Archive of Our Own

September 1735, Reading, England.

Crowley had been in Amsterdam for just long enough to remember why he liked it and left before he discovered a reason not to. It was a good strategy, he thought. He didn’t get bored of a place if he left before it got boring; he didn’t get attached if he left before he formed attachments [1]. Now that he had returned across the Channel, it was time for the angel to hold up his end of the Arrangement. Crowley had done both their jobs; now it was time for Aziraphale to write their memos. Aziraphale writing the memos, of course, meant that they had to meet up so Crowley could tell him what to write in them.

This was the excuse Crowley had for pounding on the door of a blasted Berkshire manor at half three in the afternoon on a Saturday, growing more irritated by the second that Aziraphale had chosen such a large house without employing any actual human servants to do things like answer bloody doors.

His fist finally met air when Aziraphale sharply pulled the door open, crossly demanding “What the blazes do you want?” before his entire face lit up like a solar flare. “Crowley!” he chirped. “You’re a full week earlier than I expected! Do come in.”

Crowley did so come, following Aziraphale through the sparse entrance and parlor to the drawing room. The difference between the spaces was night and day—or Heaven and Earth. The wide, marble-white, brightly lit, nearly empty space of the parlor was worlds apart from the tiny, cluttered space Aziraphale actually lived in, filled tip-to-top with trinkets and knickknacks and the general detritus of fifty-seven centuries of living on earth. Aziraphale unburied a Chesterfield for Crowley to flop onto, and Crowley simply smiled his cheekiest smile when Aziraphale scolded him to take more care with it.

“Angel,” he promised, “if I bust your leather couch, I’ll fix it and I’ll buy you another one, how about it?”

“Replacing my sofa would be the least of your problems,” Aziraphale said severely, settling his Champaign-pink-coated bum on a chair that matched nothing else in the room and was at least 300 years old. Crowley believed him.

“Oh yeah?” Crowley taunted anyway. “What would you have me do instead? Buy you a country estate? Take your next dozen baptisms?” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, as though seriously considering it. Crowley grinned; Aziraphale hated babies, although he wouldn’t admit it even under pain of discorporation. “Maybe,” Crowley dropped his voice to a theatrical whisper, “I could treat you to dinner every night for a century, hm?”

Judging by his shiver, Crowley had struck gold. Aziraphale was, after all, a greedy thing, an aesthete who enjoyed the fine things in life and knew Crowley could give them to him. Aziraphale knew how much Crowley liked to give them, enjoyed being the center of Crowley’s attention. The demon in him ached with pleasure at the thought of watching Aziraphale eat, indulging base and bestial desires, and doing it for him, doing it because he knew Crowley liked to watch. Crowley watched now, as Aziraphale closed his eyes for a moment, as both of them imagined what it would be like to indulge so completely for so long.

Then Aziraphale opened his eyes again, and the moment faded. “Don’t be ridiculous, Crowley,” Aziraphale chided without any conviction. Crowley stuck out his tongue, making it fork at the end because he could.

“I’m not being ridiculous!” he said, ridiculously. “I could start it tonight, so I’ve already got some banked in for when I’m supposed to start paying you back.”

Aziraphale arched his eyebrows. “Are you planning to break my furniture?”

“No,” Crowley argued, “I’m just saying that, hypothetically, if I were to in the future on accident, because I trip over one of your mounds of junk you keep around the place, I’d already have one or two in the bag. Besides, it’s not as though you’ve got anything else going on tonight.”

“Oh, but I do!” Aziraphale grinned, pleased with himself. “I’m dining at Mapledurham tonight.” He leaned in conspiratorially, wiggling his shoulders. It took all of Crowley’s self-control to remain aloof and jaded. “I’m a member of a literary society, you see.”

“Are you now,” Crowley sneered. “And I suppose you’ll be in good company getting crumbs all over the books?”

 “Not at all, my dear fellow. We shan’t read the books over dinner; we’ll discuss them.” Crowley raised his eyebrows skeptically. “The human perspective is not one to be dismissed so easily, my dear boy. In fact,” Aziraphale said with all the unsubtle mischievousness of an angel who had concocted a plan, discarded it as impossible, and had suddenly seen an opening, “why don’t you come with me, hm? I daresay you would find the conversation enlightening.”

“Is this a new method of demon-smiting, Aziraphale? Boring me to death?” Crowley groaned, delighted.

Aziraphale’s smug grin practically sparkled.

