Chapter Text
Crowley looked at his email for a long time, he tapped the screen to keep it going dark. Marked the email as unread multiple times as he lingered on it. He couldn’t deal with this right now, this email is a ‘reply once home’ email. He locked the screen and tucked the phone away in his pocket. Sighing deeply, he knocked on the Dean’s office door.
He heard Gabriel acknowledge him from inside and opened the door.
“Dean. I…uh…need to speak to you.” Crowley started awkwardly.
Gabriel sighed and put his pen down, “Sure, look, whatever Aziraphale said or did, I’ll speak to him.”
Crowley looked confused, “He didn’t…well…he did , but I said something first, Bea told me to talk to you.”
Gabriel straightened up, “Well, take a seat I guess. Can’t imagine them sending you here for no reason.” Crowley sat uncomfortably and stared at Gabriel, “Come on, I don’t have all day.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why I’m here. They said ‘talk to you’, they didn’t give me a list of questions to ask.” Crowley snapped.
“Why don’t you start with explaining why my office administrator slammed in here earlier hollering about stuck up professors and their attitude problems. It was not the good kind of slamming.” Gabriel sighed.
Crowley pulled a face that luckily went unnoticed and exhaled, “Fine, I said something to Professor Fell that was over the line, we were arguing about my blog, I called him stuck up, then I…I said something about his past. Something I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have known. He left and then Bea came to slam doors and throw stuff at me, too.”
Gabriel had gone still, the pen he’d been tapping silent against the desk, “What did you say?”
Crowley heard the tone, the careful nonchalance and posture, he chewed his cheek, “I’m getting the strangest feeling you already know.” He said slowly, “But I’m not saying, it’s obvious this is a big deal for him.”
Gabriel relaxed slightly, “Hm, you’re right, I do know a lot about him, he is my brother after all.” Crowley’s jaw actually dropped and he slammed his lips back together once he realised he was gaping. Gabriel grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “Well, almost, I was engaged to his sister a long time ago. Very odd family.” Gabriel threaded his fingers together and propped them up under his chin.
“So you understand why we can’t do this class together.” Crowley said, “He won’t even be in the same room as me.”
“Well that sounds like a ‘you problem’, Professor Crowley. As in, you broke it so you fix it, sunshine.”
Crowley gaped at him, “How the fuck am I meant to do that? Aziraphale barely tolerated me before, and he’s the most unreasonable person I’ve had the misfortune to try and work with!”
“Go crawling back, say you're sorry, be nice. If you’re not doing what I hired you to do, then there’s no reason for you to be here.”
“You’re going to fire me?!”
“I never said that.” Gabriel replied calmly, “But generally speaking the department does not look kindly on short term Professors with no references upsetting our long standing faculty members.”
“He’s never going to forgive me! He’s had it in for me since day one, and I mean, being completely honest even before my fuck up we were arguing.”
Gabriel sighed and pushed his chair back, relaxing slightly into it, “Anthony, I’m going to give you some information that doesn’t leave this room. I’m doing this because, whilst I absolutely could remove you, cancel the course and happily move on and never look back, I’ve put a lot of time into making this work. Plus, several other department heads told me this was a bad idea and are actively betting against me. I hate losing, so I’m going to do everything in my power to win.” He leant forward, steepling his fingers. “Aziraphale will forgive you, because he forgave me. It’s just what he’s like. You may have uncovered his secret, but I’m the reason there’s a secret to uncover in the first place. In a misguided attempt to win my bride-to-be and her family over I outed him to his family and ultimately got him kicked out. By the time I came to my senses about the woman I was engaged to I had a decent position at the university and learned Aziraphale was sleeping on someone’s couch about to drop out.” Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, “I felt bad for him, but it took a few more years and someone else pointing it out for me to realise I owed him something.”
“So you, what? Gave him a job as an apology for ruining his life?” Crowley scoffed, Gabriel hadn’t looked particularly remorseful at all, relaying the sad state of Aziraphale’s past as if it were something he was reading out of a book. “You can’t fix having your home taken away from you.”
“Yeah, that’s what Bea said.”
Crowley huffed, “Why am I not surprised.”
