Wednesday Morning, a bookshop in Soho

A.Z. Fell's bookshop is not a "den of iniquity", or anything of the sort. Even if it lies side by side with shops like Silk Slam and Vinyl Fetish. People seeking that kind of establishment have plenty to select from, and not just in Soho. There is no shortage of massage parlors in London. Or all-you-can-eat buffets. Or museums.

Inherently immoral places, museums.

One could argue that places in and of themselves can't be immoral, and that would be quite correct. However, that fails to take into account that all things remember, although not exactly the way humans do.

Museums were private collections of the rich before they became open to the public. The rich were the only ones who could collect things, back then, and often did so in order to impress their peers with antique and exotic items. This is not the same as hoarding, mind. Hoarding implies an unattractive amount of smelliness. This brand of habitual gathering of unnecessary things is called greed, which is considered attractive indeed among the rich.

Gathering is another word that comes with specifications in the context of museums and their founders. Collections could occasionally be expanded through the type of gathering that involves sharp words and even sharper pointy objects of metal, because if something is antique and exotic odds are high someone else already owns it. This prompted owners of prestigious collections to hire simliar staff, with similar pointy objects of metal, that would ensure nothing that was added to the collection ever left it. Greed and envy are, after all, next of kin.

As for smelliness, some collections could be smelly, too. It depended on what was displayed, which in turn was determined by how much respect the rich had for their fellow humans. The exact amount of that respect is best assessed by visiting the Egyptian section of the British Museum.

The British Museum has gathered a very large, and smelly, collection. It has a very large staff, too, but only in daytime. At night, the guard is limited to the six individuals keeping an eye on the monitors in the surveillance room. It is the kind of job that entails a lot of card games, Ben Stiller films, and coffee. Their coffeemaker has no idea what a touchscreen is, and thinks cappuccino is a type of monk, which says something about the age of the thing. But it makes decent coffee and has never poisoned anyone. That they know of.

"Hello?" Newton breathes into the ancient receiver at the reception desk. The museum takes the matter of style seriously, and the coffeemaker isn't the only appliance that could have its own display cabinet.

"Newt? Is something wrong? You sound strange," Anathema says on the other end.

"Not really. I hope. I just wanted to know if you know anything about stomach illness? Or maybe food poisoning? Uh, and what you might do to fix it."

All people, at some point, wish they were living in a book. In a sense, they are. This is because books come from within, manifesting the geography of the human mind in reality. Books are everything sharpened and distilled and real, until they seem more real than reality itself, and that is why books always have and always will shape the world.

Newton was one of those children that physique barred from playing football and physics barred from playing video games. But the books were there, and, like so many children before him, Newton had dreamed of stepping in between their pages to live out the lives of heroes like Robin Hood, Huckleberry Finn, and Dick Turpin. Being told that Dick Turpin wasn't actually a hero doesn't matter much when you are ten years old, as long as you get to have gunfights and daredevil escapes on horseback.

At the moment, Newton is living in an Agatha Christie novel. The one with the unfortunate nursery rhyme name, in which a group of people are invited to an isolated island and die one by one under mysterious circumstances. It is not the book he would have preferred to be in.

"Is it the Thai food?" Anathema asks warily.

"I'm not sick. Not yet." He knocks on the wooden top of the reception desk. "But the others are dropping like flies."

It might come as a surprise that someone like Newton - who has an unusually science-oriented mind, for a witchfinder - bothers with superstitions like knocking on wood. Then again, someone with Newton's propensity for bizarre misfortune is bound to conclude that something beyond the realm of the physical world is keeping him alive, because everything in the physical world seems to work towards the opposite.

The first guard to leave had been Mrs Bains. It started out as a general queasiness and fatigue, for which no water or rest had helped. Eventually, she had resolved that it was better for everyone if she went home so they didn't catch whatever she had caught. Mr Grillo appeared to have caught it anyway, half an hour later, and then the same thing had happened to poor old Mrs Quigg.

