The shop was indeed back, just as Crowley had assured him it was. Aziraphale found it difficult to muster the same sense of awe as Crowley had with his Bentley. It wasn't that he didn't love the shop; he did, but he hadn't been there when it had burned down. He hadn't seen the fire, or the resulting destruction. In his mind, nothing much had changed.
Despite not really feeling as though he had lost it, he was still very glad to have it back. It was home. The offer of staying with Crowley had been tempting but it wouldn't have been the same. He would almost certainly have taken him up on it though, if the shop really had been gone. For a little while, at least. Until he could find somewhere new and start again.
Or maybe he wouldn't have started again. He had been collecting his books for centuries, since before he even had a shop to display them in. It would have been heartbreaking to have to start again, and even if he had, some of them were irreplaceable.
Luckily, the one that Crowley was currently manhandling was not one of them.
The demon was slouched in an armchair, one leg slung over a wooden arm in a way that didn't look at all comfortable. He was flicking absently through a book selected at random from the shop, from one of the more prominently displayed shelves filled with books that Aziraphale didn't mind selling. Crowley had opened the book wide enough to crack the spine, and was turning the pages far too quickly to be actually reading, each time with a loud whisper of paper scraped against paper that made Aziraphale wince internally.
He took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat, trying to ignore it. "What do you think; should we try it again now, or leave it a bit longer?" He held out a hand hesitantly.
If he was honest, the idea of trying to switch back again made him a little nervous. Every time they tried and it didn't work, he became that little bit more certain that it wasn't going to work, and he didn't want to think about what that would mean for the two of them.
He was beginning to regret sobering up after lunch.
Crowley looked up from his book, eyes focussing first on the offered hand, and then moving to Aziraphale's face. Or, more specifically, his eyes. "You took the glasses off," he said.
Aziraphale allowed his hand to drop back to his side. "It's a little dark in here with them on," he said. He offered the hand again, more insistently this time.
Crowley opened his book a little wider and lay it face down, pages splayed open, on the table. Aziraphale tried not to wince. He reminded himself of two things; that Crowley was definitely only doing it to annoy him, and that Crowley had deliberately chosen one of the books he knew didn't mean anything to him.
Crowley looked at him for a long few seconds before he spoke. "Look," he said, "Here's the thing. Yeah, I'll try it, but honestly, I don't think it's going to work."
Oh. He'd said it. Aziraphale hadn't thought they were going to do that yet.
He had, of course, been relatively certain that one of them was going to say it sooner or later, but he had imagined a few more attempts first, a few days of playing along with the idea that it was going to work eventually, that they were just doing something wrong and sooner or later they would realise what it was and fix it.
But no, Crowley was just going to go ahead and say it, without any kind of warning. Just fire it out into the world, give voice to the idea, make it real.
The worst part was, he was right. Aziraphale had felt it too. It wasn't going to work. When they had attempted the switch back in the park, it had been like hitting a brick wall. It was like trying to switch with a brick wall; it was simply impossible.
'Impossible' had never really featured in Aziraphale's vocabulary before. No, that wasn't true; every word in the English language featured in his vocabulary, as well as all the words in a number of languages that he had spoken before English existed and a fair few that were spoken around the world today.
Not French though; he had always had a bit of trouble with French.
"Aziraphale?"
The concept though, the idea of something being impossible, was not something he had needed to deal with very often. At no point during his 6000 year tenure on Earth, had Aziraphale come up against something that he just couldn't do. It was one of the perks of being an Angel; the ability to miracle himself out of all kinds of pickles. And if for whatever reason he hadn't been able to — memos from Heaven about frivolous miracle usage arrived every so often — he always had Crowley to help him out.
And so the fact that he couldn't do this, that neither of them could do this, was worrying. No, it was more than worrying, it was downright panic-inducing.
"Hey. Aziraphale?" A hand touched his, and the unexpected contact pulled him out of his thoughts before they could spiral too far.
He blinked, and sucked in a breath. Crowley had rearranged his position on the chair so that he was seated almost normally. He leaned forward a little, staring at him with an expression of concern.
Aziraphale looked back, examining the face before him. It was a good face. Friendly, expressive; it was the kind of face you instantly wanted to trust. He had grown quite attached to it, he knew how it worked, how to make it do what he wanted, which was his best side for those ridiculous selfies that Crowley insisted on taking with him from time to time. It was his. He didn't want to have to get used to a different one.
He offered his hand for a third time. "We should try again," he said.
Crowley hesitated. Only for a moment, but for long enough for Aziraphale to notice. Then, he reached out, took the hand in his own and squeezed gently. He nodded, and the two of them both tried to will themselves from one vessel to the other.
Predictably enough, nothing happened.
Crowley shot him a look that said 'told you so', and he was right. He had.
