Wednesday
A Good Omens fanfiction
Part 1 of 12
"Well, seeing that today certainly is my day – why don't you call me Wednesday?"
– American Gods, Neil Gaiman
It was a rainy Wednesday in Aziraphale's bookshop; Crowley was about to sit down for elevenses with the angel, watching suspiciously as 'Aziraphale' made a number of uncharacteristic mistakes setting the table.
He chipped a saucer – and didn't immediately bite back a frustrated curse. Nor did his eyes bulge from struggle of trying very, very hard not to swear – not even the slightest pop. He gave Crowley the wrong cup – the teacup he usually used himself. The spoons he placed haphazardly down in front of him were, in actuality, big gold-plated tablespoons. The world could literally be ending and the fussy principality would still never have used those to stir tea – Crowley knew this from firsthand experience.
Whoever the person across from him was, smiling a little too brightly – this person wearing Aziraphale's face and shape – it was decidedly not Aziraphale.
It didn't even smell like him.
He was already positive this was an imposter, but Crowley decided to make doubly sure. He pushed back his chair, walked over to the nearest shelf, picked up a book, raised an eyebrow, and made a motion as if to dog-ear one of the pages.
'Aziraphale' didn't react.
Biting onto his lower lip, Crowley turned his face away and murmured, "Son of a bitch."
Careful not to give himself away just yet, Crowley set the book back on the shelf and sat down as if nothing was wrong, as if he believed this was indeed his closest friend and suspected nothing at all.
"So, Crowley, how have you been?"
"Fine." Crowley lifted the teacup to his lips and began sipping it, struggling not to make a face of revulsion.
It tasted horrible. Further proof this was not Aziraphale, since the principality knew how to make a decent cup of tea – this vile brew tasted like mud and medicine with a sharply bitter aftertaste that made him want to be sick all over the bookshop floor.
Forcing himself to smile and swallow it was a struggle.
"You like the tea?"
"Mmm-hmmm."
"Made it especially for you, runt." And then the person across from him made the most obnoxious tittering sound Crowley had ever heard in his life.
"I appreciate it," said Crowley, downing the rest of the awful tea in a final relieved swig – one last merciful gulp – and setting the cup down onto the mismatched saucer with a pretence of complete ease. "Oh, by the way, Hastur, Aziraphale does not laugh like that. Nor would he ever refer to me as runt."
"No," said Hastur with Aziraphale's voice and smile, bringing a napkin to his mouth and dabbing at it coolly. "I suppose he wouldn't, would he?"
Crowley folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. "You might as well stop pretending and tell me what you've done with him before I become very unpleasant."
"Done with him? I've done nothing to him. This wasn't about him."
"You expect me to believe that?" he hissed, slamming his palms down on the tabletop, causing the tea-set to rattle violently. "Tell me where Aziraphale is now!"
"I have no idea."
The shop bell above the door jingled; Crowley didn't register it, he was too busy glaring daggers at Hasturaphale. He leaped up, flipping the table over – mismatched crockery flying across the room and shattering against the far wall – and grabbed Hastur by Aziraphale's lapel.
"Really, my dear? My good china? Was that necessary? I've asked you many times not to break things in a fit of demonic rage inside my shop. I have an entire cheap tea-set for you to smash as you see fit – outside."
It was Aziraphale – really him – standing behind them holding a heavy paper parcel tied up with string, and he sounded rather put out. He had not seen the demon who was currently adorned in his likeness, not yet – he'd only seen Crowley flipping over the table, looking like he wanted to kill something.
Then, after he set the parcel down, he realised. The angel pointed, mouth agape. "What the hell is going on?"
Crowley flung Hasturaphale aside. "You're all right," he said, relieved.
Hastur looked like himself now; Aziraphale's soft, plump features had melted away in a twinkling. The troubling thing was that he did not seem particularly upset. No, he was actually grinning.
"Wot the deuce are you so happy about?" Crowley demanded, lips pursed.
The duke of Hell did not reply.
"Hastur, if you think this is acceptable, you're quite mistaken." Aziraphale pouted, splaying his fingers emphatically. "Your office in Hell will be receiving an invoice for the cost of the broken china! Oh, this is going to take forever to clean up!"
