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Chapter Text

“Awesome of you to go back to school, sir.”

“What.” Crowley freezes. He slips his outdated notebook right back into his bag in the silver sea of laptops this classroom has become.

At least the student next to him, who uttered that sentence of doom, now has the decency to stutter. “At… at your age.”

Crowley slowly looks the offending subject up and down – ironed shirt, expensive shoes, bloody Etonesque. The kid withers a little under the scrutiny. 

“Shut up,” Crowley says, and demonic miracles his laptop battery to always give out at crucial points during the lecture. 

He rests his hands on the desk, unsure what to do with them now, without either a laptop nor a notebook to fiddle with. But why would he write anything down anyway? He’s not planning on sticking around until the exams. This is all strictly demon business. Temptation-adjacent.  

“I like your notebook,” says the student on the other side of him, who apparently managed to catch a glimpse of the thing. 

Crowley stole it off Aziraphale’s desk this morning. It’s leather-bound, old and yet unused. Aziraphale buys loads of notebooks without ever writing in them. Ridiculous. At least now it’s going to have a good… well, medium use. 

“My name’s Eldrydd, they/them.” Eldrydd points to the pronoun badge on their backpack. “You?”

“He/him, currently,” Crowley says. He’s met with an understanding nod. “Errr, Anthony.”

“I’m James,” the posh student says without having been invited into the conversation. They probably teach that at Eton.

Crowley ignores him. Birth names are utter bollocks. That’s clearly a Gavin. 

The professor, who seemingly left the room shortly after setting up his laptop, has arranged the dark wooden tables in a rectangle like some sort of psychopath. That interferes with Crowley’s evil demonic plan to simply stuff himself away in the back of the classroom. Perhaps nap during the boring bits. 

But because he also arrived demonically late, he’s even been forced to sit quite close to the front. Simply annoying, that. 

There’s a white screen upon which are projected the words ‘Classic Literature:’. At least he’s in the right room.

A remarkably tall man walks in and closes the door behind him. His ginger hair looks like he’s been on a five mile bike ride. 

The man moves the cursor on the laptop. Must be the professor, Crowley reckons, but then his attention is drawn to the screen. There, a new word has been revealed, effectively changing the title slide to: ‘Classic Literature: Fantasy’.

“Oh no,” Crowley mutters under his breath. He can’t believe this. Can anything in his life go right, please? 

“What’s wrong?” Eldrydd whispers, and Crowley vaguely gestures towards the screen. 

“Thought it was just, y’know, about classic literature. Reading Hemingway drunk for the full experience, learning which of the Brönte sisters was which, that sort of stuff.”

“Oh,” James leans over. “You had to click open the whole title while enrolling on the student portal. It did look like just Classic Literature at first glance. But most people of course click –”

“Shut up, Gavin.”

“It’s James.”

“Can’t expect me to learn everyone’s names,” Crowley snarls, and turns back. “Eldrydd, do you think I could still, I don’t know, switch courses at this point? Jump out the window? Set the building on fire?”

They stare at him with narrowed eyes, apparently unsure if he’s joking or not.

“Hello, class,” the professor claps his hands. He has put most of his hair in some sort of haircut resembling shape. Crowley absentmindedly combs his fingers through his own hair. Takes time and skill to learn to tame curls. Or a miracle, really. 

The man points at the name on another projected slide. ‘Professor W. Nachtergale.’

“Some of you already know me from the modules I teach for undergraduates, but I see some new faces in the room. Hallo, I’m professor Nachtergale. Before you ask, it’s a Dutch name. I grew up in Amsterdam and moved here when I was 21, long before Brexit. I know sometimes it’s customary to call professors by their first name in these smaller seminars, but I prefer professor or mister Nachtergale, please.”

Crowley smirks. He’s a non-man of the world. He’s been to places. “It’s because the W. stands for Willy, doesn’t it?”

The professor hones in on him, and smiles mildly. “I see you’ve done your googling. It’s a perfectly normal Dutch name, Mr…”

“Just Anthony.”

“Anthony. Would you agree that the right name, the right words, the precision of them, is of importance? If not, you are in the wrong module.”

Oh, Crowley is definitely in the wrong module. But he might as well sit this one out now. He puts his notebook gently on the table and glances around. At least, now he notices, he’s not the only mature student in the room. Though he’s by far the oldest – by give or take 6,000 years. 

“As a reminder, this isn’t a beginner’s module,” the professor addresses the whole room again. “You all have bachelor degrees under your belt and are ready to take it to the next level. And I will expect, no, I am excited to hear your informed opinions on the texts we will be reading.”

Crowley groans. Maybe he demonic miracled a little too close to the sun when he enrolled in this.

“Do any of you know why I named this course ‘Classic Literature: Fantasy’?”, professor Nachtergale asks.  

Crowley suppresses a scoff. To trick unsuspecting readers into taking his module, clearly. 

Not that Crowley has done much reading in his lifetime, that’s more Aziraphale’s area. But he knows a thing or two about classic literature. He’s seen the BBC adaptations of Great Expectations and Tipping the Velvet. And the Disney adaptation of Robin Hood, which did have a rather odd amount of animals.  

“Because,” Eldrydd says, overcoming some sort of unnecessary shyness. “Those books tend to be considered tosh? When they’re actually proper writing?”

They phrase it like some sort of question. And yes, Crowley questions it alright. 

“Indeed, Eldrydd – good to see you in one of my classes again, by the way. Fantasy is an underrated genre. Seen as flimsy and useless.”

That’s something Crowley can agree on: this course is pretty useless. And he hasn’t done the required reading anyway. 

He didn’t even open the email they all got about it, with the list of books. He’s a demon. He was busy, full schedule of glueing coins to the sidewalk and such. Not that he needs to report to Hell anymore. But everyone needs a hobby. 

Professor Nachtergale continues, moving on to a slide compiled of several book covers: The Fellowship of the Ring, Chronicles of Narnia, the Earthsea Trilogy, American Gods, … The images are moving around fast in a cheesy animation. 

“Critics, authors and readers throughout the ages have traditionally reacted with upturned noses at the fantasy genre. It wasn’t until Tolkien that the attitudes shifted. In my opinion, this genre stands its ground among the likes of J.D. Salinger, Oscar Wilde, Toni Morrison or Jane Austen.” 

Crowley blinks. The diamond robber? 

He opens his notebook. Should he write this down? Everywhere around him, students are typing. Probably just messages to their friends, though. Web whatsapp was one of his demonic inventions.

He growls under his breath. This blasted pen doesn’t work. Zero writing appears on the pages. Typical, this. Can’t Aziraphale just throw things out when they’re broken? 

He miracles himself a new pen.

“Now,” the professor says, pressing a key on the laptop. “Let’s move on to the first book of the semester, which you’ve all been reading in preparation for this seminar, I’m sure.” He smiles to himself, like a seasoned teacher. “Good Omens…”

The cover appears on the screen, but Crowley’s too busy writing to glance at it. 

“...or its full title: Good Omens - The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.”

Crowley’s pen somehow manages to do an olympic diver style backflip off the table.

Agnes Nutter?!

“What?”

“You don’t know the book?” James whispers while handing the pen back. The guy frowns.  “You’re basically a Crowley cosplayer at this point, mate.”

“Ngk.”

Crowly’s face feels like it’s stuck in the shape a cartoon character’s face gets after he gets whacked by a pan.  

“Didn’t know we were supposed to read a book already,” he hisses indignantly.

“It’s a literature course,” James supplies. Oh great. Must have been top of his class at public school. 

Crowley glares at him. What’s wrong with students these days anyway? It’s only the first day. The professor will talk about the coursebook for half an hour then close early, right? That’s surely how it works? Crowley hasn’t been to school in ages. Literally. 

“Could someone summarise this book for me, please?”, the teacher asks the class. 

Crowley meanwhile has scooped Eldrydd’s copy off their desk. It looks completely tattered, close to falling apart, there’s.. Is that water damage?

He flips through it, wondering if he’s having a brain bleed catching glimpses of the names ‘Aziraphale’ and ‘Crowley’ in there – is it even possible for a demon to have a stroke?

“It’s about an angel and a demon trying to stop the end times after the birth of the Antichrist,” a freckle-faced girl summarises. “Written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and published in 1990.”

Crowley catches the word ‘Arrangement’ in this bloody book, underlined in careful pencil, and just about gets a heart attack. 

He wonders how much demonic power would be needed to miracle the whole world illiterate. Or, well, not the humans per se, but definitely the angels and demons – though some would argue most of those are basically illiterate already.   