"I don't think you're going to be sick, Newt," Anathema says distantly, tapping away at her computer as she speaks. "I think Mr Aziraphale is seeing to that."

Anathema is one of the few people in the world who has literally lived in a book, and is only just now getting used to this reality thing. She still instinctively turns to books to understand the world around her, sometimes. If she sounds a bit distant, it is because her mind is cross-referencing the current situation with select bits from the plagues of Egypt.

It takes a while to adjust to living in reality, as opposed to a book. It takes a while to adjust to other beings out of books inhabiting reality, too.

"Will he make sure they're all right?" Newton asks tentatively.

Anathema thinks some more of Egypt. Then she thinks of coin tricks and hot cocoa.

"Yeah. He will." She hits a few more keys and smiles at her computer. They now have a cosy hotel booked in Los Angeles. Under false names. Three banks within a 500 m radius.

The nursery rhyme never comes as far as "and then there were none", to Newton's relief. That isn't to say that relief is what he feels. It is quite overwhelming, in a both arousing and terrifying way, to actually be doing this. To adjust the zoom on the surveillance cameras and watch the monitors fizz and die one by one. It is a thing out of a dream, out of a book. A breathless, tipping-edge sort of moment.

If Newton is humming the Mission Impossible theme quietly to himself as he slides the gloves on and pockets the keys to the display cabinets, no one will ever know. If he switches to the Indiana Jones theme as he passes through the Religious Icons and Imagery exhibition, no one will know that either. No one will know how nervous he is. How excited he is. How he almost jumps out of his skin whenever his brain wiggles itself into hearing things in the adjacent halls.

Humans don't unleash bursts of energy when they are excited. That isn't to say there aren't bursts of energy, but they are confined to speeding around the nervous system with no way out, like those slot cars Newton could never play with. There is all of the rapid heartbeats, sweating, and inhibition of higher brain functions in Newton tonight, and his hands shake almost too hard to fit the key in the cabinet lock.

A.Z. Fell's bookshop is not a museum, or anything of the sort, because its owner is a firm believer in denial. The shop itself has contemplated taking up the title since the combination of haunted house and museum seems to be working well for Madame Tussauds. It has also contemplated if it will need new floors first.

Aziraphale has not been this physically active since his twenty second jog with Gabriel. He will lose several pounds to pacing, at this rate. And carpets. All sorts of drawbacks to this pacing thing, but it's that or glowing like an anxious night lamp until Newton goes off his shift. Cell phones are a useful contraption, yes – when they work, which in Newton's case is never. Aziraphale has yet to figure out how to make calls without a phone, excitement or not.

The bell above the door gives a merry jingle, and Aziraphale stops pacing.

"Morning," Newton says with a shaky wave of his hand. His eyes have a caffeinated look, a little unfocused and more than a little energetic. He looks like he is soon going to suggest something dreadfully invigorating, like a morning run.

"Good morning! How did it go? Did you get it?" He might be glowing. If he is, he will blame the rising sun for playing tricks with the light.

"It worked," he says, breathless with excited disbelief. "All the others came down with food poisoning and dropped off, and then it was just me. And the monitors. The rest was… easy." His voice is a mix of wonder and terror: the voice of a man who is on the battlefield for the first time and discovers he has a natural talent for its gruesome business. "I could definitely have taken more."

Aziraphale starts on a lesson about how morality is not a plot of land to be owned but a garden that requires continuous tending and cultivation lest it wither. It's a very short lesson, because then Newton takes the hair clasp out of his pocket. The real clasp. The one that remembers an impish grin flashing across the dusty streets of a city that no longer exists.

It's a good thing, probably, that humans can't tell the way immortal beings can.

"Thank you," Aziraphale says, tongue stumbling on the thick swell in his throat. "Thank you, dear, you've no idea– oh it's marvellous."

Newton Pulsifer leaves the bookshop as the most blessed man in a century, to return to his equally blessed girlfriend and celebrate their debut as partners in crime. They will have long lives in excellent health, and many children, and their camels will never have parasites. That one hasn't been relevant in some time, but you never know.

