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In the future, when reflecting upon certain happenstances of the year 1478, Aziraphale would shield himself from the guilt he felt for ignoring the signs, so to speak, by remembering Treviso’s L’arte de l’abbaco. The arithmetics manual had been fresh off the relatively newly invented press when a copy had fallen into Aziraphale’s hands. He’d spent two weeks holed up inside his home in England’s centre of commerce, London. Great place for acquiring the newest books, especially one as tied to trade as this one.
Aziraphale remembered having found the book delightful, not because of any interest in pursuing human riches–or in maths, really, which he still firmly believed to be Crowley’s work, no matter how much the demon claimed otherwise–but because of its simple and didactic approach. Humans could achieve wonderful things when they applied themselves.
So caught up was he in appreciating the lovelier qualities of the human spirit that he had only noticed the sense of wrongness that had been growing in the back of his mind for two weeks when the burning note had appeared.
It was a brief note, clear and concise. It didn’t bother with greetings or pleasantries. It had a job to do, and it didn’t get paid to do more than what was requested of it.
It read:
Let’s meet up. -C.
By that point in history, with four centuries of the Arrangement under his belt, Aziraphale was well acquainted with Crowley’s strange methods of communication. A smoking slip of paper was not the worst he could receive. The Pigeon Incident of 1180 came to mind.
The angel took up a black quill and turned the singed paper over.
Usual time and place. -A.
He’d barely finished signing when the thing disappeared again in a shower of harmless sparks.1 Aziraphale shook his head. Crowley and his flair for the dramatics.
He went back to his book, but before he could read a whole sentence, the paper fizzled back into existence in front of him. Aziraphale frowned. That was new. Their long-distance communication never went further than agreeing on a rendezvous. He unfolded the blackened scrap and read the words hastily scrawled there.
Can I pop by now?
Aziraphale blinked. He re-read the message, to make sure it hadn’t changed its meaning. It hadn’t. It was most unlike Crowley to…
That was when he felt it.
Unconsciously, he had reached out towards that far-away presence that was Crowley’s demonic energy in Aziraphale’s radar.2 It was… farther away than he expected. Frazzled. Buzzing, jumping, and twisting all over the place. A whirling vortex from which Aziraphale got the faint impression of someone howling in agony.
He hurried to write back.
I’m in London. Do you need an address?
I’ll find you.
And that was that.
Aziraphale started pacing. It was hard to tune out Crowley now that he had noticed the state the poor fellow was in. He worried. Then he worried about being worried. Crowley was a demon. The Enemy! If he was downcast (both literally and metaphorically), then it was what he deserved. If he was grief stricken, it was because he’d been shunned from the Almighty’s embrace, cursed never to find solace again. If he was feeling soul-achingly lonely, then it was by his own wrongdoings that he’d ended up that way.
Aziraphale sighed, wringing his hands together. No, he had never managed to buy into that rhetoric, not where his friendly Adversary was concerned. Why pretend that could change now? He turned on his heels.
Crowley was there, his long, lean body draped over one of Aziraphale’s chairs. He was clad in luxurious black clothing with red accents all over. No surprise there, except that the cut was not one Aziraphale recognised as English. His eyes were covered by opaque black spectacles, and his hair was styled in the modern fashion.
“‘Ello, angel.”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale smiled. It slipped and fell off his face as he noticed some more things about his guest. Like how his clothes were rumpled and in disarray, his face flushed underneath the glasses. A strong smell of distilled alcohol wafted from him. The angel frowned. “Are you drunk?”
“Nah. Sobered up before coming here.” Crowley stood up in one fluid movement. He swayed on his feet. “Maybe not completely,” he amended, grabbing onto the chair’s high back, and looking up at Aziraphale–or at least in his general direction. “I could use a drink.”
“It seems you’ve had quite enough already.”
Aziraphale had expected a sarcastic, flippant remark, the go-to for their ages-old bickering. Instead, Crowley stayed silent, holding onto the chair in a death grip. Something hardened in his eyes. Aziraphale didn’t quite understand how he could tell, as through the decades Crowley had only got better at finding glasses dark enough to cover his eyes completely, but he could. Years of association, most likely.
“Have you been to Spain recently, Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, in a voice often heard in those breaking bad news to children.
The angel considered for a moment.
“No, I don’t think so. Not for a century or so.”
“You’re lucky.” Crowley let go of the chair and ambled off towards the cabinet where Aziraphale stored his wine and liquors. Either the demon had a bloodhound’s nose for alcohol, or he’d taken an educated guess based on the sparse furnishings of Aziraphale’s lodgings. “I’ve just come back from.” He uncorked a stout bottle of cider and took a healthy swig straight from the neck.
“I… take it didn’t go over well?”
