*All characters, aside from two spectacularly unimpressive lesser demons, are the intellectual and creative property of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I didn't invent the Boy Scouts either. Just go with it. Title quote the property of a vaguely known playwright called Shakespeare, from As You Like It: Act 4 Scene 2 Page 4, whose wisdoms I have peppered liberally across this work.*
"Crowley...pick up the phone this instant...I want to speak with you!"
"I'm probably out right now," answerphone Crowley drawled coolly, "or asleep…" he continued, "or," he went on, with considerable, and in Aziraphale's opinion, wholly unnecessary and frankly hyperbolic dramatic flare, "enacting the malevolent machinations of the unnamable forces of the Netherworld…"
"He really must update his answerphone," murmured the angel, addressing a stack of books piled to the bookshop ceiling. He flicked his hand in irritation, banishing an errant spider in a fit of rebellious, idle miracle making. Shucks to you, Michael, thought Aziraphale mutinously.
"Or drinking...cavorting...general mischief making, evil brewing...you know the sort of thing," offered answerphone Crowley, helpfully. "But I'll get back to you soon…"
"Crowley, I've got to speak to you! Call me back as soon as-"
"If I can be bothered," finished Crowley, with a yawn that was not so much audible as implied.
"Bugger," muttered Aziraphale, exiting the call with a sharp exhale of combined resignation, frustration and regret. The phone was placed back on to its hook with slightly more force than was strictly angelic before the dial to leave a message could sound it's supercilious beep.
"I never meant to sound stand-offish," Aziraphale addressed the cookery section, hopelessly. A hardback Deliah Smith volume, picturing a showily fluffy Victoria Sponge cake on its front cover, seemed to stare back, pityingly.
Aziraphale felt rather flat and soggy in comparison.
He exhaled sharply and flounced towards the kitchen with an aggrieved 'huff'. Bitter words could be sweetened, he felt, with enough cocoa. It would have to be Damn sweet cocoa though.
Meanwhile, two lesser demons of Pandemonium huddled against the front door of A.Z Fell & Co., proud purveyor of Antiquarian and Unusual books , subtly pointed ears and pockmarked cheeks pressed against the casement windows. They would leave a greasy stain on the spotless windows. Hell, it transpired, was not conducive to maintaining a healthy complexion. Nor was the lack of fresh fruit, which was not part of the encouraged Hellish dieta.
Suffice it to say, they were not Bibliophiles, and were not here to enquire after a copy of Shakespeare's first folio. Which was just as well, as Aziraphale would not have sold it. It was signed.
The dark velvet of the night lent their already illishly grey skin a ghoulish tinge, and they hunkered conspiratorially against the late Summer breeze.
They were cold, up here. When you called the fiery vista of Inferno home, everywhere else began to seem rather chilly, in comparison. It was like living in a home for the elderly where the heating was permanently turned up high enough to shrivel any inanimate object with less moisture than a prune, with much less opportunity to play Scrabble. They did, however, occasionally enjoy a game of Monopoly. It was good for inciting murderous riots on the duller days.
Blessed - or rather, cursed, to be precise, with obscenely excellent hearing (all the better for hearing their Dark Master's insidious commands), they had been able to pick up every word. More or less. Both of them suffered quite badly with infernal ear wax. It really did build up over the millennia.
Demons, on the whole, are not particularly evil. Oh sure, they played at it. They were Foul, Cruel, Vindictive and Bad-tempered certainly...but no worse than humans. The legions of Hell operate on an around 70/30 ratio of the truly evil and the generally dimwitted.
Luckily for Aziraphale and Crowley, these particular demons were swaying towards the latter side of the equation.
After 'Crowley's' frankly spectacular demonstration of apparent immunity to Holy Water, there had been quite a buzz in Pandemonium. Beelzebub, with the air of a desolate, long suffering Prince of Hell that had suffered-quite-enough-for-one-day, thankyou, had instructed his Demonic Duke Hastur, who had delegated to Ligur, who had in turn shoved the job onto one of his subordinates, who in his stead had cornered the pair of them, and informed them that they must on no uncertain terms, 'keep an eye on the flash snakey bastard and the poncey angel boyfriend, and report back anything developments, or else!'
Hell, it is fair to infer from this demonic game of Chinese Whispers, was attempting a metaphorical 'washing of Hands.' However, like the stain of Duncan's vital fluids on Lady Macbeth's bloody hands, the rogue demon Crowley had left a stubborn taint it was proving quite difficult to fully eradicate. It was all a bit embarrassing really. A demon defying the origins of it's Hellish Home. The Lord was displeased.
Yes Hell, or rather, those in charge within it - had to be seen to be taking 'firm actions.' Disciplinary measures, if you will. Keeping tabs, at least. No good if the lesser demons started getting rebellious stirrings. Crowley had to be seen as someone they were keeping an eye on. That was where Heelian and Pleidor came in.
Like many inhabitants of the Netherworld, they had been attracted to the forces of Darkness by sheer convenience rather than any real sense of conviction. You killed more flies with Vinegar than honey, after all. It was a lot easier, they found, to get by if you were just enough of a bastard about it. Demonicism was an ugly job, but somebody, they figured, had to do it. They might as well give it their worst-ish shot with some gusto. They'd been given a task to do, and they were sure as hell going to do their Dark Master proud.