Gabriel did actually manage to look a little contrite, “I can’t change what happened to Aziraphale. I’m not going to lie and say I cared much for him then, or that I care much for him now. Bea opened my eyes to a lot of things though, they’re part of the reason I left Michael. I’m so much happier now than I would have been.”
Crowley snorted and stood up, “Yeah, Bea’s a real eye opener. Look, I’m so glad you found your happy place and discovered some fun stuff about yourself and this modern world we live in along the way. But respectfully, and knowing full well you can fire me, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Aziraphale deserves so much better than all of you.” He took a breath, “You are right though, if he forgave you, he’ll forgive me. What you did was so much worse.”
Crowley turned around without waiting for a response, and stormed out of the office. He was absolutely going to regret this later when he was packing up another desk, but for now he was struggling to find it in himself to really think he’d made the wrong choice. Regardless of whether Aziraphale ever spoke to him again or not.
Aziraphale had sat in his office and contemplated what Beatrice had said to him about Crowley. It was rare for them to involve themselves in personal matters, let alone to leap to anyone’s defence. Those thoughts were still turning themselves over in his head when he made the short journey across the building to Gabriel’s office, intent on apologising for his behaviour and promising to make it up to the affected students personally.
He’d raised his hand to knock when he’d heard voices coming from inside, he couldn’t hear what was being said, only the tone of Gabriel’s deep rumbling being met with a quieter voice. Well, quiet to a point, it was suddenly quite clear who the other person was as he heard Crowley’s raised voice through the door perfectly clearly curse Gabriel out in his defence.
He’d hurriedly stepped back and around the corner as he heard boots cross the office, ducking out of sight just as Crowley exited the room looking furious and stalked off muttering to himself. Aziraphale never made it into Gabriel’s office, instead he left the English building in a daze, absently smiling and nodding goodbye to students as he left. He had walked back to the bookshop instead of taking the bus, needing the space and time to think. Making his way home even more distressed than when he had got to the campus after his disastrous meeting with Crowley in the morning. He pushed open the door to the shop, quietly walking past Anathema and the older gentleman she was serving to sit in the large wingback at the desk behind the register. She frowned at him, but otherwise carried on her conversation, waiting for the door to swing closed behind the man before turning to him, hands on hips.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Do you ever think maybe you’ve misjudged someone?” Aziraphale said, fingers scraping along the carved swirls of the chairs arms.
“Rarely, I’m an excellent judge of character. You on the other hand…” she raised an eyebrow.
“Hmm.” Aziraphale hummed and carried on staring past her.
Anathema frowned, Aziraphale rarely passed up an opportunity to rise to the bait. It was part of the reason she enjoyed laying it out so often. She took her hands off her hips and walked over to lean against the desk next to him. She grabbed his hand, where it was picking at a loose thread on the padded arm. “Seriously, what happened? You’re worrying me.”
“I overheard Professor Crowley telling Gabriel off.”
“Oo-kay. I’m still not sure why you look like someone died.”
He finally focussed on her face, “I think they were talking about me.”
She wrinkled her nose, “Why?”
“He said I deserved better.”
“The Dean did?”
Aziraphale snorted, and immediately looked affronted by the noise his body had made and coughed, “Ah, no dear. Really, could you imagine Gabriel possessing an ounce of awareness or empathy?” he sighed, “If anything I think he might have just handed Crowley my entire sordid history on a silver platter.”
Anathema rolled her eyes at the dramatics, “Sordid is a bit strong, you got kicked out of home it’s not like you were embroiled in a plot to overthrow the government.”
“I think they would have preferred that to be honest, trying to overthrow a government is considered ‘character building’ in those circles.”
“I knew it.” She said, bumping her shoulder into his and getting a small smile for her effort.
“What am I going to do Ana? It’s bad enough I’m tied to this university and Gabriel so I can do a job I love without people asking any awkward questions.”
She leant into him, resting her head on his, “It’s not the worst thing you’ve had to deal with.”
He let out a short laugh, “No, I suppose not. There was this one time I took in a bedraggled second year student, still can’t get rid of her, milling around my shop not selling a single thing.”
