Chapter Text
This was not shaping up to be Aziraphale’s day. Between the muggy weather, the influx of absolute lackwits infiltrating his shop, and his complete disaster of an employee Newton missing his shift due to a mild case of electrocution of all things, he had had it. With Newt out of the picture for a day or two, Aziraphale had to stay late to close, something he really preferred to avoid. After all, he had already worked a full, very frustrating day, and he felt he deserved a little comfort.
Next time, he promised himself, he’d just close early.
But of course, he couldn’t do that every time. It was a business, after all, his business, and he very much wanted it to be able to continue. He had compromised by deciding to pick up some takeout on the way home, and enjoy a relaxing dinner with his latest read. It had all sounded rather splendid at the time.
Now, with a hot order of curry threatening to soak through its paper box in one hand, keys in the other, coat over his arm, and the mail be picked up from downstairs tucked in his armpit, it just seemed like more stress. All of this was compounded even more by the huge box in front of his door and wedged under the doorknob.
FRISBY’S RODENT HABITAT, read big black letters on the box.
Aziraphale spent one addled moment wondering if there was an insult in finding this in front of his door. Luckily it only lasted long enough for him to notice that the package was for a Mr. Anthony J. Crowley, of apartment 312, not Aziraphale Fell of 212.
Well this was damned inconvenient, that’s what it was. Aziraphale did not want to put his increasingly soggy dinner on the floor, nor his coat, which he took great care to maintain in tip top condition. The mail was in many pieces and could not easily be put down.
Gingerly, Aziraphale tried to nudge the package, which covered nearly the entire bottom half of the door, out from under the doorknob with his foot. No dice. How had the delivery man even gotten tucked in like that? He turned his back to the wall and crouched down, shimmying his hip against the box. It remained steady as the Rock of Gibraltar.
This was getting ridiculous. With a huff, Aziraphale slammed his hip into the box. It gave way all at once, sending Aziraphale stumbling after. To make matters worse, his curry box decided this was entirely too much to be expected of it, and gave up the ghost rather dramatically, spilling hot saucy curry all down Aziraphale’s front, onto the package, and a fair bit on the carpet as well. (footnote: the hallway would smell of curry for weeks after that)
Biting back curses, Aziraphale simply stood for a moment, dripping curry and thinking about his life. Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.
Finally, he gave a heavy sigh. The curry squelching in his shoes was uncomfortable, and if he didn’t rinse out his pants soon it would stain them. Time to deal with it. He unlocked the now exposed door and walked in, dumping his keys in the bowl by the door and immediately tossing the mail on a side table before stripping out of his clothes. The entire bunch he brought to the bathroom and threw in the tub, starting warm water for them to soak. Then he got dressed again and grabbed a towel to clean up his door and the hallway. He toyed with the idea of not wiping down the package, but considering he still had to get it to 312, he did it out of a sense of self preservation. He wasn’t interested in currying his shirt as well, after all.
He sighed sadly as he wiped the last smudge off his door. As much trouble as it ended up being, it smelled lovely, and he really had been looking forward to it. Now he would probably eat a sad meal of too much cheese and hardly anything else.
Not the cozy, comforting evening he was looking for.
Now there was just the package. He could leave it, but he really couldn’t stand looking at the thing for a moment more. Reluctantly, he hefted it into his arms and started for the stairs.
Rodent habitat. It would be 312 wanting a rodent habitat. The resident hadn’t been there long but Aziraphale had seen him in the hallways and stairwells. Skinny and sharp and beautiful in the way that poison dart frogs beckoned you to touch. Vivid red hair stood out among what appeared to be a nearly all black wardrobe. He was unapproachable in all the conventional ways and several unconventional as well. He walked fast (and what a fascinating, swaying walk it was), head down, hands shoved in the pockets of ridiculously tight pants. He sneered when he talked. He had a tattoo. Of a snake. On his face.
So it would be 312, who was apparently called Anthony Crowley, who would think about doing something so stupid as having rodents in an apartment building. Not to mention, Aziraphale had heard through the building grapevine that he had gotten special permission from the building to keep his pet snake.
A snake! Aziraphale adjusted the box in his hands and shuddered. Of all the creatures one could choose to have in their life, why a snake? Slimy, cold, slithering… Awful. Everything about them was so… unnatural. Those buggy, never-blinking eyes. (Could snakes blink? Aziraphale wasn’t sure. He just knew that every one he had seen seemed to be staring unblinkingly into his soul.) And rats were hardly any better. Smelly greasy pests that any reasonable person would try to get out of their lives, not welcome with some clearly top of the line habitat as Frisby’s.
