Disclaimer: In case it isn't blatant enough, people who own rights to the work don't go around writing fanfiction. I have no claim to anything recognisable within the story.
A big thank you to ArcticRose for her help.
Summary: When Aziraphale got a call about old books in need of a rescue, a feline addition to the mix was the last thing Crowley could rationally expect.
Treasured
Usually when you are a demon brutally torn out of sleep by a burst of angelic rage and exclamations of outrage at some unspeakable blasphemy and sacrilege, you can assume you are in trouble. Never doing anything the usual way, Crowley chose to be baffled instead.
The fact that he had been just woken up from a rather pleasant dream involving a nice drive in the countryside with Aziraphale by his side might have been partly responsible.
"-needs to be done this instant!", he registered Aziraphale exclaiming, before dragging himself into a sitting position and rubbing his face, surmising that going back to sleep probably wasn't an option.
"What was that, Angel?"
"Really, Crowley. Do pay attention. As I was saying, we need to go immediately to put a stop to this atrocity. I hardly dare to think what damage might have been done already."
"Slow down, Angel. We need to go where, exactly?"
"Guildford, of course."
"Guildford. Right. Why?"
"Honestly. Haven't you heard a word of what I was saying?"
"Been a touch distracted. Could you tone down the illumination until I put my glasses on at least?"
The aggressive divine light faded a bit, allowing him to stop squinting and, after the afterimages faded slightly, see a very apologetic angel standing in the doorway.
"I'm sorry about that, my dear. I never realised I was doing that."
"'S fine, Angel. But can you start over and tell me what got you ready to smite the first person that crosses you?"
"There is really no call for such exaggeration," Aziraphale said indignantly and Crowley wisely decided not to remind the angel that he was still emanating enough of avenging angel energy to have any other demon cautiously backing away, mindful not to make any sudden movements.
"Sure, Angel, whatever. But I'm still not sure why we are supposed to be going wherever it was."
"To Guildford, I told you."
Crowley looked at the angel with an unamused expression of a demon who got woken up after only four hours of sleep for as of yet undetermined reason.
"Right. Got that. Why?"
"Well, you see, just as I opened my bookshop this morning I had a call from a lovely lady from Guildford-"
"Should I be jealous, Angel?"
Aziraphale huffed. "Really, Crowley, do try to be serious. As I was saying, Lorna told me about her neighbour bequeathing her home to her nephew. Who, apparently, since early this morning, has been throwing out the book collection his aunt had once been very proud of. Can you imagine? She supposedly even had some first editions there!"
"Right. So it's about books," Crowley summarised before yawning. There wasn't much chance the angel would let him go back to sleep if this was about books. "Just give me a second to get presentable. I don't suppose we have time for me to make myself some coffee?"
"Really Crowley. We are talking about potential first editions at the mercy of English weather ."
"Eh. Never mind."
III
The drive took them just under an hour (with Crowley's typical driving and studious avoidance of M25) to get to Guildford and then another twenty minutes trying to find the extremely vague address Aziraphale managed to glean from the lady he talked to in the morning.
When they did, however, locate the street there could be no doubt as to the exact house in question, as there were multiple stacks of books nearly completely blocking the pavement in front of one of the houses. Crowley heard a gasp at his side before his 'heavenly vengeance' registers started rising rapidly.
"Careful, Angel. Your halo's showing," he muttered, parking the car next to the offending pile, successfully blocking the rest of the pavement.
"How could anyone even contemplate doing something like that?" In an uncharacteristic rush Aziraphale was out of the car as soon as they stopped. "It's nothing less than an absolute outrage." The angel was almost shaking at the sight and Crowley quickly left the Bentley to stand beside him, next to the pile of books thoroughly saturated with the smell of pipe tobacco and Chanel no. 5. Suddenly the demon had an inexplicable feeling that he might have liked the late owner of the books.
"Look at it this way, angel, the weather is nice today, nothing bad has happened to them so far and now you're here to prevent any disasters."
In the window of the building next to them, lace curtains moved and a moment later the door of the house opened revealing a bluish-haired lady who absolutely didn't immediately make Crowley think Sophia because that would imply the demon's excessive fondness for the Golden Girls. Which obviously wasn't the case.
"Hello, dears," the lady-who-absolutely-didn't remind-Crowley-of-anyone greeted. "Is one of you by any chance Mr Fell?"
Aziraphale beamed. "Good morning. You must be Lorna Williams. Lovely to meet you in person, despite the circumstances. This is my friend, Mr Crowley."
"Very nice to meet you, luv. You know, aside from this whole unfortunate business. I'm telling you, Mary would have been heartbroken if she saw her books treated this way."
