Well, the story goes on, in spite of how it was looking for a while! *yikes* Sorry I made you sad, but now comes the hopeful part! Basically, things didn't go the way Aziraphale and Crowley thought they would...

As such, there's a bit of a bombshell at the end of this chapter... pretty sure you haven't seen it coming YET, but perhaps by the end of chapter 21, you will have!

We left off, of course, at the end of a passionate night for our heroes, which they believed would be their last. This outcome may prove a bit controversial, but I hope you enjoy, and I hope you feel things!

TWENTY-ONE

Neither of them dreamed of doom and/or gloom. Neither of them had their trepidatious heads filled with images of death or discorporation, or even of Hastur or Gabriel. Perhaps the night's genuine realised fervour was enough to set their minds at ease with their presumed fate.

Rather, they dreamed of each other. But not entwined in a state of physical, feverish passion. Instead, they dreamed of being entwined in a cerebral, intellectual passion, forever. Both saw themselves sitting at a table, sharing wine and good conversation. They saw each other philosophising over something spiritual or banal, on park benches, in the back room of the bookshop, on the streets of Soho, in cafés all over Europe.

But mostly, remarkably, their dreams were abstract. Their thoughts and ideas and theories and words were just that, only they spun in the ether alongside each other, racing through time, spanning all of Heaven and Hell, impenetrable, complementary, for always.

A noise roused Aziraphale out of his sleep. It sounded faraway, but familiar.

He opened his eyes and concentrated, and realised he'd heard the deadbolt on the front door of the flat being undone from the outside. And now, someone seemed to be struggling with the doorknob, whose lock could be, admittedly, tricky.

"Drat!" he spat. "Mrs. Meehan!"

He threw off the bedclothes and stood up. He snapped his fingers, but nothing happened. He looked down at himself quizzically, seeing that he was still naked, though he'd expressly meant to dress himself…

With a tick of his tongue in exasperation, he hurried over to the closet, and reached in, grabbing the first thing he could find. It turned out to be a black Chinese silk robe, with a swirly red dragon pattern. It was Crowley's, of course, but he put it on quickly, since his own clothes were either across the hall, or in pieces all over the floor, some of those pieces inside-out. And miracling himself dressed didn't seem to be working.

He threw open the bedroom door, and hurried to the foyer, just as the neighbor was shutting the front door behind her.

"Oh!" she said, jumping a bit when she saw him. She grabbed at her collarbone. "You startled me!"

"Yes, terribly sorry about that," Aziraphale said to her.

"What are you doing here? I thought Mr. Crowley said you were leaving at midnight."

"Erm…" Aziraphale began, looking about, realising for the first time that he was alive, but he wasn't meant to be. "Yes, we thought we were, but apparently… well, we hit a snag. Of a sort. I'm not exactly sure what's happening now…"

"Oh, well," Mrs. Meehan said, shrugging. "Shall I give you back your key? You can let me know when you work it out, and I'll be happy to come back whenever."

"Yes, I think that would be best," Aziraphale said, reaching out for the key. She placed it in his hand with a little smile. "Sorry to trouble you, and make you trek all the way down here for naught."

"Not at all. It's a short walk. See you soon, yeah?"

"Hope so." He gave her a congenial smile as she waved, and walked out the front door. He locked it behind her, then hurried back to the bedroom.

During the night, Crowley's body had shifted away from the "spooning" position in which he'd fallen asleep, and he was now lying face-down, with his arms buried under the pillow, slumbering soundly. Much as he might have relished the idea of watching his lover lost in sleep, Aziraphale hopped up onto the bed, and placed both hands on Crowley's back, and began to jostle him.

"Crowley! Crowley, wake up! Crowley!"

Crowley groaned. "What?" he asked, without turning over or opening his eyes.

"What do you mean, what? Wake up, you silly old demon! You're alive!"

Crowley stirred and pressed himself up into cobra position with his hands. "Oh. Yeah, you're right. What time is it?"

"I don't know," Aziraphale said. "But the sun is out, and I just had to run Mrs. Meehan out of here."

Crowley turned over and was now sitting, with the covers pulled up to his waist. "How are we awake?" He asked. Then, he rubbed his eyes, blinked hard, then looked at his companion. "And what are you wearing?"

A look of utter shock melted over Aziraphale's features, and he backed up from Crowley, into a standing position beside the bed. "Crowley…" he breathed.

