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The Army Jeep was filled with pomp and joy and Crowley, for once uncaring of how ridiculous he seemed, sang along with every deeleedoo and taradeetaradee of Water Music. Fireworks, he thought vaguely. He deserved fireworks. They both did.
Somewhere outside the Jeep was the smoking wreckage of the Bentley and the knowledge that Hell was still deeply displeased with him, but inside there was music and celebration and Aziraphale, humming and waving his rose-scented hands as if conducting, and Crowley wished it could last forever.
That thought was unwelcome. It came from Adam, he thought. Rummaging in Crowley’s mind with clumsy childish hands and bringing to the light a lot of ancient things that should have been properly left in the darkness.
Aziraphale was all right, of course. Amusing company in his cobwebbed way. Clever. Comfortingly familiar. A good angel to have by your side in a crisis, as it happened. And he understood things, including, to a vaguely unsettling degree, Crowley. Anything else should have been left undisturbed and barely thought about.
Crowley pulled up at the curb in front of the rounded corner of the Ritz. “Well,” he said, “this is you.”
The radio clicked itself off.
“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Yes.”
Crowley didn’t look at him, but his peripheral vision still caught the pucker between Aziraphale’s eyebrows. “Sorry about the bookshop,” he said awkwardly.
“Think of the lovely time I shall have starting it all over.” Aziraphale’s voice was as bright and brittle as spun sugar. “My collection—I mean, my stock—was badly in need of refreshing.”
“If you need money or anything?” That was even more awkward. But, bless it, Crowley had enough money to buy several bookshops over.
“No, my dear boy. It’s a kind thought, but I have crossed enough lines in the last eleven years without taking Hell’s wages,” Aziraphale said, as if Hell’s wages hadn’t paid for a lot of cream buns, champagne, and chamber music tickets over the years.
“All right, then.” Crowley turned to look at Aziraphale, and immediately regretted it, because Aziraphale was looking at him, and their faces were close.
Well, what of it? They were just faces. Nothing to feel strange about. Most people had faces. Crowley resisted the urge to scrub his suddenly sweating palms on his thighs.
Angel and demon sat and looked at each other for a long moment, as if looking away would show a weakness. Aziraphale’s eyes really were very blue, even in this darkness. Had they been as blue in his old corporation? Crowley rather thought they hadn’t been. Aziraphale’s tongue nervously touched his own lower lip, as if it was dry, and Crowley jumped like there had been another paintball corporate warrior hidden in the bushes.
Aziraphale glanced away and undid his seat belt. “Well. Do let me know how you get on.”
“I will,” Crowley said. “Goodnight.”
He kept the Jeep on the curb, much to the annoyance of several humans who should have been grateful they were still alive to be inconvenienced, and watched Aziraphale through the glass doors until he was sure he was safely inside.
He had a hollow damp feeling in his chest, as if he had missed something important.
There was fire. Cars were exploding, children screaming, the panicked hammering of doors of the soon-to-be-dead. He had to find Aziraphale, who was somewhere among the burning, but he couldn’t undo the Bentley’s seat belt. His Master’s voice was booming above his head, WELL DONE CRAWLY, GOLD STAR ON YOUR REPORT, ALWAYS KNEW YOU’D BE A DEMON TO WATCH OUT FOR. Damned souls were weeping and lamenting, and the spare baby on the back seat wouldn’t stop crying.
“It’s not my fault, okay?” Crowley said to the people in cars, and the damned, and the baby, and Aziraphale. Melting metal dripped on his head, severely disrupting his hairstyle. “I was just doing my job! You’ve got to look after number one first.”
“I don’t even like apples,” said Eve from the passenger seat.
Crowley turned to look at her, and realised Aziraphale wasn’t outside the Bentley after all, but was sitting where Eve had been, eating an apple.
“Well, this is you,” Aziraphale said, a drop of clear juice running down his chin, and Crowley felt a tongue as long as a snake’s flicker out to taste it.
Before it could make contact, he woke up.
No fire. No reprimand from Hell. Crowley waved a hand at the bedroom television, and there was no hint of destruction, or Atlantis, or monsters in the sea. The horrible mark on the carpet that had been there last night was gone. Pity. He’d never liked Ligur. Just reports on a rather bad storm, and some cases of amnesia.
