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“I must admit, Mr. Fell, I wasn’t expecting your lending restrictions to be quite so, ah, thorough.”
Aziraphale caught a hint of disapproval in the curator’s carefully-modulated voice. He’d rather expected the lending restrictions to be thorough enough to put the Conservatory right off the proposal, but apparently not. He gave her a noncommittal smile and adjusted his glasses.
“Well, Ms. Reed, I’m afraid I wouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of lending the collection if it weren’t for the head propagist at Kew vouching for your outfit,” he told her. The Barbican was enough of an eyesore that it had barely wormed its way back into his good graces by housing consistently spectacular plays and exhibitions; installing an enormous garden on the inside seemed like a waste when it could have been put to much better use concealing at least some of the building’s hideous exterior.
“Operating costs are always a consideration,” she’d said, when he’d offered his opinion on that aspect of the project.
Ms. Reed’s lips thinned at the word ‘outfit,’ but she didn’t say anything. Aziraphale bit back a sigh.
He was being unkind, and over what? The Conservatory’s request had hardly been unusual or even particularly forward. A dozen-odd books once in limited supply and now all but impossible to obtain, a bit of forebearance on his part over their botanists’ time constraints and speaking schedules--they weren’t asking him to move mountains, were they?
He was just out of sorts because the winter was dragging on, damp and miserable and all of it in that way where it got into everything and had to be miracled back out. He’d been called onto the carpet about it just last month, and his protests that he’d only been trying to preserve his books had generated the most skeptical looks. The way Michael had emphasized attachment when she’d suggested that his dedication to his cover was growing a bit cumbersome had been worrying.
“Remember,” she’d said, “the imitation of humanity is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.”
And Crowley’d been avoiding him lately, so he hadn’t even had anyone to complain to afterwards. Not that the demon was necessarily sympathetic to him, not after the sort of pragmatic, restrained collegiality they’d settled into since Aziraphale had handed over the holy water and turned down the ride home. But Crowley listened, and however sympathetic he was or wasn’t to Aziraphale at the moment, Crowley could always be relied upon to be satisfyingly judgmental of Aziraphale’s superiors.
Aziraphale couldn’t tell what he’d done to annoy the demon this time; he’d even let all the nonsense with that motorway pass by without so much as the barest attempt at thwarting. Maybe he’d been meant to take the bait, and Crowley was sulking over being ignored?
He was sure it was his imagination playing tricks on him--just a passing, morbid fancy--but it seemed that Crowley had been more distant, had been pricklier ever since Aziraphale had given him the holy water. Crowley had seemed so touched by the gift, or by Aziraphale allowing himself to be swayed, and then Crowley had seemed so disappointed when that was all there was to it. He couldn’t have anticipated more, could he?
Aziraphale had tried to be so clear about that, after the peccadillo with the books of prophecy and the fake British Intelligence agent. He hadn’t wanted to lead Crowley on, to let him hope. And Crowley had seemed to get the message, had driven off with a simple “Ah. Of course.” after leaving Aziraphale in front of the bookshop in the black-out darkened street. He’d even laughed a bit, hadn’t he? Surely Crowley had understood about the holy water.
If he was being perfectly honest, Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to weaken his own resolve, either, which was the ever-present danger of Crowley’s more tender moments. Crowley stretched out, and Crowley gave him that smoke-and-honey smile, and Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to pull the demon into his arms and kiss him. How could he not, when he knew how sweet it was to have Crowley exactly where he belonged, in Aziraphale’s bed?
They’d been so careless, those blissful few months. The only passing nod to caution had been Crowley renting them a pied-à-terre midway between the bookshop and Crowley’s apartment; it had gone unused as often as not, what with them barely going more than a few hours without reaching for one another. They’d been fantastically, horrendously lucky not to have been caught.
They probably would have been, looking back, if it hadn’t been for Crowley’s request, and the ice-cold blast of reality that had come with it. Crowley’s fit of temper when Aziraphale had said no had been a blessing in disguise. Crowley’s fit of whatever it was this time was probably just as much of one. Between the weather and Michael, God only knew what Aziraphale would do if Crowley tried tempting him now. He’d been so out of sorts...
Aziraphale grimaced and looked at the curator. Out of sorts, and taking it out on comparatively innocent strangers.
“I don’t mean to impugn the Conservatory’s credentials, Ms. Reed,” he said. “Recently-minted as the place is, they’re still quite impeccable. And your preservation goals are, of course, terribly important. But the items in question aren’t inventory--they’re family heirlooms. My, ah, great-great-grandfather received them as a gift from one of the more prolific orchid enthusiasts of the time. I’m sure you can understand why I’m a bit cautious about lending them out.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, giving him a smile that said all was hardly forgiven. It wasn’t so much colder than it had started out, though, and Aziraphale supposed getting a collection of this size off the ground wouldn’t be easy even when everything went right. “It’s why I thought this private tour might help make you more comfortable with your decision. Give you a chance to see what we’re working toward, as it were, and get an idea of what your accommodation would be facilitating.”
“It’s all quite lovely.” Aziraphale smiled.
He’d decided during her first, pat introduction, which had taken all of five minutes, that it was as if someone had tried to recreate the Garden as a theme park ride. It was quite lovely, and everything was just right at first blush. The moment he closed his eyes and breathed in, though, he could tell that he was standing in the middle of nothing more than a giant terrarium. It was like the plants resented being penned in, with water coming out of tubes in the ground or sprinklers overhead at regular intervals and warmth doled out as human keepers saw fit.
Aziraphale was quite sure he’d never have noticed, if he’d never set foot in the real Eden. Even after so many millennia, though, the brief time he’d spent guarding it stood out in his mind, its mark indelible. It had been such a perfect place; the world had never seen its like since. The hum of background activity, the mark of a keeper--it had been divine, in that garden.
