Good Omens Fic: But Thou Readst Black Where I Read White pt II

[rainjoyswriting]

But Thou Readst Black Where I Read White part II of III, a Good Omens fic, Crowley/Aziraphale <3

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and to be honest in terms of sheer rabid love for them I think they're Michael Sheen's now o_0

Rating: NC-17 for a bit of smut and much more importantly a significant amount of violence.

Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series, watch that first. Strong bloody violence, a little here and significantly more in the last part.

Summary: Read part I here. In which there are consequences to the accidental formation of a rebel army.



Note on the hierarchy of angels: The shit I research for fanfic omg. Actually I already knew some of this from fortuitously reading Paradise Lost last summer, so: Principalities and archangels are both part of the lowest rung of angel rankings (the ranks come tiered in threes), and, hilariously, principalities outrank archangels. Actually it's a bit more complicated than that because really they have different remits - archangels are basically foot soldiers, while principalities care for particular Earthly realms (Vehuel, who turns up in this part, cares for the oceans; Aziraphale after a few years of global pottering is now a *Londoner* to his soul in a way that Crowley isn't, obvious in Aziraphale's approach to walking out in front of traffic [Kids! Don't walk out in front of traffic. But Londoners? Londoners are pedestrians. They walk. Cars are just inconveniences to be ignored. Kids!! Look both ways!!!], so I believe with all my soul that Aziraphale is the protective angel of Soho, bless him). And actually, it's even more complicated than THAT because the big named Archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel etc.) aren't *archangels*, they have a different rank (cherubim or seraphim are the highest) and 'Archangel' seems to be a title they're given. And if you think that all of this is needlessly complicated, yes it is, welcome to Biblical scholarship, hope you're fluent in at least two ancient languages if you want to even scratch the surface and probably best not base any bigotry off something you *think* that book says! Anyway, fic.









They're both a little overalert for the shop's bell ringing for the next few days. No-one enters but a few unsuspecting customers who generally manage to leave without being sold anything (Aziraphale does keep some shelves of second-hand paperbacks he probably won't reread that he's content to sell, though sometimes when he sees them in a customer's hand he thinks that - well, he might want to reread that one someday after all, and announces that that book is unfortunately already reserved). Ramiel and Zophiel, nervy of an Archangel coming down from Heaven and into the shop, stay meekly underground supplied with books from Aziraphale and from Crowley a 'tablet', a little handheld screen-computer (amazing how tiny they are now, Aziraphale remembers dear Alan's enormous computer as if it were yesterday and is very confused by that thing no bigger than a pamphlet and all it can do), as Crowley thinks that the internet comments sections are the best way they can inoculate themselves against contemporary humanity.

"Do you think we should start taking them out somewhere?" Aziraphale says after a couple of weeks, looking out through the dusty windows onto Soho's busy streets. "Teach them a bit, you know. It - they seem to be letting us be."

'They' refers to Heaven and Hell. Crowley, playing with his phone on the bookshop's sofa, grunts. Aziraphale just sighs. Crowley's feelings on the matter of their current situation seem to veer wildly up and down as his emotions do generally, Crowley always alarms Aziraphale in the way he feels things. Aziraphale's wilder emotions are very internal - at their very worst he stills, contracting his anxiety inwards like a breath held in. Crowley's wildest emotions are liable to come out in any way at all, he's very unpredictable in them, and Aziraphale really doesn't know what to do with him in his most erratic moods.

At peace, Crowley's entire face softens, the smile is so gentle but omnipresent there, brow to eyes to cheek to lips all softened with a serenity that - he squirms a little there on the bookshop floor just thinking about it - that he has only ever seen on Crowley's face when Crowley is looking at him.

Crowley's decision to defy Heaven and Hell in helping Ramiel and Zophiel is sincere, Aziraphale is certain of that, once Crowley decides on a 'fuck you' he will follow that fuck you through to the bitter black end, whatever it takes. But Gabriel rattled them both, Aziraphale honestly never knew if he'd ever see him again after the nearly-apocalypse and hadn't quite anticipated what it would make him feel like if he did (it felt terrifying and nauseating with guilt, and pathetically shameful, that even after making his own decision to leave Heaven Aziraphale still felt Gabriel's hatred and contempt so very piercingly deep). And Crowley - Crowley is very protective. Which is very sweet of him, Aziraphale can't help smiling at all the little ways Crowley looks out for him, some of them not required (drivers in central London do not need gesturing to stop when a pedestrian walks out directly in front of them, drivers in central London need to learn their lesson and take a bus) but always very kind, and well-intentioned. And Gabriel hates Aziraphale. Which inspires a furious sort of protectiveness from Crowley, and from Aziraphale . . .

He hadn't expected hatred. Maybe he was naïve not to but Gabriel is an angel, hatred is a very ugly and unexpected position for him to take. Disappointment or anger or any other expression of cold justice in the face of what Aziraphale does know is viewed by Heaven as betrayal, that he could understand, but he can't help feel that Gabriel is taking this rather harder than he should, Aziraphale's never been hated by anyone, it feels very strange and unpleasant and fretful to know that he is. He keeps wondering how he could make it up to Gabriel before remembering how foolish that is. He just . . . he doesn't really know how to react, or how Gabriel will react. And he doesn't like uncertainty. He really doesn't like uncertainty. Ineffability has always made him feel rather more desperate than reassured.

"Just around Soho for a bit," he murmurs, not even thinking that Crowley is listening to him, and he folds, rubs his arms a bit. "No-one will mind if they think they're strange there. Then the galleries, maybe, and - I don't know how to teach them to live with humans, we had millennia -"

"Still got millennia," Crowley says, apparently listening after all, pocketing his phone (how he manages it in trousers that tight Aziraphale has never known) and stretching his way up off the sofa, strolling to Aziraphale's back. "We'll get there. There's no rush."

He closes his arms around him from behind, sighs against the back of his neck, and the knot of anxiety in Aziraphale's stomach slips looser, all his nerves untangle a little. "It'll be alright, angel," Crowley says, so offhand, like a sigh, treating it so calmly is the most calming thing he could do for Aziraphale right now; his own spine sighs. "You want to order takeaway tonight? Introduce them to, I don't know, Indian."

Aziraphale considers it, immediately a little hungry at the thought. He says, "I do know a place that does very good dosas."

"There," Crowley says, dropping a kiss to his shoulder and letting go, slinking off for the sofa again. "We're good teachers. We teach them things."

"Last night you taught them 'never have I ever' and I was mortified," Aziraphale points out.

"What, I was drunk, it was funny."

"I still don't think I understand any of the rules, Ramiel kept insisting I drink when I was sure I wasn't supposed to."

"Innocence is underrated." Crowley says, and takes his phone out again.

"Maybe I didn't understand the rules, I was quite drunk myself," he admits. "Probably a good thing I couldn't find that last bottle of port, we might all have made complete fools of ourselves. Crowley, what are you doing on your phone, you haven't been off it all morning -"

"Ahh . . . researching orchids." Crowley doesn't look up from the screen he's urgently scrolling at. "Well, you. Said you'd like more flowers. Around the place."

". . . oh." Aziraphale stares at him, then smiles. "Oh. That would be lovely."

"Yeah," Crowley mutters, hunching his shoulders into his neck and staring furiously at the phone in his hand.

No retribution comes from Heaven, not that week or the next. What does come the following week is a chime of the shop's bell and Aziraphale looking up from his desk takes his spectacles off in surprise and delight, "Anathema and Newton! What a lovely surprise!"

"You look like shit," Crowley says from the sofa, which Aziraphale kicks the leg of as he passes, to help take some of their baggage from them.

"Thirteen hours on a plane," Anathema says grumpily, all of her hair bound up tight out of her face. "The couple next to us made out the entire journey back, it was disgusting."

"We're just back from America, seeing Anathema's mum," Newt says apologetically, as Aziraphale helps him roll a large suitcase out of the way of the door. It is very clever how they have them on wheels nowadays, though less handsome than the old sets of luggage. "Straight from the airport."

"You're not staying," Crowley says, deigning to rise from the sofa and walk over. "Guest room's already full."

"We're just stopping on our way back to Tadfield." Anathema says.

"I'll make tea!" Aziraphale calls, hurrying to his office.

"Look, I need to talk to you about something," Anathema says, massaging her temples as Aziraphale puts the kettle on. "It's a bit . . . ugh." she groans, like she really doesn't want to be having this conversation, as Aziraphale warms the pot, measures the leaves, listening with half an ear as Crowley presents the sofa for their guests to sit with a dramatic sweep of the arm. "It's . . ."

Newt sits beside her, grimacing. "She's started having visions."

"It's so embarrassing," Anathema says. "Like some weird inherited skin condition. And it gives me headaches."

Aziraphale makes a sympathetic noise, carrying over the tea tray. Crowley pulls two armchairs alongside, facing the sofa, and slides into his with his head propped on his hand, elbow on the chair's arm. "Visions," he says. "Anything useful?"

"Well you would think, wouldn't you? But it's all completely -" She waves an angry hand at the air. "- vague, I can't understand what half of them mean, I think they're so far in the future I can't get my head around the context for them. They're more senses that something's going to happen, vision's not the right word. And I had one - no, thank you, do you have any lemon?" To Aziraphale's murmured enquiry about milk and sugar, and Aziraphale does have a lemon, and hurries off for it in delight to finally have a guest it can be used for (it should have rotted to liquid a dozen years ago but for Aziraphale's expectation that it wouldn't sustaining it in the bottom of a drawer). "- I had one I think is about you two. I mean, I don't know who else it would be about, I don't know any other angels or demons."

Aziraphale hurries back, with a lemon and a little knife for slicing a dainty piece for Anathema's saucer. "About us?"

"Yes." She squeezes her eyes closed, rubs the space between them with the pad of her thumb, frowning as if in concentration or pain. "Ane angel and ae demon wille have a difficulte conversation about wings." She opens her eyes, looks at their faces. "I often - hear them like that, I think I'm just - used to prophecy sounding like that."

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, who's ignoring the cup of black tea in front of him. "A difficult conversation about wings," he says.

"Might not be about us." Crowley says. "World's full of angels and demons."

"Well, quite," Aziraphale says, thinking of Ramiel and Zophiel in the room below their feet. "But thank you. We will - think about it."

"You haven't seen anything else?" Crowley says. "About Heaven, or Hell?"

Anathema shrugs. "I wouldn't know if I had some of it's so vague."

"She's started writing them down," Newt says. "We can send you a copy."

Crowley says, "Just put it in a Google doc." and Aziraphale smiles the open, blank smile of an angel with no idea what his demon just said but it sounded like open gibberish. "Never know when something might be useful."

"Thank you," Aziraphale says, again, on behalf of Crowley, who rolls his eyes. "How was your trip, is your mother well?"

They progress from Anathema and Newton's time in America to how Adam is doing - still a sweet child though puberty is now making life a bit more complicated and, alarming to them at first, apparently still in possession of his powers; of course the two of them hadn't been able to sense it, Adam so neatly shielded from supernatural interference as he is. The general agreement is that he really mustn't ever use his powers, or at least, he must use them only if absolutely necessary, or at the very least he must use them hardly at all, really. From there they move to generalities; the stress of social media on children nowadays, which Aziraphale heard a programme about on Radio Four and feels at least capable of nodding along with, how they must all be in Tadfield for Christmas, the snow alone makes the trip worth it, the Hellishness of airports (literal, Crowley admits), the hellishness of London in the summer (not his fault, just fucking climate change, Crowley says). By then Anathema keeps yawning and Newt looks like he's nodding off entirely, having flown all night on no rest, so Aziraphale helps them regather their baggage, and finds that interesting book on Oxfordshire folklore he'd promised Anathema last time.