This leaves Aziraphale to more of his new hobby: pacing. He is getting quite good at it. He can only hope this proficiency will spill over on other, less developed qualities of his, such as speaking. The nest is complete, the something that was missing has been found, but he needs the right wordsor he will end up blithering some absolute nonsense when the time comes to face Crowley. Yes, he has had 6,000 years to come up with what to say. That only makes this more ridiculous. It is ridiculous, isn't it? Overwrought, complicated, stupid. Stealing an old hair ornament to speak for him, really? As if he still hadn't learnt how to talk, after so many years and so many books, theatres, operas? As if the very word angel didn't mean messenger?

Still. It had taken many thousand years before he learnt to properly talk, not just deliver a message. There is a difference, in the folds and margins of things, between speaking and talking. Speaking is within the halls of hierarchy, a word given that does not expect to be spoken back to. Talking is a more congenial act, an exchange between equals, and that... had taken him a long time indeed to learn. Six thousand years, give or take, and therein lies the rub. How does one condense 6,000 years' worth of affection into words?

The brass bell above the door jingles again.

Bells have been used by shopkeepers to attract customers since before there were shops. Bells have been used for a lot of things, to be fair. Like sounding the alarm when invaders approach.

Aziraphale puts his pacing on hold to tell the customer they're closed, just forgot to turn the sign and lock the door, so sorry, try again some other day. He doesn't get the chance to.

"We messed up," breathes a Newton whose face bears a strong resemblance to that of a camel with parasites. "It's on TV."

Aziraphale does not own a TV. He may dance and own a computer but there are limits to depravity.

"Robbery at the British Museum," Newton continues, white as a sheet. "Police blocking off the underground and all exits from London." If humans could discorporate, he would. "They're looking for the night guard."

"Oh dear."

It's a cardinal rule in storytelling that something must go wrong. If everything goes as planned all the time, there is no story: no conflict, no climax, no resolution, and you might as well be reading an installation manual. Like all connoisseurs of stories, Aziraphale understands this and appreciates a good conflict. Like all connoisseurs of stories, he appreciates it less when it happens in reality.

"You are sure the cameras were off? And you wore gloves?" Aziraphale wrings his hands around the hair clasp as if it is the last solid thing in the universe. "You didn't leave fingerprints anywhere?"

"Only in the surveillance room! I had gloves when I opened the display case and doors and all." Newton clutches his head and grimaces as if he, too, is about to come down with food poisoning. "You don't think it's the hair thing? That they can tell it's not the same?"

"No no, the replica is perfect, absolutely identical. Oh dear..."

Crowley would know what to do. He has always been there to save him in a pinch, which is why Aziraphale has to solve this mess himself. Crowley has done more than enough already.

The bell above the door jingles a third time.

Two men in official-looking suits enter the bookshop. They expect to find Mr Fell not guilty of murder, as usual, as well as not guilty of cigarette smuggling, drug dealing, or tax fraud. They do not expect to find Mr Fell engaged in conversation with a wanted criminal, clutching in his hands an object that is advertised to be at the British Museum.

"Vincent?"

"Newton?"

The appropriate thing to do in this situation, as taught by film and other educational media sources, is either to ask what the other is doing there, or to dive for cover and start shooting.

"This wasn't what I meant when I said disable security systems!" says Vincent, who clearly hasn't had enough movie nights with his kids. This is not his fault, though. They don't want him to watch if he's going to comment on everything that is unrealistic all the time.

"You know how to hack security systems?" Vincent's colleague has had too many movie nights, and too much imagination.

"It's called cybersecurity testing, Paul, it's a vital part of any workplace these days, would be irresponsible not to do it. And you..."

Vincent is experiencing a moment of divine escstasy. The world is falling away around him, everything muted to his mind except for the beautiful geometry laid out between this barely-a-business shop, the flawless tax records, the man with the expensive vintage car, and the museum display object in Mr Fell's hands.

