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Summary:

"They'll leave us alone. For a bit."

One year after the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't, Crowley and Aziraphale have settled into a new routine: keeping an eye on supernatural happenings in the world and preventing Heaven or Hell from interfering too much with humanity. It's not a bad job - despite occasional rains of fish - and if there are some unspoken things they really ought to talk about, well, they have all the time in the world now to get around to that, right?

At least, until the Archangel Raphael turns up on their doorstep looking for help... and it starts to become clear that the world is changing fast, and so are they.

Or: Crowley and Aziraphale start a detective agency. Shenanigans ensue. Slowburn continues. Apparently, there is plot. I have some thoughts about Heaven, Hell, and humanism. There will be stupid jokes and a healthy sprinkling of angst.

Notes:

Me: Oh, I don’t need to worry about getting sucked back into Good Omens fandom, I’ve loved the book for years, read all the fic I want to, and never felt the urge to write my own—
Messrs Tennant and Sheen: play tennis with my heart for six entire hours
Me, crashing through a window: HI I'M BACK ON MY BULLSHIT HERE'S A 50k* SLOWBURN EPIC

*that is a promise and a threat

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: The Agency

Chapter Text

Mrs Potts had a problem. It was a problem no-one had really had for several hundred years, and one which the modern world was ill-equipped to solve. She clutched the telephone handset nervously.

"It's our Neville," she told the nice young man on the phone.

Mrs Potts was not an imaginative woman, which is why she had first called the police, the doctor, and her MP, but after their responses, even she felt a tremor of trepidation as she continued:

"He's turned into a frog."

"Ah," said the nice young man with an air of resignation. "That sounds more like my colleague's department, please wait just a moment while I transfer you..."

There followed the sounds of someone trying - and failing - to transfer the call, interspersed with occasional muttering about too many buttons and look, just do it you stupid machine, he's right there and never had this sort of trouble before they made things so complicated...

"Oh just give it here," came another voice in the background. The receiver was handed over. The new speaker did not sound like a nice young man. He sounded like he'd be out behind the bike sheds smoking if you took your eyes off him for two seconds. "What's up?"

"It's our Neville," Mrs Potts said again. "He's a frog."

There was a groan from the other end of the line, and Mrs Potts braced herself to be hung up on for the fourth time in one morning.

"Another one?" said the man on the phone. "Lemme guess, you're in Norwich?"

"Well, yes--"

"Bit of frog problem, Norwich has at the moment. We're looking into it. My colleague'll get your details, we'll be in touch."

Mrs Potts heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, someone was doing things properly. She glanced over at the large, green frog sitting in Neville's favourite chair. It was wearing an expression of deep disgruntlement, but then, that was normal both for frogs and for Neville.

The phone was handed back to the nice young man. Mrs Potts thought she barely caught a sotto voce, "I don't see why you can't write it down yourself--"

"You're the one who always complains about my handwriting, angel," came the drawled response.

"Ah, yes, madam, if I could take your name and address, contact number, and some details of when the event occurred..."


The Agency didn't advertise. It didn't need to. When people needed it, they found it, whether as a column in their daily newspaper, a poster at the bus stop, or the top result in their internet search. Some of the people who called the Agency were looking for a private detective, and some were looking for spiritual assistance, and some really had no idea what they were looking for, only that they'd like to find it in a hurry before things got any stranger.

Crowley was already sticking a pin into the map of Norwich he'd tacked up on the wall. He'd tried using online maps for this sort of thing, but there was something very satisfying about hammering a sharp point into a geographical location that was annoying him, and Google hadn't managed to replicate that yet.

"That's three frogs this morning," he said as Aziraphale hung up the phone. "Seven this week. Eight if you count that geezer with the accent--"

"Mr Richardson," Aziraphale put in reproachfully.

"-- right, him, though I'm not sure he knows the difference between his wife and a frog on the best of days--"

"Nevertheless, we'd better look into it." Aziraphale handed Crowley the neatly written index card with Mrs Potts's details. Crowley tossed it onto his desk. "Really, why do your lot always go straight to frogs, anyway?"

"Frogs're easy. Satisfying, too. The look on their faces when they realise what's happened. Plus, if they really piss you off, you can just take one big step forward..."

Crowley held up his hands defensively at Aziraphale's horrified expression.

"Not me, I was never a frog sort of person, me. And they're not my lot. Not any more."

