Work Text:
It was a Thursday when Crowley realized his list of four-letter words had gotten shorter.
After a productive morning buying long-term stocks, now that there appeared to be a long term to speak of, he was wine shopping. Since the world hadn’t ended he’d decided to enjoy new experiences. It was a celebration of sorts.
If Aziraphale’s newfound interest in popping down to Antarctica to see what humans had done with the continent was any indication, Crowley wasn’t the only one subscribing to this philosophy.
Crowley had no desire to visit Antarctica. He was debating getting fish, since he’d never kept pets and it might be an experience worth trying. At present, he was leaning toward fighting fish as appropriately demonic.
He’d also suggested to Aziraphale that that the world was full of wines they’d never tasted, and they should make an effort to broaden their alcohol horizons.
This line of thinking found him selecting new reds while Aziraphale picked out a few whites. Crowley looked to see which top-shelf vintages he hadn’t tried, which led him to a bottle called Magna Praemia.
“Great rewards,” he muttered. It’d been ages since he spoke Latin, but demonic memory rarely failed. “It had better be rewarding for £245.”
“Excuse me,” said a petite woman to his left. “Would you mind terribly getting me a Bell Hill Pinot Noir?”
Crowley grabbed the bottle she pointed at and realized it was another wine he’d never sampled. It turned out that when you developed favorites and stuck with them, there were a great many wines you never tried.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He’d put another bottle in his basket when a man rounded the corner. “Need help reaching it, love?” that man asked the woman.
“No, this kind gentleman took it down for me.”
Crowley barely looked up from the label he was reading as they wandered off, chattering about some housewarming party.
“People are allowed to call you kind now?” asked Aziraphale with deceptive lightness as he rounded a corner.
Crowley almost glowered out of habit. Instead, he put the bottle back on the shelf and half-shrugged. “Not like it’s going to get me in trouble now.”
For all Aziraphale’s intelligence, he could be dense sometimes. You couldn’t call a demon nice and expect it to be appreciated. Demons had reputations. If Hell found out Crowley had been going around earning himself descriptions like ‘nice’ and ‘kind,’ well, all of humanity’s most effective torturers had ended up in Hell, where they shared ideas with legions of unimaginative demons in exchange for favorable treatment. It would’ve been extremely unpleasant.
But that was before. Now, Hell was leaving him alone. Crowley was the first demon to be given tacit, fear-based retirement, so what if people didn’t think he was pure evil? It hardly mattered anymore, when he was already a traitor to Hell.
Aziraphale never understood that Crowley had already been kicked out of Heaven. Therefore, if he lost Hell’s favor, there was nowhere else to go. No further to fall, and back up wasn’t an option. Unforgiveable didn’t have an escape clause.
Except there was Earth. Had been all along, it’d just taken him some millennia to realize it. Earth suited him better than Heaven or Hell ever had.
Now, finally, the pieces fell into place for Aziraphale. “Oh,” he said, wearing the particular expression which meant he had more to say, but doubted Crowley wanted to hear it, in no small part because the word ‘ineffable’ was in there somewhere.
Crowley was indeed done with the subject. “Come on, angel. Let’s pay for these and get your fancy cheeses.”
Aziraphale nodded. “I’ve discovered a lovely new chevre which will go perfectly with some of these.”
He then proceeded to spend the next decade calling Crowley complimentary adjectives whenever he thought he could get away with it. And though Crowley would never admit it, he grew to enjoy those descriptions.
Unforgivable, it turned out, was in the eye of the beholder.