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It went without saying that they did what they could to look out for each other, and that included getting their respective sides to leave the other one alone. Crowley had convinced Hell that Aziraphale was extremely dangerous, and that it was best to avoid him; Aziraphale had convinced Heaven that the same was true of Crowley.
Once, Aziraphale had even shown Crowley the pamphlet that Heaven (purportedly) gave to every angel before they were first assigned to Earth. There was a little section with a photo of Crowley looking particularly menacing. (Aziraphale claimed he didn’t know where that photo had come from. Crowley suspected that Aziraphale himself had taken the photo—and probably by accident, at that—with the disposable camera he’d once complained very loudly about having because of “orders” he had refused to elaborate on.) The caption beneath that image identified him and warned that angels should “avoid this demon at all costs” because he was “extremely dangerous and exceptionally wily.”
Of course, there was one major flaw with this strategy: there would always be angels and demons who were too stupid to heed good advice. Even worse—those angels and demons, when newly assigned to Earth, had a tendency to try to prove themselves by seeking out and attempting to smite a particularly dangerous adversary, and Crowley and Aziraphale were at the tops of those respective lists.
Aziraphale regarded such… er, visits… as a nuisance.
Crowley saw them as free entertainment.
For most of human history, he’d “escaped” these situations with ridiculously little effort. Usually, a distraction as flimsy as “Oi, look over there!” was enough for him to mysteriously vanish from the rookie angel’s sight. These days, it was even more entertaining. After all, with modern human sensibilities, he could (and did) walk around literally announcing that he was a demon, and the humans around him all assumed that either he was joking, or he was harmlessly delusional.
Rookie angels had no idea how to cope with modern human sensibilities, and Crowley enjoyed taking advantage of that.
Such was the case one time on an otherwise perfectly ordinary autumn day. Crowley was just going about his business, sowing a bit of demonic chaos in the lives of unsuspecting Londoners because… er, something-something-winning-souls-for-Lord-Satan, etc., and also just for his own amusement. He had his eye on messing with the traffic lights around the city, but he hadn’t figured out the exact details yet. He couldn’t really mess with them until he had some idea of how they actually worked, so today he was wandering the streets to examine them. To avoid drawing attention, he was employing the very best disguise for such things: his trusty donkey jacket, an I.D. badge that was too battered to be legible, and a clipboard.
There was no limit to the things you could do with a donkey jacket, an illegible badge, and a clipboard. Or if there was a limit, Crowley hadn’t found it yet.
His “disguise” made him practically invisible to humans. Sometimes it even worked on well-seasoned angels and demons. (It had never once fooled Aziraphale, but that was probably because Crowley was the one using it.) However, it was categorically useless against a rookie angel.
“Stop right there, demon!” said the overly-eager rookie angel.
Crowley had already seen them coming, of course. It would have been hard not to see them coming, what with the too-white jumper and the too-white trousers and the too-white shoes. They had the sort of skin tone that humans described as “olive” for reasons that Crowley didn’t bother trying to understand. They wore their long dark hair in a ponytail. Their torso had that sort of “masculine” shape to it, but there was something strikingly effeminate about their face. Maybe it was the red lipstick. Did Heaven even allow lipstick? It seemed like the sort of thing those wankers would ban for no real reason. It must’ve been permitted, though, because the rookie was definitely wearing expertly-applied lipstick… right in between the moustache and the goatee, both of which were comedically villainous.
Because he’d seen them coming, he had already decided to not react when they inevitably addressed him as “demon.” He had just finished his examination of this particular traffic light, and he continued making notes on his clipboard.
They didn’t like that. “Demon!” they practically shrieked, and they shoved their hand in front of his face. “Avast, foul fiend!”
Crowley reflexively sneered, because only Aziraphale was allowed to call him that, but he schooled his features before he actually looked at the rookie. Then he looked over both his shoulders, as if there were any other demons around, before facing the rookie again and pointing to himself with his pen. “Me?”
“Yes, of course, you!” the rookie squawked. “You are a demon!”
Crowley arched his eyebrow. “Am I, now,” he said. Some of the humans in the vicinity were already casting curious glances in this direction. On a whim, Crowley put out a mild demonic suggestion that whatever was happening here might be interesting.
Of course, the rookie drew attention even without accosting the perfectly innocent something-or-other worker Crowley currently appeared to be. The blindingly white outfit drew the eye; the blatant disregard for human concepts of gender (which Crowley generously pretended had been intentional) did the rest. “Yes, you are a demon!” they said indignantly. “Specifically, you are the Demon Crowley—” (mispronounced, ugh) “Serpent of Eden!”
“Mmnh,” said the Demon Crowley (pronounced correctly), Serpent of Eden. “Sounds impressive.”
“And as an Angel of the Lord,” the rookie continued, “I’m going to—”
“Going to… what, exactly?” With his pen, Crowley gestured to the surrounding humans, some of whom were glancing over now and then. “Lots of humans around. Can’t draw their attention. It’s against protocol.”
