Chapter Text
Crowley worked in Sales. He had never intended to work in Sales. It had just sort of happened. One moment, there he’d been, a newly minted university graduate off to change the world, exquisitely useless Philosophy degree in hand, and now here he was, having sauntered vaguely downwards into a Hell that consisted mainly of cold-calling new customers and sucking up to existing ones.
He’d been in his current job, at the appallingly misnamed Celestial Paper Company, for almost five years now. It wasn’t a good job, even by Crowley’s now basement-level standards. His boss was an idiot, his coworkers were incompetent, there wasn’t even good office coffee. He should have found another job a long time ago. He could have, even. Crowley wasn’t a particularly good salesman, but he had an instinct for when to push a sale and when to let it be, and he interviewed very well. He could, he was fairly certain, go somewhere else and make twice his current (crap) salary, could have a better title, could even, maybe, have his own office instead of half a desk in an open floor plan.
But Crowley had no intention of leaving CPC, for several not-very-good reasons and one Very Good Reason. The Very Good Reason’s name was Aziraphale, and he was the receptionist. Aziraphale was blond and wore a bowtie every day and had a distressing tendency to smile at people as though they were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Crowley had borne the full force of one of those smiles on his first day at CPC, and had promptly fallen headlong in love. He’d thought that maybe familiarity would breed contempt, but, instead, his initial infatuation gave way to an enduring fondness. Every ridiculous and annoying habit that he discovered only served to endear Aziraphale to him more.
Unfortunately, on that first day, when Crowley had only just recovered from the full-force dazzle effect of Aziraphale’s smile, when his thoughts had just begun to morph from a silent scream of oh my GOD into a hazy fantasy about getting married on a hillside surrounded by ducks, he’d received the New Employee Manual from Beelzebub in Personnel and learned that intra-office relationships were strictly forbidden at CPC.
So Crowley had, for the last five years, existed in the torturous balance of knowing that he would never be able to date Aziraphale so long as they both worked at CPC, and fearing that if he were ever to leave the company, he’d lose the certainty of seeing Aziraphale every weekday between eight-thirty and five-thirty.
And all of that was without even getting into the glaring fact that Crowley wasn’t at all sure whether Aziraphale reciprocated his feelings. Or was even aware of them. Oh, there were the smiles, of course, and the way that Aziraphale always seemed genuinely delighted to see him in the morning. There was the softness in his voice when he thanked Crowley for picking up a coffee for him at the cafe downstairs, and the way he laughed even at Crowley’s not-particularly-funny jokes. But all those things could have, Crowley told himself stubbornly, whenever he was feeling particularly gooey and hopeful, just been Aziraphale being Aziraphale. After all, he smiled like that at everyone. Crowley thought the smiles that he got were different, but that was probably just wishful thinking. He had a tendency to do a lot of that, around Aziraphale.
So he lived in a state of painful uncertainty, plucking the petals off of an imaginary flower and hoarding every held glance and brush of fingertips and secret smile like they were priceless treasures, as though enough maybes might someday add up to yes.
And when the branch manager of CPC Swindon, Gabriel, came out of his office to announce that his latest stupid team-building idea was a Sales versus Operations trivia contest, Crowley’s first thought wasn’t how the hell is that supposed to facilitate team-building, or what bored demon invented team-building anyway, or I wonder how I can screw this up for everyone else. (Those were all thoughts he had; they just weren’t the first.) His first thought was, Aziraphale and I are going to be on different teams.
“So,” said Gabriel, in the cheery boom of someone who had no obligations outside of work and had certainly never considered that anyone else might, “we’ll all go down to the pub tomorrow at six. Trivia starts at six-thirty, it’ll be fun! Any questions?”
“Yeah,” said Michael in Accounting, “is this mandatory?”
A general murmur of assent rippled through the office.
“Well,” Gabriel said, as though he hadn’t even considered that anyone might not want to give up their Friday evening for a work trivia night (which, to be fair, he almost certainly hadn’t), “uh, I don’t know if it...I mean, can I…” He glanced over at the Personnel corner, where Beelzebub was emphatically shaking their head no. “Uh. No. Not mandatory, I guess.”