While Crowley is telling Newton that he can't break Google by uploading one file, Aziraphale hands the book to Anathema with a smile; she doesn't smile back. She's looking at him with a loose, distant, hard sort of look, not one he recognises, and he hesitates, both of them with their hands on the book and unmoving.

She says, "Watch your back."

Then she squeezes her eyes closed, grimaces, takes the book from Aziraphale's limp hand and says, "Thank you."

His mouth flops a smile on and it falls immediately off again. The back of his neck feels covered in ants; he doesn't think she heard herself say that, and doesn't know himself what it means, but he doesn't like the sound of it one bit.

They wave them away, and promise they'll visit, and don't say another word about eerie, unsettling prophecies. When the door is jangled closed again Aziraphale bristles his shoulders out, not liking the feeling of being so perturbed, and says loudly, "A difficult conversation about wings. What do you think that means?"

"No idea." Crowley says, turning for his perpetual spot on the sofa again. "Probably Ramiel and Zophiel. Could be having it right now."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose you're right."

Watch your back. He feels very discombobulated. He's not going to tell Crowley about it, he thinks, busying himself with cleaning up the tea things. Crowley puts his worries out there into the world in unpredictable, dangerous ways; Aziraphale knows how to bottle up and hold them tight, and that's safer, isn't it? He doesn't want Crowley putting himself in danger for him, getting all overexcited about Heaven, doing something, something - drastic.

So he clears up the tea things, and hums to himself, and doesn't say a word.

*

They do start risking Ramiel and Zophiel outside of the bookshop's basement.

At first just on the shop floor, which Aziraphale is a little uneasy about but honestly, if there's anywhere where a human wouldn't notice odd behaviour it's a bookshop. Zophiel moves about the shelves, choosing volumes to settle down with and read; Ramiel mostly looks out of the windows, gawping at the humans going about their business. They never object to staying in the bookshop on a night, never seem to run out of things to talk to each other about. Crowley just grunts when Aziraphale points it out.

"They're becoming friends," Aziraphale says. "I think it's nice."

Crowley laughs at the ceiling of his flat. "Six thousand years and you have never learned how to use that word, angel."

Aziraphale doesn't understand, but does accept a kiss on the side of his head, he likes kisses.

They take them to the V&A (Aziraphale talks to them about the Arts and Crafts movement, beauty and community, and Crowley talks to them about colonialism). They go to the National Portrait Gallery and Crowley points out every picture of a slave owner while Aziraphale says they should get a cream tea after. They take them to the Tower of London and Aziraphale really does just throw his hands up and leave that narration to Crowley, though he does contribute a little about how very shiny some of those jewels are.

Ramiel, by then, is hiding her scales and gills when she's out with the humans, her eyes are humanly grey rather than silver, and her lank colourless hair - somewhere between brown and grey, the colour of dusty mouse fur - she's started wearing bleached white, with a good inch of roots showing, the bottom part dyed deep teal, plaited like a fish's tail. Aziraphale tries to delicately point out that that would hardly not draw attention to her but Crowley just shrugs.

"Dip-dye, it's a thing they do. I thought about it once." He scrunches at his own cropped hair. "When it was longer."

Aziraphale stares at him bewildered. "But why would you bleach it? It's such a beautiful colour."

Crowley goes still, then coughs and turns away and busies himself with his phone. Aziraphale really doesn't understand him sometimes (he never understood why Crowley cut all his lovely hair in the first place). Like his desire to take Ramiel and Zophiel to Westfield, Aziraphale feels the way his face twists at the suggestion, he can hardly think of anywhere he'd want to be less. "Why?" he says, carefully, sitting there on Crowley's sofa in the slanting morning light, readying to go out to the bookshop for another day's work. Straining, "Why there, Crowley, dear?"

Crowley comes through from the kitchen with the cafetiere, says, "It's educational."

"The Natural History Museum is educational. A shopping centre . . ."

"The shopping centre, angel." Crowley says, pouring his cup for him. "Biggest in Europe."

"How delightful," Aziraphale says, and Crowley raises his eyebrows, grinning, at his expression.

"Look, the theatre and all that is bags of education and everything but they're not dealing with the world a hundred years ago, they're dealing with the world now. And that means they need to know shopping centres and supermarkets and car parks. That's where all the humans are meeting each other and getting in each other's way, that's the prime ground for you to do nice and me to do - well, let's call it justice."

"Amazing how many rude drivers run over nails in your vicinity."

"I know, right? Look - you don't have to come. You see to the shop, I'll take them."

"Really?" The suggestion is surprising before he can feel the relief of not having to go to some ungodly retail centre, they haven't risked separation since Ramiel and Zophiel arrived.

"Yeah, I mean . . . been a few months, think we're . . . we can't never risk anything just because of them. That's like . . . letting the terrorists win, or something."

"You are a dear," Aziraphale says, touching his arm as Crowley lifts his coffee cup. "I'm terribly behind on accounting."

Crowley flits him a golden glance, says with a little of the hiss in it, "Am I so terribly distracting?"

"Given that the last time I tried to do my accounts you climbed on top of the desk and lay on the paperwork saying 'Aziraphale don't be boring', yes, you rather are."

So Aziraphale gets a quiet morning to himself in the shop, getting his accounts out of the way quickly before Crowley can return and moan and lay face-down on top of them to stop him from doing them, then he has a nice time unpacking some boxes of books from a sale in Northumbria, there are some James Bonds in there he knows exactly the dealer to get rid of with, he has no interest in Fleming -

He only looks up out of vague interest when the bell goes, arms full of books from a shelf he's having to reorganise to fit some more in, and his heart hits the floor like it dropped from a balcony at Gabriel's cold glare as he closes the door behind himself.

There aren't any customers. Aziraphale hadn't noticed himself alone, never really feeling it before when surrounded by books. But Ramiel and Zophiel aren't in the basement beneath him, Crowley isn't sprawled on the sofa at the other side of the room, and the only thing between himself and Gabriel is the short stack of books he's holding to himself, too stupid with fear to set them down.

He says, "May - may I - help you?"

It's just automatic when fear has switched his brain off, but Gabriel's mouth twists the sneer and then Aziraphale really feels the idiocy of the question, hunching a little smaller over his books. Gabriel says, "What exactly do you think I could want your help with?"

Gabriel always had a way of making him feel very stupid and small. "Why are you here?" he says, quietly, swallowing and resettling his grip of the books. "Nothing has changed since you were last here. So why are you here?"

Sandalphon isn't here. Which is something Aziraphale notes with a dis-ease, the absence of Sandalphon prickling in his stomach, because while he has never liked Sandalphon, the fact that Gabriel chose to come alone, without witnesses is - unnerving. Crowley isn't here either of course which is worse, much worse, but - Aziraphale doesn't want Crowley facing down Gabriel, and -

Watch your back. Isn't it time he did some watching of it, instead of letting Crowley do it all?

"I wanted a word with you," Gabriel says in a calm, hard voice, "without your little demon boyfriend here making you feel brave. Because I don't think you understand the gravity of what you've done."

"What I've done," Aziraphale says. "Would you - would you remind me, please, which thing I've done that we're talking about . . . ?"

"You betrayed Heaven, you double-dealing traitor."

"Ah . . ." Aziraphale says, and in honesty is still no clearer on exactly which action they're discussing, he's amassed quite a few that could fit under that title. "Look - Gabriel -" He manages a smile, though it's a frail one. "All those years down here with Crowley, it really helped us see that the whole opposite sides thing, it's really just more a - a big mess in the middle, with everyone bumbling along as best they can -"

Gabriel says, low and dark, "You are trying to explain the nature of good and evil to an Archangel and you are doing a very bad job of it."

"But - good and evil - I mean, Gabriel, the great war and everything, all those people would have died, in the most - awful, awful ways, and-"

"And Heaven would have triumphed. The whole point of humans is that they die and their soul goes up or down, it was never about the humans, it was always about triumphing over the forces of evil and then you -" That comes out as a shout an Aziraphale jumps, visibly, and wishes he hadn't. "- took away our only chance to do that -"

"And I would like for good to win, honestly I would, but not at any price, it - you must see, I didn't, I didn't want to betray Heaven, I just - I didn't want to betray Earth." He hugs the books, the lovely solid safe books, and manages the wobbliest of smiles. "You put me down here to look after them. All I was doing was my job."

"And fornicating with some demon on the side."

"That is slander," Aziraphale says, feeling his face heat. "We don't 'fornicate'. Honestly. We can't sleep together without you thinking that we're fornicating?"

Gabriel blinks, holds his hands out, his surprise still very angry surprise. "What do you think 'fornicating' means?"

Aziraphale says coldly, "Gabriel, I work in Soho, I could tell you a thing or two about fornication for goodness' sake. We don't fornicate."

"Of course you're fornicating, what the Hell would you call it?"

"Well -" What does he call what he does with Crowley? He does everything with Crowley, it's hard to put a name to it. "The snuggling's nice," he says, and the way Gabriel is looking at him, he feels half an inch high. He swallows. "It's really none of your business," he says, aiming for stiff but voice coming a little too high. "But we don't, anyway, if you must know. And if you're not here for any reason other than accusing me of fornication, I think it's time for you to leave, Gabriel."

"Oh do you?" Gabriel says, and holds his arms out. "So make me."

Aziraphale just holds his books and looks at him. Gabriel is an Archangel and Aziraphale is Aziraphale, so they both know he's not going to physically remove him from the shop. Aziraphale just shifts his grip on the books, clears his throat a little, says, "You're being very childish."

It's a mistake, he knows it's a mistake the moment it's left his throat, he just feels very cornered and nettled and frustrated and bubbling to let some of it out. Gabriel's eyebrow cocks. He says, "Childish."

"Gabriel, please," Aziraphale says quickly, he knows he's stepped on a scorpion out of sheer stupidity and it's now very important to calm the situation down. "This is all - it's all unnecessary, none of this has to get nasty, Crowley and I were on opposite sides for millennia but we never had to be unfriendly -"

"And where did that lead?"

"Perhaps exactly where the Almighty wanted it to, for all we know." Aziraphale fluffs his wings behind himself, not visible on this plane except in a bristling of his shoulder blades, he's just trying to make himself feel a bit bigger and braver. "All I'm trying to say is, all the - the good and evil - stuff, Heaven and Hell, that's all well and good and we all know what we're doing in regards to, ah, all of that -" Gabriel is looking at him like that again, Aziraphale is beginning to feel a bit faint. "But there's no need for it to get personal."

". . . personal."

Aziraphale really, really doesn't like the expression on Gabriel's face. ". . . y-yes. It's just work, there's no need for us to have a, a, an unpleasant relationship -"

"Personal," Gabriel says, and there's a darkness in his eyes, Aziraphale can't move. "You think you can lie to me and betray me and this isn't personal?"

Aziraphale's face is hot, his throat is hurting him, he is absolutely determined that he is not going to cry. "Yes," he admits, gaze dropping to the books in his arms, swallowing hard and painful. "I never was a very good angel, was I? But that's no reason why you shouldn't be."

Gabriel's voice is quiet and awful. "Don't you dare tell me what constitutes a good angel."

Aziraphale just looks at his books, the gently faded covers, and any argument he could make against that would be such an argument, he doesn't know how to start it. Gabriel lets his breath out in a snort, says, "A good angel. You've never deserved those wings. When did you start betraying us?"

Aziraphale says, quietly, "You really should leave now."

