Chapter Text
Muriel is doing a fantastic job!
Muriel is having a wonderful time! Muriel sold a book to a human person who wandered into the shop looking for the loo! (Muriel offered to let the human person use the loo upstairs, but it turned out it had never actually been connected to the water pipes, so Muriel did a teensy little miracle and everything was just fine!) The human person bought a book on owls and Muriel didn’t know how much to charge for it (or, really, how money works at all… all those little bits of metal and paper? Hmm) so Muriel just traded it for the human person’s lovely silky scarf! Now Muriel’s favourite colour is lovely silky blue!
Also Muriel would quite like to find out how you can tell if a body is a dead body, please and thank you ever so much.
This is what Muriel tells Nina the Human Coffee-Seller, ten days after taking over A.Z. Fell and Co. All the words spill out in a rush because there’s ever such a lot to say, even though Muriel’s corporation does need at least a little bit of oxygen at times, but Nina listens to it all very carefully, Muriel can tell, with her head tilted to one side and her eyes narrowed in concentration while she dries all her lovely clean coffee mugs.
“Have you… killed someone?” Nina asks, when Muriel has finished. “Or are you just getting really into true crime?”
“Oh no, I don’t like crimes at all,” explains Muriel. “Not even the false ones. It’s only… Well, it’s Mr. Crowley you see.”
“Shit, has he killed someone?” Nina asks, putting down her dish cloth.
“No, no. He just… isn’t moving?”
“Jesus Christ - sorry, is that, I don’t know, a microaggression against angels? Okay, whatever, just - tell me what happened. Here.” Nina looks around her lovely cafe, checks that nobody is watching, and then lifts the glass hat thing off one of the plates on her lovely cafe counter. She hands Muriel a cookie. “Free of charge. Don’t tell anyone, or they’ll all want one. Now, what the fuck’s happened?”
Nibbling on the edges of the lovely cookie, Muriel takes a deep breath and explains what the fuck happened.
*
On the seventh day of bookshop management, Muriel rested.
It felt appropriate. And it was raining, anyway, so Muriel flipped the sign to ‘Closed’ and curled up in the bed that had belonged to Jim, because it smelled so comfortingly of home. (How funny! That a smell could belong to a person and that a smell could evoke an emotion! Heaven had no scent, Muriel was almost certain, and Muriel had certainly never been close enough to Gabriel to sniff him. But somehow here on Earth, Jim (who was so much nicer than Gabriel!) had left a smell on a blanket and when Muriel lay down on the blanket and inhaled deeply, it was just like being 1,000 years old again, with so much scrivening to look forward to!)
And Muriel had been enjoying holding a lovely warm cuppertea, and listening to the rain, and watching the sky get dark through the windows, and thinking about all the wonderful books downstairs that Muriel had barely even begun to read, and practicing at beginning to maybe almost nod off (sleeping was so strange and difficult! How amazing that on Earth even babies can do it!), when there was a sudden commotion of noise from down the stairs.
It sounded exactly like a pile of very large, very old books falling over. (Well, old by book standards, anyway.)
(“Get on with it,” Nina says.
Muriel thinks Nina might be the perfect friend.)
So Muriel imbued the teaspoon with a… teaspoonful of holy energy and snuck down the stairs, spoon first, ready to defend the shop from whatever dastardly ruffians were attacking the books. Muriel could almost already imagine what the Metatron would say, praising Muriel for being so brave and for performing the very important task he had given Muriel so well. Maybe Muriel would get a medal!
What Muriel got, at the bottom of the staircase, was a dark shape, sitting on the floor surrounded by books. The dark shape was muttering.
“Shit, shit, bloody, shitting, argh,” the dark shape was muttering, to be precise.
“Hello?” said Muriel.
“Angel?” said the dark shape.
“Muriel,” said Muriel.
The dark shape hiccuped, or something close to a hiccup, a little sort of choked off sound, and it waved a hand. “Let there be… might as well bloody let there be bloody light.”
In the light, Muriel lowered the teaspoon, and the demon Crowley lowered his hand.
He was sagged against a bookcase, his head hanging down so low his sunglasses were almost but not quite dangling off his nose, and his legs sprawled out all askew like he’d tripped over himself. The top shelf of the bookcase was empty, because the books were all the ground. One was in Crowley’s lap, open, and he was gripping a page very tightly.