He’s shaking his head at the book. This seminar is just ridiculous. The whole – the whole idea of it. Crowley has been to astronomy lectures occasionally over the ages, just to see how much humans had yet to discover. But a lesson about books? About their own creations? It’s almost blasphemy – alright fine, he’s won over to the idea again.

But this? This – are there hidden cameras in here? He checks out the corners of the classroom. Surely he’s being, what was the name of that reality tv show he helped create years ago? Punk’d? 

“What are its main themes, in your opinion?” the teacher asks.

Themes? This is his life, damn it all to Heaven. 

“Good versus evil,” a kid says.

Crowley rolls his eyes. Low hanging fucking fruit, that. And wrong. 

“Destiny versus free will”, another pipes up.

Lacks imagination.

“Human nature,” James says.

“It’s not even about humans!”

Crowley finds, horrified, that he has said this out loud. 

He clarifies, not hindered in the slightest by not having read it: “It’s about angels and demons, and errrr… bravery. Very bravely fighting back in the face of danger.”

“Sure,” James says, in a soothing tone, “but it’s about how through staying on Earth so long, Aziraphale and Crowley, in very small steps, each become a little more human.”

Crowley can’t believe he’s being demonsplained by a human. And the professor is nodding. Crowley slams the book closed. 

“What?”

It’s hubris, is what this is. These humans who’ve only been alive for the blink of an eye, think they know everything there is to know about two ageless beings, and not only that, think Crowley and Aziraphale are anything even remotely like – like humans? 

“Some would say Aziraphale and Crowley have a lot of human traits,” the teacher interferes before Crowley attacks James like a rabid dog. “For example, Crowley is described as an optimist.”

Crowley’s mouth falls open. “An optimist? I – he’s a demon. Fallen angel.” He gestures vaguely in the air. “Unforgivable. Dark. Bit of a goth? Scary?”

Eldrydd takes their book back, and apparently locates the offending passage with suspicious ease. 

“This is after Aziraphale discorporates and before Crowley decides to go to Tadfield anyway,” they explain, and start reading directly from the book:

Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times – he thought briefly of the fourteenth century – then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.

Consonants collect for an impromptu meeting in Crowley’s throat. How did this ‘Neil Gaiman’ and ‘Terry Pratchett’, if those are even their real names, know about his feelings about the fourteenth century? How did they even know all those – those details? Was this ghostwritten by the real Agnes Nutter, ouija-board-style? 

He frowns down at himself. There must be something he’s missing. This – a human course about his life – simply cannot be a coincidence. 

And calling Crowley an optimist? Definitely written by someone truly evil. An angel?

“Thank you for that, Eldrydd,” professor Nachtergale says. “That part also demonstrates one of the key elements of the book. Academically speaking, Good Omens is at an even less popular intersection of genres, because it’s at the crossroads of fantasy and humour, which is also traditionally looked down upon. Even more so than fantasy, in this day and age. People shamefully underestimate how hard it is to write something funny.”

“Funny?!” The word escapes from Crowley’s lips like a wild animal. 

Not only are their deepest darkest secrets – the Arrangement, his belief in the power of the Universe – written down in a book for all of humanity and some of demonity, whatever’s the word, to read; also they’re all making fun of them?

“It’s so funny, Anthony,” Eldrydd says with a glint in their eye. They clearly, for some reason, love this book. Maybe they need a brain scan. It must be quite rotten in there. “I think the paintball scene is the most obvious example.”

They flip to another page. “They get shot and immediately very dramatically fall against a statue, and in a bush.”

Crowley looks appalled. They should try living through that! It’s no laughing matter!

Eldrydd reads out loud:

“Ooh, that stung,” moaned the fallen angel. “Got me right under the ribs.”

“Yes, but do you normally bleed blue?” said Crowley.

Eldrydd giggles softly. 

“It’s not funny!” Crowley insists. He scowls. 

“The whole premise is hilarious, really,” Eldrydd says. “Quiet quitting heroes, they are. Not wanting to work too hard for their respective sides. And Aziraphale and Crowley sort of whoopsydaisy themselves into saving the world. They actually had very little to do with stopping the Armageddon, when it all came down to it.”

“Interesting, Eldrydd,” the professor says, and Crowley disagrees strongly. Not interesting at all, this. Isn’t there some Hobbit-y book to be discussed instead? 

“Let’s talk about which other characters were actually responsible for saving the world,” professor Nachtergale prompts. 

Well, every curriculum has its boring bits, Crowley supposes. His thoughts started drifting off. 

The facts, as far as he understands them, are these. There is a book about Crowley and Aziraphale — and some unimportant side characters – exposing the Arrangement and the true(ish) events of Armageddon. If this book gets into the wrong hands, they both could get in very serious trouble. 

But it doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar – it’s even foolishly categorised as ‘fantasy’ by humans. Crowley snorts. As if they’re werewolves and vampires! The Twilightification – another film he was involved in – of their lives. 

So, as disturbing as this situation is (he simply has no desire to be lectured about, errr, himself), there’s no need to panic just yet. Most books end up in a discount pile within a few weeks after release. There’s no reason this one should become, well, truly become, a classic. How many humans read fantasy anyway?

“... and that’s why I think the way Crowley treats his plants symbolises his feelings about being cast out of Heaven by God,” a girl is just finishing her sentence when Crowley tunes back into the class. 

His whole notebook drops to the floor this time. 

What?

“Do you think the excessive drinking is also a way to cope with those feelings?”, one of the other students asks. 

Crowley scrambles for his notebook, cursing under his breath about the fresh dog-ears and dirt stains. He glares at the notebook. 

“Oh, come on, there’s no – no excessive drinking,” Crowley says. “Aren’t you supposed to be the, errr, the future elite of England? The state of education these days…”

Crowley slams the bloody notebook closed. “And talking to plants is just good sense, makes ‘em all nice and green. They have to be properly motivated.”

The whole room stares at him like blinking mice in a bush. 

“It’s just not about – whatever. Divine rejection or whatever you educated lot think. It’s just a guy, a, a demon watering plants.”

“But you can’t possibly think it’s a coincidence that it’s plants,” James says. Of course it’s James. It’s always that Gavin faced guy thinking he’s the smartest in the room. “He was the Serpent of Eden. Of course he has a complicated relationship with trees and plants.”

One more word out of his mouth and Crowley’s ready to boa constrictor the life out of the pick-me student. See how he likes that. 

All Crowley’s got is a very severe glare, though. That’ll have to do for now. 

“And it’s, it’s really all about, uhhh, rising above your supposed nature,” James continues after an approving nod from professor Nachtergale. “Like in the book, Adam rebels against his dad, against Satan. But he says he’s not rebelling, he’s merely pointing out some facts; which, I think, probably mirrors Crowley’s reasons for falling. The whole time this fallen angel, more than anyone else, is aware of the absurdity of Heaven’s rules, and Hell, and how they’re not really two sides but more like two essential divisions of the same company.”

Crowley stares at him, completely stunned into silence.

“But aren’t Aziraphale and Crowley clearly presented as from two opposite sides?”, the freckle-faced girl asks. 

“Well, on the surface, yes,” James says. “They struggle with the expectations of both Heaven and Hell, and then of course there’s also their mistrust, I mean…”

Crowley’s hand shapes into a fist. Mistrust?

“... for example, Aziraphale doesn’t even tell Crowley about finding the Antichrist at first. He puts Heaven above… Hey, wait, is my laptop on fire?”

James rises from his chair in a mild panic.

And amidst the chaos of putting out a small and really if you think about it, harmless fire, Crowley lets his words sink in. Mistrust? They’re – Aziraphale and him, they trust each other. There isn’t anyone in the whole world he trusts more. 

Does Aziraphale not trust him? Is that it? Is that in the book?

“Right, I think it’s best if we end the lesson here,” professor Nachtergale says, looking a bit paler than usual. Crowley nods. Indeed. Enough of all this nonsense.

The professor manages a half-smile at the room. 

“Next seminar, we’re going to dive into the gay subtext.”

Chapter Text

“So, errr, Aziraphale,” Crowley says. 

There’s a careful art to sitting casually, and Crowley has perfected it. He’s starfish-draped over one of the bookshop chairs, the one closest to the angel’s desk, where Aziraphale is currently inspecting some old Bible. 

“Hm?” Aziraphale smooths out a page without looking up. 

“Have you,” Crowley says with frankly admirable lightness, if he may say so himself, “heard of the book Good Omens?”

That gives Aziraphale pause. 

“Yes.” He clears his throat, and looks up. “I own it.”

“What.”

Is Crowley the last one on Earth to hear about this book that’s been existing for thirty years? Apparently he is. He feels like the butt of a joke he didn’t even know people were telling. 

Crowley pops out of his chair. “And where is this precious copy of yours, my book collecting fiend?”

