Chapter Text
It’s a perfectly normal Thursday afternoon with Crowley threatening his plants with fairly graphic Medieval torture methods just for the fun of it when suddenly his phone starts to ring.
The demon hates to be interrupted in his very colorful depiction and for a moment considers to ignore the annoying device altogether and migrate to the stories of hellish witch burnings instead, including detailed descriptions of melting flesh and painful screams, but after a quick glance on the display he notices it’s Aziraphale calling him and he finds himself pressing the reply button without a second thought.
It’s just a reflex by now.
He just can’t ignore the angel. It’s physically impossible.
“Aziraphale,” he greets his friend cheerfully. “You’re already missing me?”
It stays silent for a moment at the other end of the line, only a small shuffling noise like the angel rearranging some papers, followed by a very deep sigh and some incoherent mumbling that nobody on earth and beyond would’ve been able to understand.
Eventually, though, Aziraphale remembers that he has to answer in order to have some kind of conversation. “Crowley, my dear …”
And then he falls quiet again, like he can’t recall why he even picked up his phone in the first place and finds his thoughts going astray the next second.
“You alright, angel?” Crowley wonders, a tinge of worry gripping at his heart.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Aziraphale is quick to reassure. Too quick. “I’m perfectly fine.”
There are things you automatically learn when you know someone for over six thousand years and the different hitches and wavers in the angel’s voice have always been one of the most prominent. Aziraphale’s ability to lie - or at least bend the truth so much you don’t have to feel guilty about it as a celestial being - has always been mediocre at best, his tone and his usually quite expressive face normally giving him away pretty fast, making it fairly easy for the demon to detect the attempted deception.
This time it’s no different.
“Okay, angel, what is going on?” Crowley urges. “You sound off.”
“Like I said, I’m perfectly -”
“Nonsense!”
“Crowley -!”
“Aziraphale -!”
The angel huffs and puffs and for a moment Crowley honestly believes Aziraphale would just hang up and leave the country for the next few decades only to avoid having to continue this conversation.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
Eventually, though, instead of fleeing to the other side of the world Aziraphale takes a very deep breath in an effort to collect himself. “I’m just calling to inform you not to bother coming around the bookshop for the next couple of days. I’m fairly busy at the moment and would merely throw you out anyway.”
Not a lie.
Interesting.
“Busy with what?” Crowley wonders.
Aziraphale makes a noise Crowley’s not sure he ever heard him produce before. “Well … research. About some books which very recently started to pique my interest.”
Again, not a lie.
But Crowley’s supernatural senses are still tingling like crazy.
“You remember we’ve got tickets for that play tonight?” Crowley can’t help pointing out. “That depressingly gloomy one you’ve been prattling on about for the last week?”
Aziraphale sucks in some air, like he indeed totally forgot about the entire affair. “Well … I guess I have to cancel my engagement, I’m afraid.”
Crowley raises an eyebrow. “Cancel? Because of some books?”
“It’s quite important research -”
“Which you have to conduct day and night, without any sort of break?” Crowley shakes his head in disbelief. “C’mon, Aziraphale. I bought these bloody tickets for you. And now you’re telling me you don’t want to go?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to -”
“Then what’s keeping you?” Crowley throws his arms up into the air in frustration and notices in the corner of his eye how his plants in the background start to shake nervously, obviously anticipating him to lash out in a rather violent way in the not so distant future. “Don’t tell me some bullshit -”
“I’m not lying!” Aziraphale emphasises.
“But you’re not telling the whole truth either!”
For a moment they both fall quiet, marinating in their own thoughts and emotions getting the better of them, and Crowley finds himself grinding his teeth as both anger and concern gnaw at his naked bones. Admittedly, Aziraphale always had his secrets and hideouts over the last millennia, just as much as Crowley, but since the apocalypse-that-wasn’t the demon actually believed they ascended to an entirely new level in their relationship. No sides anymore, no Above and Below, only them and their own little thing.
He hates to think he’d been wrong.
In the end it’s Aziraphale who picks up his voice again. He sounds tired as he explains, “I promise you nothing life threatening for me or anyone else is afoot. It’s just something that I have to deal with myself at first. Something … personal.”
Crowley chews on his bottom lip. This doesn’t do much to disperse his worries at all, he has to admit.
“I swear I will make it up to you,” Aziraphale promises. “So instead of sulking you should be thrilled you don’t have to watch this ‘gloomy’ play and do something you genuinely enjoy instead.”
Crowley frowns. Sure, he still prefers the funny ones, but nothing can beat spending time with the angel, not even unnecessarily dark and grim plot lines which make you wish to stab yourself into the eye with a fork every two minutes. Does Aziraphale still not know that?
