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For my whole queer family, especially my fellow cuties with Church Wounds. Mostly, this is for you, Nathan. This happy ending is for you.
****************************
The baby anti-christ had been delivered (well not delivered-delivered. Handed over) about seven years ago. Aziraphale sat in the shop, drinking wine and waiting for an is-the-baby-evil-yet meeting with Crowley. When instead of screeching antique tires, a slamming door, and a tinkling bell, he heard a persistent knock, he turned from his desk and squinted toward the door. He was met with the gaze of a child, maybe 8 or 9 years old. When she saw he was looking, she raised her eyebrows pointedly and continued knocking--this time on the window. He mouthed “we’re closed” and turned around. Surely a child of that age could read the “closed” sign?
The knocking didn’t stop. With a sharp exhale, he dropped his reading glasses on the desk and rose, his chair spinning behind him.
As he walked toward her, the girl yelled through the window, a bit more loudly than necessary, “the sign says you’re open, can I please come in?”
An American, of course.
“I’m afraid we’re closed, I must have forgot to change the sign.” As he said it, he pointedly flipped it with a thwack.
She wilted. “I just want to read in there. Please?”
At that precise and irritating moment, the Bentley rolled up and parked in the loading zone in front of the shop. Crowley tapped on the girl’s left shoulder and peeked around to the right, asking “who’re you? He’s closed...you could wait, but Satan knows how long a wait it’ll be.” She whirled around to the left, coming full circle at the sound of his voice.
As he turned the handle, she said “well, you’re going in, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes. What's it to you?”
Aziraphale threw a desperate glance at Crowley. For God’s sake, take care of this.
Instead of “taking care of this,” however, Crowley raised his eyebrows in amusement and looked between the two as he stood between them in the doorway.
“I want to come in, obviously. To read.” She brandished a library book. The Phantom Tollbooth.
As Crowley said “come in,” Aziraphale repeated “we’re closed.”
She took the answer that suited her best, pushing past the angel and into the shop. Crowley followed, smirking at Aziraphale.
“C’mon, angel, we can catch up in a minute.”
Aziraphale was visibly flustered. “Well-well...all right, I suppose. Don’t touch any of the books!”
She pulled a face and looked up at him. “Isn’t this a book store? How can people know which one they want if they don’t touch them?”
“I-well. Yes. But you’ve brought your own so. Just keep your hands to yourself.”
The two men seemed...foreign somehow, but they weren’t, by their accents. She prided herself on her blossoming (and new found) knowledge of English accents. She perched on small empty space on a table, facing them interview-style.
“What’s your name, kid?” Crowley asked, sliding his hands into his pockets and pacing to examine her from the side.
“Gabrielle Antonia Vail. I’m 10.”
Aziraphale scowled at her choice of seating as Crowley suppressed a laugh in his direction.
“And why aren’t you at school, Gabrielle Antonia Vail?”
In reply, she scooted off the table and made her way into a nook among the bookshelves nearby, curled her knees into her chest, and opened her book.
Crowley and Aziraphale raised their eyebrows at each other.
“I’m afraid we do have rather an important meeting to get started, Ms. Vail.”
She giggled, made no move to get up, and glanced between the two of them.
“Ms. Vail? I’m ten! You can call me Gabby. What’s your name? I don’t want to call you Mr. Fell. ‘Fell’ doesn’t sound like a real na-I mean. It’s. It’s. Not technically a proper noun.”
“He’s Aziraphale. I’m Crowley.”
“Aziraphale. Aziraphale. That’s a funny name, Aziraphale.”
“Yes, well. Thank you. We really must get to our little chat, Gabby. Might you come back later? Or...something?” or never?
“She won’t be a bother, angel, we can talk up in the flat.” He produced a set of noise-canceling headphones from...somewhere...and tossed them down to her. “You can stay if you keep these on.”
“Really, my dear boy, that is, Crowley--”
Crowley gave him a sharp, but somehow still amused, look. “Let’s go.”
Several hours later, when the angel and the demon had finished their updates (something to the effect of “he’s only 7, we can’t tell yet, what do you think of the play they’re doing at the Royal Opera House”) and several bottles of wine, they came back downstairs to discover that Gabby had barely moved at all. The only difference was that her head, instead of being buried in her book, was leaning sideways on the shelf beside her, the headphones were awkwardly askew, and she was asleep.
Crowley softened as Aziraphale stiffened.
The angel scoffed “really, I say.”
“She’s just tired. You nap like that all the time!”
“I wonder where her parents live...will they, I don’t know, come get her?”
“Yes I suppose that is a concern...but perhaps it’s up to her? She knows her rules better than we do…?”
“In any case. Wake her up, please.” Aziraphale turned back toward his desk.
Crowley crouched down next to the girl, very gently touched her knee as he slipped the book from her hands and marked her page. “Oi. Gabby. Wakey wakey, it’s nighttime.”
“What? Seriously? Oh my god!” When “oh god” escaped her mouth, she clapped a hand across it and compulsively glanced heavenward.
She jumped up and Crowley reeled, raising his hands. Noting (and feeling decidedly unsettled by) the intense fear in her eyes, he said “whoa, whoa, it’s all right! You’re not in trouble!”
She snatched the book back from him, stuffed it in her backpack, and ran out the door.
Positively harassed, Aziraphale gasped, “first the anti-christ, now American children invading the bookshop.”
Crowley rolled his eyes harder than was (literally) humanly possible and wandered toward the back room (and the half-finished bottle of red that waited there).