Aziraphale was really enjoying this decade, Crowley thought. His clothes were contemporary, and his smiles were bright and genuine. On the carriage ride over to this young woman’s house, he’d chattered happily about the societal goings-on of this little corner of society he’d ensconced himself in, with its poetry and philosophy and little harmless scandals. By the time the carriage arrived at Mapledurham [2], Aziraphale was practically glowing. Crowley tipped his tinted lenses down to check that Aziraphale wasn’t literally glowing with Divine Light. No: just metaphorically.

Aziraphale introduced him as simply Mr Crowley, an old acquaintance who had just arrived unexpectedly from the Netherlands, which was true enough. The hostess, introduced to him as Mistress Martha Blount and thereafter called by Aziraphale simply “my dear Patty,” was graciously accepting of an uninvited surprise guest to her little salon, and the assembled gentlepeople seemed to take his presence in similar stride.

It was… nice, almost, being somewhere with Aziraphale as something like a social unit.

“My dear Patty’s darling young friend Lady Betty,” a middle aged woman with a face made for smiling, was his particular favorite new acquaintance for the way her eyes widened in understanding when they met, like he was the solution to a riddle she had been attempting to solve for some time, and whose first words to him were a conspiratorial, “so you must be the famous gentleman that Mr Fell visits so often in London; we’ve heard scandalously little about you, no matter that your name is so rarely far from his lips.” Flattery, Crowley had always said, would get you anywhere, and so would turning Aziraphale’s ears a bright and unmistakable pink that clashed horribly with his coat.

Her brother was an unexcitingly beige sort of person, the kind of politician who succeeds on the basis of being entirely unobjectionable by virtue of being entirely forgettable, but the sister-in-law was a vivacious and cultured woman who leant him interest simply by standing next to him—and a old friend of Crowley’s from Court, no less.

“If it isn’t the Countess of Suffolk,” he said, dipping into a bow. “My congratulations for finding a more suitable match.”

Her smile was bright, even as she politely sidestepped the comment. “Mr Crowley, I’m surprised to find you here! I thought you disliked reading?” she teased, having caught him at it more than once after his having publicly declared a lack of interest to irritate a particularly bookish vicar.

“Well, I dropped in on my friend Mr Fell, and found myself dragged here quite by surprise,” he said, earning a look from Aziraphale, who he nudged good-humoredly. “But with such fine female company, I’m sure I can find a way to amuse myself.”

“My George knows the feeling, I’m sure,” Lady Henrietta laughed, and her George obediently stuck his hand out for Crowley to shake. “But the gentlemen are just as enlightened. Have you met Darty yet?” When Crowley raised his eyebrows, she grinned. “Oh, Mr Fell just hates him,” she faux-whispered, with a wink aimed at angel and demon both. “They’re both always scheming for the best glass of wine, or the choicest cut of the steak, and only one or the other of them can win, of course. Wait here, darlings,” and she swept off to fetch him.

Crowley grinned widely at Aziraphale, who looked quite put-out at Lady Henrietta’s gregarious betrayal. “I think I like your friends already, angel. Gluttony, pride, conspiracy, at least one adulteress. Love me an adulteress.”

“The Queen was fully aware and approved of the relationship,” Aziraphale sniffed, and Crowley’s grin grew wider.

“And I’m sure the slights toward our favourite Countess weren’t due to envy and jilted pride in the slightest,” he jeered, and Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “And look, here comes the one giving you a run for your gluttony money!”

The one called Darty really was a particular unfavourite of Aziraphale’s, it seemed, and an incorrigible flirt. Crowley was endlessly amused by Aziraphale’s pointed and increasingly flustered pivots around the balding human’s clear interest and assumptions of compatibility between himself and an immortal being older than the universe, watching it all go down with a wolfish smile until Aziraphale sent him a pleading glance, “save me” written in his eyes.

“I think I’d like to take a turn about the room,” he announced, and offered his arm to Aziraphale. “Coming, angel?”

Aziraphale gripped his arm like a life preserver thrown from a sinking ship. “Of course. Why, there are still guests you haven’t yet met, aren’t there? Atrociously rude of me. Begging your pardon,” he said to the air, and practically dragged Crowley with him to the walls. Ladies Henrietta and Betty laughed at them from behind their fans. Doubtless this little show would give them grist for the gossip mill about Reading for weeks. All in a day’s work, and he wasn’t even clocked in, really. This was fully extra-curricular, just between him and his favorite angel.

“So, this is a literary society, then? They haven’t said a word about books except to nag me for not having read any, and you can do that anytime,” Crowley teased, and Aziraphale swatted his arm.

