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The bookshop was quiet in the way only it could be. Floating dust motes visible in sunlight filtered through old glass, a delicate first edition left open on a coffee table.
Aziraphale stood before the tall gilt mirror he kept near the theology section. It had been a gift in 1872 from a minor Viscount with a dramatic temperament and unfortunate sideburns. The mirror was honest in the way all enchanted things eventually become when one stops checking the enchantments.
He tugged at his waistcoat.
“Well,” he murmured to himself, “this is hardly… streamlined, is it?”
The waistcoat, a perfectly respectable shade of buttercream, strained very slightly. Frowning to himself, Aziraphale turned sideways as he further scrutinized his reflection.
“Oh dear.”
The bell above the shop door gave its familiar, offended jingle.
“Angel,” drawled an amused voice, “if you’re reorganising the metaphysical alignment of your shelves again, at least warn me. I nearly tripped over a seventeenth-century heresy on my way in.”
Aziraphale startled. “Crowley! I didn’t hear you.”
“You never do,” Crowley replied, sweeping into the bookshop, sunglasses on, hair immaculate, coat impeccable as ever. He shut the door with a soft click and stopped mid-stride.
Aziraphale was still standing sideways before the mirror.
Crowley tilted his head. “What are we assessing? Structural integrity of the bookshop? Because I’ve told you, if the place collapses it’ll be the cookbooks that do it.”
Aziraphale flushed faintly. “It’s nothing.”
“Mmm.” Crowley stepped closer, peering at the mirror and meeting Aziraphale’s reflected eyes. “That’s a lie. You’ve got the nothing face. That’s the same face you made in 1793 when you insisted the guillotine was ‘architecturally interesting.’”
Aziraphale huffed. “I do not have a face for different categories of nothing.”
“Angel. You absolutely do.”
Silence settled between them, but Crowley didn’t speak again. Knowing Aziraphale as he did, the demon knew he’d soon explain.
Aziraphale looked back at the mirror. “It’s simply that corporations are… rather inconvenient.”
Crowley blinked. “Corporations.”
“Yes. Vessels. Bodies.” He waved a hand vaguely at himself. “They expand.”
Crowley leaned one hip against a shelf. “They do that.”
“I haven’t been smiting anyone,” Aziraphale said defensively. “Or performing miracles for cake. Well. Not many miracles. And one can hardly refuse cake on principle alone.”
“I’d be worried if you did.”
Aziraphale sighed, shoulders slumping. “I used to look rather… ethereal, didn’t I?”
Crowley didn’t answer immediately.
The mirror reflected an angel in soft cream and gold, hair a touch unruly, waistcoat warm against a rounder middle than Heaven’s marketing department would likely approve of. He looked comfortable, solid. Like someone who had stood in bookshops for centuries and tasted nearly every pastry humans have ever created.
“You still do,” Crowley said at last.
Aziraphale made a small disbelieving sound. “Crowley.”
“What?”
“I’m not naïve.”
“Debatable.”
“Crowley.”
The demon pushed off the shelf and came to stand behind him, peering into the mirror at Aziraphale’s reflected eyes.
“You’re not meant to look like a marble statue,” Crowley said quietly. “You’re not one of those dreary angels up top carved out of self-righteousness and idealism.”
Aziraphale’s hands tightened on the edge of his waistcoat. “Heaven does rather favour symmetry.”
“Heaven also thought the Spanish Inquisition was a good idea.”
Aziraphale’s lips twitched despite himself.
Crowley reached up and deliberately adjusted the collar at Aziraphale’s neck. His fingers brushed warm skin. “You’ve had this corporation since Eden.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve eaten with it. Drunk with it. Danced, however badly, with it.”
“I do not dance badly.”
“You waltzed into a table in 1926.”
“That table moved.”
Crowley’s mouth curved. Then his voice softened.
“You chose this body, angel.”
Aziraphale went still.
“You could look like anything,” Crowley continued. “Tall. Thin. Terrifyingly radiant. Six wings all the time if you fancied. But you chose this.”
“I—”
Crowley continued. “You chose soft hands that can hold rare books without damaging them. You chose a stomach that can appreciate oysters and crêpes Suzette and whatever that alarming trifle was in 1963. You chose cheeks that go pink when you’re cross.”
Aziraphale stared at their reflection.
Crowley’s hands settled gently at his waist.
“And you chose something that feels,” Crowley said, voice lower now, “like home.”
Aziraphale swallowed. “Crowley, I’m not certain that’s—”
“I like it.”
The bluntness of it startled them both.
Crowley’s expression twitched slightly, as if annoyed at himself. “You’re warm,” he muttered. “You’re solid. When you stand next to me, you feel real, not like judgement or some sanctimonious breeze.”
Aziraphale’s reflection looked wide-eyed.
“I have spent six thousand years surrounded by creatures obsessed with appearances,” Crowley went on. “Angels polishing halos. Demons cultivating cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. The entire human cosmetics industry. It’s exhausting.”
His thumb traced a small, absent-minded circle through the fabric of Aziraphale’s waistcoat.
“You,” Crowley said, softer still, “look like someone who enjoys existing.”
Aziraphale’s breath caught.
“I don’t want you carved thinner,” Crowley added. “I don’t want you sharpened. I don’t want you rearranged to suit anyone’s celestial aesthetic.”
He leaned closer, lips near Aziraphale’s ear.
“I like that you take up space.”
The words landed like a benediction.
Aziraphale’s eyes shimmered faintly. “Crowley…”
“If anyone up there,” Crowley said, straightening slightly, a familiar edge returning, “has a problem with it, they can come discuss it with me. I have several plagues left I never got to use.”
A wet, surprised laugh escaped Aziraphale.
“Honestly,” Crowley muttered, brushing invisible dust from the waistcoat, “if you miracle yourself thinner I shall be deeply offended.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’ve grown accustomed to this configuration.”
Aziraphale turned slowly in his arms. “You have?”
Crowley hesitated, just a fraction, then nodded.
Aziraphale looked down at himself, then back at Crowley.
“Well,” he said after a moment, voice steadier, “I suppose one shouldn’t tamper with a perfectly functional corporation.”
“Absolutely not,” Crowley agreed. “To do so would be positively blasphemous.”
Aziraphale smiled warmly, unmistakably ethereal in a way no mirror could measure.
“Would you stay for tea?” he asked.
Crowley smirked. “If there are scones.”
“There are always scones.”
“Then yes, angel.” He offered an arm with exaggerated gallantry. “Lead on. And try not to waltz into any furniture.”
“The table moved,” Aziraphale insisted, taking his arm.
As they disappeared toward the back room, the mirror reflected the backs of a demon and an angel: imperfect, enduring, and entirely themselves.