If it wasn't too hard, or more than mildly inconvenient, obviously. They'd maybe consider leaving it, if they had a chance to shirk off the first modicum of responsibility bestowed upon them without anyone too important noticing.
"What did the Angel say?" muttered Pleidor, an acrid smell of pewter accompanying his words as his breath made smoky clouds in the cool midnight air.
"He's tryin' to call Crowley," answered Heelian in a low tone. "Says he never meant to sand the stand-of-fish."
There was a pregnant pause. The demons considered this.
"Well...what does that mean?" asked Pleidor.
"I reckon it's code," mused Heelian. "The Stand-of-Fish could be Heavenly lingo for something."
"Like what?" asked Pleidor, with a dull curiosity.
"I Dunno, do I?!" answered Heelian crossly, admitting defeat after a few moments of deep consideration. (As deep as Heelian's consideration ever got, that was. Which, incidentally, was around the same depth of a particularly shallow puddle).
"Could mean anything. They're weird, Up That Way."
"The son fed 5000 with them once," replied Pleidor, the marginally brighter of the two, accessing dusty reserves hitherto unknown to anyone, not least himself. "A stand-of-fish, that is," he elaborated, in answer to Heelian's furrowed brow. "And," he continued, unearthing unnerving Biblical knowledge, "'e were a carpenter, before the promotion, weren't he? Which would explain the sandin'."
There was another pause as the Demonic duo considered the complexities of potentially coded Heavenly linguistics. Rusted mental cogs whirred, with considerable squeaking, grinding, and general squeals of disuse before grinding to an unimpressive holt.
The contemplative silence was shattered as a sleek black Bentley careered around the corner as though the pointed teeth of Hell were nipping at the hem of his obscenely tight jeans. Which two of the less impressive ones were, kind of, or at least half-heartedly trailing after.
Approximately ninety minutes previously, the sleek black door of Crowley's Mayfair flat had been flung open in a blaze of heady, fool-hardy frustration before the doorbell had even finished ringing.
The small, chubby caller - a boy of about nine or ten (he was, in fact, nine and three-quarters) - gazed up at the Man. If a man was, indeed, what he was. He seemed more, different, other, than a man somehow. If the child could have articulated any of these stunted, startled thoughts into motion, he might have run. But despite his better judgement, his Merell clad feet remained stubbornly rooted to the glistening pavement.
A stranger was just a friend you hadn't met yet, after all. That's what his Leader had always said. Unless they were trying to speak to you on an Internet Chat Room, or were offering you sweets from white vans. Then they were Trouble, with a capital T. But this man, he was sure, simply needed to be wonderful over with a dose of Enthusiasm, a dash of Politeness and a Big Friendly Smile.
Watery, bespectacled blue eyes met a furiously slitted, serpentine gaze.
The boy's gap-toothed grin faltered slightly under the man's quelling stare. He felt rather like a mouse being encircled by a Boa Constrictor he had once seen on a David Attenborough programme on a Sunday night before bed. Although he tried to love all of God's dear creatures, all things great and small, he didn't really care for snakes. He thought they were creepy.
"Well?" hissed Crowley, ominously quiet and imperious all at once. He towered menacingly over the small, bemused boy with the air of an ancient tyrant King. "I suppose you've been sent, have you?"
"Um... " the boy sputtered, "I…I suppose so, yes..."
"Bastards! They're recruiting them younger and younger. Disgusting, it is. Being used as a mortal puppet are you? A flesh instrument of the torturous retribution for my betrayal...come to exact the Dark Lord's revenge plan on the treacherous A J Crowley, have you? I knew it was only a matter of time before Down Below got wind of it..."
"I, uh…"
"Oh, I knew it was too good to be true," despaired Crowley. "Knew we couldn't get off so easily. What's that damn annoying song? I should be so lucky," his voice rose in a terrible (in the sense of being both extremely bad, and terror inducing) sonorous parody of the Australian pop singer.
"Lucky, lucky, bloody LUCKY," shouted Crowley, his voice wavering dangerously. The demon's voice reverberated around the sleek landing, a hundred unhinged echoes filling the room. Somewhere behind Crowley, a multitude of house plants became minutely more vibrant and a smidge healthier looking, in an act of preemptive self-defense.
The boy remained, though he took a sensible step backwards.
"Come on then,"continued Crowley, the mania in his tone shifting up an octave. "Do your worst, demon spawn. What's it to be? Agonising Hell Fire? Simply dragging me back down for some nice, old-fasioned eternal torture? Come to bring me a lovely old boulder to drag up some god-forsaken hill for all the unknowable ethers of an immeasurable eternity?"
"Sir…" stuttered the boy, hardening the most steely of his resolve and remembering his Sacred Oaths…"I wonder if I could take a moment of your time to tell you about the Fourth Kensington Boy Scouts?"
Crowley paused. Not quite the infernal torture he'd been expecting, but still...