“Well, the literary discussion is principally conducted via correspondence, really,” he admitted. “This is more a private salon than a book club. But everyone is fairly literarily accomplished, except George, but that’s to be excused, as he makes Lady Henrietta so blessedly happy.”

“How did such a boring bloke manage to marry our Countess, anyway?”

“Opposites attract, I suppose,” Aziraphale recited in the tones he used for invoking Heavenly mandates he was particularly wishy-washy about, then sighed. “Or perhaps he’s simply the first man to have ever been properly kind to her, no strings attached.”

They walked in silence for a moment, each thinking of a wing over his head, kindness offered nearly off-handedly, so long ago.

“I was quite serious, you know, about introducing you to the last guest, if dear Patty doesn’t beat me to it,” Aziraphale said. “You’ll like him, I think. He gardens.”

As they neared the table upon which stood the drinks and nibbles, a very short man whose hair was quite as curly as Aziraphale’s and powdered until it was nearly as pale was talking with their hostess, who introduced Crowley and Mr Alexander Pope, poet and satirist.

Crowley knew Pope by reputation. He’d read some of his work, mostly while skiving off. 1730 had been a good year for it; he and Aziraphale had both been assigned to making sure Townsend resigned from government and left Walpole up, and the humans had gone and done it independently without either of them having to lift a feather. He’d lounged around his fashionable home in Mayfair and looked for vulgar and controversial art to take credit for downstairs and had discounted Pope’s little Peri Bathous on the basis of it being too clever for Hell to get.

“Fell here tells me you garden,” Crowley said, instead of any of that.

The little man smiled in a way that somehow managed to make his dark, deeply set eyes seem to hold almost an inner light. “Sometimes, I think Fell is the only one who remembers this,” he said. “I am not sure whether to be flattered at the recollection or offended that such a trifling hobby ranks so much more highly in his estimation than my literary work.”

Crowley shrugged and was surprised as Aziraphale smiled conspiratorially at them both. “I have always had a fondness for gardens,” he said in a theatrical whisper. “Haven’t I, Crowley?”

An odd expression passed over Pope’s face, and Crowley realized: this human knew what they were, or at least knew what Aziraphale was and had deduced something resembling the truth about Crowley.

“Well,” he said, drawing out the short word across several syllables, “you rather liked the very first one, I suppose, and the rest have all been pale imitations.”

“Tosh. Nebuchadnezzar had a nice one, as I recall.”

“Ah yes. The seventh wonder of the world, and you tutted and complained about the fruit selection.”

“You can’t really expect to have a garden without an apple tree, now can you?” Aziraphale asked, a smile on his lips.

“Or two,” Crowley agreed, happy to concede the old argument on these terms. “And what do you think of this fine gentleman’s?”

Aziraphale smiled condescendingly. “He does have an apple tree at Twickenham, do you not, Mr Pope?”

“That, at least,” Pope said levelly, “though I am sure that such trifles do not hold a candle to Babylon.”

Mr Pope’s face through the whole little interaction had been calm and unsurprised, as though they had been discussing Kensington and Kew rather than Eden and Babylon. Aziraphale rarely let his mask slip, preferring to be seen by humans as a mere eccentric even to the point of memory wipes and moving house, things he loathed to do for any other reason. He must really like and trust this Pope fellow, Crowley thought, to let him continue to know, to introduce him to the Serpent of Eden himself at a party. He followed his curiosity. If he trusted anything, he trusted Aziraphale. His judgement of character could shade on naïve at first meeting, but he was remarkably perceptive over the course of a longer acquaintance; if Aziraphale thought Mr Pope was safe to trust and associate with as his true self, Crowley would follow his lead.

Crowley tipped his glass toward Mr Pope in acknowledgement. “The real genius there was in the irrigation, really. What kind of set-up do you have in your gardens, then?”

They talked at some length about water and salinity levels and soil ratios, boring Aziraphale to tears no doubt, but his angelic warmth remained solidly at Crowley’s right side through the whole thing, chatting with the ladies as they gradually created a little circle. The conversation on that side really did eventually turn to books, even discussing recent translations from Greek, which finally prised him and Pope from their horticultural discussion and back into the main swing of things.

“And of course,” Lady Betty was saying, “I tried to stick with a hexameter, but it is ever so tricky, is it not, Alexander? Your version was not, I don’t think.”

“No, my lady; I used iambic pentameter.”

