Chapter Text
For a moment, a solitary moment, he thought it was the angel.
It was the laugh perhaps, or maybe the voice itself, though he couldn’t make out the words from this distance.
Then, his heart thrumming with adrenaline, palms damp with sweat, not sure if it was hope or fear driving his steps, he turned the corner of the aisle, could see him over by the register.
It was only a man. Curly-headed, but with dark hair going to grey rather than the white-gold he desperately longed to see. He sported a short beard of the same salt-and-pepper. If you squinted, Crowley thought, he did bear a fair resemblance to the angel, but the angel never would have been caught discorporated in what he wore: denims and a heathered grey shirt with a stretched-out neck, lightly scuffed trainers, a dark blue jacket.
His voice, when he spoke again, was a little lower, with a lilting accent that gave him away as belonging to the Welsh valleys.
Turning away from the stranger, Crowley stared at a rack of music, willing the sudden tightness in his throat to dissipate, grateful for the ever-present dark glasses that hid his eyes from view.
“Cheers,” the man said to the clerk as he gathered his purchases and spun away from the counter, his eyes on one of the albums in his hand.
Crowley saw the collision coming, but didn’t move fast enough, and the man barrelled into him. He fell squarely on his arse, his sunglasses jumping off his nose and skittering away to land on top of a dropped record. A thoughtless miracle ensured neither glasses nor album were damaged.
“Fuck! I’m so sorry. Didn’t see you there. Y’alright?”
He scrambled for his glasses before further questions could be asked, scooping up the blue case at the same time.
A broad hand reached toward him, offering aid, and though he hesitated, he allowed himself to take it. The palm was warm, a little rougher than the angel’s had ever been, his love of fine things keeping him in balms and treatments long before a manicurist could be found on every corner. His chest ached as the man pulled him to his feet.
“Okay then?” the man asked, peering at him, his grey-green-hazel eyes clearly concerned.
Crowley held out the fallen album in silence, and the man’s gaze dropped to the offering.
“Ah, thanks. Seems to be intact. Been lookin’ for this one for years. Woulda been a shame to lose it half a minute after finally findin’ it. Are you actually alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Crowley cleared his throat, aware of the curious look he was on the end of, aware that he’d not responded verbally to the earlier questions, that he’d not made a sound when the man had knocked him down.
“Yeah. Fine.”
The stranger looked him over, and that face, those eyes, so similar and yet not quite right, pulled something taut in him, had him speaking before he could stop himself.
“What’s so special about it? The album.”
Crow’s feet appeared at the man’s temples as he smiled, his face breaking open. There were dimples beneath the trimmed beard, just where the angel’s own resided, and Crowley found his own cheeks beginning to stretch involuntarily, even as he had to swallow down a thick lump in his throat.
“Anniversary edition box set. All kinds of extra bits and bobs.”
He nodded, schooling his expression into something that better fit his usual demeanour.
“Y’familiar with them? The Manics?” the man asked, flipping the cover to an angle where Crowley could see it.
“Mm, no,” Crowley said. “Don’t think so. Any good?”
The cardboard case was pressed into his chest, and his fingers rose reflexively to curl around the edges.
“Here. Keep it. Find out for yourself. An apology for not lookin’ where I was going.”
Crowley looked up sharply. “That’s not– but you said you’d been looking– you’d just give it away? Why?”
The man tilted his head to one side slightly, his eyes shrewd. “Helped me through some tough times, their music. They put into words things I didn’t even know I was feeling. They came out with this one just after they’d lost their friend.”
Crowley opened his mouth to deny a need for such self-scrutiny, to say that surely he couldn’t identify with such a situation. But no words came forth.
The man’s expression lightened. “Plus, I know the boys in the band. If I asked, I’m sure they’d get me anothert. Just like to do things the hard way sometimes, y’know? Feel like I earned it.”
He clapped a hand on Crowley’s bicep and squeezed lightly. “Look after yourself.”
Crowley nodded wordlessly as the man brushed past him, his arm burning where he’d been touched. Humans didn’t touch him, as a rule, at least nothing beyond an accidental graze on a busy street. Never this, never something with intention, even if that intention was casual and only friendly, even if this human had no idea who — what — he was.
The man was nearly at the door of the shop when he turned back, his one eyebrow raised.
“Anyone ever tell you that you look a bit like the Doctor?”
“The doctor? Doctor who?”
The man laughed, and the sound bounced around in Crowley’s chest, shredding through him like a bit of molten metal. “That’s the one.”
Crowley grimaced, but the man tipped his head slightly in farewell, his upturned nose rising. Two of the fingers clenched around the handle of his bag lifted in a small wave. “Tara.”
The bell over the shop door jingled with his exit, and Crowley stood there in the aisle, watched him disappear down the street.
