Chapter Text
After Gabriel and Beelzebub had run off together, the world had gone quiet, as if someone had pressed the mute button on the entire universe.
There were no emergency summons from Heaven, no special assignments from Hell, no apocalypses that needed averting — not even a naked Archangel turning up at the bookshop door. And Crowley had finally got his flat back.
Crowley found this quiet a bit unsettling — not that he would ever admit to it, of course. A demon wasn't supposed to be unsettled by anything. It was a fundamental principle laid out in the Hellish Work Manual (Chapter Six, Section Thirteen, to be precise). But Crowley hadn't opened that manual in centuries. The battered, crumbling thing had been tossed aside ages ago, and he'd long since forgotten where it had ended up. And honestly, he'd never been the sort of demon who followed the manual to the letter anyway.
Aziraphale, on the other hand, was thoroughly enjoying the peace and quiet. He sat in the comfortable leather armchair in his bookshop, a slightly yellowed first edition of Dickens open on his lap, a cup of perfectly tempered hot cocoa resting on the side table.
Ever since the apocalypse had been averted and Gabriel and Beelzebub had vanished hand in hand, singing, Aziraphale had relaxed in a way that was positively visible to the naked eye.
It manifested in all sorts of ways: he no longer kept the bookshop curtains drawn tight, he no longer jumped at the sound of knocking, and there were even a few cream stains on his waistcoat that he either hadn't noticed or — more tellingly — had noticed but couldn't be bothered to miracle away. Which said more about his state of relaxation than anything else, really, didn't it?
And most importantly, he had stopped saying That Thing.
That Thing — which Crowley privately thought of as The Prohibition — was something Aziraphale had said countless times over the past six thousand years.
He always delivered it in that particular tone of his, a mixture of regret, reluctance and the faintest hint of petulance, as if the fact that he and Crowley spent so much time together was some sort of grievous violation that required a written apology to be submitted to Heaven.
Of course, it wasn't one specific sentence, but rather a whole category of them. The general gist was always: "You're a demon, I'm an angel, and angels and demons cannot be friends."
In the old days, Aziraphale would say this sort of thing regularly. But then, no more than twenty seconds after saying it, he would be holding open a restaurant door for Crowley, or pouring him half of his wine, or enthusiastically performing a magic trick for him — thoroughly undermining every single word he had just uttered, as if the whole thing had merely been for show.
But now, That Thing had vanished from Aziraphale's vocabulary entirely. Gone without a trace, as if it had been hit with a permanent vanishing miracle (not that such a miracle actually existed).
And Crowley was extremely pleased about this — not that he would ever say so out loud, of course. A demon wasn't supposed to feel "pleased" (a principle also covered in the Hellish Work Manual, Chapter Ten, Section Five), unless said pleasure resulted in the corruption of some innocent soul or other.
But as we have already established, Crowley was not a demon who followed the manual to the letter, and he was perfectly willing to admit — to himself, at least — that his mood had improved considerably.
"What are you reading today, angel?" Crowley sauntered in through the bookshop entrance, depositing his sunglasses on the horse-shaped ornament, the hem of his black jacket still fluttering slightly from the cold November wind outside.
He threw himself onto the squashy sofa, slinging his long legs over the armrest (a bad habit Aziraphale had pointed out many times and which Crowley had absolutely no intention of correcting), twisting his spine into what appeared to be three entirely different angles — a position that looked profoundly unhealthy but was, for a demon, not a problem in the slightest.
"Great Expectations," said Aziraphale, who seemed thoroughly accustomed to Crowley's unannounced arrivals. He glanced up briefly before returning his attention to the book. "I've read it before, but I felt like revisiting it. Dickens really was a genius, you know. Just listen to this bit —"
"Stop right there, angel. You know I don't go in for all that," Crowley cut him off, pulling a face.
"You always say you're not interested," Aziraphale shrugged, turning another page, his voice carrying a note of indulgence he wasn't even aware of. "But in 1793 you read the entirety of The Social Contract in Paris, and in 1905 you sneaked a look at that Oscar Wilde manuscript here in my shop, and in 1964 —"
"I was trapped on those occasions," said Crowley. "And I didn't sneak a look. I just happened to be passing by, and I glanced at it. Casually."
"You spent an entire afternoon in my bookshop that time —"
"It was raining outside. I didn't want my clothes getting wet, angel."
"No," said Aziraphale. "It was three afternoons. Did it rain for three afternoons in a row? And you do have miracles, you know."
Crowley glared at him, but Aziraphale knew there was no real malice behind it.