Crowley snorted. “Remember the Crusades? Imagine that, but instead of slaughtering the nonbelievers, the holy knights have come up with novel torture methods that would put my lot to shame.” Another drink, longer. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Now take whatever you’ve imagined and make it ten times worse.”
Aziraphale clasped his hands together and started fidgeting.
“Oh, dear.”
“Indeed. Inquisition, they’re calling it.”
The angel walked up to the cupboard and brought out his own bottle, as it grew clear that Crowley did not intend to share his. He poured two glasses, his stomach churning with dread.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.” And if it was as bad as Crowley said, why hadn’t he? Mere distraction, or demonic intervention?
“Ngk. It’s fairly new.” The demon finished the first cider bottle and moved on to the tumbler Aziraphale offered him. He downed it in one go. “Just got officialised.”
The dread hardened, turning into cold cement in his belly. Aziraphale took a sip of his drink. The apple flavour tasted bitter.
“One of yours?”
Crowley apparently had no qualms with the beverage, because he took the second bottle, started to tip it towards his glass, and then shrugged and brought the entire thing to his mouth again.
“As far as Hell’s concerned.” He leaned against the cupboard. “Lord Beelzebub asked me about it while I was in the country. I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, but they seemed impressed. What was I supposed to do? ‘Course I said it was me!” Crowley hiccuped. He patted his pockets with his free hand. “Lookie. Got a comma- commi- bloody good job note for it. Medal ‘n all.” He threw a small object at Aziraphale. The angel fumbled to catch it. It was, indeed, a small medal, rusty and coppery, with the words ‘To the demun Crowley, for hiz outsztanding job on the Spanish Inquizishon’ scratched on the surface.3
“It’s, um… very nice,” Aziraphale offered, returning it after a moment and fighting the urge to wipe his hands down his clothes.
Crowley huffed. “Don’t worry, I hate it, too. Anyway, I nipped by Seville as soon as they left. Figured if I was gonna get blamed, at least I should know what I was bein’ blamed for. I- the things I saw- Ngh. Humans… Too creative for their own good.”
Aziraphale’s eyes widened in surprise–both at what Crowley’s words implied, and (mainly) at the fact that the demon had so casually dropped the hint that he resented getting Hell's recognition.
“So you had nothing to do with it?”
Maybe his tone of voice had been too incredulous. Maybe it’d been the effect of the copious amounts of alcohol flowing through Crowley’s veins. The fact was that Crowley tensed up all of a sudden, a snake coiling in on itself before it lunged.
“Not a thing,” he said, shrugging an incredibly stiff shoulder. He pawed at the bottle again, muttering his next words over its lip. “The mortals thought it up themselves.”
You might be acquainted, if you’ve spent more than a few years on Earth, with the feeling one gets when going down a staircase and missing a step in haste. The brittle quality to Crowley’s voice made Aziraphale feel like he’d missed two.
“Sorry, dear fellow. I only ask because… well, you understand. After all, you’re a-“
“Demon,” Crowley finished. “Minister of evil, creature of the pit. Yeah, I get it.”
“It’s just the facts,” the angel mumbled, apologetic.
“Mm.” Crowley turned his head, developing a sudden interest, it seemed, in Aziraphale’s mould-infested walls. He cradled the empty bottle to him like an infant. His fingers tapped incessantly on the glass. “You have any more?” he asked, lazily lifting the bottle up. It shook in his hand. As soon as he noticed it, the demon held it back to his chest and hissed low. A full-on serpentine sound, like that of a rattlesnake. Or, rather, a rattled snake.
Aziraphale had only ever heard Crowley resort to such vocalisations when he was very overwhelmed or truly, truly out of it.4 He didn’t know which reason to attribute it to this time.
“Crowley…” the angel started. Crowley refused to turn his head towards him. The black and red sigil under his ear was more prominent than ever against the pallor of his skin. Aziraphale sighed. He, too, leaned against the cupboard, but stubbornly remained with his face pointed towards Crowley. In a gentle tone, he coaxed, “What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you get this worked up. Not even the Crusades…”
Crowley lolled his head this way and that.
“Nghhhh. The Crusades were just war,” he sneered at nothing in particular. “I’m used to war. Pillaging and murder are nothing new. This is… different”
“Different how?”
“Bad.”
Aziraphale took a deep breath and did his best to keep his angelic patience to him. It was not Crowley’s fault, really. He was just incredibly drunk. He opened his mouth to ask, gently, again…
“Do you have more cider or not?”
Lord forgive him, patience was a difficult virtue.
“Did you come here to get drunk, Crowley?”
“Yep.”
“Well, then. I suggest you try your luck at a local pub.”
Crowley shook his head.
“Nah. I’ve been there all week. Wasn’t fun.”
The scathing comeback died on Aziraphale’s lips.