Crowley turned to shake his head at the angel. As amusing at the thought of Hastur having to pay for the broken tea-things of an irate angel was, they really didn't want to be getting Hell's attention (or Heaven's) right now; they were meant to be keeping under the radar after their little body-swap stunt.
But before he could so much as gesture in Aziraphale's direction, the demon felt something wrong. He pressed his hand to his abdomen and groaned, bending forward.
"Angel," he mumbled as the world around him started to spin.
"I can't–" He wheezed, stumbling to the side so he could lean against the wall. "Something's not–" The tea! The bloody awful tea. He drank the tea. There was no time to miracle it out of his bloodstream, whatever he'd done...it was already working... "Hastur–" The rapidly turning world was shiny, then dark.
Aziraphale rushed over and caught Crowley in his arms as he slumped unconsciously towards the floor. "You poisoned him."
Hastur guffawed with dark merriment.
The principality stroked the side of his friend's pale face mournfully. "Oh, Crowley." And, brokenly, under Hastur's gloating gaze, he waited for an end that didn't come.
Something wasn't adding up about this. Crowley wasn't breathing, but demons didn't need to breathe, so that in itself didn't tell the angel much. The thing was, the body wasn't showing any signs of being discorporated – the body was just remaining here, in the angel's arms, with Crowley seemingly locked inside of it.
Aziraphale gently removed Crowley's sunglasses and slapped his cheek. "Come on, my dear, if you're in there, wake up – look at me now."
Hastur smirked down at him. "Oh, don't bother, fat-wings. It won't help. He's gone – he's not in there."
"Where did you send him?" demanded Aziraphale, eyes moist and teeth gritted.
'ello, it's Wednesday morning!
"Wot?" Crowley rolled over in what seemed to be rather a comfortable bed, actually. "What's happening? Where the Heaven am I?"
It's overcast today, with a fifty to sixty percent chance of rain, so you best have your brolly on hand just in case –
As if from some ingrained habit, Crowley felt his arm flail to the side, smacking the top of an alarm clock radio, making the noise stop so he could think for a moment.
Rubbing at his eyes, he sat up. His cascading hair settled against the middle of his back – he couldn't remember the last time he'd worn it that long. "Bleh." His mouth tasted like copper pennies with a faint hint of piss.
The last thing he remembered was... His stomach. Pain. Poison. Aziraphale. Hastur. Crockery everywhere. Bookshop. Damn tea.
Aziraphale! He'd left Aziraphale alone with Hastur!
He flung back the covers and jumped out of bed, landing on a soft sheepskin rug that tickled his toes delightfully.
The air smelled faintly of jasmine-scented aerosol. It was so sickeningly sterile; it reminded him of a hospital – or maybe of Heaven, just a bit.
"This isn't my flat." His eyes darted the length of the bedroom – it was cream-coloured and bright with floor length mirrors and pictures of saints on the walls.
There was a half-finished bottle of some fizzy health drink, a pair of silver sewing scissors, and a stack of square reading glasses beside the alarm clock radio.
He looked up – there were bloody mirrors on the ceiling as well. Who thought that was a good idea?
A pair of wide, bright blue eyes stared down at him.
Wait, if that was his reflection...
"My eyes!" Crowley ran over to the floor length mirror and practically shoved his nose against it. "Why are they blue?"
This was impossible.
Crowley knew for a fact that his snake-eyes, apart from their level of dilation, were something that could not be changed – he couldn't even wear contacts, because they didn't work for him, thus why he always kept his sunglasses handy. His demonically glowing yellow eyes had been unchangeable for six thousand years!
Something in his back twitched and his heart pounded. Thump. Thud. Thump. "No... No..." He'd prove it wasn't what he... He relaxed the muscles holding them back, let them out. Gleaming white wings unfurled from his back, a flurry of handsome but rather messy feathers. "Shit, shit, shit! Shit!"
A landline on the dresser pressed against the wall to the mirror's right began ringing.