He follows Aziraphale’s guilty line of sight and quickly slinks over to the corner. There, a hip-height closed off cabinet suddenly seems suspicious. He opens its doors and finds, as if it’s a comically small serving of one shrimp on a serving plate, only one book. Good Omens. 

It looks a bit different than Eldrydd’s copy, which had a drawing of a demon – presumably Crowley – on the front, with a glass of wine in his hand. This edition is black with the number 666 in a neon-lit roadmap of the M25. 

From these two book covers, only one possible conclusion can be drawn, and he’s not surprised: Crowley is the main character. 

“Have you read it?” he asks, holding it up against the light. 

“I skimmed it,” Aziraphale says.

“This looks very well-read.” Crowley’s nose crinkles. Smells a bit like parsnip soup.

“Bought it second hand,” Aziraphale says quickly. He’s stood up now, Bible abandoned on his desk, book handling gloves off. 

Crowley raises his eyebrows at the first page. “Signed by the authors? To ‘Mr. Fell’?”

Aziraphale takes a small step forward. Light as an angel feather, he sounds. “Oh, I meet so many authors. Why the sudden interest in…”

Crowley looks at him sharply. In what? Reading? 

“... biblical… literature?”

Crowley throws himself sideways over the armchair and flips through the book. 

Usually, Aziraphale loves to pencil thoughts, annotations and remarks in the margins. Here, there are none. 

What a relief!

Surely, this is what relief feels like. Right? 

“Well, we’re bloody in it, aren’t we? This book’s been out ages! You couldn’t have mentioned?”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitches slightly. Would this be the ideal time for Crowley to bring up the alleged “gay subtext”? 

Probably not.

“It only had a limited print,” Aziraphale says, hands hidden behind his back. 

“It’s a bestseller! They’re reading it in my – in that literature course!” 

Crowley hasn’t provided too many details about the seminar he’s taking, except that he owes Beelzebub a small temptation and will therefore be out every Tuesday morning. 

Not that he lives in the bookshop now, or that he owes Aziraphale an explanation about his whereabouts. 

It’s just that he’s been hanging around there most evenings, ever since the not-quite-the-End Times, and falling asleep on various pieces of furniture or book piles – but that doesn’t make it his home. He’s just sleepy, comes with old age. He’ll return to his perfectly nice demon lair eventually. 

“Oh, are they?” Aziraphale sounds suddenly interested.

Crowley squints. Does Aziraphale look pleased? Doesn’t he realise the danger they’re both in – and not just the dangers of bad writing?

“What if Heaven or Hell finds out about this blessed thing?” He jumps up and steps close to Aziraphale. “This mentions the Arrangement, you know.” 

“Oh, don’t be silly”, Aziraphale says. “Angels and demons don’t read. Most they do is watch the adaptation.”

“Well, then let’s hope they never sell the tv rights,” Crowley says. As if Armageddon were a cinematographic show!

He wonders if the reason Aziraphale didn’t tell him about Good Omens is the ‘mistrust’ that was mentioned by his fellow students. But the angel did tell him just now, when he asked about it. They have no secrets for each other!

Aziraphale coughs and takes a small step backwards. “By the way, I’ve lost one of my notebooks.”

Crowley’s fingers grip more tightly around Good Omens. There’s a very luxurious, leather-bound notebook in his bag right now, in which is written only one line: ‘Classic Literature: Good O’

That’s when he’d stopped writing, last lesson. 

“You wouldn’t know where it is?” Aziraphale says.

“Ngk,” Crowley shrugs. 

How’s it even possible that Aziraphale misses it? He has stacks and stacks of empty notebooks, never used. 

“Well, it’s time for my seminar. I’m confiscating this!”

He slips Good Omens in his book bag and leaves the shop. Reads a bit while steering the Bentley through the streets of London. Driving tends to get boring. 

Odd, though. This book’s dialogue is sometimes scarily accurate, he notices while avoiding a granny crossing the street. “Were Gaiman and Pratchett some sort of freak prophets?”, he mumbles to himself while Freddie Mercury sings Love of my Life. 

—

Everyone is sitting in the exact same place as last time, because humans are creatures of habit. Unlike Crowley, who is unpredictable and cool. He’s wondering what snacks Aziraphale will prepare for Golden Girls night tomorrow.

“Let’s discuss Good Omens as a queer allegory,” professor Nachtergale says. 

Crowley opens his leather notebook and cocks an eyebrow. 

“This especially applies to Crowley,” the professor says. Crowley nearly chokes on his own spit. “The demon who’s been rejected by his family. Thrown out. Yet he’s unapologetically himself, and yes, that is admirable, he’s carving out his own way. But it’s also out of necessity – since he has lost Heaven, has lost the love of God. A very queer concept.”

Crowley snorts. That would make every demon gay, and none of the angels. 

Those are human concepts anyway, and for the likes of him rather – he thinks of Aziraphale – meaningless. 

“Aziraphale on the other hand could be perceived as written as a gay man who is trying to conform, to please the family, so to speak. While hiding the depth of his true desires, in this instance his love for food, rule-breaking and human delights. Both Crowley and Aziraphale therefore experience a very different type of queer loneliness.”

Crowley swallows. 

Lonely? He’s not – they have each other. And the whole world. 

But he’s somewhat glad the seminar doesn’t actually seem to be about their, well, their perceived gay love for each other. Thank fuck. No, it’s just humans projecting their own little issues onto a piece of art. 

“Professor,” Eldrydd says thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s gay when Aziraphale calls Crowley ‘my dear’?”

W- What?

Crowley scrambles for Aziraphale’s copy in his bag and starts scanning the pages. When does that happen? His ears are not burning, by the way. 

“Well, that is of course subject of great debate,” the professor says.

Crowley looks up. Is it? 

“Is that a… is that a first edition?” James whispers at his book, but Crowley shuts him up with one glare.

“What do you think, Eldrydd?”, the professor asks.

“I like to think so,” they say, and Crowley wonders what he has done to deserve all this. Original sin, sure, but that was ages ago.

Eldrydd reads the relevant passage out loud:

Aziraphale tossed a crust to a scruffy-looking drake, which caught it and sank immediately.

The angel turned to Crowley.

“Really, my dear,” he murmured.

“Sorry,” said Crowley. “I was forgetting myself.”

When a character sees their whole life flashing before their eyes when they’re dying in a film, that’s how Crowley’s mind feels casting back to all the times Aziraphale called him ‘my dear’. 6,000 years’ worth. 

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Crowley says. “We’re – They’re friends, I suppose, of sorts. Close coworkers. Who only meet on business trips.”

“Sure, but Aziraphale’s quite gay coded,” James interrupts, next to him.

A gay did what?

“Right, here it is,” James says, and starts reading from his book: 

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

Crowley wishes there was a camera he could look into, to share a long-suffering look with the audience. 

Instead, he throws one such gaze to Eldrydd. “That doesn’t mean he’s gay, Aziraphale isn’t – he doesn’t – he’s always been – ”

He’s stumbling down the tracks of his own thoughts. How to explain the universe to a mosquito? 

One of the other students interrupts. “What’s wrong with it if he is? Gay. I don’t know if you’re aware, perhaps your generation isn’t used to the nuances of it all, but you are sounding a little homophobic.”

His generation?

“I’m not homophobic, I threw the fifth brick at Stonewall!” He pauses. “In a manner of speaking,” he mumbles, trying to sound a little younger. When was Stonewall again?

“Now, what else is in the text to support a queer reading?” the professor asks in the tone of someone who just got handed a spoon and started stirring.  

“There’s of course also the pansy line,” Eldrydd says. 

The what now?

Crowley’s face must be screaming that question, because Eldrydd starts searching for it in their copy. 

“Sergeant Shadwell calls him Southern pansy a few times, but then, when he possesses Madame Tracy, Aziraphale declares it himself: ‘Not just A Southern pansy, Sergeant Shadwell. THE Southern pansy.’”

Surely that hadn’t actually happened? Crowley wasn’t there for that particular bit in the story of their lives. He grips the edges of his table. 

“Oh and what about the ‘Buggre Alle This Bible’? Surely that must have been a gay joke of sorts,” James suggests.

“Not with the gay joke discourse, please,” Eldrydd sighs, looking into the distance like a war hero remembering a particularly brutal battle. “Next thing you’ll probably bring up the Anathema feeling safe thing.”

“But it is interesting!” James says. “And we shouldn’t shy away from this subject.”

Crowley’s confused face, Satan have no mercy on his soul, seems to only urge James on.

“When they drop her off with the Bentley. Here it is.” James reads:

“Can we get on?” said Crowley. “Goodnight, miss. Get in, angel.”

