Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Come on,” Nina says, more kindly than she really feels like. “It’s pissing it down and you’re soaked to the bone.”

“Don’t care,” the man (...shaped? …person?) mutters.

“Yes, well, apparently I can’t resist a pathetic looking stray, and you’re right outside my shop, so now I’m getting wet, and if I catch a cold because of you, you’ll have Maggie to answer to.”

That snaps him out of it. His forehead wrinkles up over one eyebrow, breaking the eerie blankness that had been there before, and he turns slightly in her direction, as though only really just noticing her.

“Come on,” she repeats. “Inside with you.” He offers surprisingly little resistance to being led back inside Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death.

“I think he’s depressed,” Nina says conversationally.

“Oh, right, yes!” the other one says brightly. “Um, what does that mean?”

Nina’s talent for collecting strays extends beyond Crowley, apparently, even if he has become a regular fixture in the corner of her shop – hunched and brooding over his six shots of espresso as he stares moodily across the road at Mr. Fell’s old bookshop. (At least he’s indoors now, even if she sometimes wishes he weren’t.)

That’s how she’d collected Muriel in the first place, though, so maybe there’s a pattern there. After a month or so of peeping out of the bookshop windows at Crowley’s gloomy presence every time he was there, they’d finally worked up the nerve to come over and see what was going on. Nina couldn’t decide which one of them was worse, but at least Muriel had finally ditched the weird little police costume for a too-wide pair of trousers that looked like they’d come straight from Mr. Fell’s cupboard, and a knitted tank-top that had probably once been Jim’s.

“It means he’s sad,” Maggie said, coming to stand next to them. They stood, all three in a row, and each took a thoughtful sip of their drinks like a tired, queer, over-caffeinated chorus line.

“I wish I could help,” Muriel said. “I mean, I’m an ang– a human who likes to help other humans.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you go and sit with him?” she suggested, sensing a way to kill two stray birds with one rock. “People often need company, when they’re sad.”

“Oh! Yes! Thanks!” Muriel said, almost literally jumping into action. “No wait, maybe I shouldn’t, what if he–”

Nina made a shooing motion, and Muriel nodded resignedly and continued edging towards Crowley’s table.

“How’d it go with the new therapist earlier?” Maggie asked, once they were out of earshot.

Nine took a breath, looking at the ceiling, pushing down the immediate impulse to lie. “Feel a bit sad,” she admitted.

“Need some company?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah,” Nina said, looking over at last. “Yeah, that’d be nice actually.”

The thing about Crowley is, he’s undeniably weird, and grumpy, and most likely some kind of unfathomable eldritch horror underneath his people-suit, but he’s also weirdly helpful. It’s early one morning when Nina is struggling with a delivery, trying to bring in a big order by herself, when she spots him down the road in his fancy old car. She’s just about to whistle at him and yell, “Oi! Get the door for me, will you?” when she realises he’s already getting out to come and do it.

Another time, after a particularly busy Sunday when Nina is dropping from tiredness, he picks up a cloth as she’s closing and just starts… wiping things down. He grumbles the whole time about shortened Sunday trading hours and the church interfering in the state, and he probably just doesn’t want to go home yet (wherever that is) but, yeah. She didn’t ask him to do it, that’s all him.

“Are you going to try and thank me again?” he asks warily, when Nina finally manages to chase him out.

She snorts. She’s not going to make that mistake again. “Piss off,” she says, shoving him out the door so she can lock up. She thinks she sees him grin, there and gone again. She remembers, though. That first smile is always the hardest.

“His problem is,” Maggie had said a couple of weeks ago, “he doesn’t have anyone to talk to.”

“Can you imagine someone like him going to therapy?”

“Well, no. But I’ve always preferred a good self-help book, myself.”

“I sell books,” Muriel had piped up, before correcting themself conscientiously. “I have a big shop full of books.”