Gabriel is pacing, up and down in front of him, and Aziraphale watches him the way a mouse watches a cat. "You don't even want to admit it, do you, how many thousands of years -"

"It wasn't thousands of years. You are being rude and you should leave."

"Rude. I'm being rude? That's all you've got?" Gabriel stops pacing and takes a moment to look Aziraphale up and down - the sort-of-angel hiding behind a stack of books from whom an accusation of rudeness is one of the worst insults he can manage - and he says, "You're pathetic."

Aziraphale just looks at him, and holds his books.

"You're ridiculous," Gabriel snarls. "Some pitiful excuse for an angel who didn't dare to fight -"

"No," Aziraphale says softly. "But I dared to defy you."

Gabriel tilts his head at him, eyebrows high, says, "So you think you're brave for betraying us, do you? You think you're brave?"

"Not especially." Not at all. "I'm just not afraid of you."

Gabriel nods. "You aren't afraid of me," he says, "are you?"

And he walks right at him.

Aziraphale doesn't think, the action is automatic, he clutches the books in like a shield and nearly trips over his shoes scrabbling backwards until his back hits a shelf and Gabriel's palm bangs hitting it next to Aziraphale's head so Aziraphale starts, and hunches behind his books as Gabriel leans in. Gabriel says, low, "So this is you not afraid of me, is it?"

Staring into his eyes Aziraphale is extremely aware of how much bigger than him Gabriel is, and everything an Archangel is to a mere principality. He can't make his body small enough and he really doesn't want to visibly shake in front of Gabriel but he feels so unsteady, all his muscles so thin and weak, that he doesn't know if he is or not. "- alright," he manages, voice very uneven. "Alright, I am afraid of you. But the," He swallows, "the important thing, Gabriel, is that even if I am afraid of you, I'm still not going to do what you want. And that's as good as bravery, down here." He draws his shaky breath in, and holds Gabriel's gaze, and maybe he is shaking but he's absolutely furious as well. "Maybe I am ridiculous but good Lord, everyone is ridiculous, you didn't even know every time you came down here and sneered at the humans for being so stupid and ignorant and they were all looking at you thinking exactly the same thing about you, you didn't even know how you embarrassed yourself because we are all, we are all, ridiculous. It ought to make us kinder to each other, it's not something to sneer at. And I'm not going to feel ashamed of being pitiful. All that means is I'm deserving of pity and what on Earth are you as an angel for if not offering that?"

He really feels like he's going to cry and in that moment he doesn't know if it's from fear or sheer helpless rage. And Gabriel is staring at him, still leaning dangerously over him with only a stack of books between them as a shield, but his gaze has changed, unfocused from his glare, Aziraphale's touched something in him, some nerve of vulnerability has been activated. Aziraphale understands the danger of it. He doesn't think that Gabriel has questioned himself in six thousand years, and here and now, alone, Aziraphale has done something untried and potentially very, very unwise.

Then Gabriel's brows lower and his gaze hardens and he puts his free hand on top of the books Aziraphale is carrying and slaps them down - it's all Aziraphale can do not to shriek out loud, as the pile hits the floor with a messy clatter of paper and bindings - and he says, low and growled, "Don't ever fucking call me 'ridiculous' again."

Gabriel stands up straight, shifts his clothes immaculate again, and Aziraphale just leans against the bookshelf with weak knees and a heart running faster than Crowley's Bentley on a clear country road, gripping the shelf behind himself so his hands can't shake. "Don't think I won't be back," Gabriel says, resettling his cuffs. "The second your wings start showing your true colours."

Aziraphale breathes, breathes, breathes. And Gabriel walks for the door, and the bell rings he opens it.

Aziraphale breathes, breathes.

He says, "So this is you not being childish, is it?"

Gabriel looks back at him. And Aziraphale feels like a leaf in the face of an oncoming storm, but he looks right back, and for a moment, between them, there's silence.

The bell chimes again as the door finally closes, and Aziraphale makes a small helpless noise, and slides down the bookshelf to sit on the floor, spent of all strength, terror ringing in his ears. Twice in three months he's been snotty with Gabriel, twice -

For a time he just sits on the floor, dazed, and then his gaze begins to find some focus on his dropped books. He picks them up, rights them, closes the ones which fell open, splayed like wings across the floor. He pats them into a nice pile, and sets them aside, and finds his breath a little steadier.

Tea, he thinks. Nice cup of tea. Nice calming tea.

It's not the tea so much, it's the ritual, warming the pot, measuring the leaves, steeping, brewing. Everything is calmer in the process of making tea. Even the act of just dropping a bag into a cup has a soothing quality to it, he's not a snob about teabags though he prefers loose leaf. There's still a novelty to teabags. When did they invent them? Can't have been that long ago. He really can't remember. Crowley would know.

He lays down on one of the sofas with a handkerchief over his face and has a little moment while the cup cools. Breathing slowly, hands folded neatly on his stomach, he thinks, How do I tell Crowley this?

He desperately, queasily doesn't want to. The thought of what Crowley might do - he might do anything, he's a bit of a primed bomb where heightened emotion comes in, Aziraphale has no idea what he's capable of. What if he got it into his head to fight Gabriel? What if he got hurt, or - killed, because of him -

Do I have to tell him? Underneath the handkerchief Aziraphale returns to the lingering thought that lays low under all his panic; Gabriel intended to intimidate him, intended to belittle him, more or less openly threatened him, backed him to a wall and loomed right over him - but he didn't actually touch him, he didn't do anything to him. And why wouldn't he? He had him alone, and Gabriel is an Archangel, how could Aziraphale defend himself against him? Even if there were a fight it would be a brief one. He came here when Aziraphale was alone because he must know that Aziraphale will always be braver when Crowley is there to protect, and he wanted to scare him, he wanted Aziraphale to know that Gabriel knew how scared he was, but he didn't lay a hand on him. And the only reason why he wouldn't, Aziraphale thinks slowly, opening his eyes and looking at the safe white tent of his handkerchief, is if Gabriel didn't think that the fight would be brief and one-sided at all.

. . . what the Hell even are you now?

Gabriel doesn't know, he realises. Gabriel has no idea that Aziraphale and Crowley performed their little switch, he believes that Aziraphale is something else entirely, that he can be harmed by neither hellfire nor holy water, that he's neither angel nor demon but some strange unprecedented entity that Gabriel is afraid to attempt to destroy in case he can't. He came here to intimidate him but not to fight him. He's frightened by the white of Aziraphale's wings, if Aziraphale is capable of what Gabriel believes of him. How can they be white, when Aziraphale is what he is? What is he?

It's something Aziraphale has never understood himself. He always was a pretty poor angel, a bit too soft and self-absorbed for it really, and then the moment when nothing was hidden anymore, when he just dropped that silly uniform and left Heaven to get back to Earth whatever it took - he was frightened of how much he expected it but there was too much else to think about at the time. He always expected his wings to . . . he didn't know what it would involve. He didn't know if he would be flung into Hell and he knew, after he and Crowley stopped the apocalypse, that he would never survive that. He didn't know if they would just fade, darkening day by day, or if one morning he'd feel different and it would just be done. And yet his wings stayed white, after all of it, as pristine as the day he was made. He was not blasted into Hell by the Lord's terrible righteous fire. His wings never shifted a feather. He doesn't understand. He's never understood, but he supposes that's the point of it. Ineffable, and all.

But what it means mostly is that Gabriel might come down here to threaten Aziraphale but he has no intention of following the threat through, Gabriel doesn't know what Aziraphale is or if he's even capable of destroying him. So - there's no need to worry Crowley with it, is there? It's just some silly - talk, that's all. And Crowley is so much safer not knowing. It could fret Aziraphale's stomach to shreds, the thought of Crowley brooding on how to hurt Gabriel back. He's safer not knowing. He seems happy, right now, Crowley, he doesn't need it ruining by Aziraphale. He's happier not knowing. Aziraphale is watching his own back, maybe that's all Anathema meant, and Crowley doesn't need to know.

He hears the rain start against the bookshop's windows, the clatter of the first heavy drops building to a stable hum. Drat. Rain usually drives some people in to browse in the dry. He really ought to get up.

He just lays there, with a handkerchief over his face, letting his tea go cold.

*

Zophiel lays down her cards, says, "You're making these rules up as you go along."

"I never am! Look, again, two pairs's better'n one pair but three of a kind's better'n two pairs -"

Sitting on the floor of the bookshop basement, bottle of whisky and two glasses at their side, Zophiel sits back on her hands and watches Ramiel talk. Here in the bookshop the demon has dropped the disguise of her scales and gills, and her eyes are again silvery, not dark grey; but her hair she seems to have permanently shifted to its odd dyed state, as if she likes it. And she has a lipring, off-centre on her broad bottom lip. Zophiel finds herself frequently drawn to the sight of it, doesn't know exactly the feeling it inspires in her, the closest word she can find is 'curiosity'.

Aziraphale took her to have it done when she said she wanted it, insisted it was being done 'somewhere proper' if it must indeed be done, not some dank den of unsterilised needles as Crowley would inevitably choose. Ramiel flicks at it with her tongue from inside her bottom lip sometimes when she's thinking, which should be absurd but somehow seems - well, rather sweet. In its way.

Zophiel herself didn't think she would change anything about her own appearance, which was perfectly serviceable, as Heaven dictated. But looking around at all those clothes shops, how humans love clothes, she found herself more and more fascinated, some of the things really were so lovely, and it took her some time because she felt embarrassed to admit that she wanted it, but, well, what are they here for, if not to get attached to here?

The office wear is gone. She's wearing a sleek white dress cut an interesting way across the shoulders, with a short cape in a carefully draped curve falling back below the shoulder blades. She's researching designers online. Not everything has to be practical, not everything has to be neutral. Humans make such beautiful, beautiful things, nothing in Heaven compares, shouldn't Heaven have something to match mere human artifice? But Heaven is all utility and emptiness, and down here in their clutter the humans pick up some fabric and cut it into sharp clean lovely lines like - like wings . . .

She likes white clothes. She likes how very black her hair shows against them, and how it emphasises the golden bloom in her skin. She has a lipstick now, deep deep red, and she's thinking about nail varnish; Aziraphale goes for a manicure sometimes, she's sure he would be happy for her to come along . . .

"- an' a royal flush beats all, angel, you're lookin' at my mouth again, like, again, like, do you wanna tell me summat about why you keeps lookin' at my mouth?"

Zophiel's face shoots hot, and she regathers the cards in a fluster. "No. No. Just - distracted. Let's play again, I do want to learn -"

Ramiel watches her shuffle for a long smiling moment, then says, "'ow about some stakes, to make it intrestin'?"

"We don't have any money," Zophiel points out.

"Don't 'ave to bet money," Ramiel says. "If I wins the next round, I wants a kiss. What do you want if yous win?"

Zophiel's breath comes in shuddery and high, a long shocked breath that doesn't seem to get deep in her lungs, her hands fumble in shuffling, her heart beats in her tongue; and she shuffles the cards, shuffles the cards, shuffles the cards, and stares at them.

"They does it an' it does them no 'arm," Ramiel says, gingerly touching her wrist. "We dun 'ave to, if you really don't want . . . c'n bet summat else." Her voice falls into a mumble. "Doesn' matter. Silly, really."

Zophiel shuffles the cards, shuffles the cards, shuffles the cards, and thinks about those two in their bubble of idiot happiness, the fearless angel and demon who saved the Earth against all the combined forces of Heaven and Hell and how besottedly helpless they are with each other, the demon does any tiny nothing thing for Aziraphale and Aziraphale looks at him with melting heartfulness, the angel touches Crowley's hand or smiles at him and Crowley stills like his mind has shut down, like the universe ceased existing in comparison to the importance of him.

