Aziraphale hadn't thought that his plan would be easy. Indeed, he'd known, going in, that it would take work - hard work - to undo the damage he'd done to his relationship with Gabriel. If nothing else, there was the fact that he wasn't fully certain what precisely he'd done wrong in the first place. And then there was everything else - their seemingly ill-matched life plans, their very different social groups, the whole Michael thing - that conspired to turn a hard task into a difficult one.

But this… This wasn't just difficult; it was dead in the water.

It had only been one day - a hellish, nightmare-like day, sure, but only one - and yet it felt like twenty, all folded together and compressed into the densest pocket of bad luck Aziraphale had ever experienced. The urge to let himself sink into despair was strong - almost too strong - and it'd be so easy-

It wasn't like he had anything positive to hold onto. Even the relief of finally, finally getting a textbook was undermined by his guilt about how it had happened, and that was about the only bright spot he could hold onto. Heaven Law had been passively unfriendly at the best of times, actively hostile at the worst, and Aziraphale himself had already managed to piss off his professor within a single class period. Gabriel was, to put it lightly, unconvinced. Michael was still Michael, and Gabriel was still smitten with her. And Aziraphale was still just… Ezra.

He was starting to wonder if he'd ever be able to change that.

It would be easy, but he was just so tired. Not only in the literal sense - the burning of his eyes, the urge to close them, the headache building… everywhere - though there was that too, but in the emotional sense. He didn't have the energy to reopen Anathema's book, to read through more mind-numbing legal jargon and pretend he stood a chance of understanding it. He didn't have the energy to stand up and go back to his dorm room so he could break down in peace. He didn't even have the energy to despair properly.

He was just hollow, like an aluminium can whose lid had gone jagged from a badly-used can opener, whose insides had been scraped out by a spoon until nothing remained but the rasp of metal against the can's ribbed interior. He wasn't much of a crying person at the best of times, but he was definitely an overthinker - he'd spent many a desolate afternoon analysing one conversation or another, with probably-unhealthy results - and yet he couldn't even manage the energy for that.

He simply sat… and sat…

And sat.

– – –

Aziraphale was still sitting, in fact, when a familiar, black-clad figure stopped in its loping tracks and squinted over at him from behind dark glasses. He wasn't quite sure how he knew about the squint, since he wasn't really looking at the figure in the first place; he was, rather, focused on the pond directly in front of his bench, which he had dimly registered when he'd first sat down and then promptly forgotten about after the conversation with Gabriel that followed. (There were ducks on it!) He wouldn't even have noticed the figure - even the objectively easy task of focusing his eyes instead of staring listlessly into space felt like a little too much - if it weren't for the fact that said figure spoke.

"Oh," it said. Then, "Aziraphale, right?" Either Aziraphale was imagining things (again) or there was a trace of something almost pleased about the comment. "From Morningstar's lecture."

He managed a nod, somehow, even as it scraped the very-limited reserves of energy that he still had left. He also managed a "yes." It was croaked-out, and rougher than he'd intended, but he didn't much care; he was focused on the pond.

Ducks are nice, Aziraphale decided. The pond was a nice little thing, and he could dimly hear the creatures' happy little quacks from his bench, the sound a little at odds with his mood. He hadn't quite realised how large ducks could be until he saw them there, floating about with water beading on slick, dark feathers. There were small ones too, though - babies, presumably - and they were smaller than he'd ever thought possible, little more than bundles of fluff swimming along after their parents. Precious, he couldn't help but think. He made a resolution to bring them along some bread if he ever returned to the bench.

"-phale. Aziraphale!" Crowley - for, of course, that was the figure who had approached and stopped and approached and talked - had stooped over at some point, one hand bracing him on the bench's armrest, the other waving across Aziraphale's sightline. "C'mon, angel, say something. C'n you hear me?"

"Yes." It was slightly stronger that time, thanks largely to the fact that Crowley had managed to wave his way through whatever stupor or haze Aziraphale had been sitting in. He flexed his fingers, unclenching their death grip on the book in his lap and wincing as pins and needles flooded into them instead. "Everything is tip-top, dear boy. Absolutely… tickety-boo."