“It’s too quiet,” Aziraphale murmured, after a moment.
“Mmm?” Ms. Reed said. She looked up from a tiny orchid she’d been inspecting, as if its placement in a discreet coconut-fiber nest halfway up a slender tree was about to earn someone a talking-to.
“All these plants, all this light, and no birds or insects to fill it with song,” he explained. “Sorry, it was just a passing thought. I know a place like this can’t really--”
“No, no. You’re right,” she told him, shaking her head. “Or at least, you’re not alone in thinking it. One of the board members was quite insistent that we make a bit of room for the birds and the bees, as it were.” Her smile told him the joke was practiced and, most probably, not hers. “We’ll be adding songbirds before we open. Not free-flying, of course, but we’ve already installed the enclosures that will house them.”
She led him along a narrower path, toward the rear of the greenhouse.
“I rather prefer the silence of a plants-only conservatory,” she confessed, “but apparently it strikes most people as unsettling. A primatologist friend of our epiphyte specialist said it has to do with the way we register signs of large predators subconsciously. Abnormal calling behavior from animals with a better view of the surroundings means that it’s time to start counting the children and looking for eyes in the shadows.”
Aziraphale nodded absently. It sounded about right. God had made human beings in Her own image, after all--it only stood to reason that they’d be as needlessly and unexpectedly complicated as the Almighty.
He caught sight of the aviaries set back from the plants a bit, on their own small half-circle of brick-paved pathway. It looked more like the kind of path meant for a keeper than for visitors, utilitarian and narrow and easily hidden from view when maintenance was underway. The aviaries were long and wide, the sort of structure that was generous for a cage but a pittance compared to the open sky. They made his wings ache just looking at them.
He followed Ms. Reed, their footsteps on the brick deadened by the thick undergrowth. The enclosures were cleverly-designed, at least. Very pretty, bordering on elegant, but with all the perches and boxes and runs easily cleaned and easily replaced; most of the habitat was in the process of being put together, all the pieces laid out like an exploded diagram.
“The original thought was small parrots or parakeets,” Ms. Reed said, “but of course they’re very demanding birds to keep. Extremely noisy, messy, very specialized care and behavioral requirements, prone to biting…” She shook her head. “And that’s all assuming you can keep visitors from teaching them rude words. It was scaled back to something more reasonable as the design progressed. The Conservatory will be home to three types of native finch and two types of canary when it opens.”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to ask a question--a meaningless, trite, utterly pointless question--and then stopped before he breathed a syllable. The last cage was not only fully assembled, but latched, locked, and occupied.
“Not part of the exhibit,” Ms. Reed said drily. “Our nepenthes expert is having trouble with her furnace, and apparently boarding the thing is out of the question.”
“I see.” Aziraphale was amazed at how steady his voice sounded. Ms. Reed gave him a narrow look, then shook her head.
“Snakes that size are a bit of a shock to see in person, aren’t they? Why don’t we backtrack to the coffea display? I feel it might have gotten short shrift, being so close to the strelitzia. They show up when they’re blooming, of course, but they’re breathtaking plants even when they’re not. And the economic interest isn’t to be understated…”
She wandered back up the path, and Aziraphale didn’t feel the least bit bad about the small suggestion that led her to believe he was right there behind her, listening attentively. The filtered sunlight gave glossy black scales a dappled look, the barest hint of red around the edges almost invisible in the soft light. Golden eyes that normally all but glowed were dim and unseeing under their heavy lids. Crowley was fast asleep, looped in a tight coil over a sturdy branch, his head resting in the center of the muscular loops of his body.
Crowley was fast asleep, and locked inside a damned cage, and Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to dig his fingers into iron bars and rip the whole thing apart with his bare hands.
It was an odd thing, feeling that righteous compulsion to act, that unquestionable moral imperative to correct a grave flaw in the world, over something so decidedly in keeping with Heaven’s agenda. He’d finally found that zeal that might have put him in the archangels’ good graces during any of God’s early smiting sprees, and it was over Crowley getting some measure of well-earned comeuppance.
Aziraphale tried to rein himself back in, tried to imagine explaining the whole thing to Gabriel when he shot past his allocation of miraculous power again. “Well, you see, a demon had been imprisoned, and I lost my head a bit at the thought of him being trapped like that, and one thing led to another…”
Crowley hated anything that smacked of constraint, or confinement, or binding--hated it like poison, chafed against it reflexively, would dare even the most reckless things to escape it. Even Hell hadn’t been able to pen him in. The idea that he’d gotten himself stuck in an aviary was frankly ludicrous, and Aziraphale felt the full measure of his own foolishness in that overwhelming and immediate response to seeing it. If Crowley was curled up asleep in an iron box, it was because he had nowhere better to be.
Except. Aziraphale swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to think it through. Except that Crowley had been running through power like water lately, hadn’t he? That motorway was slow going, even for a demon, and he’d been pouring himself into it. If he’d overdone it, who was to say what sort of trouble he’d found himself in? And the iron couldn’t be helping, could it? Aziraphale distinctly recalled having read something, somewhere, about iron having an effect on demons.
And it would, in fact, be just like Crowley to do something a bit too reckless and wind up in the clutches of some feckless scientist. He was forever pushing himself too far, pushing his luck too hard, pushing the envelope until something finally gave out.
It was how he’d fallen, even: not one grand gesture like Lucifer but a series of small, careless things that had all added up to a loss of grace. Crowley’d been taken by surprise, when he’d fallen. Aziraphale knew that much just from the way Crowley’d answered him when he’d asked, all sharp edges and brittle pride and scrambling defensiveness.
If Crowley hadn’t known when to stop when it was God Herself drawing the lines, it seemed ridiculous to assume he’d be reasonable about when to stop when there weren’t any lines at all. Hell certainly wasn’t going to hold him to account if he burned himself out or got himself in trouble cementing one of their temporary Earthly triumphs.
