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Crowley was not going about this without a plan, obviously. He wasn’t stupid. He also wasn’t overthinking things. No, he was thinking about this in a perfectly average, adequate, and healthy way that did not involve any aforementioned overthinking. He definitely didn’t make any diagrams, or maps, or lists, nor did he get caught up halfway through any particular task in order to obsessively daydream about…stuff. ‘Course not.
But, that said, he was a demon that had duped Heaven and Hell last summer – and for the preceding six millennia – and that didn’t happen by accident.
So, Crowley had a plan. And it started with a plant.
No matter how much Crowley (over)analysed the situation, he knew that, no matter what unspecified persons felt for additional unspecified persons, it would be (based on many centuries of carefully catalogued evidence), unwise to use a straightforward and blunt approach to bring into being particular and definite changes. On a theoretical, abstract level, if a certain individual wanted to encourage the development of a relation in a cooperative, mutually beneficial direction that involved fewer allegorical shingles, then something more indirect would be required.
It was possible that Crowley wanted to move in with Aziraphale and didn’t know how to ask if that was okay.
A demon, and certainly not Crowley, was not one for things like manners and common etiquette, but it nonetheless took some finesse to garner and maintain a friendship with someone for whom manners and common etiquette were as necessary to life as breathing. For humans, anyway. No matter how often Aziraphale accused Crowley of being uncouth or foul, Crowley was still leagues and leagues above the muck of Hell, which generally considering comparing boils to be the polite way to introduce oneself.
Crowley didn’t think Aziraphale would appreciate that. He knew he certainly didn’t. If it horrified even Crowley, he could only imagine…wait actually, that might be hilarious. He might need to make a note of that. But that would be for later down the line, when he wasn’t aligning his every cognitive function toward achieving a specific goal that required, as its key component, for Aziraphale to not think he was the type of person who thought boils were fashionable.
Back to the plan. The first and most important step was acclimatizing the angel to Crowley’s extended presence. They clearly already had a high tolerance, considering the extended duration of their friendship, but seeing someone every decade to century wasn’t the same as daily contact. So, after Armageddon’t, Crowley upped their dinner dates and museum visits and watched more plays than he thought a person could feasibly watch. They were meeting on a nigh daily basis, and Crowley kept an eye out for any sign of discomfort with this arrangement, lowercase a. When none showed, it was time to move on to the next step.
And this was where it actually started, with the plant bit. That first step was really more like step zed. Baseline establishment of intentions. Now, Crowley could begin the process of moving into the bookshop.
Subtly.
Crowley brought over a plant one day, claiming he just didn’t have space for it. This was a blatant lie, considering how empty and barren his flat was. “Doesn’t need a ton of sun,” he explained Not Nervously from the doorstep of the bookshop, “and it’s pretty dark in here, so I thought it could just sit in the back room-”
“Crowley, I’ve already told you that’s fine,” Aziraphale interrupted, turning away and walking deeper into the shop. Crowley followed. “Put it wherever you think is best.”
“I’ll come by to take care of it, of course,” Crowley continued as he placed the plant carefully on Aziraphale’s desk – more accurately, atop the dozen-odd books that were stacked there. He’d been planning where his various flora would sit for a while now and knew this was where he’d wanted the prayer plant to live. “That should do.”
“I won’t have you misting it, my dear. The moisture would da-“
“Damage your books, duh,” Crowley filled in, folding himself onto the sofa. “Don’t worry, I won’t. So long as you don’t go talking too sweet to it.”
“We’ll see.”
So, Crowley left the plant, drank for a bit, and ditched.
The plant, of course, had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the Fear of Crowley before being planted (ha! Puns) in the bookshop. It had strict instructions to only dare to be the most beautiful, luscious plant while in the angel’s presence, and anything less…well. The plant really didn’t want to know.
A week later, Crowley came by again wearing a jacket. He usually wore a jacket, so that wasn’t weird. It also wasn’t weird for him to take it off while he was there, darting between bookshelves and bothering customers while Aziraphale pretended not to notice his antics. All in all, Crowley was on his best behaviour and was doing absolutely nothing worthy of notice.
Until he hung his jacket on the coat hanger, and “forgot” it that evening.
