As it so happens, over the last forty years or so, a developing interest in sustainable food and a concern over the chemicals used in commercial farming, meant that London actually played host to a great many fowl. A concerned London citizen, of the type who wore patchouli as perfume and cared deeply about the environment, was allowed to keep hens in their garden for their own personal use as a source of eggs or meat- though the type of people who wanted to do such a outlandish thing, were also typically the type of people who didn't go in for the carnivorous lifestyle. But, hens are not the same as cocks. They clucked a bit in their happy chicken way, but they did not crow at dawn to annoy the neighbors at five in the morning.
However, as it happened, there was one elderly cock of the barnyard variety that made his home in Soho.
His name was Albert.
Yes, as in Prince Albert. Make of that, what you will.
He was owned by a middle-aged woman named Deborah. She claimed, to anyone who asked, that he was an emotional support rooster- though she had neither the paperwork, nor the medical need to substantiate such a claim. In truth, he was a quite illegal resident of her small rented flat above a bakery.
Albert lived the sedentary lifestyle of a housecock. He rarely rose before nine o'clock, when he went for his morning scratch about the place, had a few pecks at his chicken pellets, and then settled atop a chair in front of the windows to preen himself. He was a purebred Dutch Bantam cock, and his feathers were a beautiful mix of iridescent greens and blacks, with a stunning cascade of orange and yellow hackles over his neck, and bright red waddles and comb. He was quite a fine looking rooster indeed.
He was, being a bantam breed, also about the size of a pigeon. As a result, his crow sounded like someone stepping on a dog's squeaky toy. He was a bit embarrassed about it, really. This was, however, a large part of the reason that he had been able to avoid the detection of his illegal status by human authorities for so long.
oOoOoOo
Aziraphale was woken from a sound sleep at the very arse-crack of dawn by a loud crash. He sat up in bed with a bleary-eyed look around the bedroom. Crowley's spot in the bed beside him was unoccupied. With a groan, he made himself get out of bed, expecting that their holy houseguest had arrived.
Aziraphale had never really slept much prior to his brief stint as a human, but it had turned out to be a hard habit to break. Having Crowley around all the time hadn't helped matters much. Crowley had never really abandoned his reptilian tenancy to curl up and just laze about whenever he found a warm place to lay down, and since Aziraphale was the warm place that Crowley most liked to cuddle into, he often found himself with a lawful of snoring ex-demon, and would usually drift off himself in the middle of a page of whatever he happened to be reading. As a result, he had gotten used to getting his forty winks in of a night, and he found himself resenting the messiah for interrupting his beauty sleep.
But, when he exited the bedroom into the rest of the flat, there was no Christ to be found, just Crowley cursing at a frying pan in the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" Aziraphale asked him.
"Making breakfast," Crowley growled back at him.
"But, you don't know how to cook, dear."
"I've been on this planet for over six thousand years, angel. I can figure out how to fry up some bacon. If, I can just get this blasted stove to turn on." He spun several of the dials, contributing further to the smell of gas that Aziraphale had noticed when he first walked into the kitchen.
"It's the old style of stove, dear," Aziraphale told him. "You have to light it with a match."
Crowley let out a long string of curses and blessings; he'd been relieved to be able to use both interchangeably since becoming neutral—really widened his range of expression. Aziraphale reached past him to turn all the knobs back to off.
"Why haven't we updated these appliances, yet?" Crowley asked. "I have a perfectly good flat full of state-of-the-art appliances. I don't see why we can't just move in there. This place is so nineteen fifties."
"I like my flat," Aziraphale said, "and it's above the bookshop. If we stayed at yours, I'd have to take the tube over every morning, and we haven't updated the kitchen, because neither of us knows how to cook."
"Then why do we have a kitchen? We could get rid of it, and I wouldn't have to keep the plants in the bathroom."
"Well, we need somewhere to keep the table, and the refrigerator."
"When was the last time we used either one of those? It's been years. We eat on the couch like normal people, and you'd have to actually leave some leftovers to put them in the refrigerator."
"Well, you're using the kitchen now, aren't you? And where would I keep my cookbooks if we replaced all the cupboards with shelving for your plants?" Aziraphale asked.
"Oh, I don't know, downstairs with the others," Crowley suggested sarcastically. "You could sell them, since neither of us knows how to cook."
"That's what the books are for," Aziraphale explained. "I've been meaning to learn."
"No time like the present, then," Crowley said. "Help me light this thing."
Aziraphale found the matches, and after a few tries, and some slightly singed fingertips, managed to light the burner. "Ouch," he said, jerking his hand back from the flames.
Crowley took his hand and kissed the burns away from his fingertips, sucking each gently between his lips, one at a time.
Aziraphale let out a long breath that was almost a moan, eyes growing heated as he watched, but Crowley pulled away and turned back to the stove. He watched in consternation as Crowley's attention was returned to his cooking experiment, and he pulled a package of bacon out of the supermarket bag on the counter.
"Why are you suddenly cooking breakfast anyway?" Aziraphale asked, as though he didn't already know the answer.