Emboldened by this ceasefire in the strange man's incessant monologue, the boy continued, swinging a large canvas backpack from his shoulders and producing from its mysterious depths a battered Tupperware box of what looked like some form of biscuit. It's contents rattled suspiciously, as though most of its contents were now more crumb than cookie. Which would have been an accurate assessment.
"We're having a fundraiser, you see," Timothy Brown, proud member of South London's Premium Youth Club, 'Friend to All' and exemplary student of Scoutcraft skills, explained patiently.
"Selling homemade cookies, you see Sir, to make money. We need a new minivan if we're going to get our Camping badges. The other one hasn't driven right since Mikey Deansgate stuffed his scarf and Metalwork badge up the exhaust pipe."
There was another pregnant pause, in which Crowley seemed to weigh up the veracity of the boy's statement. He'd rather thought the Boy Scouts movement had beenone of their ideas...but maybe he was thinking of the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
"So...you're ah, not a messenger puppet of the Dark Lord sent to drag me back to the fiery pits of Hell, then?" asked Crowley, injecting a determined note of faux insouciance into his tone.
"No, Sir," ploughed on Timmy with a determined air. "I've never even met Voldemort," and continuing with the steely resolve of an unscrupulous second hand car salesman, "would you prefer Chocolate Chip, Ginger and Cinnamon or Raspberry and Coconut? I've only got a six packet of the Ginger and Cinnamon left but they're gluten and refined sugar free…"
Crowley took the last of the Ginger, just to be inconspicuous. It was Mayfair, after all. He also took four boxes of the decimated Chocolate Chip off the boy's hands, by way of apology. As well as three of the Raspberry and Coconut, because coconut was Aziraphale's favourite. The wrong 'un.
It was fair to say he was feeling paranoid. Something must be done. London was not the place to lie low. He, or they, rather - for they were a team now, a side all of their own (and had, admittedly in Crowley's eyes, anyway - been so long before the Apoco-wasn't).
He produced a sleek black IPhone from the pocket of his exquisite Armani blazer, and called Aziraphale.
"Oh hello, Crowley, it's me!" Aziraphale had sounded, all jolly as usual. He always sounded so pleased to hear Crowley's voice. Like a happy golden retriever when it's master came home. It would have cheered Crowley up, had he not been 6ft 2 of man-shaped nervous energy at that precise moment in time. He'd have quite liked to shift into a snake, it was easier to think straight - but it made talking on the phone with any clarity an impossibility.
"I need to speak to you," he'd said brusquely. "And I know it's you, I called you, didn't I? Obviously."
"Is everything alright?" Aziraphale had asked, sounding touchingly worried. "You seem...tense."
Understatement of the century.
"Never been better," Crowley replied, grimly. "But listen, I think we're being watched. Monitored. By management, that is."
"Really?" Aziraphale had asked, now not sounding nearly worried enough, in Crowley's opinion. "Already? I thought we'd have longer. A breath of fresh air on both sides, you said."
"I know. I know what I said," replied Crowley impatiently. "So did I," he admitted after a moment. "But since this morning I've just..had a feeling. A sense. Something wicked this way comes and all that."
Aziraphale considered this at the other end of the line. Crowley wondered if he was going to panic.
"But really, dear," replied Aziraphale with calm matter-of-factness, surprising him, "being watched isn't so frightening, is it? They most likely just want to be seen to be doing something, surely? A box to tick in head office, you know what it's like. Punctilious pen-pushing. We're just another cog in the wheel, as you've said yourself on many occasions. You said you thought they'd leave us alone, at least for a little while. What's brought all this on?"
"Hm," replied Crowley, noncommittally. He'd like to agree. Some part of him did. But eons of backstabbing, conniving, fear and a healthy distrust of authority was catching up to him, now the adrenaline of the swap and the aversion of the Apocalypse was wearing off. Their victory would be short-lived if they didn't act fast. He wasn't sure how long he could guarantee their safety. And he needed to know Aziraphale was safe. Preferably with him.
Inspiration struck. Divine.
"You know, you're probably right," flattered Crowley, just a touch of the old 'let-me-tempt-you,' wheedle entering his tone. "But I've been thinking...now everything's over...we should have a change of scenery," Crowley had said, his tone containing a forced lightness his eyes, had Aziraphale been able to see them, belied. Crowley was trying very, very hard to sound as though the Angel's answer didn't really matter to him, one way or the other. Which was, frankly, a big, fat flaming lie.
The Angel had gone very, very quiet. The static buzzed with unspoken emotion Crowley could not identify. He plunged recklessly on, hoping the silence was merely acquiesce in disguise.
"We could….move. To a little cottage, or something. In the countryside. Lie low."
There was another pause.
"But, Crowley...how could we? I mean, we couldn't possibly. What about the bookshop, your flat?"