Manic, Crowley snatched up the headset and shouted, "My eyes are blue! Blue!" And then he slammed it back down onto the receiver, his chest heaving. He closed his inexplicably blue eyes, winched in his wings, and inhaled long and deep. "Okay. Right. Got that out of my system, then." He wondered vaguely who had been on the other end of that call.
My eyes are blue! Blue!
Click.
Riding atop a double-decker bus on the other side of London, the archangel Michael was staring down at the screen of her sleek, faintly glowing cellphone.
Call ended.
"Well," she said; "that was...odd..."
After a few stunned moments where even the phone's operating system seemed at a loss for words, there was a shimmering flicker and a suggestion popped up on the screen.
Early Call Termination Detected – Call Back 'Raphael'?
After making two wrong turns and finding himself in an impossibly large and steamy bathroom with far too many pushable buttons (Crowley liked technology, but only when it was simple – his stereo back at his flat in Mayfair only had an on-off switch and a dial for volume control, literally nothing else), the very lost and increasingly irate demon-turned-angel finally shuffled his way out of the complicated loft (via what he'd thought was a broom closet or one of those wicker doors meant to conceal dirty laundry baskets) and downstairs into more familiar surroundings.
It was Aziraphale's bookshop! The very last place he would have thought he was going by the upstairs!
Except, there were less shelves, everything was open-spaced and the thick overlaying carpets were a sharp shade of evergreen. And there were telescopes and rolled up posters and framed pictures of the moon (and several planets) and stacks of table-length charts mapped out with positions of various stars. It appeared to be an astronomy-centred shop of some kind, but it evidently hadn't opened yet, since there were all these easel-shaped wooden signs with half-finished streamers which said things like "Grand Opening," and piles of fliers announcing the doors would be thrown open on Thursday afternoon.
This didn't make sense. Where were all the books? Aziraphale would never clear them all out and replace them with astronomy equipment. It was as if the Astronomy section had somehow taken over the rest of the bookshop.
Half the space in the shop was actually occupied by a plethora of crowded-in potted plants with luxuriant leaves almost the same exact colour as the carpet.
Crowley felt his chest clench. "Aziraphale?"
There was no answer.
"Aziraphale, where are you, you idiot?" He could hear the desperation in his own voice, and sniffed – jumping nearly right out of his own skin when there came a rap on the window closest to the door.
A young woman with a ponytail stood out there, holding a book, waving at him.
Crowley opened the door – there was no jingle, no bells set above it to do so, and that felt almost sacrilegious. "Yeah?"
"Ohmigosh. I can't believe it's really you! You're Raphael Antonius!" She held up the book – his photograph was on the back of the dust-jacket, smiling angelically at the cameraman. "Your book changed my life – I hope you don't mind my tracking you down here – I know you're probably planning for the big opening tomorrow – but I'm such a huge fan." She drew a pen from a beaded clutch at her side. "Would you sign it for me?"
Crowley stared wordlessly.
She took in his baggy pastel pyjamas, her cheeks flushing. "Was this a bad time?"
"Ngh, give it here." He pulled himself back together, taking the book from her outstretched hands and glancing hastily at the title. If he'd written a book, he'd at least like to know what the deuce it was about.
Healing Yourself: Peaceful & Healthful Living Tips
"You know, back when you had that talk show, I used to watch you every single day – my whole family did – you were bloody fabulous. My sister just loved the gardening tips segment at the end."
His lips went numb; he found it impossible to form coherent words. "T-talk show?"
"Mm-hmm." The pony-tail girl nodded earnestly. "We just loved it – we were so disappointed when you went off the air and they replaced you with that Yank televangelist, Marvin O. Bagman.
"It's not that my family hates Americans on principle, of course, you know. We simply don't trust anyone whose co-host used to be in Penthouse.
"But, anyway, I taped your final episode and everything." Her eyes darted to the book, hanging limply from his fingertips. "So, uh, you signing that or what?"
"Er...right...I..." He uncapped the pen and hastily scribbled a signature before thrusting it back at her. "Glad you liked it. Always nice to meet a fan."
"What's this?" Her expression changed to one of disgusted disappointment as she glanced down at the flyleaf. "Who's A.J. Crowley?"
