Chapter Text
“Is that why you’re here?” Aziraphale demanded. “This is what you want?”
“And what exactly – ” Crowley’s smile turned sharp, voice curling low, “ – do you think I want?”
The ruby necklace swung from Crowley’s hand, a deep red that matched the rouje painted across Crowley’s lips, that smile a scar, a wound. Unlike the last time they were here, Crowley had his longer hair tied loosely to the back, strands coming free to frame that crooked smile, his tailcoat far more form-fitting – with its top button undone – and his heeled snakeskin boots riding up to his knees. In the chandelier light, it was hard to see past those black lenses.
And yet, something in them made Aziraphale pause anyway. A challenge, that moment when push became shove, and shove teetered on the edge of falling. Aziraphale clung to his balance against the tides. There were many things Crowley said he wanted. But that wasn’t the question, was it?
“We’re not on opposite sides,” Aziraphale answered, in the end. Neither of them wanted a fight. “Not right now.”
He watched the pinpricks of light dance across the dark mirror of Crowley’s glasses. Light, reflected. Light, recycled into shadow.
The demon stepped closer. “Turn around, angel.”
From anyone else, the command would have been a threat. And for Aziraphale to obey, it would be a surrender, turning his back to an enemy he couldn’t ever trust, opening himself up to a betrayal crueler than Judas’ kiss on Christ’s cheek.
But from Crowley, it was a temptation turned into a promise. And for Aziraphale to obey, it would be a supplication, a leap of faith – opening himself up to a truth that was equal parts betrayal and confession: a truth, that perhaps a kiss was less a betrayal, and more a desire. That perhaps Aziraphale didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t know what he’d come here to find.
Gardens of Versailles
January 1804
“Haven’t you learned your lesson?”
Aziraphale didn’t turn, but Crowley spotted the dimpled dip of his cheek anyway as Crowley stepped closer, the gravel of the footpath crunched beneath his snakeskin boots.
They both stared up at the sculpture tucked between the overgrown hedges. White marble wings curved over a hunched back, shaping a little awning. Stone curls carved gently around the statue’s soft cheeks – that is, if stone could ever be called soft – and a chipped hand curled around a broken weapon.
“I do have standards,” Aziraphale huffed his reply. His grey silk cravat poked through his beige waistcoat, almost exactly the same as when they’d last been in Paris. “And this is hardly the Bastille. There isn’t anyone around.”
Almost, because the angel had replaced the chains around his wrists with white gloves, as he promenaded freely in the rare winter sun. As he gazed at the statue of – oh. The broken weapon, with its marble cut off at one end, was a bow and arrow. A bow and arrow which, Crowley slowly realized, usually belonged to Eros.
“I hope you aren’t here for another nibble,” he muttered at Aziraphale’s back. “Is your bookshop so dull that you’re sneaking across the Channel again?”
In the years since the French Revolution, the Gardens of Versailles had gone into some disrepair with the Republic Government selling off the palace treasures to pay its debts, and other members of the government milling about the grounds to turn it into a museum. But Versailles was fortuitously deserted today, or as fortuitous as a demonic intervention could be called: the moment he’d spotted the overdressed angel wandering about in the open cold, he’d put up wards to keep all prying eyes out.
The last time he’d seen the angel was – what, seven years ago? He’d been in London to check out the new apartment Hell had rewarded him with, which he’d promptly left behind to bother Aziraphale’s shop, still halfway finished. And which he’d then left behind to have a long drink alone because his heart wouldn’t stop doing those ridiculous flips when –
“Haven’t had a customer in months,” Aziraphale answered, finally turning to him and beaming proudly, almost smugly. “I thought I might take a stroll amongst the artwork here. And the libraries. Oh, the libraries!” Aziraphale clasped his hands together, grasping at the empty air. “We never did get a proper chance to look inside before, and I’ve heard the most marvelous things.”
We? Crowley hummed, shifting to stand a little closer to the angel.
It was warmer near the angel, like a private patch of sun, and Crowley covered the move up with a little smirk. “You could take some of the books home.” He polished it off with a wink. “I’m sure there’s plenty in there that’d fit your shelves.”
“That would be stealing!”
“Call it art preservation.” He waved at the sculpture. “Or, if you prefer, it’d only take a small miracle to bring this beauty home.” In fact, he might just do it himself – his newly assigned apartment in London needed some sprucing up, and – Crowley paused. He squinted through his glasses, first at Aziraphale’s wide eyes, and then at the statue’s curled hair, the slope of the statue’s shoulders, and the robes sliding off the marble chest. Those feathers really had quite some detail, and that smile on the statue, bordering halfway between sweet and smug – “Wait a minute, angel, is this you? You inspired Eros? The god of carnal desire, that’s your doing?”