“Sir?”
He turned toward the clerk, shook his head mutely at the offer of assistance, and fled, still clutching the album to his chest.
The problem was, Crowley didn’t own any way to play the music. With every new piece of technology that emerged over the decades — the centuries, the millennia — he’d been an early adopter. He kept art, kept mementos of his long existence. Didn’t keep a gramophone, or an 8-track, or a cd player, not even a first gen iPod. He did think he might have a Zune somewhere — one of his proudest achievements.
So.
The options:
- Go out and purchase a record or cd player, dealing with who knows how many humans in the process. He really wasn’t sure he was up to it when he already felt raw and strung out by the morning’s interaction. He was liable to start a small fire or cause a thunderstorm that would knock out the local power grid for several hours.
- Miracle one. Perhaps this would be his preferred option, if creating things wholesale and/or pulling them intact through the ether had been going well for him lately. It hadn’t.
- Make use of the record player he knew existed, in a place where there was a comfortable piece of furniture that always seemed to stretch to accommodate his too-long legs and mould itself to the curve of his snakey spine, where the light was never too bright, where he could leave his eyes uncovered.
Of course, he chose the objectively worst idea, snapped his fingers to call the Bentley, and climbed in, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles were white as the car pulled away from the very illegal spot where he’d parked. The radio stayed off.
Muriel greeted him when he entered.
More accurately, Muriel screeched when he pulled open the door, hurrying over from the shelf they were reorganising and giving off every indication that he was about to be the recipient of a hearty embrace. They halted at the last minute and stopped a few feet away.
“‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello.”
“Drop the Inspector Constable act,” he said shortly, but not altogether unkindly. “You’re a bookseller now.”
Their shoulders dropped, but the friendly smile remained undimmed. “It’s so good to see you, Mr. Crowley.”
He frowned.
The only one ever happy to see him had been Aziraphale.
Even the rest of the shopkeepers on Whickber Street, for all that he was a familiar face, had always seemed wary of his presence — some instinctive reaction to his nature, he supposed, enmity between him and the children of Eve, thou shalt bruise his heel and all that rot.
Well, and perhaps that Sister Mary Loquacious had been quite pleased to see him when he’d delivered the Antichrist to her waiting arms some sixteen years ago. But she was a Satanist nun and therefore ought not to count by his measure, as she clearly didn’t keep with the usual behavioural patterns of humans.
He wouldn’t even consider the rest of the angels or his fellow demons. None of them had ever been thrilled to see him either.
“Have I said the wrong thing?” Muriel asked.
He reached up to tug on his left earlobe. “Nnnyuhh.”
They seemed to take the collection of sounds as a sign that he hadn’t taken offence, but would prefer not to dwell on the matter. They were right.
He looked around the shop, taking in how little things had changed in the months he’d been absent. A little less dust, perhaps, some of the books on different shelves from what he remembered. But it was largely the same. The Marly Horses remained in their places, but his glasses stayed on for the time being.
“Did you need–” Muriel began, but trailed off when he shook his head.
“Oh. Shall I…”
They gestured in the direction of the door, and he lifted a noncommittal shoulder.
“I’ve been meaning to look at some coffee,” they said, and shuffled past him to the exit, the door swinging shut behind them. He locked it with a wave of his hand, though it wouldn’t keep Muriel out. That was as things were, he supposed.
He wandered through the shop, resting long fingers lightly on stacks of books and the marble bust where the angel’s medal had once hung. There was the antique cash register, gleaming far more than it used to; perhaps Muriel was actually selling books. The angel — The Supreme Archangel, he corrected himself — wouldn’t be best pleased by that turn of events, at least the old version wouldn’t.
Perhaps the new version wouldn’t mind.
Perhaps he was above attachment to such fleeting human pleasures as a good book.
As a perfectly prepared roll of sushi.
As a glass of wine shared with a friend.
Oh Crowley, nothing lasts forever.
He turned tight eyes away from the register, looked up at the oculus above him, its rounded glass providing a glimpse of the grey sky beyond. The rug beneath his feet was bunched up in one spot, leaving an edge of the circle exposed, and he ran the toe of his boot across the bump to smooth the weave back into place.
He paused at the clock. Sometime during his absence, its hands had gone still. He could wind it, could reset the pendulum and the chains. He left it.
The angel’s chair sat where it always had, where he’d made sure to place it after that whole business with the battle when he’d been tidying up. It wasn’t his usual perch, though it offered the best view of the door, his reason for choosing it the last time he’d been in this space.
He dropped heavily onto the chesterfield instead.
The thing was — the thing was — he wasn’t even sure he ought to have been allowed in. Muriel hadn’t invited him; he’d stepped through the door before they’d even seen him.
