"You know," Crowley spoke almost intelligently from where he sat in the bookshop's window seat, watching Adam toddle around and explore the shop. "I think I'm going to miss having Adam around."

Ezra, seated at the till of his shop, didn't look up from his notebook as he made a few finishing touches to his mother's eulogy - no doubt adding an extra layer of subtext to allow him to say what he wanted to say and having the true meaning of it completely going over his audience's heads - as he said, "How come, my love?"

"Well, he did kind of bring us together. He's keeping me busy now that I'm not at the office. And I don't know about you, but I really enjoy taking care of him."

A hum of agreement came from behind the counter.

"It's almost a shame his mums are coming back home tomorrow."

The scritching sounds of a luxurious fountain pen dragging across paper that had filled the shop for hours suddenly ceased. "Tomorrow?" Ezra asked. "Has it really been two weeks already?"

Crowley reached behind his head to rub where the bump from that football had grown after the first day Adam had been in his care. It had completely shrunk away. "Doesn't feel like it," he mumbled. "But it also feels like it's been months, if you catch my drift."

Ezra nodded in agreement. "Do you have anything planned today? For him?"

"No. Why?" Crowley asked.

"Well, there aren't any points of tension between the three of us that need to be resolved are there?"

Crowley considered this for a second. "No?"

"And there's still a day left, correct?"

"Yes?"

Ezra chuckled. "I was just thinking, this is just like a book, waiting to go into its conclusion with no ongoing plot threads left. Perhaps the author had a certain number of chapters left, or maybe they were aiming for a certain word count and they're just stalling."

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Your point, angel?"

"It's just bad planning from a storytelling point of view."

Oh, so that's how it was? Wishing they had spread their 'plot' evenly over the two weeks they had to look after Adam? Well, two could play that game. "Would you rather not have kissed me on Monday?"

"If I hadn't, you might have gotten a grand gesture tomorrow. You'll never know, now." Ezra winked and got up from his seat, advancing towards Crowley.

Crowley laughed, shaking his head, "I can't believe my life is a badly written romantic comedy."

"Actually, I believe there's a good plot for a book hiding somewhere in this situation. I can't promise I won't write it down," he said as he bent down to take Crowley's hands in his. "Albeit structured a little better."

Ezra's hands were plump and soft. Crowley couldn't help but squeeze back.

Then, Ezra threw his weight backwards, pulling Crowley out of his seat and into his arms.

Crowley practically melted into the embrace.

"Hm, doesn't really suit the 'Aziraphale' brand, does it? A rom com amid historical fiction. Or would you consider publishing under your own name?"

Ezra was quiet for a moment. He hid his face in Crowley's chest. Ezra's fists dug into the back of his jacket before releasing it almost instantly and Crowley was sure he had said the wrong thing until the man spoke again.

"You know, if you asked me a few days ago, I would have given you a definitive 'no'. In fact, I have, just a few days further back. Gabriel didn't like that too much… But now, I don't know. I feel more free right now than I've felt for as long as I can remember. I just might publish a book under my own name."

A feeling of pride swelled in Crowley. To see how far Ezra* had come in such a short amount of time was amazing to him. He spotted Adam only a few yards away from the two of them, trying to stand up by clinging to one of the displays but ultimately falling on his bum. And yet he tried again. "I still can't believe all of this happened just because Lucy asked me to look after her baby for two weeks."

(*and to a certain degree, he himself.)

"I can barely believe it myself. Every morning, just after I wake up, I check the entries in my journal just to make sure I didn't dream all of it."

Ezra always knew how to find Crowley's heartstrings and proceeded to play them like an angel would play harp.

"And then, when I read the entries of the previous days, I'm always happy to find I didn't dream all of it."

Or rather, proceeded to play them like Jimi Hendrix played his electric guitar that one time at the Monterey International Pop Festival 1967**.

(**Where Hendrix notoriously lit his guitar on fire before smashing it in front of a live audience, earning him the title 'from rumour to legend'.)

"Anthony, please tell me… If your boss hadn't given you her baby to look after, how long would it have taken you to get in touch with me?"

Crowley tore his eyes from Adam and looked into Ezra's. There was a look of despair, of sadness, of pain, but to his surprise he found no such thing as judgment. He wasn't sure what hurt him more. The look on Ezra's face or the answer he was after. He sighed.

"Truthfully? I'm afraid it would have taken a long time," Crowley admitted, feeling tears forming in his eyes. "Before, I had somehow convinced myself I had done something wrong and you hated me and there was nothing I could do to change it. I mean, of course now I know that wasn't true, and that you somehow fancy me as well, but at that moment, it was completely unthinkable to me. But then again, you could have called me, too."

Ezra smiled sadly and reached up to thumb Crowley's tears away. "Oh, my dearest Anthony, how could I not fancy you? But even so, I'm afraid I felt the same. I'm sorry I never said anything."

"I'm sorry, too," Crowley whispered to the man embracing him and leaned down to kiss him. "If I ask again why you insist on calling me 'Anthony', will you give me a straight answer for once?" he murmured into Ezra's ear.

"Perhaps," Ezra said simply. His face was still buried in Crowley's shoulder, but Crowley could hear the shit-eating grin that graced his features in his voice.

"Then please, enlighten me," Crowley said. He'd be damned if he asked Ezra outright.

"Saint Anthony is the patron saint of all lost things," Ezra stated, pulling back from the embrace to look up at Crowley. The smile on his face was shy, but so bright, Crowley could barely resist the temptation to put his sunglasses back on. Ezra bashfully looked away as he scratched behind his ear. "And we have been quite lost, I feel, to one another. So I suppose it summarized our situation quite well, because in the end we found our way back to each other.

Crowley couldn't stop the incredulous laugh that left him. "You're such a sap."

"I would hazard to guess that's precisely why you like me."

"And rightly so." Crowley was about to kiss Ezra again when Adam started wailing.

"Sounds like someone needs his nappy changed." Ezra reached into the diaper bag for a clean diaper and a pack of wet wipes and… handed them to Crowley. "I believe you were just saying how much you enjoy taking care of him."

"You're on thin ice, Ezra Fell."

"I love you too, Anthony Crowley."