"We've been placing bets in the office all these years. Murder, money laundering, trafficking. You had to keep this shop in business somehow, some way," Vincent breathes, hardly believing they finally caught him. "No one ever bet art theft."

Vincent is not, in fact, experiencing divine ecstasy. Aziraphale has not been authorised to perform those since Saint Theresa. Too ecstatic for Heaven's taste. Which is nothing short of ridiculous, really - divine ecstasy should be, well, divine.

"I beg your pardon."

Angels may have some features in common with birds - or, rather, the birds have features in common with angels - but that is where the similarity ends. Angels do not ruffle their feathers when they are upset, nor do they lay eggs. They do nest, of course. And sing. And they will deny it even under threat of hellfire, but they moult. However, they do not puff up into feathery balls of menace when agitated, and if Aziraphale gives the impression that he is then that too is a trick played by the light.

"I have been subjected to a great deal of misinformed accusations in my time but trafficking?!"

"He bet trafficking," says the man named Paul and quirks his head at his colleague. "I bet robbery, so I'd say I won."

"I haven't robbed anyone! This belongs to my- my-" Husband, he wants to say, but his tongue won't shape the word.

"It belongs to the museum that you robbed, or I guess you made him rob it 'cause he can crash any operative system by looking at it."

"So this means you can hack into our servers?" Paul looks at Vincent as if there is another betting pool in the office, one that Vincent doesn't know about and that Paul just lost. "And you never told me?"

"Just call the police, Paul."

"On it." The redhead shuffles backwards to block the exit. One hand holds a phone to his ear, the other turns the key and locks the door.

"Is that really necessary? What about presumption of innocence? You do know there is a perfectly sensible explanation to this, don't you?" Aziraphale says, trying to think of a sensible explanation.

"I expect I'm about to hear it."

"Well, you see..." Aziraphale may be a good liar, but not under stress.

"There was a... an alien. Who left it here. With a message of peace and cosmic harmony?" Newton isn't a good liar regardless of circumstances.

In the background, Paul is murmuring the address to the bookshop, and Aziraphale is vividly reminded of a beautiful summer day in Stockholm, 1628. People had gathered in the harbor to see Vasa, the Royal Navy's newest flagship, set sail for the first time. She was a dream of craftsmanship, fifty metres high and seventy long, with a transom shining in red and gold. She sank before she ever made it out of the harbor.

"Please, if we could just talk about this, you don't understand…!" Aziraphale pulls backwards into the shop, one hand clutching the hair clasp protectively to his chest and the other raised before him in a placating gesture.

Vincent advances cautiously, ready to lunge in case the bookseller tries to bolt through some hidden back door. Nobody is more surprised by this than Vincent. His crime fighting ambitions typically extend to writing crisply worded reports and yelling at people who litter on the pavement. Tax inspectors do not throw down with robbers, under normal circumstances, because they would very quickly not be tax inspectors anymore, or be anything else for that matter. That being said, when the circumstances are Newton and Mr Fell, two tax inspectors are practically a SWAT team.

There are two tell-tale signs that Aziraphale is in a state of distress. Or three, depending on how you count. The third is not so much a situational response as a lifestyle.

Aziraphale backs into the shop, into the circle under the carpet, and wishes desperately that Crowley was there.

There's elaborate rituals to summoning, down to the hour of day and what soap to wash your feet with. While people usually don't appreciate such unnecessarily complicated things, many are willing to reconsider after accidentally summoning an ancient monstrosity that curses them with vomiting tadpoles. So, rituals. Elaborate, complicated, foolproof rituals, each one painstakingly designed to call upon a single, specific demon.

Essentially, they're phone numbers.

"Who in the Nine Hells dares sssummon me?!" The acrid burst of smoke dissipates fast, while the smell of brimstone and burnt plastic lingers long enough that Aziraphale worries about getting it out of the carpet. "In broad daylight, on a Wednesday morning?! Don't you people have jobs to be at? 'Cause I have, and your sssoul is not worth–"

Crowley is in the middle of an animated tirade when his eyes land on Aziraphale, whose face is trying to negotiate between delighted and devastated.