And she thinks about Ramiel, who is - not, not what she thought a demon would be, who is a bit untamed and untaught but unthinkingly generous and friendly, full of fun and liveliness, who turned her back on Hell because she knew what it is to love a human and she knows what Hell does to humans, who is - who is really, in her fishy way, very cute, and so silvery and shiny, that gleam at the sides of her throat like dark pewter, or bright silver, or pure white as the light changes on her scales -

"No," she says, sitting straighter, shuffling more methodically now, as if she's calm. "No, that's fine. If you win, you get a kiss."

Ramiel stares at her. Finally she blinks, and says, "What if you win?"

Zophiel shuffles the cards, eyes modestly on what she's doing, and says, "If I win, I want a kiss."

And it's done, then, it's out there, the decision is made, as she shuffles the cards and Ramiel is utterly silent and whatever happens next, they are going to kiss.

She begins dealing. Ramiel still says nothing.

Her cards aren't that good; she moves them around in her hand a bit, seeking a pattern that might emerge, and Ramiel says, "'ow do you reckon them two started?"

"I have no idea," Zophiel says. "They never talk about it."

"Someone 'ad to make the first move. I dunno who. They're both a bit - shy, at each other."

It's a nice way to word it; they are rather shy at each other, as if trying to send signals through it. Zophiel looks at her cards, and says, "They handle what lies between them like it's precious."

". . . yeah." Ramiel is looking not at her cards but at Zophiel. "That was beautiful, that was. You're well good with words."

"In your own very unique way, so are you. Are we - we do the thing where we draw new cards now. Yes?"

"Yeah. You doin' it?"

"I can."

Cards are discarded and collected. They return to their hands. Zophiel's is a little better now, one pair at least, and . . . well, those two are one after the other, that might mean something. She's very aware of her own heartbeat, underneath the white of her dress. It feels like it might be visible above the fabric in the sides of her bare throat.

Ramiel tugs her lip ring in with her teeth for a second, says, "Can we raise?"

Zophiel looks up at her. "What does that mean?"

Ramiel looks her in the eye, silver and strange. "Means I might want more'n a kiss if I win."

Her pulse must be visible in her neck, it's beating hard enough to make swallowing difficult. "And what do I get, if I win?"

Ramiel looks at her with open honest eyes, and says, "Whatever you wants."

Zophiel breathes, slowly, and wets her lips. She lays her cards down, face up. She says, "I don't even know what these mean."

"Fuck 'em," Ramiel says, dropping her hand, crawling over the deck to Zophiel. She comes up on her knees in front of her, says, "You never bin kissed before?"

"I'm an angel," Zophiel points out, a little primly. Ramiel lifts a hand, and with one reverent finger she brushes the loose fall of Zophiel's hair over her shoulder, baring that slit of her skin framed by the white of the dress.

"S'alright," she says. "Don't worry about any of that crap. All I cares about is kissin' you."

And she does; lifts Zophiel's chin with a gentle knuckle and her mouth pressing to hers shocks Zophiel, not in a bad way, like an electric charge running to strange deep areas of her body. The lipring is cool pressed to her lip; she finds her mouth parting slightly, like instinct, to press the flesh of her lips into the thin shape of it and Ramiel makes a low, lovely noise.

Zophiel slides an arm up Ramiel's back, Ramiel's webbed hand is now cupping her cheek and the kiss makes a lovely noise as it shifts and changes, Zophiel's eyes are closed and her heart is beating in her tongue and Ramiel's free hand lifts and cups her breast and it sets up an ache too deep to bear -

(This is how you found each other, she thinks, wrapping Ramiel in the loose clean cut of both her white sleeves; this is how you found each other, you touched and realised you couldn't stop, no wonder you can't stay off each other when flesh is just so fascinating . . .)

*

Crowley sprawls on his sofa with his head in Aziraphale's lap, looking on his phone (which has never dared to run out of battery for him) at more interesting strains of orchid than mere phalaenopsis, every old woman has a phalaenopsis on her living room windowsill (where it's no business being anyway, shocking conditions for it). He thinks, for his angel, a white, sweet, accommodating cypripedium; but he is quite drawn to the psychopsises . . .

Aziraphale, above him, is working on the newspaper's crossword. Between clues his hand falls to Crowley's hair, either to simply rest there, the reassurance of the weight of it, or to stroke, gently with thumb along the hairline, or fingers massaging his scalp, hardly even thinking about it, thinking the clues through in his head. Being together is their natural mode of being. It doesn't require much thought from either of them, at their easiest.

Crowley says without looking up, like an alarm clock, "Your cocoa's getting cold."

"Hm? Oh, thank you, dear." He can't actually lean to get it with Crowley occupying his lap so Crowley passes the mug to him, eyes still on his phone, then returns it to the coffee table when Aziraphale hands it back.

"Maybe vandas," Crowley mutters to himself. "Heaven, maybe all of them."

"- Crowley? Did you say something?"

"Nah. Go back to your crossword, angel." He's going to fill that fucking bedroom with flowers. He's going to wait until Aziraphale's out and do it. If he's feeling brave enough to make the gesture. Which he is. He is going to fill that fucking bedroom with flowers, and when Aziraphale sees it it will be better than Eden because Crowley made it for him, and gets to share it with him.

Aziraphale strokes his hair, ruminating. Crowley closes his eyes, and everything about this is better than Eden.

*

Ramiel's thumb strokes her nipple awake, Zophiel clutches her back with both hands, doesn't really know what to do but her body knows something, certain parts of it suddenly very knowing of what they want, as she sucks Ramiel's lipring into her mouth and Ramiel gives a growling moan, and slides her hand, fingers aimed down, down Zophiel's belly, sliding (oh) two fingers between, pressing through the fabric of her dress.

Ramiel breaks the kiss and they share their panting, brow to brow. Ramiel says shakily, "Alright?"

Zophiel slips her arms around her neck, and her tongue into her mouth.

*

"I don't know what to read," Aziraphale says, having finished his book last night and now Crowley wants to put his face to Aziraphale's stomach and go to sleep so he's going to need a new book to occupy himself with during that. Aziraphale frowns in front of the books, underneath the plants hanging from the top bookshelves, and Crowley hangs off his shoulder, drowsy. "I need to bring some more from the shop. I could reread Paradise Lost, it's been a while."

"He was a weirdo," Crowley says. "Milton. He thought Heaven was full of angels having gay sex, he literally wrote that in his big - poem thing and nobody batted an eyelid, I never knew how he got away with that one."

Aziraphale tilts his head ruefully. "He had his moments. Oh, there's Blake -"

"Even more of a weirdo. Ultimate weirdo."

"He was a lovely man. His wife was charming."

"Did he know you were an angel? 'cause he knew I was a demon first time he saw me."

". . . yes, we did have some rather awkward conversations about that, but he was always very generous with a signed edition. Some quite odd ideas." Aziraphale's pout flexes. "Bit irascible."

"Bit irascible? He used to throw things at me."

"Well, he thought you were a demon."

"I am a demon, it's no excuse to throw things at me!"

Aziraphale sighs. "This is all a lot of bother, maybe I'll just sleep tonight. I'll pick up a new book tomorrow."

Crowley is immediately more alert, though he doesn't lift his head from Aziraphale's shoulder. "So you're sleeping, tonight." he says, carefully, to check.

Aziraphale ruffles his hair, kisses his head through it. "Yes, you old silly. Now, pyjamas, bed, nice long sleep . . ."

Lovely sleep, Crowley thinks, picking his head up from Aziraphale's shoulder but leaving his arm around his waist as they turn for the bedroom. Lovely, perfect, sublime sleep, if he gets to watch Aziraphale fall asleep first . . .

*

One morning they get to the bookshop and realise that the bunk beds in the basement have become a double bed, and Ramiel and Zophiel keep brushing, touching, playing with each other's hands. Crowley gives Ramiel a smirk over his sunglasses (she smiles back the goopy smile of a demon who's rediscovered a better Heaven), and Aziraphale is extremely surprised when the significance of it finally occurs to him, and then discreetly, delightedly slips them a bottle of champagne for the evening, being rather in love with other people's love himself.

It's hard to say that Ramiel and Zophiel still don't know what they're doing in the world just as much as Crowley and Aziraphale do, though, which is a bit galling given how many centuries it took them but probably just speaks to their skill as teachers. Because when it comes to resistance - all they have to be is themselves. To defy Heaven and Hell and make the Earth a little stronger, all it takes is finding some middle ground.

Blessings, Aziraphale says with a scowl, were always unevenly distributed, going mostly to the pious rather than the genuinely good or needy, and now he can bless whomever he bloody well feels like and he does. Crowley, who knows how you only need to tweak a little thing here or a little thing there to make humans act much worse than they would otherwise, thinks that he can easily work out some seemingly little ways to make humans into better humans; not by any Heavenly criteria because fuck them but by making them more vibrantly, fiercely part of the world they're already in. Ramiel and Zophiel already seem to be attached to the population of Soho, the clothes, the busyness, the, and Crowley cannot draw quite too fine a line under this point, rampant display of gender and sexuality in every form humans have thus far discovered. They don't need training for war, to resist. They just need training in how fucking brilliant Earth is, and they're already there.

Which is good, because shortly after they take to sharing a bed, Andrealphus turns up.

Crowley isn't there at the time - why is he never fucking there when random demons walk in on Aziraphale in the bookshop? - he's out with Ramiel at a grubby little place on Denmark Street playing unreasonably loud music which Aziraphale would hate, after a satisfying morning laying minor curses on litterers and those on the pavement who won't look up from their phone and barge down the elderly, the disabled, people with prams. Ramiel's alright, look, Crowley's still only saying she's alright, he still doesn't need friends or anything, he's not interested in friends. All he's interested in is Aziraphale. But given Aziraphale's irrational aversion to drinking warm spirits at sticky tables, it's handy to have someone else around sometimes, that's all.

Aziraphale himself, when Crowley gets back to the shop, is sitting with Zophiel and a demon Crowley's never seen before. Ramiel walks straight to Zophiel who moves her cup to her other hand and holds Ramiel's hand in silent reassurance, while Aziraphale smiles at Crowley with an innocent joy, "Crowley, how lovely, look, Andrealphus has come to join us!"

Crowley walks towards Andrealphus slowly, murmuring as aggressively as he can, "How lovely."

Andrealphus' long hair turns into feathers halfway down, and his nose is a little beaky, his eyes raptor-gold; not entirely unlike Crowley's, which annoys Crowley unreasonably, going around looking a bit like him in front of his angel, he refuses to express the feeling in any way in case it's wilfully misinterpreted as some sort of jealousy but he knows it's not right. Andrealphus is also, mercifully, fucking terrified of Crowley - even Ramiel's fear has never died, is now an undercurrent of nervousness just controlled, sometimes Crowley wonders what the fuck Aziraphale did to them all in Hell to make them stop breathing at the sound of his name. Which is good; Crowley leans his hip into the arm of Aziraphale's armchair, folds his arms, looks at Andrealphus who sits too straight now, knees together, holding a flower-patterned teacup and saucer of all things and staring down at it like he doesn't understand how ridiculous Aziraphale has managed to make the situation he's in as the demon has to relate to Crowley, the most dangerous creature who ever strolled through Hell, why he wants to leave.

"I'm on cleaning," he says. "I can't take the - the mess anymore."