"It's for Yeshua. I thought he might like to have something to eat when he gets here"
Which, or course, didn't explain why they couldn't just eat in a restaurant like they normally did, but Aziraphale ignored that to ask instead, "And you're making bacon for him? Wasn't he a Jew? They don't eat pork."
"His mother was a Jew, and he was raised Jewish, but he's the son of God. He can eat whatever he wants. It took some serious temptation, but one taste of bacon, and he did away with all those ridiculous food restrictions when he started preaching the new religion. As though God should care if you eat meat and dairy in the same meal."
"He must have done, or it wouldn't be in The Book," Aziraphale said.
"We both know that there are plenty of things in that book that didn't happen exactly the way it says they did. It was written by humans. You can call it the word of God all you want; it's still subject to human interpretation, and as long as humans have free will, they can interpret it however they want. We've both seen it enough times that you should know the truth of it by now. Either way, kosher or not, telling them that they could eat bacon converted more Jews to Christianity than a thousand sermons about peace and good will toward men."
Crowley slid a raw slice onto the frying pan and it let out a crackle of boiling grease. "Yeshua loves the stuff."
oOoOoOo
Five hours later, the flat smelled like burnt bacon, and there was still no sign of Jesus.
Crowley made his hundredth trip to the windows and looked down on the street. "Why isn't he here yet?" he asked. "You don't think he's lost do you? Gabriel said he would be here first thing."
Aziraphale looked up from his book. "You know how Heaven is. He's probably still filling out requisition forms for the body."
"Or, he's lost in the city somewhere, already gathering disciples, and performing miracles, and stirring up trouble, and by the time we find him, he'll have gotten himself publicly executed by an angry mob, and Gabriel's going to be back here with a flaming sword to enact the wrath of God."
Aziraphale frowned. "Perhaps we should try to contact Heaven, make sure that there hasn't been some kind of mix-up."
oOoOoOo
A few blocks over, Albert the Emotional Support Rooster had tucked his head beneath one wing and gone back to sleep.
oOoOoOo
Aziraphale hadn't tried to open a line to Heaven since before the revocation of his angelic aspect, and while he had drawn all the appropriate cabalistic symbols, lit the right number of candles, and said the right words, the summoning circle remained inert.
"Why isn't it doing anything?" Aziraphale wondered.
"How should I know," Crowley snapped back. "Maybe the Metatron is on a tea break.
Don't they have an answering service?"
"It's Heaven, not some multinational corporation. The Metatron doesn't have a secretary."
"You have to admit that there are certain aesthetic similarities."
Aziraphale chuckled. "I did once hear Gabriel say the phrase, 'synergistic paradigm shift,' with a straight face." He blew out the candles. "I'm afraid this isn't going to work. Do you want to try it the other way?"
"What do you mean?" Crowley asked.
Aziraphale put his hand together in mock prayer and looked upward with an expression of angelic devotion.
Crowley shuddered. "I'd rather not run it that far up the flagpole, just yet."
"Well, if he was lost on Earth, in London, where would he go?" Aziraphale asked. "St. Paul's Cathedral?"
Crowley snorted. "He's spent the last two thousand years in Heaven; the last thing he wants is more pious devotion and hymns."
"What would you want if you hadn't been to Earth in a couple millennia?" Aziraphale asked.
"Food and a fuck," Crowley answered, completely unashamed. "That's why I made the bacon."
Aziraphale doubted that the pile of charred pork sitting on a plate upstairs would be much of an enticement for anyone, regardless of how long it had been since they had eaten, but Crowley had been so proud of himself, so he hadn't had the heart to mention it. He tried not to think about the fucking at all.
"There's a kosher bakery a few blocks over," he suggested instead.
"I'm telling you that you're on the wrong track with this whole kosher thing," Crowley said, but he was already grabbing his jacket. "S'pose we could pick up some matzah to go with the bacon, though."
"Well, that just seems… disrespectful," Aziraphale said as he walked toward the door.
"Yeshua will appreciate the irony."
oOoOoOo
It didn't occur to either one of them, until they had walked the few blocks to Rosenberg's Kosher Bakery, and seen the closed sign on the door, that it was Saturday, and no devout Jew would have their business open on the Sabbath.
"This was a waste of time," Crowley grumbled.
"I don't think he's here," Aziraphale agreed.
"I didn't think he would be, but what about the matzah?" Crowley pounded on the door.
"Don't do that, dear. They're closed. They aren't just going to open because you're hammering away. You have no idea how irritating that is."
"It's for the son of God," Crowley insisted. "They can break Sabbath for the son of God."
Crowley pounded on the door again. "I need some unleavened bread for the messiah! Open up!"
"Crowley," Aziraphale hissed. "You're being ridiculous. He isn't going to care if he has matzah bread to go with his burnt bacon."
"It isn't that burned."
"That's what it means when it gets all black like that, luv," Aziraphale said.
Crowley scowled at him, and started pounding on the door again.
oOoOoOo
Above the bakery, Albert was suddenly awakened by all of the racket and let out a startled crow.
oOoOoOo
"Did you hear that?" Aziraphale asked, looking up.
"Hear what?" Crowley asked, following Aziraphale's gaze to the window's above the shop.
"What are we looking at?" Jesus of Nazareth asked from behind them.