"Aziraphale? Someone's sake, angel, this isn't Canaan! I have a phone!"

Aziraphale knows this. He also knows he shouldn't actually have been able to summon Crowley like this, but what he knows most of all is that his gift-giving hopes have been dashed, ruined, and salted. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, or that terrible fish they serve in Scandinavia.

"And you were gonna date that guy?!" hisses a voice in the background.

"Oh I am," whispers another voice.

Aziraphale does not have time for that right now.

"I know you have a phone, dear, and I know you hate being summoned–"

"Then why summon me, you idiot? What if I'd been in the bath?!"

"I didn't know you took baths?"

"Well I might!"

"You don't have a bathtub."

"Then I'll get one so next time you summon me I can slosh water all over your books!" He swings his arms out at the bookshop, which, although this it isn't exactly what it had hoped for, nonetheless approves of the situation.

"I didn't mean to summon you! You shouldn't even have been– oh bother, this is a complete disaster–" Devastated it is, his face decides, but only until delight gets the upper hand: "Were you baking something?"

At the ends of Crowley's flung-out arms is something that looks quite a lot like oven mitts.

"What?" With a sideways glance, Crowley, too, discovers his oven mitts. "Oh – yeah. Right. Baking." He tugs them off as if caught disposing of a body. "You've been going on about that crème brûlée you wanted to try out and I thought, you know – desserts you light on fire sound right up my alley, don't it? Decided I'd give it a go." Crowley has known Aziraphale for a long time and doesn't need to hear the question to answer it: "Vanilla, with blackberries."

"Oh that sounds– oh dear I ruined those too now, didn't I? Look, I really didn't mean to summon you here, it's just that this is all getting quite–"

"Is that police sirens?"

The strangled noise Aziraphale makes in response is the exact same sound dignity makes when it sinks through the floor and into the molten core of the earth.

Crowley's eyebrows arch up, and his chin dips down, and if the chattering nuns of Saint Beryl had learnt wordless communication from him they would never have mixed up any babies, ever.

The police enters the bookshop, and the flagship Vasa is not only sinking, it is going up in flames and giving off a truly Hollywood-worthy cascade of explosions. Debris will be located as far away as the Mediterranean.

The four police people fan out, taking stock of the situation and who is most likely to cause them trouble.

"Newton Pulsifer?" The woman sounds – and looks – like someone who enrolled in the force at a time when being a policewoman meant you had to be twice as tough as a policeman to be taken seriously at work, and made the assumption that tough also means rough since they're only one letter apart anyway.

"Yes," Newton admits. His hands have been in the air since the police cars pulled up outside.

It is with some embarrassment that all four police persons turn from Crowley to the suspect.

"Hand over the Russian icon you stole from the museum, Pulsifer."

Like fine wine and food, different types of silence go with different types of response. The awkward silence pairs well with a sudden observation of something unrelated, while the heavy silence goes with a bit of deep, gutting honesty to bring out its full bouquet. The type of silence that fills the bookshop is simpler, and is most commonly followed by an exclamation of 'what?'. But not just any 'what', because nothing is that simple. There is art to fitting a 'what' to the precise dimensions given by the silence, not so big that it pours over but not so little that it can't fill the width and depth of it.

There is only one person qualified to produce such a 'what'.

"Oh, you mean the one in the car?" Crowley snaps his fingers in a manner that suggests he just connected the dots. The silence departs like a slighted lover. "That car this brave guard person tracked down to get it back?"

The policewoman, who is also quite apt at wordless communication, sends one of her colleagues out with a look. The car parked outside the bookshop is locked, because this is London, but a peep into the backseat confirms the presence of the stolen icon.

"Who's the owner of the silver Hyundai outside?" asks the policeman when he comes back.

Newton tentatively lowers his hands. The tax inspectors, on the other hand, exchange bewildered looks and stammer something about a business car.

"Step outside and unlock the car, please."