"It is rather appalling, the way some people are showing books so little respect these days," Aziraphale agreed. "Especially, I'd say, when some of them are rather older than the man who treated them this way. Why, if I'm not mistaken this is a rather lovely edition of Mina Loy's poems-" the angel broke off as he was leaning to take a closer look at one of the stacks. "Oh my, what are you doing here, you lovely creature?" Crowley heard him ask a second before Lorna stepped closer to take a better look.
There was a cat huddled between the books, looking at them with a touch of uncertainty. It had jet black fur save for a single spot of white on its foot. Its eyes were bright, in a colour suspiciously similar to what Crowley was used to seeing in a mirror.
"Goodness, that's Molly!" The old lady said with surprise.
"Is she yours?" the demon asked, taking a quick look at a rather miserable looking cat.
"Mine? Oh no. She used to belong to Mary. I would have known her anywhere, with that white spot on her paw. Had her from a kitten, Mary had. Bottlefed her when she'd first found her. Mary never let her out of the house, you see. Said she wouldn't know how to take care of herself outside."
"Perhaps she snuck away, following the familiar scent of the books?" the angel mused, gently stroking the black fur.
"Could be. That Reggie should be more careful though. From what Mary said, he got the house because he promised to take care of her little baby." the woman looked fondly at the cat.
"Well then, I suppose we had better have a little chat with this Reggie sooner rather than later." Aziraphale said, straightening, a very determined look appearing on his face.
When he knocked on the door, Aziraphale schooled his expression into the epitome of strained politeness that wouldn't be out of place during a heavenly performance review. The thirty-something man who opened the door didn't seem to pick up on this nuance though.
"Excuse me, sir. Are the books outside by any chance yours?" Crowley took full advantage of his glasses, rolling his eyes at the line the angel led in. Trust Aziraphale to open with the books.
"What's it to you?"
"Oh, I assure you, I only have the safety of the collection in mind. Those are not the optimal conditions for the books, you see."
"Collection?" The calculating expression on the man's face said everything, really. "You think this rubbish might be worth anything?"
"Rubbish?" the angel repeated in outrage, recoiling as if the man had physically struck him.
Which was more or less the point at which Crowley decided that this would be a matter much more easily dealt with by means of temptation rather than angelic patience.
"Weeell," he drawled, leaning casually on the doorframe, "there is an equal chance it could be just a pile of worthless old paper. We would probably need to go through them one by one to see if anything there has any value. But that would take time and with them lying outside for however long it was, even if there was something interesting there, it might be damaged already."
"They weren't there that long," the man tried to argue, but was already losing his confidence.
"You do know you live in England, right? Not exactly the optimal climate to go airing your books outside." He gave an appearance of thinking this over. "Tell you what, we'll risk it and give you twenty quid for the whole lot. If they're all worthless, that's our loss and you'll have them gone before your neighbours start complaining about them littering the pavement."
"Twenty?" The man seemed to be thinking about it. A few meteorologists might be a touch surprised by the strange phenomenon of a small drizzle starting at that moment, oddly enough focusing only on one house and leaving the books on the pavement dry.
"You can see if someone gives you a better offer, but then you'd probably need to take all that damp paper back inside and hope for the best. We wouldn't even be asking if we hadn't been accidentally driving by. I mean, those probably aren't worth the drive from London to get them."
Crowley groaned inwardly at the huff from his side. Trust the angel to choose this moment to thwart a perfectly good temptation. He turned pointedly to his companion.
"Yeah, I know we should have been in Farnham fifteen minutes ago, Aziraphale. I'm trying to wrap this up." He turned to the man. "So what do you say? Twenty quid? We are in a bit of a hurry today so you'd need to decide soonish."
"I guess twenty quid is fine," the apparent future of literacy responded, eagerly taking the offered banknote from the demon.
"Nice doing business with you. Also, you should know, your cat seems to be sitting with the books," he stated as casually as possible.
"I don't have a cat." The man was already closing the door, holding his money with satisfaction.
"Oh, you don't?" The angel asked with enough innocence that it actually took being an experienced demon not to buy into it (or knowing Aziraphale for centuries, but obviously it had to be the first one - Crowley had some pride). "That lovely lady from next door was rather convinced you inherited one."
"It ran away,"
"Well then, perhaps this is your cat after all. Shouldn't you check?"
"It's not mine," the man said, not even looking in the cat's direction. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm busy and weren't you in a hurry? Good day to you."
The door slammed in their faces.
"Goodness gracious, that was quite uncivilised of him," the angel observed.
"Yeah, just the type to make a demon wish he still had a quota to fulfil. Maybe in a few years he'll regret throwing out the last animal whose fur didn't give him a violent allergic reaction." A malicious wave of demonic power gently drifted towards the house. "And it's not like without the cat he'll be able to sell the house more easily, what with all the small floor cracks and the mice infestation."