Such indirect forgetfulness was crucial to multiple stages of Crowley’s complex and detailed plan. Just because it wasn’t Ineffable didn’t mean it wasn’t worth thinking through the potential variables.
When next Crowley came by, Aziraphale pointed out, “Ah, you left your jacket here yesterday, dear. Here you are.” They pulled it down and passed it to the demon, who pushed his sunglasses hard against the bridge of his nose.
“’S too hot today for a jacket,” Crowley said, already wearing a jacket as it sprinkled outside. “I’ll pick it up another time, eh?”
“Alright,” Aziraphale conceded in an odd tone. “Shall we get on with brunch, then?”
“’Course,” Crowley said, grateful Aziraphale hadn’t pushed. Maybe he was actually going to pull this off.
Crowley stared.
Aziraphale had indeed returned Crowley’s coat to the coat rack. In fact, it was placed directly beside Aziraphale’s beloved overcoat. The angel never let things touch their coat, but there they were. Snuggled together. Seeing the cream and black side-by-side made something in Crowley clench with hope, but he tore his eyes away, determined not to rush it. Trust the process, he reminded himself. He had a plan.
“Alright, you slacker,” Crowley murmured as he checked over the prayer plant that lived on Aziraphale’s desk. He’d been by a handful of times already to check it out. The angel was in the other room making tea, so now was a good time to remind it of its purpose. “I hope you’ve been keeping our angel happy. Not dissssapointing them, are you?” He raised a speculative eyebrow, running a gentle finger over one of the banded leaves. “You know what will happen if you do.”
The plant flicked a leaf at him. Crowley’s jaw dropped.
“Wha – you can’t do that!” he hissed, crouching to eye-level to glare at it. He even lifted his sunglasses for maximum effect. “Your job is to sit still and look pretty. I sssswear to Satan, your days are numbered if you don’t-“
“I’m back, dear,” Aziraphale said as they entered the room, blissfully ignorant of Crowley’s scolding. They held up two triumphant mugs of steaming tea. “Oh, how’s your little friend?”
Crowley resented the sickly-sweet way Aziraphale referred to the back-stabbing flora, but now was not the time to argue over such matters with this complete disaster on his hands. “What have you been doing to it, angel?”
Aziraphale set Crowley’s mug on the small table nestled to the sofa before sitting with their own. “What do you mean?”
“Have you been talking to it?” Crowley accused, squinting at the smug thing again.
“Well,” Aziraphale said with a prim sniff, “it seemed lonely.”
“Lonely!” Crowley burst. “The plant sssseemed lonely!”
“Yes,” Aziraphale replied firmly.
Crowley let out a noisy breath and ran a hand through his hair. At this rate, the plant was going to be completely unhinged. No rules, no structure, just complete chaos. Might get ideas about spots or growing crooked soon. Unbelievable. Absolutely bloody typical of the angel to-
Wait.
Crowley blinked, an idea forming.
“Well,” Crowley said slowly, “I suppose…I could bring a second plant over. To keep it company. Wouldn’t be so lonely, then.” And then Aziraphale wouldn’t ruin his plants by making them go soft.
Aziraphale clapped their hands together. “That would be lovely! What a grand idea!”
Crowley grinned, and changed the subject.
The next time he came, he left two behind, a snake plant on the little sofa table and succulent on a suspiciously half-empty bookshelf.
“I just thought it might be nice,” Crowley said as he methodically aligned his records alongside Aziraphale’s, “to have the option, y’know? If you ever feel like getting caught up with the times, then these’ll be right here for you to use. Very convenient.”
Aziraphale studied Crowley’s movements as the demon continued combining their music collections, Sondheim and the Beatles making themselves friendly as Bach and The Velvet Underground got to know each other more closely than they’d ever wished.
“That should do it,” Crowley said once the little cabinet was holding approximately four times what it should feasibly be capable of containing if it was limited by such inanities as psychics. He dusted his hands off, glancing aside to see Aziraphale’s reaction. They’d been oddly quiet ever since Crowley showed up with his box of records, cassettes, and CDs.
“Hmm.” Aziraphale pursed their lips.
Crowley swallowed. “Erm. Is this…okay?”
“Absolutely not.”
Crowley cringed. “Right, of course, what was I thinking, obviously you don’t-“
“You know I keep my music in a very particular order,” Aziraphale interrupted, looking thoroughly disappointed. “And now you’ve shoved your things in there completely haphazard, utterly wrecking my system!”