Every Wednesday, her familiar (and, to Aziraphale, annoying) persistent knock clanged on the door (or, in desperate cases, the window). Sometimes, when there was no answer, Gabby curled on the stoop and waited. Once Crowley knew that Wednesdays were “her day” (his words), he made sure that at least one of them was there to let her in and keep track of her. She kept the same schedule, 12-7, usually sleeping for part of the time and working through some excellent choice of book or another for the rest of it.
_____________________________________________________________
One Wednesday, one fateful Wednesday, Crowley forgot himself. Warlock had been particularly troublesome, and he’d needed to stay at the Dowlings’ late into the night. Aziraphale, who was in Wales performing various miracles and temptations--and who barely kept track of the days of the week anyway--had not been in to answer her noontime knocking, either. It had been raining in that October-in-London fashion: all day, without cease, chilling the air and one’s insides in equal measure.
When Crowley traipsed clumsily out of the Bentley--for that’s what his swagger looked like after long days bouncing a baby while wearing heels: clumsy--he found her curled on the stoop, completely soaked, eyes closed, her raincoat wrapped around the book in her lap.
He sat down beside her on the step, shrugging off his blazer and putting it over her shoulders.
“Gabby?”
“Hello. You weren’t here so I. Well. Waited.”
“I see that,” Crowley said, smiling a little.
When she didn’t reply, he nudged her a little with his elbow and said softly “I’m sorry neither of us were here to let you in, little one. Aren’t you cold?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s ok.”
“You’re shivering. I’m told that’s what humans do when they’re cold. Come to that, so am I. Do you want me to drive you home? Or come inside to dry off before you go? You may enjoy the damp, but I don’t.”
She hesitated. “I...I guess I’ll come in.”
“Excellent. Shall we?”
He opened the door and swiped the wall, making a show of flipping a nonexistent switch as he snapped his fingers to turn on the lights (were there any actual light switches in here?).
Temperature regulation had never been a priority in the bookshop. Angels never really got cold or hot, so whenever Crowley, who required reptile-friendly temperatures, was not in, it was markedly chilly inside. It was an effective customer deterrent. It was an ineffective way to dry off a grumpy 11-year-old human child. Crowley, seeing her shiver, reflexively raised the heat with a thought.
“There are blankets and things back here, come along.”
In the back room, Crowley pointed her to the blanket-laden couch as he sat across from her at one of Aziraphale’s many desks and poured himself a glass of wine.
“...nice outfit.” There was no malice in her voice--only questions. Then again, she had learned rather quickly in her interactions with Crowley and Aziraphale that their habits raised more questions than answers. Especially their fashion habits.
“Ah, yes well. I’m...a nanny.”
She stared at him with her little brow furrowed, brain wheels palpably turning. She settled for “oh. Ok.” She had the distinct thought that her parents would Not Approve of her acquaintance with a skirt-wearing (apparently male) nanny and a bookseller who dressed like a hobbit who seemed to live together.
“I’ll go change and wash up, then. Just, erm. Well. Just stay there and warm up.”
She nodded, taking her typical curled-up posture on the couch and wrapping herself in several crocheted blankets.
Crowley returned a little too quickly to have freed himself from a full-on skirt suit, makeup, and tights, but if Gabby noticed, she didn’t comment. Crowley gave her one of his warm smiles as he walked down from the upstairs flat and slipped a cup of cocoa into her hands.
Her face lit up. She smiled and thanked him over the rim of the cup, then took a generous sip.
And if Crowley was miraculously drying her off just a sight quicker than was normal, what of it?
“Where’s Aziraphale?”
“It’s not like I keep a copy of his diary.”
“Actually, I bet you do.”
Crowley looked at her sideways (or at least, she assumed he did. It was never easy to tell where he was looking behind his sunglasses). “He’s in Wales. On business.”
“Mm. I get it. My parents travel for business all the time.”
Crowley realized, with something of a jolt, that neither of them had ever asked Gabby why she and her American family lived in England in the first place. Through the fog of his exhaustion, he dimly felt that they had let her down somehow.
“What do they do?”
“They’re um. They’re missionaries.” She said it like a confession, with a distinct wince. “It’s more normal in America than it is here, I guess.”
“They’re on a long-term missions trip...in London?”
She giggled at his disbelieving tone and clarified, “no, no. They work for this company that does missionary work in, you know, Africa and stuff. They used to work at a location of it in America, but they got transferred to the office here.”
Crowley took her in, sipping wine as he processed the thought of a “Christian missionary” company wealthy enough to open offices all over the world when their money could be spent on, well. Doing Good Works. As he watched Gabby, shivering on the couch of a bookseller who barely knew her but whose companionship she sought once a week--for a year, at this point--he wondered if this company was “one of his or one of theirs,” so to speak.
Gently, he asked “and do you like it here? What do you think of London?”
As usual, she was quiet for a long time. Luckily, Crowley was better practiced in patience than she could possibly imagine. “It’s hard. To move. I mean it’s just that...everything here is so different and I’m in a different place in school than everyone else and you can’t buy American peanut butter anywhere. I’ve only made a few friends because...well, because I’m sort of awkward, I guess. I don’t really belong here. I mean, I do now, and like, I do have friends, it’s not like I don’t have any friends. And I don’t like having an accent. I’m used to thinking you all have accents. You know, Harry Potter. And stuff. I stick out. It’s embarrassing.” She trailed off, staring pointedly into her cocoa.