“Great,” said Michael, “then I’m out.”
“But!” Gabriel said hurriedly, “the prize for the winning team is an extra day off. With pay. So. Keep that in mind.”
The rumble of discontent turned quickly to a rumble of interest. Crowley could see Beelzebub practically smacking their head against the wall of their cubicle, presumably at the thought of all the paperwork an extra vacation day for half the office would cause. “Gabriel,” they said, with forced calm, “if I could have a word?”
Gabriel looked at them with the expression of a child caught with one hand in the cookie tin. “Uh. Can’t. Very busy. Right, so, back to work, everyone, and get ready for trivia night!” he said, and retreated quickly into his office. Beelzebub actually smacked their head against the cubicle wall.
Crowley let his gaze gravitate where it always did, to Reception. (He’d developed a crick in his neck from perfecting his watching-Aziraphale-without-looking-like-you’re-watching-him angle.) Aziraphale was typing industriously away on his computer, at what looked from a distance like work, but was probably the draft of the novel he’d told Crowley he was writing but had never let anyone read. With forced casualness, Crowley rose from his chair and strolled the few meters to reception, apparently (he hoped) solely engrossed in choosing which hard candy to pick from the bowl Aziraphale kept on his desk. (In fact, Crowley hated hard candy. He had, nevertheless, gained five pounds and two cavities since the beginning of his employment at CPC, because the candy dish proved an excellent excuse for conversation with its owner.)
“Oh, hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, as though this was the best thing that had happened to him all day.
“‘Lo,” Crowley muttered, stuffing a Werther’s Original into his mouth. “Wild about this trivia night thing, mmm? Are you, erm, are you thinking of going?”
“Oh, yes, I think so,” Aziraphale said warmly. “I’m quite good at trivia, actually. Are you? Going, I mean?”
Yes, Crowley wanted to say, I’d go anywhere you went. “Eh, not sure, day off sounds nice,” he said, instead.
“I think you—” Aziraphale’s phone rang, and he touched a finger to his lips and held it up to Crowley in a wait-a-minute gesture. “Celestial Paper Company, how may I direct your call?”
Crowley sucked on his candy and tried not to think about the way Aziraphale’s mouth had looked when he’d brought his finger up to it, about the way his lips had pursed, in a way that, if one were a stupid idiot reading signs that almost definitely weren’t there, one could interpret as a kiss.
“I’ll transfer you, please hold,” Aziraphale said, and dithered over the buttons of his phone for a few seconds before pressing a few of them and gingerly placing the phone back in its cradle. “Anyhow,” he said to Crowley, smiling slightly, “you should come. To trivia night. It’ll be fun.”
Crowley could imagine few things less fun than forced socializing with his co-workers, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve got anything—”
He was cut off by Aziraphale’s phone, ringing again. Aziraphale rolled his eyes and smiled a little and picked it up. “Celestial Paper Company, how may I—oh, it’s you again. Oh, it didn’t go through. Oh, I’m very sorry. If you’ll hold for just a moment—”
That was the thing about Aziraphale—he was a truly terrible receptionist. Crowley couldn’t count on his hands the number of clients he’d lost due to dropped calls and misplaced memos, faxes that had never reached their destination, mail that went mysteriously missing. It was a miracle, really, that he hadn’t been fired years ago. Crowley suspected this was largely due to Gabriel’s own incompetence, which apparently shielded him from seeing Aziraphale’s in a sort of double-jeopardy effect. Aziraphale seemed profoundly out of place, both in his job and in their office in general. He should have been a million other things, Crowley thought, a used bookstore owner or an absent-minded professor or a kindly librarian. Jobs that didn’t involve being organized, and keeping track of schedules, and understanding technology, none of which were Aziraphale’s forte. The man had apparently been born sixty-five. He still made notes on paper, for Heaven’s sake.
Aziraphale placed the phone down again, this time with a more triumphant air. “I think that’s done it,” he said, a note of doubt creeping into his voice. “You don’t think they’ve changed the commands again, do you?”