Aziraphale shifted, guilty, flustered. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting. My side frowns on idolatry.”
The pantheon of gods had been a distinctly human creation, stories so old they evolved into myth. The concept of Eros was also a human thing, though Crowley liked to claim credit for his original apple. He’d done his fair share to help the Greek worshippers spread their beliefs – if anyone asked, yes, he’d received a commendation for increasing the number of false gods, and no, the snake on Aesculapius’ Staff of Healing had nothing whatsoever to do with his own serpentine form, thank you very little. He’d just been off his head on arsenic and he hadn’t intended to bless a House of Healing. The rest of the details were as vague to him as his report to Hell had been.
The image of the gods, though – Crowley had his face carved as the likeness of Hera, once, as a joke. But the more Crowley stared at this statue of Eros, the more he saw the resemblance. Aziraphale had always been a patron of the arts, in his own way, and a romantic too. And, Crowley knew how well-read the angel was: under the terms of the Arrangement, Aziraphale had done a seduction for Crowley once, and had been concerningly good at it. (I’m an angel, Aziraphale had insisted, of course I’m good.)
Crowley snorted at the red flush high on the angel’s cheeks, now. He himself wasn’t good enough to not enjoy this, and his own smirk turned smug.
“You’re a terrible liar, angel.”
Aziraphale walked on to the next statue with a pointed huff. “If you must know,” the angel mumbled, glaring at him, “I blessed the sculptor. Healed his broken wrist. I didn’t ask him to turn me into a – a Greek god. And certainly not Eros.”
“Shame,” Crowley said. “Looking like that, you could start a cult.” He flashed a crooked grin, which quickly turned into a laugh, unable to help himself. “I’d sign right down.”
Something twisted across Aziraphale’s face, flickering between indignance and annoyance and something dangerously close to fondness. It settled there, soft and warm in the winter sun, the light catching on it as Aziraphale shook his head.
“What are you doing here, you foul fiend?” He fell into step beside Crowley. “Spreading foment, again?”
Fiend was just one letter away from friend, and Crowley happily chewed on that letter. “They’ve been hanging laundry over the bushes.” He was all for the democratization of the palace, of the people having access to it and tearing down its righteousness from its very roots, but, “The trees haven’t been making fruit.”
“You’ve become a palace gardener?”
“I’ve been a commander,” Crowley corrected. (He hadn’t learned about talking to plants yet. All he had been doing thus far was glowering at the plants and hoping he got his message across as he angrily sprayed water at them, until winter had rolled around and all he could do was sulk. No, he didn’t sulk, he skulked.) As it was, he flapped his hand, and cleared his throat, and ignored the fact that there was a thin sheet of ice over everything. “Commanding the plants. To grow properly bad. They’re harder work than the merchants I was supposed to tempt.”
Aziraphale had the decency to hold his laugh. “Can I come meet your little army?”
“No.”
It had been three days since the last snowfall, but most of the estate was still covered in powdered white, the air cold enough that their breaths puffed mist into the air. He hadn’t planned on the angel knowing of his work here – Aziraphale would only be smug that Crowley was using his powers for something other than foment.
But the merchants really hadn’t needed any tempting to ruin themselves on all the usual vices, and Crowley had to be seen doing something, so he’d been telling Hell that he was helping plan another revolution in France. And if the revolution involved the grass taking over Versailles’ stone paths (infrastructure damage, very demonic indeed) while Crowley snuck royal jewels out to give to sick children (thieving, arguably the original sin), no one needed to know.
And Crowley had been zapping the snow away from the palace grass when he’d been lucky enough to spot Aziraphale casually strolling past the frozen hedges as if he owned the place. Really, was the angel trying to get into trouble at a demon’s expense?
Crowley had better things to do than spend an afternoon rescuing an angel from trouble over again. He much preferred tempting said angel to some indecency.
But Aziraphale beat him to the punch.
“How about something warm to drink, then?” Aziraphale suggested, walking in the general direction of the palace building, past several more statues. His breaths puffed in the air. “Tea? Cocoa?”
“Coffee,” Crowley said, and when Aziraphale made a face, Crowley laughed some more. “Weren’t you there when the Pope baptized coffee?” He leaned against a sculpture of Pandora, her robe pooled around her hips. Crowley toyed with the crook of her finger as Aziraphale’s gaze darted away from the state of the statue’s undress.
The angel stared instead at Crowley’s hand. “The Devil’s Brew, they called it. Was it really your doing?”
“Well.” He couldn’t take all the credit for the popularization and democratization of coffee. He had simply stolen all the credit, in his reports to Hell. “I did do some work on the Ottoman legal system. Freed a lot of wives when it was legal for them to divorce on the grounds – ” and here Crowley grinned a little wider, “grounds, get it? That their husbands weren’t giving them enough coffee.”