Aziraphale miracled the lock open and slipped into the aviary. Whatever Crowley had done, however Crowley’d gotten himself into this mess, leaving him to it was out of the question. Crowley didn’t stir, and Aziraphale could hear Ms. Reed’s voice receding as she continued the tour, narrating to an imagined audience. Probably the version of Aziraphale that she was imagining for herself was more receptive than the real one had been. If he just made the inside of his messenger bag a bit bigger, it would hold the serpent. It would be snug, and Aziraphale would probably have to deflect the attention of another half-dozen people, and Gabriel was going to have a right fit about everything, but…
Aziraphale looked back out at the conservatory, though the bars, and he shuddered.
No, he very decidedly couldn’t leave Crowley. He paused and listened; there was no one nearby except Ms. Reed. He wasn’t going to get a better opportunity. Aziraphale flipped his bag open and tipped it so that it gaped wide, his heart pounding away in his chest. It’d be called theft, if he got caught. He couldn’t imagine the outrage if a recalcitrant dealer in rare books and antiquities was discovered in the act of looting a fledgling conservatory, for all that it would be of an ill-gotten exotic animal not even meant to be part of the exhibit. He’d be stuck flinging suggestions and lapses of attention left and right, explaining the whole thing to head office, probably blaming most of it on Crowley and then that would start a whole different row…
Aziraphale steeled himself, then scooped the sleeping demon off his perch and into the safety of the bag in one desperate movement. He’d barely gotten the cover flipped back over when the satchel began thrashing like a landed fish, thumping uncomfortably against his hip, and a growl that made his hair stand on end seemed to emanate from the very air around them.
“How dare--” Crowley’s head darted out of the gap between the bag and the flap, and he stopped short, blinking at Aziraphale, fangs gaping. Aziraphale blinked back, and it was funny, wasn’t it, that it had never occurred to him to be afraid of Crowley before. “You.”
Crowley blinked again, getting his bearings. He tucked his fangs away and stopped writhing against the bag.
“What the hell, angel?”
Oh. Aziraphale hadn’t thought this part through, had he, hadn’t considered the only natural reaction to going from a cage to being stuffed into a sack would be defensive at best. Small wonder Crowley had snarled at him and bared his fangs. If he’d realized Crowley would wake so easily, they could have had a civil conversation about it first. If he’d realized Crowley was still stuck in the cage without even being torpid, he probably would have ripped it apart with his bare hands.
“I’m rescuing you,” Aziraphale whispered, looking around frantically. No one had heard them, at least. Or maybe they had, and decided it really wasn’t any of their concern after the growl.
“You’re what?” Crowley asked.
Confusion and lack of acuity and God only knew what else--Aziraphale would sort it out as soon as they were safe. Could he heal a demon’s corporation? What if it wasn’t the corporation that was the problem--what if Crowley had drained himself? He pushed the thought away; he’d worry about it all later.
“Rescuing you,” Aziraphale repeated. A pair of voices near the entrance cost him the rest of his nerve.
“I don’t--”
Aziraphale pressed his hand over Crowley’s mouth, silencing him, and Crowley’s eyes narrowed. “Please, please be quiet! I’m trying to get you--”
Aziraphale barely stifled a cry when Crowley nipped him. He snatched his hand back, staring at the serpent, aghast. Crowley hadn’t drawn blood, hadn’t broken the skin, had barely done more than deliver a stinging little pinch, but it was the thought that counted.
“Beastly thing,” Aziraphale murmured. Then again, if it was the thought that counted, how clearly was Crowley really thinking?
“I don’t need--”
“We don’t have time to argue, Crowley,” he said firmly.
“Why not? What hasss gotten into you?”
“Be a dear and stay hidden while I get us out of this, won’t you?”
He tucked Crowley’s head firmly into the bag and rearranged the flap to conceal the serpent. The retreat from the garden was uneventful, and possibly the most stressful thing he’d done since 1941. Every hiss of the sprinkler system, every footstep from across the greenhouse, every phone ringing in the distant offices made him certain they’d be discovered. It didn’t help that it took far longer than it should, thanks to his lack of attention to Ms. Reed’s earlier guidance.
Aziraphale found the Conservatory exit after three misfires and one near thing with an alarmed door leading directly out onto the street. He shivered at the thought of being caught. Ms. Reed would no doubt be positively furious with him as it was, but that could be solved with a softening on his anti-photography stance and a lengthy loan period. The important thing was that Crowley was safe, that no one was trying to wrest the satchel away from him and put Crowley back in that wretched cage.
He ducked through one of the galleries, paranoid that someone would notice both his absence and Crowley’s absence and come to the correct conclusion. The screaming riot of colors and textures decorating the walls would have been startling enough on a good day--it was the sort of thing Crowley would have liked on principle, just for the way it made people instinctively flinch away from it when they noticed it--but it was too much at the moment for his poor frayed nerves. He thought of coaxing Crowley partway out of the satchel to weigh in on one particularly large and ostentatious piece and had to stifle a hysterical little laugh. What on Earth had he been thinking with all this?
Aziraphale bolted out the rear entrance of the exhibition, finally finding a side exit he could slip out without alerting the entire building to his misdeeds. Or rather, he reminded himself firmly, his perceived misdeeds. He was actually doing something astonishingly noble, for which he’d been bitten, and it was only now beginning to dawn on him that he had no idea where to go next.
Aziraphale hesitated a moment in the courtyard, then decided on the tube. It would give him time to think, and a bit of anonymity, and get them out of the wind at least. Once he was sitting down again, he slipped his hand carefully into his satchel, fingertips brushing over Crowley’s head. He heard a sulky huff from the interior of the bag, then felt the cloth bulge against him as Crowley shoved his head deeper into his coils, away from Aziraphale’s hand.
