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“I am authorised to remove the name of anyone who helped Gabriel from the Book of Life,” Michael says, and Crowley discreetly rolls his eyes. Michael has always been the sort who walks into a dinner party and seats himself at the head of the table. “You will never have existed Aziraphale,” Michael goes on, sounding more and more self-important by the second. “In the absence of Gabriel, I am the supreme archangel.”
“Duty officer.” Uriel’s bored tone masks real anger and Crowley supresses a snort of amusement. Demons jockey for position openly but angels, who pretend to that last-shall-be-first-and-first-shall-be-last nonsense, have to preserve the celestial harmonies. They might all want to be supreme archangel but none of them can show it.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, I must interrupt you there.” The Metatron enters the bookshop, carrying a large coffee. His voice has the musical, carrying quality of a Shakespearean actor’s. Crowley freezes, and sinks into Aziraphale’s most comfortable chair. He does not, precisely, fear the Metatron, but he suddenly very aware of being a lone demon in a room full of heaven’s most arrogant, powerful angels. Nothing to see here. “Oh, and I’ve brought over a coffee.”
Michael bristles. “I don’t believe I asked for any interruptions.” You’ll never make more than duty officer if you can’t do better than that, my fine fellow, Crowley thinks, amused.
“Yes, I couldn’t help it,” the Metatron says. His voice rises. “You’re talking utter balderdash. I mean, complete piffle! You don’t have the authority to do anything like that.”
“Um, and who are you?” Michael says, and Crowley loops one of his legs over the arm of his chair and settles in for the show. Michael is the acting supreme archangel. He cannot be this stupid, surely.
“For Heaven’s sake,” the Metatron says, holding his coffee as though it were an orb and sceptre. “And I mean that most literally. You don’t know me?” He looks across the bookshop and sees Crowley. His eyes narrow. “Well, what about you, demon? Do you know me?”
Michael follows his gaze and tries to recover lost ground. “Get him out of here!” he blusters.
“Really,” the Metatron reproves him.
“Oh, I know you,” Crowley says, malicious with the pleasure of showing Michael up. Arrogance in demons is rather encouraged, after all. “Last time I saw you, you were a big floating giant head, mind.”
“Oh! The Metatron!” Aziraphale gasps, and Crowley permits himself a brief shake of his head. He tries not to think of himself as smarter than most angels—he knows he is, but since a superiority complex doesn’t really help in dealing with them, he tries not to nurture one—but he still can’t quite believe it. He is surely not the only one who recognised the Voice of God right away.
“Correct!” the Metatron says, over the gaps of all the angels present. Crowley wonders uneasily what he is trying to hide and why. He thinks of Armageddon, and the Metatron’s attempt to take control and force the end of the world. The voice of God is a puppetmaster, and if he is choosing to hide himself, there is a reason for it. “This calls much less attention, though.”
“Right, you, you, you, back to heaven spit-spot, not another word!” the Metatron commands, and Crowley allows himself a moment to let the dislike he feels show on his face. He has no love for heaven’s archangels, but there is something unsettling about seeing them shooed away like naughty children. “Ah, ah, ah, not you,” he points to the young angel, Muriel.
“Um, your reverence, your grace, your--” Uriel says, nervously.
“Oh come on, spit it out,” the Metatron says impatiently.
“Have we done anything wrong?”
“Well, that remains to be seen, does it not?” the Metatron says. “Well go on, off you go, the lot of you! Except the dim one. I may need you!”
As the Archangels ascend in a glow of celestial light, Muriel remains in the corner, looking shy but pleased. Crowley feels a surge of something close to hatred at how no one else seems to react to, or even notice, the Metatron’s casual contempt for the angels. Uriel had sounded genuinely afraid and was dismissed without reassurance. Muriel has no idea they’ve just been insulted; they probably think dim is some sort of compliment. What act of angelic asshattery is the Metatron is up to now?
“Right.” If his hands weren’t full, he’d be dusting them, Crowley thinks spitefully. “It’s just you and me Aziraphale, eh?” The Voice of God steps towards Aziraphale, eyes alight. “I think we need to have a bit of a chin-wag. Don’t you?”