Eyes scanning the rows of music, Crowley let out a relieved breath. Okay, that was fine, this was fine. It wasn’t ruined, he could fix this. “Um. I could…redo it?”
“No, you have no idea how it goes,” Aziraphale complained. “Just pull it all out and we’ll start from scratch.”
Crowley was happy to comply, more than a little amazed that this had actually worked. But of course, it had, obviously. Because Crowley had a plan and knew precisely what he was doing.
The musical fiasco had almost ruined everything, so Crowley decided to back off and give Aziraphale some space before moving on to the next stage in his masterfully crafted agenda. He stuck to things that were familiar and well-worn, like evenings in the bookshop and alcohol and long talks into the night. This tradition was nearly as old as the concept of inebriation.
One morning, Crowley blinked himself awake, only to find his face smushed into a cushion that smelled of vanilla, a heavy weight over his body and a leg trailing on the floor off the edge of his bed.
His view of the world looked mysteriously like a sideways iteration of Aziraphale’s back room.
“Finally awake, my dear?” came a soft voice. Crowley glanced up to see a figure that looked mysteriously like a sideways iteration of Aziraphale. “It’s been a long time since you forgot to sober up after a night of drinking.”
Distantly, Crowley’s brain aligned snippets of memory. Empty bottles, laughter, something about them arguing over whose side came up with llamas…
Then it faded to black, and now Crowley was here.
He forced himself to sit up, and the mysteriously sideways iteration of both the back room and Aziraphale themself became unmysteriously upright realities. “Uh,” Crowley said intelligently, his throat dry and voice grainy with sleep. “What happened?”
“Seems you needed a nap,” Aziraphale said serenely. “I took the liberty of mixing you a tonic for the hangover. I read that it can help alleviate the effects.”
Crowley squinted at the cup of sludge that was then shoved into his hands. “And when, exactly, did you get this?”
A suspicious pause. “Let’s just say it was before The Ministry of Food was established.”
“In other words, it’s definitely going to kill me or give me a disease. Or at least make me high.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I would never give you something that would hurt you.”
Crowley blinked at it, trying not to think about how easily Aziraphale said that nor what it meant to hear. Nor the fact that he believed it entirely, a feeling so strong that the drink was sure to alter its ingredient’s list as Crowley swallowed it in one long gulp. It didn’t even cross his mind that he could’ve just miracled away the hangover.
“Thanks, angel,” Crowley said, already feeling the headache recede a tiny bit.
“Of course, dear.”
With a slightly clearer head, Crowley glanced around the back room, thin strips of early morning light breaking through the dust-thick air. It looked different, to wake up there. He’d never done that before. Aziraphale had never let Crowley stay the full night in the past.
Crowley tried not to panic as he considered that sneaking a nap on the sofa was a step multiple paces ahead in his plans. He would have to completely reorganize the pacing of events now that this had occurred so as not to overwhelm nor stall out entirely. This whole moving-in-without-talking-about-it-like-healthy-and-adjusted-people was a delicate process that required painstaking care.
Granted, Aziraphale seemed utterly unbothered by Crowley’s presence as they drank their morning tea and eventually made their way out to breakfast. It should have bothered Aziraphale, according to the calculations Crowley had run before he began, and the fact that they were not meant Crowley clearly had lost the thread of Aziraphale’s comfort level somewhere and would need to redo the numbers.
Not that he was anxious about it. He had it under control.
Two weeks later, Crowley confidently strode into the bookshop during open hours. He’d spent a few sleepless nights recalibrating his schedule, then a few more doing very important not-daydreaming-about-white-curls sorta activities. All very demonic and dastardly.
He stopped suddenly, mouth half-open to call out to Aziraphale.
There was a small, black ceramic bowl by the register with nothing in it.
“Um. Angel?” Crowley called, suddenly not confident at all. Aziraphale didn’t buy black ceramic bowls. Maybe a customer left it there. Maybe it was a gift for some human they knew. Maybe Crowley was hallucinating. He was not overreacting.
“Good afternoon, Crowley,” Aziraphale said as they entered the room, a stack of books in hand. “I was just reorganizing the Bibles in the back.” Seeing the expression on Crowley’s face, Aziraphale frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Wrong! Nothing’s wrong,” Crowley replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just, uh. Admiring your…bowl.”
