It was a nice day.
A nice Sunday in fact, the first day of spring, flowers blooming, and squirrels making lots of other rotten little squirrels. It was such a nice day, in fact, Aziraphale decided to take a walk to the lovely St. James' park down the street.
Feeding the ducks is a time-honored tradition. Anyone could take a stroll down to your local pond and see a middle-aged man wrapped up in a trench coat and scarf holding a tiny plastic bag full of bread crumbs in front of many little ducks who seem to be starved to death, even though that little girl down the street already came by not so long ago with her daily bag of bread.
Aziraphale likes feeding the ducks. He knows that almost every known person in Soho feeds these ducks on a normal basis, but he can't pull his self away from their cute little beaks and pearl white feathers that are so much like his own wings. What if everyone all of a sudden just stopped feeding them? Then one day a daddy duck would be sitting alone and say sadly to his baby ducks, 'That one with the white-blond hair will come and fed us, don't worry' and then they all starved, and there was nothing but dead ducks lying about? He wasn't going to be the one who knew he killed all the ducks.
He loved animals.
Even snakes.
His favorite snake was named Anthony Crowley.
Well, he wasn't exactly a snake, not anymore. When they had first met some thousands of years ago, he was. Aziraphale had been walking along The Garden until he saw that snake, the one he heard of from Him. He had heard that the snake had convinced dear Eve to eat an apple and now all hope was lost. Ever since then they had many interests in common. Crowley was now a demon that lived in upper London and drove a very nice car.
"Honestly, tell me how many times a day you are here," said a familiar voice.
"Just once, I thought they would be hungry."
"You always think they are hungry. They're going to be too fat to fit in this pond when you're through with them," Crowley said while reaching for Aziraphale's bag of breadcrumbs.
""I went to the bookstore," Crowley said conversationally. "You were supposed to be there. We were going to have tea, remember?"
"You were also supposed to be there by noon, it is now," Aziraphale flicked his wrist to see his watch and announced, "It is now one fifteen,"
"Sorry mate, the ole Bentley was smoking again," he said, throwing an ugly, brown duck a breadcrumb.
"Sure, sure."
"So, how does that tea sound?"