Crowley forbore from replying that “they” hadn’t once changed the phone commands in his whole tenure at CPC. “Could be,” he said neutrally. “Well. I just came by to get my, uh, my candy—” he gestured awkwardly to the lump in the corner of his mouth— “and I s’pose I’ll see you, then. At trivia night.”
“You’ll see me trounce you,” Aziraphale said, and sighed deeply as his phone rang again. “Celestial Paper—oh, it didn’t? I’m very sorry, phones must be acting up again…”
Crowley grabbed a Post-It note from Aziraphale’s desk and scrawled “It’s Transfer then 2 then the extension” on it, then slapped it to Aziraphale’s monitor.
Aziraphale mouthed “Thank you so much” silently, then said, “Oh yes, I see the problem now, this should do the trick,” pressed the buttons decisively, and placed the phone back down again. A few desks away, Hastur’s phone rang. “Oh, it worked,” Aziraphale said, delighted. “Thank you, you’re so clever.”
Crowley made a not-clever-at-all sort of noise and shrugged. “Maybe you won’t quite trounce me at trivia, then,” he said, “if, y’know, they have questions about phone commands—”
Aziraphale reached out towards his computer, delicately un-stuck the Post-It note, crumpled it up, and threw it in Crowley’s face. “Somehow I doubt that,” he said haughtily.
“Ow,” Crowley said, dramatically, despite the complete lack of pain induced by Post-It note assault. “Well, we’ll see tomorrow, then, won’t we?”
“I suppose we will,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley slouched back to his desk, the last few bits of sweetness from the candy sinking into his tongue, leaving behind only the sharp edges that pricked and stung.
In the end, just about everyone showed up for trivia night. The pub Gabriel had chosen was terrible, of course, with kitschy decor and too-expensive drinks and a clientele composed almost exclusively of businessmen in ill-fitting suits, because, really, who did trivia night on a Friday? Friday, Crowley thought, was for getting properly drunk, not for answering questions about who’d won the 1982 World Cup.
Gabriel had chivvied them all into sitting with their teammates, Sales at one table and Operations at another. Crowley looked around at his table and decided they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. He wasn’t much for trivia, himself, and he couldn’t believe that Hastur and Ligur, the two senior salesmen, were, either. Gabriel had declared himself part of the Sales team, despite the fact that he hadn’t actually sold anything since his promotion. While Crowley was a little more willing to believe that he might have a heretofore-unseen store of trivia ability, he didn’t hold out much hope. As for Sandalphon, who had started as a junior sales rep at the same time as Crowley and toadied his way up to become what he referred to as “Gabriel’s right-hand man” and Crowley referred to as “Gabriel’s errand boy,” he probably had some trivia knowledge. It just wasn’t likely to be anything you’d be asked about in a bar.
The Operations team, on the other hand; now that was a team that had a shot. Aziraphale had probably read the encyclopedia cover to cover and retained every detail (except the bits about how to avoid replying-all on an email), Michael and Uriel in Accounting both had maths degrees and certainly acted like they knew a lot of facts, Dagon, in customer service, was apparently a sports trivia fiend, and Beelzebub—well, Crowley wouldn’t put anything past Beelzebub. Underestimating them was a fool’s game.
“Right,” came an uncertain voice from near the bar, “I’m your host for tonight’s trivia game, I hope you’ve all brought your thinking caps and are ready to have a good time!”
Crowley glanced over to see what sort of sad sack was spending his Friday night hosting pub trivia, and saw pretty much exactly what he’d been expecting—a tall, skinny young man with messy dark hair and spectacles, who was apparently reading off a cue card.
“My name’s Newt,” the host continued— of course it is, Crowley thought—“and tonight’s game has eight rounds. As a reminder, after each round, the team with the highest score in that round gets a free round of drinks—so you’ve always got a chance! Now, erm, categories for the first round. We’ve got: Shakespeare, James Bond, History Since 1950, and The Book of Revelations. You have two minutes to assign a point value to each category based on your confidence level. And time starts...now.”