"What? What's wrong?"

"You… your… "

"What? You're scaring me! What?"

"Go look in the mirror."

"Just tell me!"

"Your eyes…"

"What about them?" Crowley asked, now throwing the covers off himself. He stood up and hurried (still naked) into the adjoining bathroom. In about three seconds, he could be heard quite emphatically exclaiming, "What the living fuck?"

In the mirror, Crowley saw a man's face, not bad to look at, rather angular, topped with unruly red hair, well-defined jawbones, and a slightly crooked nose. It was the same face that had been looking back at him since the invention of the mirror, with one exception: today, it was looking through brown eyes.

He emerged from the bathroom and looked at Aziraphale, who was still frozen in place.

"Are you seeing this too?" Crowley asked him, uselessly.

He hurried back into the bathroom to examine what he'd seen.

Brown eyes with round irises, a round black pupil at the centre, and white surrounding. "How did this happen?" he called out, pulling his eyelids back to inspect further.

Aziraphale appeared in the doorway with a pair of black jeans that he'd picked up off the floor. "I'm sure I don't know. Here, put these on."

"Erm, hello, bigger fish to fry."

"You can't stay like that, Crowley."

"Why not? Suddenly you're not fond of my nakedness? Put them on me, if you must," Crowley told him, distractedly, still staring at himself in the mirror.

"I can't," Aziraphale told him, voice shaking slightly.

"Yes you can. Just, you know…"

"I can't," Aziraphale repeated.

Crowley squinted at him. "Why not?"

"I tried to…" and with that, he snapped his fingers to illustrate. "…dress myself when I heard Mrs. Meehan coming in. It didn't work. That's why I'm wearing your robe. It was faster than getting into my own clothes."

"Don't be daft," Crowley scolded, then snapped his own fingers, intending to find his bottom half covered with black denim. But it didn't work any better for him, than for Aziraphale.

His jaw dropped open and his brown eyes fixed on Aziraphale's for a few moments. Eventually, he reached out and took the jeans and stepped into them, pulling them on, buttoning them at the waist, pulling up the zip, in a completely normal manner.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"I don't know," Aziraphale responded. "I would suggest we consult the prophecies."

"I would agree. We left the laptop at your shop."

"Let's get dressed and go, post-haste."

For the first time ever, Crowley saw Aziraphale emerge from a room with his ensemble not completely put-together. He was wearing a dress shirt, trousers, and shoes, but no waistcoat, no jacket, no tie of any sort. He had wanted to save time, he said, rather than standing about trying to perfect his butterfly knot.

Crowley himself had just climbed back into the grey t-shirt that had been lying on the floor. He had tried again to miracle his boots onto his feet, but wasn't able to. So he pulled them on and laced them up, like a being with no magical powers. Through force of habit, he put sunglasses on his face, but was very conscious of the fact that he only needed them now for blocking out the sun.

They rode down, stepped off the lift, and exited the building. They turned left, and found Crowley's Bentley parked, as usual, illegally, just outside. Crowley removed all of the parking tickets by hand, cursing the whole time, but was not able to make them burst into flames and disappear, as he'd always done. He simply let them litter the concrete and blow away.

Then the two of them climbed into the car.

But the car went nowhere.

Crowley just stared at the steering wheel.

"Haven't you brought the keys?" Aziraphale asked.

"I've never needed keys, Aziraphale!"

"But you often carry them anyway. You said you like the feel of them."

"Yeah, well, half the time I forget, and the car moves anyway."

"Well, I'll wait here. You go get the keys."

Crowley turned and looked at him. "Keys won't help."

"Why?"

"Because I haven't put petrol in the tank since 1966."

"Oh."

"I lent it to someone as part of a temptation thing… long story. Anyway, that was the first and last time. And I'm getting the feeling that neither one of us could override the lack of fuel in an internal combustion engine. Especially one that's ninety years old."

"All right, then," Aziraphale sighed. "We take the bus to the bookshop, then. We've done it before, we can do it again."

Crowley cursed, then conceded, "All right. Damn it."

They let themselves into the shop, but did not open for business. Today was just not a talking-people-out-of-buying-things kind of day. Aziraphale walked up the stairs to his former flat, and vowed to return to the shop in a few minutes with a pair of espressos.

"We need to bring that machine home," Crowley muttered. "It's too good a thing to let sit up there doing nothing."