He settled his fingers over Crowley’s spine, which didn’t elicit the same sullen retreat, and comforted himself by the feel of Crowley’s steady breathing. Aziraphale cradled the bag in his lap, grimacing. It was fine; he’d explain everything as soon as he could. Crowley would understand, once he woke up enough to think straight again. And if he didn’t, well, Crowley’d gotten over more embarrassing things than this. It would probably help if Aziraphale did it someplace the demon felt safe, someplace that was at least neutral territory. Someplace private.
Aziraphale chewed his lip. It wasn’t so much farther to Crowley’s flat than it was to the bookshop, and he wasn’t sure whether the bookshop was neutral territory anymore. Probably not, now that he thought about it. Crowley hadn’t set foot inside it since…
Aziraphale rubbed his eyes. Since asking for holy water. Since Aziraphale had rebuked him without realizing that was what he was doing. Crowley hadn’t even returned to collect the clothing he’d left behind, before everything they’d had together had all gone up in flames. Aziraphale had meant to return it, he had, but that would have meant deliberately purging all traces of Crowley from the shop and the apartment upstairs. It would have been another statement he hadn’t meant to make, delivering it all back to Crowley by a courier, a tidy package containing the implicit message that Crowley was no longer welcome in Aziraphale’s bailiwick. It would have meant admitting that things had been damaged past the point of repair, that the rupture might be permanent.
Funny how refusing to admit it hadn’t stopped it from happening. Aziraphale rested his hand against Crowley’s back, inside the satchel, and the scales warmed against his palm. Reckless, foolhardy creature.
Aziraphale should have known it was only a matter of time before Crowley got himself into some jam he couldn’t get back out of, the way he’d been carrying on the past century. The demon’s theatrics that night in the church would have let even a blind stranger in on that much. Aziraphale hadn’t thought to keep a closer watch on him because Aziraphale had wanted to carry on pretending that things were fine, that Crowley would come to him if he was in need of help, that he’d hear a knock on the bookshop door and find a note stuck in the jamb with a time and place for the necessary meeting.
Even that hadn’t happened since the night he’d finally handed over the holy water; Crowley called, if he reached out at all. Aziraphale sighed. Crowley’s flat it was, then. He just had to resist the urge to squeeze the satchel to his chest with every minor jolt of the carriage until they could get there.
The trip seemed to take an eternity, but it couldn’t have been more than half an hour later when he finally lugged the bag full of serpent across the threshold of Crowley’s apartment. The door had opened for him without needing a miracle, and Aziraphale deliberately assumed it was responding to Crowley’s presence and not his own. The idea that Crowley might consider himself banished from the bookshop but have left Aziraphale a standing invitation into his own home was too much.
He set the bag down carefully and locked the door. The apartment was blessedly warm and dry--almost too much so, but after the chilly damp of the rest of the city, Aziraphale was grateful for it.
Crowley nudged the satchel open with his snout and glowered at him. “Can I talk, now?”
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He knelt by the bag, opened the flap, and gently tipped it over onto its side. Crowley slithered out of it, every undulation a study in persecution and inconvenience. “If I’d realized how light your doze was, I’d have warned you first, I promise.”
“Mind giving me a moment?” Crowley asked archly, when Aziraphale’s fretful attention didn’t waver.
“Ah.” Aziraphale smiled weakly. The demon never had liked transforming in front of an audience, had he? He’d gotten slightly better about it, after the first few weeks they’d spent in each other’s arms, but Aziraphale couldn’t expect that same familiarity now, could he?
Aziraphale turned away and shed his coat, hanging it up carefully on the hook by the door. When he turned back, Crowley looked human again, and he was leaning with his back against the wall and his arms crossed and an expectant look on his face.
“All right,” Crowley grunted. “Now that we’re safe as houses and you seem to have regained some semblance of the sense God gave a mallard, would you mind telling me what the ineffable fuck that was all about?”
Aziraphale’s brows furrowed. “By ‘that,’ I assume you mean me rescuing you?”
“Rescuing…” Crowley reached up with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Angel, you clapped a hand over my mouth, stuffed me in a sack, and made off with me. I think the technical term for it might be a bit closer to kidnapping.”
Aziraphale wanted to quibble about the precise order, but clarifying that he’d clapped a hand over Crowley’s mouth after stuffing him in a sack probably wouldn’t be especially exculpatory.
“Crowley, how much of the past… well, few weeks at least,” he said, trying to recall when the last time he’d been able to contact Crowley was, “do you remember?”
“I remember the bit where the heat’s been playing silly buggers, and the bit where just miracling it right again was giving the manager absolute conniptions, and the bit where the repairmen kept breaking it again trying to get it fixed properly anyway, and all that got a bit tiresome on top of human minds being what they are, and, well.” Crowley raised his hands and grimaced. “You know.”
Aziraphale nodded. Quite a waste of power, on top of everything else, and Hell wasn’t likely to be any more sympathetic to a field agent’s discomfort than Heaven was.
“Why didn’t you say? You could’ve stayed in the…” It wouldn’t leave his throat, a lie like that. Crowley raised an eyebrow, but didn’t give voice to the obvious. Aziraphale would have tutted sympathetically over the inconvenience and then recommended a lovely hotel or two that would make the whole thing seem like a vacation. He very much would not have invited Crowley to weather the repairs in the flat above the bookshop.
“And I remember the bit about finding an absolutely lovely little garden with the perfect ambient humidity levels and temperature ranges,” Crowley continued, as if Aziraphale hadn’t said anything. “Not even open to the public yet, so no faffing about making droves of people ignore a stray snake or two. Gorgeous lush greenery, everyone puttering about happy as clams, flowers that would make you forget your own name. Perfectly wonderful spot for a bit of a nap while the furnace situation sorted itself out back here, really, right up until a certain divine messenger decided to…”
Crowley stopped, and he gave Aziraphale a distinctly uncomfortable look. The angel squirmed and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Took you a few millennia, but I suppose those instincts had to kick in eventually,” Crowley muttered, almost to himself.
