered his powers and embarrassed his parents and about how Crowley couldn’t decide if she liked her male or female body better and kept switching between the two, confusing all of their son’s playmates’ parents. I could talk about how his name was Oliver, about his dark hair and intense sky blue eyes, about the special things he could do with his tongue, about his winning smile, about his wings which started off covered with down and then grew into glossy feathers that both his parents taught him how to groom, though one with more success than the other. But perhaps it would suffice to say that it was a happy ending, and leave the rest to your imagination.