"Oh, they're just props, aren't they? We've never needed them. Forget about the bookshop. You get about two customers a year anyway, no-one will even notice you've packed up. "
"But Dear Boy, be that as it may," Aziraphale had blustered, and it was he who sounded strained now. "It's just all...terribly sudden. We can't just go careering off to the Countryside on a whim...lovely as it sounds...we'd have to think, to plan…I mean I couldn't possibly just-Head Office would...too many questions...still have duties...still an angel after-"
"Fine," Crowly snapped, desperate to just cut off the rest of the flustered tirade on the other end of the line. His heart hurt. He was stressed. He needed a whiskey. Or a hug...preferably from an angel. His angel. Oh for hell...heavens...someone's damn bloody heavenly sake this was infuriating. All these emotions. How did humans manage it? Maybe that was why they could only live so long, the sheer deluge of feelings just burned them out until they sparked like cheap lighters, extinguished forever. It was overwhelming. Hurt, Longing, Frustration rolled over him in waves at a hundred miles an hour. Why couldn't he just pick one and roll with it?
He decided to go for Anger with a dash of Devil-May-Care callousness . It felt appropriate, for a Demon. Comfortable. Like slipping on your favourite pair of well worn jeans.
"Suit yourself. Be like that. Be...stand-offish. But you care about me Angel. You'll miss me if I go. And you know it. But don't expect me to be mooning around waiting for you to deign to join me. And ah, don't be offended if I don't leave a forwarding address. Oh, and don't even think about crying to me all holier-than-thou shock and surprise when you find out Archangel Gabriel's been spying on you through the key-hole, just waiting for some dirt to dish out to Head Office."
"Now, Crowley-"
He threw the phone down before Aziraphale could stutter another word of reprimand, shooting a vindictive glower at the houseplants. "What are you looking at, you disgusting gutter weeds?" he enquired viciously.
A particularly deep, verdant leaf, worthy of a Babylonian Garden, sprouted from thin air in what was, in his opinion, a show of sheer spite.
The righteous glow of zealous anger was fading, leaving Crowley feeling desolate. It had been satisfying. For about four seconds. And then a familiar weight of loneliness settled around his heart, or where he thought his heart might have been, once upon a time. An extra pang descended when he considered Aziraphale, probably pacing the bookshop floor in agitated bewilderment this very second. Angels, he supposed, were simply not meant for spontaneity. He should have seeded the idea slowly, gently, over time. He knew better. He knew Aziraphale better. He knew he had taken a hasty, miscalculated risk. And had, admittedly, probably been a bit of a bastard about it in the process.
He sighed, and flopped on the practically unused grey sofa. It was stylish, sinfully expensive, stiff with disuse and painfully uncomfortable. His posterior felt square after little more than a few seconds of desolate flopping, so he switched, rearranging long jean clad legs into a position more aptly described as 'princely lounging.'
He stared up at the tiled ceiling. The refrigerator hummed. Crowley ruminated. Sulked. Glared with Dark Intensity.
'I spy with my little eye,' he said aloud, just to break the deathly silence - "something beginning with 'A.'
'Ooh, I know! I know! It's Angel, an unbidden and hauntingly familiar voice asked delightedly from the periphery of Crowley's imagination.'
'Nope,' Crowley thought smugly, mentally popping the 'p' and pleased to have defeated a fictitious replica of Aziraphale borne of his own imagination.
'Hmm. You are a wiley one. I know! I've got it this time. It's...Aziraphale!'
'You're wrong again! Not very good at this, are you?"
"Well, you're the one talking to me in your own head," huffed his imaginary Aziraphale, before shutting up in an act of fictitious rebellion.
"It was 'A Great Big Spider's Web,' Crowley announced pathetically to the empty room.
"That's cheating," the Aziraphale inside his head muttered reprovingly.
Crowley sighed. Talking to Aziraphale when he wasn't there was a Bad Habit he had slipped into over the years, exacerbated when they'd had what the angel euphemistically called 'A Little Disagreement,' and were not on speaking terms as a matter of mutual celestial pride.
It really was true, he reflected. Stick around for more than a couple of millenia and you really did start to crack-up like a too soft-boiled egg. But possible crazed paranoia aside, he was still worried about being poached. Or worse - devilled.
He resumed staring at the checkered ceiling. 'Sod it,' he thought a rebellious, hedonistic sense of freedom suddenly fuelling him. Life was for living. Even if it was eternal. They'd wasted enough time already.
They'd outwitted management before. Should the need arise, who was to say they couldn't do it again?
He would make it up with the Angel. They'd been through enough. No use being petulant about Aziraphale being exactly how he was designed to be. Changes were going to take time. They'd just have to be...cautious.
But still.
Best to let him fret a little first. Let him consider what he was missing.
But how to pass the time before then? He sighed, beginning to count the black and white tiles on the cobwebbed ceiling and with a lazy demonic miracle, flicking his 'Best of the 80s' CD into the state of the art home music system.
Eurythmics 1985 classic 'There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)'
sounded out through smart design, bi-wire 606 speakers, filling the flat with Annie Lennox's crooning. Crowley groaned.
He'd forgotten this was the first track.
"Must be talking to an angel
Must be talking to an angel
Must be talking to an angel
Must be talking to an angel
Must be talking to an angel," Lennox sang rapturously.
'Yeah, got the picture cheers Annie. Not talking to an angel, right this second, thanks', thought Crowley, grimly. 'Had enough of the lot of them, prim gits.'
"There must be an angel
Playing with my heart…"
Crowley had had enough. Flicking his hand furiously, the track skipped to the next song.