“You’ve been at the pub for an entire week?”
“It wasn’t a local pub,” the demon explained, ignoring Aziraphale’s alarmed tone. “It was in Toledo. But the one here can’t be that different.” He tried to take a drink from the empty bottle and frowned at finding nothing in it. “Humans get twitchy when you start speaking in tongues, did you know that?”
“I- well, I imagine they do, yes.”
“Hmm.”
“Crowley?”
Yellow eyes finally slid back to him, beneath small sunglasses.
“You spent a week getting drunk in a Spanish pub?”
“Eh, more or less, yes. I did a mir’cle… thing to stop the mortals from noticing me. Worked just fine at first. Then I got too drunk to keep it up.” His lips pulled into a flat line. “I wanted to forget.”
Aziraphale’s heart gave a painful twinge. He felt awful for ever being suspicious of Crowley.
“Did it work?” he asked after a moment’s silence.
“What do you think?”
Aziraphale didn’t have to think. He knew. For him, it was images that manifested out of the blue, behind his eyelids when he closed them for a moment, between the lines of books. The smouldering remains of Sodom and Gomorrah. A young man’s unjust crucifixion. The chaos and bloodshed of too many skirmishes to count.
They stood in silence, sipping from their drinks (Crowley had somehow refilled his bottle with something, definitely not cider). Light and dark, good and evil. Complete opposites in theory, and yet…
A square cupboard’s distance stood between them. A few feet. A whole Earth.
“I’m tired, Aziraphale.” Crowley’s voice, quiet as the rustle of dead leaves. “What’s the point in tempting them if they are a million times worse than whatever I can come up with?”
Aziraphale fixed his eyes on the wall opposite them both. He spoke past the lump in his throat, trying for a light-hearted, casual tone and falling somewhere on cheerfully anxious instead. “Well, it’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s- it’s all part of the Great Plan. We both have jobs to do-“
“I never wanted this.”
Aziraphale’s mind screeched to a halt. He snapped his focus to the side.
Crowley’s chest arched with a deep, shuddery breath. From the opening on the side of his glasses, Aziraphale could see his fully golden eyes.
“I never asked to be this,” Crowley continued, vanishing all of Aziraphale’s hopes that the awful, croaky sound that he’d made before had been a onetime vocal chords malfunction. He looked like a painting, long legs crossed at the ankle, body strewn in one sinuous line, face to the Heavens. The picture of aloofness. But where humans these days favoured bright, flashy colours, Crowley was devoid of. Even his hair and the deep crimson accents of his clothes looked washed out in the dwindling light that came through the top window. “If I’d known- If I’d known, I wouldn’t-“ He looked down, shook his head. “No, ‘s not true. I knew they wouldn’t like it, me asking questions. You said they wouldn’t- Hghhhhrm.” Crowley clicked his tongue and sighed. “Thing is, I was warned, and I did it anyway. Kept bad company. My fault, that. But I can’t remember- the moment I asked, I can’t- Was I rude?” He turned pleading eyes to the ceiling. The angel’s heart shattered at the next words, small and utterly lost, “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Good Lord, Crowley was praying.
Aziraphale tried to fill his lungs. What did one say to that? What could he say? As much as he liked Crowley, as much as he–yes, why not admit it?–cared for him… Aziraphale couldn’t blaspheme. And if God, in Her infinite wisdom, had decided to cast Crowley out? Then there must have been a reason.
Still, the anguish in Crowley’s eyes threatened to break him. The words were worse. He’d always suspected Crowley had lost at least some of his memories of Before, had never dared to ask, but now he’d had it confirmed. After the nebulae’s creation, Aziraphale had seen the angel Crowley had once been a few times more. He’d always seemed disillusioned, becoming more and more convinced that if he just placed the right questions, made the right suggestions, then someone would listen to him. Surely. He wouldn’t be dissuaded, but he was never aggressive about it. Not like Lucifer and his gaggle of followers; Aziraphale tended to steer clear of that group. And then, all too quickly, the Fall had happened, the rebels had been sent down to Hell, and the star-making angel had stopped meeting up with him. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
After that, the garden. A face once so familiar, sporting a scowl over sulphur eyes. Crawley, the demon had said he was called. Aziraphale hadn’t offered a name back; Crawley had called him by the correct one nonetheless. He’d known for certain, then.
“I don’t think it was a matter of rudeness,” Aziraphale said, toeing the line between duty and personal feelings like a professional acrobat.
Crowley continued to stare up, chest shuddering with each breath in.
“No. No, probably not.” He finally lowered his head. Dejected, Aziraphale’s mind whispered. Struck down. Abandoned. “Well.” Crowley pushed away from the cupboard. “I should get out of your hair now. Thanks for the cider.”