“I don’t believe there’s anything left to be said.” Like Uriel, Aziraphale sounds nervous. Unlike Uriel, Aziraphale can think beyond heaven’s displeasure, and Crowley feels a brief surge of pride, when the angel continues, “I’ve made my position quite clear.”
“Yes, well, I brought you a coffee from the shop,” the Metatron replies nonsensically. “It’s an oat milk latte with a hefty jigger of almond syrup.”
“You brought me a coffee.” Aziraphale sounds as surprised as Crowley feels. This is not, he thinks, what either of them expected to happen next. “Are you going to take it?”
“Shall I?”
“Drink it?” The Metatron’s voice is warm. Amused. Crowley distrusts it. “Of course. I’ve ingested things in my time, you know.”
Aziraphale tries the coffee and stammers a response about how nice it is.
“Yes, I should jolly well hope so,” the Metatron says. “Well, we have things to talk about. Shall we take a little stroll?”
Aziraphale turns to Crowley, a look of entreaty on his face. Crowley forces himself to relax, to show neither fear nor dislike towards the Metatron, at whom he is very carefully not looking. He is still in control of his voice but he is pretty sure he has lost control of his face. “Go on,” he says, striving to sound indifferent. “Day can’t get any weirder.”
As the Metatron follows Aziraphale out the door, he glares at Crowley. I like you as little as you like me. Less, Crowley thinks, and he stands to watch them go. Aziraphale’s chandeliers, which had spontaneously and charmingly lit themselves as Beelzebub and Gabriel declared their love for one another, rattle warningly. If they could, Crowley thinks, they would be emitting darkness.
He paces, turning his own dislike and the bookshop’s reaction over in his mind, and startles when he catches sight of Muriel. I’m as bad as Michael, forgetting who’s around me. “You should leave now too.”
“The Metatron told me to wait,” Muriel says, and they sound so delighted that Crowley can’t help but smile a little. “He said he might need me. Me!” Muriel laughs in delighted disbelief. "He might need me.”
“Marvellous, have a gold star,” Crowley says, mocking them gently. Baby angels are as sweet and as dumb as puppies. You can’t be mad at them for being as stupid as they are, but you have to be a better being than Crowley not to want to laugh at them a little sometimes. The dim one, he hears the Metatron sneer, and gets angry all over again.
“They’ll be back soon,” Crowley says, looking out the window, trying to see where his angel and the Voice of God have gone.
“Yes,” Muriel says breathlessly.
“When they do come back, I think we need a little us time.” Crowley tips his head back, the weight of the day’s absurdities suddenly too much for him. “After all this, I think we are going for an extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz.”
“Brilliant idea,” Muriel says. If they had a tail, it would be wagging furiously. “Breakfast. Us time.”
“Just us,” Crowley says, “Not you.”
“Oh. Oh, right, yes,” Muriel says cheerfully. “I can explore the bookshop.”
“You need to go,” Crowley says. Puppies are adorable, but they are so dumb, and Muriel has the earnest inability to take a hint common to all young angels.
“Can I,” Muriel stammers. “Can I take a book with me? I was looking at one earlier. They’re like people, only portable.”
“Go for it,” Crowley says, and throws a book at them. “Here. You’ll like this one.”
Minutes skip away as he stands, lost in thought. He comes back to himself to realise that Muriel is gone, and that the bookshop, covered in sulfur, fire supressing foam, splayed encyclopedias, and loose pages, is unhappy with its dishevelment.
He breathes deeply, and forces his attention on the task at hand. He restores the carpet to its proper place. With a snap of his fingers, shelves return to where they should be. Sulfur vanishes. Putting the bookshop back together calms him.
Still, tidying takes very little time, and he goes back to worrying. Searching for something else to do, he drags the armchair away from the desk and positions it in front of the clock. It is thirty seconds of distraction. He looks down at his watch. Where is the bloody angel, and what is the bloody Voice of God bloody doing here? He throws himself into the armchair and tips his head back with a groan, wanting Aziraphale back so they can figure out, together, what is going on.
He looks up hopefully when the door opens, but it is only Maggie, smiling slightly. Nina comes in after, frowning, and closes the door with a harder push than is strictly necessarily. What’s she got to be annoyed about, Crowley thinks, still focused on the problem of the Metatron.