Crowley’s eyes widened a bit at hearing Gabby speak more than a few words at a time. “I think Aziraphale might have some peanut butter” was all he could seem to come up with in reply.
“Really?”
“Er yeah. Hang on.”
He made another trip upstairs, reaching into what had been, seconds before, an empty cupboard. He grabbed a brand new jar of Skippy peanut butter (it was the only kind of specifically American peanut butter he’d heard of). Conveniently, there was also a new loaf of bread in the cupboard. He spread some peanut butter on it, wrapped it in a napkin, and held it in front of himself.
“What’s the difference?” He asked himself aloud as he surreptitiously dipped a finger into the jar.
Oh, there was a difference. It was sugar.
“There you are,” he said, presenting a sandwich to her on his outstretched hand.
“Oh wow, thank you! Wow. Yes.”
Crowley took advantage of her full, stuck-together mouth to formulate his questions.
“Why Wednesdays?”
“What?” she asked thickly.
“Why do you always grace us with your presence on Wednesdays?”
“Oh. It’s my parents’ long day at work, and I have the school convinced that I have to go with them. I told them it was an American Evangelist thing, and they didn’t question me. Think I scared them off.”
At this, Crowley smirked, and Gabby returned it with a conspiratorial smile.
“Also, Wednesday nights are Bible study and youth group.” The same thing that had flickered across her face when she’d told Crowley her parents’ job darkened her features for just a moment.
Crowley was nothing if not an expert at reading humans for their potential vulnerable-to-temptation spots, so he didn’t miss the expression, brief as it was. However, temptation was not his intention when he asked “and why would you want to miss that?”
She thought for a moment, staring at him with her peanut butter sandwich halfway to her mouth. “It’s….I mean, it’s just that it’s boring.” She punctuated this statement--which, to Crowley, an excellent liar, was obviously untrue--with a large bite of sandwich.
“I see. And your parents? They don’t care if you don’t go?”
“God you really are a nanny, aren’t you?” she whipped back.
He raised his hands like he had the first time they’d met and she’d startled him.
“Sorry. No, they don’t miss me. I tell them I have a regular study group.”
“So...your parents think you’re at school and school thinks you’re with your parents.”
She nodded, a mixture of self-satisfaction and guilt lifting her chest but simultaneously worrying her brow. “Please don’t tell anyone. I need...well. I like being here. Instead.” She blushed furiously and brought the mug up for what would have been a long drink, had there been any cocoa left. Cocoa aside, however, she achieved her goal: covering her entire face.
“Oh I’m never one to tell on people for causing trouble, not to worry.” He paused. “Out of an interest, what’s this company called? The one your parents work with.”
“‘Compassion International.’”
“Compassion International? That’s an odd sort of name, isn’t it?”
“No? I don’t know.”
“What do they do? On their missions trips?”
Gabby shrugged. “The times I’ve gone, we’ve given food to poor kids, built them houses, spread God’s word, taught them how to read. That sort of thing.”
“What do you use to teach them to read?”
“The Bible, obviously.”
There were few human things for which Crowley felt utterly ill-equipped. Okay, there were actually a lot. But one of them was this conversation. How could he hope to explain how wildly un-Christ-like this kind of thing was? Or was it...heavenly? It certainly didn’t allow for much choice or free will for the kids who had the misfortune to come into contact with it (on either end). And it did seem like the sort of thing Gabriel or Sandalphon would cook up in some heavenly cubicle. Or corner office, in their cases.
He’d never had a theological conversation with a human that wasn’t an attempt to foment petty sin, especially not one with a child. Perhaps it was best to just...ask her as if she were an adult?
He made honest eye contact with her as he asked, “And you, Gabby? Do you believe in God? That God wants you to do…” he waved his hand vaguely “...that?”
She hesitated, thrown by the nakedness and sincerity of the question. She quickly regained her composure and said “of course. We believe in a personal relationship with Jesus and...and...everyone should have that! You know, for their own souls. People who don’t believe in Jesus go to Hell when they die.” She punctuated her statements with a tidy nod.
Oh, heaven. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and he closed it. She was so convicted and misguided and...little. Crowley’s shoulders drooped and he leaned his elbows on his knees, staring into his wine and swilling it. At this point, he was hardly surprised by the lengths humans went to “in God’s name.” He’d rather seen it all. He flinched as he thought of his commendation for the Spanish Inquisition.
“Gabby,” he said. She looked back up at him. “Who told you those things?”
“My parents, and, you know, everyone. I really don’t meet anyone who isn’t Christian. I mean, I do now, since we’re here, but they’re still at a Christian school, they just don’t, you know, read the Bible or witness to anyone or anything.”
This was something he should’ve taken credit for. An eleven-year-old who already believed she would Fall if she made choices, asked questions. If she asked questions she didn’t even know were askable. For the thousandth, the millionth time, he asked Her why the kids deserved this.
“It’s late. Can you take me home, please?”
“Of course, little one.”
**************************
When Aziraphale returned later that night, he found Crowley pacing with his never-ending glass of wine in hand and his sunglasses on the desk.
He’d no sooner walked in the door when Crowley asked “were American Evangelicals one of ours or one of yours?”
A familiar shame made the angel's face fall. “Ours, I'm afraid. But, to his credit, I don’t think Gabriel knew it would go this far.”
Crowley grumbled into a sip of wine and ran a hand through his hair.