Aziraphale lit back up. “Oh, yes! I’m quite proud of it. It was made by a student at one of the universities nearby and I just couldn’t resist. I thought it seemed perfect for your car keys.”
Crowley watched blankly as Aziraphale rounded the counter, putting the books down so they could lift the bowl up for an inspection. “My car keys?”
Aziraphale gave him an unimpressed look. “Yes, dear, your car keys. Do keep up. You need somewhere to put them while you’re here, after all.”
Crowley’s car keys were in his pocket. Said keys were always in Crowley’s pocket. Said keys had been in Crowley’s pocket since the 1920s, literally at all times, unless they were being used. Crowley had never once had a need or desire to take the Bentley’s keys out of his pocket and put them in a ceramic bowl made by a university student on the counter of the bookshop.
Aziraphale gave him those irresistible, shiny eyes.
“Sounds perfect, angel,” Crowley croaked, fishing the keys out and dropping them with an unceremonious clatter into the bowl.
The expression on Aziraphale’s face had Crowley certain he was not going to survive this, whether he effectively moved into the bookshop or not.
By the time Crowley was ready for the next stage, she had swapped out her pronouns and spontaneously grown out all her hair again, allowing the red curls to fall to her hips. As she approached the bookshop with a cardboard box in her arms, she tried to focus on whatever remained of her original scheme. All current events remained under her strict and thorough management, of course, even if some developments had resulted in previously unconsidered consequences for the individuals involved. But she was cool, and she had it, and she knew what she was doing. Totally.
“Hey, angel!” Crowley said as she entered the bookshop. It was closed, thankfully, so she wouldn’t have to deal with humans interfering.
“Crowley! I’m in the back!” Aziraphale replied.
Crowley delved deeper into the shop, tense yet met with a familiar feeling of home. Aziraphale was at their desk, tiny stupid glasses on their nose as they inspected a document that looked like it might crumble with a touch. She took a moment to appreciate the focus on their face, and the intensity with which they handled something they felt was so precious.
Crowley could only hope she ranked half as high on Aziraphale’s list of precious things.
“Uh, yeah, hi,” she said, and oh, now Aziraphale turned to look at her with that blinding smile, the one that used to be so rare before they found their freedom together, and now appeared unfettered when all Crowley did was exist. “Um. I brought something.”
“I see that,” Aziraphale said, eyeing the cardboard box in her arms with interest.
“They – books. They’re books,” she managed. “My books. I thought that you might, uh, like to see them. And then I could maybe read them here and…cross reference…with your stuff.”
“I see,” Aziraphale said, utterly unsuspicious. Likely because Crowley was so smooth and eloquent. “What sort of books do you have?”
“Um, astronomy, mostly,” Crowley said, setting the box on one half of the sofa. “Some herbology. A few things I’ve saved over the years.”
“Let me see,” Aziraphale said eagerly, and they crowded up to Crowley’s side to poke through her small but cherished collection of texts. Crowley studiously didn’t move, ensuring their sides remained close enough to brush on occasion. She did her best not to blush, because that was definitely not in the plan.
“What do you think? Suppose you have the slightest bit of spare space in this ridiculous shop of yours?” Crowley asked, determined to dredge up some of her usual snark.
“Of course!” Aziraphale replied, either ignoring or missing Crowley’s teasing. “I know just the spot, in fact. I can clear a shelf above the sofa so you have access to them, yes?”
Crowley’s eyes widened. “Um. You don’t have to reorganize your stuff or anything, I can just keep it in the box-“
“Stuff and nonsense,” Aziraphale said promptly. “I won’t have you living out of a box when it’s simple enough to relocate some twentieth-century memoirs.”
Crowley stood back as Aziraphale, in a flurry, made space for Crowley in their world, their life, and their space. And she didn’t even overthink it a little.
“Oh, angel, by the way,” Crowley said one evening while they were talking and drinking, “I think I left a pair of sunglasses here last time. Did you happen to pick them up?”
Aziraphale regarded her from across the room, that awful, terrible space between the sofa and armchair maintaining its existence despite Crowley’s threatening glare. She wondered if Aziraphale would notice if she shoved the furniture closer together.
