This was inspired by a post on tumblr about what might happen if Aziraphale and Crowley couldn't switch back bodies. I posted it a while ago there and on AO3, and just somehow... forgot about this site. Oops. So if you've seen this before, that's why. I'm going to write more, one chapter is almost done, but updates after that may be little sporadic.

Looking Like this

"Right," Crowley said, offering his hand to Aziraphale, "Swap back then."

Aziraphale took the hand and through the physical contact, the two of them slipped back into their own bodies. Only… they didn't. Crowley frowned, gripped Aziraphale's hand a little tighter and they tried again.

Nothing. They each remained firmly where they were.

"Uh… you're not doing something funny, are you?"

"Me?!" Aziraphale asked, shocked at the implication. "I was about to ask if you…"

"Yeah, okay." Crowley interrupted. It wasn't Aziraphale, he had known that already, but he had still needed to ask, to make sure. That look of panic on his friend's… well, on his own… face had been all the answer he needed. He broke contact, took a deep breath and tried to focus. "Right. Again." For a second time, he offered his hand, and for a second time Aziraphale took it.

For a third time, nothing happened.

Well, not nothing. This time, Crowley was hit by a sudden and unshakable feeling that things had gone very wrong.

"Well, shit," he said.

He looked at Aziraphale, or rather, he looked at himself. Even with the shades covering his eyes, it was easy to see that his friend was feeling the exact same thing.

"Shit," Aziraphale confirmed. His hand slipped from Crowley's and came to rest on the bench between them.

"I don't get it," Crowley said. "What went wrong?"

Honestly, he had a few ideas. The first of which was that Heaven and Hell weren't actually the clueless idiots they had assumed them to be, and that their respective forces had dreamed up this little twist as some kind of perverse form of amusement. He dismissed the idea almost instantly — it wasn't nearly cruel enough for either side, it was more the kind of thing that he himself might have dreamed up to amuse himself on a rainy afternoon — but the thought refused to bugger off, sitting irritatingly in the back of his mind.

"I don't know," Aziraphale said. He stared at his… at Crowley's… hand in confusion. "I don't know," he repeated, a little more quietly but with an edge of panic beginning to creep into his voice.

"Okay, don't… let's just try again" Crowley suggested. He didn't hold out much hope of attempt number four being any more successful than attempt numbers one through three, but he wasn't going to let anybody say that he didn't try. He had spend a lot of time in that body; he had grown attached to it.

Aziraphale hesitated this time before he took the hand, but eventually grabbed it and held on as tightly as he could. The shades did nothing to disguise the fact that he was screwing up his entire face in concentration. It wasn't a good look on him.

Nothing. As Crowley had expected.

"What are we going to do?" Aziraphale said. "I don't want to be you!"

"Oh," Crowley folded his arms and glared pointedly at the angel, "Well, I'll try not to take that as an insult! This was your idea, as I recall."

Technically, it had been Agnes' idea. Or maybe Agnes had simply watched it happen and written it down in order to give the idea to Aziraphale, who wouldn't have had the idea if it hadn't been predicted by… Crowley stopped trying to figure it out before it started to make his head spin. Which wasn't actually something that most demons did on a regular basis, despite what happened in the movies.

Aziraphale shook his head. "No, I mean… look, it was fine for a little while. It was fun even. You know, walk a mile or two in someone else's shoes, wait for the inevitable attack by the joint forces of Heaven and Hell, take a bath in holy water." He grinned, remembering. "I asked for a rubber duck," he added. "I made the archangel Michael miracle me a towel!"

Crowley couldn't help himself, he laughed out loud at that image. "Well, I guess that part was a success at least. They should leave us alone for a while, anyway." That didn't help with the current problem, of course.

"That doesn't help with the current problem, of course," Aziraphale said. "I can't be you."

"You think I want to spend the rest of eternity wearing a white suit and a bowtie?" Crowley countered. "I mean, look at me!" He ran the back of his hand down the front of the suit as though he was brushing away some speck of dust.

"You never had a problem with the way I looked before, as I recall," Aziraphale noted.

It wasn't so much the way the body looked as it was the style that was uniquely Aziraphale's. He had no problem looking at it, walking around next to it, eating dinner opposite it. What he did object to was wearing it for himself. It was… humiliating. If this lasted much longer, he was going to have to go shopping at the first available opportunity. "I don't have a problem with it," Crowley insisted. "It's just… not very me, you know?"

"That's the root of the whole problem."

Crowley sighed. That was the kind of statement that it would be impossible to argue with. "Yeah, you got me there," he said instead. He got to his… to Aziraphale's… feet and held out a hand, "Come on, no point sitting around here all day worrying about it, is there?"

Aziraphale frowned, but took the offered hand and allowed Crowley to pull him to his feet. "You had another venue in mind?" he asked.

Honestly, no. All he knew was that swapping back wasn't working and he didn't want to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on a park bench trying, and failing, to perform what should have been a relatively easy demonic miracle. It was frustrating, and he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was lurking, watching, and probably laughing about it. "Not really, no," he said. "But once the whole swapping back thing was done, I was going to try to tempt you to lunch. What do you say?"

Aziraphale frowned, then pushed up the sunglasses that covered his distinctly inhuman eyes. "Looking like this?"

"Not like we've got a choice in the matter, is it? Whatever we do right now we're going to be doing like this. Might as well do something we both enjoy."

Aziraphale considered it, then sighed and shrugged. "Fine. Why not? Who knows, maybe if we try again on a full stomach, it'll work." He paused, then smiled. "How about the Ritz? I believe a table for two has just miraculously come free."

Honestly, Crowley wasn't sure that food, or time, or anything else, was going to make a difference. It was as though something had fundamentally changed, some shift in reality that had made the switch back a physical impossibility. He wasn't going to give up though. It had taken millennia, but he was finally happy with his hairstyle; he wasn't about to let Aziraphale loose on it for longer than was absolutely necessary.

"Sounds great," he said. "Shall we?"

He offered an arm to the angel at his side, who took it with a smile, and they walked together through the park to their waiting table.