The faint blue light of your laptop illuminates the secret lair of your bedroom as you scroll through page after page of irrelevant pages on the internet. The sodium light burns through your curtains, the streets outside echoing faintly with midnight footsteps of strangers – so many of them aimlessly wondering London after hours, searching for God knows what... And it's not uncommon in the mind of paranoia to assume they're looking for an open window, a freshly-sharpened knife, a black-market handgun... or any other weapon they could possibly use to inflict grievous bodily harm on one person, and that one person is always you.

Now with a glance to the shadows you turn up the volume on your laptop, huddling deeper into the covers as if in the vain hope they could protect you from your morbid imagination. You can't remember what time it is even though you just looked to the bottom-right corner of the screen, the numbers seeming to melt away with time itself. You're tired. You know you should be a sleep, but the panic is nagging at your mind over and over and over and over: you don't want to see your potential murderer, so sleeping while he... did it would be preferable, but you can't help thinking that if you stare at him he might leave you alone, or as if the very fact of you being awake would keep him out.

Plus there are the nightmares... How many dreams had been twisted now, how many times have you woken up in a cold sweat?

But you needn't be worried:

There's an angel looking after you.

And a rather nonchalant demon. He sidles along the pavement, retracing his steps from memory as he draws a cigarette between his lips, the smoke curling over his head as his tongue coils in his mouth. It's been a long time since he's been here – maybe twenty years? Hm. And he hasn't aged a day: hair darker than the night itself, and shades even blacker than that. The only difference is that he's rolled up his sleeves because in mid-summer, even demons overheat. It had been a long time since he'd been Below but he could have sworn it was never this hot.

Or maybe it was the nerves. He takes one more drag of nicotine into his lungs, watches the embers flare in the end of the stub before dropping it by the side of the road. People hated that. He smiles slightly.

He sees you've left your bedroom window open on the second floor and realises he'll have to keep quiet. Not a problem; he is a self-professed master of stealth. Last time he was here, of course, you weren't – twenty years ago you weren't even born, let alone trying to get a degree and to survive the price of a London rent on your own. It's not that you dislike people in general: it's just that you dislike them stealing your food from the fridge, or walking in on you on the toilet or sleeping, or making a mess in "your area" even though it was obviously not your mess so why do you have to clean it up, and while we're on the subject, why and how did they manage to get the towels so wet that they would happily serve as an aquarium? You'd rather be paranoid of murderers than constantly nearly becoming one. But this does mean your ears, even beneath your headphones, are pricked for every sound.

So when you hear a clunk at the door, your blood runs cold. You hit the pause button on whatever it was you were doing (I'm not here to judge). But you and I can both agree it's not important now. What is important is that you know there is someone downstairs and this time it's not just your mind playing tricks on you. You can hear his shiny snake-skin shoes stepping towards the sofa.

And now you have the choice: do you stay very silent, let the man, whoever his is, take your stuff but leave you with your life, assuming he doesn't find you up here, or do you grab something, anything, and try to defend your new microwave and the TV you can barely afford? He'd probably be helping you save money.

You gulp. Gently set aside your laptop. Wonder why you are doing this but... You feel you have to do something. Your pulse surges back to life and you place your trembling foot onto the old carpet, shuffle forward, wind your head around before grabbing- err, what? What is there that could fend off a maniac? Your old teddy won't do. Try again. You hear your errors ringing in your head as if read by a news reporter pretending not to be amused by your pelting a paintbrush at a deranged killer. Eventually you grab your bedside lamp, cringing to wrench the plug from the socket as it jiggled and eventually jerked out with a loud metallic clang.

You can't hear him anymore. Maybe you were imagining it after all – or at least, so you hope, pausing and holding your breath until- a familiar garbled mumbling starts up and your frown deepens. Is he... watching TV? ... Is that an old repeat of 'Top Gear'?

Intrigued and baffled you head for the stairs, rounding the corner and clenching your jaw as you carefully clench down, one knuckle white around the lamp and the other holding onto the banister as you slowly, without a sound, squinting into the darkness, peer through and...

He is watching 'Top Gear'. And he doesn't seem particularly amused. His arms are folded across his chest, legs neatly crossed at the ankle, and he continuously checked his multi-faced watch and mutters to himself. You're convinced now that he must be mad. But he's not stealing anything or trying to kill you so perhaps that's not all that much of a bad thing? You hope so. Because either way you don't have the courage to move anymore – your feet feel as though they have turned into blocks of lead, or maybe merged with the building itself.

