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There were many forms of human comforts that Aziraphale had learned to enjoy during his day-to-day life on Earth. Good food, for instance, had always been among one of his greatest weaknesses, equaled only by his love for fashionable clothes and his passion for the written word. His bookshop, more akin to both a personal library and a secluded vault of knowledge, was his pride and joy, even though he was quite reluctant to call the place as such, as at least one of those attributes was quite unbecoming of an angel of his status.
The latest fleeting pastime to have caught his attention was the arcade, specifically all the little games one could play for hours upon hours with nought but a silly stick and large buttons on a colorful screen. There was just something magical in the way those blips of music and dots of light came together as a whole story, a truly marvelous display of human ingenuity that Aziraphale just couldn't get enough of. He was fairly sure his direct superiors upstairs would surely disapprove of his newest passion, but—as many humans were ever so fond of saying—what they didn't know couldn't hurt them, or something to that effect, and besides, the angel would have been the first to know how dreadfully boring life without a bit of levity could be when faced with the prospect of an eternity spent living among mortals.
Aziraphale's day had begun just like any other, with a delicious chocolate chip muffin bought by the café in front of his bookshop before he comfortably settled in on his favorite armchair, accompanied by tea and biscuits, for the morning shift of his job—officially as a bookstore owner and only clerk, although he mainly persuaded any potential customer to leave so that he would never part from any of his precious tomes—followed by a fulfilling lunch in his usual spot by the corner of the road. The only hour booked in his afternoon besides the rest of his day of "work" was dedicated to his personal seamstress, as a couple of his white tailor-made suits and his favorite beige button-up didn't quite fit his shoulders and tummy as comfortably as they used to, which just so happened to coincidentally bring him exactly in front of the arcade he had been regularly haunting for the last few weeks or so.
Oh, oh my, what a surprising turn of totally unforeseeable events! Since Aziraphale was already passing by he might as well stop, he figured, and that he did, wordlessly greeting the burly gentleman behind the counter with a polite tip of his cream top hat, which he then held between his fingers as a means to surreptitiously hide the tiny, precious diamond glinting on the handle of his walking cane from any wandering eye. Unfortunately, Aziraphale had arrived right as the mid-afternoon rush of high school students with disposable allowances to spend had packed the place tight, meaning that the game he had been most excited to play was momentarily occupied, but never be said that the angel couldn't play the part of a patient man. Aziraphale began walking laps inside the arcade, one, two, three, four times, greeting every youngster that met his gaze with a polite, tactful smile, until while halfway through his fifth round he noticed an unmistakable figure among the crowd, one that was quite familiar to him and yet had no business standing at the front window of one of the many arcades that had recently opened in London.
"Crowley?" he muttered to himself, unsure if his own mind was playing tricks on him. Only after the demon turned on the spot—inadvertently confirming his real identity to whomever would have been able to hear the angel's voice—did Aziraphale approach him, with the same urgency in his step one would grant to the first spark of a household fire. "What are you doing here?"
"What does it look like?" drawled back the demon in response to the angel's demand, pulling the trigger on the spray bottle in his hand. Aziraphale blinked, half expecting the water shot to land on him, although he truly didn't catch anything else but the creak of old, overused plastic with his ears and the intended target with his eyes, one of the many plants standing at the front of the arcade. He then looked back at Crowley, taking in his feminine appearance made of a dark blue flannel over a lighter button up shirt, a skirt matching the sweater and flat black shoes with white ribbons, pondering what exactly he could possibly mean and giving it an honest attempt to boot, but his inward confusion must have been much more apparent than he thought it would because with a long, suffering sigh, the demon gestured with the sprinkler in his hand back to the counter of the shop. "I work here, angel."
"No, you don't!" Aziraphale shot back immediately, the crease on his forehead deepening as he stood up to his full height, "do you take me for a fool, Crowley?" he then asked, chest puffing in righteous indignation. In lieu of an answer, the demon simply showed him a tag hanging on the front pocket of his jumper, a small employee identification card with the tiny picture of a redhead woman and a name which read: Rebecca Dane.
