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Chapter Text

"Go to Hell," said the Scrivener.

Crowley had heard those words before. Many, many times, including right here in the Dirty Donkey, over the same whisky and salty pretzels. It was the tone of earnest hope that made it weird. Also the speaker, an angel in the company of a whore, holding out a spiral-bound notebook and a metallic copper gelly pen. And being the one begged to help save the world.

The demon sighed theatrically, swirled his Talisker. "What if I don't?" he asked. He was stalling.

"Then I will," said Muriel. "I'm not sure I can manage the murder-hornet trick? But I'd try." The unlined face went thoughtful, then sprouted a respectable pair of segmented black antennae above dark eyes. "And Mrs S will try to do the Earth part alone." The blond woman nodded.

He didn't like the way the two of them stood together. Side by side, an angel and... someone who wasn't an angel. Not even of angelic stock. Mrs Sandwich was a perfectly ordinary soul; pretty enough, if you liked them blond and plump. She didn't flinch from the miracle, which implied she found them familiar. The idea of their alliance made Crowley uncomfortable; the demon snorted. "She can't do that kind of work." It was appalling even to discuss this in front of a human, let alone expect one to help.

"Would you do the Earth part then?" Muriel asked. Their antennae trembled and Crowley cringed. Real demons didn't go about on Earth with that kind of nonsense showing, right in anyone's face in the pub. It brought out the holy water. And Muriel was terrible at temptation, or driving a bargain, or whatever this conversation was supposed to be, because Crowley was firmly unconvinced. "I don't think it'll work without all three," they carried on. "We're not sure it's going to work at all. But you saved the world before and it ought not to end now either. This is the world, not some fancy desk toy! There are people living here and it's too wonderful for Judgment --"

"Shut up," Crowley interrupted, or tried.

The Scrivener did not pause. "-- and the Supreme Archangel is going to do Heaven's part. It would be so, so helpful if you'd join us!" After that they did shut up, dark eyes peering into dark glasses. The demon waited until Muriel said, "Or not," and the pen and paper sagged to their sides.

Mrs Sandwich wrapped a comforting arm around the angel's shoulder. She glared at Crowley with her mouth pinched hard behind bright lipstick, but she held her tongue. "Please?" said Muriel.

Crowley didn't say anything. He was not thinking about the Supreme Archangel; he was thinking, Don't sound so desperate. Nobody likes it when you're needy. Surely Mrs Sandwich understood that, but nobody had taught this absurd little angel anything. The demon sipped in silence, poured himself more whisky. If the Scrivener had a lick of sense they'd be getting drunk too. "I'll go," said Muriel, but they weren't addressing him anymore. They were talking to Mrs Sandwich and taking her hand. "I know you'll do your best. Your penmanship is beautiful, truly as fine as anyone's in Heaven."

Crowley was still not thinking about the Supreme Archangel, or alliances, or saving the world. He'd given himself over entirely to all of the above at different times, and what did it ever come to? Another alcoholic haze under another impending doom.

"We'll do what we can, love." The human voice cut through. Mrs Sandwich did not sound hopeful; her voice was steely hard, flat and fierce. But she insisted: "Everything we can do, love, we will."

Muriel's wide eyes closed. "We will," the angel echoed. Their small shoulders squared when Mrs Sandwich leaned in and kissed their cheek and Crowley couldn't stand it.

"Right," he said. The Talisker sloshed as he stood up and reached, snatching the notebook and pen. "One. I'll do one miracle. Because," did he have an excuse? He floundered. "I'll never hear the end of it if you go bumbling into Hell. You'll trip over things. Lose Hell-Hounds all over London. Get your tongue stuck to a wall."

Muriel said, "Oh, wonderful!" Their face opened into beaming joy and that was horrible, like the cut of a familiar sword. Mrs Sandwich's approving nod made it worse. Crowley drew himself as tall as he could, which allowed him to look over both their heads, at the sea of humanity minding its own business in the pub. That was... steadying, actually. He had rather liked people for a very long time.

"It goes like this, only miraculously instead of physically," Muriel explained. They came alongside him, aligning their corporations, far too close for comfort. They were in the middle of the pub, where anyone could see -- Mrs Sandwich was watching with dismayingly satisfied pride. Muriel took the pad and uncapped the pen, then slid their right hand down the back of Crowley's arm. Short fingers slotted in behind his long ones, strong and directing, setting them into synchrony. "We'll need to be working in unison," the voice sounded behind his ear like one of his own thoughts. "All of us perfectly harmonized in purpose and time. We'll each bring our own will to work, inscribing in the fullest intent. We have so much power together." Demon and angel moved like hand in glove, writing words that Crowley had known for a very long time: Let there be

His head tipped back, looking instinctively up as he swallowed, tasting Talisker and tears. He knew he could do this.