“Ooh, now there’s a thought,” Maggie had said, with a wink at Nina and a light in her eyes that could best be labelled as benign mischief. She’d linked arms with Muriel and gone back with them to the bookshop, and Nina had very adamantly not got involved.

Maybe she should’ve, though. Or supervised, at least. Because said chain of events has somehow led, today, to Muriel hefting a sledgehammer into Nina’s shop with a bright smile and a cheery nod, before dragging it over to Crowley’s usual table.

“What,” Nina hears Crowley ask, “is that for?”

“Sorry.” Nina bustles over as quickly as she can. “You can’t have that in here, you’ll break something.”

“Oh.” Muriel looks crestfallen. “But I need it. To help Crowley.”

“Help me?” Crowley says, looking somehow both affronted and delighted. “Why are you trying to–”

“You’re really going to have to take it outside, though,” Nina insists.

“But it says in my book that to be more emotionally open you need to break down walls.”

“You need to–!” Crowley splutters, leaning so far back in his chair he’s practically teetering on its two back legs.

“No walls are being broken in here,” Nina says sternly, pointing at the door. “Out. Now.”

Surprisingly, when Muriel drags their way back out again, Crowley gets up and follows. Nina just hears him saying, “Be a shame to waste it, now you’ve got it,” before the next customer demands her attention.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Maggie says later over fish and chips. “If they’ve done anything that bad, we’ll hear about it on the news.”

Nina is secretly a bit disappointed when they don’t.

So a demon is helping her out in her coffee shop sometimes, and an angel is regularly popping over from the bookshop, and Maggie really is there to stay, and they’re apparently all friends. It’s a bit weird, and not for the reasons you’d think – Lindsay hadn’t liked Nina going out without her, and Nina had been embarrassed by the way no one seemed to like Lindsay (wonder why that was? Bloody hindsight) and so all told she hasn’t actually had any friends in… years.

All told, that’s why she’d always tried never to learn people’s names, only their orders.

Funny old world, really. She only cries about it sometimes.

Chapter Text

One foot in front of the other, Aziraphale thinks. Just keep moving, don’t look back. He can’t look back. He mustn’t.

The Metatron takes him to an office that’s as big and white and open as the rest of heaven. It has a desk and a chair, and he supposes he should be glad for that much.

“I’ll leave you to get settled in,” the Metatron says, but there’s no sagging in relief once he’s gone. No collapse after the emotional fire Aziraphale’s just walked through. There are no walls. There is no privacy. There’s no… anything.

“Right,” he says, taking a deep, aching breath. “Time to get to work.

It almost happens by accident. Aziraphale, so used to being surrounded by chairs and tables and things, reaches out absent-mindedly to return a file to a shelf that has never existed and… a shelf fills the empty air, ready.

He pauses, considering its existence. The bookshelf quivers, wavering in and out of reality questioningly.

“Very good,” Aziraphale says softly, and the bookshelf solidifies into reality with a satisfied little shiver.

“Oh,” Michael says in surprise, the first time she pops over with a question. “That’s…”

She apparently can’t find a word she’s willing to use, but her face is all over disapproval. Something in Aziraphale shrinks back in reaction, but then he steadies himself. He’s in charge now. The Metatron chose him; God chose him. And he doesn’t have to take this kind of treatment any longer.

“Not going to be a problem, I trust,” Aziraphale finishes for her, polite as a block of stone.

“Ah, no. Of course,” Michael says unenthusiastically. Cautiously, she edges over to Aziraphale, moving awkwardly as though she doesn’t want to show the little bookshelf her back.

“It isn’t going to bite you,” he tells her. She gives him the most unconvincing smile he’s ever seen. Except in the mirror, of course.

“It’s all very well for you,” Uriel says, looking around the room that has grown up around Aziraphale – walls that are covered in shelves filled with books, a soft chair, a rug in reds and blues to soften the echoing footfalls. “But you’re going to give the lower angels… ideas.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale asks. “What sort of ideas?”