Ah. Well. That explained it. She had been perfectly safe after all. 

“Anathema felt safe because Crowley addressed Aziraphale as ‘angel’,” James explains. “She thought they were a gay couple.”

Crowley feels a little dizzy. He would not fucking say that!

This was supposed to be a boring little course. 

He slowly breathes in and out, and tries to be a little honest with himself, as much as it hurts. He thinks about all the times he has called Aziraphale ‘angel’. Because yes, guilty as apparently charged. 

He didn’t really consider how it might look, to humans. Just fell out of his mouth. Angel after angel. And yet – Aziraphale never calls him ‘demon’. Only ‘dear.’

Best not to linger on that too much. 

James continues: “Now was this a gay joke, written as a throwaway line in the 90s, a very different time, or was it deliberate gay subtext? Queer coding?” 

“You’re overthinking it,” Crowley says.

“Or what about when Aziraphale sat on a flaming sword?”, the freckle-faced girl he remembers from last time asks. “That was a little gay.”

“Sometimes angels just sit on swords and it doesn’t mean anything!” Crowley just barely refrains from outright yelling.

“Oh, you mean sometimes the curtains are just blue?” Eldrydd asks. 

What’s that supposed to mean? Crowley thinks answering “yes” won’t be very helpful.

“And I bet the bookshop walls are just yellow,” freckles says. 

What is she on about? Crowley squirms uncomfortably in his seat, adjusting his sunglasses. How does she even know what colour those walls are? Is that also in the book? 

“If we think of these as gay jokes, and not gay coding, well…,” James says. “The use of poofter, pansy, nancy boys, even faggot… It hasn’t aged well.”

“Come on, you know Terry Pratchett wasn’t homophobic at all, and neither is Neil Gaiman,” Eldrydd says, looking like they’re about to murder James in broad daylight. 

“Faggot?” Crowley says. 

James smirks and reads:

“You’re rubbish,” said Warlock. “I wanted cartoons anyway.”

“He’s right, you know,” agreed a small girl with a ponytail. You are rubbish. And probably a faggot.”

Aziraphale stared desperately at Crowley. As far as he was concerned young Warlock was obviously infernally tainted, and the sooner the Black Dog turned up and they could get away from this place, the better.

Right, now Crowley remembers – Warlock’s Birthday party. By performing as a magician, Aziraphale had invited the wrath of something worse than God: children. 

Though Crowley doesn’t remember being this casual about the children taunting Aziraphale. Quite a few rocks got permanently stuck in shoes that day. 

“Sure, Aziraphale’s queer coding is well established,” a student in the back says. “What about Crowley’s, though? There’s not much to go on in the book.”

Crowley nearly falls off his chair. Forget downstairs. This is his own personal Hell. 

“True, it’s almost like the demon is the everyman for readers to project onto,” professor Nachtergale mutters, perhaps more to himself. 

“Or like Aziraphale’s the main character in a romance novel and Crowley’s the love interest,” a student unhelpfully supplies. 

What? Crowley miracles the guy’s shoes forever untied. 

“There are signs… Subtext. There’s a chapter where he eats angel cake,” Eldrydd says, unsure. 

Crowley stares at them. Baffled. That’s not a euphemism, that’s just cake. 

“You’re grasping at straws,” James says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t see it at all. There’s clearly love between the two of them.”

Whack. Is the sound of Crowley’s pen falling to the floor. 

He twists his body around to pick it up. 

And emerges in an entirely new sort of Hell.

“Anyway,” James is saying, “is it even gay if neither Aziraphale or Crowley has a gender, really? They’re just an angel and a demon.”

“Well, they are male presenting,” the freckle-faced girl says. 

“Says in the book,” James says, undisturbed (unlike Crowley): “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”

Is this real? Is this Crowley’s real life? Are his genitals being discussed like Schrödinger’s fucking penis?  

He swallows hard.

“Nanny Ashtoreth wasn’t male presenting,” Eldrydd says. “And he/him pronouns don’t mean anything anyway. Crowley is canonically genderfluid.”

Oh, Crowley likes Eldrydd. They get it. But when did this turn into a gender seminar? Dear Satan below!

It isn’t any of their business, what’s in his pants, what he feels, what he calls his angel in the privacy of their own, errrr, private conversations.  

“True,” James says. “And Neil Gaiman himself doesn’t think of them as homosexuals in the traditional human sense.”

“Hold up, I didn’t mean… That doesn’t mean the story isn’t inherently queer,” Eldrydd says.

“But what about death of the author?”, another student asks. 

Now that sounds like a lovely idea to Crowley, but once the professor explains what it is, he isn’t all that interested in the concept anymore. 

“It’s all just queerbaiting, if you ask me,” a different student says. “It just wasn’t meant to be read as a love story.”

“Queerbaiting is a marketing technique, not a literary style,” Eldrydd says pointedly.

The student withers a little. “Yes, but, I mean. It’s just a funny book, that’s all. They were never meant to end up together.”

Crowley feels a little weird, but he nods. That’s right. A lot of humans love to see a love story in everything, to distract themselves from war, climate change and laundry. Doesn’t mean Aziraphale’s in love with him, he never got that impression and he's at peace with that, really.

Clearly, this proves that literary analysis is bollocks. Just a bunch of people sitting in a room telling others what to think about books. Wannabe intellectuals trying to look into his pants. 

And they’re wrong about, about… Aziraphale. 

“It’s about readers’ own interpretations, in the end,” professor Nachtergale concludes. “Asexual or aromantic readings are just as valid. And whatever the intent, and I personally do believe there is an honest love story in there, the queers are baited…”

Crowley puts his, well, Aziraphale’s book back in the bag and closes the luxurious notebook he still hasn’t given back to the angel. Now he can’t ever show it to Aziraphale again. There are only a few words on the pages, underlined: Pansy? Faggot?    

“... hence the popularity among the LGBTQIA+ community. And then there’s of course death of the author! That’s why next lecture,” the professor says. “We’ll dive deeper into transformative works.”

Crowley nods. He’s relieved. Whatever that is, at least it’ll be a break from this ridiculousness.

Chapter Text

“Are you alright, Crowley?”

The Good Omens book makes a small triple axel in Crowley’s hands. He catches it and snaps it shut, then scrambles to an upright position on the bookshop’s carpet. Just to bring home that he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

“Why wouldn’t I be alright?” he asks Aziraphale.

“You’re reading…”

Crowley stops him right there. “I read!”

Crowley, in fact, has read an entirety of three books in his life. First of all, the Bible, to inspect how exactly they were writing about him. Second, the world’s most famous book on snake care, just so he could write correction letters to the author and the publisher. Third, Twilight.

He tried audio books in the Bentley but they didn’t even take 24 hours to turn into Queen. The Bentley, just like him, is street smarts.

“Yes, well…,” Aziraphale hesitates, handing him a cup of steaming tea. “You’re also intermittently mumbling, ‘THAT’S what happened?’ and groaning.”

“I do not groan.” In fact Crowley’s a bit appalled by all the gnk’ing that’s going on in this book.

Aziraphale sips his own tea. His cup, Crowley notices, has a small chip in it, at the lip.

Crowley’s own cup is perfect. He swallows. The tea is nice and soothing and sweet in his throat.

“If you must know. I wasn’t there for many parts of the near-Armageddon. So it’s just interesting to fill in the blanks of what occurred between whatever you and I were doing.”

“And?” His tone is casual — as if he’s inquiring about the weather. But there’s an alertness in his eyes.

“I doubt whether there’s any pure truth in there at all,” Crowley says. “Because even our parts, the ones I was there for at least, are described completely wrong and off the mark. It’s like reading a newspaper!”

That seems to surprise Aziraphale somewhat. “Example?”

Well, he’s not going to ask if Aziraphale ever noticed any gay subtext. He won’t.

“The bookshop fire, for example”, he says, regretting it immediately.

“What’s wrong with it?” Aziraphale asks.

“Well, I was never knocked to the ground by a jet of water,” he lies.

In fact, the thing the book got wrong, is that there was a lot more crying involved. But he’s not about to mention that.

Smoke really does a number on the tear ducts.

Aziraphale takes his empty cup from his hands and pats him on the shoulder. “Must have been a metaphor.”

“Shut up.” Crowley pauses. “And you never told me you said ‘bugger’. Or ‘fuck’!”

Those parts made it a rather exciting read, actually.

“I didn’t,” Aziraphale says with his special Lying Smile, which he vehemently denies he has.

Crowley stands up to read out loud from the book. Aziraphale immediately starts chasing him around.