Aziraphale moved along from Pandora’s statue, toward the next, which really was in a worse – or depending on perspective, better – state of undress. “You’re incorrigible, Crowley.”
“I live to please.” Crowley gave a small bow, courtly, the kind used to ask for a dance. Then, he straightened back as much as he could stand straight, and followed the angel along to the palace doors. “Which Pope was it again? I liked Benedict – selling the Papacy, now that’s a revolutionary thought. Our Lord in Hell should have tried auctioning Heaven off.”
“Will you be back in London, soon?” Aziraphale asked, studiously ignoring everything about auctions. He led them in through one of the side doors, the rusted metal hinges wiggling open with just the gentlest bit of persuasion.
The threshold between the palace and the garden had a more jarring difference than Heaven and Earth. That, Crowley supposed, said more about Heaven’s poor and bland tastes than it did about the Earth – and the humans always did have more imagination than all the Archangels combined. He closed the gilded door behind them, and stared down a corridor lined with thick velvet curtains on one side, and tall portraits on the other.
Snakes didn’t usually do well in the winter cold, especially not with just a tailcoat and snakeskin boots. And certainly not when he’d left his top button undone for style. But Crowley had his own standards, and he shivered gratefully in the warmth of the palace walls, free from the chill winds outside.
Then, he frowned. The curtains were closed, plunging them into deep shadow. Crowley could see well enough in the dark, but Aziraphale had made no move to bring any light. Did the angel expect Crowley to do it for him?
Sighing, Crowley tamped down on his shivers to smile as cocky as he could manage. Really, he should stop indulging Aziraphale. Should stop indulging himself. But he was a demon, and his job was to run – or saunter – toward temptation. Crowley snapped his fingers to light up the lanterns along the wall, and tucked his own hair behind his ear.
“Did you miss me, angel?”
Aziraphale stared at him in the firelight, the amber color warm on his skin, a halo over his hair. His gaze flicked up and down Crowley’s face, and there was something thick in the air that Crowley couldn’t place. It couldn’t be lust. Greed, maybe, or gluttony – unsated want, left behind in the palace walls, and remarkably fresh for a place that had been empty for so long. Crowley waggled his brows –
“I – no!” the angel protested, catching himself, and the thickness in the air cleared. Crowley barely had a moment to think about what that implied, before Aziraphale looked away from him, gazing at the murals painted high on the ceilings. There was Apollo up above them, and the sun that had melted Icarus’ wings. “It’s just – the world’s changing, faster than ever.” There was a Heaven, drawn in pastel pinks and whites and gentle blues, and the punishments it deemed just. “Everywhere you look, there’s a revolution.”
The Americans had recently declared their independence, and so had the Haitians. If the rumors in Hell were true, the Serbians were planning their own revolution too. Uprisings always had Hell’s blessing, for better or for worse, and the air lately had been thick with equal amounts of fear and hope.
“They’re reclaiming their power.” Crowley shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be happy? No more tyranny. You were fine when Moses walked out of Egypt.”
Aziraphale reached forward to brush the dust off the wall, grey staining those white gloves. The corridor was as deserted as the rest of the palace grounds, and when Aziraphale spoke, it echoed with his grief, old and new alike. “They’re dying, and I can’t – I can’t save them all.” His hands curled into fists. “Sandalphon put a miracle blocker on me. Too many frivolous blessings. Said I was only to observe.”
Maybe Crowley did need to come back to London, if Archangels were roaming about making trouble. “So, what – ” Crowley eyed Aziraphale from over the top of his glasses. “You figured you’d come here and stare at art instead?”
Beneath that beige coat, Aziraphale’s shoulders stiffened. He turned to Crowley, the firelight dancing in his eyes, the shadows stretching long behind him in place of wings, looking as lost as a parishioner before a priest. It was unsettling, and Crowley wanted to claw the feeling away, wanted to do –
“Won’t you do something to save them?” Aziraphale asked.
Ah, so the angel had come to find Crowley. This wasn’t a coincidence – he should have known he wasn’t so lucky.
And he would, usually. Do something about it. And he would usually point out that this was Heaven’s fault – they’d scattered all the peoples of Babel, into fractured nations always destined for war. But that wasn’t the point here. Crowley nudged the angel forward, past another doorway, and into the Hall of Mirrors.
The silver ribbon in Crowley’s hair snaked down his back.
“Sandalphon’s just scared.”
Aziraphale startled, frowning at him. “Scared?”