He remembered that time before Time very well. Crowley was someone else then -- a creator and an innocent. Aziraphale was with him, already afraid and warning him about words. They had spoken and then stayed together, side by side. His own right wing, still white, sheltered Aziraphale from the first falling light.

Chapter Text

For his part, Crowley chose an extremely obscure corner of Hell, tucked up in the gents' facilities of the long-closed British Museum stop on the Tube. No one, damned or demon, had any business down there in ninety years, but the choked-cinder air never changed.

He waited, nervous and fidgeting, for interminable hours. It felt like days, and possibly it was. There was no way he could sleep, and he didn't quite dare to sneak back to Earth. He'd only end up getting drunk again. According to his elaborate watch, it was always already too late.

The Second Coming was coming and he would do what he could to stop it. Or rather, the Scrivener would try to stop it while Crowley clung to their hand. It was like how he'd held the Antichrist's hand at Armageddon, only more metaphysical and less sweaty.

What made it worse was Muriel's miracles. Despite the fact that he was in Hell, Crowley could feel the bookshop, where this other angel had set up their work. The round table in the back room, where he had downed thousands of drinks from cut crystal, was set up with a notebook exactly like (or possibly the same as; he didn't understand Scrivening in the slightest) the one he had perched on the edge of an empty sink. It was slightly askew from the senses, like his wings, but it was there (or rather, here). Crowley spun the pen around his own long thumb, because Muriel was not deft enough for that trick -- and neither was he, apparently, and he had to get down on the floor and feel around beneath a tangle of long-damned pipes to retrieve the blasted thing. There was a spider. Ugh. It skittered off, possibly to inform on him, and he stood up and put himself back into synchrony. He had agreed to this, but it could not be over too soon.

Are Heaven and Hell on opposite sides, with Earth in between? Or are they more alike than different -- nearer kin, in their rules and orders, than the wild solid world they fought to claim? Crowley had always suspected the latter. At this moment Heaven was palpably immanent, closer than close, and the demon was there as well. This must be the Supreme Archangel's desk beneath the spiral-bound notebook, shining with a brittle light that hurt his serpent eyes. And (worst) this was Aziraphale's own arm, which Crowley had worn in Heaven once himself; his sword-strong tendons aligning Crowley's thinner bones; Aziraphale's hand (they had liked to hold hands) on the copper gelly pen. He must have come to the same agreement (not Arrangement) with Muriel and Mrs Sandwich. Crowley hadn't seen him since the doors to the lift had closed.

They were estranged as ever, but linked like dancing palm to palm. Aziraphale in Heaven held Crowley in Hell, and Muriel and Mrs Sandwich moved with them in the World.

Something of Crowley was older than any of these. He had been a Creator, spoken stars into being with something more essential than a voice. The Word was only ever words, and now they would be writing: letters on paper, copper ink on white. What made it matter was meaning.

The pen paused above the paper while they worked it through. They struck a solid agreement, and Crowley saw himself scrawl:

LET THERE BE
LOVE

He stared at the page. His hand carried the weight of Aziraphale's hand, the shapes of Muriel's and Mrs Sandwich's too. But those were Crowley's clear capitals, sure as his signature. He must have meant it.

Something changed. Crowley had felt like this before, when a boy at play in a quarry fell in love with a dog.

This time he'd done it himself. It was easy. He had loved stars before they were born, then the world as it came to be. Also, this time, he could see. Not directly -- Crowley was still in Hell, bent over the rusty sink. But he shared Aziraphale's view from Above, and the Second Coming troubled his sight.

Crowley noted clinically that it looked precisely as the poet had described. (Yeats must have been a proper witch and not pretending, when Crowley had been un-Christianizing Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century.) It came down as if through a burning desert, surrounded by reeling wings. Its shape was lion body and the head of a man, its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.

LOVE, the miracle said. Love was as real as light, as chains unlocked in the Bastille. It might have been there all along.

The Second Coming slowed its slouching towards Bethlehem. It looked down upon the panoply of human souls, took in their glory and sin, and blinked.

Halfway from Heaven, it stopped. The lion body curled up like a cat's, watching people like a predator after prey, fiercely attuned and attentive. Crowley cringed. God had looked at him that way, once, and found him unworthy.

This creature's claws extended and flexed, not aggressively, but like a nursing kitten's. Its eyes went soft and blinked again, slowly, several times. A rough voice made a questioning sound, then it hauled itself to its feet and turned back.