“Of course,” Aziraphale replied after a moment. “They’re…in your drawer.”
“My…what?”
“Your drawer. At the desk.” Aziraphale gestured to their workspace with the hand not holding a tumbler of whiskey. “There are seven or eight pairs in there by now. You do tend to leave them here a lot.”
“Oh.” Crowley blinked twice, which didn’t actually help her process anything that was happening. “Since when do I have a drawer, angel?”
“Since you stopped taking care of your stuff,” Aziraphale replied huffily, yet without a trace of ire. “Go on, take a look if you like. It’s the second one down, below the inks.”
Crowley tentatively approached the desk like it might bite her and pulled out the specified drawer. Sure enough, a row of sunglasses lay delicately and precisely inside.
“Angel.”
“Yes?”
“Is this…my pair from the 1730s?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“You didn’t even have the bookshop yet,” she complained.
“And yet, you still haphazardly left your stuff in my care, knowing full well there was nowhere for me to keep it before I established this base,” Aziraphale replied before taking a dainty sip. “Does that satisfy your curiosity?” They paused, before continuing in a strangely vulnerable tone, “Would you…like them back, then?”
Crowley swallowed and slowly shut the drawer. “They seem fine where they are. I’ll know where to go if I want to look like John Lennon again.”
“Who?”
“Angel…”
If Crowley’s sunglasses were left behind at the bookshop at an alarming rate after that, it really wasn’t anyone’s business but the drawer’s.
The drawer that was hers.
Crowley woke up on the sofa again.
By the third repetition of this occurrence, the blanket that lay over her was no longer the old throw that had lived on the sofa since time immemorial and instead appeared to be a quilt patched of blacks and greys. It began living there regularly, even when Crowley was not.
A red throw pillow joined shortly after.
Crowley wanted to say something. She wanted desperately to say something. She couldn’t remember her plans anymore, they had all been tossed upon the rocks of inequity and vanished as efficiently as her demonic dignity. She thought parts were still salvageable, maybe, but now she had no idea if she had successfully moved in or not now that the events were occurring all out of order and, in a very Aziraphalean manner, with utter disregard for logical progression.
But she could be misreading things.
The bit with the music, and the quilt, and the books, and the drawer, and the car keys could all be a big misunderstanding. It didn’t have to mean anything at all. It probably didn’t.
Right?
There were two dozen plants in the bookshop. Aziraphale said they liked the atmosphere that greenery brought to the space, so Crowley transferred more. Then Crowley said that these ones needed less sunlight, and the bookshop would be a healthier place for them, and Aziraphale seemed happy to volunteer some counter space. Then Aziraphale commented how much cleaner the air seemed with all the foliage around, so Crowley hung some from the ceiling in little macrame pulleys and cutesy pots.
Her greenery room in her flat was empty.
None of the plants listened to Crowley’s scolding anymore, and they seemed much happier in the shop. Crowley was forced to admit defeat and allowed herself to concede that, were she to be honest with herself, the plants weren’t the only ones that had gone soft in Aziraphale’s presence. She wasn’t one to judge.
Crowley hung up her Mona Lisa sketch on a rare stretch of blank wall. Aziraphale went on a rant about art history and didn’t seem to notice the handful of other art pieces – small statues, carvings, paintings – that joined it.
The perfectly clean kitchen in Crowley’s Mayfair flat had never seen use outside of alcohol storage, anyway, so her select bottles joined Aziraphale’s collection.
Aziraphale still said nothing, so Crowley still said nothing, and she woke up every morning with a blanket drawn over her body.
“Did I ever tell you,” Aziraphale said, “about the floor above the bookshop?”
Crowley regarded her friend from across the table where they dined and lifted an eyebrow. “There’s a first floor?” She supposed that did make sense, from the outside, but the bookshop was already much too big to fit in the physical space upon which it supposedly resided, and she had assumed it was part of the front.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said speculatively. “It came with the shop, you know, but I never had a need for it. It’s a living space, if I recall. There’s a door to it behind one of the bookshelves.”
“Interesting,” Crowley replied, mentally scanning the bookshop and trying to place it. She would’ve thought she might notice something like that. “I wonder what’s up there.”
“Me too,” Aziraphale agreed. They hesitated a moment before shyly asking, “Want to find out?”