“Let there be light,” Crowley muttered, and the chandeliers all around them burst into brilliance – Hell didn’t keep track of his miracles, and it was worth it, to see Aziraphale’s gaze shift from that twisted worry into an open awe. To one side were tall arching windows covered up in thick, black velvet curtains, and to the other were equally tall mirrors, cut out into the same shape as the windows, with marble pillars in between them to hold up the golden ceiling, with more murals of battles and victories painted above them. Crowley gestured at all the opulence around them, some of the mirrors cracked, some of the chandeliers missing its crystals – symmetry broken. “Scared,” he repeated. “If this all comes tumbling down – what if Heaven comes tumbling down, too?”
The awe now shifted into stubbornness, that bastardly audacity as Aziraphale huffed at him, meeting his gaze through one of the cracked mirrors.
“Heaven doesn’t tumble. Your side couldn’t defeat us, the first time around.”
That still wasn’t the point. Two drawing rooms bracketed the Hall of Mirrors: the War Room, and the Peace Room, with glistening panes of fragile glass tying them together. He walked toward War, and the pile of tables and chairs and jewels in the corner of the Hall that the French hadn’t gotten around to selling yet. Rumor had it that a bloke named Napoleon was going to move in soon, but tonight, the palace belonged to Crowley, and so did all its ghosts and all its shadows. All its wine, too, if he could remember where that cellar was.
“We can’t save them all,” he told Aziraphale. The light caught on their reflection, the crystal chandeliers refracting as the mirrors reflected, changing course and changing direction. “You’ve always known that. And we certainly can’t save them from themselves.”
“But all that suffering – ” Aziraphale followed him, footsteps clacking on scratched wood, a broken record spinning on a broken dance floor. “Why would anyone choose any of this?”
Aziraphale had asked the same question, at the height of the Crusades. She never asked them to kill, to die, the angel had wrung his hands, his head bowed, and Crowley had watched the Pope recite Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and answered: She made them, to die.
There was a harp, among the pile of things, gilded and abandoned. In the streets, people were singing with only their own voices to serve as melody, a defiant song, and Crowley could never, had never been able to do anything about that – because however short, however long, however good, however bad, She made them to live, too. And life had always been a greater mystery to angels and demons than time itself, than the future already written.
“They chose freedom,” Crowley answered. He tugged a necklace free from the pile of forgotten things. The jewels glimmered in the light, rubies as red as blood. “Life isn’t just something you bury, angel.” He thought of the ground beneath his broken, burning wings, he thought of the earth beneath his feet, between his fingers as he stamped a pomegranate seed in the ground, a sunflower seed – never quite as bright as the stars, and the stars never quite as fierce as their roots, burrowing deep into homeland and heart. “It’s something you bury your hands in, too, while you get the chance.”
Aziraphale stared at the necklace. Stared at Crowley. “Would you make the same choice?”
Crowley had picked himself up, from the rubble of his own faith. He had handed humanity an apple, not a weapon. “I’ve made the choice.”
Aziraphale stepped forward, closer, and plucked a harp string. A sweet ringing thing, a note high enough to be heavenly.
“Was it worth it?” Aziraphale asked, unwavering. His gaze stayed heavy on Crowley, almost a test of faith, trying to balance out the scales of life and death and the world gone out of tune.
But if Crowley wanted to look through the world with rose-colored glasses, he would have found himself some pink lenses. There wasn’t any romanticizing this, there was just the truth of it, and all the facets of the truth, yes and no refracted until it no longer recognized itself. Until Crowley no longer recognized himself, some days. Freedom wasn’t all it was chalked up to be, and Hell liked to remind him that freedom was a fragile thing, too.
So Crowley picked the most convenient truth. “I get to do whatever I want to, now,” he said, shrugging one shoulder up, lifting the royal jewels further into the light. “Mostly. Loosely speaking.”
Aziraphale crossed his arms. “Is that why you’re here? This is what you want? Trinkets?”
Something sharp rose up in Crowley, indignant. Was this – he clutched at the necklace in his fist, the hard edge of the rubies digging into his palm until it stung, his mortal flesh and mortal heart too easily wounded. There was a time when he could touch starlight without even a sting, but now – now what he wanted was alcohol. He wanted more than an empty kingdom. He wanted Aziraphale to get on with the program and get away from Heaven. He wanted to spend a day arguing semantics with the angel without worrying about their Head Offices finding out, to strip away some of the angel’s prim properness and get to know more of that bastard worth knowing, and get to know more of the friend he’d always had, and couldn’t have, and wanted to have.
Also, if his own heart would listen, he wanted it to stop making those ridiculous flips every time Aziraphale did something ridiculous. Quite frankly, it was ridiculous.
And, of course, he wanted the unicorns to come back.
Yes, Crowley was aware there were bigger problems in the world. No, he wasn’t going to do anything about it, not now that the angel was here and judging him for choices that were never theirs to make – for choices the angel was too holy to make.
“And what exactly,” Crowley hissed, “do you think I want?”