Crowley delicately does not ask where in Hell Andrealphus was cleaning, and Aziraphale, thankfully, doesn't seem to know to ask. There are places in Hell where the souls of evil humans go, and the things done to them sometimes require extensive, intensive cleaning. Crowley always avoided those parts of Hell, feeling sick at just the smell - fuck, forget the sound - and the knowledge that he had no idea how many souls there might have been tipped just enough over the line by anything he did.

Give it a few more years, he thinks. A few more hundred more years of not harming humans and doing good for him, and maybe, maybe, maybe the black will start fading, maybe She'll just grant him just some grey, some sense of movement, some indication that whatever he's done he's using free will the right way now and he's better than - that, down there, he's better than what some demons do, isn't he?

Ascertaining that Andrealphus is far too scared of Crowley to be any sort of mole sent from Hell to hurt them, the problem is what to do with him. "I can put more bunkbeds in the basement," Aziraphale says, and Ramiel and Zophiel look at each other, and the angel squeezes the demon's hand.

"Actually," Zophiel says.

"We thought," Ramiel says, with a deferential sort of bob towards Crowley.

"We're ready to move on." Zophiel says, in her even, certain way. "We don't need to keep imposing on your hospitality forever. We can blend in with the humans now, at least enough to get by, and together we can defend ourselves if we have to."

". . . of course you're welcome to leave, but you're welcome to stay as well," Aziraphale says, blinking at them. "But where would you go?"

Ramiel and Zophiel look at each other, then Ramiel says, "We thought Brighton."

Crowley rolls his eyes to the ceiling; Soho-on-Sea, of course that's where you send angels and demons to avoid detection, Ramiel and Zophiel are almost not weird enough for that place. "I think it's a good idea," he says, while Aziraphale is still frowning, thinking. Crowley gestures at Andrealphus huddling behind a cup of tea for strength, says, "We don't know how many more are coming, we might need the space."

"You can send them on to us," Zophiel offers. "If too many come. Get them settled a little and then move them to us. We can start setting up other bases, spread out, just in case."

"Just in case," Aziraphale murmurs quietly, and Crowley can see him thinking, he knows the way he quiets when he thinks; that they defected, and then Ramiel and Zophiel defected, and now Andrealphus, and how many more . . . ? Crowley understands it as well, if every half-hearted angel and demon decided that Earth was just more them, there'd only be the ones who really believed left in Heaven and Hell, the genuine vicious bastards down there who really do want to inflict horror on humanity, the arrogant, self-righteous, pitiless bastards up there who don't give a shit about humanity as long as they get to win. And if Heaven and Hell ever did turn on humanity together - humanity wouldn't be alone. There really would be an army of the resistance, if a bit ragtag and not very keen on fighting but the important thing when it comes to fighting, Crowley knows, is to find a way to make your opponent fuck themselves up without you having to do anything much yourself . . .

And on a more selfish note, the more defectors there are the more Heaven and Hell will blame the two of them, and if they've got that many enemies Crowley does get now that they're better off with a few friends on their side instead of a bunch of people they told to fuck off when they needed help.

Having little luggage to pack and knowing that the perfect place will become available as soon as they need it, they take Ramiel and Zophiel to Victoria, to see them off. Crowley feels a bit weird about it - the fact that he has feelings about it at all surprises him; he thinks, and doesn't know how to feel about it, that he's going to miss them. Aziraphale hugs them both away, he's got quite into hugging with people he actually feels comfortable with, and Crowley gives them both a carefully measured nod. Aziraphale waves an actual handkerchief to see them off, and when the train is gone, blows his nose on it and says, "Oh, dear, I will miss them."

Crowley puts an arm around his back to lead him off for the Bentley and the bookshop again. "Got a new one now," he says. "It's like fostering. You've got to let them spread their wings."

Aziraphale gives a watery smile to that. "Yes," he says, and when the smile comes sweetly truer, Crowley's legs forget how knees work a little.

Only a week after Andrealphus arrives, Penemuel turns up, having spent centuries crafting dangerous misinformation in pamphlets and gossip and now reduced to influencing tabloid writers who don't even need her anymore, "The news," she says despairingly, "doesn't need demonic spin, have you looked at it?"

"That's why you left Hell?" Crowley says, leaning against Aziraphale's armchair in a process they've already got a pattern for, which Crowley thinks of as the exit interview. "You didn't feel useful anymore?"

"You know why I've left Hell," she says, looking down at her ink-wet fingertips, Aziraphale is really squeamish about her presence in the bookshop. "You do the job, it doesn't mean you like it, and if you don't have to do the job, why the Heaven would you?"

She's the first of them, the defectors from Hell, who breathes shakily but she looks Crowley in the eye and he knows that more than anyone, she gets it. Not everyone Fell because they were evil. Some of them were just - a bit bad, no worse than humans are, a bit arrogant, bit self-absorbed, bit selfish and then they found themselves down in Hell and they had to do whatever they could to survive, and . . . well. The punishment never did fit the crime, so a prison break is really the only sane option.

It's three demon defectors to one angel, in all. "Two angels," Aziraphale points out, a little hot and embarrassed when Crowley mentions it. "Four demons, two angels. We left too."

"Wonder why more demons than angels, though," Crowley says, watching Aziraphale take careful, savoured bites of a coffee éclair alongside his mocha; Crowley's on black coffee and watching Aziraphale eat, which he finds far more pleasurable than eating himself, Aziraphale just so clearly enjoys it more.

"Heaven is rather . . ." Aziraphale dabs his mouth with a napkin, brows low in a pained way. "I think it's all got rather personal up there, a bit . . . nasty. I suppose demons expect disobedience."

"Yeah, well," Crowley stretches back, lifts his coffee cup, "that's what angels get for going around trusting each other."

Aziraphale gives him a strained smile, and cuts another precise portion of éclair with the edge of his fork.

And that's how things continue, until the day Sidriel and Vehuel turn up.

*

Heaven is large and Aziraphale never knew every angel there, though he does think he's seen Vehuel around, close-cropped hair and their eyes a startling violet that here on Earth has been subdued to grey-blue. Sidriel is new to him, an angel with freckles and her long natural hair, reddish brown, worn loose. They sit together on the bookshop sofa, wary of the two demons keeping their distance, reading or pretending to, listening in more likely. Not that the two angels are really any less wary of Crowley and Aziraphale, though Aziraphale understands Sidriel's nervousness, the way her fingers play at her teacup, they need to be believed after all. Vehuel is quieter, more contained, their eyes never leaving Aziraphale as if he's the only one they need to persuade. It makes Aziraphale a little uncomfortable, makes him keep looking at Crowley, who slumps in the armchair next to him squeezing the bridge of his nose.

"And you thought two at once would lead to less attention, did you?" he says.

"Sorry," Sidriel says, shoulders squirming guilt. "We just - we had to come together. We've been - we always knew we had to come together."

Vehuel puts a hand on Sidriel's, strokes her fingers into a hold in such a practised, comfortable way, it lifts the memory in Aziraphale of every easy time he's slipped his arm through Crowley's. "We've been having an illicit affair since -" They look at Sidriel. "Is it five hundred years?"

"It's nearly six hundred," Sidriel points out, narrowing her eyes at them a little.

"Yes. Sorry." Their eyes roll to the ceiling. "Nearly six hundred years. And you know what will happen if management finds out."

Aziraphale's mouth moves for some time before his brain finds words for it: how they've managed to hide it, how it even happened in the cold office culture of Heaven in the first place, how they never Fell -? What he eventually comes out with is, "How . . . lovely. Congratulations. How very nice." He looks at Crowley, he's not - there's nothing they can do about it now, he understands that, they're not going to tell Sidriel and Vehuel to leave, but - oh, Gabriel's wrath at losing two angels in a day is a very very big 'but'.

Sidriel squeezes Vehuel's hand, says, "We couldn't stay, everything's so tightly locked down now, they were going to find us out and - and it's just not safe up there anymore, it's . . ."

Vehuel says, eyes calmly on Aziraphale, "Gabriel is losing his mind."

Aziraphale blinks. Crowley stretches his legs out, says, "Would you care to elaborate?"

"He has rages. He's increasingly paranoid. And he keeps a feather on his desk, encased in crystal like a paperweight, which he - picks up and shakes and shouts at, a lot." Vehuel's calmness is almost as unnerving as the bottomless pit sighing open in Aziraphale's stomach. "He's coming to pieces. And if he does, Heaven . . . no-one knows what will happen."

Aziraphale swallows, he feels sick and shaky, his hands don't feel steady. "The last time-" He stops himself; Crowley doesn't know the true last time, but . . . "The last time he was here," he says, carefully, "he seemed quite sane. Angry and vengeful, I will grant you, but - perfectly sane. Dangerously so."

Sidriel points out, "He's screaming at paperweights."

Aziraphale doesn't know what to say, and knows his face must be visibly heated. He doesn't think Gabriel is mad. Madness is an affliction requiring compassion whereas what afflicts Gabriel is hatred, and the fear in Aziraphale's stomach makes that rather harder to love. What does the hatred of an Archangel mean?

Crowley must sense his distress, sliding his long body out of his armchair and throwing a casual leg over the arm of Aziraphale's to sit there instead, letting an elbow bend at his back, a hand settle into his hair, and Aziraphale is stiff and embarrassed with all his nerves for a moment before the knowing kneading of Crowley's fingers at the back of his head pulls him out of the pit in his stomach and back into the room. "Regardless," Aziraphale says, regathering himself, "I think you're quite right that you're not safe in Heaven and you're very welcome here. It's bunk beds, I'm afraid, we're a little short on space, but I'm sure you and Andrealphus and Penemuel will be fast friends in no time."

The two demons, nonchalantly standing against shelves with books in front of their faces, lower them to look at each other. The angels hold hands, their faces serious and needing and knowing it.

"You'll be a lot safer here," Aziraphale promises them, and somehow they need to find a way to make that true.

The evening passes without incident. Aziraphale leaves the four occupants of the basement Happy Families to play, Crowley gives them a thing called a 'Bop-It'. And in bed that night, safe under the weight of the duvet with Crowley wrapped around him, his lovely skin and the faint freckles on his shoulders and his eyes all drowsy gold before sleep - sometimes Aziraphale's heart feels like it cracks from love, the feeling so deep it edges into pain, it is agony to love Crowley the way he does. She could have made it feel like anything but She made it feel like this, and it's beautiful in its aching backwards way, he would never have thought to make love feel like this, that love would feel at its strongest and best like this, but She did. Aziraphale is no longer always sure about the plans of the Almighty - he would have some strongly-worded feedback about that Flood if they ever met again to start with, and then there's the Fall and everything that put everyone through, for goodness' sake - but little things give him a hope he can't deny, rekindle a faith Heaven tried to bully into him that he would have held anyway, if they'd just let him. He has Crowley, after all. He doesn't know how anything so perfect could be anything but Divine will.

"Go to sleep, darling," he murmurs, tucking him close, leaning to kiss his brow smooth. "Go to sleep, my love."

Crowley's eyes blink closed, and he sighs the way a satisfied dog does, from deep within and so, so safe.

Aziraphale brings pastries for their guests the next morning, Crowley carries the coffees. The sky is trying to be a bit blue behind the cloud overhead and the shop hasn't burned down in the night which Aziraphale always sees as a good start. There's a bit of tension between their guests, some sort of wine-fuelled Bop It-related row last night it seems, but Aziraphale is firm that everybody is going to have a nice breakfast and get along, he just feels like he can't have any of this nonsense, he is already dealing with quite enough before all this silliness -

Crowley lays a hand on his back, murmurs low, "You are weirdly sexy when you get schoolmarmish."