The air outside smelled, even in London, like the storm had passed, that delicious hint of petrichor in the air, clean and new. The first time Crowley had smelled it, he’d gradually sidled onto Aziraphale’s lap and curled up there, tongue tasting the air. It had all been a big bugger-up, of course, but the world after it had smelled…
…made anew.
Funny place, Eden. It was still around somewhere, he supposed, but they’d never managed to make their way back. The world had been too busy, anyway. And it would have felt strange to see another angel watching the Gate.
The Bentley was waiting on the road as if it had never burned. Crowley stared at it a little while, then poked a wheel with the tip of his snakeskin shoe. It was real, and waiting to take him to Aziraphale.
“I’d prefer to go somewhere fashionable,” he told it firmly, but it took him to St James’s Park anyway, where a figure as straight-backed as any Victorian sat on a park bench, waiting for him. The empty space in his stomach was replaced by something even more uncomfortably warm.
Crowley didn’t bother to sober up after lunch. If his car could reconstitute herself from a burning hunk of metal, she could drive herself. More Handel, but less pompous this time. “Convey Me to the Lovely Shore,” the soprano’s notes more pure than those of an angel, which wasn’t really saying anything. He’d heard Aziraphale trying to sing “A Messe of Good Fellowes” after six mugs of ale.
He had no idea why there were tears running down his cheeks, while at the same time he felt safer and more comforted than he ever had.
The Bentley drew over outside the bookshop.
“This is you,” Crowley said, using a small miracle to dry his face.
Aziraphale moved his head to look at him, but Crowley was wise to that game, and stayed staring straight ahead, as the words Ask me in ran through his head over and over. A human woman caught his gaze through the sunglasses, gave a frightened squeak, and scurried down the street.
The invitation didn’t come, but Aziraphale didn’t move either.
“What do we do now we’ve been retired by the Antichrist himself?” Crowley asked, his voice as low and level as it could be when it was bobbing on the waves of alcohol. Ask me in. I don’t want today to end. I don’t want you to get out of the car, unless I go with you, and gosh I really am drunk.
“Well, I suppose I shall catalogue the new books.” The edges of Aziraphale’s own voice were blurred with drink, but his voice was still precise. “Should keep me occupied quite a while. You?”
Crowley shrugged. “Don’t know, really. Work on my stock portfolio. Release an album. Get into investment banking.”
He could feel Aziraphale’s critical gaze on him, but all the angel said was, “It would suit you. Very smart clothes.”
“Rock star wouldn’t be so bad, though. Sunglasses at night would fit in, and I fancy myself in leather pants again.”
“So do I.”
Crowley turned the words over, tried to match them up with the kind of things Aziraphale said, and decided he’d misheard.
“It’s hard not to feel at a loose end,” he said. Ask me in and we’ll tie our loose end up together.
“I thought that I might take a holiday,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully. “Would you…”
It hung in the air a moment, and Crowley laughed, in a way that didn’t seem to dissipate the question properly. “I don’t think a boarding house in Torquay is quite my style.”
“Pity,” said Aziraphale.
By the time Crowley’s alcohol-slowed brain had properly registered the answer, or the cold tone it had arrived in, the doors of the bookshop had already swung shut, with a definite bang.
When he went back to the bookshop a few days later, with a vague feeling he ought to apologise and not sure for what, it was closed. Well, that was to be expected. But this time, the doors didn’t open to him.
That was all right. Didn’t mean it was burning down or anything. He wasn’t looking around for buckets, or panicking. That flutter in his wrists was just the unseasonable early autumn heat.
If anything had happened to Aziraphale he’d know, right? And the angel had been talking about taking a holiday. There was no reason at all to be hurt about it. They’d never reported in to each other about their movements. Well, they had, ever since the Middle Ages, but that was just a convenience because of the Arrangement, nothing personal. Aziraphale didn’t owe him anything. And he certainly didn’t owe Aziraphale anything, especially an apology.
The hollow damp feeling was back.
After two days Crowley gave up and went home. He drank the making-up Château Margaux bottle alone, straight from the neck. It tasted like pencil shavings, and did nothing to fill the hole in his chest.