Aziraphale paused, still searching Crowley’s gaze through those dark glasses. The mirrors all around them reflected each other in an infinite asymmetry, frames caught out of time, until Aziraphale answered, as certain as he was uncertain, “We’re not on opposite sides.” Then, quieter, “Not right now.”
Boundary lines, drawn and redrawn. When push came to shove, they met each other there, at the edge of everything, still standing on Eden’s wall – that space where paradise became forsaken. Still trapped by choices they couldn’t hide from, by a roll of God’s dice and the high ringing note of Her laugh. Crowley tamped down on a frustrated snarl: what did Aziraphale think Crowley wanted? Here, all alone, the candlelight blurring the edges where shadow became bright, and brilliance became shadow, the empty rooms more hollow than loneliness –
Taking a step closer, Crowley let the rubies of the necklace swing in the air. Thirteen of them, linked together by small diamonds in between, and a silver clasp to hook it closed.
“Turn around, angel.”
“Why?”
The question came as a whisper. The wide blue of Aziraphale’s eyes were just a shade greyer than the world, silver linings for a world still worth saving. And still, Aziraphale turned, the tension between them pulled taut. Aziraphale turned, a step of faith, a trust undressed, and watched through the mirror as Crowley took another step closer toward his back, until there was scarcely any space between them –
The weight of the necklace was heavier than Heaven’s medals of commendation.
Crowley felt Aziraphale’s breath hitch as he tugged the silk cravat off the angel, slipping it loose and away onto the floor, until Aziraphale’s neck was bare. And when the angel made no protest, Crowley hooked the ruby necklace around it. His thumb brushed Aziraphale’s skin as he clasped the necklace on, lingering as he felt a tremble run through. In the mirror, the rubies glittered, a stark contrast against the angel’s colors, and Crowley had to stop his own breath from stuttering, his own corporation betraying him as much as he betrayed it.
“This miracle blocker,” Crowley managed to say, “how does it work?”
“Sandalphon said I get one emergency miracle.” Aziraphale’s hand drifted up to brush against the gemstones, and when he spoke, he sounded distant, absent. “Then no more miracles for me, until I explain myself to Heaven.”
Crowley could curse the necklace, turn it into an amulet of protection, to try keep the angel safe from Heaven. But there were lines he knew Aziraphale wouldn’t cross – and there were easier ways to rile the angel up. Besides, Aziraphale could very well take the necklace off on his own, could very well be rid of its weight if he wanted to. There was no Heaven or Hell stopping them, not here, not now with the palace warded as it was.
So instead, Crowley bent to take the angel’s cravat from the floor, and when he straightened, he asked, “You didn’t check that the blocker works?”
That made Aziraphale snap out of it. He whirled back around to face Crowley, indignant. “I won’t waste my one miracle on checking!”
Really, Crowley couldn’t help his snort. “You crossed the Channel to get here from London by boat, then?”
“And horseback.” The indignation turned sullen. Aziraphale’s back was pressed against the mirror. “Could feel you in the area.”
Horses were hard on the buttocks. Crowley shrugged again, eyeing the distance between them, and how easy it would be to shove Aziraphale against the glass, and –
Crowley cleared his throat, blinking away temptation. The silk of the cravat in his hands was soft, and it would be so easy, too, to break it. To tear into it, nail ripping against thread, turning want into wound –
Crowley cleared his throat again, and tucked the cravat away into his own pocket as he said, voice somehow steady:
“‘It’s not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner’.” But from their regard to their own interest, he finished the quote in his head.
Aziraphale perked up, impressed. “That’s Smith! You read Smith’s book?”
But wasn’t that why their Arrangement worked, why Aziraphale had come to him today? Out of their own self-interest? Wasn’t that what Heaven and Hell really were about? When the world ends, it won’t be the benevolence of angels that saves it.
“I met Smith,” Crowley corrected. “Seemed to be very convinced about the economy’s invisible hand.” He strode away and pushed the door open into the Peace Room instead – any longer with the mirrors, and he wouldn’t be responsible for where else his hands roamed, or for any broken mirrors and any angel pushed up against them. “A greater force balancing things out, demand and supply. An equilibrium of good and evil.”
“Well.” Aziraphale nodded as he followed along. “The Almighty works in mysterious ways.”
An equilibrium of fear, too. “Everything has a price, doesn’t it? Life, freedom, miracles.”
“What?”
Crowley pushed another door open, into the Queen’s bedchamber, and whispered low in Aziraphale’s ear. “There’s no miracle blocker on you.”
Aziraphale shut the door behind him. His gaze flicked down to Crowley’s lips, and the short distance between him and Crowley and Crowley’s touch. “How –” Aziraphale winced at his stutter. “How would you know?”