It was a Bible, Muriel could tell. (Angels can always tell when a book is a Bible. Or when it’s a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto, for some reason.)
“You,” Crowley said. “Still here, then? Good f’r… good f’r you. Work ethic! ‘m sure the big angel upstairs’ll be happy. Don’t mind me, I’m just… Just gonna. Sit, a bit.”
“On the floor?” Muriel asked.
Crowley made the noise like a hiccup again, and then giggled. It was not a good sound. “Always relived, relayed - relied on this floor. And it always relied on me. Me and this floor, we’re an usss.”
Muriel edged closer and crouched down next to the demon. Crowley did not smell like Jim or home at all, but like something hot and sour.
“I could get you a blanket.”
“No, no blanket, I’m a demon! Demons don’t need blankets.” His finger clenched on the page he was holding, wrinkling the paper - it was rag paper, good and thick and not easily creased, but Muriel took an alarmed step forwards all the same. Crowley held up a finger. “Y’know what I was gonna do, Murrrriel? I was gonna tear up all his precious bloody Bibles! Just like what he did to my ... - not that I even have one, all that, bleurgh, pumping, feelings. Demon! But if I did have, then he, he…”
Crowley trailed off. He rolled his head back against the side of the bookshelf, lifting his chin up to stare at - well, maybe to stare at Muriel or maybe off into the middle distance, but with the dark glass of his exciting dark glasses, who could say? (Only Crowley, Muriel supposed.)
“Can’t bring m’self to. Wanna, but… can’t, even after he - Wasssat about, hm?”
“Or some hot chocolate?” Muriel suggested.
“C’mon, you’re’n angel, side of goodnesss ‘n truth ‘n light, blah blah blaah. Why can’t I just tear up a book or two, hmm? Nice ‘n demonic.”
“Well… do you like books?”
“What? No. Hate ‘em. Piss off.”
Snarling, Crowley gripped the page tightly again. He made another terrible little sound, let the page go and smoothed his hand over it, then shoved the whole book off of his lap and onto the wooden floor. He dropped his head down and stuck his hands into his hair. His hands were shaking, Muriel noticed. From all the book excitement!
(“Sure,” Nina says.)
“What don’t you have?” Muriel asked, once Crowley’s excited-book-shakes weren’t quite so… shaky.
“Hm?”
“You said you were going to tear up Mr. Aziraphale’s ‘precious bloody Bibles’, just like he did to your something that you don’t even have. And then you said ‘bleurgh, pumping, feelings.’”
“Oh.” Crowley tugged on his hair. “Said that, did I? Dunno. Blanket, prob’ly.”
Muriel knew all about blankets and feelings! This was going so well!
“Why don’t you come upstairs and we get you a nice blanket, then?”
“Nrg,” Crowley muttered.
It took a bit of effort to get Crowley up the spiral staircase, because Muriel couldn’t miracle two bodies at once and Crowley couldn’t really stay upright without hands holding him and occasionally dragging him up the next step. But eventually they made it to the top of the stairs and Crowley wobbled right out of Muriel’s hands and through the door Muriel had never opened into the room Muriel had never been in, where he flopped face-down onto a bed.
The bed was big and metal, and it was covered in a patchwork blanket that looked ever so soft. Crowley’s feet stuck off the end of the bed, while Crowley was busy breathing very hard, his shoulders jerking up and down. He was probably smelling the blanket, Muriel decided. Maybe it smelled of his home!
After a little while, Crowley stopped breathing quite so hard. He kicked his shoes off, curled onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chin, and then he grabbed the corner of the blanket and dragged it slowly over himself, until all Muriel could see from the doorway was a patchwork-covered lump in the middle of the mattress, with red hair sticking out the top.
And after that, Crowley stopped moving at all.
*
While Muriel explains, Nina finishes drying coffee mugs, and puts away the dry mugs, and serves some customers, and makes some coffee, and wipes some tables, always with her head cocked like she’s listening very hard, which makes Muriel very happy. And Muriel nibbles neatly around the edges of the special free cookie (and Muriel doesn’t tell anyone! Or else they’ll all want one!), which tastes so brightly of burnt sugar and the thing called chocolate.
(Eating! It’s so strange! But it’s quite fun too, now Muriel’s getting used to it! Teeth!!!)
“So he’s been in Mr. Fell’s flat for two days?” Nina says, once Muriel has finished explaining. “And he hasn’t moved once?”