"We'll have to hire someone to carry it," Aziraphale muttered back.

While he waited, Crowley went to the comfy back room and fired up the laptop, and his phone, and readied the prophecies for reading. As he sat back on the sofa and sighed, wondering at their new lot in life, his eyes fell upon a set of volumes, arranged in a place of honor, atop Aziraphale's roll-top desk.

Tao Te Ching, the Qur'an, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Talmud, and of course, the Bible.

Holy texts.

Crowley stood up and approached them. He'd handled them without HazMat materials before, of course, prior to the advent of such precautions. They singed him as might the ceramic surface of a bowl of soup, fresh off the boil… he could hold on long enough to move it a few feet quickly, but not with his whole hands, and he almost always found that he had to drop it, rather than set it down carefully.

He reached out for the Bible, and picked it up.

Nothing.

He held it flat between both hands. No burn. No singeing. No smoke, no pain… nothing. Just two hands, and a book.

"Blimey," he muttered, for the first time ever, opening the Bible, and casting his own brown eyes upon the very tiny words upon the page. Aloud, he said, "Jeremiah 48:10. Cursed be the one who does the Lord's work negligently, and cursed be the one who restrains his sword from blood. Oh, great. Now you tell us."

And that's when there was a knock that startled him so much, he wound up dropping The Book anyway. Someone was banging on the front door of the shop.

"Aziraphale! Are you expecting visitors?" Crowley called up the stairs.

"Of course not! Why?"

"Someone is here!"

"What? Who is it?"

"How the Heaven should I know?"

"Well, go and see!"

Crowley could hear Aziraphale's footsteps above, moving toward the staircase. He crossed the shop, threw the deadbolt, and pulled the door open just as Aziraphale made his way quickly down the steps.

There stood a familiar woman. She was wearing a white suit, and as always, a beatific look on her face. In her hand, she held what looked like a white leather clutch purse.

"Michael!" Aziraphale said from somewhere behind Crowley.

"Hello, gentlemen," she said to them, with a bit of a smile.

Aziraphale approached the door, peered out, and instinctively cast his gaze about, looking for the rest of the Archangel posse. "What are you doing…here?"

"I'm alone, Aziraphale, you needn't worry," she said. "However, I think it's best we find someplace private to chat, rather than stand here in the doorway don't you?"

Aziraphale nodded, and Crowley made a gesture that implied after you, and ushered her into the shop.

"Crowley, why don't you ready the back room for our guest?" Aziraphale said, hinting that the prophecies should be hidden.

"Right," Crowley muttered, and he disappeared behind some shelves.

"So, Michael," Aziraphale said, tightly, politely. "What brings you down to this plane of existence? I mean, you'll forgive me if I'm a bit jumpy. Last time you bothered to do this, you and Sandalphon and Uriel threatened, and then enacted physical violence upon me. I much prefer the, er… well, the method of communication you've been using recently."

Michael smiled indulgently. "Electronics? That's the method of Hell."

"All the same."

"Besides, Aziraphale, there is one key reason why that will not work now, and I think that you and Crowley are both clever enough to have already suspected that reason."

"Come on through," Crowley called out.

Aziraphale gestured for Michael to enter the back room, then he invited her to have a seat on the sofa. She perched primly on one end, and Crowley sat down on the other. Aziraphale moved toward his desk chair, stopping first to pick up the Bible from the floor, then sat down.

"As you may have guessed, Aziraphale, Crowley, I have some news," Michael said, setting her white clutch down upon the coffee table. "And Aziraphale has already pointed out that actually walking up and knocking on your door would not normally be something I'm likely to do. I'd be much more wont to get into touch with you via supernatural channels."

"But we are no longer privy to supernatural channels, are we?" Aziraphale asked her.

"Indeed, not," she said.

"What are we, then?" Crowley wondered.

Michael turned to look at him, and smiled. "Sorry, Crowley… I'm just curious. May I see your eyes?"

Crowley took off his dark glasses and put them on the table. His new brown eyes penetrated her gaze, and he asked, "What d'you reckon? Too pedestrian?"

She smiled wider. "Not at all. I quite like the new look. It's very… human."

"So that's what we are now," Crowley muttered. "Human."

"Yes," she confirmed.

As always, I'd love to hear what you think, keeping in mind that more details, for better or for worse, will be revealed in the following chapter. Reviews are love, and that's the truth! :-) Thanks for reading!