Uriel shoots him an annoyed look. “We’re angels, Aziraphale. We don’t need earthly comforts.”

“No, I suppose we don’t,” Aziraphale says. “They’re nice, though.”

“Nice isn’t for 37th level scriv–”

“Now, now, Uriel,” a calm voice comes from the doorway. The Metatron is standing there, framed in dark wood with the white light of the rest of heaven behind him. “Is that any way to speak to your boss? We’re under new management, now, remember.”

“Of course,” Uriel says stiffly.

Aziraphale sits up straighter and tries not to preen too visibly. It’s so nice to have a colleague on his side.

It also gives him an idea.

“Ah, yes, hello,” Aziraphale says to his angelic phone. “Would you be so kind as to call the 37th floor?”

“Arcangel Aziraphale!” the angel on the other end squeaks when she answers the call. “Sir! Um. How can I– How can– Is this a wrong number?”

Aziraphale smiles warmly to himself. “Jophiel, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes, sir?”

“Do you have that document I asked for?”

“Yes, sir. Bechamel just got back with it from the stacks.”

“Wonderful. Would you be so kind as to bring it up to my office?”

When Jophiel arrives, eyes like saucers, Aziraphale takes the file and invites her to sit down. Immediately, a chair appears opposite his desk, very much like the one that– well. It’s always looked comfy.

Jophiel doesn’t look comfy. That’s okay, though; Aziraphale’s got a plan. He’s here to make a difference, after all – that doesn’t have to exclude his fellow angels.

Jophiel doesn’t touch the tea he offers her (kettle appearing on a side table already full of hot water), but she is fascinated by the book set out on one side of his desk, a beautiful old bible open to a page of exquisitely illuminated text.

“Do you like it?” he asks.

“I’ve– I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Then it’s yours,” Aziraphale says, the delight of doing something good filling up his empty places. He miracles the page out of the book and into a picture frame with a wave of his hand. “I insist.”

Jophiel looks like a startled deer. “But I don’t have anywhere to put it!” she half-argues, half-pleads.

“Art often looks best on a wall,” Aziraphale says gently, kindly. At her confused look he waves his hand in a way that encompasses his own four walls. “You get the idea.”

Jophiel looks hunted now. “I’ll get into trouble,” she whispers.

“With who? I’m giving you my permission.”

She breathes out with a soft, “Oh.”

“Now, I’ll let you get back to work, but would you be so kind as to send up–” he consults his list– “Ariel? Oh, and please give my thanks to Bechamel. You are all doing such good work.”

Yes, all things considered, it’s all going rather well. He barely ever thinks about earth at all, except in the course of his work. He’s making changes, just as he wanted. The Metatron is pleased with him, and the other archangels will adjust with time. He can make a difference, he knows he can. And if he just keeps his sketchbook and pencils out of sight, the drawer locked, the key tucked into the pocket by his heart, then he won’t even have to think too much about what it’s cost him.

(Oh, Crowley. Why did you abandon me?)

But Aziraphale is so very lonely.

Chapter Text

Crowley doesn’t get official permission to take his flat back, but once Shax has returned to hell, he thinks, fuck it. The plants haven’t exactly been thriving in the back seat of the Bentley (which keeps trying to turn yellow on him) and frankly he could do with his own bed and access to his collection of very strong booze.

He should’ve realised what a bloody mistake that was. Aziraphale is everywhere in here, from the teacup in the cupboard Shax had clearly never opened, to the corner of the couch he had claimed, briefly, as his own.

Crowley walks around like a sleepwalker, staring numbly at all of the things he’s miracled back into place – things that should bring him comfort, but instead just echo with memories inside the hollow cavern of his chest. Like bats. Great, big, horrible memory-bats. Diving at him out of the dark without warning.