"W-What!" sputtered the angel, his features growing red, "you look nothing like her at all, I say!"
Yes, Aziraphale would have been the first to concede that Crowley's lanky body and unruly fiery curls could share similarities with a woman with unkempt red hair and a sickly figure, as demonstrated several times over by the demon himself and all his endless pranks at the angel's expense. He would also admit that a casual onlooker might be deceived at first glance, but that was as far as he would go. Crowley' sharp, freshly shaven jaw was much more angular and prominent than that Rebecca's hollow cheeks, his nose was more crooked and, frankly, much better proportioned for his face than that- that hideous potato the woman had the misfortune of being born with, not to mention her eyes—oh, those eyes! Had circumstances been different, Aziraphale would have certainly been quite concerned about the emotional wellbeing of the owner of the soulless, sunken gaze of depression that was staring back at him from the small picture pinned on Crowley's jacket, but even with his signature circular sunglasses on to hide it there was such a marvelous spark of life behind them, such a vivacious expressiveness in the demon's golden gaze that made Aziraphale seriously wonder if everyone inside the place had lost their collective minds.
Honestly, there was just no way.
The Almighty, in all her nigh-encompassing benevolence and imperscrutable wisdom, would like to set the record straight, so to speak, and stress that there was plenty of way, actually. If the problem with Crowley's clever disguise was that it couldn't fool Aziraphale, specifically—well, that was a plot point the angel still wasn't and wouldn't have been willing to address for many years to come.
Back to the Earth that housed Her favorite creations, the booming voice of the owner of the arcade cut through their back and forth. "Is everything alright there, 'Becca?" the man hollered from behind the counter, his burly chin nodding towards the angel, "that bloke bothering you?"
"Oh, no, no," replied Crowley with a lazy wave of his hand, "all's good and well, but thank you, thank you. Greg."
"My goodness," hissed Aziraphale under his breath, "you didn't even change your voice!" By then his face had flushed a full scarlet, both from his righteous indignation at the assumption that he would act so lowly as to harass a poor woman and from his ever-growing frustration with Crowley's antics. "For Heaven's sake, how do they not see you aren't the real Rebecca?"
The demon simply shrugged. "Eh, you know. Ol' 'Becca has always been a bit nutty." He then sprinkled some water on the nearest plant, oblivious to or, more likely, unwilling to entertain the angel's internal struggle at the absurdity of the situation.
Aziraphale composed himself with a deep breath, withholding any ulterior judgment at Crowley's evident lack of self-preservation and willing his body to cool off. He fidgeted with the hem of the hat between his fingers, rocking back and forth on the heels of his feet as he watched the demon water the few plants on the side of the shop giving to the road with extra care. "Be it as it may," he started, a hint of genuine curiosity creeping into his voice, "what... are you doing here, exactly?"
"I already told you," replied Crowley straight away, "I work here." He kept sprinkling on the plants with obvious care, so much so that Aziraphale had to wonder if caring for those was all there was to it. The rare few times he had been inside the demon's apartment he couldn't help but notice how deeply cared for all his plants were, how he watered them regularly, gave them words of encouragement and seldomly even played music for them. What he couldn't wrap his head around, however, was his seemingly illogical choice of doing the same inside the specific arcade Aziraphale had been going to, or for that matter any other place besides his own home. Could it be that, perhaps, he had chosen the place because Aziraphale was frequenting it?
"But why here?" the angel asked tentatively, with a glint of breathless anticipation in his voice, "I mean, I never knew you to be one to keep a mundane job where you actually have to do anything."
At that, Crowley tilted his head back and met Aziraphale's gaze over the rim of his round sunglasses with a cheeky smirk, the gold hue of his real eyes flashing with a question, a statement and a challenge all at once.
