Chapter Text
The bookshop was cleaner than Aziraphale remembered it, but the smell was the same. He had been enveloped by the aroma of stories and history begging to be read, and couldn’t help but inhale deeply, savouring the scent of pages brimming with potential.
It felt like home. It felt like love.
He walked over to his desk, one hand trailing nostalgically over books and trinkets. The desk was significantly tidier and had accrued lots of small, clear plastic trays and boxes into which everything, normally left right within Aziraphale’s reach, had been placed.
“They’ve become heavily invested in the organisation side of TikTok.”
Startled, Aziraphale turned to find Crowley sprawled across the chesterfield at an impossible angle.
“One of my more brilliant ideas,” drawled the demon.
“Crowley,” the word fell unbidden from his mouth, a reverent whisper. Aziraphale took a moment to drink in Crowley’s appearance, starved of it for too long. He took in everything, from his snakeskin boots to the tip of his flaming hair. However, on the journey, he saw a silver pin on his lapel, shaped like a crown.
Noticing where Aziraphale’s eyes had landed, Crowley said “Ah, yes, not the only one deserving of a promotion it seems, Archangel.” Crowley couldn’t hide the sneer, audible in every syllable of that word, like something foul on his tongue.
In an instant he was on his feet, head cocked. “You seem…disappointed,” he laughed, “the hypocrisy is just…” he pressed his thumb and fingertips to his mouth in a chef’s kiss.
Aziraphale ignored the barb.
“Why are you here, Crowley?”
Crowley put his hands in his pockets (well, as far as his jeans would allow) and began sauntering in a circle around the angel, whose violet eyes keenly followed his every move.
“Rumour has it you’ve been taking The Messiah out on a leash to fraternise with the humans and, while my memory of Her word is a bit hazy, I’m pretty sure that bit isn’t actually in Revelations.”
Aziraphale stood rooted to the spot, mind ablaze with thoughts that he couldn’t quite connect into anything coherent. Where to begin? He felt caught in Crowley’s invisible gaze as the demon halted, his head trained precisely at the spot where Aziraphale stood; a serpent ready to strike.
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest notion…”
“There’s no point in lying to me, Aziraphale.”
A beat.
“Not much incentive for me to be honest with a Duke of Hell, is there, my dear?” Aziraphale looked down, his lips pressed into a thin, forced smile. After everything he’d said, he’d not only rejoined hell, but he was helping run it. Aziraphale’s opposite number.
He knew he had no right to judge but he felt the disappointment as keenly as hellfire. It was a rush of ice tingling just below his corporeal surface. That hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach. The bitter swoop of disappointment.
Duke of Hell.
For a long moment they simply watched each other, a frisson of tension hanging in the air between them.
It was Crowley who broke it, “Look, everything aside,” he gestured between the two of them; ‘everything’ was such a small word to describe ‘everything’ between them. “I’m sure we’re both still on the same Not Obliterating the World page, so tell me where he is, and I’ll deal with it. Not a speck on your shiny white suit.”
Crowley hated it. Who would have thought he’d miss the tartan?
“Crowley, we went through this with Adam. We can’t just kill the Son of God!”
“There’s definitely something in my contract about thwarting all things divine so I’m pretty sure I can.”
“He didn’t deserve it the first time, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it happen a second!”
They had inadvertently gravitated towards each other with every word. An invisible line drawing them together.
“I mean, that could be arranged.”
“I’m not going to let you tempt me into falling, Crowley. Not after…”
Last time. The time when you kissed me.
Crowley flinched, struck by the unseen blow.
He reached up and tore his glasses off his face, giving Aziraphale the first chance he’d had in almost three hundred and forty-eight days to see those beautiful eyes he thought he’d lost forever.
“Is that what I was doing? Tempting you?”
Crowley’s eyes always held the truth of him; one of the main reasons he shielded them from the world, more than just to hide their unusual design.
He was hurt.
Beyond that, Aziraphale could see a rage building inside him, scales literally creeping up his neck, crawling towards his jawline. Smoke and sulphur began broiling in swirls of smoke around him, whisps of serpents breaking forth from the mist and hovering menacingly at Crowley’s side. Aziraphale failed to hide his shock at what was quite the sight before him, but he quickly recovered. A lot had happened in their time apart. This was new.
“When have I ever given you reason to believe I’d do that!?” Crowley whispered, his voice simultaneously laden with anger and pain. The demon grimaced, he’d shown his hand, shown Aziraphale a snapshot of the turmoil he’d been living with these past days, weeks, months. He turned his back on Aziraphale to compose himself, eyes trained on the ceiling. Why did he always search for Her, even after all this time? The snakes suspended at his side calculated their next move.
