Chapter Text
By and large, most people saying something like “well, you are the very last person I expected to see!” are lying.
If you knew someone at all, we must point out, putting on our most insufferable know-it-all glasses and getting out a personalised clipboard and pocket calculator with our names embossed on it, you expected to see them again at some point, even just a little bit, even in unusual circumstances; so, a total stranger you had never heard of before would, in all technicality, be even more unexpected.
Only more so if said stranger was long dead, had not yet been born, or was entirely fictional. There were higher and higher bars to become the very, very last person someone had expected to see, and most individuals could never hope of clearing them all.
So, technically, his personal wily adversary, the Serpent of Eden, the Demon Crowley Himself In All His Devilish Glory, had not been the very last person Aziraphale had expected to see - that was a textile merchant named Irwing who had been made up by a young woman in 372 AD as an excuse not to get married to the miller’s son - but he didn’t exactly make the top ten, either. Especially not here, at the very monastery Aziraphale had now been stationed at for a good few decades of the Middle Ages.*
*Though, of course, at the time they had been the very-far-end-all-the-way-at-the-front ages. The middle-ing had come on gradually.
Not that he was an unpleasant sight, of course. Aziraphale always enjoyed seeing Crowley; quite a lot, in fact, to a degree that was honestly starting to worry him a bit.*
*He had recently begun to note that most things that felt good and were deeply enjoyable were also the sort of thing Heaven sternly disapproved of, and was on the slow and rocky path of drawing some unappealing conclusions from that.
It was just that Crowley was an unusually attractive demon, wearing a particularly fetching humanoid corporation, which was simply an objective fact. He was all fluid joints and too much limb - Aziraphale quietly suspected the poor boy was overcompensating for the whole myth of God punishing the Serpent by taking its legs - and confidence enough for half a dozen men, which one should never underestimate.
Crowley knew he was attractive, and held himself as such… to Aziraphale’s great misfortune. Very impolite of him, to be all temptation, even now. In a monastery. In front of an angel.
(Not that Crowley seemed to be aware of Aziraphale’s presence on the staircase behind him, currently very busy miracling one step just a hair higher than the others, and maybe making it a little more slippery than it by all rights should be.
It wasn’t much, but it was dishonest work, and Crowley believed deeply in the power of micro-evildoing.)
So, when Aziraphale exclaimed “Crowley!”, it came out rather more accusing than it ought to, and a little offended by the fact that Crowley had somehow managed to make a monk’s habit look form-fitting and stylish and just a hint cheeky. Disgraceful. Demons really stopped at nothing, these days.
“Nghah!?” Crowley’s head whipped around in a flurry of crimson curls - he had forgone the monastic regulation tonsure, as well as the cross and rosaries he ought to be wearing, because apparently demons did stop at some things, after all.
At the sight of Aziraphale, he took a startled step backwards, up the stairs.…
And, inevitably, his heel caught on the recently-manipulated step.
We shall spare the Esteemed Readers a detailed description of the second-worst Fall in Crowley’s life, though they should know it was supremely humiliating, and still did not change Aziraphale’s firm conviction that Crowley was immensely attractive and effortlessly elegant even a little bit.
“Ouch,” muttered Crowley, at the bottom of the stairs, picking himself up and futilely trying to gather the shards of his dignity. “Hullo, angel. Fancy seeing you here.”*
*Crowley made no comment along the lines of Aziraphale being the last person he’d expected to see, in part because he always expected to see Aziraphale.
Or. Well.
Hoped.
Same difference, really.
“What are you doing here!” Aziraphale gasped, once he too had reached the bottom of the stairs in a slightly less mortifying matter.
“Oh, thanks for asking, I’m fine, nothing broken, don’t you fret-” Crowley shot back in a nasal sort of voice that did not sound like Aziraphale at all, thank you very much.
“What, in Heaven’s name, are YOU doing here!?” He repeated in a tone that was most certainly not a shriek, but only by way of denial.
“Nothing! I’m doing nothing in Heaven’s name!” Crowley, that wily demon, blinked his bright golden eyes innocently behind his dark glasses.* “In Hell’s name, however…”
*The Society of Timetravellers Against Really Dumb Inconsistencies in Spacetime (TARDIS Society for short, and currently locked in a fierce copyright battle with a Doctor Who fanclub from the 22nd century) had written Crowley up a ticket for the blatant anachronism at least once every century, but so far he had always shrugged, paid the fine, and stubbornly kept his glasses on.
“You’re here on-” Aziraphale lowered his voice, though not his outraged high pitch, leading to the sort of tone that gave nearby bats a headache, but required Crowley to lean in quite closely. “Demon business?”