"Why—that is—you—with the bookshop it's different!" babbled back the angel, feeling himself growing flustered under the collar of his shirt. When it became clear that the demon wasn't going to let it go, Aziraphale couldn't help but lean directly in his face. "You know exactly what I mean. You get plenty of use out of it, as well!" he spat out, however Crowley, seizing the opportunity, and the angel himself with it, wrapped his free arm around Aziraphale's shoulders, who immediately froze at the sudden contact and allowed the demon to manhandle his side against his broad and very much flat—he still couldn't believe no one had noticed—chest.
"My dear angel, let me ask you a question." Crowley started, squishing their cheeks together and gesturing widely to the inner side of the shop window in front of him with his sprinkler. "If you were to see on the side of the road, let's just say, two arcades identical to one another, but one had all the plants in the front wilted and withered away while in the other they were all alive and blooming, which one would you choose?"
Aziraphale wanted to reply right away, he truly did, but the unforeseen combination of the oddness of the question, coupled with such closeness with his one eternal rival and, admittedly, somewhat constant friend along the ages had momentarily stolen his breath away. Rare were the times when the two of them stood but a single step apart, and even scarcer still were the moments when they had been as close to being able to touch one another. He wasn't opposed to the act, per se—The Almighty only knew how used Crowley was to the many liberties the demon took with him without ever thinking twice about it—he had just been caught off guard. Aziraphale was still determined to give some sort of reply, nonetheless, but only a strangled, half-coherent vowel made past his lips before the demon instantly interrupted him.
"Exactly!" quipped Crowley, with a crazed grin that could only be described as truly feral, "and so you see, just by innocently tending to the plants by the front, I'm slowly but ever so surely ensnaring the willful youth of this country from the—let's be honest here, angel—boring path of righteousness into a road of glorious perdition that would grant my Lord Beelzebub thousands upon thousands of mortal souls!"
With Crowley's zealous fervor quickly rising to a feverish pitch, Aziraphale was finally able to wiggle his way out of the demon's grasp and take a single step back. He first straightened all the little wrinkles out of his suit and then he reached for his collar to adjust his bowtie to its proper, presentable state, clearing his throat and mulling over what Crowley had just said.
The demon made a compelling argument about his presence in the arcade, one that would surely work on his superiors in Hell, but—but the thing with Crowley was that Aziraphale knew him too well and from far too long to fall for his imaginative excuses and made-up-on-the-spot- ideas. Sure, the demon might always get away with reaping all the benefits of the innumerable sins of humanity while doing absolutely nothing to earn them, but his impeccable acting didn't work with Aziraphale anymore, not with the angel that had stood by his side on Earth for so many centuries, the same angel that seldomly borrowed a demon's antiquated car and let that very same demon hang out for tea and biscuits in his bookshop when he had nothing better to do. No, Crowley was in the arcade for another reason, the angel concluded, and given their long and shared history of popping up wherever the other had disappeared to, Aziraphale couldn't help but think, and daresay hope, that the demon was there because he himself had shown an interest in the place, although of course he couldn't just say that.
"Yes, well, I'm sure it has nothing to do at all with these plants over here, yes?" the angel asked instead, working an angle they both knew Crowley had a vested interest in, "all this poor, neglected greenery." Aziraphale let a pleased little hum embellish the end of his sentence, a sly, impish smile curling his lips because surely, surely Crowley would catch his true meaning and yet again be complicit in their millennia-old game of pretending, however the demon just gave him an impassive shrug, all his previous enthusiasm drying out and leaving behind only a stony mask.
"I'm here, so," Crowley deadpanned, hitting the sprinkler once more. "Might as well."
Oh. Aziraphale tried to not let any trace of disappointment filter through his face, even though he couldn't be completely sure the demon wasn't just pulling his leg. For all his apparent nonchalance Crowley had always been quite the drama queen, but when the wrong mood took a hold of him trying to get a straight answer out of the demon was nigh impossible.