“We forgot about Gabby today. It’s Wednesday.”
“Oh! Oh. We certainly did, poor girl.”
“When I got here, she was sat on the stoop. In the rain. Almost asleep. Soaked. Freezing.”
“Oh dear. And you let her in? Did she get anything wet?” he wreung his hands.
“Aziraphale.”
“No I do feel bad for forgetting her! Truly. I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, of course I let her in. We talked for a while.”
“A while? Really?” Aziraphale asked as he miracled a cup of cocoa into his hands and took a seat.
“I know.” He sprawled on the couch facing the angel. “We talked about religion.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yes, oh dear.” He sprang back up from the couch and resumed pacing. “Her parents work for this-this corporation that does ‘God’s work’” the air quotes caused his wine to slosh a bit, landing on his hand and instantly disappearing, “’ministering’ to the ‘less fortunate.’ Compassion International, it’s called.”
Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably. “Well maybe it’s...that is, dear boy, it could be--”
“No, it’s not! They might as well be going out there to throw bibles at kids. And--well, and Gabby! She’s...they’ve got her...she can’t even ask questions! She doesn’t even know it’s possible!”
The angel’s mug of cocoa miraculously transformed into a glass of scotch.
“Exactly” came Crowley’s reply.
____________________________________________________________________________
Now, Crowley and Aziraphale had been unintentionally been working up from slight brushes of the fingers to cheek kisses (when that was The Thing) to handshakes. As the anti-christ grew up, the stress and preoccupation of the prospect of Earth ending pressed heavier and heavier on them. As with humans, so with celestial creatures: their self-care had rather fallen by the wayside. For Aziraphale, this meant that his wings, once pristine, grew steadily more disheveled and, eventually, quite uncomfortable.
After much angelic internal conflict, and a great deal of cajoling by a demon who was perplexed by Aziraphale’s constant need to adjust his back, they’d fallen into the habit of preening each other.
It was glorious. That was the only word for it. Glorious.
Crowley had been positively longing to run his fingers through Aziraphale’s wings since the actual Beginning. Although the angel would never admit this to himself, the feeling was mutual.
On one of these lovely occasions, a quiet Tuesday afternoon in the shop, Aziraphale sat on the floor in front of the couch as Crowley slowly worked through each of the angel’s beautiful--and shockingly huge--feathers.
They were each so deep in separate states of emotional turmoil (ohmySomeone it’s really happening!) and intense relaxation (something like occult and ethereal purring) that they’d forgotten to lock the door.
Neither of them snapped their wings out of the physical plane quite quickly enough when Gabby waltzed through the door. The tinkling bell seemed to mock all three of them as they froze: one midway through a dramatic wave of greeting, one with his hands awkwardly hovering on either side of another’s back, and one with his hands so tightly clasped in his lap that his fingers were going white.
Gabby was the first to speak.
“What.”
Neither the angel nor the demon snapped their fingers to suspend the child’s capacity for memory or movement. She wasn’t, after all, an ordinary human to them. She was sort of a friend. Or something?
Their wings had been visible for too long to be explained away as a trick of the light or a one-off hallucination. Crowley slammed his sunglasses onto his face and was sorely tempted to take on his snake aspect, but he quickly realized that that would only make matters worse. Aziraphale stood up.
And then, he blew Crowley’s level of optimism and faith in humanity out of the water. He found himself wanting to be honest with this odd little person. “Well um, you see. We. There’s. An explanation. For that. You might just have to...give us a moment. Can you do that?”
Gabby nodded mutely and went back to sit on the couch.
Something passed between Aziraphale and Crowley. Aziraphale gave him a meaningful look, hoping to convey his intention. Obviously, Crowley agreed--the angel wondered why he’d ever thought that Crowley wouldn’t want to be honest with the child.
Before the demon could say anything, Aziraphale spat out “whydon’tyoudothetalking.”
Crowley scowled and shook his head, but privately agreed that it was indeed for the best.
“You’ve studied the Bible, right, little one?”
She nodded.
“You know how it says in there that...actually I’m not totally sure what it says in there about angels and demons and all. But. The point is that...well. It’s er. It’s true.”
“What?”
He gestured weakly between himself and Aziraphale. “There’s...there’s angels and demons. And...god and all that. You know, Jesus. Adam and Eve. The works.”
This was not going how he’d expected. That is...he had never expected anything like this to happen at all. Ever.
“That’s. Well. No there isn’t.”
“I can see why you might think that, darling girl. But it really is...well. It is true. These days it’s not something we tell the whole world, exactly. Bit more subtle now than the whole ‘be not afraid’ era, that is.”
Gabby leaned back on the couch, unable to tear her gaze away from the two of them. Her only friends in England were zealous Christians, too. Zealous Christians who wore costume wings.
“I don’t...this isn’t what I…” her voice was rising to almost-crying levels of stress, “you’re saying my parents have it RIGHT?” She leapt off the couch. “No no no, that can’t be. What about all the other religions? Hmm? Why are you saying all this...this...bullshit?” She covered her own mouth after she swore, but maintained her condemning glare at Aziraphale.
Crowley stood up and said softly, “no, Gabby. Listen to me, ok?” he waited until she met his eyes. “Your parents definitely do not have it right.”
That seemed to reassure her slightly. “But...I thought that demons…. So if I believed you--which I don’t--well...which of you is which?”
Crowley gave an outright laugh, whirling around to point at Aziraphale, who looked extremely put out and offended.
