Chapter Text
Aziraphale descends to the shop after finishing his breakfast, even though Sky is perfectly able to handle most customers without assistance. Having employees (well, an employee) is so liberating to one's schedule; Aziraphale is disappointed in himself for never thinking of it in the past. The shop can now be open even when Crowley distracts him from getting out of bed, or drags him off on a last-minute adventure. Still, despite this brave new world they're living in, he enjoys his quiet routines and spending time in the shop most days is pleasant. Invigorating, even, what with the increasing number of customers the shop has been letting through the door.
"Good morning, Az," Sky says, in her usual grave way, looking up from her mobile when he appears on the ground floor. She’s perched on the stool behind the counter, still wearing her parka against the chill of the mid-September morning. Aziraphale reminds himself that he should find the space heater and order wood for the stove before the first true cold spell. Crowley might do most of his napping upstairs these days, but Sky also runs cold. And now there are students who like to gather in the overstuffed armchairs and sagging sofa that Sky and Crowley had acquired last winter and arranged by the stove. Perhaps, Aziraphale thinks, he could make room for a second electric kettle in that back corner. A tea chest and some spare china. Crowley enjoyed prowling the local charity shops and could be sent out on a mission.
Since Sky began working at the shop, they've had more customers. Aziraphale still isn't sure how he feels about this. More customers means more chances to brighten a person's day with the book they didn't know they needed. But it also means he has to think about such unorthodox ideas as ordering books rather than relying on his familiar network of antiquarian book hunters.
He hasn't purchased new books from publishers since the 1870s. But, after all, he's tried a number of new things since the apocalypse-that-wasn't and enjoyed many of them. Perhaps he can enlist Sky, and the other young people her presence has encouraged the shop to allow in, to help him select new stock to interleave with his usual second-hand wares. If they're going to retire from the payroll of Heaven and Hell, after all, income will have to come from somewhere -- God may have given a rather passive blessing to their union but so far it hasn't come with a dowry or a pension.
"Good morning, my dear," he finally responds, pulling himself back from his wandering thoughts as he joins her behind the counter. He moves to his desk and powers on the computer.
After nearly a year, he and Sky have settled into a routine at the shop: Sky arrives shortly before nine to open for business, then usually goes out in search of a coffee -- sometimes with Crowley -- while Aziraphale enjoys a bit of morning solitude. Once she returns, Aziraphale leaves the midday shop floor to her while he putters around on various projects in the shop and elsewhere: appraisals, auctions, estate sales, correspondence, translations, research. This morning, Aziraphale has barely signed into his computer before Crowley comes down to the shop with his coat on and claims Sky for a walk across the lane to Su Lin's.
"One of the morning buns, please!" Aziraphale calls after them and gets a salute of acknowledgement from Sky as she slips out the door Crowley is holding open for her.
The shop to himself, Aziraphale turns back to the computer and opens his email. Crowley has copied him on the reply to Warlock, which Aziraphale opens to read before he tackles his business correspondence.
Dear Warlock,
Clever lad, to find me; I knew you would. Of course you may visit. I’ve retired from nannying. It wouldn’t have been half the fun with children who weren’t you. Francis and I live in London now, where he runs a bookshop and I do the gardening. We live above the shop and there's a spare bedroom* that you are welcome to use. Let me know if there are forms (there always are). You may not remember, but my full name is Ashtoreth J. Crowley. The school will need it (for the forms).
Cheerio,
Nanny A.
P.S. Glad you liked the ammonite! Caught my eye in an antique shop in Notting Hill and I thought of you.
*There hadn't been at breakfast time but Aziraphale imagines Crowley has taken care of that.
Aziraphale considers the email. It's an extremely Crowley email: absolutely truthful while revealing very little unless you know where to look. Aziraphale, for example, knows to look at the semicolon between “find me” and “I knew you would” for all the hope and potential heartbreak it contains. He thinks of Crowley’s employment files, deliberately left in the Dowlings’ home office -- somewhere they’ll be forgotten by the parents, but not so hidden that a searching child couldn’t find them. He thinks of the email address, left active, with messages set up to forward to Crowley’s current inbox. He wonders how long Crowley has been waiting for Warlock to return, and feels an upwelling of shame for failing to understand that Warlock, too, is part of the life Crowley has been fighting for.