““Bugger!” he said”, Crowley reads, using his Aziraphale voice, which the angel also denies he has. “It was the first time he’d sworn in more than six thousand years.”

“Give that back, my foul fiend,” Aziraphale says, swinging at the book but missing.

Crowley stands on top of a chair now, Dead Poets Society style. He reads, while guarding off Aziraphale with his other hand like a father holding off an enraged toddler.

Aziraphale looked down at his feet, and swore for the second time in five minutes. He’d stepped into the circle.
“Oh, fuck,” he said.

Aziraphale stops struggling and straightens his bow tie.

“Well, you were right,” Aziraphale says. “The writers clearly made loads up.”

Interesting turn of events. Crowley looks at him sceptically and steps down from the chair.

“Or does the book have you all figured out?” Aziraphale asks, something else creeping into his tone – it feels… Crowley crinkles his nose. Genuine. The angel is curious.

As if the essence of Crowley could be caught in a novel. Perhaps more like a library! Or a bookshop.

“No. It’s all…” He gestures. “Hogwash.”

“What about the bit about the plants?”

“Rubbish! You shouldn’t believe a word of it. It’s not like you actually know how to gavotte, for example.”

Aziraphale clears his throat and turns on his feet. Crowley follows him to the kitchen and watches him carefully wash the teacups. The one with the chipped rim gets the most attention, is handled so delicately. Crowley is mesmerised by the movements.

“Aziraphale,” he asks, watching his hands until the angel looks up. “Why did you paint your bookshop walls yellow?”

It’s been rotating in his head ever since his classmate brought it up so flippantly.

Aziraphale looks him in the eyes, holds his gaze, then carefully puts the chipped cup away.

He clears his throat.

“Well, I’ve got some work to be getting on with,” he deflects. “And isn’t it getting late?”

“It’s 9 in the morning,” Crowley says.

But he knows the truth – he found out from the book this is the way Aziraphale prefers to “exorcise demons from the shop”. It means it’s time for Crowley to retreat.

He could go to his flat, perhaps. Or go for a walk. Buy up the Good Omens stock from London’s bookshops so nobody has access to them anymore.

This book is neither nice nor accurate.

When he’s about to walk out, Aziraphale stops him with a hand on his chest. “You almost forgot your bag, my dear,” he says, handing it to him.

Crowley looks at it. He’s just been fatally wounded by another canonical ‘my dear’ – how is he meant to live now that he knows exactly how the readers of his unauthorised biography are interpreting that?

Though Aziraphale is just the type to say that, isn’t he? He’s an old fashioned kind of fellow. Says things like ‘my dear’, ‘tickety-boo’ or ‘wiggle on’.

“Thanks, angel,” Crowley says. Like he means it.

It’s only once he’s back in his flat, that he finds Aziraphale has put a tin of biscuits in his bag.

—

Crowley hasn’t felt this betrayed in 6,000 years. He’s in the lecture, and he just found out ‘transformative works’ is just another word for ‘fanfiction’.

Now, fanfiction is one of his own inventions. He especially enjoyed the time he befriended Anne Rice and told her all about it.

It’s tragic to see one of your inventions go so wrong.

Well, ‘inventions’. He had at least a heavy hand in inspiring it. In more ways than one, he finds out now. Let it be put on record: Crowley does not support RDF (real demon fic).

“Of all the fics posted in Archive of our Own in this fandom, the overwhelming majority is a ship fic or a slash fic, meaning the authors wish for a romantic relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley,” professor Nachtergale says.

Crowley rolls his eyes. This isn’t a democracy.

“Have you guys heard of consent?” Crowley says.

“You would do numbers on Tumblr,” Eldrydd says drily.

Ah, yes. Tumblr. Satan hadn’t been that impressed with Crowley’s work since the iPhone battery. But as usual: the humans had thought it all up themselves.

Though he did have dinner with the CEO of Yahoo before the billion dollar deal. Can he hear a Yahoo?

“Now let’s talk about tags,” professor Nachtergale says. “Fanfic writers are also their own online librarians: they sort their work by searchable tags or categories. Some of the most used tags within Good Omens slash fics are Fluff, Alternative Universe and Angst, though Happy Ending is also a strong contender.”

Huh. They’re writing them in different universes?

At least some Crowleys are getting a happy ending.

Though, he reckons, he is happy enough. Or there’s the word: content. The world’s been saved. He’s free from Heaven and Hell – both just different coloured shackles, really. And he can hang at the bookshop whenever he wants. He’s as content as can be. Content ending. Underrated, that.

“Another word for the pairing is ‘Ineffable Husbands’,” professor Nachtergale says. “Or ‘Ineffable Idiots’.”

Idiots? He miracles the professor’s lunch box empty. Nothing but slices of white bread with cheese anyway. He’ll never understand the Dutch.

“Is this so-called ‘fanfiction’ really necessary to talk about in our expensive master’s program,” says Crowley, who didn’t pay a thing, nor is doing the rest of the master’s degree. “It’s got nothing of, well, literary value, this… drivel.”

“But Anthony,” Eldrydd says next to him. “Even Good Omens itself is fanfiction. Bible fanfiction.”

Is this what it’s like to experience different brain bleeds at once? Crowley’s life, he thinks angrily, is not fanfiction!

“There’s a lot to be said about the literary value of fanfiction,” the professor says, and Crowley has an ominous feeling he’s about to do just that. “As Eldrydd here mentioned, more books than you realise are in fact, fanfiction of other works. Respected books that won prizes, books that are being taught in schools, that are highly regarded. A lot of Shakespeare is Real People Fiction. Or think of Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno.”

Crowley would rather not, thanks.

“But even disregarding that, let’s look at the more modern interpretation of fanfiction. It’s a genre especially embraced by authors from social groups society looks down on, like teenagers, women and queer people. As scholars we shouldn’t fall into the trap of diminishing their art. As a literary genre, it’s interesting to us: it has its own conventions, rules, favoured tropes, it even spawned whole new worlds.”

“Do you mean Omegaverse?” Eldrydd asks.

Crowley writes down ‘omegaverse?’ in the leatherbound notebook.

“Perhaps.” The professor chuckles. “Is it all high quality literature? Of course not. But there’s also something to be said for that, isn’t there? Writing for the joy of it?”

Sure, Crowley agrees. But must it really involve him and the angel?

“This course is so lit,” Eldrydd mumbles.

“As for Good Omens, an overwhelming majority of fic authors seems to agree on one thing. Some of the most popular tags are ‘Crowley Loves Aziraphale’ and ‘Aziraphale Loves Crowley’.”

Crowley physically stops himself from saying “gnk”.

The next ten minutes pass in a blur, because thoughts are whirling in his mind like bath water going down a drain.

A thousand people at once saying something doesn’t make it the truth, a thousand people writing something doesn’t make it real, he tells himself. A thousand people dreaming something doesn’t make it reality.

Sure, yes, Aziraphale is his everything. And Crowley – well, he does have a vague sense that perhaps, if they were human –

But they aren’t.

And it isn’t how Aziraphale feels about him. Can’t be. An angel and a demon? K – kissing?

The pen in his hand snaps in two, earning him a rather stunned look from James.

Professor Nachtergale, unlike Crowley, seems undisturbed. “There are also some quite… specific tags indicative of certain fandom opinions. Which is interesting for fandom scholars. For example, the tags ‘Aziraphale Loves Crowley’s Eyes’, ‘Oblivious Crowley’ or ‘Crowley’s Love Language is Acts of Service’.”

Crowley is appalled. He’s nobody’s servant!

And he’s pretty sure his love language would be English, though he does an impressive Scottish, too.

“There are definitely some interesting tags to be found in this fandom,” the professor proceeds, “for example ‘Crowley has two penises’ and ‘Crowley’s tongue’.”

Crowley’s tongue is currently working itself in knots.

Why are the fans counting his genitals?

Could this seminar get any more ridiculous?

“Professor,” Eldrydd says, “can we talk about the ao3 writer who’s rumoured to be Neil Gaiman?”

“Ohh, the diary guy?” another student pipes up. “Or at least I assume he/him based on username and vibes.”

“Yes, azzfell, he writes the Aziraphale’s Diaries series,” Eldrydd says. “Quite accurate historical fiction, in diary form. It’s first person pov, which I usually don’t read, but he does it so well.”

“I’ve read him. I think he’s just smoked a bit too much of the rp weed,” freckleface says – Crowley would learn her name but it’s too late to ask now. As is, probably, asking what ‘rp’ means.

“Do you think Neil Gaiman would write fanfiction?” the professor asks.

“He has written it – he won a Hugo Award for a HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes fanfiction,” James says.

“Right, but on ao3…”

James considers this. “This series is T rated, so it could be. But Neil gets to write actual canon, so why would he need to?”