Which meant he was still, apparently, welcome here, if only on a technicality. Perhaps, in all the busyness of his new responsibilities, the angel had just not thought to revoke his access.
Which was worse? Being unwanted or simply forgotten?
He allowed himself a few minutes to sit in the unnatural silence of the shop, so unlike the quiet but constant activity that had always filled the space: the slide of leather on wood as angel flitted from shelf to shelf reorganising books, the clink of teacups and thunk of mugs of cocoa, the shuffle of feet across the floor and up the stairs, the swish of hands conducting along with classical music.
Sighing, Crowley pushed himself up from his seat and retrieved the album from its sleeve in the case. He fitted it to the gramophone, nudging a little power into the machine so it would play even if the record wasn’t the correct size. That much he could manage.
The first track was an odd one.
He’d met the real Elvis once, on one of his brief forays to North America in the early 60s when he’d hoped he might have more luck procuring holy water out from under the watchful eye of a certain angel. The music had been fine, but neither to his own tastes nor to the angel’s, so he hadn’t much followed his career. He did, however, quite appreciate the musician’s ability to move his hips.
The last of the distorted vocals faded away and a guitar started in on a repeating riff that rose and fell with the beat of drums and then the hum of strings.
The singer’s voice cut in over the guitar after a moment, and Crowley grimaced at the opening line — the angel would have agreed with it, he thought, at least at his core, though perhaps outwardly he would have argued that power, of course, came from the divine.
It was never lost on him: the irony of the roles they’d carved out for themselves over the milennia.
Charged with protecting the humans — on apple tree duty, as he’d once put it — the angel had apparently failed in his God-given task when Crowley had tempted the woman with knowledge and she’d given in; he had become a bastion of human knowledge, a collector of the works that never would have existed if he’d used that flaming sword for its intended purpose. He had turned his back on Heaven’s asceticism, pursuing earthly pleasures of food and finery, had let himself be sullied by things other angels drew away from in disgust.
And Crowley, the reason — well, perhaps not the reason, but the least catalyst — for the Fall of Man, the original tempter, had used his work as a path toward what little freedom he could find from Hell’s prison. Living topside in the fresh air rather than the dank confines of dripping corridors. Disguising goats and children to keep them from burning. Badgering the angel until he agreed to the Arrangement, so Crowley could fall back on the excuse of corrupting one of Her ambassadors if he ever got caught doing good rather than evil, creating rather than destroying, blessing rather than cursing.
But there was a cost for each of them. For the angel, it had been the esteem of Heaven, and perhaps, Crowley had thought before, even his own faith. He had been wrong about that, it seemed. His own cost? The constant fear of losing his only friend.
Oh, they’d parted in the past. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes for decades. And he knew, he knew, that the tipping point of many of their past disagreements had been his own nature.
He’d never been able to fully forget his origins — neither Hell, nor his existence before, before the War, before he Fell.
But he’d found a way to carry on. Found a reason to carry on in the form of his hereditary enemy who had somehow become the only entity on Earth, Above, or Below who really mattered. They’d always returned to each other, sooner or later.
And when it all had been threatened, they’d worked together to save their precious existence.
Of course, they hadn’t talked about it, not really.
Certainly not about what they were to each other.
Not about Crowley’s fatalism that only ended when the angel threatened to never speak to him again. Not about their frankly lunatic idea to each walk into a place they shouldn’t have stepped foot in to save the other’s skin.
Not about the four quiet years that followed, easy even in the midst of a global pandemic. In the paths they’d forged together, in the habits they’d built around each other’s routines, in the ways they’d orbited around each other, their own binary system. What were four years in the face of eternity?
It turned out they were everything, though Crowley hadn’t known it at the time.
No, they’d carried on as they always had in times of peace: they’d dined together and drunk together, and perhaps spent a little less time looking over their shoulders.
And finally, when one more close call had threatened their fragile existence, the life they’d built together. When Crowley had thought that perhaps this was the moment after all —
Then it had all come down around him. No bang, just a whimper.
No shouting, not really.
No fires, no floods, no horsemen.
Just a fundamental misunderstanding of what they meant to each other, of the boundaries of their relationship.
Of who they were — of who he was and who he was willing to be.
He’d thought the angel knew him. He’d thought the angel would want what he wanted.
He was wrong.
Soaring strings and guitar disappeared, the last phrase cut short, leaving only the steady beat of drums. When that too ended, he twitched his hand. The needle lifted and reset itself, the rise and fall of the guitar echoing through the empty bookshop.
He pulled off his glasses, buried his face in his hands.
And for the first time since the Ark, Crowley let himself weep.
Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now
For a shallow piece of dignity
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for
-“A Design for Life,” Manic Street Preachers