The bed was still there, a large thing with more than enough space for two, and the room was as cold as any other, and it took only another snap of Crowley’s fingers for the fireplace to light itself up.
Pulling away from the angel, Crowley grinned, teeth scraping against lip. “I know how you smell.”
“You – Crowley!” Aziraphale chided. He unclasped the ruby necklace, and threw it on the bed, glaring at Crowley all the while. It landed on a diadem that had been left behind, which Crowley snatched before Aziraphale could stop him.
“Look,” he started, plopping the diadem on Aziraphale’s hair, the gold around its diamonds glinting brighter than a halo, “you’re a Principality. There’s very few of you – ” Crowley held up a hand to stop Aziraphale from cutting in, “ – and your powers’re tied to your kingdoms.”
Aziraphale glanced up at the crown before he took that off, too, with a huff. Pale cheeks flushed pink. “The Eastern Gate doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It’s an idea, isn’t it?” Crowley argued. “A dream, stronger than the land.” A promise, as steady as Aziraphale’s constancy. He took his glasses off and placed them over the mantelpiece, beside the clutter of forgotten books and perfume bottles. If he remembered Heaven’s policies as well as he remembered their passwords, taking away a Principality’s miracles while they were in their domain required centuries of training that no one in Heaven or Hell had ever cared to complete, not even Gabriel. “It’d take more than a rude note to block your miracles.”
After all, the Eastern Gate had always marked humanity’s escape from Eden – banishment, punishment, freedom, however anyone cared to name it – and as ironic as it was, Aziraphale held guardianship over that change, that promise that every human choice was balanced out some consequence. By God’s justice, by an angel’s mercy.
It had been Aziraphale’s sword that had first saved humanity, it had been that sword that damned them to a future of war and loss and grief. Everything had a price, whether by an invisible hand or an auction trying to find the highest bidder for Heaven, for that paradise lost: and wasn’t that the crux of Aziraphale’s kingdom? Everything had a price – books, art, freedom, forgiveness – but price paid or not, there was no going back, only going forward.
Only going forward, onto the sun and rain waiting on the horizon.
And perhaps, one day, onto a promised land to call a homeland, instead of a paradise. To call home, instead of a fantasy, instead of a foolish hope, instead of this wanting, this fighting, this yearning.
The shadows flitted in and out of the light. Aziraphale shook his head. “Crowley, Heaven’s changed since you were last there.”
“They’ve all become wankers,” Crowley agreed. Without his glasses, all the colors sharpened into focus, and when Aziraphale blanched, he added, “Well, not you, angel.” And when Aziraphale preened, Crowley finished, “You’re just a bastard, sometimes.”
How did Shakespeare’s quote go? Heaven is empty, and all the gits are here.
Aziraphale shot him a glare, the crown still in his left hand. “I don’t know why I bother with you, sometimes.”
“Well.” Crowley gave another exaggerated bow. He reached across to take Aziraphale’s right hand, lifting it up to his lips to press a kiss over the back of it. “Your Highness – ” the rouje on his lips stained Aziraphale’s white gloves, propriety turned vice, all their boundary lines redrawn as Crowley tried to push shove into trust – “You came to me.”
Through the flickering firelight, Crowley watched Aziraphale freeze, eyes fluttering shut, breath frozen on an exhale: one second, and then two, and – Aziraphale pulled himself away from Crowley. “Oh,” he looked at his stained gloves, mournfully. “Oh, it’ll be impossible to wash that off.”
Crowley hummed. “It’d take a real miracle.”
Aziraphale kept glaring. “I’m not using my miracle on this.” Then, spiteful, he closed the gap between them and dropped the crown over Crowley’s head, messing with the carefully combed hair. “You know very well that I’ve never had a kingdom, never been trusted with one – you can stop mocking my, my helplessness.”
Helpless? The angel had never been – alright. Maybe sometimes, Aziraphale could be stubborn to the point of helplessness, but helpless was the last way Crowley would think to describe him. Ridiculous was definitely on top of that list of adjectives that fell under the Aziraphale category in his head, followed by some roughly scratched out ones (which included lovely, pretty, pleasing, and some too far scratched out to read), but Aziraphale was far from helpless. He was cleverer than all of Heaven put together, and braver too.
It was the kind of courage that hid in the corners, silent but stubborn enough to keep picking itself up, the same way Aziraphale liked to hide himself. The same way Aziraphale kept climbing every mountain that Heaven set before him, brilliant enough to find loopholes and shortcuts across. Crowley wasn’t mocking him – Crowley was only trying to draw him out, the angel who was properly good, tarnished at his edges and a little bit of a bastard and all the better for it, for having buried his hands and wings and knees into the life all around them. Heaven was scared, of the world and of Aziraphale – of this angel they didn’t understand, dressed all in meek colors but stained through with a fierce love for all the little things Heaven overlooked.