“Tided up?” Maggie says sunnily, and Crowley marvels at the resilience of humans. Here is a woman who has just come face to face with most of the demons of hell, who was very nearly killed by them, and her concern is for the arrangement of furniture in a bookshop. Remarkable.
“Where’s the other one? We need to talk to you,” Nina says sharply, and Crowley slouches further, recognising a human being with an ax to grind.
“He’s out,” Crowley says, and holds up his hand. “Not a good time.” His lip curls.
“Wasn’t asking,” Nina says, and Crowley wants to bang his head against the chair in frustration, maybe conjure an illusion of something rotten with maggots or a nice bit of hellfire to get her to go away. “There are things you need to hear.”
Nina and Maggie sit down on the couch next to each other. They aren’t touching, Crowley notes, regretfully. Their bodies aren’t canted towards one another. “You and your…partner have been messing about in our lives.”
“We’re not a game. We’re real people,” Maggie says. “You can’t just pair us up for your amusement.”
Crowley slouches further. “You were crying and Nina needed rescuing,” he gabbles, waving his hand at the two of them as though sweeping them together.
“My relationship just ended,” Nina says angrily. “I am not ready to start another one yet.” Maggie gives a sharp nod. “I’d just be a rebound mess. I can’t start seeing Maggie. When I’m ready, I hope, she’ll be there, but there isn’t any guarantee.”
Maggie smiles with one side of her mouth. “There is.”
“You’re not helping, angel,” Nina says gruffly, and Crowley’s heart misses a beat. She sounds like someone he recognises. Me, he realises. She sounds like me. Me, when I talk to Aziraphale.
“Look at you two,” Nina says, going on the attack. “You’re the hard bitten one, the ‘can’t trust anyone ever again,’ and Mr. Where-ever-he-is, is the soft one who still believes in magic, and people being basically good, and all that.”
Crowley opens his mouth to protest that he’s been around longer than her entire species, and he knows himself very well, thank you very much. What comes out instead is, “Why are you telling me all this? I don’t understand.”
“That’s why she’s telling you,” Maggie says. “Because you don’t understand.” She leans forward and puts her hands together. “Because you and Mr. Fell don’t ever talk to each other.”
Crowley supresses a hoot of derision but he can’t control his face. Michael, the Metatron, and a come-to-Jesus talk from a pair of humans not even old enough to have grandchildren. “We talk all the time,” he says, and slouches, thinking wistfully of the talking he and Aziraphale could be doing at the Ritz, right now, with enough alcohol to help him forget this entire ridiculous day. “We’ve been talking for millions of years. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah! I say something brilliant; he says something unintentionally funny back. It’s great.”
“You never say what you’re really thinking,” Maggie says. She looks quickly and affectionately at Nina. “That was all we needed. It’s what you two need as well.”
There is a long and not entirely comfortable silence.
It is interrupted, to Crowley’s relief, by Aziraphale entering the bookshop, beaming like the ray of bloody sunshine he always is. It would be annoying—Hell, it sometimes is annoying, Crowley has the faint presentiment that the angel is about to be very, very bloody annoying—but he admits to himself, in the wake of Nina and Maggie’s upbraiding (in one corner of his mind, he is amazed that they dared), that Aziraphale’s sunniness and pettiness and primness and stubbornness are a necessary part of his existence, and at some point, in the future, perhaps even the near future, he could actually say so. Using words. Aloud.
“We’re just going,” Maggie says.
“I’m sure you two have a lot to say,” Nina says. The door closes behind them. Aziraphale smiles, and Crowley slithers to his feet, half-minded to go after them shouting denials and protests. We talk! he wants to yell. We talk all the time! Blah blah blah blah! See us talking!
His momentum has carried him to stand in front of the clock. He tears off his glasses, hoping it will lessen the feeling of pressure in his head. It doesn’t. He tries speaking. “Look. Um. I suppose, I’ve got something to say,” he says and curses himself. Speech is useless. He has so much to say and not enough breath to say it with. He sees Aziraphale waving his hands, and barrels onwards. “I know we ought to be talking about it. It’s probably best if I start off doing all the talking and you do all the listening. Because if I don’t start talking now, I’ll never start talking.”