"Crowley!"
"What? Be honest, I just beat you to it."
"Well, I might have considered a way to ensure no other animal would suffer such neglect from him. That doesn't mean-"
"Of course it doesn't. But now we have a bunch of books to fit into the Bentley and have to figure out what to do about the cat."
"She can ride on a blanket in the back seat, I suppose," Aziraphale stated simply.
"She can what now?"
"The blanket, I told you."
With a flourish that might have been for the benefit of Lorna still standing on her porch observing them and might have been just Aziraphale being himself, the angel produced a woollen tartan blanket from the back of the car and with a simple gesture transferred to it the tobacco-Chanel smell from the books. It didn't take much coaxing for Molly to accept the invitation and curl on the blanket that took half of the Bentley's back seat. Of course that only left half of the space that would normally be available to pack the books into, but luckily for the angel, the Bentley liked him.
III
The drive back to London took them infinitely longer than it should, which might have had something to do with a certain angel admonishing Crowley to remember about a certain feline sleeping in the back any time the demon even thought about exceeding thirty miles per hour.
By the time they had finally stopped in front of Soho's oldest bookshop, both Crowley and the Bentley were itching to take off at the full speed just to relieve the frustration of the slow crawl through the roads they had just endured (one could point out that nothing was strictly forcing Crowley to comply with the speed requests and the Bentley was more than capable of keeping both the cat and the books safely in place no matter the speed, but attempting to mention that within Crowley's hearing range would likely be inadvisable).
Once the books were safely transferred with a snap of the fingers to a temporary shelf to await further inspection, both the angel and the demon looked to the back, where the black cat was sleeping soundly, exposing the soft fur on her belly, one paw defiantly raised upwards.
"I suppose we should give you some space for now, to sort through those books?" Crowley asked eventually.
"We ?"
"Sure. Properly demonic creatures, black cats. Besides, it's only fitting that I'd get to keep the cat when you get to keep the books." Crowley announced with the tone of someone daring the world to question the unshakable pinnacle of logic.
"Whatever you say, my dear."
"Give me a call when you're done, yeah? We'll get sushi on the way."
"That would be absolutely marvellous. I shan't take too long, I promise."
"Right. I guess we'll be off then. Need to show the little hellion her new home and all."
"Oh, of course. Until later then."
When the Bentley sped up towards Mayfair, the sleepy cat in the backseat started purring in tune with the engine. As far as felines went, this one seemed to have an excellent taste.
III
"Right," Crowley said, as soon as the door closed behind them. "So, Molly, are you more of a fish oil or olive oil kind of girl?"
The cat seemed to give it some serious consideration. Then she meowed.
"Good point. There is no reason not to start with one and then see where the evening goes," the demon agreed, materialising a champagne coupe filled with fish oil before the feline and pouring himself some wine. "Now that you are going to be staying here, you need to know a few things. First of all, all those plants in here? They should know better than to let themselves be chomped on but just for the record, I wouldn't try eating them if I were you. Also, don't scratch anything that smells older than a few decades. And now, for the important stuff. You remember that angel who was in the car with us? Let me tell you a few things about him..."
After about an hour they decided to move the conversation to a more comfortable location. Molly, it turned out, was a great connoisseur of soft pillows.
III
As could be expected by anyone who had spoken with Aziraphale on a topic other than theology for more than two minutes, Crowley and Molly managed to have a nice long nap before the angel called to invite them back.
With a small detour to Aziraphale's favourite sushi place, they had made a rather good time getting to the bookshop, where the demon busied himself with setting the table, arranging their order.
At first the arrangement on the table seemed to look the way it usually did - the fanciest sushi set for Aziraphale, with compliments from the sushi master, the single Hosomaki roll for Crowley, who was aware that the angel liked to eat in company and frowned at the demon insisting that drinking sake was practically the same thing.
Then came a bit of a departure from the norm, when the demon placed a black porcelain plate in the usually unused corner.
"Have you decided to try something new today, my dear?" Aziraphale asked with curiosity at the sight.
"Nah, not a great fan of eating, me. You know that, Angel. But there are three of us today, aren't there? Had to order for everyone." With that he proceeded to place sushi-quality raw fish strips on the plate, to the purring approval of Molly.
"She's eating with us at the table then?"
"Thought about it on the way but she should be able to reach it without a problem if she sits in my lap."
In Crowley's opinion, the poorly concealed mirth on the angel's face was completely unwarranted. He was simply being practical. Besides, once she ate, Molly fell asleep next to him, so it wasn't like she spent the entire evening lying on him. And with her being black he'd hardly need to worry about her shedding on his clothes in any case.
The End