“Oi!” She smacked his arm lightly, “I’ll start selling stuff if you’re gonna be like that.”
“You wouldn’t!” Aziraphale looked at her in mock outrage, eyes betraying his amusement.
Anathema pushed him laughing, “Willing to bet your Oscar Wilde first editions on that?” She darted off into the shelving, still laughing.
“How dare you!” Aziraphale stood up, “Ana?!” The shop was silent, “Anathema!? You come back here right now!” A paper plane flew out of the stacks and bounced off his forehead. Anathema following it grinning broadly.
He rolled his eyes and tutted at her, “You are a terrible person.”
“ I am awesome and you love me.”
Crowley slung himself over the arm of his couch onto his stomach and buried his face in a couch cushion, screaming. He’d managed to contain it all the way from the university to Waterloo and the entire time he was travelling home, he was considering that a miracle.
“You dumb fuck.” He shouted into the fabric covered foam. He rolled over and looked up at the bright light on the ceiling. “Uggghhh.” He flopped an arm over his face.
“Of all the things…I mean…Gabriel…the Dean of all people. Couldn’t just keep your mouth shut? You don’t even like him!” Crowley fell silent, talking to an empty room was just depressing after a while. He rolled onto his side and stared gloomily at the sparse living room he’d barely had time to furnish between moving to London and starting his new job.
He pulled his phone out his pocket, no messages from the university asking him to politely go elsewhere yet. Angel’s last message was still set there unread and unresponded to. He opened it again.
If I could swap you for him I would!
The words glared off the page, white on black. He entertained the fantasy, Angel worked in education of some description, he had co-workers so he clearly was part of a company or school. Crowley was fairly confident he could teach most age ranges. He wondered if it would be completely inappropriate and or insane to ‘jokingly’ ask if there were any jobs going. A whats app notification appeared on the top bar and the phone vibrated in his hands, he flicked it down and read the preview. It was short, from Bea and just said,
Not fired! Tlk tmrrw!
The fantasy disappeared instantly, but so did the tight knot across his chest and he breathed out in relief. Crowley didn’t know if she’d done something or was just relaying the information knowing he’d be worrying, either way he probably owed her a drink. He dismissed the whats app and opened the reply for Angel’s email.
Aw, you’d hate working with me! I chew all the pens, can’t sit still and I talk to myself when I’m concentrating!
I’d drive you batty in a day!
Well, even if love isn’t in the air - making friends with this guy would probably make work a lot nicer, no ?
He tapped send; a nice safe message. Acknowledge the sentiment and play it off with a self-deprecating joke, before deflecting onto something else. The alternative was coming dangerously close to skirting into emotions, and Crowley wasn’t prepared for those at all.
Instead he flicked back up the email chain and eyeballed the suggestions Angel had made for extending an apology. Some of them were a bit faffy, or required getting hold of things that he definitely couldn’t get hold of in Twickenham at 9 p.m. at night. One of them was promising though, he tabbed over to chrome and typed in a search for nurseries.
He grumbled as the search offered him sixteen different places to send small children and specified ‘plants’ tapping over a couple options near him, only one opened early enough in the morning — Streets Florist and Greengrocer — he looked through their website, mostly flowers but he saw a few promising items he thought could he could make work. Plan set, he closed the phone down and stretched out, swinging himself around to lurch off the couch as his legs reminded him they needed blood flow as he staggered off to bed.
Aziraphale was in work early on Thursday, he had a 9 a.m. class. He couldn’t help but be mildly impressed then that someone had beat him to office - despite being annoyed at the break in.
A plastic duck shaped pen holder sat on Aziraphale’s desk, upon closer inspection it contained a thick twig, seven olives and smelled lightly like whiskey. A note attached read,
Apparently you can’t buy literal olive branches??? Couldn’t find a dove either….
I hope the sentiment is still there.
- Crowley
Aziraphale smiled despite himself, it was a fairly cleverly cobbled together gesture.
He threw the olives in the bin — there was absolutely no chance he was eating something that came out of a piece of novelty stationary. The twig in the penholder he moved to the windowsill, eventually the twig would have to go as well but for now it was fine sitting in the weak autumn sun. He caught the time out of the corner of his eyes and startled, he had three minutes to get down to his lecture hall, a location approximately six minutes away. Grumbling about trespassers he grabbed his bag and hurried out.