His feeling of desperation grows as he struggles to force out the words. “Right. Yes. So.”
Aziraphale steps forward and Crowley scowls at the interruption, “What’s that lovely human expression? Oh yes! Hold that thought.” Azriaphale laughs nervously, as though what he has to say astonishes him. “You see I, oh, I have some incredibly good news. To give you.” He is practically vibrating with excitement.
“Really?” Crowley says, his voice a skeptical rasp. He wonders if Aziraphale noticed the bookshop’s reaction to the Metatron. The Metatron’s reaction to him. It occurs to him, distantly, to wonder if the angel’s definition of good news is the same as his own.
“I, um,” Aziraphale stops, then tries again. “So, I, um, the Metatron, you know, I don’t, he’s as bad a fellow, well, I, uh, I think I might have misjudged him.” Aziraphale’s gestures are as wild and inarticulate as his speech. He seems, Crowley thinks, to be trying to catch words that are trying to fly away from him.
“You see, well, Gabriel, obviously, hadn’t worked out as supreme archangel and commander of the heavenly host.” Aziraphale gives another nervous laugh and continues to wave his hands as though batting away the wrong words. “And he asked who I thought should take over now that Gabriel was gone. And I said, Michael?”
Oh, don’t be silly. No no no no. There’s only one candidate who makes even the slightest bit of sense, and that’s you.
“And I said Me?” Aziraphale’s face looks equally delighted and embarrassed. Crowley’s dismay grows as Aziraphale re-enacts the entire conversation.
“Well, yes. You’re a leader, you’re honest, you don’t just tell people what they want to hear. It’s why Gabriel came to you in the first place, I imagine She has plans afoot, enormous projects, and I will need you to run them. You are just the angel for the job.”
“I, I, I don’t want to go back to heaven. Where would I get my coffee?”
“You know, as supreme archangel, you would be able to decide who you wanted to work with. I’ve been looking over your previous exploits and I see in quite a few of them, you formed a de facto partnership with the demon Crowley. Now, if you wanted to work with him again, that might be considered irregular, but it would certainly be within your jurisdiction to restore your friend, Crowley, to full angelic status.”
Crowley stares. He is so angry his skin feels too tight for his body. “He said what?”
“He said I could appoint you,” Aziraphale carols, “To be an angel! You could come back! To heaven.” His hands sketch a rainbow. “And everything! Like the old times. Only even nicer!” The angel laughs, this time with genuine delight.
“Right,” Crowley growls, nodding. Plans, enormous projects. Surely Aziraphale has heard the words he’s just said. “And you told him just where he could stick it then.”
“Not at all,” the angel falters. His smile slips.
“Oh, we’re better than that. You’re better than that, angel. You don’t need them; I certainly don’t need them!” He feels as though he ought to be too angry to speak but whatever was blocking his speech earlier has given way and words are pouring out of him. “They asked me back to hell, I said no. I’m not rejoining their team, neither should you!”
Aziraphale sounds puzzled, maybe even a little amused, by Crowley’s anger. “Well, obviously you said no to hell, you’re the bad guys. But heaven!” He spreads his hands, an angel delivering a divine benediction, and he responds to Crowley’s glare by starting to stumble over his words. “Well, it’s the side of truth. Of, of light. Of good.”
That was what Aziraphale got from his six thousand years on earth? From Armageddon? Crowley’s human body is flushed and dizzy with rage. His heart pounds so loud Aziraphale must be able to hear it. “When heaven ends life on earth it will be just as dead as if hell ended it.” He spits the consonants at the end of his words. “Tell me you said no.”
Aziraphale’s mouth opens and shuts in helpless surprise, and Crowley steps towards him, his gaze locked on the angel’s face. His dear, foolish face. His dear, foolish, stupid face, that he has seen for six thousand years, and expected to see for six thousand more. “Tell me you said no,” he pleads.
“If I am in charge,” Aziraphale says, endlessly gentle, his voice warm with hope and resolve, “I can make a difference.”