“We’re going to see each other in a couple of days then,” Aziraphale states, his voice appearing fairly strained again. “I will be in touch.”
“Wait -”
“Until next time.”
And then he hangs up and leaves Crowley staring at his phone with a mixture of bewilderment and concern.
What the hell just happened?
-----
For about an hour Crowley honestly considers that he’s making too much of a deal out of this.
After all, it’s certainly possible Aziraphale developed some new obsession. He’s fairly good with those, to be honest. Once he spent a sodding eternity translating just one single text. Not to mention the summer of ‘78 where he suddenly got addicted to bee keeping and it switched between weeks of Crowley not hearing a tiny little peep from him and then Aziraphale suddenly appearing out of the blue and attacking the demon with 12,784 new facts about those flying yellow bugs without any prompting whatsoever.
So it surely wouldn’t be the first time for the angel to get a bit lost.
But Crowley can’t shake the sound of Aziraphale’s voice, the slight hesitations in his speech. The way he chose every word very carefully.
There is something going on.
And Crowley will be damned - again - if he can’t find out what’s going on.
-----
The first odd thing Crowley notices is a few bunches of flowers sitting at the bookshop’s entrance, bright and colourful against the building’s bland exterior. It seems they have been deliberately positioned there so that no one would be able to miss them.
For a moment the demon considers the place having turned into a crime scene at some point not long ago - murder, accident, the presence of a pantomime ... who knows? - and Aziraphale simply forgot to bring it up, mainly because he just generally has trouble paying attention to the things going around him, so why bother with a murder scene, right? But at closer inspection the flowers appear way too joyful and cheery to express condolences in any way, not to mention the cards full of hearts and rainbows attached to some of them speak a totally different language as well.
Probably not a murder scene then.
Unless an unpopular politician died here, of course. Hell knows there are a lot of them walking around these days.
Crowley certainly wouldn’t be surprised to learn humanity celebrates some of those people’s demises.
He steps at the door and instantly halts in his movements as he sees the big sign pinned at it declaring the shop “closed until further notice due to maintenance”.
Crowley can’t help arching his brows. That’s clearly something new.
Granted, Aziraphale actually hates customers and keeps very irregular and confusing opening hours to throw off as many people as possible, but at the same time he does put some effort into keeping up the charade of a normal business. Having it closed for an undefined time and not even telling Crowley about it in the first place is clearly something that arouses suspicion straightaway.
Well, maintenance certainly isn’t the issue here, no doubt about that. Any burst pipe or overturned shelf could be fixed thanks to some heavenly miracle without any trouble at all. And considering that Aziraphale had kept the place the same for very long decades now Crowley highly doubts the angel just succumbed to an urgent need to see the whole shop refurbished all of a sudden.
Sure, maybe Aziraphale just desires some peace and quiet for his ‘research’ and doesn’t want to be disturbed by obnoxious customers, but still …
The entire thing is fairly strange.
Just a moment later it gets weirder as he notices the door being locked. Not only the normal way, but very supernatural as well.
Crowley growls and snips his fingers several times, but apart from a mild groan from the hinges he doesn’t get anything.
“Damnit!” he curses, glaring at the door and hoping against all odds that this would be enough to have it pop open. “Seriously, Aziraphale?”
He doesn’t wait around for long but starts to pound onto the wood, loud and booming and fairly annoying, while exclaiming “AZIRAPHALE!” with such a volume all of Soho is probably startled to their core right away.
“Aziraphale, open that damned door!” he bellows. “I know you’re in there!”
He can feel it, deep in his guts. Aziraphale’s presence is like a lighthouse, even despite all these magical precautions shielding off the shop.
Finding the angel and spotting him amongst millions has always been the easiest task in the world for Crowley.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s muffled voice eventually - FINALLY - sounds through the door. “What are you doing here? I told you I’m not prepared for any company.”
Crowley snorts. “You really think I’d stay away? After you gave me such a lame excuse and nothing else?”
“It isn’t an excuse -”
“You’re a bad liar, angel,” Crowley hollers through the door. “Something bad is going on and if you won’t let me in in the next ten seconds, I’m gonna kick this blasted hinges open -”
“No, please,” Aziraphale cuts in, sounding all shades of desperate now. “I can’t … I can’t have you looking at me.”
Crowley halts in his motions and wrinkles his forehead.
That is not exactly what he had expected to hear.
“Not look at you?” he wonders in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Aziraphale stays silent for a moment, probably sorting his thoughts and searching for a way to not have the demon destroy his front door.
“Please, Crowley …” he begs in the end. “You can’t … I’m not …”
Crowley presses himself against the wood while ignoring the odd looks of the passersby in the process. “What is it, Aziraphale?” he asks, putting something akin to softness in his tone. “Why can’t I look at you? Is it something embarrassing?”