“Good point,” the professor says. “What are some of the reasons people think this azzfell is him?”

“He’s just got that Aziraphale voice spot on,” Eldrydd says. They take some time to think. “Though there is a large emphasis on Crowley’s different hairstyles throughout the ages, so some have speculated he’s a hairdresser in real life. But it’s really a motif of sorts, his preference for the longer hair.”

Crowley’s hand moves automatically to his own hair. He’s kept it rather short, recently. He never even considered Aziraphale might have preferences about it, but apparently the so-called ‘fandom’ thinks he does.

“It’s been going on for years,” Eldrydd says. “And it’s still updating, at an impressive pace. It’s very realistic. Like in his latest update he laments about ‘losing one of his diaries’ in the author’s note, and how he’s going to have to make a time jump. Gives it all a bit of a meta feel. It’s brilliant, and clearly written by a much older author than average. You know, Neil Gaiman’s age, maybe?”

“Maybe, but unlikely. What do we actually know about him?” professor Nachtergale asks.

“Next to nothing,” James says. “He doesn’t use any social media outside of ao3...”

“Well, it’s a well known fact Neil Gaiman doesn’t have social media;” Eldrydd says.

“…and he doesn’t respond to comments beyond a general ‘thank you’. I think he gets off on staying mysterious.”

Eldrydd rolls their eyes. “Well if you had hundreds of comments each fic, you wouldn’t respond to them either.”

“Would!”

“And his general thank-yous are very nice,” Eldrydd says. “Very polite. I don’t know, I’m not into conspiracies but his work just reads very close to canon. With a lot of love for Crowley.”

Crowley scoffs. “Just another ‘shipper’ then. Or… ‘slasher’?”

“Neil himself could be considered a shipper,” Eldrydd says. “And this fic is extremely slow burn. They haven’t even kissed yet and we’re a thousands of years into their friendship. The good stuff!”

“How is that good?” Crowley snaps. “Pages and pages of bloody nothing! It could even never happen!”

Eldrydd looks at him with a softness in their eyes. Like he’s been placed under a lamp and all his feelings are illuminated. For all to see.

He pretends to start writing in the notebook. And demonic miracles their Tumblr search function to be unusable.

“Either way,” professor Nachtergale says. “That’s it for our syllabus about Good Omens, I’m afraid. The next book series we’ll be discussing is that other fantasy classic, The Lord of the Rings.”

Crowley nods. A heterosexual book next, for variety.

“But before that, I have a little surprise for you. Through my own connections I’ve invited Neil Gaiman. He has agreed to come by for a quick ten minute Q&A at the beginning of our next seminar.”

Huh. Crowley stuffs his material away. He wonders what it’ll be like meeting the face of pure evil.

—

The next evening, he decides to call Aziraphale ‘my dear’, just to try out how it feels.

They’re doing their weekly Golden Girls night, sitting in bed together – it’s just where Aziraphale’s new TV is, that’s all – and Crowley clears his throat for it.

“Aziraphale, m… dear,” he says, nestling a little more in the blankets. “Pass me more wine?”

The angel hands him the bottle as if he didn’t just call him a pet name.

“There you are, love,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley just about melts. His classmates would definitely go feral if they knew about this.

Maybe the Good Omens book was right, sometimes. Maybe he is just a little bit of an optimist.

Chapter Text

“What are you?” Crowley slams Neil Gaiman against the wall. “A demon? A prophet?”

Neil Gaiman blinks. “A… writer?”

–

A few hours earlier, nothing was amiss.

Well, not much.

Crowley is sitting in the bookshop scrolling Goodreads. There are, inexplicably, thousands of reviews on the page for Good Omens. Is this thing bigger than the Bible?

Every single one of the reviews is written by someone who has read all about his and Aziraphale’s life. For a long time these people even knew more about the events of Armageddon than Crowley himself. And they didn’t even realise it wasn’t fiction. Idiots.

He filters for the one star reviews. 

Those will be his kind of people. 

There is a guy who “slogged through half of it” being accused of “not speaking British-ness”. Crowley grins and scrolls further down. “Crowley is an amazing character”, someone wrote. The demon nods. Clearly a human with taste. “But I hated Aziraphale.” He almost drops the smartphone out of his hands. 

Crowley starts typing a vicious response. He will simply not stand for Aziraphale slander. How many exclamation marks is too much?

Aziraphale leans over his shoulder, and in an admirably fast and very reasonable reflex he throws the phone out the open window. Aziraphale doesn’t need to see any of those reviews. Or rather, character assassinations. 

“Ready for our lecture?” the angel asks. 

“Yes,” he says, collecting his bag. Ever since he told Aziraphale that Neil Gaiman would be coming in for a ten minute Q&A at the start of this lecture, the angel has been insisting on joining him. “But stop smiling so hard.”

Aziraphale does no such thing. In fact, he starts glowing even more when he looks Crowley up and down.

“My dear, are you growing out your hair?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley swipes a strand behind his ear. “No. Let’s go.”

As they exit the bookshop, Crowley tries not to overanalyse that ‘my dear’. Things needn’t get weird between them just because of a few romance-addicted literature students. 

“Neil Gaiman has a lot to answer for,” Crowley mumbles.

“Do be good,” Aziraphale says, opening the door to the Bentley. 

Crowley scowls. “I’m a demon, I can’t be good.”

“Don’t be silly, love. Of course you can. And if you can’t be good, be careful,” Aziraphale says, effectively shutting him up for the whole drive there. 

—-

The room is fuller than usual. More than one student decided to bring a friend for the occasion, it seems, and even those who usually sleep through Tuesday morning seminars have decided to show their face. 

Everyone — except one — is excited to see Neil Gaiman.

“Who’s your handsome friend?” Eldrydd asks when they sit down.

“I’m the handsome friend,” Crowley says. “He’s Az… errr. Azz.”

“Now that’s not very nice,” James says. “Calling your friend an ass.”

“Your cosplaying friend is called Azz?” Eldrydd frowns for a second, but then they seem to remember something. “You should get out your notebook,” they say, and Crowley feels a sting of betrayal. “Before you came in, professor Nachtergale said it might be on the exam.”

“What notebook?” Aziraphale immediately picks up on it. 

“Oh, Anthony has a really lovely one. Proper old looking,” Eldrydd says. “I wouldn’t even dare to write in it, so pretty.”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley sharply as he mumbles he “forgot it at home”. 

Saved by the Neil – the writer walks in and the whole atmosphere in the room changes. All sounds fade away. 

“Here he is, the man himself,” professor Nachtergale says. “I am leaving him at your mercy, for ten minutes only.”

“I can’t wait to hear all of your questions about the book,” Neil Gaiman says.

“Will season 2 of Good Omens have a large time jump after the non-Armageddon?” a student asks.

Crowley ngk’s under his breath. There’s a tv show?

“Wait and see,” Neil Gaiman says.

“Will there be a script book released again for season 2?” another student asks.

Crowley’s mind is still spinning like a ballerina.

People actually watch a tv show about biblical Armageddon? And it was renewed for a second season, beyond the events of the book? 

But… Crowley frowns. They’re living that. And it’s really quite boring — to outsiders. Lots of falling asleep in the bookshop, trying out little restaurants and sitting through Aziraphale’s magic practice. 

Not world-changing stuff. Not for anyone but Crowley, at least.

“Wait and see.”

“Will Aziraphale and Crowley finally kiss in season 2?” Eldrydd asks.

Jesus — no — Satan — no — somebody not-Christ.

Crowley does his utmost not to look at Aziraphale. Why must the students ask such indecent questions?

He chances a glance.

The angel is looking down, fiddling with his fingers. 

Neil Gaiman, for his part, looks used to this but tired.

“Wait and see.”

Professor Nachtergale steps in. “Remember we only have him for ten minutes. Any other questions for Mr. Neil Gaiman? Anything at all about the book?”

“Yes,” Crowley is surprised to hear himself say, before releasing his most burning question from his mouth: “Why?”

Neil Gaiman frowns. “Why… what?”

Crowley gestures to the book and glares. 

Unfortunately, Neil Gaiman takes it as an opportunity to tell a long and irritatingly lovely story about the origins of the book, how he and Terry Pratchett called each other to tell the other what they came up with. 

Crowley scoffs. Horseshit. That’s surely not what happened. They were ritually slicing pig throats or making deals with a demon or something, to write these actual events and sell them as cheap fiction.

“Oh, there it is,” Aziraphale suddenly whispers, and to Crowley’s horror, he’s holding the leather notebook. Must’ve fished it out of his bag while Neil Gaiman was reminiscing about how Aziraphale and Crowley are “characters”.