Crowley remembers the look of sick, anguished betrayal on Aziraphale’s face, as they stood facing each other in the courtyard of the house of Job and Sitis, and he pretended to destroy all of Job’s wealth. He tries to convince himself that this is similar. He will turn, and look at this from a different perspective, and Aziraphale will not have just said I can make a difference. He tries to say this, without saying it. His first try emerges as a hoarse groan, the sound ripped out of him, and he turns away. Aziraphale does not lie, perhaps cannot lie. I can make a difference. He tips his head back, forcing down a sound that might otherwise emerge as a sob.
Words are pouring from his mouth, unwanted and unplanned. "Oh, God. Right, okay. Right.” He can still talk. He can still make Aziraphale see. He remembers Maggie’s gentle surety. You never say what you’re really thinking. That’s all we needed. He turns back towards Aziraphale, determined to make him understand. “I didn’t get a chance to say what I was going to say, I think I’d better say it now. Right, okay, yes, so.” Forcing himself to say that he has something to say, is not the same as actually saying it. Lifting his head to meet Aziraphale’s eyes nearly takes more courage than he has.
“We’ve known each other a long time, we’ve been on this planet for a long time. I mean. You and me.” The words are halting, wrong. Insubstantial. Crowley tries again. “I could always rely on you.” Better. He swallows and presses on. “You could always rely on me. We’re a team. A group. A group of the two of us. And we spend our existence pretending that we aren’t.” Aziraphale is shaking his head. Crowley breathes, flays himself with honesty once more. “I mean the last few years, not really.” He tips his chin back before he starts speaking again, forcing down the waver in his voice, and his directs his gaze towards the ceiling. He cannot bear to see Aziraphale’s reaction. “And I would like to spend,” but his voice gives out.
His skin feels too tight. His face burns. What can he possibly say to make Aziraphale understand? He looks away, to where the Grand Duke of Hell and the former Archangel stood, declaring themselves each other’s heaven and hell, and is seized with sudden inspiration. “I mean, if Gabriel and Beelzebub can do it, go off together, then we can.” By some miracle, he is still talking. “Just the two of us. We don’t need heaven, we don’t need hell, they’re toxic! We need to get away from them, just be an us!” He hears the sound of his own voice, ragged and rising, with astonishment. The last, difficult breath. The question that must be asked. “You and me, whaddya say?”
Aziraphale surges forward. His momentum carries him directly in front of Crowley, close enough to touch. “Come with me! To heaven,” he pleads. “I’ll run it; you can be my second in command.” He sounds as though he is about to weep. “We can make a difference.”
He is still close enough for Crowley to touch and he has never felt so far away. “You can’t leave this bookshop,” the demon says, at last, clinging to the truth he knows, that he has seen for millennia, that Aziraphale loves the world too much to ever give it up.
“Oh Crowley. Nothing lasts forever.”
Everything hurts. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to think, it hurts to be alive, it hurts to be in this bookshop. With this angel. “No,” he says, once, and the pain washes over him like a great wave. He blinks away a sudden blurriness of his vision, and unfolds his glasses, bringing them up to meet his lowered face. “No, I don’t suppose it does,” he says quietly and puts his sunglasses on. He will not weep where Aziraphale can see.
The demon lifts his chin and steps past the new archangel. “Good luck.”
“Good luck?” In another time and place, the outraged astonishment in Aziraphale’s voice would make him laugh. “Crowley. Crowley, come back! To heaven. Work with me! We can be together. Angels! Doing good. I need you!”
All is silence. Crowley stands, refusing to look at him, words clotting on his tongue, arrested by the raw urgency in the angel’s voice. I need you. Aziraphale has always had a way with words. Crowley’s hopes rise. I need you, too. He tests the words in his head, satisfies himself with their rightness, prepares to give them breath and voice. Before he can speak, Aziraphale breaks the silence. “I don’t think you understand what I’m offering you.”
“I understand.” He wants to yell, once again, how can someone as clever as you be so stupid? “I think I understand a whole lot better than you do.”
“Well,” Aziraphale says. He tries to smile. “Then there’s nothing more to say.”
Crowley is possessed by a sudden, lunatic desire to remind Aziraphale of their toast, to the world. The alcoholic brunch at the Ritz, the one that, in another world, a better world, they would be at right now, springs suddenly to mind. “Listen. Hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything.” Aziraphale’s voice frays with confused frustration.
“That’s the point.” Crowley tells him. “No nightingales.” He watches Aziraphale’s face crumple with realization and regret, and wants to grab him by the collar and shake him.