"Don't know what to do,
You're looking for love,
Calling Heaven above,
Send me an angel,
Send me an angel,
Right now, right now,"
Sang New Zealand synth-pop one-hit wonders, Real Life, immortally frozen in 1983.
He suddenly viciously hated the 1980s. The music in the 1880s had been much better than this drivel. Give him Tchaikovsky over Billy Joel, any day of the week. He did quite like the artist formerly known as Prince, he had to admit. That guy could sing. And he admired any man that could change his name to a symbol.
With a long-suffering sigh of exhaustion and defeat, he peeled himself from the sofa, gave the blasted stereo the finger before viciously whacking it and shutting it off in one fluid motion, grabbed his jacket, grabbed the car keys to the Bentley and made for the door.
He was going to see the infuriating, hesitant, ridiculous, prim and irritatingly lovely centre of his world.
Aziraphale could be persuaded to see sense. A country cottage would be infinitely nicer than London. Crowley would not, he promised to himself,be packing his 'Top of the 80s' CD.
A short-ish drive later (would have been quicker, but a traffic diversion had forced him to take the M25, always a nightmare), Crowley pulled up outside A. Z Fell & Co. with a short squeal of brakes and a whole lot of style. Bounding out of the car, he ducked into the door of the bookshop, feeling slightly sheepish. The drive had calmed him down. Though...on consideration...could he smell...sulfur? Awhiffof the old fire and brimstone? He shook his head. He really was getting too paranoid. Or maybe just the right amount of paranoid, who knew. Never hurt to be wary. He guessed it was a sensible by-product of a millennia or two of working for Hell.
"Oh! You're here already, are you?" exclaimed the Angel, emerging from the kitchen just as Crowley passed the threshold, white winged mug clutched in one perfectly manicured hand.
"What a performance on the telephone. You hardly let me get a word in edgeways! I thought you'd be sulking for months."
"I was thinking years," confessed Crowley. "But..thought better of it. Turns out you're the only one I've got left to talk to, you see..." he smiled a lopsided smile with a subtle hint of an apology only Aziraphale could detect hidden in its curve. "Apart from the plants, that is. But, uh, they never have any wine. Or cake."
Aziraphale smiled despite himself. "Hmm," he said, a small, reluctant twitch of the lips, from which Crowley inferred he was forgiven, or almost.
"Speaking of," he said, cementing his absolution, "brought you some cookies. Coconut."
"Ooh!" exclaimed Aziraphale, cerulean eyes lighting up with delight. "'My favourite."
"I know," said Crowley, casually.
Aziraphale considered him seriously for a moment. "Thankyou, Crowley," he began earnestly. "That was very sweet of you."
Crowley resisted the urge to lean forward, to stare into the angel's eyes in an attempt to X-ray into the innermost matter of his brain, to try to read his thoughts. How could someone he knew so well simultaneously be such a damn mystery to him?
"S' only biscuits," muttered Crowley, praying- ha, slip of the tongue...willing himself not to blush and absurdly pleased to be apparently forgiven. "Don't know an angel for a few millennia without learning his favourite flavour, do you?"
"It would seem not," said Aziraphale, snapping out of his reverie and smiling properly. "I really do have a penchant for the noix de coco."
Crowley breathed an internal sigh of relief. He felt vulnerable, somehow. Naked. The angel truly Saw him in a way that no-one else really did. It was unnerving. And nice. Confusing.
"But listen, dear boy," said Aziraphale, setting down the tupperware peace offering on a nearby antique coffee table and mystifyingly, infuriatingly, managing to surprise him still, after all these years. "Never mind the delicious confectionary. We need to talk."
Crowley was rooted to the spot. He felt suddenly afraid of what Aziraphale might have to say. What he might shatter. Good old fashioned fear. Not very befitting a demon. They were meant to incite it in others, not feel it themselves. He began to fiddle with the temple of his sunglasses, tipping the ear pieces up and down like a ridiculous jack-in-a-box.
He was so far from cool right now.
Embarrassing.
"Crowley, please take the sunglasses off, dear. I want to look into your eyes when I'm explaining this to you."
"I'm alright, thanks," mumbled Crowley, petulantly, emotional shutters down, self-defence mechanisms in full working order. Completing the picture, his chin jutted in self-righteous defiance.
"Oh really, Crowley. You're being ridiculous," huffed the Angel.
"Oh that's rich," Crowley said bitterly, exploding suddenly, the afternoons rollercoaster of emotions resuming, setting him spinning like a Victorian whirligig yet again. He began to circle a mishmash tower of leather-bound hardbacks like a menacing vulture.
"Ridiculous, am I? I'll tell you what's ridiculous...still trying to pander to the rules and regulations of the powers that be in Heaven when you've already practically done a metaphorical naked bloody tango on the Angelic Code, told the major Archangels to stick a shot of hell-fire and a Pitchfork up their backsides and replaced the Holy Sacrament with a rice cake and a...Ribena!"
"Now really," expostulated Aziraphale. "I know we've broken some rules but you're being grossly excessive!"
There was a brief pause as Aziraphale considered his words.