He should do something wicked. But there was no one around to thwart him, and he’d just make the poor buggers miserable for nothing.
Eggs without salt, Aziraphale had said. Bland. But salt without eggs was worse. You’d choke on it.
He lasted a month and redecorated his flat three times before he put an ad in the personal column of The Times. “Serpent seeks holiday-making angel for chess matches and solving crossword puzzles, leave the flaming sword behind.” Chess and crosswords sounded as exciting as Aziraphale could handle, he figured, ignoring how much he himself liked matching his wits against the angel.
The card arrived a couple of days later, because of course Aziraphale didn’t believe in defrauding the Royal Post by sending via miracle, and he’d never been able to persuade him to get a paging service. An address card, somewhere in the South Downs. A. Z. Fell, Esq., because of course it was.
Right. He’d go check on the angel and make it clear he didn’t enjoy being stood up on a drinking date, even if he hadn’t bothered to let Aziraphale know he was coming, and of course it hadn’t been a date-date, either. That was human nonsense.
The cottage was covered in late-blooming roses, of course it was. It was well out of the village, which must be inconvenient without a car, and Crowley and the Bentley were far too far away to ship him around. Perhaps Aziraphale had forgotten how atrocious taxis were so far out here. It wasn’t like he kept a horse and pair these days.
Gosh, it was beautiful. Rolling downs, a sky so big when there were no buildings to get in the way. Salt and greenness and the smoke of fragrant wood on a fire on the air instead of smog. You’d feel tucked away from the world in a place like this.
Not Crowley’s scene, of course. But it could be, his mind whispered.
He didn’t bother to knock. Aziraphale was in a tastefully modernized kitchen, up to his elbows in raw pastry, but he never was one for hugging in greeting anyway, and why on Earth had Crowley even thought in those terms?
Aziraphale dusted the flour off his arms and washed his hands. Then his sleeves came down, which was a bit of a shame. He had nice forearms, plump and touchable. “So you’re here.”
“I brought a chessboard.”
“Marvellous. Just let me get this pie on. Somehow I baked more than enough for two.” Aziraphale looked Crowley up and down, and for some reason Crowley felt heat creep over his face. “Nice trousers.”
“Thanks. Took a miracle to get them on.”
“So you decided on rock star, then?”
“Nah. I haven’t really decided what to do.” Crowley looked around the kitchen, the autumn light slanting through the curtains. “Seems you’ve decided what you want. This is very you.”
“Thank you. I haven’t decided what to do with myself, either. I thought I would try a break from London. Two thousand years in one place is rather a lot. Although, that also depends on the company.” Aziraphale looked thoughtfully at Crowley, who felt a bit at a loss, and also a little hurt.
“You meet all types of humans in London, over the years.”
“Indeed.” Aziraphale turned and bent over to put the pie in the oven, and Crowley tried not to stare in a way unbecoming of an old enemy.
Were they enemies anymore? Had they ever been? Aziraphale was part of The Enemy, of course, but it was hard to take that seriously when they’d been friendly for six millennia, and anyway, they’d come in from the cold now. Did retired agents settle in Plymouth together?
“I want to live here,” he said in a rush.
Aziraphale straightened, but didn’t look at him. “Here?”
Might as well say it. “With you.”
“Why?”
He really was going to make Crowley say it, even if he choked on it. “Because everything is pointless without you,” he said to the back of Aziraphale’s head.
Aziraphale still didn’t turn, shoulders tucked up tight, which was proof Crowley had said the worst possible thing. Or was the angel just waiting for him to take it back? Crowley thought for a moment about how he was supposed to follow up, what gesture you made after a declaration like that. Some mortals went down on a knee, which was foolish and showy and not an option for anyone with Crowley’s knees.
Instead, he reached for the scraps of unbaked dough that had been carefully trimmed off the pie dish, tore off a chunk, and crammed it in his mouth to avoid talking for a second.
It didn’t work. Aziraphale was still silent, although at least he turned, so there was only the butcher’s block between them. The problem was that now Crowley was faced with those bright blue eyes. There was a line of flour down one of Aziraphale’s cheeks.