“Fitting!” said Darty. “Good old Shakespeare, can’t beat the classics. Old Lewis is quite mad over him, you know.” Mr Pope’s face darkened in a way Crowley noted with professional interest. “Found that old lost one, didn’t he?”

“Lewis Theobald has never produced the texts he is supposed to have of Cardenio at all,” Mr Pope said in a tone so icy it would freeze Pandemonium. No wonder Aziraphale liked him. “He ‘found’ it as much as I ‘found’ my Dunciad.”

As Mr Pope scoffed, Aziraphale looked sheepish. Crowley raised an eyebrow, and Aziraphale leaned in and whispered, “It’s my copy Theobald referenced.” The guilt on Aziraphale’s face was mixed with the pride he felt over his beloved books. “That memo I had you send to headquarters in ’28. It was pure accident, I assure you.” Crowley shook his head to keep himself from breaking into laughter.

“And this, gentlemen, is why we don’t cross Alex,” laughed Lady Henrietta, her exuberance the perfect cover for Aziraphale’s admission. “He’ll skewer you mercilessly and make a mint doing it.”

“I did rather like your new poem, though, the Essay on Man,” Aziraphale’s dear Patty said, transparently attempting to salve the masculine egos in her parlor. “I was so glad you admitted authorship, my dear.”

“Yes! ‘Hope springs eternal,’ such a pretty phrase,” said George, who earned a patronizing smile from everyone in the room, except Lady Henrietta, whose smile was genuinely adoring. Aziraphale’s friends were apparently the kind of sickeningly nice people that also knew they were much smarter than average and relished having someone who couldn’t keep up around to remind themselves how clever and civil they were. It seemed a role George was content to fill.

“Thank you, George,” Mr Pope said graciously. “I hope you found it instructive?”

“Oh yes, jolly instructive,” George agreed. “Isn’t that so, my dear?”

“We loved it,” Lady Henrietta gushed. “Betty and I talked over the second epistle for just ages.”

“We did,” Lady Betty agreed, in breathless tones more suited to gossip of a torrid affair. Their application to the discussion of a poem of moral instruction was hysterically funny, though Crowley was able, just, to contain his laughter. “I rather think you are correct, Mr Pope, that it is to our societal advantage to study the sciences and cultivate reason. But you must think so lowly of our sex, to think us charmed by lust!”

“Must he?” asked their hostess before Mr Pope could answer the charge, her smile beginning to strain.

“No, madam, I take your point,” Mr Pope replied. “It was not meant as a slight, I assure you, but an inversion. Oh; we are upsetting Patty, I think. Mr Crowley, you have just come back from the continent?”

The subject neatly changed, the spotlight back on the new face in their midst, the conversation in the salon once again wandered, as glasses of wine were endlessly refilled and small sandwiches and treats circulated by the servants of the house, invisible as mice but nearly as numerous, ensuring the little party lacked for nothing.

Later in the evening, as guest rooms were being retired to and carriages were being called, Lady Patty took him to one side. “Mr Crowley,” she told him, “I am glad you convinced Fell to attend tonight. He’s been hesitant to attend one of these little gatherings in person, even though he lives but a few miles away, and I can’t help but think your presence must have been the deciding factor. Thank you, sir.”

“I had nothing to do with it, I’m sure,” Crowley replied politely. “It seems to me he must have discovered his social obligations.”

“Even so,” she said, patting him on the arm, “he is happier by your side than I have ever seen him in over twenty years of acquaintance. Do take care of each other.”

Aziraphale appeared to his right then, as suddenly as if he’d teleported but without the tell-tale residual aura of miracle, and the lady smiled at him. “I’m glad you came tonight, Mr Fell,” she said, the picture of sincerity, and allowed him to kiss her hand as they bade her goodnight.

Carriage summoned, Crowley departed with an angel on his arm, several more facts about English soil and water patterns stuck into his brain, a list from Lady Henrietta of all the naughty poems he ought to read before the next London season, and a whole evening’s worth of Aziraphalean eccentricities to ponder.

Already tipsy from the party, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley bothered to shuck their coats and shoes before opening up the nice vodka Crowley had brought back from the Continent in Aziraphale’s drawing room to get roaring drunk.

“I just think that,” Aziraphale continued, “that there should have been trees on the terraces. Both start with a T. Nice flow. Tree, terrace, tea….” He lost his train of thought when presented with his glass. “Oh, thank you, my dear.”

“Cheers,” Crowley said, and downed his, pouring himself and then Aziraphale another. “You know what this reminds me of?” he asked.

“Anjou, 1138,” Aziraphale said dreamily.