Aziraphale looks at him scowling with not knowing how to reply to that when the door shatters inwards off its hinges.

Aziraphale jumps and spins to look, mouth open blank at the - the thing barging into his bookshop, the thing so broad it cracks and crunches the doorframe inwards, a thick clay humanoid figure nearly eight feet high with a word he knows written across its forehead, and Crowley is hissing fury, the four angels and demons at their backs have - tensed, backed away, grabbed for each other, terrified -

And Aziraphale knows exactly what this is and is absolutely furious, can hardly speak for it, it fills his mouth like a hot white stone, how dare he - they're doing nothing to Heaven, they didn't ask Sidriel and Vehuel to defect and Sidriel and Vehuel had every right anyway, none of them are harming Heaven in the slightest and his bookshop -

He doesn't even know what he's doing except that he can't hear anything through the pulsing in his ears as he strides at the thing yelling, "Now see here, this is absolutely not o-"

He honestly had utterly no idea they could move that fast.

. . . his head hurts abominably. He's not used to pain and doesn't really know what to do about it, everything seems slow, dopey, both distant and looming. There's a lot of confusing noise that seems too close, his head, he can't make sense of anything around the pain, a sharp line like a metal bar in the back of his skull - he doesn't know what's happening. But he thinks - some of that mangled, senseless noise is - it sounds like Crowley.

He tries to blink, blackness and blurring, he doesn't have the time for this. He heals himself, a rush job but good enough, blinks and he's laying crashed on his side on the bookshop floor, half-propped against a shelf, his - there's something wrong with his arm, he heals that as well in hurried frustration, the noise is making more sense now, he looks up at -

"Cr- Crowley!"

The golem who smashed its way into his bookshop is missing its head, burned clean off its neck into nothing by the sheer Hellish heat of Crowley's searing hands, burned down to the shoulders and still Crowley is holding the clay in burning hands and screaming at it, sunglasses lost somewhere and eyes livid, blazing yellow. Crowley was only able to reach its head to burn it off because the golem must have grabbed him first, squeezed him up in both arms against its chest with impossible strength, Crowley's scream is gargling and broken because he is -

Aziraphale scrambles up, stands on his own coat and falls over again, scrabbles and runs at the unmoving golem - head gone, the word that animated it is no longer activated and it will never move again - grabs its arm and snaps his fingers. A brick that used to be its arm hits the floor; Crowley hits Aziraphale's arms harder than expected, no bracing at all, smacking him down into the bookshop floor with bruising force. "Crowley -" Aziraphale chokes, sitting on his throbbing arse and touching Crowley's head, his shoulders, oh God he can feel how broken up inside he is, that golem snapped his ribcage into his lungs, Crowley is only still moving out of sheer mad fury -

Aziraphale heals him, runs his hands over him, whispering nonsense soothing babble, his poor Crowley he's so hurt everything is so broken inside but it's alright now it's alright now it's alright now -

Clumsy over his lap Crowley grabs him around the back with both arms, stuffs his face into Aziraphale's stomach and screams.

It goes up Aziraphale's spine like a knife. He sucks his breath inwards and Crowley only stops screaming to gasp in enough breath to scream again, Aziraphale's shaking hands find his head, he whispers, blinking at tears of sheer shock, "Crowley -"

He knows it's not the pain. Crowley screams into his stomach, wrenching dry sobs, his legs squirm, kick on the floor, he's forgotten himself, all he knows is - "Crowley, my love, Crowley, we're alright, we're alright -" Aziraphale whispers, drawing his fingers through his hair over and over, trying to get him back to himself, "Crowley, dear, Crowley, please -"

He's terrified. He doesn't know what to do with the way Crowley feels things.

Crowley's breath is coming in short jolting spasms, it's not his broken lungs, Aziraphale fixed those, it's - Aziraphale looks across at the bookshelf he woke against and sees - oh good Lord, he looks away queasy; the bloody edge of the shelf, and somehow worse, white hair stuck in the blood. Crowley saw Aziraphale get his head staved in against a bookshelf. That's why he can't breathe properly. The same horror Aziraphale felt, waking to see Crowley's bones snapped like toothpicks in a golem's arms.

"Crowley, love, I'm alright, I'm alright, I promise, my darling, I'm right here, look, I'm alright, we're both alright . . ."

Crowley's hands scrabble and snatch at him, his face still stuffed into Aziraphale's stomach, and he makes a pained whining noise. Aziraphale just hugs his head to himself tight and his throat hurts and his eyes burn and his whole face hurts with wanting to cry, "I'm right here, my dearest, I'm not leaving you, I'm never leaving you, I'm right here, I'm alright, my darling darling Crowley -"

Crowley pants, shaking on the in-breaths. Aziraphale swallows, jumps at a voice behind him; one of the angels, Vehuel, leaning down a little, hands held up tentatively as if they're unsure of how Aziraphale might startle. "Are you both alright?"

"Ah - yes! Yes, tickety-b . . . he's a bit . . . shook up, we're a bit . . ." I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do to make this better, I don't know what to do. "We're fine, honestly," with as much of a smile as he can manage, and he doesn't know what to do, he doesn't know what to do.

". . . we can leave. This is our fault. We must leave."

"You absolutely must not. It's not safe and regardless, we're not having what we do dictated to us by them." He strokes Crowley's hair, Crowley still squirming and moaning, his whole body contorted inwards and not with physical pain, and Aziraphale says more shakily now, "Crowley, my love, will you please . . . it's alright, Crowley . . ."

Vehuel looks at him evenly, and Sidriel walks up behind them, slips her hand into theirs. "Take him home," Vehuel says. "We'll clean this up."

Behind them, tentatively, Andrealphus says, "I'm good at cleaning."

Aziraphale swallows. "Yes, but -" He looks around the shop, the wreckage, the half-golem still to deal with, the cracked open doorway (People in Soho will be wondering what happened to Mr Fell's shop but in fairness it's hardly the strangest thing that's ever happened to Mr Fell's shop.), the tumbled and splayed books. "- but what if they come back?"

Heaven sent it, golems are holy creatures. And if they intend to try again after that failure, with Crowley and Aziraphale not here -

"Then we will defend ourselves." Vehuel says. "You two can do nothing now."

And their eyes flick from Aziraphale's to the top of Crowley's head and back, the meaning clear: Crowley can do nothing now, even though the screaming has stopped his whole body is rocking with his breathing, his hands are still a too-tight spasming grip on Aziraphale, he can't be expected to face anything else dangerous, he's too strung out, too far gone already. He needs to be calmed down, not put through worse. Aziraphale draws in as deep, reviving and untrembling a breath as he can manage, and he strokes a hand over Crowley's hair, and whispers in his gentlest voice, "Let's go home, Crowley. Let's go back to your flat. Get a taxi and go home, you're in no state to drive, come on now, there's a good chap . . ."

It takes a little work to encourage Crowley's face up from his stomach, his head still hanging loose, and then the air leaves Aziraphale with a pained noise; Aziraphale healed his crushed lungs but there was still enough blood on Crowley's breath to leave it freckling his lips and in his teeth, and Aziraphale swallows, fishes his handkerchief out, cleans him up a bit - nauseatingly like wiping a child's mouth - while Crowley blinks at his stomach with unfocused eyes, looking drained and, it shocks Aziraphale to think it, old.

"Where are your sunglasses now, wher- there, thank you, Penemuel. There we are, Crowley, all ready for the outside world now," gently sliding the arms into his hair, over his ears. "There. Lovely. Now let's sit up, there we are . . ."

Crowley is still staring at his stomach. "There's blood on your waistcoat."

Aziraphale looks down, says, ". . . that will be yours, Crowley, from, um." Screaming the contents of his rib-impaled lungs out at him.

Then Crowley looks up at Aziraphale's face, and Aziraphale sees the last colour drain from Crowley's skin. "What?" Aziraphale says nervously, blinking quick in panic. "What?"

At his back Vehuel says very quietly, "You're covered in blood."

"I'm - what?" Aziraphale lifts a hand to side of his face and touches something sticky with the side of his palm, lifts it away, says, "Oh dear."

Crowley folds his arms around Aziraphale's neck and pulls him into a tight hug, and Aziraphale feels, like a cool breeze, the miracle brushing over his head and shoulders, cleaning the blood away. He touches Crowley's back, closes the hug around his skinny, unsteady shoulder blades, murmurs to him, "Thank you."

Crowley doesn't say anything on the journey back. Aziraphale isn't sure a taxi is going to stop for them - he's more or less supporting Crowley with an arm around his waist, Crowley with one shaky arm around Aziraphale's shoulders, he looks drunk and Aziraphale does know that he's probably looking worse for wear himself. So he walks them to Charing Cross Road, waits to see a free taxi and then just steps them out in front of it, and when it screeches to a stop, he waves, smiling, and bundles Crowley in before the driver can really stop him. They'll have to come back for the Bentley when Crowley's more able to manage it, he certainly wouldn't forgive Aziraphale trying to drive it, and right now Crowley's in no fit state, seems almost catatonic, Aziraphale doesn't know what to do when he gets like this, he doesn't know what to do -

The driver keeps shooting them glances in the rear view mirror as Crowley remains clutched to Aziraphale, Aziraphale holding his head tenderly to himself, stroking his hair, trying to be more than just his own fear for Crowley. "It's alright, dear, it's all alright, we'll get you home and everything will seem better there, darling, won't it? Nothing's broken, Crowley, we're alright, we're both alright . . ."

The driver says, "You should report it."

Aziraphale blinks up, finds the man's eyes in the mirror, says, "Excuse me?"

"You should report it, don't let the bastards get away with it. There's CCTV everywhere, they catch them more than they used to. At least get it in the statistics." The driver indicates to turn, mutters at the road, "Fucking homophobes, worse than animals."

Aziraphale has no idea what he's talking about.

He leads Crowley out of the taxi, into the building, can't really deal with the faff of keys right now so the door just opens for them. He brought Crowley here to make him feel safe but as soon as the door closes Aziraphale feels his own shoulders fall, he hadn't realised he'd been hunching them, and then Crowley, who had been gripping his side tight and walking as directed but not making any movement of his own, turns Aziraphale's body before he can even make a surprised noise and pins him determinedly into the corner next to the front door, arms around him squeezing him in in a hug that hurts. Aziraphale blinks at the room over Crowley's shoulder, then lifts his arms, encloses Crowley from behind as well, closes his eyes and murmurs underneath Crowley's ear, softer now he finally feels safe himself, "Crowley."

". . . this is all my fault."

"- what?"

It shouldn't be possible but Crowley's arms clamp tighter around him. "Could've killed you," he whispers. "Could've got you killed -"

"Discorporated at best, and it didn't," Aziraphale says. "What do you mean it was your fault? Of course it wasn't your fault, you know it wasn't your fault -" His mind clicks into a different, colder gear. "- what did you do?"

Crowley's breath sucks in through his teeth and Aziraphale is really very uncomfortable in this hug - held up on the balls of his feet, squeezed painfully tight, tilted so off-balance that if Crowley stepped back, he would fall. But he doesn't want to be anywhere else, slides a hand up to Crowley's head, holds a handful of his hair, just holds it, so Crowley can feel him there. And Crowley hisses, "I didn't scare them enough, did I? Whatever the fuck you did down in Hell it did the job, they would rather swim in holy water than face me again, but up there - all I had to do was scare them, all I had to do was scare them and how did I not - I'm a fucking demon for fuck's sake -"

"Crowley, dear, I don't understand what you . . ."