Aziraphale peaks in it. “You’ve been writing in this?”

He sounds appalled. 

“It’s a notebook ,” Crowley hisses, and he pulls it out of Aziraphale’s hands. 

“What’s omegaverse?” Aziraphale manages to ask before getting shushed by another student.

Already, the professor thanks Neil Gaiman for his time. The students clap and the writer disappears through the door.

So does Crowley; faster than the professor can say “Lord of the Rings”.

He catches up with the man a little down the empty corridor.

“What are you?” Crowley slams Neil Gaiman against the wall. “A demon? A prophet?”

Neil Gaiman blinks. “A… writer?”

Crowley feels a tug on his shoulder. It’s Aziraphale. The angel pulls the demon back easily.

“Apologies for my friend,” he says. Then, after a brief consideration: “Though I, too, don’t agree with some of the character choices you’ve made in the book. I’m much more, how do you say? ‘Cool’ in real life!”

“Aziraphale,” Neil says. “I was surprised to see you in there, but it’s a pleasure as always.”

Crowley blinks. They know each other? Things in his mind are clicking into each other, though it’s all forming a rather deformed robot. How many book signings has the angel gone to?

Neil looks at Crowley curiously. Then, a light bulb seems to turn on, and he releases a small smile. “Always knew you were the wall slamming kind.”

Crowley turns to Aziraphale. “What the Heaven is going on? You’re in cahoots with this man?”

“You know I support the arts!”

“Support?!! He knows all my — all our secrets!” He is one Queen song away from snapping.

“Speaking of which”, Neil Gaiman steps in, with no apparent regard for his own wellbeing. “You might have noticed, uhh, the fans want certain… things…. to happen.”

Crowley stares at him, exasperated. “We’re real people, you know! You can’t just pair us up for your amusement!”

“Aziraphale, how —” Neil starts asking, but the angel cuts him off.

“We’ll best be going home, actually.” Aziraphale glances at Crowley with an unsure look. 

“Oh yes, angel, we are going home,” Crowley says, taking him by the sleeve. “And we’re going to watch that Good Omens show immediately.”

—-

“Narrated by God? Ohhh, she won’t be pleased,” Crowley says, delighted. “She loves to self direct all her own appearances.”

They’re sitting on Aziraphale’s bed to watch the first and, so far, only season of Good Omens, underneath a shared blanket. The angel has created some sort of pillowy nest for him and has provided a hot water bottle, a cup of hot chocolate and, strangely, a lot of eccles cakes. 

There’s a distinct contrast between how Crowley feels watching the TV show of their lives, and the cosiness of the room. It’s rather confusing.

“At least they finally used God’s correct pronouns for the TV adaptation,” Aziraphale says. 

“For now! Who knows when she’ll change pronouns again,” Crowley says. God likes to be mysterious and unknowable, after all.

“True, the book was written in different times,” Aziraphale admits. 

“Oh, Christ! Did they really have to put me in snake form like that ?” Crowley says, already distracted by the garden of Eden scene. 

Watching this feels weird. Like someone retaking all your pictures with different people. 

“I believe it’s what the viewers call a meet-cute,” Aziraphale pats his arm. 

“That wasn’t even when we first met! We met while I was creating the Eta Carinae Nebula, remember?”

Soft surprise blends into Aziraphale’s face. “You remember that?”

“Of course,” Crowley says. “I was a big name angel, you know. All blasted bollocks, of course, those celestial hierarchies. But our first meeting, well, that at least is something Neil Gaiman doesn’t know about! Who are you texting by the way?”

“No-one.” Aziraphale slips his phone away on the bed table. 

Crowley didn’t even know the angel had a smartphone. Why then, did he always insist on giving him handwritten notes, stuffed in the lunchboxes he’d make for temptation travels? They could’ve been… snapchatting or something.

Meanwhile, atrocious things are happening on screen. “THAT’S David Tennant? That guy doesn’t look like me at all,” 

“He kind of does,” Aziraphale says, running his hand up and down Crowley’s blanket-covered arm.

“Does he?” Crowley falls silent for a while. 

This is an extremely surreal experience. Watching himself – well, sort of himself – interact with Aziraphale is kind of messing with his mind. Surely they don’t talk to each other like that? 

Look at each other like that?

He glances at Aziraphale. The way the dim light falls on Aziraphale’s face makes him shine brighter than stars. 

Crowley decides to focus really hard on the episode, instead. 

He crosses his arms. “Well that David Tennant guy seems to have a little too much fun playing me drunk. I do not sound like that!” 

“Eccles cake?” 

“Thanks, angel. Anyway,” he gestures at the TV. “May he never win a BAFTA ever.”

“Oh, don’t, dear,” Aziraphale says, doing some sort of simultaneous counter miracle next to him. 

Uh oh. The results always tend to be a bit surprising when that happens. 

They’re silent for a while — his mouth’s too full of cake to comment — until they reach Warlock’s Birthday party. 

“This is outrageous,” Crowley says, “I was the one who brought that dove back to life, not you.”

A demon can’t be shocked that television lies, especially not a demon who helped invent reality TV. But there are limits!

“Well, I just…” Aziraphale starts saying. “I mean, it just seems a bit unangelic, otherwise, don’t you think? Aziraphale is clearly meant to be on the side of good.”

Unbelievable. “Yes, the point being that Heaven and Hell are just two branches of the same company, and none of it’s good! We are – well, fuck the very concept itself, but – we are good! Both of us! Good enough, at least. Human-ish. Have you understood nothing about the themes of the book?”

“These are our lives!”

“I did a course!” Crowley crosses his arms and doesn’t uncross them for a whole long while. At least, until he needs one of them to accept a refill of the hot chocolate.

He finishes his cup just as on-screen-Crowley starts cussing out his plants. 

And he completely freezes, looking at it. A demon looking at a mirror of himself not looking at the angel looking at the depiction of demon-him.

“Don’t worry,” Aziraphale says softly, and his hand is back on Crowley’s arm. “I know that’s not what you’re really like.”

“Thanks.”

“You actually bring the spotted plants to your neighbour for safekeeping.”

“Shut up,” he snarls. A smile threatens to break out of the corner of his lips, but he will not allow it. He has a reputation to uphold.

It only feels natural to let the episode move on to the next one. They have nowhere to be but here, they might as well watch this whole thing. 

Next thing he knows it’s the paintball scene, the one his fellow students thought was “funny”. Well. If deathly terror is funny, then Crowley supposes his life has been hilarious.

“This place feels loved,” the television-Aziraphale exclaims, which definitely didn’t happen in real life. Crowley would remember that.  

“Interestingly,” Aziraphale says, waiting until Crowley looks at him before continuing, “about this scene, well… because Crowley can’t feel when a place is loved, there’s a fan theory that Crowley can’t feel when he’s loved, either.”

There’s a short silence, which Crowley has no desire whatsoever to fill. Nope. He reaches out over Aziraphale’s body and stuffs another eccles cake in his mouth like a snake closing its jaws around a mouse. 

“Do you think that’s true?” Aziraphale asks when Crowley’s upright again.

He chews. What kind of question is that, to ask a demon? “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

If Aziraphale was brighter than a star earlier, well, he’s a full moon now. His mouth twitches.

But then, they’re both distracted by some severe wall slamming happening on the screen. In Good Omens the TV show, Crowley is scolding Aziraphale for calling him “nice”. 

“They play that very, errrr, homoerotically,” Crowley comments. This must be what humans feel like when they’re watching sex scenes on family film night. 

Aziraphale cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t reply. 

They watch on. 

And then something interesting happens.

The show deviates from the book. Significantly.

Crowley can tell how significantly by the way Aziraphale starts fiddling next to him. 

It’s an episode called ‘Hard times’, which Crowley hopes to Satan is not a double entendre, and the first thirty minutes are snapshots from the ages they’ve known each other. 

How — how did those TV makers know all that?

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, and an eccles cake flies through the room. Aziraphale puts his shaking hands in his lap.

“Yes?”

“How — no, I’m serious. We are not in a comedy!”

The cake slides down the wall. 

“How do they know about all of this? Things that happened? Between us? Even how I got the—” He doesn’t say “holy water”. Lots of things unsaid. 

“Well, dear, don’t be upset now.”

“I’m not upset!” He sips some hot chocolate to prove how wholesome he is.

“… but I told Neil.”

The hot chocolate tries to treat his throat like a rollercoaster.

“Told him what?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale looks down, in that Winnie the Pooh way of his. “Just. Everything.”

“Gnk.” What else is there to say, really?

Their encounter with the writer earlier starts making a lot more sense.