"But– You can't trust him!" Vincent jabs a finger in Crowley's direction. "He's–!"

"He just appeared! Materialised out of thin air, right in front of us! You can't trust somebody who pops out of thin air!"

The police knows you can't trust somebody who hallucinates, and firmly escort the inspectors out of Mr Fell's bookshop. They request that Mr Pulsifer come along as well, to testify. Newton leaves with a quick, grateful nod to Crowley, who quirks the tiniest of smiles.

Aziraphale's smile is not tiny.

"Oh, Crowley, dear, I..." Aziraphale is about to start crying. "Thank you! "

With all the allusions that have been made to atoms, one might be led to wonder: are angels and demons subject to radioactive decay? If they destabilise, will they begin to fall apart? Do they dissipate all over the place, like dust motes, or do they just explode? The answer is: no. But they might look like it.

Crowley lets him go on tripping over himself for a while. Hears out the trailing explanations and apologies and thank yous that pile high enough to pose a hazard to passenger planes - it's only polite, after all, not interrupting people. He plucks his glasses off and twirls the frame lazily between his fingers, waiting. A smile wiggles on his lips. The other parts of his face deliberate whether he should respond or just keep smiling.

"How d'you figure I knew, exactly, which icon the coppers were looking for?"

"It was on TV?" Aziraphale tries helplessly.

Now the smile is still, and the rest of Crowley is wiggling – keeps wiggling, until understanding dawns in Aziraphale's eyes.

"You stole the–? You stole?! Crowley!" he bursts out with all the righteous indignation of an angel who would never dream of robbing a museum exhibition of priceless historical artefacts.

Crowley flicks his gaze to the hair clasp and back up to Aziraphale's eyes, where it does things to the angel's composure that even dog-ears in hardbacks can't. His grin grows downright devilish.

There might be amendments to make regarding the statement that angels don't explode. There might be mending to do on the shop, too, if the man-shaped lightning storm that is Aziraphale continues to rattle the fabric of the material universe.

Meanwhile, Crowley laughs. It's the full-bodied kind of laughter that lights him from inside, fans out from his eyes and paints crinkles of unadulterated joy all over his cheeks. He laughs and his corporeal form fills with it, shakes with it, boneless and happy, and Aziraphale would steal the pyramids right off their foundations to see him like this again.

Aziraphale is laughing, too, eventually. He can't help it. The entire situation is too absurd, too silly, too...

"You don't think I've been ridiculous, then? With all this hubbub?" he asks, when they are both weak and sore and spent.

"You're always ridiculous, angel. Stealing from British Museum." Crowley is trying very hard not to start laughing again. "Is it even really stealing if you're returning a stolen object to its rightful owner?"

They're both ridiculous, Aziraphale thinks, as he pretends to be deeply morally concerned that Crowley would even think of such an argument. They're both absolutely bleeding ridiculous, and he cannot let Crowley know that or it will be like that time he misunderstood sup.

Crowley might just be a bit more ridiculous than Aziraphale, though. And not the good kind of ridiculous.

"Crème brûlée, was it?" Aziraphale shoots a look at the oven mitts that still swing idly from the demon's fingers. It is a look that Knows.

Crowley pretends to clasp his blistered hands behind his back in a casual manner. "Something brûlée-ed. Of a fashion." He sees the expression brewing on Aziraphale's face, and offers: "Can still try making you one, if you want?"

At this, Aziraphale's expression goes from brewing to boiling. "Crowley, you idiot! You could have gotten yourself seriously hurt! What were you thinking? A whole exhibition hall filled with blessed objects!"

"Yeah, well. Sometimes you just gotta rush in and rescue a notorious outlaw."

Aziraphale gives him the sort of look that desperately wants to be disapproving but is just stupidly fond.