Aziraphale gets up from the computer and goes over to his electric kettle to switch it on. Another cup of tea will help. As he waits for the kettle to boil he looks around the shop and wonders what Warlock will make of it, of them. He wonders how the quiet, yet perceptive child he remembers from their years at the Dowlings -- “Shy,” his parents said, reprovingly, with downturned lips. “He’s so withdrawn.” -- has fared in boarding school. Not so poorly that he’s been sent down; not so well, that he’s moved blithely on from his odd childhood into an adolescence his parents approve of. Once Aziraphale’s assam has properly steeped, he goes back to the computer and opens a new window on his internet browser. He searches for the school’s website, but several clicks in he has to close the tab because the uniform blazers and school ties are making him shiver with visions of angelic training seminars.
It’s disorienting, even a little nauseating, to think that only two Earthly years ago Aziraphale had thought such a place was appropriate for a sensitive child like Warlock. He gets up from his computer again and walks away from his own upsetting thoughts to straighten a shelf of paperback romances while sipping his tea to settle his stomach. Warlock’s email had said nothing about why he wanted to visit. In the absence of facts, Aziraphale can feel the panic rising. Has Warlock developed some sort of … sensitivity to demonic or angelic (or demonic and angelic) forces, given such prolonged exposure? Is he manifesting miracles or engaged in prophecy? Causing small demonic misfortunes for those around him? Or is he being bullied by his classmates, disciplined by his teachers? Had either he or Crowley thought to investigate what forms of punishment the school used?
Oh, what does Aziraphale know about human children; perhaps it’s all a pretext for being allowed to leave school for a few days unsupervised. The copy of Proper Englishhe’s holding in his hand offers no answers. He sighs. Probably the only way they’ll sort out what’s needed is by waiting for Warlock to arrive and reveal what has prompted him to circumvent his parents in order to reach out to Crowley for help.
He’s still standing there thinking when Crowley and Sky return, each carrying a beverage in a tall paper cup, and Crowley with a paper sack containing Aziraphale's pastry. He meets them back at the counter and accepts the pastry bag with a kiss. Nothing very lingering, with Sky present, but firm.
"I look forward to seeing our spare bedroom," he says, with a smile.
Crowley gestures with his coffee cup, an upward ellipsis that takes in the whole of the building they stand in. "Yes. Well. Who wants to sleep on a sofa.”
"Perhaps we can put him to work on potting the tulip bulbs," Aziraphale says as he opens his pastry and hmmms in delight. "He always did enjoy helping with the kitchen gardens."
"If that school hasn't let him grow too posh," Crowley sniffs, leaning back against the counter and taking a meditative sip of coffee. "Public schools must have been Gabriel's invention. Obsessed with conformity, the lot of them."
"He’s asked to visit," Aziraphale reminds him, though of course his own worried thoughts have been treading similar paths.
"I still can't believe you used to work as a nanny," Sky observes around a mouthful of sticky bun, rolling her eyes at Crowley. "What rich bloke looked at you and said, 'I know, let's hire him to look after our precious future Lord Such-and-so.'"
"I'll have you know I clean up rather well!" Crowley protests. "And they were Americans." He grins, all teeth.
"Oh my God," Sky says. "Of course they were. What did you do, dress up like Mary Poppins?"
Aziraphale chokes on his mouthful of tea.
"The hat wouldn't have suited me," is all Crowley offers in reply.
"I've always thought you wore flowers very well," Aziraphale observes mildly, setting down his teacup so he can extricate his bun. He's thinking most immediately of the Sunday previous when they had gone to the botanic gardens at Kew and Crowley had spent several hours slithering about and scaring quail in the Mediterranean Garden while Aziraphale re-read a favorite Gerald Durrell. It had been a lovely afternoon. They had stopped at the gift shop on their way back to the Tube; Crowley had complained about the imperfections of every plant on display and then allowed Aziraphale to buy him a flowering hibiscus that was the same deep red as the carmine scales that flare at the small of Crowley's back. Aziraphale had pointed this out later than evening when he was working his slow, kissing way down every scale on Crowley's back from the nape of his neck to his tailbone. Crowley had squirmed under him, protesting breathlessly at the comparison.
"You two are ridiculous," Sky declares happily. Then, dusting the sugar from her hands: "Right. Az, did you want me to put out the book carts today?" She doesn't wait for an affirmative before disappearing into the back room.
“I’ll just … be in my study. If you need me,” Crowley says, which is his way of saying in Sky’s hearing that he’s heading up to the roof to spend some time in the sun, in snake form.
“Be good,” Aziraphale says with a rather sticky kiss. Popping the last bit of morning bun into his mouth, he makes his way back to his computer to get a start on the day’s work.