He eyed the map of Norwich from behind his sunglasses. The pins he'd stuck in it so far were clustered around the city centre. There was a certain pattern to the victims, as well. Shop clerks, baristas, a traffic warden... the kind of people who were likely to be on the receiving end of other people's frustration. Especially if the other people were new to this whole people thing.

"Another one got curious, is my guess," he said. "Came up to see what all the fuss was about, someone spilled coffee on their new body, and boom, frogs everywhere."

"You'd think they'd have learned by now..."

"Yeah? And whose side made all the ATMs on Oxford Street spit twenties because they couldn't figure out how a chip and pin works?"

"They're not my side either," Aziraphale replied primly. "And I told Nanael just to write a cheque."

"No-one uses cheques anymore."

"Really? They always seem to accept mine."

Crowley considered pointing out that this was, in fact, entirely down to Aziraphale's unshakable belief that it would be so, but decided against it. Ever since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't, Aziraphale would get terribly upset when he realised he was bending reality around him without meaning to. It was exactly the sort of thing the Agency was supposed to prevent.

It had been Adam's idea. Well, strictly speaking, Adam's idea had involved a lot more secret underground bases and solemn people in black suits, but Crowley had pointed out that a) getting Aziraphale to dress like that would be a minor miracle in itself, b) all the really good underground bases had been converted into server farms these days, and c) as far as recruitment went, there were really only two of them qualified for the job.

Heaven and Hell had long watched the Earth from afar, treating it as a disposable battleground. Humans were little more than temporary pieces in the great game - until Adam changed the rules. Now Earth, it seemed, was going to be around for the foreseeable future, and humans were apparently far, far more dangerous than either the celestial or infernal realms had suspected. And so, after a period of confusion and milling around, the fact-finding forays had begun.

An angel came to Islington, and promptly started a riot by turning water to wine in the recently installed eco-friendly drinking fountains. A devil went down to Georgia, and every violin in the state mysteriously became something nasty overnight. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale had managed to identify which side had been responsible for the Bognor Incident, but seven hundred angry flamingos and a sentient beach umbrella had occupied their full attention for nearly a week.

Given that they were immortal beings, both angels and demons were remarkably lacking in patience, at least when confronted with the baffling idiosyncrasies of the mortal world. Even the ones who weren't trying to cause trouble had a tendency to leave a trail of weirdness in their wake.

As for the others...

There were maps on every wall of the office now. Most of them were from the UK, presumably because it had been the centrepiece of the abortive Heaven/Hell rematch, but a few enterprising entities had branched out to other parts of the world. Aziraphale had rushed off to Australia just last month to chastise a pair of cherubim for attempting to fix the platypus.

("Though I must say," he'd confided on his return, "the poor thing does seem in dire need of some adjustments. I can't believe nobody spotted it during testing."

"Always said seven days wasn't long enough to catch all the bugs."

"Well, it's true we did go rather overboard on beetles....")

Some of the maps had pieces of string indicating other maps that were relevant to the incident in question, or newspaper clippings, or scrawled notes. The office was a big, old room in a big, old building in Mayfair, with high ceilings and elegant plaster moulding. The maps went right up to the ceiling, filling spaces that shouldn't, technically speaking, be reachable without a ladder, which they did not have. Even so, they were running out of space.

The whole office was the same. It had started out rather stylish, with its impressive mahogany desks, leather seats, and air of quiet authority. Crowley had brought along the world's most over-engineered coffee machine and a spider plant with PTSD; Aziraphale had contributed a shelf of impressive-looking leather-bound books and a rack containing more kinds of tea than Crowley had even known existed in the world.

It was all lost now under a sea of paper. It didn't help that both of them had a tendency to assume they would just find what they needed when they needed it - a bad habit, like paying by cheque or believing firmly that one-way streets were for other people. Aziraphale's desk was at least sorted into piles of varying sizes. Crowley's was where post-it notes went to die.

"It's no good," he said. Aziraphale peered at him over a teetering stack of cardboard folders. "We need a computer."

"We have a computer," Aziraphale protested. "Two of them. They were quite expensive."

Crowley looking meaningfully at the flat-screen monitor on Aziraphale's desk. He'd taken to using it like a bulletin board: the screen was almost lost behind little bits of paper with torn edges and hastily scribbled notes. Crowley's own sleek laptop hadn't been seen in weeks. He assumed it was still under there somewhere.

"We need someone who knows how to use a computer," he corrected.

"I know how to use a computer."