"I was trying to act like you," Crowley says. "I just didn't know you were a fucking terrifying bastard underneath it all, I - oh I alarmed them, I'll give you that, I gave them cause for concern, but I didn't scare them and now - they'll kill you, Heaven's fucking sake Aziraphale they'll kill you -"

"Discorporate, Crowley, it's hardly the end of the-"

"And where do you go when you discorporate, angel?" Crowley roars, Aziraphale stays still in his arms, eyes wide. When overexcited Crowley's voice goes high, almost screeching, and Aziraphale never know what to do with Crowley when he gets like this, when he -

"Heaven," he says, understanding it himself. "Oh. Oh, that . . ."

Crowley's arms are hurting him. "You would never come back." he hisses darkly, hands squeezing tight in Aziraphale's back. "I would never see you again. They would - do something to you. Put you somewhere. Hurt you." His voice slips low and rough. "There are more ways to kill us than holy water and hellfire."

Aziraphale is silent because - he's never thought of this, it had never occurred to him but it must have to Crowley, if either of them were discorporated now . . .

And there are, indeed, other ways to kill angels and demons. Holy objects, swords and spears and similar, would damage more than just their Earthly bodies. And they could find a place to put Aziraphale if he did just turn up in Heaven again, that's perfectly true, some locked room alone for the rest of eternity, they wouldn't even need to feed him, the perfect prisoner: just lock the door and destroy the key. But it's not just Aziraphale who would snap back where he came from if discorporated, Crowley -

"Crowley, you - goose - it nearly killed you, you would have snapped back to Hell!"

"And waltzed right on out again, after the show you put on," Crowley says, voice distant, sad. "I fucked it up, angel. I didn't scare them enough. I fucked it up and then I let some golem smash your brains out right in front of me -"

"It hardly did that, I just banged my head, Crowley will you - please, my dear, will you - let me down a little, it isn't very easy to breathe like this."

There's a pause, as if Crowley needs the time to work out what he's doing for the request to make sense. Then his body softens against Aziraphale's, and he steps back, just one step, still with his arms urgent around him helping him steady himself and his eyes - he hasn't even taken his sunglasses off but Aziraphale can see enough, his eyes so bleak on Aziraphale's face. "Sorry," he croaks, and Aziraphale catches his face in both hands and kisses him once, says, "There is nothing to be sorry for. You didn't send a golem to discorporate us, and you weren't the one silly enough to think that shouting at it would make it go away, and - and honestly, Crowley, why would you think I could be angry that you turn out to be gentler than you thought you were? Scaring Hell was easy, it was all the sort of threat they understand, Heaven - I wouldn't know where to start scaring Heaven." He pauses, thinking about it. "I will have to work it out," he murmurs, because . . .

Crowley is still staring at his face, still very highly strung, reaching up - so tentatively - to touch, as if the touch might bruise, Aziraphale's cheek, and then back into his hair, fingertips so gentle, searching out . . . Aziraphale knows what he's searching for. "I healed it," he promises. "I'm fine, Crowley, I was only ever - stunned, I think the word is."

Crowley sniffs. "I can still smell blood."

"Well, yes, miracles are never as good as the real thing." He looks down at his waistcoat, brushes at where Crowley's blood isn't and he will always know that it isn't.

Crowley sighs, plopping a hand on top of Aziraphale's head, gently turning him for the bathroom. "Bath, angel."

It's a relief just to have him halfway calm. Aziraphale smiles, walks as directed. And as they walk Crowley says, under his breath, "'Goose', really . . . ?"

He should have guessed that Crowley, who so likes to lounge, would be a devotee of bathing. He's never much bothered with it himself, once it ceased to be a necessary social moment for meeting the right people, oh, centuries ago now, but show Crowley a pool of warm water and naturally his first thought is to slither in. The clawfoot bath in his flat is enormous, it easily can be given that there's nothing else in his bathroom to take up space, angels and demons having no need for those kinds of plumbing. Two can fit comfortably. And Aziraphale allows Crowley the fiction that the candles and bubbles are a new luxury Crowley lays on for him, because Crowley seems to forget that for a couple of days Aziraphale wore his form and moved through his flat fascinated, taking in every little detail, everything he'd never known about him, spotting that statue from the church for the first time since the forties and blushing so hard he nearly fainted. So he indulges Crowley his minor lies and obfuscations. He's guilty of enough of those himself.

He sits in the water allowing Crowley to work shampoo into his hair from behind, which, alright, does feel very nice, the scratching of his fingers at his scalp. "It really wasn't your fault," he says. "Neither of us anticipated quite how badly Gabriel was going to take the whole thing. And neither of us knew that other angels would come down and make things - difficult."

"So what do we do about it?" Crowley says in the grim voice of someone who doesn't believe in the slightest that he's not the one at fault. Aziraphale sighs, and closes his eyes at the circling pull, pull, pull at the back of his head, just delicious.

"I think I need to have a word with someone above Gabriel's pay grade," he says. "We can't have him sending golems after us willy-nilly, even in Soho they're going to notice that eventually."

"Who're you going to find who's above Gabriel? What is he, a seraph?"

"Cherubim, I think." Aziraphale says gloomily.

Crowley's hands pause in their massaging, then start again, and he says low through his teeth, "He could kill you by swatting you."

"But - the curious thing - he hasn't. Which I think gives us a bit of wiggle room, if we can work out how to use it."

"What d'you mean by that? Head back, close your eyes."

Aziraphale doesn't say anything while Crowley runs the showerhead, since it probably wouldn't be heard anyway. When the water's off and Crowley is brushing it carefully back from his brow so it doesn't run into his eyes, he smiles and says, "I have a thought or two. Would you mind awfully doing the conditioner as well? It dries all frizzy otherwise."

"God forbid."

"No, I know." Aziraphale thinks back to the bookshop, that huge clay thing barging in, the sight of Crowley cracked like a twig in its arms, he still remembers the feel of healing his shattered bones and has to close his eyes, swallow. Crowley is smoothing conditioner into his hair that smells of crushed mint and golden oil, and Aziraphale breathes, and feels the living shape of Crowley behind him, safe with him. Gabriel could kill them both by swatting them. The only thing stopping him is that he doesn't know that he can do that, and Aziraphale has to, has to make sure he never finds out . . .

Hair run clean with water, he looks at Crowley over his shoulder and smiles. "Now yours?"

Crowley, still holding the shower head, looks at him with lowered eyebrows. "I didn't get my skull cracked open this morning."

"Indulge me anyway, love."

He doesn't know why Crowley pretends, once they manoeuvre themselves around and Aziraphale is lathering his hair he can hear in Crowley's chest the noises he's trying not to let out and he smiles, secret behind Crowley's head. "You have such beautiful hair," he says. "Why did you cut it short?"

"I - just - you don't like it," said in sudden numb horror, and Aziraphale rubs his ears for comfort.

"No, no, not at all, of course I like it, you always look charming. I've always liked your hair. Well, if I'm entirely honest I don't think Roman fashion did you any favours -"

"Mm, maybe not."

"- you just change it so very much, it's always very interesting. And it's such a lovely colour. And so thick."

Crowley is silent while Aziraphale massages circles into his scalp, then says, "Would . . . you like it if I grew it out again?"

"I like it however you like it, you always look dashing," he promises, splashing the suds off his hands in the bathwater, picking up the showerhead. "Eyes closed. . ."

Rinsed, Aziraphale just squirting conditioner into his palm, Crowley says, "What the fuck are we going to do, then?"

"Don't worry about it a moment, my dear," Aziraphale says in his most reassuring voice, working conditioner gently-gently through the ends of Crowley's hair. "I'm going to take care of it."

Crowley says nothing, eyes slitting to Aziraphale's fingers running through, through, through his hair, then he says, "See, that makes me worry about it more."

Aziraphale picks up the showerhead again. "You keep saying I scared Hell into leaving us alone, well, now it's Heaven's turn. Eyes closed . . ."

The red in Crowley's hair darkens when wet, like low-burning embers. Crowley says, as if he needed the time to mull the word over, "Dashing."

"Terribly so. Miss Austen and the Brontës would have killed for an eyeful of you."

"'Dashing', Christ." Crowley turns his head to look at him, then shifts around properly, skin squeaking against the bath, and looks over Aziraphale's hair with a rapt golden gaze, fingers brushing at it as if neatening it but Aziraphale knows what his true focus is, Crowley is likely to be a bit obsessed with the integrity of Aziraphale's skull for the next few days.

"I'm alright, Crowley." he says. "Honestly, I don't know which of us was more frightened, I had - no idea what to do. None. And I'm sure angels are supposed to know what to do, but I just . . ." He watches Crowley's eyes and feels heartbroken because he still doesn't know what to do. "I didn't know what you needed from me and I just . . . went a bit to pieces."

Crowley's gaze softens on his, and his palm, wet from the bathwater but cool from the air, settles on Aziraphale's cheek. "I need you alive." he says, voice husked low. "As long as I have that, anything you choose to do is the right thing to do, for me."

He smiles though it hurts more than most smiles, and says in a mostly-steady voice, "I'm so very glad that you're alright, my dear."

The thought that he might not have been makes him feel nauseous, and he has to swallow hard. Crowley checks his eyes and says, "Yes, yes, I'm fine, I'm fine," wrapping his arm around Aziraphale's head, resting his chin in his hair. "I'm fine, angel, I'm fine."

How odd; Crowley seems suddenly less afraid, now he's the one doing the comforting.

It's still only noon by the time they're dry and dressed, which gives them a great many options, and on a more ordinary day might have sent them to the bed or the sofa, so Aziraphale could get in a solid twenty hours' reading with Crowley asleep on top of him. But it's not an ordinary day, and the memory of the golem lingers even if the broken bones and blood does not. Heaven must have some sense that the golem failed in whatever it was intended to do by now - intimidation, Aziraphale suspects, and discorporation if it could - and so they need to act before they can really feel settled again.

The rugs in Crowley's flat are Aziraphale's, the bareness of the floors needled at him before, and Crowley is better at adapting than him, always willing to try new things while it just takes Aziraphale longer and stark concrete floors he'd need some time to get used to. So it's Aziraphale Crowley is cursing as they move furniture, the sofa and coffee table, to roll up the rug, Aziraphale Crowley is eyeing in suspicion as Aziraphale chalks his circle, humming under his breath, Crowley wanting nothing to do with something giving off such an obvious aura of the holy. He does help Aziraphale corral enough candles (a rather motley assortment, he hopes the scented ones from the bathroom probably won't interfere with the circle, they may just give the Metatron a rather pleasant scent of jasmine in the summoning), and then stands back, as far back as he can really get in the same room, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and head suspiciously low.

Aziraphale checks over his circle, swallows, checks and resettles all his clothing quite right, then folds his hands together, and closes his eyes and takes a long, slow breath.

*

When Crowley was up in Heaven God was still at least relatively there, Her voice was heard, and so Crowley never knew the Metratron, that whole office only became required when God slipped back, became distant even from Her angels, after Eden.

(He feels a pang, there, in that exact moment watching Aziraphale looking particularly sweet and innocent in the candlelight and that pose, planning God-knows-what in that tricksy head of his; he feels the pang that having set enough things in motion that he never anticipated the outcomes of himself, maybe he knows why God slipped Herself into the background, stopped talking to them all. Maybe She saw the state of it all, She handed out a little bit of free will and never realised they'd use it and just thought, Fuck it. It's a strange sort of pang. Crowley really doesn't know how to feel about sympathising with God.)