“I’m a demon. By definition, all my business is demon business.” Crowley smiled quite infuriatingly, though also handsomely, which just made it worse. “But also, yeah. Destroy all the good in the world. Erode humanity’s faith in the Almighty. Sow a bit of dissent and treachery and blasphemy and…” Crowley tried to think of more nouns. “...stuff.”
“Here!? At a monastery?”
Crowley shrugged. “Go big or go home.”*
*There was a demotivational poster down in Hell that said something similar, except it read, in a font that looked like comic sans, just more grimy, “Go Big or Go To Hell (because you have no home, miserable underling)”.
“Well. Far be it from me to discourage your lofty ambitions,” Aziraphale muttered tetchily, “but you might want to try a different monastery, then, hm? I’ve been puttering about in this one for years now, blessing left and right, sharing God’s love, Goodwill To All Mankind Etcetera Etcetera, and you know how easily we cancel each other out.”*
*The scientific method, controlled experiments, and empirical testing had yet to really catch on among the alchemists of Europe, who preferred more of a “fuck around and find out gold” approach; but Aziraphale and Crowley had gone through enough trial and error to find out that any time they were within a hundred miles of each other while both blessing and cursing respectively, it really didn’t do much either way.
“Hnyeah. One of us will have to leave,” Crowley agreed.
“One of us will have to, indeed.”
In the ensuing silence filled with looks so pointed that they would make a needle look positively dull, it became quite clear that when Crowley and Aziraphale said “one of us” they really meant “you”, and neither had any intent of leaving.
“So.” Said Aziraphale.
“So,” echoed Crowley.
“After you?” Aziraphale tried, dropping all pretence at subtlety; but they were not yet at that point in their relationship where a demon could be banished simply by strongly hinting, so Crowley stayed put.
“Age before wisdom,” Crowley shot back, which was perfectly ridiculous because he and Aziraphale were both Older Than Time Itself, and arguably both lacking in wisdom.
“Now really, dear fellow, you’re being quite childish.” Aziraphale huffed. “One would think you’d jump at the idea of leaving this one to me! I’d imagine the hallowed ground isn’t particularly easy on your feet… you must be in terrible burning holy agony.”
“Kind of you to worry, but it’s fine actually.” Crowley threw Aziraphale a curious look. “Don’t you know what sort of monastery this is, angel?”
“Er.” That gave Aziraphale pause. “The briefing from Above has admittedly been… minimalist.”
“But you said you lived here for years.”
“...there’s always work to do in the scriptorium. I kept busy, Crowley!”
“Right.” Crowley, who had actually been at the monastery for two weeks already, but spent most of it in the gardens hissing at bulbs (and therefore never crossing Aziraphale’s path from the library and scriptorium to dinner in the refectory and back again), struggled to argue against that. “Fair.”
“So, why aren’t you in terrible burning holy agony?” Aziraphale inquired politely. Not that he wanted Crowley to be in t.b.h.a or anything, perish the thought; but he was wondering.
“Well, the thing about this monastery is…” Crowley began; though since his explanation style occasionally leaned rather ramble-y, we will leave Aziraphale to sort through it on his own, and instead provide the Esteemed Reader with an omniscient cliffnotes summary.
This particular monastery, in which Aziraphale and Crowley both found themselves in, housed the Brotherhood of Blissful Ignorance, an order of monks worshipping Saint Casimir the Oblivious.
Saint Casimir had been a pagan prince living somewhen in the fifth century, and had been married to a Christian woman named Beryl Articulatus of Cracow - which the Esteemed Reader might recall as the patron saint of the Chattering Order of Satanist nuns. Some sources claimed that her God-given ability to incessantly chatter had eventually driven him to strangle his wife a few weeks into their still-unconsummated marriage, and thereby ensured her martyrdom; but the Brotherhood of Blissful Ignorance rather subscribed to the alternate legend, which revolved around the purchase of a set of earplugs and a surprisingly happy and loving marriage as a result of it.
Saint Casimir, they believed, had been blessed with God’s benevolence, and in His honour, they engaged frequently and enthusiastically in what the Brotherhood considered the holiest act of all and the root of all that is Good and Kind in the world: Minding Your Own Business.*
*This was, coincidentally, why Aziraphale and Crowley had been so readily accepted, and why nobody had commented on their rather odd angelic or demonic behaviours. To ignore strange happenings, and each other - the monks only acknowledged communication through written missives they passed to one another, and quite a few even wore blessed earplugs in honour of Saint Casimir - was akin to prayer and a core tenet of the particular way in which the occupants of this monastery served God; and they’d really been quite grateful to Brother Aziraphale for taking one for the team and acting so incredibly strangely that they had quite a lot to worshipfully turn a blind eye to.