Crowley couldn't let himself look at Heaven again. He twisted his mind to find the world, and the familiar back room held him transfixed. There was an angel in a woman's arms, hand simply laid over hand. The bookshop smelled as it always had, of old paper, red wine, and vanilla cream. Delicious and precious, safe and home, lost as Eden. Horribly, the demon thought he might cry.

But Mrs Sandwich tightened her grip so Crowley clung to his. All together, they wrote on:

and common decency.

Chapter Text

They let him go. The miracles ended, and Crowley was alone in Hell.

There was only his own reflection, hollow cheeks and sulfur eyes, in the dim steel mirror over the sink. A pocket opened in the raw firmament of his jacket and he tucked away the notebook and the pen. He desperately wanted a drink, and he really ought to go up and see what had become of the world, but he was also completely exhausted. His corporation slumped against the wall.

The door to the gents' opened with a rusty squeal and the angel Aziraphale stepped through. He enuncitated, "Crowley," then went on in a rush, "I've come to say I'm terribly sorry for, well. A great many things." He stopped and took a loud, unnecessary breath. "You don't have to forgive me," he added. "I'm just. Terribly sorry anyway."

Aziraphale flooded his senses and Crowley flinched. The angel wasn't ethereal at all -- he took up solid space, far too close in the cramped little room. His soft, civilized voice echoed on the tiles, and his familiar scent cut through the ashen air. But the angel had never apologized for anything without an argument before, and the demon had always had to be wary.

Miracles altered reality -- that was the point -- but perhaps their collaboration had gone wrong. Had they, for the world's sake, somehow corrupted Aziraphale's sweet, self-righteous self?

The thought made Crowley sick. He had always wanted too much, too fast, and they had misjudged their powers before, with their disastrous half-workings over Gabriel. He had to ask: "Is that the love, or the common decency?"

"Probably the latter," said Aziraphale. "I've loved you all along."

What passed for Crowley's heart twisted and fell. He felt it go, out of his corporation, probably down to some deeper level of Hell. Aziraphale might have been speaking the plainest truth, which made it hurt more. The demon swallowed hard and tried to change the subject. "What happened to the end of the world?"

"It's having a chinwag with the Metatron," Aziraphale said. "I didn't stay to listen in, but it's not going to hurt anyone. I think it's all gone rather nicely." He smiled, stopped smiling, tried to speak on. "I. Er."

"You don't have to do this," Crowley said miserably. "Unfortunate side effect." Muriel could have done the Heaven part and left Earth to Mrs Sandwich, or maybe they should have let Armageddon go through instead. "Take it as said." They'd have to fix this. Crowley didn't know how, and the worst was that he knew he didn't want to. Aziraphale bit his lip and Crowley remembered how it tasted.

"Can we," Aziraphale started, then switched to, "Shall I do the dance?"

"Please don't," said Crowley, horrified. "Look, let's get you back to the bookshop, get the Scrivener to take this off you. World saved, well done. You should," he waved a hand. Aziraphale just looked back at him, shining like the full moon in a white suit, while Crowley tried to figure out how to say this. "Get back to being yourself."

Aziraphale's face went mulish. "That was my miracle too," he said. "Are you pretending that common decency was just Mrs Sandwich's idea? She's a human, Crowley." His voice turned argumentative in the most familiar way. "That was me, and that was us. I know you did all of it too. Just like I know you made light."

This was true, or at least seemed very painful to pick apart. Crowley huffed and didn't try. "Let's get out of here," he said instead. He would have given Aziraphale a wide berth, but the angel was closer to the door and opened it politely. At least he didn't say After you. He did lead the way up into the museum proper, but not to the poky cafeteria where they had met so many times, conspiring over coffee and deviled eggs. They went to the restaurant with blue linen napkins under the great glass roof, and the table with the best view of the Ionic columns.

"We're celebrating," he said firmly, pulling out a chair. They stared at each other for a moment, then Crowley gave in and sat down. At least it wasn't Hell. A waiter brought Aziraphale seared bass with shallots and a glass of lemonade, and Crowley an espresso martini which was too creamy and too sweet. He drank it in one long gulp and the waiter brought him another.

Aziraphale ate with gluttonous rapture, pink cheeks and fluttering eyelashes and small, blissful sounds. This was exactly the same as ever and, as ever, Crowley was transfixed. The waiter came again, with sparkling water to cleanse the angelic palate, then strawberries and cream and a third espresso martini for Crowley. The caffeine sharpened his senses and the alcohol steadied him. Of course he enjoyed it. This was everything he liked. The museum full of humans' striving and accomplishments, the buzz and caress of the drinks, the whole world spinning on its way. The joyful, savoring angel, whose world it was too, looking back full of delight.