"Although," he murmured, the chuckle simmering in his voice, tenuously offering Crowley a metaphorical olive branch, "the visual of Sandalphon with...with...a Pitchfork up their bottom is highly amusing,"
There was a pause.
"They'd look like the Celestial Equivalent of a mushroom skewer," ventured Crowley, after a moment.
The angel and the demon dissolved into the irreverent peels of laughter of two naughty schoolboys mocking the headteacher.
The tension was broken. For a moment.
"Now please do take the glasses off," begged Aziraphale, when he had stopped giggling. He reached for them, preparing to snatch them from the Demon's hands.
The laugh died on Crowley's lips. This was a point of pride. His sunglasses were a line of defence. They bought him time to disguise whatever genuine emotion he might be feeling at the time. Eyes were traitorous beasts, even, he supposed Snake Eyes. They always showed the truth, no matter what your mouth might reveal. Should Aziraphale deny him again, he didn't want the hurt to show.
He swatted Aziraphale's pale hand away rudely. "Oh, piss off, will you? I...I just want to keep them on, alright?"
Aziraphale, refusing to be beaten, concentrated. The glasses slid from Crowley's nose and flew into the space between them in yet another display of unnecessary miracle making. Before long they were back on the bridge of Crowley's nose, as the demon furiously exerted his own hellish will.
"For heaven's sake!' muttered Aziraphale
"I. Told. You," hissed Crowley, "the glasses STAY ON."
This mini, and it must be stated, rather less dramatic enactment of the battle of heaven and hell, was waged for a good three minutes. Crowley's sunglasses took a veritable turn around the room, batted like a ping pong ball from one opponent to the other. Eventually the said glasses, exhausted by their role as an infernal instrument of this divine and demonic power play, shattered into tiny fragments in protest. Black shards littered the bookshop floor, sparking like tiny meteorites on the wooden slats.
The Angel and the Demon stared down at the shards.
"Oh dear," said Aziraphale weakly.
"Broken my damn sunglasses now," chuntered Crowley sullenly and unnecessarily.
He did, of course, have 23 other pairs in his glove compartment alone, but this was a fact that Aziraphale simply did not need to know right now.
Silence filled the room like an unwelcome stench. It was agonising. They never normally suffered from uncomfortable silences when they were together. The advantage of having several millennia to refine a rapport that had really been solid from the start. But this wasn't silence, not truly. Not their usual kind of cosy silence, borne from the afterglow of a good meal, a good wine, a good conversation. The atmosphere, the very air that surrounded them, was laden, heavy with the words left unsaid.
"Look - what I wanted to say about...about the cottage...about us going...it's not because I don't want to, or that I don't...that I don't care to, you great fool," blurted Aziraphale desperately. "I-I very much-that is to say, I...one might go as far as to suggest...that, in fact-"
"For someone that knows so very many words," replied Crowley bitterly, jaw rigid with 6000 years of repressed frustration, "you're not very good at using them, are you?" He sighed. "We're going round in circles angel. Always crashing in the same car."
He looked at the elegant watch attached to his elegant arm ostentatiously, a faux bravado filling his tone and leaving a bitter aftertaste in Aziraphale's mouth.
"I'd better be off," he said, without looking at the Angel. "Things to do, plants to terrorise, whiskey to drink."
He turned sharply on his heel, and began to pace darkly towards the door, exquisite snakeskin shoes reverberating impressively on the wooden slats of the shop.
Aziraphale could not let him go. Not like this. His heart simply couldn't bear it. Every fibre of his being was calling to the demon; 'come baaaack!'
The heart was hard to translate, it had its very own language. One that his mouth, at this particular moment, wasn't willing to learn.
"I-I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation," Aziraphale said, overly loudly, addressing Crowley's back and desperately tripping over the familiar words in his haste to explain himself.
Crowley whipped around so fast a human eye might have missed it.
"What are you blathering on about now, Angel?" he asked, a note of frustration tinged with...a subtle kind of hope tinting his tone.
"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation...It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun1."
Crowley still looked bemused, yet a subtle glow of eagerness had illuminated the fine, sharp planes of his face.
"I'm having to borrow someone else's words, you see. My tongue doesn't seem to want to cooperate. My usual eloquence has, it would seem, evaporated.
My feelings for you, Crowley, are...well, they're ineffable. No, don't scoff - that's what they are. Ineffable. I have no words for them that feel big enough. So please just listen, and understand, and know that should, heaven forbid, your existence cease to be, my life would suddenly be very bleak and very dull and in fact, quite pointless. And I love you. Obviously.
I think the only law I really live by these days is that you're like the sun to me now. I think I only really know how to exist in your orbit."
Crowley was quiet.
And still too far away.
Aziraphale couldn't bear to look at him, afraid of what he might see in his beloved Demon's face.
Instead, he inspected an interesting part of the room just past Crowley's shoulder. It was safe. He caught sight of an errant edition of King Lear in the process, which had clearly decided it would be much happier living in the Victorian Literature section, thank you very much.
"And, ah, if that's not clear enough for you,' murmured Aziraphale, heart thumping, mouth dry, "let me steal the words once more -
'I love you more than words can wield the matter…' that is to say, that you, Crowley...my dear, darling boy, are dearer to me than eyesight, space, Liberty2, Heaven...and...and Macaroons. Even the Noix de Coco ones from Le Chat Noir in Paris."