"The better question is," continued Crowley, leaning into Aziraphale's personal space so much that the angel could feel the scent of his crisp aftershave, "what are you doing here?"
Oh dear. Busted. "Oh, uh, well—" Aziraphale coughed, clearing his throat to buy some time, "—you see, I—I—I just heard there was this new place in town for the kids, and, and, well, I thought I should see it for myself and be on the lookout for any ne’er-do-wells such as yourself, which, since you are clearly here with nefarious intent, I must say I made the right call, indeed."
Crowley conceded the point with a solemn nod, pursing his lips and then releasing an audible pop, crossing his arms over his chest. "I see. And what's the real reason?" he asked, so bluntly that Aziraphale was left completely flabbergasted for all of two seconds. Was he really that bad of a liar? Aziraphale didn't think so, but then again it would take a professional deceiver such as Crowley to recognize another, and since the demon had asked so nicely...
"They have this little game," Aziraphale started, leaning forward with an impish smile, "you play as a small triangle, which represents a star ship of all things, if you can believe it. Truly, human imagination indeed knows no bounds, wouldn't you say?" The angel inquired as an afterthought, following a thread in his mind that fizzled out before Crowley could reply. "Anyway. You score points by dodging all the various shapes that come your way, the 'Asteroids', as humans call them." He provided Crowley with a visual demonstration as he spoke, mimicking the motions of the game with his hands and shaking around both his top hat and his walking cane without a single care in the world. "There is something about it that's just jolly fun! Sometimes—sometimes, Crowley, the asteroids get too close to my little ship and I—I—" for a fateful moment, Aziraphale felt the weight of his daring confession clog his throat, ever so paranoid that one among his innumerable heavenly colleagues could be nearby to hear, but seeing as he was with Crowley, and Crowley alone, the angel felt safe enough to lean into his ear and blurt out, "I even shoot them!"
Crowley pulled back with a startled gasp, his mouth hanging open for a second before he caught himself. "You? No way." He hissed, to which Aziraphale only nodded feverishly in response. "Really?" the demon asked, still skeptical, and again the angel could only nod, unable to respond verbally as he was riding on the addictive thrill of his rebellious transgression. The demon finally conceded the point with a respectful cant of his head, tilting his body to rest his weight against the window shop at his back and crossing his thin arms over his broad chest, his mischievous golden eyes flicking up and down over Aziraphale from behind his round sunglasses, "Impressive, little angel. Didn't think you had it in you."
Aziraphale rocked once on the heels of his shoes, ever so glad to be rid of the crushing weight of his most recent, even if totally innocuous, secret. Crowley even seemed to approve, he would dare to say, but before the angel could do something incredibly foolish, such as inviting the demon over for tea and biscuits or, The Almighty preserve him, dinner, Crowley's eyes fell on his wrist.
"Oh, would you look at that. My shift's over."
Aziraphale instantly snapped his attention to where he could follow the demon's gaze, his very naked, notably devoid-of-a-watch wrist, frowning deeply when he noticed how the only thing he could see was the hem of his blue jumper with nothing else concealed there. He wanted to question how exactly Crowley could tell the time, if indeed he could at all or if he was just messing with him again, but he was prevented from doing so by a gentle touch on his forearm, which for all intents and purposes silenced him when Crowley gave him an affectionate squeeze. "Well, good luck to you! See you around, angel."
The demon swiftly brushed past him and disappeared through a door with the label employees only that the angel assumed led to the back of the arcade. Aziraphale, on the other hand, was left rooted to the spot by the sudden departure of his partner in, well, not crime, exactly, as mortals were so fond of saying, but immortality, perhaps, checking the fob watch stored in the breast pocket of his suit, which read 4.17. An odd timing, as far as afternoon shifts went, but then again, dealing with Crowley meant to accept all his kookiness for what it was, so the angel decided to let the matter slide and resign himself to the fact that his plans for the rest of the day would not be including Crowley, anymore.