Of course he liked it best at the end, when Aziraphale took his hand. There was nothing miraculous about it. No desperation disguised as dancing and no rewriting reality, just a solid grip and pull like gravity. Crowley let himself be tumbled through the human crowds, among treasures from the Ancient Levant and down a flight of prosaic stairs, past the Rosetta Stone and the gift shop. Then they were outside in the London afternoon, walking through wrought-iron gates and down a street full of twee little shops.

This was not the way to Whickber Street, not even Mayfair or back to the Bentley. Aziraphale drew him along, chattering, capricious and irresistible, like a soldier skipping. Crowley wasn't sure he wanted to ask, but he'd always needed to know all the hows and whys and what-happens-nexts -- "Where are we going?" He grabbed a small tree by the trunk and they stopped. Aziraphale hung onto his hand, fluttering like a white balloon tied to a string.

"A nice hotel," said the angel, adding swiftly, "Not the Ritz. I'm still apologizing." Crowley's face must have done something awful because Aziraphale looked concerned, but he kept speaking. "I want us to be on, well. Neutral ground. In privacy."

"No you don't. You want to be the Supreme Archangel and do good." Crowley spat with heartbroken certainty and serpent venom. "You needed me to be your second-"

"I was wrong," said Aziraphale. He turned to face the demon fully, put his other hand over Crowley's on the tree. "We were wrong about the Antichrist too, remember? Armageddon came down to a boy we'd never met and a human who was bad with computers. This was mostly Muriel and Mrs Sandwich, or some gentleness at the heart of the beast. I'm not so important after all."

"You're important to me," Crowley muttered, then wished he'd swallowed his own tongue instead. Aziraphale blushed.

"I meant for us to be safe," he said, and Crowley laughed.

"Nothing's ever safe, angel. Not for long." You'd think anyone would know that after six thousand years. Even before Eden there was War. But Aziraphale regarded him with steady seawater eyes, so full of faith the demon looked away.

"If peace is brief and fragile," Aziraphale did not quite concede the point, "all the more reason to spend it well. Please come with me, Crowley?"

He had followed that voice around to shops and into wars, pined after its laughter and coached it through lies. After six thousand years, Crowley knew his own weaknesses very well. He let go of the tree and allowed Aziraphale to lead him, still staggering drunk, a loose string on a flying balloon.

Chapter Text

There was a bathtub in the hotel room. White enamel with golden claw feet, up on a little platform beneath a window, with a wooden stool and shelves of white fluffy towels alongside. Crowley didn't spend a lot of time in hotels, but he was fairly certain that bathing had generally been confined to bathrooms for at least a century, along with other plumbing. This was in the same room as the bed. Odd.

He was staring at it. He was looking anywhere but at Aziraphale, who had closed the door behind them. Who was saying, "When I was in Hell, not this time. When I was in your corporation." The angel's hand was on Crowley's hip, a sensitive spot, and out of long habit Crowley neither flinched nor leaned in. "It took me by surprise, how nice it felt to be in the water."

"The holy water," said Crowley incredulously.

"You liked the baths in Rome too," Aziraphale reminded him, "even though your glasses fogged up. And your flat in Mayfair had that enormous soaking thing." Crowley nodded numbly. He'd missed it, living in the Bentley. "I kept on a singlet and socks, for modesty and, you know. In case I couldn't get your feet right." Crowley nodded again. Scales and black nails, not the easiest for an angel to see.

"It was weird going without glasses," Crowley admitted. "I kept worrying the eyes would, you know." Those hours in the angel's aspect were desperate measures but a delicious memory. That perfect, painless posture, and his defiantly chosen, open face.

"We were busy with our sleight-of-hand. But I thought about it then, and after." Aziraphale plunged on. "That being bathed would feel good to you, and I could wash you, in humility?"

That was a virtue and a ritual millennia out of practice, which made Crowley wonder if Aziraphale had thought about it before, and then he couldn't look at the tub anymore. Pride had never particularly struck him as a sin at stake. Six thousand years sat unspoken; he couldn't have known the half of it. The room's other prominent furnishing was a bed, also made up in fluffy white and gold, with plenty of pillows and the sheets turned down invitingly.

Aziraphale must have been thinking about this for a disturbingly long time, and he had now been awaiting an answer for a disturbingly long time too. He looked patient, a virtue which the demon was aware was not Aziraphale's favorite. That opened a line of argument: he could be directly crude. "If I didn't want to fuck?"