"Even...even the coconut ones, eh?" said Crowley, in a voice that tried very hard to be casual, and was painfully, obviously, not so.
"Yes," replied Aziraphale simply.
With a gulp, he lifted his eyes to Crowley's. Eyes the colour of a pale summer sky met a golden serpentine gaze. The pure love he saw within that gaze quite took the breath right out of him.
Crowley advanced slowly, taking his time.
He'd already waited six thousand years.
What were a few more seconds?
Aziraphale's heart thumped traitorously in his chest. He felt like someone had hold of his heart in an iron grip, and was pressing very tightly. It was not altogether unpleasant. A new sensation. Painful, in an exquisite kind of way.
A pale elegant hand reached out to cup Aziraphale's chin, surprisingly soft hands tracing the line of his jaw, inducing a sharp, delighted, longing intake of breath from the angel.
"Well, if we're quoting," said the fallen one, impossibly softly, "hear my soul speak. Of the instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly, at your service3. And that's the...that's the God honest truth, Angel."
"You always did prefer the comedies," breathed Aziraphale, heart signing a veritable angelic chorus.
Crowley smiled his most Crowley-ish smile. Tempter. Foul, delicious, kind, tempting fiend, thought Aziraphale fondly.
"Well," replied the demon, equally soft, their noses practically touching now. "I preferred the company more than the material, if you know what I mean."
Aziraphale could feel Crowley's breath on his cheek. He could see every pore, count every eyelash. He breathed, absorbing the divine symmetry of his beloved demon's face.
In the end, it was Aziraphale that made the first move. After considering Crowley for a moment that felt like a small fragment of forever, sheer love emanating from the heart of him - and oh, he never knew he could contain, could feel this much love - it was radiating from the very essence of his being - he was surprised the whole of London wasn't high on it - he kissed his demon, lightly and fully on the mouth, gentle as a summer breeze, hands lightly resting on his shoulders.
It was a kiss that might almost have been described as chaste. But it was not so. It was sacred. It was profound. The first of many. A Good Omen of things to come.
After a moment, Aziraphale stepped back - not from any desire to distance himself from Crowley, but rather in the way that one admires a masterpiece - stepping back to fully appreciate a work of the Sublime variety.
"I'll go with you. You are my home, now. I'd follow you anywhere. But give me a month. To...prepare. To get things in order, to...you know," he said vaguely, wafting a hand with an expression intended to encompass a mass of swift productivity, "to sort things out."
Crowley could not find the words.
He closed the distance between them in one easy stride - Aziraphale was too far away again - really it would be easier if they could just stay this close forever, nose to nose, perhaps they could consider using super glue, thought Crowley, confusedly. He grasped his Angel's face with both hands, pressing his mouth down on Aziraphale's firmly, confidently. Where Aziraphale's kiss had been light, a brush of an angel wing, a drop of summer rain, Crowley's was a tsunami of six thousand years of passion, slow, coaxing, sensual. Delicious and tender with just a small promise of the delightful wickedness to come. Everything a kiss from a fallen angel should be, really.
The angel responded to him unthinkingly, reflecting dazedly that they fit perfectly together, two halves of one whole destined to be fused together. Star Cross'd. Perhaps they'd been crafted from the same one.
After several long moments, or minutes, or years, Aziraphale wasn't sure, they broke away, ever so slightly, and he found his fingers were wound in the demon's soft russet hair.
The clouds above parted, and a stream of moonlight beamed down benevolently from the bookshop's domed ceiling, cloaking the still entwined pair in a silver sheen. Aziraphale's pale cloud of hair was transmuted to moonshine, Crowley's amber eyes alchemised to liquid gold. All was still. Everything was beautiful.
"We'll sort it out," murmured Crowley, infinitely soft. "We'll go. In our own sweet time. No more running. No more rushing...but together?"
Aziraphale shut his eyes, and beamed out good old-fashioned heavenly euphoria, it took effort - you could only shine it when you really meant it - and an aura of sheer bliss enveloped the both of them. It felt like a salve to Crowley's every wound, a balm for every fear, absolution for every misdeed. This was his heaven. Their heaven. The only one they needed.
"Together," Aziraphale agreed, breathing every ounce of love he could muster into the word.
They smiled at one another. It was enough.
There was nothing to sort out, not really. Possessions could be moved, the material objects of a few hundred thousand years packed up easily enough, letters forwarded. It was all irrelevant, really. But Crowley recognised, deep down, that this was an Adjustment period.
Whereas he would have rushed in, heedless of good judgement and sense, Aziraphale had intuitively known what he had missed...they both needed a little breather. A moment to stop and smell the roses, as it were, before jumping to the next garden.
A month was good. A Recalibration. They were More now, or rather the Moreness that had always been between them had been acknowledged, finally.
They had to explore the limits of what they could be, to enjoy this new peace. Explore this new heaven and lay down the doctrine of their Own Side.
They'd taken a big step, today. It made sense to pace themselves. They loved each other and they had eternity. That's all that mattered.