“No, it—wait, you remember that?” Crowley asked, sidetracked, before getting back on course. “Reminds me,” he said, holding up his glass in emphasis, “of, of. Hm.” He briefly forgot what it reminded him of.

“You wore those trumpet sleeves. Terribly impractical. Old Walnut tried to eat them.”

“Yes, no, I mean.” Crowley snapped his fingers. “This reminds me of! When that German bloke invented that press. Goo, gluten, google—"

“Oh, Johannes was a nice chap,” Aziraphale said. “Nice, nice boy. Such a pity about the lawsuit. Do you reckon we have him?”

“I dunno, probably not,” Crowley said dismissively. Aziraphale pouted. “Anyway! This is like when he first put out those Bibles all fast, and you thought any day you’d be able to debate translations with people.”

“I was right about that, you know,” Aziraphale said smugly. “It only took a handful of decades.”

“Yeah, and then,” Crowley reminded him, “the Church split into a thousand tiny Churches.”

Aziraphale’s smug smile went all wobbly at the edges. “But this isn’t like that at all!” he cried. “There’s not going to be a schism, Crowley. I was told so. ’Tisn’t in the plan.”

“Your people don’t know that any more than mine do,” Crowley said darkly, then hiccoughed.

Aziraphale gazed into his wine.

“I do think Alexander is right, you know, or at least less wrong than other people might be,” he told the wine.

“Alexander?”

“Pope, my dear.”

“Thought the Pope was that Clement bloke.”

“No, not the Pope in Rome; the gentleman you insulted at the party. I helped him with a book.”

“Oh.” Crowley hadn’t insulted anyone at the party, but Aziraphale had insulted all the gentlemen. It’d been fun. “Gardening bloke? What’d he say, then?”

“Whatever is, is right,” Aziraphale quoted, enunciating each word carefully.

“Do you reckon?” Crowley asked. “Just ’cause something is, can’t mean it’s automatically right. I mean, what about…” He cast around for something to be about. “What about… about… bad plays at the Globe, right?” Aziraphale curled his lip in disgust at the thought; Crowley latched onto it. They’d been to enough of them to have seen just how bad the plays could get. “Lackluster acting, kids that can’t project, rhymes that don’t work, poking some poor bear with a stick. Not worth the penny you paid for admission. Can’t be right.”

Aziraphale hummed. Then he said, “Teaches Patience, a bad play. Can’t leave in the middle, you see, you have to wait patiently for it to end.”

“Sure you can, angel, you’ve done it a million times.”

“Twice,” Aziraphale corrected sharply, and Crowley grinned ear-to-ear. Pointedly ignoring his own hypocrisy, Aziraphale poured himself a new cup of wine and said, “And the actors learn and do better next time. Which is Humble and Diligent.” He over-enunciated the capital letters, as though reminding himself of the names of the virtues. “See? Even bad things can—” Aziraphale hiccoughed and started over— “even bad things can be good things, in the end.”

“If that’s so,” Crowley countered, “wouldn’t good things also be bad things? Like you get someone who’s ooooooh, so great, everybody loves them, absolute poppet, right, and everywhere they go they inspire Envy?”

“Ah!” Aziraphale said. “But you see, Alexander says, he says, er, if that Envy inspires one to emulate that great person and cultivate Virtues to be more like them, then it is Good.”

“Huh,” said Crowley. “Sounds like your kind of theolologick. Thelogeny-aic. Shun. Theo-logo-shin. Your thing, angel.”

“Quite so,” Aziraphale said, nodding. “Like you and trumpet sleeves.”

“I wore trumpet sleeves one time, six hundred years ago—”

“They suited you, ’sall,” Aziraphale said around his glass.

Crowley preened. “Of course they did, angel, everything suits me.”

“Then Walnut ate them.”

“Blessed horse,” Crowley swore. “When the humans invent a horseless carriage, angel, I am going to be first in line for one.” Crowley shook his fist at the sky, and Aziraphale giggled, which was so cute that Crowley couldn’t help but to laugh; all at once, they were falling into each other in hysterics.

After their laughter slowly faded and Crowley had straightened out just enough to pour another glass of wine, Aziraphale suddenly shot up, straight-backed as a soldier on parade.

“Anjou!” he said, then bustled off to the next room.

“Watcha doin’, angel?” Crowley called after him. He got no response, so he launched himself up and staggered on unsteady legs to follow Aziraphale through the doorway. “What do you mean, Anj—oh.”