"If you didn't want to fuck first," Aziraphale answered in the same tone, and came around to plant himself directly in front of Crowley's face. He tried not to cringe; Aziraphale sighed. "It's not easy, this common decency," he said, which coupled with the vulgarity nearly shocked Crowley into laughing instead. "It was easy to start with lunch. It's always been nice for us to sit together, for me to eat and you to drink. I'm not drunk," he added, "not at all. I don't dare until I've done my best at apologizing. Not just to dance it off, but let you know I mean to do better."

"Apologize for what?" If they had to talk about this, Crowley wanted it clear.

"Abandoning you. Making you feel unloved and alone." Aziraphale's voice was completely steady and Crowley thought he might fall apart. "I can break it down to individual acts," he said, very quietly, "but that's the sum. You never needed forgiving."

"You enjoyed it," Crowley interjected. Aziraphale looked uncomfortable.

"I did. Which makes it worse, I suppose. I only ever said I forgave you; I never acted like it."

"Don't suppose I'd know if you did," said Crowley. "Not your fault I'm a demon." However hard they tried, Crowley knew, they could only play at being allies. Demons had rebelled, but angels never approached free will. Whatever they did must be planned.

He couldn't look at Aziraphale anymore. He tried to turn away but he was drunk and half-hearted; Aziraphale caught him and his legs gave out. "Oh, my dear," he murmured, breath soft on Crowley's face. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please, may I please," he whispered, trailing off like a temptation. Then even softer, a kiss on Crowley's cheek.

"Whatever you like, angel." He had always wanted to say that, just as he had always wanted to be kissed. He was crying; all he could see was a blur of white and gold. "Of course you can bathe me, of course you can fuck me. We still have the world, right? Even if it was Adam last time and Muriel this time. We're still here, and I still want," he choked. He hadn't been able to say it in the bookshop, not quite, because Aziraphale had stopped him. He couldn't say it now either.

"Thank you," said Aziraphale, in a voice like a prayer, "thank you."

Soft hands went slowly everywhere. Carding through Crowley's hair, sliding the jacket off his shoulders, the shoes from his scaly feet. There was the sound of running water, and Crowley gave in like drowning.

Chapter Text

You spend three hundred years in your outpost on Earth. The last ninety were agreeably peaceful, with nothing to do but keep six or seven eyes out, spin webs and eat the occasional fly. Not a terrible time, as being a demonic spider goes. (You managed to entirely avoid the Apocalypse, having spent that entire time in the loo.)

Eventually there's something you can't ignore. Right there in front of you: that Crowley creature with a miracle pen. Dutifully, you descend to make your report.

On the way down... it's not quite like the Apocalypse wasn't. But things have been changing again.

When you hit the lower levels you know for sure: Beelzebub's gone. Which means there is a terrible shortage of flies down there.

Everything seems a bit off. Somebody's let the Hell-hounds out for a run. An inordinate number of Erics have assembled and are making signs that say: UNION STRONG.

It makes a minion think. What has Hell ever done for a spider? Bugger all this for a lark.

You depart the way you came. Back on Earth, there are people who'll be glad to have somebody catch their flies.

The bathtub steamed, scenting the room with roses and vanilla. Crowley was naked, hot water flowing over skin. Aziraphale fussed with taps and the overflow drain, which was ridiculous. "Stop that," Crowley said. "I'll do the miracle if anything goes wrong." It was a comfortingly familiar thing to say.

The angel turned, flushed and smiling. This was also a familiar comfort. Aziraphale always looked at him with such indulgence; it was what made his harsh words so impossible to believe. "Nothing's going to go wrong," he said, which was unfortunately also impossible to believe.

Crowley was still drunk, which helped him go along with all these impossibilities. Another espresso martini would help, he thought, dragging himself to sit nearly upright at the far end of the tub, skinny legs (no socks, scattered scales) submerged. "Think we've shaded into indecency, angel," he observed. They had bathed together when that was what people did, many years and many memos on modesty ago.

"You kissed me hard," said Aziraphale, and Crowley considered turning liquid and escaping down the drain. He cringed back; he'd gone through phone lines before. Then he felt too drunk to make the attempt, and despite the conversation, too comfortable. The water was deep enough to cradle his hips and there was a fluffy towel folded behind his head.

So he said, "That didn't go well," and shut his eyes.

His other senses sharpened. The angel's smell, sweeter than roses. The sound of his sleeves. The touch of his hand, sword-strong, folding into Crowley's own.

Their right hands. Their writing hands. Let there be

Crowley let them hold on.

By the time the Second Coming was back in Heaven, it had acquired something like a lion's jaws, and it was ready to bite off the Metatron's head.

Even love and common decency had limits.