The angel made a few more laps around the arcade to distract himself, nothing out of the ordinary in the disorderly gaggle of teens catching his eyes, before the moment he had been so eagerly waiting for since he had first walked in a couple of hours ago presented itself: Asteroids was finally left blessedly alone.
Aziraphale immediately beelined for the game machine and then settled right in front of it, hooking his walking cane on one side and resting his white top hat on the other, his eager hands gliding down in pure reverence to delicately caress the sides of the metallic casing as his eyes eagerly took in the colorful display. A thought suddenly occurred to him and so he reached with one hand in a side pocket of his suit, retrieving a pair of thin, beige-rimmed reading glasses that he didn't really need—the angel simply believed a gentleman of his apparent age should use them and, most importantly, that they made him look quite nifty— sliding them down on his nose as far away as he possibly could from his eyes without having them fall down. Satisfied, the angel nodded to himself, inserting a single coin into the machine and then beginning to play.
Two hours of uninterrupted game time later, Aziraphale had become the proud owner of the newest high score in the entire arcade. A bright, flashy prompt insistently demanded he record his username to immortalize his victory, using the buttons at his disposal and the white, blocky letters displayed on the screen. For a brief moment, the angel considered choosing his real name, quickly discarding the notion after he suddenly remembered he wasn't supposed to leave any trace of his presence on Earth, and he was fairly sure that typing Aziraphale in the memory of an arcade game machine accessible by basically anyone certainly qualified as such.
He had to come up with a pseudonym of some kind, he realized, one that couldn't possibly give away his secret identity as a heavenly angel living on Earth and yet could be easily recognizable by those who knew him for what he truly was—who just happened to be a certain demon and really nobody else. Aziraphale angled his head to look at the blinking lines and dots on the screen from over the rim of his reading glasses, humming quietly to himself while he mulled over his options. On one hand he couldn't be too vague, otherwise Crowley would never know the high score was his, but on the other hand anything too specific would be a flagrant violation of his primary directives from the main office, which he wanted to avoid at any and all costs else he would draw on himself the eye and the ire of the administration, or worse, Michael. Perhaps there was a way to reconcile both options, though. A compromise of sorts, as dealing with centuries of shenanigans with Crowley had taught him.
Yes, that would suffice. Decision taken, the angel began to type his chosen username using the awkward controls, selecting each letter on the row using the motion stick and then confirming every choice with the push of a button. Once he was done, he pressed enter.
Satisfied, Aziraphale nodded to himself before a job well done before looking up at the screen, where a string of blocky white letters greeted him.
ANGLE ON EARTH
The angel blinked, once, but the name didn't change. He blinked again: same result. He blinked for a third time, hoping beyond hope that his impeccable eyes were deceiving him. Alas, the deed was set in stone.
"Oh no!" Aziraphale cried, voice raspy after a couple hours of misuse. Remembering only then that he was in public he frantically looked around, noting in that moment how the ruckus of the afternoon had given away to the soft, quiet atmosphere of the early evening, and even though he was hardly alone inside the arcade no one seemed to have paid any attention to his sudden outburst. He sighed in relief, although the sentiment was quite short lived as he was instantly thrown back to the reason he had been so upset in the first place.
How could he have let that happen? He was, or at least pretended to be at the time, a well-learned, British gentleman owner of a renowned bookshop, for Heaven's Sake, such blatant, embarrassing mistakes should be far beneath him.
Aziraphale went through his options. He considered performing a small miracle to move the mistyped letter in the correct position, first, quickly tossing away the notion as doing such a deed for such a trivial matter would most definitely attract the unwanted attention of the upper administration. The angel began to fiddle with the controls and settings of the game, as his second choice, hoping to find a way to correct his mistake, but as he quickly found out once a name was inserted there was no changing it, as otherwise someone could simply edit someone else's alias and lay claim to a score that didn't belong to them. His last resort was to ask the owner of the arcade for assistance, but that would lead to the man asking questions he could really not answer, not without exposing himself, which would be in antithesis with his direct directive of laying low.