Over the years, Aziraphale had learned to distinguish between Crowley's various types of glares: the genuinely angry one, where his pupils contracted into the thinnest of vertical slits (the expression he'd worn when he saw the amnesiac Gabriel); the pretend-angry one, where his pupils stayed the same but his eyebrows lowered dramatically (this one usually appeared whenever Aziraphale told him that deep down he was really quite nice); and then there was this one — the one where the edges of his pupils quivered ever so slightly, but the corner of his mouth gave everything away — a completely harmless glare.
So Aziraphale gave Crowley a smile in return and went back to his Dickens.
This was the understanding between them, an understanding built up over six thousand years — like two dance partners who had been dancing together for a lifetime, able to match each other's every step without needing any music at all.
The days that followed were, in Crowley's own words, "too good to be true".
The frequency of their meetings skyrocketed to unprecedented levels during this period.
Over the long span of six thousand years, Crowley and Aziraphale had always abided by a certain unspoken rule: meet once every few decades, occasionally more frequently, but never more than twice a year.
This wasn't because they didn't want to see each other more often — at least, not on Crowley's part (though he had missed several meetings by sleeping through an entire century) — but because any contact that was too frequent might draw the attention of both Heaven and Hell to their... irregular relationship. The bullet catch in 1941 was a prime example of the kind of trouble that could arise.
Before the apocalypse crisis, the danger had been very real. If an angel and a demon were discovered fraternising too closely, the consequences might involve more than just a bit of hellfire or holy water.
But now, Heaven was far too busy dealing with the mess Gabriel had left behind, and Hell was frantically trying to fill the gaping hole left by Beelzebub's departure — which meant there was no spare manpower to keep tabs on Aziraphale and Crowley, two "minor players" pottering about on Earth at their leisure.
And so Crowley embarked upon the most intensive social schedule of his entire existence — or demonic career, whichever way you wanted to look at it.
On Mondays, they fed the ducks at St James's Park.
Crowley had learned to bring frozen peas. He now strictly followed the park's noticeboard guidelines (though he complained every single time that it was entirely beneath his style), while Aziraphale, with great enthusiasm, had taken it upon himself to name every single duck — yes, you read that correctly: every. single. duck.
According to the angel's rigorous naming system, there were at least three generations of ducks on that lake with a complete family genealogy, including a mallard named "Leo III", his girlfriend — known affectionately as "the Gossip Queen" — and no fewer than seventeen of their extended relatives.
Crowley found this utterly astonishing. He could not fathom how the angel's little head managed to work so quickly when it came to this sort of thing.
On Tuesdays, they went for drives in the countryside.
Crowley still drove his Bentley, hurtling along England's country lanes at speeds that far exceeded anything permitted by any known traffic regulation. Aziraphale sat in the passenger seat, one hand gripping the grab handle above the door and the other cradling a miraculously stabilised cup of hot cocoa, his expression hovering somewhere between enjoyment and terror — or perhaps somewhere in between.
No matter what CD Crowley shoved into the player, the Bentley stubbornly insisted on playing only the Queen albums it favoured. Initially, they had both agreed that the car simply had its own musical preferences. But then, on one fortuitous occasion, Aziraphale slipped in a classical music disc he was fond of, and the car obediently began to play it without any fuss — which infuriated Crowley to no end.
The whole farce was eventually resolved by Aziraphale calming down both the demon and the Bentley (simultaneously, as it happened), after which the car resumed its around-the-clock Queen repertoire.
On Wednesdays, they dined at the Ritz.
Their outfits never changed — Crowley in that impeccably tailored black suit, Aziraphale in his cream-coloured coat. They took the table by the window. Aziraphale would eat his beloved roast lamb, while Crowley chose simply to watch him eat, occasionally sipping a demon-approved red wine.
The angel would sometimes dither over the dessert menu for an inordinate amount of time, before finally succumbing to the demon's temptation and ordering the "just this once, never again" oversized chocolate brownie. Crowley never ordered dessert himself, but he always watched Aziraphale finish his before picking up the bill.
On Thursdays and Fridays, they sometimes went to the theatre or the cinema, or to some tiny, marvellous little restaurant they'd stumbled upon, tucked away in an obscure corner of the city. But more often than not, they simply stayed at the bookshop.
At the bookshop, Crowley would sprawl on the sofa (in the manner previously described). Aziraphale would occasionally potter about, but most of the time he busied himself with the things he considered meaningful: reordering the books on each shelf by year of publication, compiling catalogue cards for the antique volumes, or reading an author's complete works from cover to cover.