But he wasn't listening; he was nudging past her and stepping onto the Soho street, trying to work out what the heaven was going on here. He'd never written a self-health book or hosted his own talk show – this wasn't his shop, it was Aziraphale's – his eyes were not blue – none of this made any damn sense.
People were beginning to stare. Crowley looked down. Still in pyjamas. Right. He concentrated and the material reshaped itself into a navy blue suit – something right on the line between demonic and heavenly in appearance. A couple of passers-by did a double-take, blinking like they could have sworn – from the corner of their eyes – the man with the long red hair in a suit had been sashaying along in his pyjamas just a second ago.
A black Ford Fiesta pulled up at the curb, screeching to a halt. The window on the passenger side wound down. "Hello! What have we here?"
Leaning across from the driver's seat was none other than Aziraphale. Aziraphale in a black leather trench coat and dark sunglasses. Aziraphale with ashy-coloured hair instead of the usual celestial platinum. But Aziraphale nonetheless.
Crowley smiled in relief. Whatever was happening right now, it was all going to be all right – Hastur hadn't hurt Aziraphale. His best friend was okay. That was all that mattered, really, when you got right down to it. The world being shifted beyond all recognition wasn't pleasant, not by any stretch of the imagination, but knowing Aziraphale was still in it – that he was safe – made it bearable again.
All he actually said, though, was "Hi."
Aziraphale opened the passenger door. "Get in, angel."
Crowley hopped in and shut the door behind himself, groaning as he slid into the seat and Aziraphale stepped on the gas like a bat out of Hell.
The locks all clicked simultaneously.
"That was so easy," Aziraphale said, after a long awkward pause, "it was sad – you know, you really could put more effort into avoiding me. This is just getting insulting."
"Wot?"
Still going at what the car's speedometer showed as ninety miles an hour but Crowley guessed from experience was actually even faster, Aziraphale turned his head to scowl at him. "I'll have you know I had an elaborate plan of capture all worked out – there were nets and ropes and pulleys involved – I had to make several trips to the hardware store to obtain everything I needed – and what do you do? You just get in the car the moment I ask you to!"
Crowley was at a complete loss. "I–"
"Look." He sighed, putting one manicured hand on the steering wheel and gesturing frustratedly with the other. "Please understand I don't mean to criticize you. I'm sure you're doing your best, my dear. I'm simply saying there's no point in my going to so much trouble if you're not even going to–" The car jerked to a stop so fast Crowley's head would have gone through the windscreen if he hadn't gripped the side of his seat just in time. "Sorry. School zone. Real pain – blasted children crossing – but there's nothing to be done." He honked the horn. "Hurry up, would you?" His fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel. "I'm sure they'll be on the other side any moment now... Er, where was I?"
Crowley shrugged, watching a group of little kids in yellow mackintoshes march across the street looking for all the world like a shuffling row of rubber ducklings.
Instead of starting the car up again once the last child made it across, Aziraphale reached under his seat and pulled out a tire iron.
Not aware, at first, what Aziraphale's intention was, Crowley didn't move. Then he saw him lift the tire iron in a motion to bring it down across the side of his face.
Crowley flinched, then dodged, from some belated instinct – but not quickly enough.
It struck his temple and everything went black.
He came to in the back seat with his hands and feet bound up with a length of rope. "Oi! What the Heaven was that for?"
"Oh, you're awake, are you? Jolly good." The reflection in the rear-view mirror made Crowley's blood run cold.
Aziraphale wasn't wearing sunglasses now; his eyes were visible, dispassionately watching him, and they were such a dark charcoal as to be almost black.
Suddenly the obvious dawned on Crowley and he wanted to hit himself for being such an idiot. If he had angel's wings and bright blue eyes – if somehow he'd become an angel again – it perhaps stood to reason that there had been a switch – and that Aziraphale was...was...
No. Aziraphale was – and always would be – an angel. He couldn't be a demon. Not him. He wasn't nearly enough a bastard for that. It was wrong; some sick, utterly vile sin against nature.
But he'd called him angel, when he'd told him to get in the car – as if he wasn't one himself.