Crowley considered the sheet in front of him. “Let’s do James Bond for four points,” he said, grabbing the pencil, “I’m pretty confident—”
Gabriel cut him off. “Yes, yes. Bond at the top, then the recent history category, then Shakespeare, and we’ll do Revelations at the bottom, pretty sure no one knows anything about that.”
“Actually,” Sandalphon started, “I did a paper in school once—”
“Put it down last, Crowley,” Gabriel said, shooting Sandalphon a “shut up” look. Sandalphon shut up, and Crowley put Revelations down last.
“Right,” came Newt’s voice over the microphone, “that’s the two minutes up, time for the first question. Category is Shakespeare, question is: In which play can you find the line All the world’s a stage, and, for a bonus point, what character says it?”
“It’s As You Like It,” Sandalphon said immediately, “put As You Like It.”
Crowley put “As You Like It.”
“Anyone know what character?” he asked, looking around.
“Jaques,” said Hastur, and every head at the table swiveled to face him.
Crowley recovered from the shock the fastest. “Uh, right, I’ll put that down, I guess—”
“Hang on,” Gabriel said, pointing an accusing finger at Hastur’s lap. “You’re not allowed to Google it.”
Hastur quickly shoved the offending cellphone back into his pocket. “Worth a try,” he grumbled.
“Do not put that down,” Gabriel told Crowley. “We are not going to win by cheating.”
We’re not going to win at all, Crowley thought, without much bitterness. He glanced over at the other table, where Aziraphale’s blond head was bent over their sheet of paper, writing furiously. After a second, he glanced up—as though he could feel Crowley’s eyes on him—and smiled, and come on, that smile had to be for Crowley, it wasn’t self-delusion to think so, he was looking literally right at him—
“Hey,” Gabriel said, kicking Crowley under the table, “what’s the name of the love interest in Thunderball? Since you’re so confident.”
Crowley blinked, and lost eye contact with Aziraphale, and felt suddenly as though he’d been plunged into a bucket of cold water. “Huh?” he said.
“The love interest. In Thunderball. James Bond?”
“Uh. No idea,” Crowley said, not even lying, because at the moment his head had gone completely empty of everything that wasn’t Aziraphale smiled at me, right at me.
“Useless,” Gabriel muttered, “thought you knew things, went to university and all.”
Crowley had the dim realization, somewhere in the back of his brain, that it was potentially less than ideal that Gabriel now thought of him as useless, but couldn’t bring himself to care.
He did, however, notice when the Sales team came in dead last after the first round. Operations was winning, of course, not just over Sales but over every other team at the pub (to be fair, there were only about four other teams, and two of them had mixed up Malta and Yalta in the History Since 1950 question, so the competition wasn’t exactly fierce, but still). Newt welcomed them up to the bar for their free round of drinks, and Aziraphale stopped on the way back at the Sales table to clink his gin and tonic against Crowley’s barely-touched glass of terrible wine. “See? Trouncing you,” he said, under his breath.
“Being trounced,” Crowley said, raising his glass to Aziraphale in a kind of salute.
The Operations team proceeded to win every single one of the next six rounds. Which meant that, in the span of just over two hours, Aziraphale had acquired seven gin and tonics, and was what Crowley would (delightedly) describe as sloshed. (None of the other Operations team members had taken quite as full advantage of the free-drink-every-round winner’s perk as Aziraphale had. Crowley was pretty sure Michael had been drinking seltzer from the get-go, and Uriel had talked the bartender into letting her swap three free drinks into one actually top-shelf whiskey. Dagon had simply declined to go up after the first two drinks, electing instead to nurse an Irish coffee that had to be cold by now, and Beelzebub had been yielding half their drinks to Gabriel, a move that had puzzled Crowley at first, but that now, as an inebriated Gabriel botched a question on Queen’s Greatest Hits, made perfect, diabolical sense.)