"Yes, and the accounts are looking great, and your eBay business is doing wonderfully," Crowley said soothingly, "but what we really need is one of those programs everyone has these days. With little... clicky things... stuff where you can go, 'Aha! This is how it all fits together!' and press a button and a box pops up to say, match found. You know. Like on CSI."

"I think," said Aziraphale, in the cautious tones of one who had been caught out before by the scurrilous lies told on television, "that some of that is, shall we say, narrative convenience."

"Okay, fine, but there's got to be a better way than this."

Crowley gestured at the serried ranks of paper well on their way to forming a new geological stratum. Aziraphale nodded reluctantly.

"Perhaps we could ask Mr Pulsifer--"

"Or," Crowley said hastily, "we could put an ad up somewhere."

"Is that a good idea? Getting a normal human involved..."

Aziraphale glanced at a set of photographs Crowley had taped to the wall. Most of them were of demons in various disastrous attempts at disguise, and all of them were peppered with pinpricks from the ballpoint pens that Crowley liked to lob across the room at them like darts.

"About time they pulled their own weight, if you ask me," Crowley retorted. "It's been, what, nearly a year? We were supposed to be done with following orders, and look at us now!"

This time his gesture was so wide that it created a draft, which in turn caused a sheaf of paper to waft over the edge of his desk. The slight movement set off something like an avalanche, which only stopped when Crowley's chair had been buried up to its armrests.

Aziraphale was frowning at him.

"We're not exactly following orders, are we?" he said. "Adam isn't--"

"Adam might as well be," Crowley snapped. "He doesn't have to say it, does he? We know how he feels about Heaven and Hell messin' around with humans. And it doesn't get messier than Bognor."

"And how many messes have we made?" Aziraphale retorted. "How many times have we intervened over the centuries? It's only just that we should be the ones helping to put it right--"

"Jussst?" Crowley couldn't keep the hiss out of his voice. He felt it again: the heat of hellfire dancing on his skin, the malice of angels beating on his soul. "What's just about you and me babysitting seven billion humans who don't even say thank you?"

"Sometimes they do. I had a nice card from Mrs Anderson just this morning." Aziraphale's frown had become concerned. "Whatever has got into you, Crowley? I thought you liked working together like this."

Crowley bit his tongue - not difficult, he had a lot of tongue - rather than say something he'd regret, one way or another.

"I do," he muttered, turning away. There was a narrow path to the door; he began to pick his way along it. "Just in a bad mood. Frogs. Norwich. You know how it is."

"Where are you going?"

"Out for a walk. Need to remember what things that aren't paper look like."

"Shall I--"

"No, no, you carry on." He didn't dare glance over his shoulder, but he didn't need to. He could picture the hurt expression on Aziraphale's face. He tossed an olive branch as he opened the door. "I'll bring you back a pistachio cream cruffin."

He had no idea who'd invented that particular crime against decency (except that they probably worked in Chelsea). What was wrong with sticking to a croissant or a muffin? But he could almost hear Aziraphale brightening up.

"The kind with sugar on top?"

"Extra sugar. See you later, angel. Be good."


Sometime after Crowley had shut the door, Aziraphale found he was still staring at it. He shook himself. After six thousand years, he should be used to Crowley's strange moods. It did seem like there were more of them than there used to be, though. Or perhaps it was just that they saw more of each other.

Or perhaps, he worried, Crowley was regretting this whole arrangement. Aziraphale had thought it a fine idea of Adam's, to turn their talents from meddling with humanity's destiny to preventing others from doing the same thing. He'd had the stationery printed before they'd even picked out an office. It would give them a purpose, he'd said to Crowley, something to get on with, it might even be fun...

He'd thought he'd won Crowley over, but lately he seemed to simmer constantly with something close to resentment, and Aziraphale was at a loss for how to address it.

Well, perhaps he could start by tidying the office. It was rather a mess. And perhaps Crowley was right about getting someone in to use the computers. It wasn't that Aziraphale couldn't do it if he tried, it was just that he preferred to think with a pen than a keyboard. But if they had someone who could transcribe his notes...

All around him, the piles of paper had begun to shift and move themselves into a more orderly arrangement. Aziraphale put a stop to that with a glare. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it the hard way. He stood up from his desk, inched his way along the narrow path to the kettle, and set it boiling with a flick of a switch. While he waited, he surveyed the room with the practised eye of someone who was always looking for a way to fit just one more book on a shelf already stuffed to bursting.