Crowley shifted a little - just enough to no longer be bent over - and raised an eyebrow of blatant incredulity. "Tickety-boo?" The words were over-enunciated, disbelieving. Aziraphale couldn't even blame him; that had hardly been the most convincing lie ever. "You can't expect me to believe that, surely."

And maybe it was the exhaustion - not the sleepy-tired-yawning exhaustion, but the bone-deep existential exhaustion - that had him giving up on the whole charade and simply shaking his head. "No, I suppose I didn't."

He got a shrug at that, though - in true Crowley fashion - it wasn't exactly a conventional shrug; it was a full-body kinda thing, both shoulders shifting upwards despite his hands somehow remaining in his pockets. "Fair enough," he said. "C'n I sit?"

"May."

Crowley blinked. "You what?"

"No-" Aziraphale held back a half-sarcastic huff. "May you sit." A moment, then, "And yes, you may."

"Should've known you'd be the type to correct a bloke on his grammar." Crowley grinned as he said it, and the words didn't sound particularly harsh, which was odd. They almost sounded fond, though that was, of course, patently ridiculous. And then the TA was sitting there, one arm draped along his armrest, the other resting loosely against his knees in an easy sprawl.

Silence reigned for a moment, save for the incidental noises of the park: students talking as they walked along the paths, the rippling of water, the quacking of the ducks. One of the little ones had gotten caught in some of the pond's greenery, and it squawked angrily as it flapped its way free. Aziraphale had to hold back a chuckle; Crowley did no such thing and simply laughed.

He must have seen something on Aziraphale's countenance, however, for he looked over for a second, tipping up his sunglasses the barest sliver - not enough for Aziraphale to see his eyes, but enough for Crowley to see… well, something - and then letting them fall again. "D'you like ducks?"

Aziraphale shrugged. "Yes, I suppose I do."

"I've got peas. D'you…" Crowley pulled out a bag from his pocket and held it out. "D'you wanna feed 'em? "

The bag was placed gently into Aziraphale's hands before he could register lifting them, the plastic slick and cool against still-pricking fingers. (They also still showed the impression of his textbook, lines of pink and pure white standing out in mottled clarity against the pads.) He should probably say thank you. Or at least yes, or no. Instead, he said, "Peas?"

Crowley nodded. "Frozen."

Aziraphale held the bag, stared at it. "Not bread?"

He got a shrug back. "It's bad for 'em, apparently."

"Thanks," he managed. It took a few moments of wrestling with the bag to get it open, to pull out a few frozen green pearls and scatter them for the ducks. They'd perked up at the sound of rustling plastic, like they'd known what was coming… and maybe they did, judging from how adept they were at catching the peas he tossed, and how many other people were standing at the water's edge and making the same sowing motions that he was.

Crowley just watched. Aziraphale couldn't help the briefest sensation of surprise at not feeling particularly uneasy about it. He'd have expected the attention to chafe, the scrutiny to wear on him too heavily for him to actually relax, and yet the rhythmic motion soothed him nonetheless. (And the ducks were cute.)

"So." The word seemed… not hesitant, per se, but cautious? Or, perhaps, careful. Whatever the word, it was softer than anything Aziraphale heard Crowley say since they'd met. He had one of the frozen peas in his hand - not that Aziraphale had seen him take it - and was rolling it, back and forth, between thumb and long index finger. "Tell me to, y'know, back off or what have you, but… 'S everything okay?"

"Yep." Aziraphale had never said anything like yep in all of his days. "Absolutely-"

"Tickety-boo?" There was that eyebrow again, cocked in something like amusement and something like disbelief. "Yeah, you said that."

The nod Aziraphale managed was, to be honest, somewhat prim. Possibly just a little bit bastardly. His heart wasn't necessarily in it - it was more of a reflex than anything - but it was the slightest bit more natural, more genuine. "Well, it's true."

"Mmhmm." The pea was flung into the water with a gentle kerplop. "Still. Wanna talk about it?"

And… well. Despite every instinct telling him that he shouldn't - the briefly overheard conversation with Gabriel, his own guilt about being so rude the day before, his general reticence towards such emotional conversations - he was starting to think that maybe he should. Or, rather, not that he should, but that he wanted to.

"Sure," he said. And so he did.