The statue of evil triumphing over good, what on earth had he… Why hadn’t he seen it before? How had he never realised that it looked like that? He laughs emptily to himself. Because it had taken a human telling him to make him realise that that huge, warm, terrible desire to always seek Aziraphale out was actually… love. That thing that humans do. Humans and, apparently, the ex-demon Crowley.

He’s so stupid. Because Aziraphale doesn’t– he couldn’t– he wants something that looks and talks and maybe even walks like Crowley, but that isn’t him on such a fundamental level that he can’t even think about it without feeling sick, a familiar downwards plummet that sends his stomach to his boots and water down his face. He’d thought they were friends, and all this time Aziraphale only wanted to go back to how things were.

“Suppose I should be angry, really,” he says to the empty flat. But there’s nothing left in him, not even for that.

That’s how he ends up being taken under Nina’s wing, like some pathetic, soggy little duckling. He tells himself he’s keeping an eye on the bookshop, just in case… well. Just keeping an eye. And if it means he can prod the bruise until he can feel it hurting, that’s just a bonus. Mostly, though, he doesn’t want to go home. Not to the teacup, or the couch, or the statue, or the empty spaces that hold Aziraphale’s shape like a ghost. While he just stands there with his heart in pieces, looking at where the furniture used to be.

It isn’t that Crowley likes the humans, it’s just that, after the first shock of being left has passed, being by himself is actually excruciating. On the other hand, Nina is entertaining to mess with, Maggie is as pathetic as he is while she flutters in and out waiting for something that will probably never come, and Inspector Constable is far too trusting by half.

“And that’s what ACAB is all about,” he finishes off telling them, throwing back his coffee in grim satisfaction.

“Right,” they say. “Only, I’m supposed to be a–cop.” Crowley raises his eyebrow at them, watches their face go through the process of realisation. “Oh! Oh, so, the uniform…”

“Not the best choice, if you’re planning to stay, no.”

“I suppose I should… probably stop… greeting customers with hello, hello, hello?”

“Well,” Crowley equivocates. “Not unless you mind scrubbing graffiti off the side of the bookshop.”

Muriel’s eyes widen in horror. “No! Gosh! Arcangel Aziraphale would be–” they cut themself off when they notice him growling. Then, to Crowley’s horror, they reach across the table and pat his hand.

“There, there,” they say.

And actually, it’s kind of nice. Crowley deals with the moment of unlikely connection by sprouting some fangs and hissing at them. Muriel leaps to their feet so fast they knock their chair over, which causes Nina to yell, “Oi!” across the shop at him with a scowl that would curdle milk.

Crowley pushes his glasses up his nose, puts the fangs away, and waggles his fingers at Muriel. “Run along now, off you pop,” and enjoys watching them scamper back to the bookshop.

Unfortunately, Nina has a very effective way of demonstrating her displeasure, and that is shorting him on his espressos.

“You can’t just go round intimidating people when they annoy you,” she says, arms crossed.

“Pretty sure I can,” Crowley mutters. It had literally been his job description once, but that was before he’d retired with… yeah.

“All right, look,” Crowley says, barging himself into the bookshop late one afternoon. “It’s been brought to my attention that I might’ve been a bit of an arsehole, so,” he shoves a potted aloe plant at Muriel. “Peace offering.”

Turns out they’d never been given anything before, and the way they light up when they finally realise what’s happening makes Crowley’s chest ache and ache and ache.

Nina has wine, God bless her, so Crowley pisses off back across the road and helps her close up so they can get to the drinking quicker. Where he can get safely drunk with someone just as bitter as him without the risk of anyone trying to hug him.

Chapter Text

It starts as a way to keep herself entertained when Nina and Crowley get into the wine. Maggie doesn’t drink, never has, apparently doesn’t have the right tastebuds for it, but she doesn’t really mind being around people who do. Hell, she’d never have made any friends at uni if she did. But experience has taught her that having something to do with her hands is a useful way to help her pass the evening and not get… sanctimonious. (She never means to get sanctimonious, it just somehow seems to happen, like she has resting sanctimonious face or something). So, she crochets.