Aziraphale sighs and looks up. “Well, alright, it was going to come out eventually. A few decades ago I was tasked with blessing Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s respective careers and took the opportunity to turn them into our unofficial biographists.”

It hits him like a train. He has so many questions. But all that makes it out of the station for now is a soft “why”.

“I love to read,” Aziraphale shrugs. 

“But why Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett?”

“When one of us wants to put out a biography, we really only have two options. Prophets or fantasy authors.”

Crowley blinks. 

“Is that why you were suddenly asking me all those questions about my side of the events, a few decades ago?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale admits. “I was having quite a few wine and sushi nights with Neil and Terry back then. And, well, they kept asking me about that wiley old serpent I couldn’t stop talking about.”

Aziraphale’s tone is teasing, but Crowley looks at the screen, where the episode of Good Omens is rolling along. 

That whole opening, significant moments in their lives? It is, Crowley reckons, kind of nice that Aziraphale would remember all that. And not only that, but also that he and other people consider them crucial to their story.

This is the opposite of a rug pull. The rug is put firmly into place and wow, it’s home.

“Strange,” is all Crowley manages to say out loud. “I thought Neil Gaiman was one of ours.”

“Don’t judge someone’s morals on his goth clothing, silly,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley turns his attention back to the screen quickly before he’s caught reacting to such an outrageous statement.

“Oh, look, it’s our bandstand,” he says happily, realising too late what he’s about to watch.

Then he remembers. He can’t believe Aziraphale told them about that, too.

And it’s devastating to relive, right in front of him, but this time with things like — like dramatic lighting. And acting choices.

“They’ve made us…” he stammers. “They…. That’s not how you look at me!”

Aziraphale stiffens next to him on the bed. 

“And… and whoever composed this show’s soundtrack is definitely one of ours,” Crowley says, but the joke falls flat.

The room only grows more quiet after that.

Thoughts are whirling in Crowley’s head. They don’t stop, never stop, as he’s shown a significant chain of events that they haven’t talked about anymore in decades. But this time, from an outsider’s point of view.

And yet, it’s sort of Aziraphale’s point of view, isn’t it? It’s everything he ever told Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. And there’s a certain this-place-feels-loved-ness to it that’s hard to look away from. 

After an hours-long bingewatch, Aziraphale turns off the TV and they sit in the extended silence, which has now become kind of pressing without the excuse of being deeply entranced by fiction.

Crowley feels like his head has just been caught between a drum cymbal. It’s still buzzing.

“Right,” he says, throat sandpapering against the words.”I can see why the fans want something to happen between those two.”

As if it’s not really them. Just — exaggerated versions of them. Parodies. 

But what they just watched, that was definitely a romance. No doubt about it.

“Yes, I see it too. What do you propose we do about it?” Aziraphale turns to him slowly.

Crowley looks at him. “Simple. We need to threaten Neil Gaiman.”

A few beats. Then they both start laughing. Feels good. Feels right.

“Oh, trust,” Aziraphale says. “I have very little influence on any of that anymore. Neil Gaiman already texted me about it. They’re going to kiss in season 2.”

Crowley wouldn’t be surprised if his eyes were actually popping out cartoon-style right now. But he can hardly keep his cool in a situation like this (in every other situation he’s fine, thank you).

“H— how?” He asks, no, he throws out into the room between them, and it hangs there.

They haven’t lived for 6,000 years not to know what a question like that might mean. And with every fibre in his body he wants to run, hide inside the blankets, dig a grave to lie in. But he doesn’t. He stays, and holds Aziraphale’s gaze, he’s brave, he’s brave.

And Aziraphale swallows, and licks his lips.

“Like this,” he says, words sounding paper thin, but sounding nonetheless. Bravely. And Aziraphale leans forward.

So it happens: an angel and a demon press their lips against each other in a queen size bed above a bookshop, surrounded by snacks and drinks to watch a romance based on their own story, and it feels... It feels… Right. 

Like it’s another step in a long and endless trail. 

Crowley sighs against Aziraphale’s mouth. He relaxes into the kiss, and takes the angel’s hand. This makes sense. So much sense.

He doesn’t regret not kissing the angel for such a long time. Because this is just another extension of who they are. Just another way of expressing what was already there anyway. 

It feels good. Like happiness. He’s planning on doing it lots of times more, if Aziraphale lets him.

Crowley pulls back. “I also have a confession to make.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale is blushing.

He’s not thinking about texting Neil Gaiman, is he? 

Crowley shakes his head. Not who he wants to be thinking about right now. 

“Yes, well. Might as well,” Crowley says. “Truth is, I wasn’t attending that seminar for a temptation.” 

“Oh, that. Yes, I know.”

“What?”

“Dear, you’re not even affiliated with Hell anymore and I doubt you’d freelance. I just couldn’t figure out why on Earth or above, or beneath, you’d want to go to school.”

“Well, to be honest,” he shrugs, like it’s nothing. “You love books and I wanted to be able to talk to you about them.”

Aziraphale smiles. “Oh, that’s so —“”

“Don’t say nice. We’re not ready for that at this point in our relationship!”

Aziraphale smirks.

Let’s get this whole thing out, then. “But the thing is, I learned more than I bargained for, didn’t I? Got more than my money’s worth. Not that I paid.” Crowley pauses. He thinks about how he’s going to phrase this, but it needs to be said.

Aziraphale doesn’t have the patience of an angel — Crowley’s not sure who would even come up with such an out of character expression — but he has his moments. He’s waiting silently. Crowley appreciates it.

He takes another breath.

“Before I took that course, it never even occurred to me that what we have might be… love.” 

It’s not hard to call it that. At all. 

He soldiers on. “See, it’s not different now, the way I feel about you, than a few weeks ago. But putting a name to it, that’s been rather eye opening. Like it was important to name it, you know? To use the correct word.” 

Didn’t burn his tongue, even. Saying it. Love. 

Heaven can’t touch it. 

“I felt the same,” Aziraphale says, sounding relieved. “Once the book came out, and the fans started reading things between the lines… well. It made me get an ‘internet’. And an intelligent phone. And I was surprised to read all of the fans’ opinions, and, well, I love to read. Some of their stories, too. There’s a whole net for ‘fanfiction’!”

Crowley nods. Of course he understands. “Omegaverse?”

“Is that some type of modern poetry? No, but, oh you know, there was only one bed and such,” Aziraphale says, sitting in his one bed. 

Crowley is not exactly sure what he means, but the gist of it, well, he got that. 

“Just to be clear,” Crowley says. He needs to be sure. “Just because the characters based on our lives are in love, doesn’t mean… I mean, obviously I am, but you don’t have to…” 

He sighs. This is difficult. 

“What if you’ve just been reading too many fan theories? What if we’ve just been brainwashed by six hours of television? TV can be bad for you. I should know — I got a commendation for that from Hell.”

The reward for that question is a supremely tired sigh.

“Hand me your seminar notebook,” Aziraphale orders him.

“What?”

“Hand it over. It is mine, after all. You stole it, foul demon.” Aziraphale smiles encouragingly.

Crowley reaches into his book bag next to the bed and fishes it out. 

Aziraphale holds it like it’s the most precious thing.

“I’ve been digitising and archiving my diaries,” Aziraphale says.

“What do you mean, archiving?”

“Well, I found an online archive where the other archivists are very interested in my accounts of all the events.”

“Oh.” Something in the back of Crowley’s mind tries to tug on him like a child on a sleeve.

Aziraphale opens the notebook. He grimaces. “I still can’t believe you’ve been writing in this.”

“It’s a notebook!”

But then Aziraphale does the most extraordinary thing. He reaches for a small flashlight and shines an ultraviolet light on the book. 

Crowley gasps. Pages upon pages of diary entries are revealed. Detailed accounts of their time together.

Suddenly it’s all clear. Aziraphale had been writing in it. With invisible ink. Probably to hide his writings from Heaven, or Hell, or him. Not — not mistrust, per se. But something much deeper than that. Something private. Something of his own.

Encouragingly, Aziraphale holds it out for Crowley. 

Crowley accepts the book and the flashlight with shaking hands, and swallows hard.

He flips through it. Hundreds of times, he spots his name. Crowley, Crowley, Crowley.

And Crowley tears up. 

The love was always there. It just needed to be lit.

Chapter Text

CROWLEY

Hi Eldrydd. What was the name again of that fanfic author that you guys thought was actually Neil Gaiman? The one who wrote very realistic diaries?

CROWLEY

I’m studying.

ELDRYDD

no u r not lol

ELDRYDD

azzfell

—

Crowley is alone in the bookshop. Ideal for reading. He settles down on the sofa, turns on the large lamp above it and clicks the link Eldrydd texted him.