And then suddenly the door latch wiggles again and turns and in steps a particularly anxious-looking man with blonde hair and slim glasses, and a very particular feeling that he is neither a burglar nor a murderer nor a madman. In fact he looks about as scared as you are.

"Crowley, what are you..?! Turn that off! You'll wake the poor dear and then what will we do?" he hisses, rushing over and swishing his hand across the screen and all the pixels blacking off instantly. Then he takes a second glance at the television, sighs slightly with the attitude of a man who is disappointed that such a thing could exists. You blink. You could have sworn the screen was only eighteen inches, but it seems about twenty-two all of a sudden. Your head swirls and regretfully all you can think is, Will it put my bills up?

"Relax, angel. We can just put her back to sleep," he answered calmly, but you can tell there's something on his mind.

The second man huffs impatiently, rubbing the back of his neck as he glances around your tiny three-roomed house (two upstairs (bedroom, bathroom) and one downstairs (everything-else-room)). He seems to take the same attitude as before to every inch of the place, but this time seems resigned to his inability to change it. He nearly looks at you. Nearly. You form the theory that if you don't move, you'll be invisible, and it seems to be working. But from his new position you can make out his bright blue eyes, the gentle dimples of his cheeks, and the golden flecks in his hair. He pulls off his cardigan, a bead of sweat across his forehead.

The first man stands up now and in one fluid motion steps over to him. "Why here anyway? It's been two decades. You'd think we could find somewhere better."

The angel smiles almost deviously.

"So help me, Aziraphale, if you say its "ineffable"..."

"I shan't, then, since you've said it for me," he teased, wiping a drop of sweat from his brow and uttering, "It really is despicable that air conditioning units always pack up so easily. And there's never any decent warranty. Can I assume you're behind that?"

"The former, yes – and thank you for noticing. That later – nah. That's all human. And aren't we glad we saved their little planet so they could keep getting worse each year?"

Aziraphale huffs and flumps onto your sofa. "Now, now. You know as well as I that the worse they get in one respect, the better they get in another. Besides," he interrupts himself, standing again and striding a mere three steps to your refrigerator, "didn't we agree not to discuss work? Let's see if our friend has anything nice to drink."

Of course you don't: you're a student. And if you did have anything nice you would have probably drunk it yourself by now. He opens the door and the light doesn't even come on, but he doesn't need it to see there's nothing inside spare a few rashers of bacon in a mostly-empty packet, half a glass of milk and a carton of orange juice that was probably there when you moved in. (Again, I'm not here to judge.) His disappointment turns to pity.

"I thought you were against stealing," Crowley teases as Aziraphale turns back to see him brandishing a bottle of wine so red its almost black.

"Ugh, Crowley, Zinfandel? On this carpet?"

You can just feel his eyes rolling beneath the sunglasses, but then in a blink the bottle brightens into a rather blanc Sauvignon Blanc. Aziraphale smiles, then glares back into the fridge, and with a swish of his hand five more bottles appear, neatly arranged in the door. Oh, and the light comes on for the first time since you moved in before he shuts it and steps back over. Two wine glasses seemed to have appeared from nowhere as well and the darker man pours the wine lavishly into each.

You, by this stage transfixed on their movements, seem to have forgotten yourself and sat down on the step, still in complete and utter silence spare the minute sound of your lips upturning. It's rather like watching an old married couple – a very old married couple, perhaps even thousands of years. It gives you faith.

"To us," Aziraphale toasts, holding up his glass with a homely grin.

Crowley chuckles softly as if to say "every time" before clinking his glass to his neighbours, and then taking a steady sip from its pale surface; in contrast his lips seem utterly ripe, and as he drinks you can sense his gaze is locked on the other man at every moment. Meanwhile Aziraphale's eyes slip shut and he hums gently in the wistful murmur of a man who had waited a long time for that drink.

You would almost interrupt for a taste of it, but remain a statue overlooking them, curious as to what they would do next. You assume they'll carry on drinking for some time with the number of additional bottles awaiting, but you're still trying to figure out just how those bottles got there in the first place. And why your sofa looks abnormally comfortable all of a sudden. There are a vague plethora of other details you're sure aren't quite right, and for a second you wonder if you're dreaming.

The gentleman in the sunglasses, reclining luxuriously on the right of your sofa with his back just to you, holds his glass in his right hand and his left begins to stray, at first to rest by his own side, and then to conveniently brush the other man's knee, before trailing up his leg, snaking up to his thigh, at which point the blonde man suddenly snickers and splutters into his sip and gives him a cold, hard stare. Crowley hisses a laugh as he recoils carefully, half-shrugging as though he could almost be embarrassed.