Aziraphale followed unconsciously, reeling from the demon’s change in attitude.
“You’re leaving?”
“You have things to do,” Crowley pointed with his head towards the desk where Aziraphale’s book had been left open. “I don’t want to keep you.”
Have I said something wrong?, the angel wondered, watching as Crowley sauntered towards the door with less finesse than usual. Or have I not said enough?
There were a million rules that he had to be mindful of in every interaction with Crowley. Rules that for thousands of years had been the foundation of the wall between them, until the demon unfailingly decided to test the sturdiness of a brick or two. It was frustrating, especially because there was nothing else Aziraphale would like more, on a good day, than to take a pickaxe and help him.
Crowley had said he was tired. Aziraphale was exhausted, too.
He chipped at the metaphorical brick.
“Crowley, wait.”
The demon stopped walking, but didn’t turn around.
“You can’t go back to yours in your state. Do you even have any lodgings in the city?”
“I’ll manage.”
That’s a no, then. Aziraphale straightened. Either intentionally or alcohol-aidedly, Crowley had bared a piece of himself today. Aziraphale could be brave, too.
“You can stay awhile, if you want. There’s a bed in the other room I have no use for.” And if there hadn’t been, there was one now.
Crowley looked at him over his shoulder. “I don’t really fancy sleeping at the moment. I’ll wake up with the worst headache of my life.”
“You can stay all the same.” Aziraphale tugged the ends of his coat. “I have a new chess set–humans seem to be working on standardising new rules, quite different from the original we played in India–that I’ve had no opportunity to try yet. No one to play with, you see.”
For a moment, he was sure Crowley would say no. They didn’t do this. They didn’t find excuses for the other to linger when an out had been found.
“New rules, you say?” He hummed. A small smile graced his thin lips. “Maybe you’ll finally manage to win now.”
Aziraphale could have laughed in relief.
“Hush. I remind you we were evenly matched at chaturanga.”
“Almost. I hold one win over you.”
“Only because you cheated.” Aziraphale set the board he’d been keeping under the desk on top of the table, sitting down to place the pieces down. He pointedly didn’t look at Crowley while he did so. He would let him decide on his own.
When he was finished with one side of the board, he heard the squeak of wood as Crowley took the seat opposite him.
“You have no proof.” A pitcher of water and two glasses had suddenly appeared next to the board. Crowley poured himself a drink, and, after a careful sip, added, almost as an afterthought. “I saw that new book you’re reading. Maths, is it?”
Aziraphale started setting up the board. “Arithmetics, actually,” he said, as he picked up a white rook and put it on Crowley’s side.
The demon stared down at the board for a moment. Finally, he took up a pawn and grumbled, “That’s just a fancy word for maths…”
Their bickering, and the match, lasted well into the night.
Footnotes:
1. The first time Crowley had sent him a note via fiery apparition, Aziraphale had taken so long to respond that the demon had been forced to show up and check that he hadn’t been discorporated. Aziraphale had pointed to the note, still on the desk it had materialised on, and bluntly asked if this was Crowley’s way of trying to annihilate him, or, worse still, burn his growing book collection down. It had taken a half-panicked, half-offended demon the span of fifteen minutes to explain that he hadn’t used real fire, much less hellfire, for his new messaging invention. Mostly because twelve of those minutes he’d spent snapping his fingers and obsessively checking if any of the copies that he conjured up burned hotter than a warm cuppa. Return to text
2. All angels had a built-in sense for detecting the occult. Aziraphale hadn’t met many demons during his time on Earth, but he had been exposed to Crowley’s signature for so long that it had become background noise by that point. He might be excused for not constantly keeping tabs on it—he’d never been hurt when it had been close. Return to text
3. It was in Spanish, of course, though the grammatical errors have been preserved in translation to transmit to the dear reader the authentic experience. The original text was as follows: “Al demoño Crowley, por su egzelente trabajo en la Inquicizión Española.” Return to text
4. That is to say, he’d heard him hiss only twice before. One time in quite recent memory, in the midst of the 14th century. Both of them had been overworking themselves, deep in the throes of the dreadful human sickness that had struck Europe. Aziraphale had stumbled out of a plagued family’s hut and straight into Crowley, crouched on the street with the sheen of sweat on his forehead and a gaggle of impoverished kids around him. He’d begged the angel’s help to cure them, something his own twisted powers didn’t allow anymore, but Aziraphale’s hands had been tied. He’d tried to explain. They’d argued, and, at one point, Crowley had bared his teeth and hissed deep from his throat, a sound so animal that Aziraphale had been silenced immediately. Crowley had apologised for it the next time they saw each other, after the demon’s longest nap to date; Aziraphale had already forgiven him. The other time he’d heard him hiss had been after the invention of vodka. Return to text