“You humans,” Crowley says one evening, apropos of nothing. “Always so bloody clever.”

Ignoring the ‘humans’ part (she’s pretty sure she can remember what happened the night of the Whickber Street Trading and Shopkeepers Association meeting – who Mr. Fell and his friends seemed to be – but she’d still rather not examine it too closely) Maggie glances up and makes a noise of polite inquiry.

“Always…” Crowley flaps his hand at her. “Making things.” He squints. “What are you making? That some kind of… animal?”

Maggie holds up the amigurumi she’s been working on this evening. It’s a bit flat without its stuffing, but close enough to finished that you can mostly tell what it is. “It’s crochet,” she explains. “I’m making an animal alphabet for my baby niece. This one’s going to be a whale.”

“A whale!” Crowley exclaims, for some reason finding this absolutely hilarious. “You’re making a whale!”

“It’s not that hard, really,” Maggie says. “I can show you, if you’d like?”

To her surprise, Crowley says, “Yeah, all right.”

“Probably shouldn’t do it drunk, though,” she adds, a little regretfully. “Maybe next ti– oh!”

With a grimace of truly theatrical proportions, Crowley tenses up all over, and one of the empty wine bottles on the table between him and Nina magically refills itself.

“That’s a neat trick,” Nina says.

“Yeeeeah a five quid bottle of wine isn’t worth the hangover,” Crowley says, with a mean little smile at Nina.

“Feel free to bring something better, Mr. Classic Car,” Nina tells him, unmoved.

Maggie pokes him with her crochet hook anyway. “You be nice.” He starts blustering his usual spiel about not being nice, but Maggie barely hears him, because Nina is now looking at her almost like she’s surprised. Did no one ever stick up for you before? Maggie wonders, but she thinks she already knows the answer, and her heart breaks a little.

“Come on, then,” Crowley interrupts her thought. “Show me how to make a whale.” She’ll have to ask him later what’s so funny about it.

Another evening, as he’s standing up to leave, handing her back the crochet hook and ball of wool, she thinks to ask, “Where are you going, anyway?”

“Oh yeah, got my flat back,” he says. “‘S not far.”

“That’s great,” Maggie says, with a little chuckle. “The way you were carting those plants around everywhere, I thought for a minute you were living in your car!”

“I was,” Crowley says, like it’s no big thing.

Maggie exchanges a glance with Nina, whose eyebrows have shot up her forehead – she clearly didn’t know either. Knowing Nina, she probably never asked. She’s good like that, not nosey like Maggie.

“Why?” Maggie asks, because she is, after all, the nosey one. “I know Mr. Fell had a spare room. He gave it to Jim when he showed up.”

Across the table, Nina grunts, and takes a large sip of her wine, expression darkening. Maggie knows her opinion of Aziraphale has lessened considerably since his… professional relocation, but she doesn’t–didn’t know him the way Maggie does–did. He was so genuinely kind, she can’t imagine he wouldn’t have wanted to help his friend out while he was homeless.

“Better yet,” Nina says, “why didn’t you just get yourself a new place? Don’t tell me you can’t get your hands on some cash if you need it.”

For a moment, Crowley looks as if he’s going to bolt. And then, very slowly, he sits back down.

And– actually sits. Two feet on the ground, arse in the chair, hands in his lap.

“Humans talk about this stuff, don’t they,” he says quietly, apparently to himself. “Fuck it.” Louder, “Aziraphale didn’t know I got kicked out,” he says – sighs, really. “It happened during the lockdowns and he… he didn’t want me to come over. Wanted to set a good example.”

“So you didn’t ask again,” Nina prods, frowning incredulously. “Didn’t bother to explain why you were asking.”

“Nope,” Crowley says, voice irreverent but expression pained.