Crowley was in a good mood as he sauntered through the quiet halls of the English department to his office, he’d not managed to get what he wanted from the garden centre — the assistant had actually seemed incredibly confused by his request — but he thought he’d pulled together something suitably apologetic. He spotted Aziraphale hurriedly walking towards him and paused, a tiny bubble of hope starting to form as the man seemed to be marching determinedly at him.
“Excuse me!” Aziraphale said, barging past before Crowley had time to even open his mouth, “You made me late! And you’re in my way!”
Crowley turned confused and realised he was standing outside the door to the main lecture hall, he shuffled to one side and Aziraphale disappeared in with a huff and shut the door.
Crowley closed his mouth, the bubble of hope bursting.
Walking on to his office he pulled out his phone and looked at the suggestions Angel had made, he still had plenty to try and one of them was well suited to Aziraphale — Crowley already knew he liked pistachio from the cafe, and luckily he knew the perfect place to get something he was pretty sure Aziraphale would love.
“Hey. Watch where you’re going.”
He looked up from his phone to find Bea standing in front of him, hands on their hips.
“Morning.” He said, ignoring the comment and unlocking his door, he swept his arm down and indicated for them to go in first. “Don’t suppose you brought the whiskey back?”
“Obviously not, whiskey is for celebrating.”
“Well, I heard I’m not getting fired.”
“Barely, you only got away with that because officially Gabe never even had that conversation with you.”
Crowley rolled his eyes, “I stand by what I said. I can’t believe you put up with that man. You of all people…”
They glared at him, “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on, Bea. He’s an arrogant self centred twat. Do you even know what he did?”
“Of course I do, who do you think kicked his dick until he understood why he was wrong?”
Crowley sighed, “That’s my point Bea, he had to have it pointed out to him. I mean come on, he didn’t even seem that sorry.”
“Do you really want to start talking about shithead blokes we’ve fucked? Cause yours still takes the piss.”
“Don’t.”
“Well don’t turn up in my life after fifteen years and start being a twat about it.”
“I just don’t get it, Bea. We grew up together, I saw what you went through with your folks to get them to accept you, you saw what happened to me when I first brought Luke home. How can you be with someone like him after all that?”
“Because he’s ignorant, not bigoted, and ignorance can learn. You don’t really know him, Crowley. Sure he’s not had the same shitty childhood we had but you can have privilege and still have a crappy upbringing. You know he was told to marry Aziraphale’s sister right? They wanted a family connection and saw Gabriel as an easy method of getting it. The only reason he’s not married to her right now is because the Dean position is tied to the church — and there’s nothing these posh rich love more than a God connection. They might privately hate me — and they do.” Bea grinned, “But publicly Gabriel is a man of the church, he’s done nothing wrong by most of society's standards and they’d rather the minor upset amongst their friends of him leaving his fiancee for me than the major one of kicking him out.”
“I just never imagined you settling for someone so completely the opposite of you.”
“It’s not settling when you’re in love, Crowley.” They smiled and relaxed back in the chair, “The monster dong helps as well.”
Crowley choked on his own breath, “Fuck sake, Bea.” He grumbled as they laughed.
Aziraphale waited patiently as the last students slowly packed their belongings up. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and opened up the email waiting for him. He’d seen it pop up the night before and hadn’t had a chance to read it. It was making him nervous.
His eyes skimmed over the text, disappointment warring with relief that there was no departure from their usual joking tone. He’d been hoping for more, but he supposed he should be grateful it wasn’t worse. He ran through the last sentence a few times, chewing his lip.
Well, even if love isn’t in the air - making friends with this guy would probably make work a lot nicer, no?
It wasn’t an unfair point. Crowley had also reached out with a metaphorical olive branch. He didn’t appear to have done anything with the information he had. Gabriel had succinctly informed him he had ‘had words’ with him, which was honestly terrifying since Gabriel had an innate knack of saying exactly the things you didn’t want spoken aloud. But then surely, Aziraphale thought, if Gabriel had said something Crowley wouldn’t be trying to be nice?