“My dear …”
“Did you turn yourself purple again?”
Aziraphale gasps in shock, apparently not having anticipated the demon to bring this up all of a sudden. “That was one time,” he defends himself angrily. “And it was an accident.”
“Accidents can always happen a second time.”
“I’m not purple!” Aziraphale states with emphasis. “And you promised me to never mention it again.”
Crowley shrugs his shoulders, even when the angel is unable to see it at the moment. “What do you expect of me? With you being all secretive …” He sighs quietly. “What is it, angel? C’mon, tell me. You got a pimple? Tried to dye your hair and it went wrong majorly?”
“It’s nothing like that …”
“Is it your wings? Do they need some grooming?”
“My dear -”
“Because they definitely need some grooming. I could help you with that.”
Aziraphale sighs. “Crowley …”
The demon shuts his eyes for a second, trying to organise the thoughts tumbling wildly inside his head. “Angel, we’re friends, right?”
Crowley is almost able to see Aziraphale’s emotional expression at those words right through the wood.
“Oh dear,” the angel whispers, his voice filled with affection. “Of course we are.”
“Then let me help you,” Crowley urges. “Whatever is happening, whatever you need to do that research for … I could give you a hand.”
“Crowley …”
“I’m not entirely useless, you know?”
“Of course I know that!” Aziraphale sounds offended now, like the mere idea is completely ridiculous and he wants everyone who ever claimed such a thing see punished for their poor judgment.
“Then let me help you, for … for whoever’s sake!”
It’s silent again as Aziraphale spends a very long while debating with himself on the other side of the door. Crowley can’t help getting impatient quite soon, but he forces himself to shut his mouth for once. He honestly doesn’t want to push the angel away and have this discussion all over again.
“Okay, fine,” Aziraphale eventually concedes, sounding fairly reluctant, but also a tiny bit relieved. Like he’s not really sure whether he wants the demon close or far away. “But there are some conditions.”
Crowley straightens his back. “Whatever. Name them.”
“First you have to promise not to laugh,” Aziraphale says, probably awkwardly shifting his weight from one leg to another, squirming like a little toddler.
Crowley finds himself scoffing. “I would never laugh at you.”
It’s a lie, of course, and they both know it, but he thinks he deserves some bonus points for making the effort in the first place.
However, his muscles begin to lose some of their tension. If Aziraphale’s biggest concern is becoming a laughing matter, it’s most likely not as serious a situation as Crowley’s imagination tried to make him believe.
“And we can’t communicate face to face,” Aziraphale states with emphasis. “I don’t care how else - phone calls, letters, carrier pigeons -, but this is important.”
This is getting really weird.
“What can be worse than turning purple for two weeks?”
“Just … promise me.”
Crowley bites his lower lip. “Fine, I will keep my distance, angel. If that’s what you want.”
The issue is, though, that the things which come out of Crowley’s mouth and the things which stay in his head and eat him up on the inside until he’s only a bundle of nerves and obnoxious emotions, are almost never the same.
So while promising Aziraphale to stay away, his whole being simply yearns to see him. To make sure for himself that the angel is indeed unharmed. To see it with his own two eyes.
And that wish - that deep seated, powerful wish - resonates directly with the magic Aziraphale put on the locked door.
Because instead of staying closed it spectacularly swings open all of a sudden to invite the demon inside and reveals a startled looking angel on the other side who stumbles backwards and nearly collides with a shelf behind him in the process.
“No, no, no, no,” Aziraphale mutters in shock, his wide eyes staring at the demon. “What did you do?”
Crowley instantly raises his hands in defence. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”
The angel appears devastated as he presses himself against the shelf like he’s hoping it might swallow him up in the next second and get him out of this situation. “No, no, no,” he keeps mumbling. “Not you … everyone but you …”
Since the damage is already done anyway and Crowley can’t do anything to make it disappear he enters the bookshop and quickly closes the door behind him (though not before whispering a quick ‘thank you’ to it).
“Well, this is that then,” he says, shrugging. “Blame your own heavenly powers for this.”
Aziraphale still looks as if he’d rather vanish on the spot than be in Crowley’s presence for even a split second longer and the demon tries not to feel offended by that.
“I see you’re not purple, at least,” Crowley points out, letting his gaze wander over the angel very thoroughly. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him - no sudden changes in colour, no facial or otherwise visible disfigurations. He still looks like a nostalgic gentleman from the last century.
Exactly the same as he left the angel.
So what the hell changed in the meantime?
“So what is it, angel?” Crowley asks again, sighing. “I’m getting a bit tired of this evasive chicken game, to be honest.”