The next room was a library. The walls held floor-to-ceiling shelves, stuffed to bursting with books and pamphlets and scrolls and tablets of all kinds. In the center was a large writing desk, clearly in active and frequent use, with several books stacked haphazardly atop it and a… gosh, was that a lunellum? What century was it?

“Aziraphale?” he called out, and finally spotted Aziraphale’s smooth white curls as they poked out from behind a free-floating shelf.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale called back, pleased as punch and at least as much alcohol by volume. “I’ve a book!”

“Couple, yeah,” Crowley said, and patted the closest one. “And a looney, lundy, lunnnneelllll—scraper thing,” he added helpfully.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and disappeared for a moment before bounding over to Crowley with a precarious stack. “Books!” he pronounced. “These were all published while you were,” his voice wavered, “away.” He shoved them toward Crowley, and a few on top began to wobble. Crowley grabbed them before they could fall and squinted at the titles.

“‘The Christian Hero’?” He lifted his glasses and squinted harder, but Aziraphale had already passed him back into the drawing room. “‘The History of England’? Angel,” he complained, “this’s why I don’t read.”

“They’re instructive,” Aziraphale said, “and anyway give them back.” The books Aziraphale was carrying were placed heavily on a table, where the stack fell apart. “Bother,” Aziraphale pouted. “’m looking for—where is it…”

Crowley watched him paw at his books a while, trying to hold on to his bemusement but feeling it float away on the wine-flavored breeze. By the time Aziraphale turned around with a triumphant, “A-ha!” and a thin octavo in his hands, the “be” had entirely disappeared, leaving only charmed amusement behind.

“Beauty,” Aziraphale said.

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed, smiling softly. This angel actually was one. Angels usually weren’t, but Aziraphale? From the little upturn at the end of his nose to his fussy satin shoes to the depths of whatever it was they had instead of souls, Aziraphale really was beautiful. Belatedly, Crowley remembered he wasn’t supposed to actually say so, and clamped his lips together.

“You’ll like it,” Aziraphale promised. “It’s. It’s your, er, whatsit, the charming human expression.” Aziraphale attempted to snap but his fingers did not cooperate; he attempted to snap with the other hand and dropped the book. Crowley caught it. While Aziraphale glared at his own fingers, Crowley looked down at the book, which had the words ‘BEAUTY: Or, the Art of Charming, by Robert Dodsley’ written on the front in large type. Ooohhhh, he thought, sluggishly.

“Ta, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, swanning off to the sofa again before his kneecaps got confused. “Always good to know what men’re saying, for temptations, and so on.”

“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale said vaguely, this time following Crowley. “Up your… road. No. Hm.”

“Drive?” Crowley asked.

“Path,” Aziraphale countered.

“Lane.”

“Avenue.”

“Street.”

“Boulevard.”

“Not France again, angel.”

“You did look fetching though. ’Fore Walnut got you.” Aziraphale giggled again.

“Should set up something in London,” Crowley said, abruptly changing the subject. “So’s we can meet up more convenient-like. For the Arrangement, and all.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “But I like my library.”

“Could start a library,” Crowley shrugged, and giggled when Aziraphale went pale.

“Lend my books?” he asked. “Surely not, surely not.”

“Or a bookshop,” Crowley added, just to see Aziraphale puff up like a, a, a… thing that puffs up. Then he kicked his feet up on the table. “Don’t have to, angel. Just a thought.”

They spent several minutes in amicable company on Aziraphale’s Chesterfield as Crowley pretended not to read the poem and Aziraphale quietly sung to himself, both of them sipping away at yet more wine.

Just as Crowley met the end of the volume, Aziraphale poked him.

“Angel?”

“Alley,” the angel said triumphantly. “Up your alley, my dear fellow.”

“Tell anyone and I’ll smite you,” Crowley threatened, “don’t think I can’t.”

Aziraphale made an exaggerated shushing gesture, and Crowley made it back.

“I shan’t tell anybody that the Serpent of Eden is a secret romantic,” Aziraphale said, and flopped against Crowley’s shoulder. “Scary snake.”

And if the drawing room was warm, and the wine was flowing, and Crowley decided to rest his eyes? Well, he had no quarters in Reading, anyway; he lived in London. Squatting in the house of an angel and getting his demonic aura all over the furniture was definitely evil of him to do. Shut up.

[1]: He studiously avoided thinking about how he had been mostly living in England for the past couple centuries and about the attachment, singular, that kept pulling him back. [Return.]

[2]: Aziraphale did, it turned out, employ at least two human servants, just not ones that opened his front door. [Return.]