“I was not driving you out of the Conservatory,” Aziraphale protested. Perhaps it had been a bit naive to think Crowley would be grateful for his efforts, but this was beyond the pale. “Honestly!”
“Is that why we’ve met at the bandstand the past few times?” he asked, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Seeing me roaming the park on my own recognizance like that was ruffling your feathers?”
“You were locked in a damned cage, Crowley!” Aziraphale cried, his hands balling into fists.
The demon straightened up and looked at him, surprised at his vehemence. Aziraphale took a breath and tried to get himself back under control.
“You were asleep in the middle of a greenhouse full of strangers,” he said, more careful of his tone this time. “Perfectly visible to anyone, not even deflecting attention away from yourself.” He bit his lip and looked down. “In a cage. With a padlock on the door.”
When Aziraphale looked back up, Crowley’s expression had softened, and Aziraphale wouldn’t venture to call it a penitent look, not by a long shot, but something approaching apologetic was there in his eyes.
“So yes, when I practically tripped over you in the middle of a tour, of all things, I could hardly leave you there, could I?” he sighed. It wasn’t like Crowley to be comfortable, put on display like that. He loved being the center of attention, yes, but always on his own terms. Just being there for anyone to gawk at, and while he slept? There was something Aziraphale was missing. “Trapped, alone, in God knows what kind of trouble, not even conscious for it--”
“I wasn’t,” Crowley said, and this time it was his turn to look away. “If I’d had any idea it was the Heavenly Host’s free day, I’d have warned you, or fucked off to the reptile house at the zoo.”
Which was not, from Aziraphale’s standpoint, any better.
“Ms. Reed said you belonged to one of the botanists.”
Crowley grimaced. “She certainly believed that, yes. Easier sell than me being one of the botanists, that was for sure.”
“And the padlock?” Aziraphale persisted.
“To keep people out, angel. Not exactly restful, having to constantly suggest people not try to pet you, or feed you a pigeon they caught on their lunch break, or, you know, pick you up and run off with you.” Crowley shook his head ruefully. “Even if they are trying to liberate you.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale could feel the embarrassment creeping into his cheeks. “I see.”
He’d annoyed Ms. Reed, and given himself a terrible fright, and blown through his miracle allotment for the better part of the quarter, and made a complete ass of himself, all for nothing.
“I suppose you couldn’t help it, though,” Crowley said after a moment. He rubbed his chin and gave Aziraphale a look that called for caution. “Your better nature coming out and all that.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Practically heroic, when you get right down to it.”
“Yes, yes, all right,” Aziraphale snapped. His cheeks were scarlet--he could feel the heat of them--and it would be an eternity before Crowley let him live this one down.
Crowley laughed and sauntered toward him. “Don’t act like it was nothing, angel. It’s hardly every day someone like you behaves so gallantly toward someone like me.”
Aziraphale swallowed, his throat tightening for an altogether different reason this time. Crowley’s eyes were almost molten, and his smile was soft.
“Staging a daring rescue in broad daylight, like that.”
Aziraphale looked away. “Crowley.”
Crowley’s hand found his, and Aziraphale almost jumped out of his skin. Crowley raised his hand to his lips, kissing the fingertips he’d nipped barely an hour ago, and Aziraphale wondered if this was what it was like, being hypnotized by a serpent.
“Even after I bit you,” Crowley murmured. “Poor thing.”
The lingering soreness dissipated, and Crowley’s thumb rubbed a small circle over Aziraphale’s knuckles. Aziraphale tried not to think about what it had been like to have Crowley right here, against the wall, half their clothes still on in their haste.
“Sssort of thing that dessservesss a reward, isssn’t it?” Crowley asked, and the answering wave of want that tore through Aziraphale almost left him breathless.
It was exactly the sort of unthinking response that had gotten him into this mess in the first place, wasn’t it?
Aziraphale pulled his hand from Crowley’s grasp and stepped back, his resolve stiffening even as hurt and disappointment chased each other across the demon’s face. If him saying no stung Crowley now, how much worse would it be if Aziraphale said yes this once and then had to re-draw that line between them? How much harder would it be to let go again, to push Crowley away again, to remind himself of his duty and where his loyalties were supposed to lie?
It was one thing to act when Crowley was in danger; Crowley’d done as much for him in the past. It was another thing to act on a whim, because Crowley was beautiful and Aziraphale’s cock was hard and the demon made such perfect little noises when he was drunk on pleasure and still wanting more.
Aziraphale tugged at his waistcoat and willed his corporation into a state more befitting the situation. Not that it mattered; Crowley was already retreating, his expression blank and the hand that had just held Aziraphale’s pulling a pair of glasses from his pocket instead. The desire that had filled the angel just moments ago was quickly curdling into a frustrated sort of unhappiness.
It wasn’t his fault things were how they were, and if anyone had bothered asking him his opinion on anything, he’d have gladly given them an earful. They hadn’t, though, and they weren’t going to, and the only thing he could do was try not to make anything worse than it had to be or, God help him, get Crowley imprisoned for real.
Aziraphale ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. It helped, a little, to look around the apartment and not recognize a single stick of furniture from the last time he’d been inside. Crowley’s craving for the novel and the modern made for an ever-shifting decor; given a long enough stretch of time, anything of sentimental value would eventually give way before the demands of fashion. It didn’t help at all, to see a loose pile of lovely landscape drawings tossed into a wastebasket and realize that all the beautiful things Crowley had had last time Aziraphale had been here had probably met a similar fate--hauled down to the curb and forgotten about, broken up for parts, or flogged at a cut-rate auction house.