And Crowley would lie on the sofa and watch Aziraphale do all these things that he personally found utterly meaningless — yet he thought there was no more fascinating programme in the entire world. Not that he ever said this out loud, of course.
As for Saturdays and Sundays?
They might repeat one of the previous days, or occasionally invent some new, interesting activity. But that's not really the point.
The point is, they saw each other nearly every day.
"Have you been coming round more often than usual lately?" Aziraphale asked casually one day.
Crowley hooked his sunglasses onto his collar. "Not at all," he said, throwing himself into the sofa. "I've always come round at this frequency, angel."
"But you were here five times last week."
"Five times isn't that many."
"And the week before that you came..." Aziraphale seemed to be genuinely trying to remember. "Six times. You came six times."
"That was because —" Crowley also paused to think. "That was the designated rest week for villains. You know how it is, angel. Villains — we demons need a break too."
"Very well," said Aziraphale. "It seems the world will stay peaceful for the foreseeable future, what with a certain 'villain' being on permanent holiday."
Crowley waved a hand at him, a gesture that broadly signalled "don't get hung up on the details". Aziraphale smiled and went back to what he was doing.
Nina, the owner of the coffee shop, was a very clever woman. As an independent business owner running a small café in London, she had seen every type of customer imaginable — the office workers who burst in at seven in the morning for a double espresso, the freelancers who sat by the window at three in the afternoon staring blankly at their laptops, the students who ordered a single Americano and camped out all day using the Wi-Fi... She considered herself thoroughly immunised against the full spectrum of human diversity.
But Aziraphale and Crowley — those two, or those two entities, whatever they were — had been completely beyond her comprehension from the very start.
At first, she'd simply found the man in the sunglasses — the one who walked like a snake, a very slithery snake at that — a bit... alarming. There was something about him, an indefinable air of danger, that made Nina instinctively want to edge the tip jar a little further away from the counter's edge.
But then things had happened — things she still couldn't fully make sense of — including, but not limited to: her coffee shop nearly getting smashed up by a gang of "supernatural hooligans on wheels", she and Maggie being inexplicably pushed together, and her own involvement in a crisis that concerned the very fate of the world.
After all that, her view of Crowley had changed entirely.
Nowadays, when Nina saw Crowley walk into her coffee shop, her first instinct was no longer to check that the baseball bat under the counter was still where she'd left it. Instead, she greeted him with a smile that was friendly, warm, and just a little bit knowing.
This change made Crowley somewhat uncomfortable. A demon wasn't supposed to make anyone feel warm (Chapter Four, Section Sixteen of the Hellish Work Manual, which Crowley was determined to stop thinking about, the blasted thing).
But he had discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that being treated with friendliness wasn't actually as objectionable as he'd imagined — especially when the source of that friendliness gave him free refills.
Another change was the relationship between Nina and Maggie.
It seemed that after the crisis, whether due to the suspension bridge effect or something else entirely, a certain wall between them had come tumbling down. Crowley remained convinced that this was entirely due to his brilliantly orchestrated rainstorm; Aziraphale begged to differ.
Regardless, Maggie could now often be found in the coffee shop — sometimes helping to carry trays, sometimes just sitting in a corner, playing jazz or rock records on an old turntable from her record shop, while casting glances at Nina that were enough to make anyone's ears turn red.
Crowley was fairly certain they were together. Aziraphale thought so too. They had once had a brief discussion on the subject, the conclusion of which was that Crowley considered human romantic entanglements far too complicated, while Aziraphale considered it a lovely development and was very pleased to see it — and then they had never spoken of it again, nor had Crowley ever mentioned the conversation he'd had with Nina that day.
And Nina and Maggie, for their part, were very obviously observing them.
Whenever Crowley and Aziraphale walked into the coffee shop together, Nina's expression would take on something a little subtle — a mixture of blessing, anticipation and mild impatience.
It was the sort of look a person wears when they're watching a television show that has dragged on for far too many seasons without the two leads finally kissing. Maggie would sometimes catch Nina's eye from her seat, give a little wink, and the two women would exchange a smile of mutual understanding.
Crowley was entirely oblivious to this — or rather, he chose to be. As a demon who had existed on Earth for six thousand years, his ability to read human micro-expressions was, one could say, honed to perfection.
He could tell in an instant whether a person was lying (the Aziraphale kind didn't count; that was far too easy), whether they were nervous, or whether they harboured murderous intent.
But when it came to gazes of goodwill and blessing — particularly those directed at whatever it was between him and Aziraphale — he selectively switched off his perception.
It was a sensible survival strategy, a core self-protection mechanism he had relied upon for six millennia: don't look, don't think, don't acknowledge.