You can't help edging forward, leaning your head right up against the bars.

"Don't tempt me," Aziraphale mutters, deadpan, and then with the flicker of a smile adds, "I want to savour my wine first."

Crowley nods slightly, and then his gaze drifts lazily up his friend's figure to rest in the bottom of his glass; you can just about see his fingers move, and the cup seems to drain itself whilst Aziraphale raises it to his lips such that his mouthful would hardly fill a thimble. Thirsty, he narrows his eyes across at his partner, and then adoration seeps into his gaze, and he sets the empty wine glass down on a side-table you swear wasn't there before. Then he sits back up again, sat on top of one leg such that he faced Crowley. He leans forward slightly, eyes sparkling in the dull glow of the single light you leave on at night, and tenderly reaches out to take hold of the arms of the demon's sunglasses, lifting them off of him to reveal-

Well, you weren't expecting that. His eyes are basically brighter than the light in the room, piercing yellow with a black serpentine slit down the middle. Crowley lowers his gaze briefly as Aziraphale whispers, "You should know you don't have to wear those around me."

He glances back up. "I could say the same to you."

"Mine are to improve my vision, not hide my eyes."

Crowley smirks, his focus straying all over his partner. "I wasn't referring to your glasses."

Azirphale blushes slightly as he gives a taut sigh. (You blush a little too, needless to say. You're definitely not about to interrupt now.) He sets the sunglasses aside, taking off his own too – because believe me, they can be very inconvenient – before stroking a perfectly manicured hand delicately down his cheek, his other pressed flush to his chest and fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt, till he reached his chin, tipping it up just a little as he leaned even closer. In the second before their lips meet you imagine your heart is beating about as fast as either of theirs. But as soon as they do, Crowley gently holds onto Aziraphale's shoulders, encouraging him even closer; the hand fiddling with the button begins to fumble a little more till it falls free and moves onto the next, and the next, and the next... leaning him down on your sofa, their kiss tightening as one or the other gasps slightly for breath and tongues slip together, Aziraphale's hands tracing over his chest eliciting a barely audible moan from the demon as they wander down his body, meanwhile Crowley rolls the shirt back off of his angel's shoulders and strokes down to his waist and just as-

You're an idiot. You know that. I know that. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

You manage to forget you brought a lamp as a weapon with you to your staircase eerie and have also managed to shove it with your foot in your eagerness to watch (and I would judge you on that but it would be hypocritical) and it tumbles onto the next step, and the next, and the next, clanking and breaking a little more each time. Crowley lurches up, arms wrapped around Aziraphale as he twists his head round to stare at you dead in the eyes, and utter, "Oh shit."

You stumble to your feet, as if you had any intentions of confronting them now, and stride down the last few steps, trying to appear the least bit angry when really all you want to do is rewind time and just let them get on with it; they weren't harming you, after all; and it was far better than a robber or a killer.

Aziraphale almost swears himself as he flushes beet red and stumbles off your sofa, shirtless and dazed from temptation but managing to hold his hands out in entreaty as he approaches you and says, "We are so sorry to, ah, to have intruded into your, err, lovely home, and to be, quite frankly, defiling it-"

"Hey!" Crowley protests, pulling his shirt back over him, meeting your eye again, and you turning from his with a baffled mind.

"Ah, well, still, we really shouldn't be here, and so, um, and I really am sorry about this – I don't do it often because I believe it's unfair but needs must in the case – so, um-"

You wake up, having had the weirdest dream. Actually, it was a lot like all your other dreams really, and so I needn't describe it to you – but it wasn't one of the nightmares, and so that made it weird. It felt very vivid though, and it takes a few minutes for you to reason to yourself that you're actually awake.

In fact, you don't remember falling asleep. Last thing you remember, you were on your laptop, scrolling through pages of something-or-other. But now your laptop is neatly tidied away on your bedside table next to the lamp. (You'll later find out that it operates faster than usual as well.)

You get up, get washed, get dressed, the usual routine, with a strange foggy feeling in your head that you choose to ignore. Everything about your house feels a little better somehow but you can't put your finger on it. Maybe you're just in a better mood than usual.

There is nothing to confirm or deny what you've already forgotten ever even happened. The only hint is the mostly empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge, next to a full glass of milk and an unopened packet of bacon.