"Don't you think you can worm out of this with glib remarks, Anthony J Crowley. Why would you steal an icon? It's not... them, is it?" A look of worry touches his face, and it is a look that remembers Hastur dropping the usher demon into a tub of holy water. "If you need insurance, I can–"

"Oh, no, not like that, not at all. Remember Novgorod? In the, what, 1100-something? You were in Russia, really ambitious gig with an eclipse, nothing of that scale seen since Moses. Freaked the Hell out of the besieging army. And you told me about it after 'cause one of the monks saw you, and you were worried it would escalate the Great Schism. But all he did was paint his next icon not a Mary and not a Christ, but an angel with golden locks," he smiles. It is the sort of look that desperately wants to be cool and confident but is just stupidly fond. "Thought it would fit nicely in your shop. Very limited edition – the only icon there is of a holy thief. I know. Checked the whole exhibition."

"Oh shush." He would try again for the disapproving look, but finds that he can't actually look at Crowley at all. "We already established, it's not really stealing if it belongs to you in the first place." Aziraphale swallows. It's not easy, learning this thing called honesty. "You did look gorgeous with it," he says softly, hands thumbing the clasp.

"Shut up." Crowley pulls a face, because he is made of wit and edge, sharp angles and brazen colours. It is easy, the faces and the joking. Much easier than the alternative.

"More than gorgeous," Aziraphale breathes, and it is the sound of things that have been kept locked away, of crumbling mortar on a lid sealed shut and slowly pried open. "I always thought you were clever – no, brilliant. You're brilliant, Crowley, in every way. And gorgeous, and brave. So much braver than I was." Courage is not the absence of fear, he reminds himself as his hands tremble around the hair clasp. Courage is the assessment that something else is more important than fear. "You've given me so much, my dear, and I– I felt ridiculous. For never giving back. I always wanted to, even the smallest thing, anything. And now I finally can."

It feels good to say it - like light, like absolution. It feels less good when he manages to look Crowley in the eye again. The demon isn't wearing his sunglasses, but he might as well be. There are things moving behind his eyes that he isn't letting Aziraphale see, blurred like shapes hidden in fog.

He remembers 1967, that dreadful night of 1967. He had given Crowley what he had wanted for a century, and Crowley had offered to give him what he had wanted for millennia: for a brief, hysterical moment Aziraphale thinks that maybe it's he who is going too fast this time, that he has misjudged it all and that Crowley and he aren't on the same page.

Hysteria never did favours for anyone's thinking. Of course they are on the same page. It's just a matter of writing the lines so that both can read.

Aziraphale buys all his clothes tailored. He likes the feeling of something made by hand, fit perfectly to his shape, and cut to make him look his best. You can have almost anything on Earth tailored to suit your needs, but only almost, and that's the tricky thing when you need to put 6,000 years into words. They don't quite fit. There are no words that sound the way it feels to hope and wait and long for six millennia, and Aziraphale can hear it, too. That in words, it sounds like business and gratitude, like returning favours and paying off debt.

"That came out wrong, didn't it?" Aziraphale's face draws together in a grimace, as if he could pull the words back into his mouth with enough muscle work. "It always does. Always preferred relying on the words of others – easier that way." He's about to start blithering. He can feel it. "They don't much encourage you to put words to your own thoughts Upstairs. Especially not this kind."

There are endless lines of poetry he could speak to Crowley, humanity has made sure of that. They have strung words so searingly beautiful the heavens weep, words that come easily to his tongue because they always have, but they aren't his. So very little of what he has said for the past 6,000 years has been truly his, and he'll be damned if he lets those old fears speak for him now, when they are the only obstacle left to overcome.

"This is– What I want to say is– I'm not talking about our Arrangement, or that box of chocolate you brought when I opened my shop, although I do appreciate all those things too–"

"Angel." Crowley gently takes the clasp from his hands.

He makes it look easy, this thing. The daunting simplicity of turning thought into action, this thing that Aziraphale has spent millennia just entertaining the concept of.

"What's really ridiculous is that you should pick up this, of all things." Crowley is made of wit and edge, sharp angles and brazen colours, but that isn't what makes him gorgeous. "It's not actually a hair clasp, you know? I mean, I used it as one, but I made it as a cloak pin."