“This is pathetic,” he spat rounding back on Aziraphale, “Tell me where he is. I know you, Aziraphale. Heaven will have pulled out all the stops to convince you, but you love this planet. I know you don’t want this giant floating rock obliterated anymore than I do. Let’s put an end to this now, and you can float back upstairs and fade into beige oblivion for all I care. But I will not let you destroy…all of this.” He gestured around the room, hoping the books might help him plead his case.
Silence.
Crowley’s phone vibrated, filling the air much too shrilly. He looked down and opened the notification from Muriel Constable.
“Huh, seems like our little bee has taken our Lord and Saviour to the zoo.” Crowley turned his phone to show a selfie of Muriel, beaming as Jesus fed a giraffe in the background, a jump suit with the words ‘zookeeper for a day’ emblazoned on it.
Crowley’s eyes darted to the door and Aziraphale’s followed.
Stalemate.
was silently begging, pleading with Crowley not to go. He didn’t want to face off against him, he wasn’t quite sure his old heart would take it, wouldn’t survive another blow at Crowley’s hands.
Crowley stalked away and Aziraphale, not quite sure what to do, called after him “Crowley, come back.”
And there it was. A mirror image of that day just shy of a year ago, when a demon offered an angel the world and the angel said “I forgive you”.
It did the job. Crowley stopped dead in his tracks. He chastised himself, a ridiculous, sentimental fool. His head bowed infinitesimally, such a slight movement you’d only catch it if you were paying close attention. And Aziraphale was. His eyes trained on Crowley, memorising him as though this might be the last time he saw him, like the last time they ended up in this exact spot.
“Can we please just take a moment to talk about this?”
“What is there to discuss, Aziraphale?” His name again. Not his angel anymore. “We both wanted to stop the world from ending once. For some of us, that hasn’t changed.”
“And your solution was to run back to Hell?” Aziraphale scoffed.
“My solution was survival.” Crowley’s patience was waning, his lip curling into a scowl. “I’m a demon, I do what needs to be done to suit me, and only me.” Crowley closed in on Aziraphale, “And if that means running Him through with a sword or covering him in sardine oil and feeding Him to the lions, then that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“You can’t kill the Lamb of God, Crowley. I’m…He’s…” But Aziraphale couldn’t finish the sentence without giving it away, the truth of what he was planning. “I won’t let you.”
“Let me? You think you have any say in this? Or anything for that matter. You’re nothing but a puppet.” Aziraphale hadn’t realised but Crowley had begun walking back to him, steadily nudging Aziraphale backwards until he was up against a bookcase as Crowley spat the last few words out, fury pouring from him, eyes wide.
Aziraphale felt a flutter of rage in his chest as Crowley struck a nerve.
“I’m the Supreme Archangel, Crowley, and His protector. If you want Him, you’ll have to go through me first.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“It’s a warning.” Aziraphale kept his eyes on Crowley, never flinching under his scrutinous gaze.
He chuckled. “A warning…could have done with a little heads-up last time we were here you know.”
“When you tried to use your evil wiles to draw me away from Heaven.”
“When you came bounding in here having accepted a job offer without having the slightest fucking idea what it was for! Trying to drag me back to the place that cast me into a pool of boiling sulphur while they laughed. You, hiding on the outskirts, covering your eyes while I was cast out.”
They had never spoken about this; the birthplace of all their unspoken words and miscommunications. Of course, they both knew Aziraphale was powerless in that moment. If he’d tried anything, they’d have done a nosedive for two into the pit. The demon never forgot the pain but the angel, he could still hear the screams. They never admitted this to each other.
Crowley smirked and turned victorious towards the door again. Aziraphale’s hand went to his side, and he drew his flaming sword from nothingness. In a heartbeat, he was at Crowley’s side as he pinned the blade against the door frame, right in front of Crowley’s face, blocking his exit.
Crowley’s eyebrows arched in surprise and perhaps even the slightest hint of admiration.
The demon eyed the blade and met the angel’s eyes across the fiery steel.
Crowley ghosted a featherlight touch over Aziraphale’s hand and gently raised the blade to nestle itself under his jaw.
Crowley’s fingers remained delicately but firmly holding the sword in place for a breath too long as he stared down into Aziraphale’s indigo eyes.
“Do it, Supreme Archangel. I dare you.”