Huffing a bit with the effort, Aziraphale finally found himself outside of 312. He put down the package (resisting the urge to wedge it under the doorknob, and knocked loudly.
“Gimme a minute!” He heard from inside.
Aziraphale sighed and tapped his foot, arms crossed impatiently.
The door ripped open and there was Snake Guy himself, lips curled in a sneer and looking Aziraphale up and down in almost a challenge. The sudden proximity had Aziraphale stumbling backward awkwardly.
He took a breath to introduce himself. “Hello, I’m Azira—”
“What the hell are you doing with that?” 312 demanded, looking down at the stained box.
“Oh.” Aziraphale looked down too, before trying a smile. “I’m afraid it was delivered to me by mistake.”
“Damned IPS. Should’ve known.” He pulled it out of Aziraphale’s steadying grasp and started inspecting it.
“Rather. As I was saying, my name is Azira—”
“Why does it smell like curry?” He raised a crimson eyebrow suspiciously.
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Aziraphale may have been avoiding eye contact for that one.
“You kind of smell like curry too.”
“Would you! Stop! Smelling me!” He had had enough. “If you must know, that confounded package was wedged against my door, and in wrestling it free, my dinner, which I was very much looking forward to, I might add, was lost in the fight. I cleaned it and myself up and did the right and neighborly thing and brought it to you. And what do I get? Not a thanks, not even the chance to introduce myself!” He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and take in his neighbor’s shocked face. “Rude!”
“Go on, then.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your introductions. Go on.” An amused smile revealed the gleam of a crooked incisor.
“Right.” Aziraphale tugged on his waistcoast, trying to regain a modicum of composure. “My name is Aziraphale Fell, and I am your downstairs neighbor. I live in 212 and this was delivered by mistake.”
He expected some comment about the name, but beyond his neighbor slowly mouthing it out with a bemused expression, he didn’t end up saying anything.
“Brought it by, huh? Right angel you are. Could have just shoved it aside.”
‘And miss the pleasure of your acquaintance?” Aziraphale did his best to be polite, but he had really had enough.
“Anthony Crowley.” 312 stuck a long fingered hand out, and Aziraphale shook it, still angry but also not an animal. “You can call me Crowley.”
“Well, Crowley, you have your package now, so I’ll be going.” He turned to go, grateful at the prospect of finally getting to settle in for the night.
“Wait.”
Aziraphale spun on his heel. How could someone so gorgeous be so frustrating. Oh. There was easily an answer in that. “Yes?”
“You said your dinner died or something. Was lost in battle,” he continued mockingly before shrugging his shoulder into the apartment. “I made pasta. Have leftovers if you want.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s very kind—” Now why was he making a face at that?! “—but to be honest I’ve heard about your… your pet and I don’t think I’d really want to spend time around it.”
Oh now that was a face. Crowley straightened up, seemingly both insulted and a bit hurt. “Rosy is lovely! She’s the nicest snake you could ask for. Snakes get a bad reputation but people don’t even give them a chance!”
“Oh, I’m sure your… Rosy… is a very nice snake. I’ve just always had… well, a thing about them. Are you… Will you be breeding food for her?”
Crowley, now sullenly tugging the box into his apartment, looked up. “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“Oh for crying out loud, what now?”
“It’s just… Do you really think it’s a good idea, breeding rodents in an apartment building? I mean, what if they get out?”
“That’s what this is for.” Crowley looked at him like he was an idiot. “So they don’t get out.”
“Yes, but…”
“Nice to meet you, Aziraphale.”
Well.
“See to it that they don’t get out! I certainly don’t need any little creatures in my apartment!”
The door shut without further comment from the red-headed snakekeeper. If Aziraphale had had any doubt about what sort of man a face-tattooed snake keeping rat breeder would be, he had none now.
Still, he had offered pasta. A sudden vision of a plate of spaghetti turning into snakes had Aziraphale shaking his head in horror. Yes, best he turned that down. With one last glance at the now-closed door, Aziraphale started down the hallway, doing his best to salvage what remained of his evening.
It wasn’t long after the rodent habitat was delivered that Aziraphale started to hear something in his apartment. At first, he wasn’t sure if it was just the ventilation going on, or perhaps a noise trickling in from one of his next door neighbors. But it kept coming up… The faintest rustling when things got quiet. The more he heard it, the more he was certain it was a rat.