“Okay,” said Newt, running a hand through his hair and matting it down again, “final round. Uh, we’ve got CPC Operations with a commanding lead, but don’t forget, winners of this round still get free drinks…” He looked nervously at Aziraphale, who was bobbing back and forth and humming something tuneless. “Although the bartender would like me to remind you that he reserves the right to refuse to serve anyone for any reason, thankyouverymuch. Onto our final categories, which are, uh, Elvis Presley, nineteenth-century literature, reptiles, and cricket—”
From the corner of his eye, Crowley saw Aziraphale lurch out of his chair, stumble into a wall, giggle to himself (apparently unhurt), and wend his way unsteadily towards the men’s room. And Crowley’s glass of wine must’ve had more of an impact on him than he’d realized, because without even really thinking about it, he muttered an excuse under his breath and followed.
The room was completely empty except for Aziraphale, who was standing in front of one of the sinks, fully clothed, looking in the mirror.
“You all right?” Crowley asked, softly, letting the door fall closed behind him.
Aziraphale turned to look at him with a widening smile. “I am beating you,” he said, proudly, “might not know how t’transfer a call but I know my Shakespeare,” and he took a step towards Crowley, whose brain went into fight-or-flight mode and somehow managed to select freeze.
“Didn’t really doubt you,” he managed to say, “congratulations on the extra day off.”
Aziraphale stepped closer, again; he was close enough to touch now, and mercifully Crowley’s brain hadn’t figured out how to send signals to his limbs yet, or he’d have reached out and taken Aziraphale’s face in his hands and—
“Look,” Aziraphale said, as though he’d suddenly discovered something astoundingly beautiful, “I’ve made sexy Crowley from Sales congratulate me—”
Crowley felt a whoosh somewhere at the base of his stomach, and he could tell that the sensation was about to spread to all sorts of extremely inconvenient places, starting with, but certainly not limited to, his heart. He finally, finally managed to get his arms working again, and he was just beginning to lift one hand (solely for the purposes of placing it reassuringly on Aziraphale’s shoulder) when Aziraphale abruptly turned a funny colour, said “Oh dear,” and vomited all over Crowley’s feet.
Crowley unceremoniously regained complete working control over all his limbs and used it to steer Aziraphale in the direction of the nearest toilet. “Come on,” he said, nonsensically, “that’s all right, just breathe, now.”
Aziraphale vomited again, this time, mercifully, in the toilet. Crowley saw that he had latched on well enough to the bowl and got up to grab a paper towel, which he dampened with warm water. He returned to the stall where Aziraphale was hunched over, gripping the toilet with both hands, and carefully placed one hand on his back.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said wretchedly, “I’ve probably ruined your shoes.”
He had, and they had been far more expensive than Crowley could afford, but he just made a soft generic comfort-noise and reached up to dab at Aziraphale’s face with the damp paper towel. Aziraphale let out a little sigh, and Crowley jerked away in surprise, but Aziraphale turned his head away from the toilet bowl to face him and said softly, “Oh, please don’t stop, it feels nice, that’s all.”
So Crowley sunk from his awkward crouch into a fully seated position, and resumed patting at Aziraphale’s face, until he was reasonably sure no more vomiting was going to occur.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, again, once Crowley had risen to throw out the paper towel.
Crowley just sort of shrugged— he’s not going to remember any of this tomorrow anyway, he thought, half-relieved, half-disappointed—and said, “Happens to all of us,” and then, allowing himself to smile directly at Aziraphale, “and besides, there’s a silver lining.”
“What’s that?” Aziraphale asked.
“Well, you’ve won an extra day off, haven’t you? So you’ve got an extra day to recover.”
“That’s right,” Aziraphale said, smiling again, “I have.”
“D’you need a ride home,” Crowley asked, cautiously, “or—”
Aziraphale shook his head, winced, and shook it again, more carefully. “Michael’s got me, she lives nearby. Actually—” he staggered to his feet— “should prob’ly go find her, make sure she hasn’t left.”
“Right,” said Crowley, and he was seized with the impulse to shake hands, or something equally definitive and ridiculous. “See you Tuesday, then, I s’pose.”
“See you Tuesday,” said Aziraphale, and walked carefully out of the room.
Crowley stared after him a minute, then set about the task of de-vomiting his shoes. They hadn’t even been waterproofed, he realized.
All the same. The night hadn’t been half bad.