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There was something about angels. Perhaps it was the image of wings and halos, surrounded by bursts of light. Or maybe it was the very idea of all that goodness triumphing over all that evil, accompanied by the sound of a heavenly choir.
That choir never actually existed, except in the minds of men (who were brilliantly capable of inventing the most metaphorical things to represent truths they could not yet understand). The truth of the thing about angels is that it was far more a matter of shades of grey than it was of black and white, or black or white. Six of one, a half-dozen of the other: that's the way people had come to see it and over time, of course, Aziraphale had to agree with them. Ever since the beginning, before bookshops were invented, before cars were a gleam in any Creator's eye — back in the days of apples and gardens and innocence and creatures slithering and sliding through the underbrush — there had always been a sort of a balance. Not a perfect balance, mind you, because perfection hadn't yet been created. But a balance nonetheless.
If balance was a sort of awkwardly-laid-out path towards perfection, then there had to be good and evil. Otherwise, there could be no balance. Otherwise, an angel was just a thing, a representation of an ideal, and in no way real. Despite their general good nature, which really was more a reflection of hopes and ideals than of reality — except in Aziraphale's case since he really was a very good-natured sort of angel to begin with, unless one got him quite agitated — angels were complex beings. They had wishes and dreams and hopes, much the same as human beings, even if their wishes and dreams and hopes were somewhat farther-reaching than those of the masses. They were guided by laws, the same as anyone, and possibly slightly less tempted to twist those laws than demons, although not much. No being had yet been created who was entirely beyond temptation.
There was also something about demons. Demons had always been genuinely dishonest and tricky creatures by nature, yet in an oddly open and forthright way, Aziraphale found. At least that was the case with Crowley, who quite enjoyed a bit of disingenuity when the time was right. Of course for demons the time was almost always right. Still, throughout time or perhaps since the dawn of time, as far as anyone could remember, there was a sort of appealing frankness to Crowley's disambiguation. For demons things were exactly black or white. Those pesky shades of grey that wrapped around legends and bound them to history were simply user error. If humans were capable of being either All Good or All Evil, then temptation would have played a far less important role in the grand scheme of things.
Humans, they say, were made in the Almighty's image. Both Crowley and Aziraphale had long assumed that one was only capable of creating that which he or she knows, at least on some level. That meant that all of His creations — the world in its entirety — were things He had known, or had been able to know, see, speak, imagine. Of course that meant that both of them were made in His likeness, which meant that perhaps they were flip sides of the same coin. That led to centuries' worth of discussion over books and tea, or over music and fast cars. Again, different sides of the same coin. Dark, light, fast, slow, up, down, Good, Evil: one was always brother to the other, metaphorically speaking. It was no surprise that over the years, angel and demon had grown at least used to one another's presence. It was no surprise that over the years, angel and demon had learned from one another, as all beings do. It was no surprise, that day in Aziraphale's bookshop, after he'd got rid of the last pesky would-be customer using tricks he'd gleaned throughout time from his Less Good companion, that he sat, finally, teapot in hand, and offered a cup to Crowley.
Crowley glanced up at him over a pair of dark sunglasses. "The way you got rid of him." Little more needed to be said. Hand outstretched, he lifted the teacup and blew across its surface. The ripples looked a little like wings, although they also looked a little more like earthworms.
Aziraphale blushed. "One would think I should know better than to listen to your compliments." He leaned back against his well-worn rickety-solid wooden chair, teacup in hand, surrounded by the smell of well-loved, well-read, definitely not-really-for-sale books. The sign on the window said OPEN but the door had somehow got locked. He paid no attention to the potential customer's impatient knocking.
Crowley waved his hand dismissively and almost at once, the knocking halted.
"Er… where did you send him?" Aziraphale worried his lip, all the while savoring the fine blend of tea. "I mean, I suppose I should have let him in. If only to keep up appearances, you know."
"Does it matter? Are you still so concerned about appearances, after all this time?" Leaning back, Crowley propped his feet on a pile of priceless first volumes, grinning at Aziraphale's sharp intake of breath.
"You're walking chaos, you know that, don't you?"
"They're only books."
"All one of a kind. I couldn't bear to part with a single volume."
"Rubbish attitude for a bookseller, but what can be done can also be undone." The sign on the window turned to CLOSED. "If that's your real intention."
"There's a saying," Aziraphale began, "may you live in interesting times."
Crowley, unconcerned, cleaned his teeth with his tongue. "It's supposed to be a curse. I think it's one of ours."
"I thought it came from our side." With an equally unconcerned shrug, Aziraphale continued. "What I meant to say, if I in fact meant to say anything, was that… well, all times have been interesting."
"You don't like to admit you've grown more like me than you ought to have." Crowley's grin was sharp and audible.
Aziraphale shrugged. "We're opposites."
"Opposites attract."
"That they do."
The angel wings in Crowley's teacup moved aside, became a sun and moon, then disappeared entirely. His stomach growled. "I think lunch."
"The Ritz?"
"Nowhere better." Crowley stood, gesturing to the Bentley parked outside the door. Aziraphale sighed, though not at all unhappily, and stretched. Somewhere, a tiny bird glittered in the sunshine and somewhere else, a cat lunged out of its hiding place in the darkness to swallow whole an equally glittery but altogether different bird.
The world went on.