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Feet scuffed in the depths of the bookshop. Both angel and demon looked up sharply to see Adam standing by one of the shelves. Not the child he had been. Older, taller, not quite filled out into a full adult frame, but solid, nonetheless.
“My dear boy,” Aziraphale began.
“How?” Crowley interrupted. No one else was supposed to exist right now.
Adam shrugged. “I left a bit of myself behind when I restored the bookshop. Figured you might need it. Bookshop’s still here, so I’m still here.”
Aziraphale tugged at his waistcoat and glanced uneasily toward God and Satan. “We’re supposed to making a decision.”
Adam cocked his head on one side and followed Aziraphale’s gaze. “Yeah. They want you to think that the only way forward is to burn it all down and start all over again.” His grin flared, bright and conspiratorial. “But we know better, don’t we?”
“We...do?”
“He’s not my dad,” Adam said. “She’s not your mother. Come on.” He turned on one heel, the laces of his trainer dragging on the floor, and started towards the rug under the bookshop dome. “You two know how to work together, and that makes you a threat. They’ve been belittling you to try and cut you down to something they can control.”
Crowley didn’t budge. “Explain.”
Adam shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Power from Heaven and Hell is like the opposite ends of a magnet. Use them together and the magnet starts spinning and generating new energy. Us humans build entire powerstations around spinning magnets, you know - or maybe you don’t.” He shrugged. “Anyway, if you two work together, you can do anything those two can do alone. Your smallest, tiniest scrap of a miracle was 25 times as powerful as an archangel’s power. If you actually put some effort behind it...”
“How do you know about that, young man?”
Adam turned to face Aziraphale squarely. “The day we met, I knew everything. Past, present, future. Some of it stuck around afterwards.”
“Even with everything,” Crowley jabbed a thumb at the void visible through the windows, “gone?”
“I restored everything once before, I can restore it again.”
“Uh-huh. Then what do you need from us?”
“That thing you did for Jim? Making it so no one from Heaven or Hell could find him even when they were looking right at him? Can you do that for Earth and everyone living on it?”
“So we couldn’t find our own homes?”
“You’re people. You’ve been living on Earth for six thousand years.” Adam rolled his eyes. “You’re included in everyone living here.”
Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged glances. “We could try, I guess.”
This time, when Adam headed for the rug, Aziraphale and Crowley followed.
Adam dropped to his knees in the centre and held out his hands.
Aziraphale and Crowley flanked him, falling into the same formation as they’d had on the day of Armageddon.
Adam’s gaze flickered around the room, trailing across the shelves full of blank books, and then settled on the door as it began to open. His voice cracked like a whip. “Now!”
Two sets of fingers snapped in unison.
#
Crowley cracked open an eye and groaned as the light from the windows hit his hangover. Opposite him, Aziraphale was slumped in his favourite chair. Between them lay the evidence of a night’s drinking.
Wait. Light. From the windows.
Crowley checked his watch. All the times on it read Too Late. He scrabbled for his phone instead and flicked it on. It was Monday morning. The first Monday after they swapped bodies and told their bosses to leave them alone.
A dream, a loop in time, a reset - he didn’t know. Didn’t care. He had his angel back and he had at least a few years and...
Aziraphale woke with a sharp intake of breath. “Crowley!”
He stared around, eyes going wider and wider, then reached for the nearest book. He opened it tentatively and even from across the nook, Crowley could see it was full of words again. Aziraphale dropped it back on the pile and thrust himself to his feet, hands reaching out to the demon.
Crowley scrambled to his own feet, meeting Aziraphale halfway.
And then they were clinging to each other, hands clutching at folds of cloth, faces buried in each other’s shoulders as if - well as if the world had ended. Which it had. And then hadn’t. Twice now.
“He did it,” Aziraphale whispered. “He really, really, did it.”
“Mmph. Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Someone leaned on you, I guess. Someone other than me, I mean. But, ngk, hasn’t happened yet. Not in this timeline.”
“It will always be there underneath, my dear, like a paintstain.” Aziraphale’s hand slid down his arm and laced warm fingers through his own.
Crowley’s breath hitched, and he turned it off before it could turn into sobs. Later. Breakdowns could wait for later. “Do better, this time.”
Aziraphale nodded. “Perhaps we can make a precious, peaceful, existance that isn’t quite so fragile this time.”
Crowley swallowed hard and squeezed Aziraphale’s hand in lieu of fumbling for words.
Aziraphale squeezed back and drifted towards the windows, towing Crowley with him. Together, an angel and a demon watched the bustle of the very ordinary (wonderful) day full of very ordinary (wonderful) humans wash past the shop. Everything was back as it had been.*
Their fingers remained entwined.
*A few things had in fact changed. There was a Book of Life wedged between Edgar Allen Poe and an eighteenth century almanac. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter (Vol. I and II) leaned against Mother Shipton on the prophecy shelf.
And up in Heaven, and down in Hell, all the monitors and access points that had previously connected to Earth now showed a different planet, one that was only barren rock. A little yellow post-it note read, “For War-Games.”