“Well I’m the angel, obviously!”
Unable to resist, Crowley parroted “ob-vi-ously.”
It earned him a grumpy look from the angel, and a small smile from Gabby.
She crossed her arms. “Prove it.”
They exchanged another meaningful look. What’s it to be? Eyes, wings, or serpent?
Without much hesitation, Crowley transformed into a very manageably sized snake, assuming correctly that his full size would be rather too shocking. Gabby leapt back with a little scream and scrambled onto the couch. After a moment, though, curiosity won out, and she climbed back down. She shuffled on her knees toward Crowley and poked him apprehensively.
“Crowley?”
“There’ssss no need to whisssssper.”
She jumped back again.
“No no! It’s ok! He’s actually quite sweet in this form.”
Crowley thanked Someone that snakes couldn’t blush. Sweet?
As if to prove the angel’s point, Crowley tentatively reached out his head for what can only be accurately described as a boop on Gabby’s hand.
“Wow,” she whispered, petting his (admittedly adorable) little snake face. He leaned into her touch a bit.
“All right, my dear boy, come back.”
“What! Your eyes stayed the same! I never noticed they were like that! Is that why the--” she made a comical gesture mimicking sunglasses.
“It is.”
“Oh that’s really very cool.”
Aziraphale might have been visibly glowing at the sight of his demon receiving an earnest compliment from a child--a compliment about his eyes, no less. But who’s to say.
“Ngk.”
Aziraphale sat down beside her and gently put his hand over hers. Crowley sat on her other side. Fulfilling a cliche while being exceedingly gentle was the least they could do after altering her vision of reality.
“You really mustn’t tell anyone, Gabby, darling.”
“That makes sense, I guess.” She seemed quite dazed. “Can I ask you some more questions?”
“Of course you can! You can ask as many questions as you like. Perhaps not tonight, though, little one. There’s only so late a study group can go.”
As soon as they were in the Bentley, Gabby was asleep, for rather the same reason a baby might fall asleep in a too-loud movie theatre: it was a lot to take in. Aziraphale couldn’t help but give furtive affectionate glances as Crowley drove sensibly and carefully so as not to wake her. They dropped her off around the block (who comes home from a study group in a 1930’s Bentley?), but they drove back around to make sure she got in safely. As soon as they were out of sight of the apartment, Crowley pulled over.
“Well.”
“Well.”
They looked over at each other. One could usually trust humans to keep secrets such as this, for various reasons. Principally, because it was all rather hard to believe, and no one wanted to be called crazy. In this case, it was because they both trusted her.
Regardless, the entire world might soon find out just how real angels and demons and all the rest were.
____________________________________________________________________________
Usually, when it was just Aziraphale and Gabby, they sat in silence and read their respective books. That was not the case the Wednesday after this (literal) revelation.
“Do you have a halo?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“Perhaps later.”
A few minutes of silence and quality reading later, she piped up again.
“If you’re an angel, why are you on Earth?”
Aziraphale, completely absorbed in the restoration of a particularly precious first edition of Tristram Shandy, genuinely didn’t hear her.
Her next question came from a much closer range.
“Aziraphale?”
He started and looked up to find her perched on the edge of his desk about six inches away from him, having carefully stacked the books that had been there on a stool.
“Yes? Sorry, dear girl.”
“I asked why you’re on Earth. If you’re an angel.”
“Ah, yes, well, that is rather a complicated question.”
“I’ll be here til seven” she said flatly.
He took off his archivist’s gloves and ran a hand over his face. “We’re both rather...we’re assigned to Earth, shall we say. We’ve been asked to represent the interests of our ‘head offices’ here.”
“Heaven and hell are...offices?”
“Well. Yes. No clouds or harps, I’m afraid.” He started idly taking notes on what needed to be done next for Tristram.
“Why London?”
He gestured vaguely “Crowley moved here and I suppose I...I….”
She raised her eyebrows “followed him here?”
He blushed and stared sharply into his notebook. “When you put it that way….”
“And the two of you work together? That doesn’t seem like-I mean, aren’t heaven and hell sort of...opposites? You know...constantly working against each other?”
“As to that, I’m afraid I really can’t explain.... That is, Crowley and I have been enemies for so long that we’re sort of. We like to keep an eye on each other, is all.”
“Ah.” Her eyebrows were still raised, and she flicked the edge of his notebook as he tried to write. “Keep an eye on each other.”
He sat up primly. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
“But you...you live together.”
“We do not live together!”
“Oh--”
“Crowley has a flat quite of his own, in fact. We work together.”
She walked over to the Gutenberg Bible that sat under a cloth beside the desk. She lifted the cloth oh-so-carefully and peered at the text.
“So is he...well, I mean. Is he...evil?” It certainly didn't seem like he was. She thought of the peanut butter, of the gentle voice, of “little one.”
Aziraphale pursed his lips and refused to meet her eyes. “He’s not like most demons. No, really, I suppose…. I suppose it’s complicated. I-I’m not sure.”
“Hmm,” she herself wasn’t “sure” if angel should be uncertain about a demon’s evilness, but her next question was far more urgent than following up about Crowley.
“And you? And your people? Your ‘head office’? Are you...good?”
“Certainly,” he replied in a decidedly uncertain voice.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Does God know...everything? Like...everything I’ve ever done or thought or? Does He...care?”
“She--”
“She?!”
“--isn’t as aware of the day-to-day actions and thoughts of humans as many of you believe. Whole universe to look after, and all.”