Crowley hides a great many things, because he is used to. Because six thousand years is a long time. There are doubts shifting in his eyes, and fears to keep them company. There is softness, too, and questions that even the Serpent of Eden never dared to ask. A demon's eyes should not be able to do the things Crowley's do, but Aziraphale suspects that whoever said that was the same person that said angels don't dance.

"Was never much into wearing gold, but you always did." Crowley turns his gaze down, strokes the shape of the metal with his thumb. Metal he shaped himself, long ago. "I thought it would be... fun? If I could get you to wear something a little less angelic. Just never got around to giving it to you. You know how it is – things got in the way."

"Things?" It is all he can say, or he will start crying again. He knows what Crowley is doing. What he has always been doing, whenever Aziraphale needed it.

"M-mh. Civil unrest. Roadwork. Tax inspectors – they really can ruin most things, tax inspectors."

Aziraphale laughs helplessly, and it feels like absolution. Crowley smiles.

"Before I knew it, time had passed and you didn't have a cloak to wear it on. Or a toga." Crowley lifts his arms in a shrug. "Seems it's caught up with me," he says with a mischievous wiggle and one question still hiding in his eyes, 6,000 years too big to fit in words. "It's still yours." Long, thin fingers hold the ornament towards him. "If you want it."

Wanting is not something angels generally do: it is much too closely related to desire. It implies that angels would be flawed like humans are, and amenable to temptation, which they are not.

Also, angels don't dance.

"Well..." He drags the word, drags his eyes over Crowley's lips. "If it's mine, I suppose..." He lifts his eyes to Crowley's and takes the pin slowly out of his hand, as he would the first bite of a dessert. "I could do whatever I wanted with it?"

It is a very conscious choice of words, and the slip of muscle in Crowley's throat when he swallows is delicious in its own right. Demons and angels are, after all, of the same original stock.

"You, uh, have anything– anything specific in mind...?"

He does. First of all that it's about time he turned thought into action.

Aziraphale crosses the last distance, and brings his hand to Crowley's hair. Temple first, just the ghosting of fingertips. It doesn't burn. He sinks his fingers into the curls, carding through them like water, and it doesn't burn.

There might be amendments to make regarding the statement that demons aren't subject to radioactive decay.

"I am terribly ridiculous, I know. I'm afraid that's your fault, my dear." Aziraphale hooks the cloak pin around one finger and runs both hands through his lovely hair, pulls the long, snaking curls back from his face.

"And I don't regret a second of it. Not even stealing from the British Museum." He keeps the hair in place, seals it there with the clasp. Leans so close their noses brush.

"I don't want to ever not be ridiculous with you, so…" The pin slides slowly through the ringlets of the clasp, a whisper of soft scales through grass. "It's yours," he murmurs, so close he can feel Crowley's breath flutter hot against his lips. "If you want it."

There might be a yes.

There might be many, but there isn't enough space between their lips for them to be heard.

A/N

Well this was a ride! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

§ The Agatha Christie book is one of the most iconic mystery novels. It was published in the U.S. as "And Then There Were None" but had a different title originally.

§ Saint Theresa has been immortalised as a Bernini statue, and is famous for looking ecstatic in a very un-Christian way.

§ The Capuchins are a religious order in the Catholic church. There's also a Capuchin monkey. I don't think the two are related.

§ The terrible fish Scandinavians serve is fermented herring (surströmming), or other small fish. It's one of those foods that are banned from public areas because of the stench.

§ "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear." /Franklin D. Roosevelt

§ That icon exists, and it is named The Angel of Golden Locks because nobody knows which angel it depicts. It was found in Novgorod and dates back to the 12th century. It so happens that in 1169, Novgorod was under siege from the Suzdalians. A miracle is said to have occurred where "the night came down as it was when Moses had been leading the Israelis through the Red Sea", which ultimately made the enemy army panic and roused the Novgorodians to strike them down. If you read this fic on AO3, you'll see Clenster has drawn the icon in his comic in chapter 5. :)