Well, I don’t know about friends. But I suppose you make a good point, we have to work together, a civil level of cordial is reasonable. If I have to.
Still, I would rather it were you I bump into in the corridors.
He was pushing it now, and he told himself firmly if this garnered nothing he would drop it.
The last student finally filed out and Aziraphale packed up his things and walked back to his office, he had a couple of free hours until his next lecture and in light of attempting to be cordial he decided he may as well take a look through Crowley’s curriculum and make his own notes. Aziraphale pushed his office door open and immediately noticed someone had been in there again; sat on his desk was a cardboard box sat on top of a pile of napkins. The box's bottom was almost translucent where whatever was inside had seeped through. He sighed, no doubt it was Crowley again, he had to find out how the man kept getting in. Gingerly he picked up the box and flipped the lid open, the scent of warm honey filled his nose and his mouth watered instantly. Nestled inside were small squares of pastry, roughly chopped nuts covering them and gathering in the base. The cardboard was soaked in a sticky, sugary, viscous liquid. Aziraphale had a brief moment of conflict about the morals of accepting an apology confectionary from someone you had no intention of forgiving before picking one up and popping it in his mouth.
“Oh.” He said, “mmmmm.”
“I take it you like them then?” An amused voice came from the door and Aziraphale looked up to see Crowley standing there.
“It’s okay.” He said, around the pastry.
Crowley rolled his eyes but otherwise didn’t say anything, “I was just dropping by to ask if you had any notes on the curriculum? Gabriel wanted it submitted by the end of the month.”
Aziraphale flushed guiltily, “I was just going to start work on it.”
Crowley nodded, “Just email it over.” He turned to go and Aziraphale chewed on his lip for a moment before calling out.
“Wait.”
Crowley turned back, his body tensed and guarded, he raised an eyebrow.
“W-w,” Aziraphale cleared his throat, “What are they?”
Crowley looked at him for a short moment, and Aziraphale worried he might just ignore him and walk away. “Baklava, filo pastry, honey and syrup and nuts. One of my student’s parents runs a small Moroccan restaurant about twenty minutes away, he made them for me.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale swallowed the last mouthful, “Well, it’s delicious. Please extend my compliments.”
Crowley nodded, “Sure.” He turned and left Aziraphale standing in his office, sticky mouth and fingers, not sure what to make of the homemade treats he was holding that Crowley had obviously gone and got whilst he was in his lecture. His phone dinged and he put the box down, wiping his fingers carefully on a napkin, a reply to his email.
Me too Angel.
His mouth went dry.
Crowley left Aziraphale alone the rest of the day, it was clear his gestures were received well enough — he’d spotted the duck pen holder on the windowsill — but that Aziraphale wasn’t going to respond to them. Perhaps two office break-ins in one day was too much. He figured he’d give him some space and maybe try again on Monday, he turned away from Aziraphale’s office and slid his phone out his pocket to re-read the message he’d got whilst picking-up the baklava. It had made his heart jump and filled his brain with all those stupid fantasies he had been doing such a good job of ignoring. He’d played the first one cool, brushed over it and given them an out to carry on without edging the conversation into anything else. Angel hadn’t taken it, that had to mean something . Before he could second guess himself he tapped out a short reply and hit send, praying to anyone who would listen he wasn’t making a huge mistake. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, not wanting to think about it and grabbed his notes for the lectures he had that afternoon, somehow he’d managed to get the worst Friday afternoon schedule and would be in classes until the end of the day. He supposed at least it would stop him dwelling on the message he had sent, or the situation with Aziraphale.
By the time he remembered the message again Crowley was most of the way home; crammed onto a train heading out of London towards Windsor. He’d hit peak rush hour; the train previous had been cancelled, and the resultant crowd of people meant his journey home was standing room only. He had had at least two sweaty strangers uncomfortably pressed way too close the entire time and had neither the energy nor the space to open his phone. He pushed his way off the train and made his way down the length of the platform behind a slow mover, somehow managing to take up just enough space he couldn’t dart around. He tapped his Oyster card to get out and finally take a breath of cold, fresh air as he started the short walk home. It was refreshing but really only added to the general dirty feeling he had and he was stripping his clothes off as soon as his front door closed behind him, making his way directly to the shower.