Gabby wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She certainly had sinful thoughts. “What about Jesus?”
“What about him?”
“Did you know him?”
“I did, yes. Crowley knew him better.”
Her eyes widened. “What? How?”
Aziraphale didn’t answer. Instead, he said “Jesus was a real man. Those stories are true, more or less.”
“What other things from the Bible are true?”
“Many of them, but the translations and human accounts are...somewhat inaccurate.”
“Did the entire world flood?”
“Not the entire world.” He winced at the memory of the drowning, the small consolation of the rainbow. Of Crowley’s biting disappointment in him.
“And when...when humans...die. Do they go to...one of your offices and…” she was unsure where to go with that thought. Work in a cubicle? Make powerpoint presentations? Chat about the weather? Was there weather?
This time, he met her gaze. “My dear, I don’t think it would be fair for me to tell you what it’s like to die.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know what it’s like for a human to die. From...from their own perspective.”
“How does god decide who goes where?”
“I’m afraid it’s rather complicated.”
“You’re dodging all my questions!”
“Not very big on questions, his lot” came Crowley’s voice from the door of the shop.
Gabby smiled to hear it. Aziraphale, meanwhile, lit up.
“Crowley!” he said. “Perhaps you ought to….”
“You might not like what I tell her, but sure.”
“What happens when you die?”
“Wow, start with the easy ones, why don’t you.” He paused. “You end up upstairs or downstairs depending on...angel, what does it depend on?”
In reply, the angel gave a flustered scoff.
“Right, yeah, literally god only knows.” He shrugged. “Above our pay grade, that sort of information.”
“But people who don’t accept Jesus in their hearts go to hell.” That one wasn’t a question, but Gabby’s voice wavered just slightly. It was a hesitation that brought a little morsel of optimism to both the angel and the demon.
“That is one theory I can confidently tell you is untrue” said Aziraphale.
“There are definitely people in hell who took that view in life, though. So perhaps it’s the hostility to difference that lands them among the damned.”
“Wow. Really? You should try telling that to my parents.” She smiled without joy.
After several seconds of silence, Gabby exhaled loudly, and right at the bottom of the breath, she said “what about. What about gay people.”
Aziraphale and Crowley, who had been looking at each other, slowly turned to face their young American friend. Slowly, as if he were approaching a deer, Aziraphale sat in front of her and folded her hands in his. His eyes glistened for his dearest human friends throughout time--their kindness, their genius, their love. For all of them.
“That, my dear, is definitely not something that sways Her decisions.”
She looked at him like he’d hit her. She made to jerk her hands out of his and considered running. Who knows where. She didn’t, though.
Her vision blurred and she broke Aziraphale’s eye contact, blinking rapidly. Crowley thanked Someone for his sunglasses. The air in the room grew heavy.
In a tiny, downward-facing voice, Gabby said “ok.”
Without another word, she slid off the desk and walked toward the door.
Crowley found himself saying “wait, no, hang on, it’s all right, don’t worry.”
She paused with her small hand resting on the knob and turned around. She sniffled and looked up at them. “Thank you.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Several months of Wednesdays passed. They both occasionally checked in on her, in their own ways, happening to walk or drive by her apartment from time to time. They made sure she didn’t see them.
She whirled into the shop on a lovely spring day, shrugged off her backpack, and giggled “Crowley, have you ever thought about how if a giraffe drank coffee, the coffee’d be cold by the time it got to its stomach?”
“Well...no. If I’m honest--which I’m usually not!--no.”
Her face went comically flat. “Of course you haven't. You only ever think about yourself.”
She couldn’t help beating him to a smirk, and he threw his head back and laughed.
“Well done, you. Where’d you get that one?”
She shrugged “around school. How’re you both?” She dipped her finger into the peanut butter jar that was already out on Aziraphale’s desk. “Wanna watch Parks and Rec?”
She’d introduced Aziraphale to television in a way that Crowley had never been able. Perhaps it was the distinctly human way she reacted to it--like she’d never seen anything so funny. Aziraphale couldn’t help but smile, too.
She and Crowley passed the peanut butter jar, and Aziraphale and Crowley passed a bottle of wine.
In the course of human (or general) history, there had seldom convened a group of creatures so capable of deflection and denial. Their fraught conversation of a few months prior was always there for each of them, very much present indeed, but they settled comfortably into not talking about it. Aziraphale took her for ice cream and read to her. After she introduced him to Marie Antoinette (“oh my, yes, this is the most accurate rendering I’ve seen yet! Poor girl”), he took her to Ladurée for assorted pastel macarons. She convinced Crowley to skateboard with her. She was markedly better at it than he was. When he managed to go more than a few feet, she was thrilled. When he managed to go the whole block without the board sliding out from under his feet, she accused him of demonic intervention. And if, by some miracle, there was no traffic on the main drag of Soho while they practiced, what of it? Sometimes people stayed in.
She always spent plenty of time reading silently in their company, or alone while they did some angelic or demonic thing or another. Their help with her history homework was always a delight, particularly when they were more than a little tipsy.
____________________________________________________________________________
The armageddon’t came and went, and the following Wednesday saw a 15-year-old Gabby settling in on the couch. She pulled her hair out of its high pigtail buns as she curled her legs up to her chest. Her hands were shaking a little as she wrapped them around herself. Aziraphale had long ago fixed the front door so that it could be locked for every human but her, and no one was there when she arrived. She sat on the couch in the dark, staring straight ahead, until she heard the bell above the door.