[…His hands on Aziraphale’s collar, leverage to shove the angel up against the wall, their noses nearly touching, Aziraphale’s breath hot on his face…]
He wants. He wants that. He wants that again. He wants—the world. To be in the world. To see what else they could be, in the world, together. “You idiot,” he says savagely, to himself and Aziraphale, idiots both, “We could have been,” his voice breaks, “us.”
Aziraphale turns away, fighting for composure, and Crowley’s body is in motion for before his mind has caught up.
He grabs Aziraphale by the labels of his ancient butter-coloured coat, and slams their mouths together.
He is viciously satisfied to hear Aziraphale’s small squeak of surprise and then he loses himself in the sensations of the kiss. Aziraphale’s lips are warm and soft and he tastes of coffee and almonds. He should, by all rights, he should be choking from the pressure of his collar on the back of his neck—Crowley’s hands are trapped between them, tightening into claws from the force of his grip, clinging to collar of Aziraphale’s coat like it prevents him from falling. Maybe it does. Aziraphale is kissing him back, open-mouthed and hungry. His lips are warm and soft and he answers Crowley’s fury with a gentle violence that is all his own. Aziraphale’s hands waver hesitantly over his back and shoulders, drifting feathers, light touches that burn through his layers of clothes. One hand settles in the small of Crowley’s back, the other grips his shoulder to pull him further into the kiss. Heaven and Hell no longer exist. His body is aflame. Aziraphale is kissing him back.
Crowley feels Aziraphale’s body cant forward, seeking his, pressing into the barrier of his trapped hands, and loses his balance. He steps away so abruptly they both stagger. He can still feel the ghost of Aziraphale’s hand on his back. His mouth burns. He needs air but Aziraphale is no longer kissing him and he cannot breathe.
Aziraphale’s breath shudders like he is sobbing. Crowley might start to sob himself. Aziraphale tries to speak. His first effort ends in a wrecked, garbled noise. It might be anything. It might be the start of the word you. The angel wets his lips and tries again. “I forgive you,” he says, at last, his voice trembling.
Crowley lets out a breath he did not realise he was still holding. I need you. I forgive you. “Don’t bother,” he says.
When he comes to himself, he is outside the shop. His mouth still aches and his eyes are burning and the acrid taste in his mouth somehow, despite everything, still has a slight flavour of almonds and coffee. The day is too bright and too loud and he closes his eyes, standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the middle of Soho, feeling as though something is about to start hurting very much, but right now he’s in too much pain to feel it.
The car. The car is there (our car) and Crowley staggers over to it. He rests one arm on the roof of the car, his car, shoves the other hand into his pocket, and watches as the Metatron crosses the street and re-enters the bookshop. The Bentley turns from black to infra-black.
His fingers close around his keys but he cannot take them out. He cannot leave. Somehow, despite everything, Crowley is still an optimist. He thinks of Aziraphale’s mouth against his, Aziraphale’s, body pressing into his, and he cannot move.
Moments or minutes or hours later—he cannot tell—the Metatron walks out of the shop, followed by Aziraphale. The archangel stares straight ahead as though deliberately trying to avoid taking in anything around him, until they arrive at the lift to heaven. There, in front of the open door, for the first time since he left the bookshop, the angel turns his head. Their eyes meet and the world comes to a stop.
Crowley sees Aziraphale hesitate, thinks for one wild moment that he is going to—he is going—he—and the supreme archangel steps, slow and deliberate, into the lift, and stares fixedly outwards until the doors close.
Crowley comes back to himself in slow stages. The sun is still shining. The car is still ultra-black. It is still parked in that rare parking spot outside Coffee or Death, the one that Aziraphale used to miracle open. Nina sees him and lifts a hand in greeting. He turns away and opens the door. He settles himself at the wheel, and looks to the opposite side of the street. Maggie is inside the record shop, head resting on her arms. She looks like she has gone to sleep.
He turns the key in the ignition and oh, for Satan’s sake. The last time Aziraphale was in the car he left the blessed radio on. “A nightingale sang in Berkley square,” begins to play and he reaches out blindly for the dashboard, his eyes welling, and turns it off.
Crowley drives away.