Chapter Text
Anthony Jonathan Crowley.
While asleep, the man's typical slouchy, frownish demeanor was utterly forgotten. Not to say he looked peaceful - quite the opposite. Unknown dreams caused his face to pinch in stress, deflate in grief, or wallow in resignation. Between the pure despair emanating from Anthony's form and his aggressive, handsome features, Aziraphale found himself unable to spare a glance elsewhere during his charge's long fits of slumber. Which was a pity, considering those were the only times Aziraphale could re-corporate himself undetected.
For the life of him (or something like it), Aziraphale could not understand why Anthony J. Crowley, of all humans, was the first in hundreds of years - maybe a thousand - to receive Her gift of Guardianship.
As far as Aziraphale could tell in his short week watching over the forty-something year-old man, Anthony wasn't much good for anything beyond sleeping, drinking, and supplementing his paltry diet with questionable medication. And especially not good for entertaining his invisible companion.
Aziraphale was restricted from moving beyond a certain range of Anthony's aura, so he found himself guiltily hoping every time the man opened a cupboard to find the reserves of wine, whiskey, and vodka dwindling. Sometimes, the angel would be rewarded with a trip down to the (London? hopefully!) streets for five sweet minutes. More often now, Anthony ordered his spirits from some mobile phone application and barely let the door open enough for Aziraphale to scent the breeze of the hallway.
Examining the man's flat had lost its appeal quickly as well. The interior design, put kindly, was minimalist. Put not so kindly, it was severe and isolating. Very few pieces of furniture adorned the many rooms, but their purpose seemed to be increasing the negative space, not occupying it. When Anthony did make it through his abode in his slithering, withering way, Aziraphale was reminded of a small minnow flailing in a large, empty aquarium, making Aziraphale the ever-present child begging the pitiful creature to do something, anything, to help pass the time besides looking helpless. The only bits of personality Aziraphale could glean came from a positive jungle of houseplants in one room that seemed to put as little effort as possible into living as Anthony had been recently, and a collection of movies and CD's in an otherwise empty entertainment center. Even the large television was so dusted over that it carried no reflection of the cavernous living room.
Everything about Anthony's life felt hollow. The empty space in the flat, the concerning pit of booze he was trying to drown himself in, the curled claws his fists became when he slept - fiercely grasping at air as he slept long and unsoundly.
For once, Aziraphale felt that he had to drag his eyes away.
Finally entering his usual body (from before this mess of a reassignment), Aziraphale took a more physical stroll around the flat. More out of boredom than divine conscientiousness, he caressed a few crestfallen leaves of a fern into standing at attention, ignoring that the plant's fate was likely sealed when Anthony stopped watering and opening the blinds just on Aziraphale's first day at his employ.
Meandering and forcing off a fit of his own depression, Aziraphale caught the scent of a previously-ordered pizza and found himself in the living room.
Crust, cheese, every topping Aziraphale loved and every topping he hated, winked at him from the cardboard. A single slice was out of place, only a few bites shy. Aziraphale had never worried for his own immortal soul more than in that moment.
Despite being new to the Guardianship business, Aziraphale was aware how taboo conscious angel-human interaction was in the twenty-first century. This was likely the reason for Guardianship going out of style, other than angels being promoted to the Heavenly Host to receive battle training, for a war Aziraphale was quite skeptical about - its purposes, its reality, etc. Not that he ever entertained these thoughts before fiercely tossing them out his other ear.
Truly, Aziraphale thought that the lowest class of angels had been eliminated categorically for good. Not so, it seems, when heaven is looking to demote.
Still better than falling, Aziraphale supposed. …Probably.
Certain that in his drug-addled state and constant half-consciousness, Anthony wouldn't notice a slice or two of his gaudy pizza mysteriously missing, Aziraphale indulged.
The first taste of grease, sodium, any spice at all - Aziraphale forgot to steel himself for the reminded sensations. As a Principality, he ate his weight and more at every restaurant he laid eyes on. Some servers may have thought it strange that the portly blonde man ordered so much for being so alone, or ate so quickly for someone so keen on savoring the taste of things, but Aziraphale was full of frivolous power that could be thrown over mortal's eyes with the brush of an eyelash towards his cheek.
Accidentally three slices in, Aziraphale managed to stop himself. Maybe…he should see how much power his new station stripped him of. A strong focus on the empty wax paper in the box and the particular ingredients thrown on the pie created only a sheen of sweat to coat the back of Aziraphale's neck.
Nothing. If Aziraphale still had enough power to damn something, the pizza would have been positively blazing.