Crowley didn’t keep things. Aziraphale glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, watched him pluck Aziraphale’s satchel from the floor and hang it on the hook next to Aziraphale’s coat. He was careful with it, straightening the edges and untwisting the strap, and Aziraphale looked back at the bin. Crowley couldn’t keep things, not really. Hell didn’t allow for that sort of stability.
Aziraphale retrieved the drawings and rifled through them, turning them to catch the light. Landscapes, mostly. A few were still lifes, rooms and tableaux that looked naggingly familiar, but Aziraphale couldn’t place a time or milieu without occupants.
“Oh, for the love of--” Crowley sighed sharply from across the room. “Angel, would you please put the rubbish back in the bin?”
Aziraphale looked up, a mix of guilt and remonstrance pricking at him. He hadn’t meant to snoop, not really, but the drawings in his hands most definitely were not rubbish.
“These are beautiful, Crowley,” he said, brows furrowing. “I can’t believe you really mean to send them to rot in a landfill.”
“I mean to burn them to ash as soon as the weather’s more cooperative,” Crowley told him. He came closer, hand outstretched, and Aziraphale fell back a few steps, instinctively putting them behind his back. Crowley stopped, mouth slackening, and then grimaced and let his hand fall to his side. Aziraphale could practically feel him rolling his eyes behind the glasses. “Really?”
“You did say something about a reward, didn’t you?” Aziraphale asked innocently, batting his eyelashes at Crowley. Let the demon have a taste of his own medicine, for once.
Crowley grunted, then threw up his hands. “Fine. All yours.”
“Thank you, Crowley.”
Crowley shook his head and snatched the satchel back off the hook, holding it open so Aziraphale could fit everything inside.
“Like being thanked by a seagull for leaving the chips on top of a trash heap,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry I interrupted your nap,” Aziraphale said quietly, securing the drawings so they wouldn’t be jostled too badly. The inside of the bag would accommodate them, as big as it was now, but he didn’t want to crease them on the way back to the bookshop.
“At least you meant well.” Crowley looked away, and his lips twisted. “I’m sorry I bit you.”
“It didn’t hurt much, and you did fix it, after.” Aziraphale could still reach out, could still take Crowley’s hand, change his mind, take Crowley to bed. “I’ll see you around, then.”
“Oh, I expect so.”
Crowley got the door for him, and Aziraphale could feel those golden eyes on him all the way to the elevator.
Aziraphale adjusted his grip on the box in his hands and squared his shoulders. As much as he hated parting with books, even on a temporary basis, a promise was a promise, and Ms. Reed had been ever so understanding about the vaguely-recalled emergency which had seen him disappearing in the middle of her tour. The suite of offices near the rear of the conservatory were spotless and professional, which helped allay a few of his fears revolving around rough-hewn workbenches and muddy-handed botanists using raw leaves as bookmarks. It wouldn’t be for so very long, and it looked as if Ms. Reed ran a tight ship; Aziraphale could do without them for a bit, for a good cause.
That there was the possibility of seeing Crowley again, without having to admit that he’d wanted to, didn’t enter into it.
His hand drifted to his bowtie, tugging it straight for the fifth time since he’d made it to the plaza. He could still feel Crowley’s lips on his fingertips, Crowley’s thumb on his knuckles. Two days, and all he’d done was try and fail not to regret the way he’d left Crowley’s apartment.
He’d spent most of yesterday examining the drawings Crowley had been so ready to throw away--Aziraphale still couldn’t credit the demon’s claim that he’d been about to burn them--and it had been quite the effort not to call Crowley up and ask if he remembered where the devil he’d gotten them from. They were all maddeningly familiar, like a word just on the tip of his tongue, but there was no commonality to them. A bowl of fruit in a low inn, a winterscape, a rough countryside that he didn’t recognize but instinctively smiled when he saw it…
Maybe they were cursed, he thought. Maybe that’s why Crowley had picked them up in the first place. Maybe that’s why Crowley was going to burn them. But then, Crowley would have said. Wouldn’t he?
“This is certainly an interesting take on the subject matter, but it’s not very accurate, is it?”
Aziraphale told himself to focus. Ms. Reed sounded put-upon, and as out of sorts as she had during the first half of his tour. He was probably in for a bit of disapproval, or some last-minute attempts at extorting better terms.
“It’s perfectly accurate.” Aziraphale stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening. Crowley’s voice dropped into that perfectly-reasonable tone he loved using when he was saying something particularly infuriating but also factually true when he continued, “From the insect’s perspective, at any rate.”
Aziraphale raised his hand to knock on the office door, partially ajar as it was, and caught a flash of movement on the other side of it.
“But it looks like your two o’clock’s here, so I’ll just get back to my actual duties, shall I?” Crowley said, opening the door. The tweed skirt and silk blouse caught Aziraphale by almost as much surprise as Crowley’s presence, and he barely smothered a gasp. Oh. He’d forgotten how lovely Crowley looked as a woman. Or maybe it was just a version of that same loveliness that he wasn’t quite as used to ignoring.
“God’s sake, Antonia--” Ms. Reed snapped. She stopped and composed herself when she saw Aziraphale. “We’ll continue this discussion later, shall we?”
“If you like, but I’d rather thought you didn’t have that much time to waste repeating yourself, these days.” Crowley gave Aziraphale a look over the top of her--very definitely her with the way she was holding herself, that sultry slouch she’d managed even around a whalebone corset--glasses and smirked, letting him know that his reaction to her get-up had very much not passed unnoticed. He flushed. “I’ll likely be checking carbon dioxide levels in the water lily tank by the time you’re done here, if you need to come find me.”
“Actually, perhaps Mr. Fell could settle this,” Ms. Reed said. She pushed a stray lock of hair behind one ear and looked at him hopefully, and Aziraphale felt an uncharitable burst of relief that it wasn’t just him Crowley drove to distraction. She gestured to a large painting on an easel in the corner. “What do you think?”