For way too long Aziraphale stays frozen and simply gapes, apparently lost for words, while he goes through a myriad of emotions that show themselves quite prominently on the angel’s face.
There’s the initial shock, obviously.
Then anger, probably at Crowley and his audacity to enter his sanctuary so blatantly.
The next thing is confusion. So much confusion. Aziraphale doesn’t even seem to know what to do with that at first, so it appears.
And then comes the suspicion.
He narrows his eyes and eventually takes a step forward, closer to the demon. He’s still wary of some distance between them, but at the same time he seems to be pulled in like a magnet.
“Crowley …” he finally whispers, his voice unsteady. “How … how are you feeling?”
Crowley just frowns at him. “Me? What about you?”
The angel, however, simply ignores his question as he continues asking, “Are you all right, my dear?” while he keeps looking at Crowley like he thinks him to be a bomb which might explode any moment now.
“All right?” Crowley scoffs. “I’m annoyed and pissed off you’re not telling me what’s going on. That’s how I’m feeling, if you wanna know.”
Aziraphale tilts his head and assesses the demon from top to bottom, his puzzled features changing into something like curiosity now.
“Crowley, my dear,” he eventually says, his tone soft, “may I ask you a question?”
Crowley can’t help feeling very uncomfortable all of a sudden. Aziraphale’s reaction is more than peculiar and he honestly doesn’t like being in the dark like this very much.
“Fine,” he growls nonetheless. “If this will help getting things along, shoot away.”
Aziraphale comes closer, his gaze so intense now Crowley feels a cold shiver running down his spine.
“Tell me, old friend,” he breathes, “are you in love with me?”
Crowley always wondered what it would feel like if the world came to a screeching halt - and suddenly, in this very moment, he experiences it firsthand.
Everything around him seems to freeze in time, even the spider in the corner building its net, and the only thing that matters is the angel and the demon in the room as that heavy question echoes from the walls and gets louder and louder within seconds.
In the end, after probably an eternity containing at least two more apocalypses they totally missed because they were way too busy staring at each other, he finally manages to find at least a fragment of his voice again.
“W-w- what?”
It’s not exactly elegant or at least somewhat graceful, but Crowley certainly isn’t prepared for more at this point.
“Are you in love with me?” Aziraphale repeats the question, sounding annoyingly calm despite the importance of the situation.
Crowley can do nothing else but widen his eyes and wonder whether his legs will continue to carry him for long.
“Do you feel the urge to confess your undying love for me?” the angel keeps wondering, like this is an everyday query and not something of huge magnitude. “Do you feel the overpowering desire to write me all the love poems in the world?”
Crowley senses a headache coming his way and he didn’t even have any alcohol yet. “Uh …”
“What about flowers?” Aziraphale adds, sounding weirdly excited now. “Do you suddenly want to pick some flowers from a meadow that have the same colour as my eyes?”
Crowley gapes some more while feeling his brain melting.
Aziraphale, however, suddenly smiles so brightly the sun itself should probably start to worry about the competition. “Oh Heavens, you’re not, right?” he asks giddily. “You’re not in love with me?”
He sounds so bloody happy about that Crowley doesn’t have any idea how to react to it.
“Oh, this is wonderful!” Aziraphale rejoices and before Crowley even knows what is happening he finds himself in a bone-crushing hug that pushes all the air he doesn’t need anyway out of his lungs. “This is magnificent!”
“Uh …”
“I’m so thrilled -”
“... I don’t …”
“You can even imagine how relieved I am -”
“Angel …”
“I mean, you are not in love with me, right?” Aziraphale asks further while pulling back a little and taking that unexpected warmth with him. “Right? Or do you feel any different?”
“I feel exactly the same,” Crowley hears himself answering before he even realizes he opened his mouth.
To see the blinding smile return is almost worth it, though.
“I was so worried,” Aziraphale explains, squeezing Crowley’s wrist. “I mean, you … I couldn’t have been able to bear it.”
Crowley feels like he’s on an emotional rollercoaster and he doesn’t even understand what is happening to begin with.
“Okay, angel, what the hell is going on?” he demands to know.
Aziraphale instantly starts to fidget uncomfortably, but he still keeps looking at Crowley with that overly affectionate gaze which makes the demon feel way too many things.
“Well … it seems I somehow … no idea how … or why … or even when, to be honest …” He clears his throat awkwardly. “It appears I somehow got into contact with some sort of - um, love spell.”
Crowley arches his brows. “What?”
“Some sort of love spell or however you want to name it,” Aziraphale repeats, a slight blush on his cheeks as he tries to avoid Crowley’s eyes. “For the last twenty-four hours everyone - apart from you - who looked at me instantly fell head over heels in love with me.”
Crowley blinks.
Blinks some more.
And then he groans.
“Ah damnit.”