Crowley’s answer to that was obvious.
A week later, when Crowley began nodding off on the sofa, Aziraphale said, “Would you like to use the bedroom we found upstairs? I’m sure we could freshen it up a bit.”
“It doesn’t even have a mattress,” Crowley complained drowsily. They’d shoved the bookshelf away from the door and explored the whole space. It turned out to be a flat of sorts, meant for the owner of the bookshop to live in. “It was literally just a bedframe. The ugliest bedframe humanity has ever seen.”
Aziraphale pouted. “Nothing we can’t fix, dear. A miracle or two should do the trick.”
Crowley wasn’t stupid enough to turn them down, no matter how tired she was. So, she followed Aziraphale up the stairs, clutching the black quilt to her chest, and lazily snapped herself into her black pajamas. When Aziraphale pushed open the door, the bed had already been swapped out for something absurdly squishy and soft-looking, with pillows galore and dark brown sheets. The bedframe remained ugly as sin.
Wordlessly, Crowley flung the black quilt over the bed and crawled under it, brain unable to focus on anything but soft soft soft, and fell asleep.
When Crowley woke up in the bookshop again, it wasn’t on the sofa this time.
It was on a bed.
Which made sense, right? Because she’d been on a bed last night.
Hissing out a yawn, jaw popping as she stretched, Crowley flopped onto her back and grunted in displeasure when she collided with something.
“Good morning, my dear,” Aziraphale said in a tone reserved for bedrooms in morning sunlight. “Did you sleep well?”
Crowley made some noises before forcing herself to open her eyes. Sitting beside her in tartan flannel, Aziraphale was smiling warmly down at her, a book held open in their lap. Their curls were messy, and their cheeks were lightly pinked. Crowley made more noises.
“I didn’t quite catch that,” Aziraphale replied serenely.
“You’re. You’re in my bed.”
Aziraphale hummed. “Actually, you’re in mine. Ours, I suppose, as I’d never used it before, either.”
“Wha – wait. Wait, wait, wait.” Crowley dragged herself upright, half-tangled in sheets and face growing hot. “What is happening right now?”
Aziraphale had the gall to look slightly embarrassed as they set their book on the nightstand. “Um, I believe we are sharing a bed.”
Crowley gaped at them. “Hrrng.”
“And if – if I’m not being too presumptuous, we might also be, ah, sharing a home.”
“Guh.”
“I tried to make the bookshop more welcoming to you, over the past few months,” Aziraphale continued quietly, unable to meet Crowley’s eyes. “I assumed, by your, ah, cooperation, that you were amenable to this development.”
“Amenable,” Crowley echoed. “Amena – yup. Yeah. Mmm hmm.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows drew in as their hands fidgeted with one another. “Did I…get it wrong?”
“Wrong? No, no, not. Yeah. Um. This is fine. Just fine,” Crowley babbled. “Ideal, really. Great. No complaints here.”
“Oh, good,” Aziraphale sighed. They gave her a bashful grin.
The two sat in silence for a moment, and Crowley was horrified to find she was smiling back.
“So,” Crowley said when she found her voice and a modicum of composure, “does that mean I can persuade you to let me bring the throne over?”
Aziraphale made a pained expression, but they gently tucked a long lock of Crowley’s hair behind her ear, all the same, fingers sliding to cradle Crowley’s cheek in their palm. “I suppose,” they conceded. “But not downstairs. There’s no space for it.”
Crowley was not. Blushing. Nope. Nuh-uh, no no no. “I can work with that,” she squeaked.
Aziraphale smiled again, something soft and delicate and tender. They leaned forward and kissed Crowley’s cheek, leaving her to die a very cool death of happiness.
“Welcome home, my love,” they murmured, and Crowley hid her face in Aziraphale’s shoulder as their arms wound around one another, a hug six thousand years in the making. Aziraphale’s hands immediately moved to gently run through Crowley’s long curls, and Crowley denied to no one that she had been dreaming of their angel doing that very thing for centuries.
Her own hands found resting places on all the lovely, round perches of Aziraphale’s body, and they found their home in each other, as in the home they now shared. Together.
All in all, Crowley was satisfied with the degree to which her expert plans had been executed. As suspected, she had known exactly what she was doing all along.