Which was commendable, all in all, and honestly not a bad way to go about your worship, all things considered. What kept Crowley’s soles safe was the fact that the Brotherhood had Satanists-in-law in the Chattering Order… and also that Casimir’s conversion status was somewhat a matter of theological debate. While it was entirely possible, if not very likely, that Casimir had once vaguely nodded and smiled, or even distractedly murmured “yes, dear” while Beryl chattered on about Jesus Christ Our Lord and Saviour and how nice it would be if her husband converted to Christianity for her, his saintly qualifications remain somewhat disputed as scholars struggle to agree on whether or not that really counted.
So, between the adjacency to Satanism and Paganism, some blasphemous acts a former abbot had performed on monastery grounds so his brothers could piously ignore him doing them, a particularly morally-dubious batch of sandstone in the building’s foundation, and an investment in sturdy footwear, a demon could stroll all about the monastery and feel barely even a twinge of discomfort.
And frankly, it did the monastery garden no end of good - a number of root vegetables and almost every type of cucumber were categorically evil, and struggled to thrive in soil with too high pH (percentage of Holiness) values. A bit of theological ambiguity was just what they needed, and if Crowley spent a few more weeks hissing obscenities and threats at them, the Brotherhood was going to be blessed by the richest harvest in decades.
Returning to our narrative, Aziraphale kept saying “oh my” and “goodness” and “dear me” as the Brotherhood of Blissful Ignorance’s complicated history and clerical status was revealed to him in bits and pieces.
“Honestly,” he said, shaking his head, when Crowley had finished explaining. You really never could tell, could you. They’d seemed like a perfectly pious lot to him, albeit a bit reluctant to strike up casual chit-chat, but there was no sin in that either way.* “It’s a miracle that Heaven chose this monastery for…”
*Unless you made small talk about the weather, which had been strongly condemned by the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople.
“For?” Crowley stepped a little closer, leaned in a little further. Aziraphale briefly had the sort of thoughts he was henceforth going to blame on the mild undercurrent of unholiness running through the monastery.
“...for nothing specific at all, you inquisitive fiend!” Aziraphale evaded, both in word and deed, stepping back quickly. “Now begone, afore I feel compelled to smite you.”
“Right.” Crowley looked weirdly hurt. Strange. There had been no smiting yet, after all. “So, still not interested in throwing our lots in together, huh? Exchanging information? Coming to an arrangement?”
“No,” Aziraphale said, rather more sharply than he meant it. The hurt look on that devilishly handsome face intensified.
“Look. Crowley.” He tried, gently. “It’s been quite lovely to see you again, and on a purely personal level, I am… rather fond of you. Yes, fond. If you were interested in getting together over a tankard of something alcoholic and a good bit of stew sometime, I would be far from opposed. But, professionally… you are a demon, dear boy, and I an angel. Nothing good would come of it if I give Evil even an inch.* Do you understand?”
*If an Effort were Made, Aziraphale would be able to give Crowley rather more than just one inch… but that was neither here nor there, and this footnote should be really very ashamed of itself for even making this innuendo in polite company.
“You wouldn’t be giving an inch to Evil. You’d be giving it to me.” Perhaps it should have come out cutting, but somehow Crowley’s voice cracked in the middle of it, and it went all faintly plaintive instead. “...but I suppose the lack of distinction there is answer enough.”
“Oh Crowley, really-” Why was he taking it so personally!? Aziraphale had just made clear that it had nothing to do with Crowley himself! It really was dashed difficult to deal with that wicked adversary sometimes, it really was!
“Don’t bother. You’ve made your stance quite clear.” Crowley’s hands clenched into fists, even as a grin spread over his face. “Guess we’ll be at odds, then. Working firmly against each other. As what I’m doing here is so Evil, and you are so Good, and our intentions are thoroughly incompatible.”
He bared his teeth, sharp serpentine fangs flashing in the candlelight, and stuck out his hand.
“May the besssst man win, eh, Aziraphale?”
“May he, indeed.” Aziraphale grabbed the offered hand rather a bit too tightly, and they shook on it with mutual the-closest-the-two-of-them-could-get-to-contempt (which really just meant somewhat sharper glares in place of longing gazes, and for-once-not-ONLY-sexual tension you could cut with a knife).
If Crowley was so intent on making trouble for Aziraphale, instead of obligingly buggering off to do Evil elsewhere, then! Well! Aziraphale would just have to place his trust in the Lord, and thwart his demonic wiles at any opportunity.
And Good would prevail.
Obviously.