“I don’t think so! I brought him lots of cupperteas, but he didn’t even want to hold them. So I, er, well, I started putting teaspoons on him.”
“Teaspoons?”
“Yes! So that in case he did move, they would all fall off and I would hear it. But… the spoons are all still where I put them, even the ones on his face.”
“That… that’s sort of clever, actually.”
“Thank you!”
Nina looks at her watch and waves at one of the other Human Coffee Sellers. She holds up a hand and one finger, then sticks up her thumb (which means hooray!), then turns back to Muriel.
“I’ll be over in five, okay?”
“Okay! Thank you for-” Muriel cuts off that sentence, looks around the cafe, and finishes in a whisper. “Thank you for the cookie.”
Muriel winks and gives Nina a big thumbs up. (Hooray!)
*
Five minutes later, just as promised, Nina is standing on the doorstep with an enormous mug in her hands.
“Six shots of espresso,” she explains, when Muriel lets her inside. “Thought it couldn’t hurt.”
She follows Muriel up the spiral staircase and into the bedroom, where Crowley is a lump on the bed beneath a patchwork blanket and 73 teaspoons. It’s a lovely bedroom, Muriel thinks, even with all the teaspoons (and honestly Muriel quite likes teaspoons. They’re so small!) and now that the door has been opened, Muriel keeps it as nice and tidy as the rest of the shop. But there’s something about the sight of Crowley curled under the blanket that makes Muriel… what is the word? Sad? Even though Muriel has opened the windows wide to let in the lovely fresh London air with all its interesting sounds and smells and occasionally pigeons, the whole lovely room just keeps on feeling - yes, that must be the word - sad.
“Crowley?” Nina says. “You alive in there?”
“I don’t think dead bodies can talk,” Muriel explains, in case Nina didn’t know.
“Thanks, Muriel,” says Nina. (Muriel is helping!)
She sets the enormous mug of six shots of espresso down on the nightstand, next to a framed sketch of what looks like an angel with bat wings lying on a cliff. The angel looks very serious. And has no clothes on! How strange! But someone has written underneath it, ‘Monsieur Fell, with thanks for his most helpful suggestions, Gustave Dore’, so it must have been a gift. How nice!
“Crowley?” Nina says again.
She crouches down next to the bed, plucks a couple of teaspoons off of Crowley’s face and inhales deeply, wrinkling her nose.
“Ah,” she says. “Don’t worry, Muriel. I know what this is.”
“Oh no. Is it a dead body?”
“Nope. It’s…”
Nina very carefully selects a spoon, turning it from side to side, weighing it in her hand, her brow furrowed in deep thought. Then she whacks Crowley on the nose with it.
“Argh!” says Crowley.
He jerks upright and there’s a cavalcade of noise upon noise upon tinkling noise as all 73 (less one) spoons slide right off of him and all over the floor. Crowley flails, one hand ramming his sunglasses more firmly onto his face and the other grabbing at spoons.
“A giant fucking hangover,” Nina says.
“Spoons?” Crowley says to the spoons in his hand.
“Hello, Crowley!” says Muriel.
Crowley drops the spoons.
“Sssshit,” he hisses, the dark black circles of his glasses moving from Nina to Muriel to the spoons to the door and back again. He licks his lips. While Muriel watches, he fiddles with the edge of the patchwork blanket then jerks his hand away like his fingers are too hot.
(Muriel touched a candle flame last week! It was exciting!)
“Shit,” Crowley says again, but quietly.
“Right then. Muriel?” Nina says. “Do you think you could go make us all a nice cup of tea? I think that would be really helpful.”
“Oh yes! I’m getting so good at making it. I almost never forget the tea leaves now.”
“Atta… angel.”
Crowley’s dark glasses are very definitely not looking at anything in the room except for his own hands now, as if he is pretending there isn’t anything in the room except for his glasses and his hands and the patchwork blanket, which he’s stroking with the very tips of his fingers. He doesn’t even look up when Nina sits down on the edge of the bed, right next to him, and says his name again.
“Crowley?” Nina ducks her head, trying to meet his eyes - or, well, his glasses, anyway. “Tea?”
“Nn,” Crowley says.
Nina looks back around at Muriel and smiles in a very friendly way that somehow nevertheless says TEA, so Muriel gives her and Crowley a big double thumbs-up (one thumb each, which means hooray hooray!)