Crowley stood in the shower letting the hot water beat down on his back and trickled through his hair and over his face. His first week at this new job had been decidedly not what he wanted and extremely stressful. He’d managed to mortally offend his new co-worker before even meeting him, somehow make it worse in person and then immediately turned around and told the Dean to fuck off. At the same time he was reasonably sure he’d just imploded one of his closest friendships.
That thought made him close his eyes and droop even further, how pathetic , he thought. Forty-five and the best friend I’ve got is some virtual stranger I’ve never met and the only connection we have is a shared interest in smut aimed at teenagers and twenty somethings.
He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, scrubbing at his hair as he wandered from the bathroom to his bedroom. A splash of colour caught his eye and he groaned as he remembered he still had Aziraphale’s scarf and gloves. He’d meant to take them into the university in the morning and he knew the weather was going to be getting a lot worse on Monday morning; he didn’t want to leave it until then. Sighing, Crowley flopped down onto the bed and opened his phone to shoot a text to Bea asking if she knew whether Professor Fell had Saturday office hours or was likely to be at the university over the weekend. They replied almost immediately asking why so he explained he’d grabbed something of his by mistake and wanted to return it. Their reply bounced back explaining they were not allowed to disclose information about faculty members. Then immediately following it a message that simply said ‘unrelated’ and contained a link. Crowley opened it and rolled his eyes at his oldest friend and the way they always managed to find a way to skirt the rules; it was a yelp page detailing a bookshop in SoHo. It was very clearly owned by Aziraphale based on the name and had a 1 star rating and a plethora of outraged reviews against it ranging from ‘poor service’ to general complaints about the owners attitude towards selling things and one specific, several page long rant about the shocking way a person had been treated after enquiring about the availability of ‘Spare’ — a book Crowley was entirely unsurprised that Aziraphale refused to stock. He made a note of the address and figured he could go there tomorrow and drop off the scarf, Aziraphale would need it for Monday he justified, besides it counted as a third apology. Decision made, he opened his email account to address the blinking notification icon he’d been studiously ignoring since unlocking his phone to message Bea, he tapped it open and was greeted with a wall of text.
Do you? I hoped you would. I worried so much when I suggested it a second time you’d think me needy or…pushy.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said you were changing jobs, hoping wildly that perhaps it might bring you closer to me.
Oh, I hope I haven’t misinterpreted. Please tell me to stop if I have.
I cherish these conversations so much, I don’t want to over step.
I feel sometimes like you are the only person I’m truly myself with — despite you not even knowing my name! How silly.
I don’t know what to do, we’ve never even met. I’m not sure I’m ready for that either.
I’m sorry, I know I started this, but … there are risks, I don’t know if I am brave at all..
Crowley smiled, the rambling worry was adorable and he suddenly and deeply wanted to be able to hold his Angel and smooth it away. But it was clear neither of them were ready for that yet, still, there was promise.
Oh, Angel, you’ve not overstepped, and you’ve nothing to worry or be sorry about.
For your information my job has brought me to London — I admit, based on your restaurant choices I already knew we were closer but wasn’t sure how to bring it up.
I love these messages as well, and….I was trying to work out how to suggest we meet, but I didn’t want to push. I’m glad I didn’t – if you’re not ready, then that’s fine.
But I would very much like to know you, when you’re ready.
He’d barely closed the app down and locked his phone when it buzzed with a reply, short but heavy with promise.
You’re so close…
Perhaps we can set a date, in a month?
Something to look forward to, and in the meantime we just carry on as we were?
Crowley’s heart leapt, and he opened his calendar, picking a Saturday one month from now and shooting the date back quickly before he could second guess himself. The response took a lot longer and he sat on his bed, towel draped over this shoulder, hair dripping slightly onto the sheets as he waited anxiously. The delay was obvious once he opened the message, he laughed. There was an agreement to the date and then a lengthy rant about the latest episode of Bridgerton, Angel had picked up their conversation right where it left off before being derailed by co-workers and...feelings.