Crowley tried out a laugh, found it half-croaked and unconvincing, so he cleared his throat and tried again for casual. “Don’t know what else you thought I was going to mean. I can’t stand the idea of being bored for eternity. Alone.” He fiddled with a tea towel. “Never did quite get how you fill the time. Thought I could… learn. If you let me watch.”
Aziraphale’s hands were white-knuckled on the counter. “You do realize,” and his tone was too careful, “that living together in the country is not always pleasant. There will be squabbles about garden sheds and ruined postmen, and so forth.”
“I know.” Crowley didn’t, but he’d learn, and enjoy every minute. “I love squabbles. Big squabbles man, me. I can get a yappy little dog for the postman.” He’d never had a dog, but why not?
“I don’t appreciate your taste in bebop.”
“We both like Mozart and being more clever than the contestants on quiz shows.”
“You can’t possibly know what you’re saying.”
“You can’t possibly disappear on me and not expect me to look for you. And I don’t believe you did. You knew I would come.”
“I didn’t want you to feel obligated,” Aziraphale said, finally, like someone opening a box marked FRAGILE. “I did think… I hoped… but it was silly.”
“Hoped what?” The hollow place in his chest was aching in an expectant kind of way, as if it was going to be filled and knew it. He stepped around the butcher’s block, so close to Aziraphale that tiny specks of flour were probably making their way from Aziraphale’s beige apron to Crowley’s black cashmere jumper.
“That now everything is over, including the Arrangement, you might want to try a new life.”
“As a what? Hedge fund manager with a secret passion for Baroque pop music?”
Aziraphale reached out and touched Crowley’s neck where the bare skin emerged from the jumper. The brush of his fingers was like a brand. “As whatever you want to be. With me.”
There was a kind of sound of desperation in it, Crowley thought. Something old and sharp, the single note of longing that had never quite resolved in their centuries of counterpoint. He ignored it, but only because it was so much louder than he could bear.
He put his hand over Aziraphale’s, there on his neck. “Suppose all I want to be is with you? What do you say to that?”
“I’d say that I suspect that I’m in love with you and didn’t realise it until the world was ending,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley had just a moment to think oh, that’s what this is, of course before their lips met.
They’d never kissed before, not even when it was custom. Angel, demon, seemed wrong somehow. And, Crowley realised as his lips parted and he started taking gulps from Aziraphale’s mouth as if he was drowning and the only air that existed was the angel, that had probably been a good thing, because neither of their sides would think much of agents who couldn’t get anything done because they were too busy trying—gosh, was that what Aziraphale’s tongue tasted like? Hot wet velvet, only that didn’t make sense because hot wet velvet would be soggy and not taste of anything much at all, and if he was human he’d say this was heaven, how did humans bear it?
Aziraphale must have pushed him back against the butcher’s block because Crowley felt a sharp pain midway down his spine and then it went spinning across the room on its little castors, startling him out of the kiss.
“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said vaguely. “That was too forward—”
“I’ll give you forward,” Crowley said. “Do you have a bedroom?"
“Have you ever done this before? I suppose you have, sinful demon.”
“No. But we’ll figure it out together.” Crowley took his hand, and they went upstairs to figure it out.
Midway through figuring it out, when Crowley’s leather trousers had been banished to the ether and his shirt was half off, he remembered something he probably say first, in case Aziraphale missed the obvious as badly as Crowley had, and worried. He could be quite fretful about silly things at times. “I love you too, angel.”
“Oh, I am glad. I did hope, but—”
“Shut up,” Crowley said, and kissed him again, trying to undo Aziraphale’s buttoned-up underwear at the same time.
The pie burned around the edges, but Crowley had worked up quite an appetite, and it was perfect anyway. He insisted on eating it on their laps, because there was no sense giving in to Aziraphale’s insistence on rules so early in their cohabitation.
“This room,” he said, taking in the pretty little floral trims and old glowing wood and blazing fire in the living room. “It’s you.”
“I suppose so.” Aziraphale was eating with quite an appetite, which he’d earned. He was surprisingly energetic for his size. He was wearing a warm thick dressing gown that Crowley wanted to hug and snuggle into, and also take off him again. Pie first, though.
“But that stereo is this year’s model, and that television is the latest. This isn't you, angel."
“No,” Aziraphale said. “This is us.”
Which, Crowley thought, resolved everything perfectly.