His gaze stays with a certain hunger on Aziraphale as the light in the circle builds, though he's glad of the sunglasses, the light having a particularly burning quality on demonic eyes. Aziraphale lifts his head, blinks, smiles at the face forming in the light and Crowley can still hear the unnatural sound of his head hitting a bookshelf, a bang hard and wet at the same time, solid and hollow at the same time, his heart stopped in that bookshop, he doesn't think it started again until he found his face in Aziraphale's hands on the floor and Aziraphale was promising him over and over that everything was alright, alive and moving even if half his white hair was crimson. He still hears that noise and is tense with not flinching, every echo of it makes his body want to jolt and he can't, he knows he scared the shit out of his angel this morning, he just - he just fucking lost it, he's not going to pretty it up with words, there's no way to skim over it. He heard Aziraphale's head crack off a bookshelf like a coconut breaking and he completely lost his mind, didn't even lose it, he threw it. He didn't want sanity in the face of losing him. He wanted to scream and burn things and tear the world down. He wanted to break everything in the world that wasn't Aziraphale to punish it for not being him.

There's a reason his wings are black and that light makes him squint, while Aziraphale lifts his face as if bathed in it. Crowley knows he's not a good person. Good enough for Aziraphale is all the good he needs.

The Metatron says, "Aziraphale, former angel of the Eastern Gate, why have you summoned me?"

"Ah, hello," Aziraphale says, with his friendliest smile. "Sorry to be a bother, again, you must have more important things to do, sick of the sight of me, only I needed to - actually, just, wait a moment, sorry, could we - back up, slightly? When you said 'former angel of the Eastern Gate', can I just check, ah - is that, brackets, 'former angel of the Eastern Gate', all one concept, you see, or -" His voice is getting more nervous. "Are we more along the lines of - 'former angel', brackets, 'of the Eastern Gate' acting as more of a, a modifier, are we . . . what did you . . . mean?"

Crowley is more alert now, watching Aziraphale's face, the nakedness of the way he shows feeling, everything open in his eyes. It's been a long time since he's expressed this fear in Crowley's presence though he did for a long time, after the near-miss of an apocalypse. He'd seemed more settled since, less worried about what it means for his angelic status given that he and Heaven are not on speaking terms. But that was before, that was before he was talking to the literal Voice of God, and Crowley stays snake-still, and feels his own black wings flex tense on a different plane.

The Metatron says, "Did you not formerly guard the Eastern Gate, Aziraphale?"

"Ahhh . . . yes. Yes, yes I did. Yes. Yes, of course." Aziraphale's body sinks softer, more relaxed, and Crowley rolls his eyes; the only person who worries that Aziraphale's capable of doing something that would stop him being an angel is Aziraphale himself. "Right. Yes. Good. Sorry. Right, so, I need to pass a message on to Heaven, you see, but I can't exactly go back to give it in person, not on good terms, terrible -" He swallows, tilts his head ruefully - "kerfuffle and all if I tried, pretty sure I'm barred. But it's a very important message for Heaven, for the Archangels."

The Metatron says, "Of what do you wish to speak, Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale looks at the Metatron, back straight, breathing a little fast but only a little, and Crowley doesn't know what comes next himself, though Aziraphale had seemed fairly certain only moments before. Now Aziraphale holds his head steady and says, "There was an incident with a golem this morning, and I think it's very important that it's communicated not only to Gabriel but to all of the Archangels that it made a bit of a mess of my bookshop and I'm honestly quite cross about that, but the golem itself is now nothing more than bricks. Because there seems to have been some sort of misunderstanding, you see. We feel - Crowley and I -" With a gesture at Crowley in the corner of the room, who raises his eyebrows a leave me out of it. "- that if angels choose to leave Heaven that is hardly our fault, and we really will have to do something if there's continued harassment from above over the matter. Once an angel has chosen to give their allegiance to the Earth, well, I was put down here in the first place to protect the Earth and its peoples, and I'm jolly well going to do that, whether I'm protecting humans or angels. And Crowley and I know what Heaven is capable of, if it does continue to take this whole affair really much more personally than need be. We know what we might be facing, what they can do. But - the important thing, this is the really important part - Heaven doesn't know what we're capable of. Heaven doesn't understand that at all."

Staring at Aziraphale in that second Crowley feels - a bubble, inside, of realisation, of that same shocking admiration that he felt back in Eden when Aziraphale confessed to a demon that he gave away his flaming sword out of kindness, even knowing what the consequences of telling a demon that might be. What he feels in this moment is the opening, blossoming sense of how clever Aziraphale can be when inspiration strikes, because Aziraphale would really rather not lie and threaten if he has to, and he's been put into a position where he has to, and yet - he's chosen not to do that after all. He's not going to lie and threaten. He's telling the absolute truth and can't threaten because he's technically admitting that he's got no power to do so, and the brilliant little fucker, Crowley thinks he's actually going to get away with it.

"I think it's best," Aziraphale says, slowly and carefully, "if Heaven considers its options, given that it doesn't really know how we might respond to further aggression. It might be best in the future, for everyone concerned, if dissatisfied angels are allowed to leave, rather than bullied into staying, they can hardly be loyal angels when their hearts aren't in it, and it really would be best of all for Crowley and I to be left alone. I mean, you have no idea what we might do if we're not. You don't know what we can do. So best leave us to our own devices, hm? Jolly good. So, yes, well, sorry, if you could just tell them that - I don't know if word-for-word or just the gist is how it usually works, don't suppose you're like one of those answering machines or anything -"

Crowley mutters out of the corner of his mouth, "Wrap it up, angel."

"- but yes. Thank you. Yes. Just that. I think it's very important that the Archangels know that. For everyone's sakes."

The Metatron says, "Your message will be relayed, Aziraphale."

"Thank you. Oh thank you terribly, it's very good of you -"

It takes Aziraphale about five minutes to thank and say goodbye to the postman every afternoon, so Crowley endures the time it takes him to effuse politeness to the Voice of God. Then Aziraphale says, "Wait -" before Crowley pushes himself off from the wall and Aziraphale very carefully closes his circle, snuffing candles, scuffing chalk with the sole of his shoe, making sure it's good and gone and nothing holy is left underfoot. Then he turns to Crowley with a sigh of relief, and says, "Well -"

Crowley grabs him by the cheeks and kisses his cunning little forehead; "Sometimes you're so clever I can't - angel that was brilliant."

"Oh," Aziraphale says, blushing, looking very pleased. "Do you think it worked?"

"I think you're an evil genius."

"Angelic genius," Aziraphale points out, a little sharply now the Voice of God has confirmed it for him himself. "But do you think it will work? That they'll leave us alone?"

"I think I wouldn't take you on," Crowley says with absolute honesty, and Aziraphale, still pink in the cheeks, beams.

Aziraphale's statement that Heaven doesn't know what they're capable of was the literal truth, in the best way Crowley can conceive of. Heaven doesn't, after all, think that they're not capable of things they actually are but thinks that they're capable of things that they're actually not, which works much better for the two of them when utilised in a war of mind games. It touches the fear nerve. It elicits the creeping worry of what they are capable of. And given that they've just survived a golem sent at them with malicious intent, given that as far as they know Aziraphale can't be burned by hellfire or dissolved by holy water, Heaven only knows that they don't know what he's truly capable of, what the two of them are, and . . .

"God I love you," Crowley says, still holding his face and staring into his eyes. "I know I don't say that very much, I just . . . I just do, I . . ."

"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale says, smile turning softer, laying a hand over one of Crowley's on his cheek. "Do you think that I don't know it, my dear?"

Crowley stares into his eyes and can't, for the longest time, find any words, language breaks on too much feeling. Then he sucks a breath in and drops his hands, says, "Guess we'd best get back and check on those four in your bookshop, could be causing unholy Heaven in there left unsupervised -"

". . . we'd better prepare, I suppose, in case there are more."

Crowley says, it's a simple fact, "There's going to be more."

For thousands of years they would have given anything for some middle ground, for some space where the colour of their wings didn't matter and free will actually meant something, they would have given anything but each other to have that. And now without even meaning to they've opened that space themselves, made Heaven, Hell and a second-hand bookshop in Soho the grounds where angels and demons lay their allegiances, and now they've done it there's no going back. Crowley still thinks, more than ever now, that one of these days it's going to be Heaven and Hell against all the rest of them. He thinks, with a prickle of nerves, that the defections of angels and demons are the thing that's going to set that off, and if it does, they're going to need all the allies they can get.

But it won't be tomorrow. He puts an arm around Aziraphale's shoulders, walking him for the door again, a lot calmer leaving this afternoon than they were coming back this morning. That was a glimpse of war, this morning, that horrible shocking - the sound of Aziraphale's head breaking, it's still with him, he's not okay. But he's coping, so's Aziraphale, they're good at that and they're going to go teach their new batch of refugees how to cope too, to show them that in the face of it all they can stand up, even to Heaven itself. Whenever war comes, it'll come in its own slow time. Crowley lives more or less at the pace humans do when he's not bored and deciding to sleep a century through, Aziraphale seems to function around fifty years behind the pace humans are moving at, never quite catching up but then never really lagging any further behind. But Heaven, Hell? They still move at the pace set long ago, when millennia were considered worth waiting through, when a century was thought of as nothing. If war comes, it won't be this evening, or even tomorrow. They've got the time to prepare.

As they walk Crowley bushes his knuckles through Aziraphale's hair, white as a lamb, unblemished as milk. Aziraphale worries about his wings, still; well, Crowley can't say anything about that, the way he still thinks about his own. Ane angel and ae demon wille have a difficulte conversation about wings, hah, not this angel and demon. It pains him too much to think about it, let alone say to Aziraphale of all people - he doesn't know, doesn't even know what he wants to say (Is it just that I deserve the dark of them?). Well, it doesn't matter. Aziraphale's wings are white, and that can be enough for both of them.

They're got the time to prepare, and to really soak into why the fight will be worth it, the things they're doing it for, when it comes. It won't matter what colour anyone's wings are when it comes. It'll be what they're fighting for, and, arm around Aziraphale's back, Heaven and Hell have no idea what motivation means . . .

(Part III)

Comments

[halberdier]

asdghjkjhgfdsdghjhgfds

So much to love in this! Oh, my goodness! (This is Classics-Lover on LJ, btw, don't know why I didn't just pick the same name...)

Gabriel is the sort who would go bananas and scream out a paperweight if it disappointed him. He's also the sort who doesn't really do Ineffable very well. As much as it annoys them I think Aziraphale and Crowley are better adapted to the idea of Ineffability.

And oh, my heart broke for them both thinking the other had died, that is a Bad Feel so excellently portrayed.

[rainjoyswriting]

Hello honey =)

Gabriel does not strike me as someone who has learned any sort of emotional coping skills; when facing the unexpected he literally does not know what to do or feel, which added to the self-righteousness complex is kind of coming out as uncontrollable rage right now ^^; I think you're right that he can't move with ineffability, he's too *rigid* for it, but then none of us love ineffability -_-;

And considering they're two (by Earthly standards) all-powerful beings, they are also dear useless idiots, and do not cope well with a golem apparently ^^;

I'm glad you enjoyed it honey, despite the Bad Feels. Thank you for reading it =)

[lmx_v3point3]

Holy crap. Strong untouchable characters breaking down is my Achilles heel and I sobbed the whole way through Crowley's meltdown, and sniffled through the rest from there. You really know how to punch in the heart. I shouldn't love it nearly as much as I do. ;)

[rainjoyswriting]

Yeah I kind of have a thing for that too, which is why I'm such a mean writer I guess ^^; Sorry for the tears honey, but I'm glad you liked it anyway ;) Thank you for reading it!