The kettle made a sad, squeaky noise that was as close as you could get to a proper whistle these days. He selected a strong black tea with hints of bergamot that promised to energise and inspire, and set to work.


The worst part about going for a walk without Aziraphale was that his feet kept trying to automatically take him to the places where they normally went together.

Well, no. The worst part about going for a walk without Aziraphale was the lack of Aziraphale.

Crowley scowled at passersby who couldn't see his expression behind the sunglasses, but hurried out of the way regardless, driven by an indefinable sense that this was not the moment to try his patience. He forced his rebellious feet away from St James's Park and slouched moodily through Belgravia.

The thing was... the thing was, he did like working with Aziraphale. That part wasn't the problem. He didn't even dislike what they did. It was the best fun he'd ever had, outwitting minor angels and lesser demons, solving strange little puzzles, putting things back the way they should be. He especially enjoyed confronting the demons. That moment when they recognised him and were consumed by sheer, pants-wetting terror: oh shit, it's him, it's Crowley, even Beelzebub doesn't mess with him, they say he carries a water pistol...

(He did, in fact, carry a water pistol for the look of the thing, but it was never filled with anything more dangerous than London tap water, which hadn't killed anyone for at least a hundred years. He'd bought Aziraphale a fancy metal lighter with an extremely stylish snake engraved on it, but Aziraphale never seemed to have it to hand when Crowley pointedly asked him for a light in front of his angelic compatriots.)

No, even with the creeping suspicion that Aziraphale and Adam had somehow tricked him into doing good on a regular basis, it wasn't the work itself that kept winding him up so tight he'd suddenly find himself snapping, lashing out at whatever target presented itself.

Crowley crossed the road without looking. A number of cars swerved to avoid him, to the considerable surprise of their drivers, who in traditional London style had been perfectly prepared to run him down and blame it on natural selection. Even more miraculously, no-one collided with anybody else, and apart from all the blasting horns, the traffic resumed its flow with barely a hitch.

The thing was... the thing was, he couldn't stand the way Aziraphale had thrown himself into this new set of duties like he'd rather do anything in the world than think for himself. The way he seemed to see it as penance, a debt he needed to work off. The way he tried to carry on as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed. Everything. They were persona non gratis in both Heaven and Hell, free to do as they liked, free to make their own choices. For the first time in six thousand years, they didn't have to worry about who was watching them. They didn't have to meet in secret, snatch a few hours amidst decades of careful distance, find an excuse to be in the same place at the same time. They could spend all day together, and all evening together, and often did.

And it wasn't enough.

Crowley drifted to a halt, grimacing. He could feel it. The panic, trying to bubble up from his bones. The terror that was always lurking when he was away from Aziraphale for too long. The fear of coming back to an empty office - or worse, another building in flames.

How could Aziraphale just brush it all away like it had been a big misunderstanding? Crowley had looked into Gabriel's eyes as he commanded Aziraphale to die with a relish that even Hastur might have thought unseemly. He'd always known angels were cold bastards - Aziraphale excepted - but he'd thought they were above such petty, spiteful revenge.

He'd stood there, at the edge of the fire, and he'd looked at them, and he'd waited, for just a split second, because he had been so sure, so sure that for this, they must Fall...

But no. 'Course not. God moved in mysterious ways, et cetera, and apparently that included tacit approval of extra-judicial executions.

Crowley was angry. He was angry almost all the time now, and it was an unfamiliar sensation. He'd spent the majority of his existence on Earth finding new and exciting ways to not give a shit. He'd always been the cynic, but it had been a cynicism of amusement, a healthy distance from topics that might lead, if he thought about them too hard, to dangerous places.

Didn't get much more dangerous than the apocalypse. Or being hauled off for a nice long soak in a tub of holy water. If they hadn't figured out that final prophecy...

His traitor feet had turned him around and were rushing him back towards the office like they thought he was running the London Marathon. Crowley made himself slow down. There was no reason to think Aziraphale was in danger. There was no reason to think he could lose him. No reason, except the memory of flames, which danced madly in his dreams until sleep stopped being a pleasure and became a nightly gauntlet.

He sighed, and went in search of a bakery that would sell him Aziraphale's current favourite pastry monstrosity.

He got lucky on the first try. It said a lot for his state of mind that he didn't even notice he'd walked into an organic butcher's shop. Its proprietor was extremely surprised to find his tray of spare ribs replaced by a neat arrangement of pistachio cream cruffins with extra sugar.