"Why'm I tied up?" The side of his face was sore. "Ow." Crowley's mind frantically grappled for something familiar to latch onto. "What about the Arrangement?"
"Arrangement?" echoed Aziraphale, sounding genuinely mystified.
"You know, lending a helping hand – since we just cancel each other out anyway." He tried to shift in the seat so that he was sitting up and could lean forward. "None of this trying to stop each other nonsense."
"It isn't nonsense." Aziraphale's tone grew defensive. "We're hereditary enemies, Raphael. You are an angel, I am a demon. I'd never agree to something like...well...that – it would be disgraceful."
"Hang on. Did you just call me Raphael?" Crowley had never told Aziraphale who he'd been before he...except maybe now...maybe now...
The name on the pony-tail girl's book came back to him. Did this mean he'd never stopped being Raphael? That he'd never become Crawly – and then Crowley – at all?
"Oh, for Satan's sake, I didn't think I hit you that hard." Aziraphale shrugged, making a sharp left turn and narrowly missing a hydrant as he bumped over the curb. Two dustbins toppled over, their contents spilling out onto the street where they were crushed under the rolling wheels of the Ford Fiesta. "Well, I suppose it'll all be the same by the time this is over."
The blood drained from Crowley's face. "Are you going to discorporate me?"
"Well, if you must know, yes, I was planning on it – but let's just drive for a little longer and see how things go." He turned and smiled back at him. "Sound good to you?"
"Not really."
He threw back his head and laughed maniacally. "Ah. Fantastic – that settles it, then."
Just when Crowley thought things couldn't get any worse, Demon-Aziraphale decided to take a handgun out of the glove compartment, pull over, and force him to walk several miles up a length of tracks down the Piccadilly line.
Initially he wasn't actively trying to get away from him, but as he quickly realised this version of Aziraphale was wholly in earnest (and possibly insane), he began struggling and stubbornly resisting – only for the sorry bastard to simply lift him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and walk the rest of the way himself.
Crowley kicked and threatened very ineffectively, though Aziraphale seemed rather pleased with this. "Put me down right now!"
"Soon enough, my dear fellow, soon enough."
"I mean it – you set me down this instant," he hissed, "or you'll face my wrath."
Aziraphale laughed so hard he almost dropped him. "Your wrath, you say? Honestly, Raphael! A person does try to do this sort of thing straight forward, all frills and no fuss, but you can't be making jokes like that. I'll have to make a trip to the lavatory if you keep it up!"
Crowley waggled his tied up legs to no avail. "How are you so good at this?" By this point, if it were him, he'd have just let the angel go and called it a day – made up some excuse – but Aziraphale kept trudging doggedly along.
He wondered what he was going to do when they stopped. Maybe Aziraphale would shoot him or... Well, they were on a set of railway tracks.
No. It couldn't be that.
No demon in the history of demony demons was clichéd enough to...
Crowley felt himself being flung to the ground and rolled over onto the tracks.
"Struggling is pointless, my dear." Sure enough, Aziraphale was merrily securing him to the tracks with more rope.
"So. Your brilliant plan is to discorporate me using methods that would have been considered dated in a 1930s silent film?"
"Shush – you're spoiling it."
"All right. You're being ridiculous. I've had about enough of this." He concentrated and the ropes loosened slightly, struggling against the occult power gathering like crackling static around Aziraphale.
They immediately tightened again and Crowley actually felt a pang of fear. Aziraphale really was going to go through with it and kill him – like it was nothing.
And, worse, he was enjoying it.
Despite there being several people not that far off, nobody seemed to notice what was happening – it was only reality, after all, and some demons knew how to bend it better than others.
"What's next?" snorted Crowley, swallowing any hurt and outrage he felt so Aziraphale wouldn't see it. "Just going to stand there and twirl your moustache, are you?"
Aziraphale's hand flew to his upper lip, aghast. "I do not have a moustache!"
"You might as well," he snapped. "And a cape."
He lowered his hand. "Oh, you're no fun."
"Fun? You're about to watch me get flattened by a Piccadilly line train!"