The rookie… stared. Predictably, they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Crowley furrowed his brow as if something had just occurred to him. “You… do know that London is… Aziraphale’s territory, yeah?” he said. “I mean, I dunno about angels, but demons get very aggressive about their territory. And Aziraphale? Hoo…” He shook his head. “He is not an angel you want to be on the wrong side of, believe you me.” He gave the rookie a pitying look. “I wouldn’t risk it, if I were you.”
The rookie’s face rapidly went through all sorts of emotions, including (but not limited to) worry, fear, confusion, and eventually suspicion, once they got around to thinking that maybe they shouldn’t take advice from a demon. They glowered at him. “Prepare to be smited, demon!”
“Really bad idea,” he tried to warn them.
Luckily for everybody, a nearby human had been paying enough attention to decide to intervene.
That human happened to be an elderly nun. (Probably not a Satanic nun, although Crowley wasn’t exactly an expert on the matter. He tended to avoid nuns, Satanic or otherwise.)
“Pardon me for intruding,” she said ever so kindly, with a little bow of her head. “Is everything… alright, here…?”
“That is an excellent question,” said Crowley, and he gestured to the rookie. “This, uh… individual, here, seems to think that I’m a demon.” He gave the nun a confused and helpless look and somehow managed not to smirk.
“Oh, really,” said the nun, as if they were discussing the weather, and she turned to the rookie angel. “Is this true?”
The rookie angel stared, horrified, at the demon and the human. “...Uh… Yes! Fellow human!” they said as they nervously tried to straighten their too-white jumper. “He is a demon! Walking among you—I mean, among us… humans.”
“Humans,” Crowley echoed, and he looked at the nun. “Funny. A minute ago, they called themself an Angel of the Lord.”
“No!” the angel said frantically. “No no no. Nope. I’m… human. Totally. Definitely a human.”
“Oh,” said the nun. She gently took the rookie angel’s hand between both of hers. The rookie nearly jumped right out of their corporation, and then tried very hard to act like they hadn’t even noticed the contact. “Now, my dear,” the nun said, “do you believe that this man is a demon, or that he is possessed by one?”
“He is a demon!” the rookie insisted.
“Yeah, they haven’t said anything about possession,” Crowley confirmed, because he really didn’t feel like going through an exorcism (again). “They specifically called me the Serpent of Eden, which…” he tapped his finger against the side of his face, pointing out the little snake there. “No idea where they got that from…”
The nun nodded her understanding and addressed the rookie again. “And what evidence do you have to believe he is a demon?”
The rookie angel could only stare, with their jaw hanging open, while they presumably tried to think of what to say. They obviously couldn’t tell the human about any of their supernatural senses, which were probably all screaming about the decidedly Infernal entity before them. They also couldn’t pull out their handy little pamphlet or claim that Head Office had told them this man-shaped-being was a demon.
The nun gently patted the rookie angel’s hand. “Now, now,” she said, “It isn’t our place to judge others, my dear. Only the Lord knows what is in anybody’s heart.”
“But—” spluttered the angel, who knew perfectly well how the Lord had judged Crowley, “But—!”
“This man is only trying to do his job here,” the nun soothingly told the angel.
“That is true,” said Crowley. Not that he was a man, per se, but he was just trying to do his job… as a demon.
“We each can only control our own choices,” the nun told the angel. “We have no reason to disrupt this man from his work.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Crowley told the nun.
She nodded to him. “I’m terribly sorry to have troubled you, young man,” she said, carefully adjusting her hold on the angel so that she was arm-in-arm with them. “Have a blessed day.”
“I won’t,” he said quickly. “But thank you!” And he gave her a charming smile.
She smiled back and gave him one more nod as she turned and firmly guided the rookie angel away. “There, you see? He chooses not to have a blessed day, and that is his choice,” she told the hapless, confounded rookie. “That’s the beauty of free will. Now, are you alright, my dear?”
“Uh,” said the rookie.
“Is there someone I should call to tell them where you are?” the nun asked.
“Er… no?”
“Well, let’s get some tea in you, at the very least,” the nun said.
“But…” The rookie was still frantically looking over their shoulder at Crowley, who cheerfully waved at them. “But he’s…!”
“There, there,” the nun said, patting their hand. “You’re safe with me, my dear. He won’t harm you.”
And so the rookie angel had no choice but to let the nun lead them out of sight.
Crowley finally allowed himself to laugh. Then he turned and sauntered off. Oh, he couldn’t wait to tell Aziraphale about this!
Of course, Aziraphale would be rather cross about the fact a rookie angel had confronted Crowley in the first place, and he would have to have some wine in him before he’d admit that the whole thing was hilarious, but that was fine.
As far as Crowley was concerned, that was all part of the fun.