Aziraphale was making good headway with the filing, helped by the discovery that a full quarter of the papers in the office consisted of old issues of the Metro, which had a tendency to breed in overlooked corners. He had also found and rehabilitated somewhere in the region of seventy ballpoint pens. Crowley would be thrilled to have more ammunition.

There was a knock at the door.

Aziraphale gave it a disapproving look. The office signs were quite clear: no tradespeople, no political canvassing, and definitely no Jehovah's Witnesses, mostly because Crowley would always insist on inviting them in for tea and awkward questions, which Aziraphale found distracting. He was tempted to ignore it, but then, perhaps it was one of those nervous-looking gentlemen who were about to be very disappointed by the contents of the pawn shop they'd heard was in this building...

The knock came again. Aziraphale made his way to the door and opened it with a smile that he hoped conveyed both polite friendliness and a complete lack of interest in hearing the word of our lord and saviour (he'd been there for the original performance and had never much taken to the later re-imaginings).

The smile froze. He took a step backwards before he could help himself.

The man outside the door was what Renaissance painters had thought all angels looked like: flowing blond hair, perfect features, alabaster skin. There was a reason for that. He'd modelled for most of them.

"R-Raphael?"

"Aziraphale!" Raphael was beaming like the sun bursting through the clouds. "Found you at last! How long has it been--?"

Aziraphale took another step back, struggling to stay calm even as he wished desperately that Crowley were here, but his face must have given away his shock and alarm, because Raphael paused, uncertainty furrowing his brow.

"Aziraphale? What's wrong?"

Aziraphale's hands clenched into fists. He hid them behind his back, striving for the attitude of cold disdain he'd been practising for this very moment. If it had been Gabriel, he might have managed it, but he'd always liked Raphael. He was the only other angel Aziraphale knew who'd spent more than a cursory amount of time on Earth, though Raphael was always on the move when he came to visit. He'd invented the roadtrip before anyone had even invented roads. He also seemed to have a soft spot for humans. For the eleven years leading up to Armageddon, Aziraphale had rather hoped he might be in favour of cancelling it, and had tried to track him down for a quiet word, but he'd been nowhere to be found.

"Given my last interaction with the Archangels," Aziraphale said stiffly, "you'll forgive me if I don't invite you in."

Raphael stared at him.

"What? What are you talking about?"

It was Aziraphale's turn to stare. Raphael had a face like glass: if there was a word that meant the opposite of inscrutable, his picture would be in the dictionary next to it. As far as Aziraphale could tell, he was genuinely confused.

"You know," Aziraphale went on, the faintest thread of uncertainty working its way under the words, "all that 'traitor' business. The hellfire and so on."

"The-- the what?" Raphael's expression had turned to bewildered concern. "Look, Aziraphale, I just got back, turns out I missed the Apocalypse, can you believe it? I was supposed to blow the trumpet, I'd been looking forward to it for ages-- anyway, the point is, no-one seems to want to talk about it, half of Heaven's popping down here for a nose around, apparently the whole thing's been called off-- and well, I heard you were down here permanently now, some sort of new department, and I thought, if anyone's going to give me a straight answer about all this, it's good old Aziraphale."

He took a breath that was, strictly speaking, unnecessary, but a welcome opportunity for Aziraphale's brain to catch up with his ears.

"You missed the Apocalypse?"

"I know, I know, it's my own fault, just, the band was doing so well, it was always one more tour, you know? And then we went platinum, and then Marv got sick, and we needed a new keyboard player, and there was never a good moment..."

"You were in a band," Aziraphale said weakly.

"I'm still in a band!" Raphael proudly whipped out a smartphone and held it out. Its lock screen was an album cover: All That Jazz by The Post-Raphaelites. "Marv's doing great, and we're thinking of breaking into the European market--"

"Raphael," Aziraphale managed to interject, "you really don't know what-- what they tried to do to me? No-one told you?"

Raphael stilled, his green eyes shifting slowly from the colour of a rainforest to the hue of a troubled sea.

"Told me what?"

It would, Aziraphale knew, be wiser to send him away. Let him ask Gabriel about it. Let him hear the official line. Raphael was an Archangel, one of the originals, part of the Establishment. A yawning chasm had opened between Aziraphale and the Establishment, in the moment he'd stood with Crowley to defy the word of Heaven and Hell both.

And it had been hurting him, no matter how much he tried to bury himself in paperwork, no matter how much he tried to share Crowley's glee at their newfound freedom.

"Perhaps you'd better come in after all," he said.