"Well, to be honest, I've got to watch something, Raphael – it isn't my fault there's never anything good on television Wednesday evenings." He tsked, shaking his head and tossing his gun in the air. "I mean – being a demon – I don't actually pay for my television license, but I'd be quite put out if I did." The gun dropped back down into his plump, manicured hands. "Oh my, it seems I forgot to put the safety on. That could have been unfortunate."
"Things have been a bit slow since they stopped rerunning Cheers," Crowley admitted begrudgingly.
"Oh, I never liked Cheers."
"It's an excellent show," Crowley insisted.
"Fraiser is obviously the superior program."
"No it's not," argued Crowley, a smidgeon petulantly.
"Agree to disagree."
The sound of the train began to roar and whoosh further up the tracks and Crowley struggled against his bonds. "Come on, angel," – it was habit, and he was frightened in more ways than one – "untie me."
All it would take was a snap of his fingers and Crowley could go free, but Aziraphale was still shaking his head no. He reached down and patted Crowley's cheek before he stepped back a safe distance from the tracks. "No hard feelings, dear boy."
The train was getting closer.
"Aziraphale!" He squirmed, tried to unsuccessful to shift into a snake. "Aziraphale!" It was no good; the demon who had been the world's sweetest angel before today couldn't even hear him over the roaring train any more.
Crowley was hit – almost without pain, it was so quick.
There was a bang and flash of pure white. Crowley found himself standing in Heaven itself. It was as pristine and cold as ever.
"Hell's teeth!" He started; Gabriel and Sandalphon were suddenly stationed in front of him. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that."
"The demon Zira again?" asked Sandalphon, his tone nasal and smug, but not without a trace of uncharacteristic sympathy.
"You're shaking," said Gabriel, stepping forward and reaching out to pat Crowley on the back – frowning as his fellow archangel flinched from his touch. "What did that vile creature do to you this time?"
"You've got to stop letting him discorporate you so often," said Sandalphon. "New bodies don't grow on trees."
"Now, now, Sandalphon – I'm sure Raphael does everything he can to avoid the inconvenience. It isn't easy, squaring off against a Prince of Hell on a regular basis."
If Crowley had had a body, he'd have choked on his own saliva. "Aziraphale's... Aziraphale's a Prince of Hell?"
"Who?" said Sandalphon, blinking.
"I believe that's what the demon was called prior to his expulsion from Heaven," Gabriel told him quickly. "That's where he took 'Zira' from."
"Prince of Hell, really?" Crowley's head was swimming – or would have been if he'd had one.
Sandalphon continued on as though Crowley hadn't interrupted. "I don't recall any Aziraphale."
"Sure you do," Gabriel told him. "Little fat angel, always messing up his assignments? He was pretty incompetent back in the good old days. Honestly, before he became such a big shot...you know..." He pointed at the floor under their feet and cleared his throat. "Heaven was better off without him."
Springing forward, Crowley lunged at him.
"What the hell?" Gabriel's purple eyes widened in shock, dodging this unexpected attack and holding him at bay with one raised arm. "Raphael, calm down. You're fine now, I promise, just fill out a few forms and we'll get you a new body and send you on your way. Relax." To Sandalphon, he added, "Michael mentioned he was having a bad day."
A stack of paperwork the size of a bloody Bible materialized in front of him; Crowley moaned and turned away, utterly miserable.
"How's it feel?" Gabriel asked him.
Crowley flexed his new hand – the same as the old one but cramped from the excessive paperwork. "It feels just–" Tears began to fill his new eyes – which were just as blue as the last set. "Tickety-boo."
"Ready to go back?"
He nodded – he was quite finished with Heaven. Had been for a long, long time.
'ello, it's Wednesday morning!
Crowley sat up in bed – his cascading hair settled against the middle of his back.
He looked around dismally at everything, all of it exactly how it was the last time he'd been in this room that wasn't his – this room above what should be Aziraphale's bookshop.
It's overcast today, with a fifty to sixty percent chance of rain, so you best have your brolly on hand just in case –
Crowley's hand slammed down on the radio alarm clock. "This," he said through his teeth, very quietly, "is Hell on earth."
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies could be delayed.