“You’re asking an antiques appraiser for graphic design and marketing opinions now?” Crowley snorted.
“Bookmonger,” Aziraphale corrected. He shifted the box back into both hands and set it down on Ms. Reed’s desk. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Miss… ?”
“Doctor,” Crowley retorted, arching an eyebrow.
“Mr. Fell is very generously loaning us a collection of incredibly rare nineteenth-century botanical works from his own private collection,” Ms. Reed said, her tone steel and ice and unsubtle reminders that there were plenty of places with hiring freezes on. “Dr. Antonia Crowley is one of our botanists, recently off the M25 environmental offset project.” She glanced at the painting. “Her practical specialty is nepenthes, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now.”
“Not the one with the snake?” Aziraphale asked, fumbling with his glasses. They were for show, of course, but the whole point of having something for show was to make a show of it.
“The one with the thankfully repaired furnace, and no further need to bring her inadvisable pets to work,” Ms. Reed assured him.
“Not so inadvisable,” Crowley said, her smile thinning. “Snakes are really quite affectionate, given half a chance.”
Aziraphale glanced at her just in time to catch the glint in her eye when she looked at him. He put his glasses on and peered at the painting, then barely stopped himself from recoiling when he really saw it. It was a cross-section of a large pitcher plant, done in lurid watercolors over india ink, with the prey-capture, digestion, and absorption processes all illustrated in loving detail as levels of hell.
“Are those… ants?” he asked weakly. They looked like demons, pitching some poor sinner into a pit for eternal torture. There were even a few in the digestive fluid, biting a centipede as it tried to escape despite its failure dooming the whole lot of them.
“Symbiotic relationship,” Crowley said. “The plant provides--”
“So, Mr. Fell, what do you think?” Ms. Reed interrupted. “Appropriate as part of the promotional material in the foyer?”
“Ah. It’s very.” Aziraphale swallowed, his eyes going to the partially-digested frog at the bottom of the pitcher. One of its feet was pristine and wrapped around a bit of debris that reached almost to the top of the water, and its rear legs were already disintegrating into the sludge at the bottom. Aziraphale felt ill, looking at it. “Powerful,” he managed.
“Thank you,” Ms. Reed said, as if that settled it. Aziraphale’s knees went weak, and his skin was too hot, and he needed to sit down. He tore his eyes from the painting, and found both Crowley and Ms. Reed watching him, startled.
“I don’t…” he mumbled, and then Crowley was propping him up and guiding him to a chair, lowering him into it carefully, and Ms. Reed was darting from the office in search of a glass of water.
“What’s gotten into you, angel?” Crowley asked quietly. Her hands were on his tie, then on his collar, undoing knots and buttons with a calm efficiency. Aziraphale wrapped his hands around her wrists and stared at her.
“It’s not like that, is it? Not really?” he demanded. He was begging, he could hear it in his voice, and surely Crowley would have said, if that’s what she was going back to every time she had to report in. All the time they’d known each other, everything they’d been to one another, she’d have told him, he knew she would have. She’d have told him, and he’d have… He’d have done something.
“What?” She stared at him, brows furrowing. He risked a glance at the painting behind her, and the furrow deepened. “Well, it’s a pastiche, not a literal botanical illustration, so it’s drawn from reality but you’re obviously not getting all that--”
“Hell.”
“Wh--” She turned to look at the painting, then back at him, and then at the painting again before settling finally on him. “Bruegel, angel. It’s cribbed from Bruegel.”
“Then it isn’t… I mean, Hell isn’t--” Aziraphale exhaled carefully, his fingers tightening around her wrists. It was occurring to him, now, that there wasn’t actually anything he could do, if she said yes. If she said yes, or said that it was a million times worse, or said that it was the closest thing to it that a person who’d never seen it could understand--a dozen different stages of drowning desperation, of being eaten alive, of the damned piled on top of the dying piled on top of the dead.
There was nothing he could do if she said yes, and so he needed, very keenly, for her to say no, to smile and reassure him that he was being ridiculous and jumping at shadows and not seeing the big picture.
The room tilted around him, and Aziraphale found himself with empty hands, Crowley behind him and gently tipping him forward until his head was between his knees. She rubbed his back lightly.
“Just breathe, will you?” she sighed. “And no, Hell isn’t remotely like the inside of a pitcher plant.”
“I’m being serious,” he protested. He closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of her hand on his spine.
“So am I,” Crowley retorted, squeezing his shoulder.
“How is he--oh, good lord,” Ms. Reed said from the doorway. She put the water down on her desk and whisked the painting out of sight behind a trifold. “We are absolutely not putting that thing up in the foyer.”
“I think it’s the temperature in here more than anything else,” Crowley said, one cool hand on the back of his neck. Aziraphale shivered. “It’s stuffy even by my standards, and he’s a bit overdressed for the weather.”
A few minutes of bickering later, and Crowley had him stripped down to his waistcoat and installed on a bench in the greenhouse.
“Was that really necessary?” Aziraphale asked mildly.
“What, reminding her that she had a conference call?” Crowley stretched her long legs across the path, thick tights just visible between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots.
“Making her think she was late for it.” He took a sip of water from the softening paper cup in his hands. He didn’t want to ask her about Hell again. “Doctor Crowley?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You have a doctorate.”
“No, don’t be an idiot.” She grinned. “I have seven doctorates.”
“Since when?” He tried and failed to imagine Crowley having the patience to make it through a doctoral program.
“Since they started making things so complicated that you need to have a fucking PhD to manipulate them without breaking them.” Crowley looked up at the ceiling above them and pursed her lips. “I mean, obviously the first two were ages and ages ago, and in law and divinity.”
Aziraphale stared at her. “No.”