He let go of Aziraphale's hand, and in one fluid movement, reached up, untied the bowtie that had still been fastened around his neck, pulled it off and placed it on the table. That done, he opened the top buttons of the shirt and sighed in relief. "Been wanting to do that for hours," he said. "And no offense, but if we're going to be stuck like this, I'm going to have to go shopping as soon as possible."
He'd done it again; suggested that the switch might last. Or worse; that it might even be permanent. Aziraphale picked up the untied bowtie from the table and started to fiddle with it just to give him something to do. "Likewise," he said. "And you can hardly comment on my wardrobe choices," he said. "Everything you're wearing is so tight I feel like I can hardly move!"
"Well, at least it doesn't look like…" Crowley began, then stopped, clamped his jaw shut, and fell into silence.
"Like what? What exactly were you going to say my clothes look like?"
The demon shook his head. "Forget it. Never mind. Bickering isn't going to help anything, is it? Tell you what, we'll both go shopping, I'll help you pick out something you like that suits me, and you can do the same for me."
Aziraphale slumped in his seat a little. He didn't want to go shopping. He had clothes. Perfectly good clothes that he had taken care of for 180 years, he didn't want new ones. He wanted his old ones to fit him again.
Or, no. Because that was something that could easily be arranged. It wasn't like he needed to worry about what Heaven thought of his frivolous miracles anymore. But he didn't want his clothes to fit him, he wanted to fit them. Whatever had gone wrong, he wanted to fix it. He wanted to be himself again. "I don't understand," he said. "We had no trouble switching in the first place. Why can't we do it again?"
At times like this, a book full of nice and accurate prophecies might be useful. It was unfortunate the book had ended around the supposed end of the world. Agnes had suggested the switch, perhaps she could have given some clue as to how to resolve their resulting problem.
"Dunno," Crowley said. He removed Aziraphale's jacket and placed it carefully over the back of his chair, then started to unbutton the waistcoat. "Got a few theories though."
Aziraphale snatched up the jacket before it creased, produced a coat hanger, and hung it up instead. He waited for Crowley to elaborate on his theories, but that appeared to be the end of it. "Well? he asked. "Would you care to share them?"
A shrug. "Well, 'a few' might have been an exaggeration. It's more like one theory. Hell." He shrugged again. "Or Heaven. Or, who knows, maybe both of them working together. I mean, for two sides that are supposed to be enemies, they seem to have more than a few common goals. Not to mention that 'help the other side execute their disobedient citizens' treaty." He paused. "So I guess that's three theories, technically."
And none of them were correct. If either Heaven or Hell knew what they had done, the two of them wouldn't be sitting in the bookshop bickering about clothes. "They don't know what we did," Aziraphale said.
"You sure about that? Sure sure? You think your performance was spot-on? Completely indistinguishable from the real thing?"
For a brief time in the mid 1950s, Aziraphale had joined an amateur dramatics society. He had rather enjoyed it. At one point, he had based a character almost entirely on Crowley, and the performance had been a roaring success. Still, he supposed it was possible he had given the game away somehow.
"Because mine wasn't," Crowley admitted. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it was good, but there was a moment there when Gabriel was trying to get me to kill myself when I seriously considered just killing him instead. You should have heard how he talked to y…" he stopped, and folded his arms. "Anyway, they might have noticed that."
"Honestly, I'm reasonably sure I would have felt the same way, if I'd been there," Aziraphale told him. "I certainly tried to splash a few demons with holy water while I was pretending to be you. As long as you didn't actually…"
"Nah. Gave it some serious thought though. Honestly, I don't know how you put up with that for so long. I mean, say what you will about Hell, but at least you know were you stand with them."
He had a point, but not one that Aziraphale wanted to discuss right now. "They don't know," he insisted. "If they did, do you really think they'd just let us head back to earth and then start messing around stopping us from switching back again just for… what? For fun?"
"Probably not. Not high on either of their agendas, fun."
"Exactly. No. They'd have either sent me upstairs and you down and got on with the executions, or they'd have just taken care of it where we were. I mean, I was in Hell. There isn't exactly a shortage of Hellfire there. You were in Heaven, they could have easily found some holy water. They wanted us dead. The only reason we aren't, is that they didn't think they could."
"So if they haven't done this, what do you think's causing it?" Crowley asked.
Aziraphale shook his head. There was a difference between knowing a theory was wrong, and having a better theory to replace it. He had no idea what was preventing them from switching back, he only knew what wasn't. "I don't know, that's the problem. If I knew, I'd… I'd…" he hesitated. "I'd do something about it."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Well, I don't know that either. It would depend entirely on what the cause was." He slumped in his chair, feeling utterly defeated. "Maybe we should get drunk again," he suggested. "I have my best ideas when I'm drunk."
"That," Crowley told him, "is an excellent idea."
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