This angel, who Crowley had spent the past thousands of years learning to find, beneath white robes traded for silver chainmail traded for beige coats. This angel, who Crowley would crown in rubies and sapphires and amber and all the colors he knew Aziraphale coveted but would never let himself have – this angel, who was too holy to make the same choices Crowley had made, but was still damned to live the same life of fear and doubt.
Adjusting the diadem on his head, Crowley wisely stopped himself from mentioning any of that. The weight of the gold felt eerily like the halo he’d lost, now replaced by the snake on his ear, which curled dangerously beneath the edge of gold – ready to strike at the crown.
“Offer nostras preces in conspectu Altissimi,” Crowley said instead in Latin, a prayer of exorcism, the words harsher than venom against his throat. Carry our prayers up to God’s throne. “Ut cito anticipent nos misericordiae Domini, et apprehendas draconem, serpentem antiquum, ut non seducat amplius gentes.” That the mercy of the Lord may quickly come and lay hold of the beast, the serpent of old, so that he can no longer seduce nations.
He didn’t finish with an Amen.
“I’m too busy seducing nations to bother with mocking you, angel,” Crowley added, rolling his eyes.
“If you won’t help me with any of this,” Aziraphale replied, marching over to the opposite corner of the bedroom and crossing his arms, “I don’t see how the Arrangement will work.”
That was low.
Crowley could go much lower. He was a demon, after all.
“Is that a threat?” he asked as he stalked closer.
Aziraphale’s gaze flicked up to the crown still on Crowley’s head. There was the Queen’s bed between them, and there was another door behind the angel, leading to more rooms, but Aziraphale made no move to run, to leave. He only shook his head as his hands curled defenseless around empty air.
“It’s a choice,” Aziraphale replied.
Brave, beautiful, bastard. “A choice?” Crowley parroted back. “And, pray tell, what exactly do you want?”
A flinch. Aziraphale glanced at the ruby necklace coiled over white satin sheets. “I’d love you to help me.”
Crowley snarled, and walked back to the fireplace, the shadows flickering in and out of focus. His sunglasses stayed perched on the mantelpiece, but he too made no move to take it.
“To help you go against Heaven’s wishes?” Crowley asked, staring at the fickle outlines of the flames, his back toward the angel, because love –
“No!” Aziraphale protested again. “Of course not, why would you suggest – I – it is only.” There was a pause so long that Crowley nearly turned back to face the angel, but Aziraphale continued. “There isn’t anyone.” Another pause, their shadows stretching long, outlines of wings and divinity they’d hidden away to fit into the world, before Aziraphale finished, repetition pushed to the brink of confession, “There isn’t anyone else.”
And there. As angels could sense love, demons could sense fear. Crowley felt a flash of it, now, from Aziraphale – but it was quickly smothered again by the angel’s courage. No, not courage, it was. It was trust, a trust so whole that it was almost holy, that it almost burned against the edge of Crowley’s temple, where crown met shattered halo.
He closed his eyes against it.
“You have your miracles, angel.” And even without miracles, Aziraphale was more than capable of doing good. “You’ve no need for me.” You’ve no want for me.
“Seven years.”
“What?”
“It’s been seven years since you were last in London,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley opened his eyes to turn and frown at the angel.
They’d gone centuries once without seeing each other. What did seven years have anything to do with Aziraphale’s refusal to see the truth of things?
“Hell’s kept me busy.”
Still at the other side of the room, Aziraphale bowed his head, hands twisted nervously together. Almost clasped in prayer. “I waited for you.”
“What?”
“Sandalphon came the day after you left.” Aziraphale’s throat bobbed, lips twisted down. “Made me try do a miracle in front of him, and I – couldn’t.”
Crowley was still racing to catch up. Seven years was nothing. It was nothing to the thousands they’d lived, to the timeless eternity before that when the world was barely more than a whim and time was only a scribble in a discarded draft to a Mediocre Plan.
But the gall of Heaven to trick Aziraphale for so long –
“You want me to come back, to London?” He’d stayed away because he couldn’t trust himself near the angel. And yet, “Then you’d use me as an excuse for miracles – to thwart my wiles there? That’s what you want?”
Aziraphale shook his head. “The whole world’s changing.” There were questions they’d never been allowed to ask, and questions they’d never learned to say. A thousand eyes and a thousand wings and still damned to the same silence, to the same blindness. “And I – there isn’t anything for me.”
There isn’t anything for me. Was the angel bored, or – “The world’s always been changing,” Crowley argued. “And you’ve always been clever enough to know it.”
Straightening his shoulders, Aziraphale pursed his lips, stubborn, as he shook his head again. Then, more declaration than question, Aziraphale said, “Have dinner with me.”