Crowley's houseplants were another group that had sensed the shift in their master's mood — and their experience of it was rather more direct, because Crowley's treatment of them was nothing if not direct.
In the Before Times — specifically, before Beelzebub and Gabriel had run off together — the plants lived under a regime of high-pressure terror. Every morning, Crowley would emerge from his bedroom in a black silk dressing gown, clutching a cup of coffee strong enough to corrode metal, and stand before them to begin his daily "inspection".
He would approach each plant in turn, bending down to fix it with those amber serpent eyes through his sunglasses, staring coldly until the plant was visibly trembling.
"You're looking rather pleased with yourself today," Crowley would say to a Monstera whose leaves had grown just a little too lush. "Growing leaves this big. Should I be impressed? Or are you showing off?"
The Monstera's leaves would droop immediately, tucking away all their splendour with a near-obsequious haste.
"And you." Crowley would turn to a Fiddle Leaf Fig whose leaf edges were going slightly yellow. "What's this? Yellow? Who, in my flat, is permitted to have yellow leaves?"
The Fiddle Leaf Fig would promptly strain every fibre of its being to will that yellow leaf back to green. If it failed, the offending leaf would silently detach and fall within minutes. The plants never knew whether Crowley gave it a subtle nudge or whether it was purely psychological stress — but either way, the horror was the same.
The empty flowerpot in the corner was the nightmare of every plant in the flat. It had once been home to a fern that had, most unfortunately, contracted some kind of fungal infection, resulting in unsightly spots on its leaves.The fern had tried desperately to hide the spots, but it had failed, and one morning Crowley had seen them.
He had said nothing. He had simply picked up the pot and walked out — and returned twenty minutes later holding only the empty pot. He placed it in the corner where all the plants could see it, and never offered a single word of explanation as to the fern's fate.
The plants called that pot "the Place of Silence". They knew that if they did not strive to grow, if they did not maintain perfection, the same fate might befall them.
But after Beelzebub and Gabriel had eloped, things began to change — subtly at first, but unmistakably.
Crowley still inspected the plants daily. Today he stood before the Fiddle Leaf Fig, studying a new leaf while the plant poured every ounce of its strength into making that leaf look absolutely flawless.
"Not bad," said Crowley.
The Fiddle Leaf Fig froze. Not bad? Had he just said "not bad"? No threat? No "GROW BETTER!"? Not even a glare? The Fiddle Leaf Fig could not tell whether its doom was nigh, but Crowley had already moved on. He approached the next plant — a Snake Plant — stopped, looked at it, and gently touched one of its leaves.
"Growing well," he said.
The Snake Plant nearly burst into bloom on the spot. This was not the sort of thing that was supposed to happen in the world of Snake Plants. Blooming required an extraordinary expenditure of energy and particular environmental stimuli, generally occurring only under the rarest of ideal conditions — and yet the Snake Plant had very nearly done it.
Praise from a demon, it turned out, might be more potent than any fertiliser.
But what stunned the plants even more was what happened next. After completing his rounds, Crowley walked over to the empty flowerpot — the "Place of Silence" — and stood before it for a moment, as if lost in thought. Then he bent down, picked up the pot, and carried it into the storage cupboard.
He put it away. The plants fell silent. Then, once they were certain Crowley had gone, they began to celebrate.
The empty flowerpot was gone! This was, perhaps, what humans would call "happiness". The plants had no real concept of "happiness", but they could sense that their master had been in a very good mood lately. And a master in a good mood (as opposed to the usual one) meant fewer threats, more sunlight, and the occasional, unexpected tenderness.
A Moth Orchid even discovered that it had been relocated to the spot by the window — a position previously reserved for the best-performing plant of the week, rotated on a strict schedule — and now here it was, inexplicably assigned to that prime location. Crowley had clearly been in an exceedingly pleasant mood when he moved it, humming to himself as he did so (it was Queen's Don't Stop Me Now).
The plants communicated this among themselves in their own particular fashion. Through root-secreted chemicals, through volatile organic compounds released by their leaves, and through various other means, they exchanged information.
The entire green community of the flat reached a consensus: whatever was happening to their master, it was a good thing. A very, very good thing indeed.
The banished flowerpot gathered dust quietly in the storage cupboard, while in the living room, every leaf gleamed a perfect, verdant green.
In short, everything was very, very good. Almost too good. As has been said already — too good to be true.
But Crowley paid no mind to this. He was, for all intents and purposes, living a real, wonderful, peaceful life —
And then Aziraphale started postponing their meetings.