Forever - a word which had always incited a dull ache of loneliness in the pit of Crowley's stomach, suddenly sounded a delicious prospect.
With Aziraphale by his side, he knew that Eternity wouldn't feel like long at all.
Epilogue:
When all had been quiet for some time, Heelion and Pleidor steeled themselves and furtively - or as furtively as one could manage to stick one's head out of a Council bin - planned their next maneuver from the small grassy verge, just behind A Z Fell & Co., where they had taken refuge at the sudden approach of Crowley.
Dawn was beginning to spread across the Eastern sky, bringing with it a crisp freshness, a sense of newness. It lent everything - even the two demons - a vaguely rose-tinted glow. Gold and blush pink, with just a hint of pale eggshell blue, swirled across the horizon, paint flung with careless abandon on God's Own Easel. She was a good painter. The best. An old hat at it, by now, that Omnipotent artist who lived in the Everything.
Birds twittered benignly in the trees. A cat meowed knowingly, somewhere in the distance.
After much grumbling and general kerfuffle, Pleidor and Heelion managed to gain enough momentum to rock the bins forward, eventually tipping them over and crawling out onto the pavement in what they hoped was a suitably terrifyingly demonic fashion. If anyone had heard the ensuing crash, no indication from within the shop was given. They peered surreptitiously through the clouded back window. All was dark. All was quiet.
Heelion had the remnants of a Scone crusted onto a tattered t-shirt, and Pleidor had a banana skin attached to his cheek. Frankly, that was the least of their hygiene issues.
Stealthily - no use their subterfuge being rumbled so early on, after all - they crept, shuffled, blundered to the front of the shop, keeping low.
"Crowley's car's still there," Heelion pointed out, who was the more observant of the pair, despite being unquestionably the stupider.
"Been a long time," replied Pleidor, accurately, if not very insightfully.
"Yeah," agreed Heelion, dully.
"What, uh, shall we do then?"
There was a pause.
"Stay and wait, I suppose," said Heelion, unenthusiastically. It really was chilly, Upstairs. Enough to make you miss the temperate clime of the Fiery Pits.
"We could always make...an arrangement," broached Pleidor, in an uncharacteristic show of wiliness.
Heelion glanced at him from the side of one dull red eye. They were on dangerous, if tempting, territory.
"What do you mean, an arrangement?" he asked cautiously.
"Well, I means," began Pleidor tentatively, we've been here all night, ain't we? And nothing's happened. Nothing to report. Nothing of interest. He came round, he stayed, the angel talked about fish. Boring. Like anyone is going to be interested in that."
Heelion was quiet, wary of saying anything incriminating, but privately agreed.
"So, we was told, keep an eye on the demon and the boyfriend. No sense us tailing them up here all the hours that Satan sends, is there? Boring, ain't it?"
"What," asked Heelion, cutting to the chase with characteristic bluntness, "are you saying?"
"I'm saying," said Pleidor in a low voice, "that we maybe just...uses our imagination, a little bit."
"Our imagination," repeated Heelion, puzzled. He thought he might have one, but wasn't entirely certain. He'd definitely never used it.
"Well," said Pleidor, significantly, "the way I sees it, the bosses don't really care about what Crowley's doin' as long as he's not makin' too much trouble for us. Not Beelzebub, not Hastur, not Ligur. Not really. They'd rather just...put it to the back of their minds. Forget about him. Think he's being dealt with. So we just maybe...goes back and makes it up a bit. Crowley and the Angel are...laying low. Not doing much."
"Not even seeing each other, really, far as we can tell," Heelion suggests, all demonic innocence, finally catching Pleidors drift. "Nothing to report at all, Master Nothing of any in-ter-est at all."
"Exactly," says Pleidor encouragingly. "More trouble than it's worth. Waste of finite Hellish resources. Really...there's not really much point us being up here, is there? Nasty place. Cold. Too many cats."
"No Pleidor," said Heelion significantly, "I don't think there is. Not much point at all."
They look at each other and begin to laugh, slowly, gap toothed grins exposed.
"Come on then," says Pleidor, after a good, healthy, evil chortle. His cheeks hurt. He hadn't smiled like that in ages. "Let's go home."
And with a cloud of acrid grey smog, a cloying smell of Sulfur, and a slight burn mark in the grassy verge, they are swallowed. Back to the firey pit from whence they came. Nice to visit Upstairs, but not for them, thanks. Happier where they were. Damnation wasn't so bad, if you were built for it.
And so it goes on. Two more subtle rebels are born. The line of Heaven and Hell, Good and Bad, becomes ever so subtly blurrier. The world, in its glorious, messy, good-bad, ugly-beautiful imperfect-perfection, spins on, much to the relief of the Angel and the Demon happily ensconced within the Bookshop walls. They'd lived to see another day, another sunrise. They'd see many more. Together.
Do R&R, hugely appreciated! To the world. Stay safe out there, fellow humans, angels and demons, witches and witch hunters, psychics and nuns xx
1 Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XVIII of Volume III, Jane Austen
2 Shakespeare, William. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 1 Page 3
3 Shakespeare, William: The Tempest: Act 3 Scene 1