Not bored, Crowley realized as he felt another flash of fear. Lonely. The angel had come because he was lonely.
Seven years without miracles, cut off from Heaven – and Aziraphale had come here to find Crowley. If Crowley were a better demon, he’d use that to tease the angel, to draw out a confession: So you did miss me? But Crowley wasn’t better, so he hid his gaze in the shadows of the firelight, and said:
“No.”
Aziraphale stumbled back, shoulder knocking against the closed door behind him. “No?”
“The world’s changed. I’ve changed, too.”
He’s had to, hadn’t he? He’d buried his hands and broken wings into the life all around them, too, because what choice did he have? It was either Hell, or the world, and Crowley knew which he preferred. It was either Hell, or Aziraphale, and that was the easy choice to make, wasn’t it? Would Crowley have chosen a demon over Heaven, if he hadn’t Fallen? Did the question even matter?
He’s changed: how many pieces of himself had he discarded in unmarked graves? Names he’d shed and stars he’d dimmed and towns he’d burned. He’d buried his hands into the life all around them, wrapped a noose around hope’s throat and buried it half-screaming in his scorched chest. And watched it sprout again anyway, every Spring, leaves greener than ever and Aziraphale’s smile brighter than ever. And Crowley watched all those discarded pieces linger forever anyway, those pieces of himself that the angel kept safe behind those sky-blue eyes, memories clearer than starlight.
Crowley wanted to resent Aziraphale for it, some days. But he couldn’t, because –
Aziraphale shrugged, straightening his lapels to collect himself.
“All the more reason,” the angel perked up again, “for us to, how do they say it? Catch up. Have dinner.” There wasn’t any more fear there. Only that brightness so heavy it was almost blinding. “Have you changed your name again? I – I should like to know.” A small smile came and went, shadows folding around the corners of those blue eyes. “I would like to know.”
But it’d been a long time since Crowley had last let himself be blinded by Heaven’s light. And how many pieces of Aziraphale had the angel buried beneath the trappings of the world? Jagged edges cut away to fit into Heaven’s clean lines: if Aziraphale remembered all the people Crowley had once been, Crowley remembered all the truths that Aziraphale was, that Aziraphale is. The flaming sword given away, Job’s children rescued – the angel desperately trying to change who he was, but never quite being able to outrun his heart.
It was just like Heaven to punish Aziraphale for it, and if Crowley ever saw Sandalphon again, he would – no, that wasn’t the point. The point was seven years. He pictured Aziraphale miserably wringing his hands in the bookshop for seven years, waiting for Crowley to come back and what? Eat cake together?
It was ridiculous.
It was everything Crowley wanted.
(He thought of Aziraphale fumbling his way to the docks to get passage across the Channel from London to Paris, no blessings to ease the sea-sickness, but still insisting on ludicrously fancy coats and gloves. It really was ridiculous. It really was everything Crowley loved.)
It really was everything Crowley didn’t trust himself with.
“We’ll have dinner,” he decided. “But on one condition.”
Aziraphale perked up even more. His hand curled around the doorknob behind him, ready to lead the way. “I’m happy to negotiate terms. We can figure out what to do with our Arrangement.”
“No.” Crowley ran his hand across the books and bottles on the mantelpiece beside him, and hummed. “You miracle the dinner here.”
A scowl, Aziraphale’s shoulders falling. “Must you be so difficult?”
“It’s in the job description.”
“My miracle is for emergencies only.”
Crowley’s hand paused over a Bible on the mantelpiece. The crown was still on his head, and he was no stranger to playing devil’s advocate – in fact, that was the job description, most days. But Aziraphale had said he’d come here for help, and if the angel wanted a deal with the devil, then a deal he’d get.
“You know your problem, angel?” Crowley replied, rhetorical. Of course Aziraphale couldn’t do a miracle in front of that git Sandalphon. It wasn’t a blocker, it was – “Your problem is you don’t trust yourself.”
Aziraphale huffed, arms crossed again. “I trust myself a great deal.”
That, Crowley knew, was true. That, Crowley understood, was also a lie. And it was just Crowley’s luck that the Bible on the mantelpiece was an old version too – a copy of the Bible de Genève that the angel would have loved to collect for his shop.
“You trust yourself more than Heaven?” Crowley challenged, pressing harder, until shove teetered on push, and push became fall.
Another flash of fear. Aziraphale’s eyes were wide in the fireplace light. “You can’t ask that, Crowley!”
Right, then.
Drastic measures.
Aziraphale wasn’t the only one who knew a thing or two about sleight of hand – and if emergencies were the only way Aziraphale could be persuaded, then Crowley would just have to provide one.
“I can, and I do,” Crowley said. Because he did trust himself, because he did trust Aziraphale. “And so can you.”
And he shoved the Bible into the burning fire.