“Funny, that’s what about half my teachers said, too.” Crowley chuckled. “The botany one wasn’t intentional, but I’ve got rather a knack for it, and I did enough field work knocking around in the Indies to earn two of ‘em, so why not? Of course, standards in the ‘20s were a bit lower than they are today, but who notices the dates on these things? Most of it’s being able to bluster your way through what you don’t know, anyway.”
She reached over and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead, then against the back of his neck, and there was nothing but a companionable concern in it. She dropped her hand to the bench again, and she didn’t repeat her earlier questions about what had caused his little fit.
Aziraphale studied the brickwork of the path in front of them. He hadn’t known Crowley had ever gone to the Indies at all, never mind spent enough time there to become an expert in the local flora. He’d just vaguely assumed the demon spent any time not under Aziraphale’s direct supervision half-heartedly tempting people to evil and doing the bare minimum to avoid being recalled to Hell. It was a bit uncomfortable, thinking that whole swathes of Crowley’s life were a closed book to him.
“You weren’t the one who put the Conservatory on my trail, were you?” he asked after a moment.
“Mmm.” Crowley took a deep breath and then sighed. “Can’t take credit for that one, I’m afraid. I may have started a rumor about a terrible fire destroying most of your stock back during the Blitz, though. Just in the interests of confounding scholarship and disrupting the transmission of information and so forth, you know.”
“Very evil of you,” Aziraphale agreed. “Just one big coincidence, then?”
“What, you running your mouth to Wiltshire and his pack of galloping mycologists about the prodigious breadth of your collection back during your spy days wasn’t part of some dastardly wheels-within-wheels plan to turf me out of the best place for a nap on this side of the Channel forty years later?” She smirked. “You’re undermining my confidence in the Great Plan, angel.”
“You just happened--”
“To dust off my botanical background when I needed a series of environmental impact reports to say that putting in miles and miles of asphalt wouldn’t disrupt anything?” Crowley interrupted smoothly. She arched an eyebrow and shrugged. “It’s not all miracles and bribes, these days. Lot more legwork than there used to be, more people that need convincing you’re not going to bring the whole thing crashing down around their ears the second there’s a bad freeze or a gale or an abnormally long rainy season.”
Aziraphale considered the statement. He felt, suddenly, like there was a whole slew of similar projects he should have been planning, to help people and relieve suffering and make things better. What would London look like if he’d applied himself in the same way Crowley apparently had been, out hectoring politicians and badgering civil servants and earning advanced degrees in human sciences to convince them to better themselves? He tried to imagine convincing Gabriel of the necessity of it, of talking Michael into upping his allotment of power for the duration, and deflated again. They’d never understand, would they? He’d barely been able to sell them on the benefits of Bibles being printed in languages people spoke and could read.
No--Crowley was going to do whatever it was that Crowley was going to do, and Aziraphale was going to watch it all happen and wring his hands and never find the right words to make the archangels listen to him.
“That painting,” he murmured.
“Oh, sod the painting,” Crowley said. “I’m sorry it upset you, but it’s just a painting. It’s not of Hell any more than those cherub-happy gold-leaf monstrosities they cranked out by the dozen back during the Renaissance were of Heaven.”
“Perfectly accurate,” Aziraphale reminded her. “From the insect’s perspective.”
“Nature’s not exactly pretty, most days.” She pushed her glasses up and rubbed the bridge of her nose, and Aziraphale was surprised to see a distant look in her eyes. “I mean, think about it. You’re just going about your life, trying to get by. It’s not a great life, maybe, but you’re doing all right for yourself. Then suddenly you find something that’s too good to be true. All your wildest dreams, right there and realized, and all you have to do is follow the path straight for it, and you can just… have it.”
Crowley shook her head, and there was a softness to her mouth that, for some reason, made him want to cry.
“It hits you, about a moment before the big drop, that you couldn’t ever really have it. It was a trick, you see. Bait, to get you close enough that it could really set its hooks in deep. Everything you wanted, right there just out of reach,” she held out her hands toward some invisible thing, fingers crooked, “to keep you distracted for just long enough that you forget how to pull yourself back out. After that, it doesn’t matter if you give up right then or keep smashing yourself into the walls until you’re too tired to move, it ends the same way.”
“That’s horrible,” Aziraphale said quietly.
“Well, at least you get a front-row seat for that beautiful illusion while you drown,” Crowley told him, her tone glittering with sharp edges and fake cheer. “So you’re doing loads better than those poor fuckers who got shelled to bits in the Somme with nothing in front of them but mud, filth, and shrapnel.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Walk you back to the office?”
Aziraphale frowned, dead certain that he was missing something but unable to look at the dazzlingly false smile on her face.
“Come on, angel,” she said, wriggling her fingers. “Even if it’s the last thing you want to do, you’ve got to settle up sometime.”
He sighed and let her pull him to his feet, and even if he knew what it was he was missing, he’d never be able to fix it, would he? Aziraphale threaded his arm through hers and leaned on her, and Crowley squeezed his hand.
“Cheer up,” she told him, nudging him with her elbow. “You’ve already robbed the place once. If they don’t want to give the books back, you can just do it again. I promise I’ll even look the other way instead of biting you, next time.”
“You’re too generous,” he scoffed. He relented after a moment. She was trying to put him at ease, trying to cheer him up. It wasn’t her fault he was in a mood. “Don’t think I won’t hold you to it, Crowley.”
“Doctor Crowley.”
“I am not calling you that.”
She smirked at him. “If you want my help ransacking the office, you will. Turning to felony theft of priceless academic resources over petty office rivalries with tenured lecturers and arrogant, sloppy field researchers? Very much a Doctor Crowley proposition, that is.”
“We’ll see,” Aziraphale said. Her smirk turned into a grin, and at least now it seemed genuine. His voice was softer when he repeated, “We’ll see.”