“Gabby?”
She leapt up from the couch and stumbled up to meet them, planting her feet. She’d decided that it was best to just sort of do this like a band-aid. So she did.
“GuysIthinkImightbegay.”
There was a brief loaded silence, then Aziraphale stepped forward and said “oh my darling girl, you brave sweet dove” and wrapped her in his arms. Crowley sniffled and smiled positively radiantly behind them. The angel turned his head and smiled back. Crowley made his way to stand behind Gabby and slowly, gently, unfurled his night-sky wings to wrap around her and the angel.
“Oh, Crowley” Aziraphale breathed.
Gabby gasped and covered her mouth, laughing the kind of laugh that can only come from honesty, from telling a truth that you’ve been dreading to tell for years.
Aziraphale manifested his wings too, and they wrapped around her, overlapping with Crowley’s. She was shaking and crying and they both held her tightly with everything, everything they had. Crowley pressed a tiny kiss on the top of her head. Aziraphale cried holy tears into her hair as she clung to him, leaning her full weight back into Crowley.
Something inside Gabby broke completely. The image of herself, not long after the conversation with these two dear beings that had led her here, sitting paralyzed at her kitchen table, floated into her mind. Her parents hadn’t been home, and she had tried, with tears streaming down her face and her head in her hands, to convince herself that she did not have a crush on a girl named Rebecca, one of her first and dearest English friends. She’d talked aloud to herself about the violation of the Word, the sheer unacceptability of it, the impossibility of it. When her parents got home, she’d buried it deeply, swallowed her tears quickly, and smiled at them when they came in the door.
Every single swallowed tear was rising up again now, soaking into the shirts and jackets and vests and wings of an angel and a demon who had long predicted that this day would come. After what felt like wonderful, endless decades of being held, she found she desperately needed to sit. She said as much, her thick voice muffled in their feathers, and they gently guided her toward the couch. When she curled up, they kept their wings around her as they angled in. They each held one of her hands.
“You did it, little one.”
They’d laughed together countless times, but this time was different. It was a laugh that rained down from heaven and bubbled up, still warm, from hell and, most importantly, rose from the dust of the Earth.
She was terrified to come out to her parents. In fact, she didn’t plan to. In many ways, in many meaningful ways, she had come out to her parents just now, and they had wrapped their celestial, Christianity-infused, irreverent, honest to god wings around her. Shame and guilt and conflicted feelings, she decided, were for later. She let herself be held. Let herself be loved.
And it was Good.
____________________________________________________________________________
Her unwillingness to hold in this particular revelation any longer had come from a truly remarkable thing that happened earlier that very Wednesday. She and Imogen, a girl she knew from 2nd period English, had been walking between classes, quite close together as always. Gabby had never thought particularly hard about how physically close they always were. She had panicked so thoroughly and so many times about her crush on Rebecca that she barely noticed how lovely Imogen was, how she always sat right next to her, how she always made eye contact and lit up when she came into the room.
And as they walked from 2nd period English to 3rd period Maths (well, technically, Imogen was walking Gabby to class--Imogen had Biology for her 3rd period), Imogen reached out, quickly and awkwardly, and squeezed Gabby’s hand. She had smiled and blushed, then turned on her heel and walked away, grinning furiously. Gabby had stared down at her hand like she’d been electrocuted. Her eyes went all cartoon-swirly. Oh god. Oh...wow.
How she got through that last class before lunch, Someone only knows. But immediately after, as soon as she was free, she had nigh run to the bookshop.
____________________________________________________________________________
It was several weeks later, and Gabby and Imogen were holding hands across a cafe table on a sunny Thursday during lunch. Gabby was able, in brief shining moments such as this, to box up and shelve the crushing shame that often weighed on her these days. Imogen sometimes asked her what her parents might think, and Gabby skillfully side-stepped out of that looming question’s shadow every time.
Imogen had never met Gabby’s mother, so she didn’t recognize her when she walked into the cafe in her crisp skirt suit.
Her voice was shrill and laced with something so harsh and strange that it could hardly be called human, much less motherly. “Gabby?”
Gabby’s pupils visibly dilated until her irises mostly disappeared. She snatched her hand out of Imogen’s and scrambled out of her chair. She had meant to say something like “I can explain” or “we’re just friends” or even “hi mom,” but when she opened her mouth to do it, she vomited all over the floor at her mom’s sensible-leather-ballet-flat covered feet.
Without another word, Gabby’s mother grabbed her by the wrist--as though afraid of the hand that had just been affectionately wrapped around Imogen’s--and led her out the door. She didn’t have to drag her; Gabby tripped over herself to follow.
“Gabby hang on!” Imogen called weakly to her back.
____________________________________________________________________________
The next time Crowley and Aziraphale saw Gabby, her face was gray. Her hands were shaking and the dark circles under her eyes didn't rightly belong on such a young face.
“Hello, dear gi--” Aziraphale turned around mid-sentence, and noticed the state his beloved human child was in.
“I’m moving. Back to America.”
“O-oh” he tried--and failed--to keep the disappointment off his face. “Why? Did your parents get transferred back? We can come and see you, of course, if you’d like, you won’t be alone.”
Crowley had yet to say anything. His glasses were off, and he sat still, taking her in. His customary optimism clicked off as he felt her aura.
“No.”