He knew this would happen. How irresponsible does one have to be to unleash rats on an unsuspecting apartment building. And being right under the… the nest so to speak made Aziraphale particularly vulnerable to infestation. Every time he heard it, he’d stop what he was doing and try to hone in on where exactly it was coming from. But it seemed that as soon as he stopped, the rat did too. He could never find it.
He worried something awful. Aside from the shop, everything he owned in the world was in that apartment. And he liked his things. When he found something he liked, he held on to it, cherished it. There were all his beloved books, many old and valuable, they were the greatest at risk. The idea of a rat nibbling on Marlowe just to make some horrid little nest to make more rats was more than he could stomach. And aside from all that, there were his clothes too. Clothes he had collected over the years that suited him, comforted him, that he didn’t want to lose.
It was all almost too terrible to think about.
In a fit of frenzy one night after hearing rustlings every time he was able to drift off to sleep (was it in his bedroom?!) Aziraphale announced loudly to the darkness, “Visitor, you are not welcome here. I recognize your right to live but you must do it somewhere else. Tomorrow I will be buying traps. If you don’t wish to be hurt, please leave.” He paused, then continued more softly, “Please, please leave.”
He got the traps. The noises continued. The traps stayed empty. Then one awful morning, Aziraphale found something unexpected on the floor of his closet. Laying on the ground like a soldier who had died trying to get to shelter, was the rat’s first victim.
“It got one of my bowties, Nina.” Aziraphale proffered up his fallen comrade desperately, the frayed silk mirroring his emotions. “This cannot continue. What if it gets my books?!”
“Then trap it.” Nina barely looked up from behind the counter where she was duly occupied making her customers their coffee orders.
“I’ve tried.” Aziraphale wailed. Nina clearly wasn’t understanding the severity of the situation here. He could understand that she was a businesswoman and had to work, but surely this merited at least some eye contact?
“Look.” Nina stopped and faced him, hands planted firmly on the counter. Really, she just needed this conversation to be over so she could work, but Aziraphale took it as giving him the matter the attention it deserved and perked up, ready to hear her pearls of wisdom. “You said the snake guy was the problem, right? No rats before he started breeding them, now there’s rats, yeah?”
Aziraphale nodded earnestly.
“Then it’s his problem, not yours. Confront him. Make him fix it.”
“How?”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t know! Complain to the building. Make him pay for an exterminator. Just stop. Bothering me. With it.”
Aziraphale tucked his cocoa in toward his body with huff. “Well, really. You’d think an establishment called Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death would be a bit more hospitable to its favorite customers.”
Nina’s eyes flashed. “You’re not dead, are you?”
Aziraphale left soon after that.
She did have a point though. This whole thing started because of Crowley and now Aziraphale’s possessions, no, more than that, his very sense of peace at home was paying the price. It couldn’t continue. He resolved that as soon as he got home that evening, he’d pay his crimson haired neighbor a visit and set things right.
Aziraphale was not typically a man of confrontation, but he was also not one to bow down and be abused, especially when his books were at stake. He slipped his key into the lock and let himself into the dim apartment. He was sure of it, there was no other way.
He just needed to tap into his righteous fury… It wouldn’t do to show up and apologetically demand that action be taken. No, it had to be clear that this was a state of affairs that would not be permitted to continue. He nodded, feeling well convinced. He would put down his things, take off his jacket, and head upstairs, even if it was a bit late. No dilly-dallying around it.
He put his keys in the bowl and had just started walking down the hall toward his room to hang up his jacket when some glimpse of movement caught his eye.
Rat.
He stopped dead, hardly breathing and suddenly, embarrassingly, terrified.
He had no idea what to do.
The beast hadn’t seen him yet, and carried along down the hallway, sticking close to the baseboard. Down the hallway toward…
No no no no
“No!” Aziraphale rushed toward the rat, trying to get it away from his bedroom but succeeding only in chasing it there. It zipped into the darkness of his room, where he slept, and disappeared entirely in the clutter.
“Damn it!” He cried with feeling. No need to tap into that righteous anger now. It was right at the surface. And by God, something would be done about this.
Aziraphale slammed the door of his bedroom, feeling only slightly bad for possibly scaring the rat. He needed to keep it contained. Then he stormed out his door and headed for the stairs.