Aziraphale hung his head in shame, finally accepting there was nothing to be done and bowing to the nefarious machine that had bested his typing skills. He looked with longing at the screen for one last time, a pang of anguish clawing at his chest at the thought of such a wasted opportunity, retrieving both his top hat and his walking cane from where they had been patently waiting for him to wrap up his gaming session, the angel vacating the premise soon after.
If it wasn't for his clumsy fingers and that poorly designed interface—it would have been perfect. There were plenty of angels on Earth, beside Aziraphale, so many in fact that by being so vague the higher ups would have had no way of finding out which had left a thread, but Crowley—
Crowley would have known.
Perhaps, The Almighty was giving him a sign, reasoned Aziraphale after a long, suffering sigh. After all, there were plenty of angles on Earth, as well, so many that he couldn't even begin to count the ones before his eyes alone, and he was simply walking down the street! Now, no one for sure would ever suspect that a real angel had been the one to get the highest score.
Indeed, no one would suspect a thing.
Not even Crowley.
After such a shameful display, Aziraphale had decided to avoid the arcade, for the time being. The decision had absolutely nothing to do with Crowley's presence in the place, of course, rather the notion that, perhaps, he was losing himself a tiny bit in those frivolous little games, if something as mundane as a simple mistype could rattle him so deeply.
His resolve lasted up until three days later, when a call from his personal seamstress informed him that his order was ready to be picked up. Since he was already in the area, he might as well check on the place in order to ensure that his rival's nefarious scheme wouldn't come into fruition—and no other reason besides that. If he had been missing his daily session at the game machine or was burning with curiosity at the thought that his high score might still be undefeated, well, that was a matter between him and The Almighty alone.
Aziraphale walked inside the place with grace and confidence but still throwing a wary glance around, eyes peeled for any sign of a certain redhead posing as another certain redhead, a puzzling mix of relief and disappointment washing over him after he realized neither of them were present at the moment. Leaving behind the confounding feelings that Crowley's presence, or in that case absence, always seemed to invoke within him, the angel walked a preliminary lap around the arcade, the enticing sight of a currently unoccupied Asteroids beckoning him closer and closer immediately. He had to wonder if the game was cursed in some capacity, in order to have such a tight hold over him, but no temptation was stronger than the iron will of one of the children of Heaven, and so Aziraphale valiantly ignored the lure of his absolute favorite machine, instead entertaining himself by swapping from one game to the other whenever any was free from other players.
No matter how hard he attempted to distract himself, however, his mind was fixed on a singular, imperative question: was his high score still there? On one hand, part of him wasn't even remotely ready to revisit the site of one among his greatest humiliations to date so soon, but on the other Aziraphale was so proud of his high score, regardless of his upsetting debacle with the awkward controls of the game and the botched username. He had no way of knowing if Crowley had seen his high score, yet, but if the demon truly did work there, as Crowley had so insistently claimed to, surely, he had to at some point, right?
Mind made up, Aziraphale approached the game with an eager bounce in his step, but the moment his gaze swept over the main menu of the machine he froze. His grip over the handle of his walking cane tightened to a dangerous creak, and even though in his human disguise the angel had no need to breathe, still some air caught in his throat. He refused to cough, however, giving his features the perfect excuse to flush a deep scarlet in order to mask the absolute fury thrumming through him at the sight before him.
There on the top left corner of the colorful screen was a new username, with a new high score.
CR0WL3Y
That thrice-be-damned demon had beaten Aziraphale's high score by a single point.
A small cough finally escaped him, and the angel cleared his throat, pushing his top hat down on his perfectly combed hair before he hooked his walking cane on the side of the game casing. He slammed the starting button on the machine with a grimace on his pursed lips, not even bothering with any pretense of gentleness and foregoing even his reading glasses.
"Oh, Crowley. It's on."