“And you didn’t get a new place because…”

“Didn’t feel safe,” Crowley mutters, looking down at his hands. “I wanted… wanted to be able to leave quickly, if we needed to.” He laughs bitterly to himself, as though he’s just thought of something, but doesn’t share it with them.

“But did you tell Aziraphale any of that?” Maggie asks gently.

“Of course I didn’t,” Crowley snaps. Then, a bit nonsensically, “I thought he knew.” And he sounds so very broken that Maggie can’t help reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t even shrug her off. Poor sod.

Maggie’s shop is never that busy, it’s part of the reason she took up crochet to start with, needed something to keep her occupied on the increasing number of slow days, but sometimes she likes to just people-watch, too. She’s gotten to know the comings and goings of the neighbourhood pretty well, over the years. It’s how she fell in love with Nina, with her incredible energy and rare smiles, the blunt jokes and even blunter gaffs. The way she lives to help others, despite the weary facade. Anyway. This is how she knows Muriel only ever leaves the bookshop to nip over to Give Me Coffee Or Give Me Death, and why she’s so surprised to be confronted by their wide, slightly wild eyes at ten in the morning on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday.

“I need help!” they wail. “He’s in the bookshop and he’s… oh good lord he’s… I don’t know what to do!”

“All right, love, I’m coming,” Maggie says, alarmed, guessing immediately who ‘he’ is likely to be. She grabs her keys and locks up quickly as Muriel literally dances on the spot in anxious impatience, before they grab her hand and pull her down the street.

“I’m so sorry about this,” they say as they shove Maggie through the door of the bookshop. “But I didn’t know who else to ask. Actually, I asked Nina first because she always knows what to do, but she told me she was busy and to go away.”

“That’s all right,” Maggie murmurs distractedly. “I don’t mind being second choice.”

Distractedly because, in the gloom of the bookshop (with all of its blinds pulled down and no chandelier) books are flying through the air like… like… like books that can fly. They’re literally floating up off the shelves and flittering around the rotunda in neat little lines, before dropping into piles on the floor. And in the middle of it all, sunglasses removed and an evil gleam in his inhuman eyes is–

“Crowley! What are you doing?” Maggie yells over the whoosh of the books.

Crowley doesn’t reply, just laughs manically.

“He’s– oh, Maggie,” Muriel whimpers. “He’s alphabetising.”

“This’ll show him!” Crowley whoops, hair whipping in the wind of his own magic.

Muriel clasps Maggie’s hand desperately. “What should I do?”

Maggie takes a breath, and pats their hand. “Probably just let him do it? And, mmm, be ready with some ice cream when he’s blown himself out.”

“Will that help?” Muriel doesn’t look any less bewildered.

“In my experience,” Maggie says. “Yes. Absolutely.”

She checks back later, shading her eyes to glance through a window on her way to grab her afternoon cup of chamomile tea. There are no more books in the air, which is a relief. She spots a figure on the couch in the back buried under a heap of blankets, one long, black-clad leg dangling out from underneath. Muriel catches sight of her, and waves enthusiastically, then gives Maggie the thumbs up.

Maggie waves back, and tries not to think about her own freezer and the three tubs of Haagen-Dazs that she’s been self-medicating with on the nights when being in one-sided love is more than she can stand.

(“How did you do it?” she’ll ask him one day in the future, when things seem hopeless and she kind of hates it all. “Six thousand years, with nothing…”

Crowley will slouch down deeper into the park bench they’re sitting on, one leg kicked out far enough to make passersby have to detour round it, or trip. Meditatively, he’ll say, “Suppose it’s because he was him.” He will toss a handful of frozen peas to the ducks, and watch as they squabble over them. “And I’m me,” he’ll add after a moment. “What else could I have done?”

“Don’t you regret it?” she’ll ask, dreading the answer.

“Every day,” he’ll say, face impassive behind his sunglasses. “And not at all.”)