Muriel goes and makes the cupperteas. It takes a couple of attempts, because the first time Muriel forgets to boil the water (and Aziraphale had explained that miracling it hot afterwards was cheating and didn’t taste right, when he had still lived here) and then the second time Muriel forgets to strain the tea, so the lovely china cups end up all full of wet hot leaves floating in the wet hot tea. This time, Muriel cheats and miracles the tea leaves away, but that makes the bookshelves disappointed and that makes Muriel feel guilty.
The third attempt, Muriel forgets to put the milk in first, which also makes the bookshelves disappointed, but Muriel blows a raspberry at them.
“It tastes just the same if you pour the milk in afterwards,” Muriel tells the bookshelves.
At last, there are three lovely cupperteas arranged on their saucers, with teaspoons and lumps of sugar on the side. Muriel puts it all on a lovely tartan-patterned tea tray, with a plate of biscuits that Muriel found in the cupboard. (Best before 1966, but miraculously still fresh.) It’s quite heavy and Muriel doesn’t want to try miracling upstairs with three cupperteas, in case it turns into attempt number four, so it’s slow, careful going up the spiral staircase.
That’s why Muriel hears some of what is said.
“-know how it feels,” Nina is saying. “I do.”
“You don’t. Don’t have a bloody clue. It’s. This is your fault, you and the blonde one and your stupid human advice.”
“Okay, I might not get the… longevity of it. But the emotions? Lost love, heartbreak? That’s humanity through and through.”
“I,” Crowley growls very slowly, “don’t do heartbreak. I am a demon. Demons don’t. Do. Heartsss.”
Nina snorts. “Come off it.”
There’s a pause. Halfway up the stairs, Muriel holds the handles of the tray very tightly. There’s a clattering of spoons, and Nina says something Muriel can’t hear, because Crowley is storming out of the lovely bedroom with the lovely patchwork blanket still around his shoulders. Crowley storms down the spiral staircase and storms right past Muriel and the tray of lovely cupperteas, and he knocks the tray right out of Muriel’s hands.
They fly up, and then they fall down. (Gravity!)
The cups and saucers shatter when they hit the floor. Tea flies everywhere, up and down, splattering Muriel’s face and splashing the books and the rugs and the trailing ends of the patchwork blanket, and the broken biscuits scatter all over the place, and so do the spoons. Nina appears at the top of the stairs, with a hand over her mouth.
Crowley almost stops walking, but then he carries on down the stairs, his shiny shoes crunching on bone china and biscuits.
Muriel’s eyes are burning. (What a strange sensation!)
“You broke Aziraphale’s lovely cups and saucers,” Muriel says.
Crowley pauses on the bottom step. He turns and looks back up at Muriel, tea dripping down his face. His hands are twisted very tightly in the patchwork blanket, as tightly as they had twisted the pages of the Bible on the evening of the seventh day. Tighter, even.
“Good,” he snarls.
He turns back around and storms out of the shop.
Muriel goes back down the stairs and carefully miracles the cups back together. Muriel isn’t very good at material objects, so the edges are wonky and the cracks are visible and Muriel’s eyes are still burning. (Very strange indeed!)
Nina comes down the stairs as well. She finds a mop and a dustpan and brush and sweeps up all the tea and biscuits.
Together, they fish the teaspoons out from under the bookshelves, but the tartan-patterned tea tray is nowhere to be found.
“At least he has a blanket now,” Muriel says, while they’re putting all the spoons back in the teaspoon section of the cutlery drawer. (Not to be confused with the dessert spoon section or the tablespoon section!)
“Is that… important?”
“That’s what he was so upset about when he came here, I think. That demons don’t have blankets.”
“Oh, they do,” Nina says. “They definitely do.”
*
That night, before getting into Jim’s old bed where the blanket smells of home, Muriel carries a slightly wobbly cuppertea on a slightly wobbly saucer into the big empty bedroom, with the big empty bed. The sheets are all creased from where Crowley had curled up and - what had Nina called it? - hanged over his patchwork blanket.
Curious, Muriel crouches down and sniffs the bedsheets and the pillows, expecting to catch the scent of Heaven or maybe even Hell (scary! But a little bit exciting!) or wherever Crowley’s home might be.
How odd, then, that it just smells like the bookshop.