While he was able to restrain himself from stowing the pizza in the fridge (as was his habit, Anthony was likely to wander in to finish his forgotten slice to fill himself up for the fortnight), Aziraphale was not able to forget the earthly pleasures that waited just outside the flat's front door.
Spreading love and joy through the world as a Principality was always going to be Aziraphale's favorite pastime (if anyone was asking), but such work was often unrewarding and lonely. Any time a cat was saved from a tree, a stray tick-bite would put the feline down - this time in his child's arms. Any time Aziraphale made an honest-to-goodness friend, over books or wine or other pleasant insignificancies, the human would die. Well, after a while at least. If he was particularly unlucky, much sooner than a while.
Aziraphale thought such work needed balance. Some sort of partnership. Indeed, he had often felt lost and strangely empty whenever he dined at the Ritz or went to feed the ducks at St. James. Humans were the ones created to have relationships - with each other, with The Almighty, but angels? They were quite literally the deuteragonists to the whole tale. By now, Aziraphale probably should have gotten used to it.
Wandering back into the bedroom, Aziraphale was mildly surprised to see Anthony sprawled in a slightly more comfortable position, face nearing stressed on its way to calm. Despite its limitations, maybe Guardianship was more Aziraphale's speed. Surely the human could not keep his determined self-disinterest up forever.
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3 more weeks, 9 more pilfered meals, and 1 concerning, rambling phone call to a senior Crowley later, Aziraphale was worried this might be his life for the next few decades. A sick part of himself thought (maybe even hoped?) it might be much less.
Surely as the man's Guardian, there was something he could do. He never really received adequate training on the subject before being demoted, but Aziraphale knew part of the deal was to at least protect the human's life. But without intervention, it seemed like the human was on a one-way path to misery, death, and another concerning file in the angel's permanent record.
The more Aziraphale worried for Anthony's soul, the more he ate his food. Today it was something vaguely Thai that looked like it had been dumped from a chum bucket into its disintegrating styrofoam bowl, a brownish fluid somehow seeping onto the kitchen counter. Still - every bite was ecstasy.
Being cut off from the world had made Aziraphale forget himself - he ate ravenously, shoveling the food down his throat so fast that the original purpose of enjoyment had to be remembered as it made its way down his hastily-constructed esophagus. He even indulged in finishing off Anthony's beers, a hide-and-seek game scattered around the flat, which tasted more like a smell than a taste. Some small part of Aziraphale's mind wondered if he had fallen. After all, he had never met any demons, as far as he knew. Maybe falling was just a euphemism, and Guardianship was a secret plot to rid heaven of its most troublesome, capricious, and doddering types. Such deep introspection was long lost on Aziraphale as he roughly punctured his tongue with the plastic fork.
"Ouch!" he hissed, only biting down on his tongue in the process. Guardianship, while hiding him from his former heavenly glory, did not protect him from the mundane pains of the earthly realm.
"You alright?" drawled a sleepy voice from behind him.
"Oh, yes, I'll be fi-"
Aziraphale turned, figuring himself to look much like a stuffed caveman in a museum when the lights are turned on suddenly. His hand faintly grasped the takeaway napkin for protection.
Anthony stood in the kitchen, leaning with a calculated, slimy precision Aziraphale must have missed without an audience to work it on. He wore his usual almost-nothing, just black boxer briefs and a kimono so sheer it acted as loosely-shed second skin. Only - the sunglasses that waited for Anthony on his nightstand for the past few weeks were now on his face and staring him down. For the first time since Aziraphale had seen him, Anthony was making an effort.
"A-Anthony!" In a daze, Aziraphale focused on wiping his chin with the napkin. He hadn't thought about efforts of any sort for a very long time.
"Crowley."
"Crowley?"
"Anyone who knows me calls me Crowley," Anthony said, now leaning as much on his words as he was the kitchen supporting beam. Aziraphale fought the urge to say something trite like, I suppose I don't know you as well as I thought, because of course he didn't. Although, he had barely known what was in the man's food and he swallowed that down without a second thought.
"Oh. Crowley, then. That's all right." Aziraphale knew he should be questioning something about this interaction, but he hadn't even spoken to another person in so long, that he found himself following Anthony- Crowley with his eyes as he stepped up to the Thai takeaway box. With more purpose than Aziraphale had ever seen him muster, the man plucked the fork from Aziraphale's grasp and slowly wound a ball of noodles with a twist of his wrist. The noodles clung to the fork, went up, up, up, and disappeared between Crowley's lips, which had adopted a fond smirk that anticipated a conversation Aziraphale was not supposed to have regarding his presence here.
A soft, poking prod snapped him out of his reverie. "What are you staring at me for? Let's eat up."
Another plastic fork, offered to him by a soft, crumpled hand. Aziraphale accepted.