“You’re...going by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
She slouched numbly toward the back room. They followed her as a matter of course, concern blossoming in both of their nonhuman hearts. They sat facing her as she crammed herself as far into the corner of the couch as she could, her knees wrapped so tightly to her chest that her head rested on them.
“They’re sending me. Away. In a few months. Homeschooling me til then.”
No, Aziraphale and Crowley thought in the kind of unison that comes from 6,000 years of love for each other and, of course, for queer humans. And children. The word bloomed into a kind of mantra. No, please, lord. No no.
Crowley tried--and failed--to keep his voice from breaking as he asked “how did they find out?”
“Was holding hands. With a girl. In a cafe. Mom came in.”
No. Please not this. Prove your love. Just once more, please.
Aziraphale slowly walked over to the couch and sat beside her. She flinched at the proximity, and he shifted slightly farther away.
“Who are you going to live with there?” he asked quietly.
Her lip trembled and she wrung her hands together. “N-no one.” Her breath was halting. It stopped and started as if she were trying to tread water with weakening arms, heaving in oxygen and then holding it back.
“What do you mean, little one?” At some point, Crowley had come to kneel on the floor in front of her like a supplicant at an altar.
“I’m g-gonna be living at a-a clinic, a hospital. F-for people like. Me. Who have...this. Where they...where people can get b-better." She was completely unraveling. She was crying so hard that she could barely speak--her nose ran freely down her face as she buried herself in her knees. “A...a Christian psychological hospital.”
It would not have taken a creature of heaven or hell to feel the fury radiating from Crowley and Aziraphale. It saturated the air.
“I g-guess I d-deserve it. I must, r-right? But y-you said god d-didn’t care.” Her crying, her despair, crystalized into rage. She raised her head slowly. “You said. You said god didn’t care.”
She rose from the couch and wobbled slightly. Aziraphale made to reach out and steady her, but she backed away. “You said god didn’t care about it! That She’d still love me! And she’s letting this happen! You said! You made--” she crossed her arms across her stomach and her voice grew painfully quiet. “You made me feel like I’d be safe. With you.”
Crowley walked towards her. “Gabby, hey, liste--”
“No! I won’t! No! You both...you both lied to me! You both lied to me! And now I’m--now I’m dirty and I know what those places are l-like and I d-don’t want to go! You said it was ok b-but it was a lie! I know I-I deserve this and...I do! I do deserve it! This is w-what happens when. Oh. Oh god.” Crowley took another step forward, and she took a step toward the door. “No! No. Do not come any closer to me, do not come near me. Please I-I can’t...I can’t handle it. I can’t.” She turned on her heel and ran to the door.
“We’ll help you, no, we promise! I promise! It's all right!" Aziraphale made to chase her, but Crowley held out his hand.
Rage shook his voice. “She asked for space. What are we going to do about this.”
**********************
That night, wracked with fury and sheer sorrow, burying themselves in wine, they blazed through every death imaginable for the trash that ran that institution, for her parents, for the Evangelical church. For god.
“I have an idea” Crowley said around 3 am as he ceased pacing.
“Oh thank god.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Crowley did not usually use legal channels to achieve his demonic goals. In effect, this was no different. There was a bill before the 116th US congress that would ban bastards disgustingly confused humans like Gabby’s parents from institutionalizing their (precious, brave, beautiful) children. He couldn’t think too hard about how many he hadn’t saved, or about the fact that Gabby had grown up with so much profound and misguided hatred permeating her life.
He could, however, commit election fraud.
To make it seem more “natural,” he only reached into the minds of most of the representatives blocking the bill. He only helped replace most of the worst ones during the election. Just like he only blew out the transmission in most of their cars. Kind of like how Aziraphale only gave most of them severe food poisoning. Or how the two of them were only mostly responsible for “naturally-occuring” fires at Compassion International’s US office and the “hospital” where Gabby was meant to be sent.
____________________________________________________________________________
When they returned to London a few months later, Gabby was sitting on the stoop.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course, sweet girl. Of course” Aziraphale said, opening the door for her.
She worried the hem of her shirt. “It’s. It’s my last Wednesday. I’ve been coming every week. Where have you been?”
Crowley made some of his characteristic pre-talking noises and said “America.”
“My dear, shall we watch a spot of news?”
“What? That’s you want to do right now? That’s not why I came here, really.”
Crowley extended his hand to her, and she took it. “Come on, little one. Come and see.”
They took up their usual seats--Gabby in the middle with her angel on one side and her demon on the other. They each held one of her hands and reached their wings up and over her head.
“My darling child, we will never, never, fail you again.”
Crowley squeezed her hand.
“God can do what She likes,” Aziraphale said with shining eyes, “but we will always be here for you.” All of you.
Crowley snapped with his free hand to turn on the television. He had the random and rather hilarious thought that he’d never voluntarily switched on American C-SPAN before.
“What--why are we watching this?”
“Well. It seems your--” Aziraphale gestured vaguely, “your governing bodies have decided that the time is ripe to make...what is it that it’s called? Conversion therapy?” he didn’t mask the disgust in his voice. “They’ve decided, darling Gabby, that it’s a federal offence.”
She gave a disbelieving laugh. “What? How? I think I’d know about that.”
Crowley winced. She’d essentially been on house arrest for months.
Gently, gently, he said “watch.”
And it was Good.
*********************************************************************
Listen, y’all. There truly is a bill before Congress that would ban conversion therapy. Call your reps, call your senators.
Most of all, love each other. Hold each other.
Be gay, do crime.