Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The bell above the shop door chimed to herald Crowley's arrival. Aziraphale's bookshop welcomed him with it's usual wave of odors. The sweet smell of old paper was prominent, as was dust gently baking in the shafts of late afternoon sunlight that fell from half closed windows set high in the walls. There was also a competing dankness issuing from some unseen place, with hints of basement, cave aged cheese, and compost. Crowley knew it was meant to be a deterrent to the casual browser but it is the nature of smells that they easily swap sides from mildly unpleasant to strangely pleasant, when given the chance to become familiar.
Crowley struck a pose of studied nonchalance, leaning against a book shelf in a way he was sure looked cool and fetching, and held it for several moments until it became clear that Aziraphale either hadn't heard the bell or was engrossed in something he deemed more important than rushing out to welcome Crowley. The demon had no choice but to take his show on the road and saunter to the back rooms that served as Aziraphale's office.
He was about to sing out and demand to know what was more tempting than going to dinner with him, Anthony J. Crowley, when he was struck silent by the sight of Aziraphale slumped over and shaking slightly on his rococo revival fainting couch.
Crowley was with him in a moment, kneeling at his side and trying to gauge the situation with gentle questions.
“Where's it hurt?”
“My head and...I feel rather strange.”
“What happened?”
“No, no. Nothing happened– I just--since this morning I think- Ah! This is...tedious,” Aziraphale said rubbing his forehead, above his right eye and wincing. “I had planned to-”
The angel's skin was hot and damp. There were no visible wounds of any kind but he was shivering, from pain or fever and the broken speech was worrying. Crowley gently moved Aziraphale's hand away from his head and placed his own there.
“Here, let me try.”
Crowley's touch was as light as feathers but Aziraphale's pain fled before it, leaving behind only the sudden absence of pain, a glorious sensation which the English language has yet to produce an adequate name for, Aziraphale realized. He sank somehow even deeper into the couch and expelled one long breath.
“Did--has that got it?” Crowley asked.
“Yes, dear boy, that is worlds better,” Aziraphale allowed himself one more moment of cloud like bliss before forcing his mind back to the problem at hand. “What on Earth was that about?”
“A migraine?” ventured Crowley, who had been too focused on getting the pain to go away immediately to formulate any theories about its cause. “Or the flu?”
“I suppose,” Aziraphale allowed.
Their bodies weren't invulnerable to damage, of course, but miracling away that damage was usually as easy as brushing a bit of lint off of his suit. Aziraphale had felt the beginnings of a headache many times before; it was apparently a human body's way of telling one that one should take a break from, say, staring at a page so ancient that the ink has mellowed to a brown barely darker than the golden creamy velum it was written on. That one should put the delightful book down, stretch, and perhaps drink a glass of water. Fortunately, Aziraphale's angelic nature allowed him to silence such annoying suggestions with barely the flick of a perfectly manicured finger and read on. So why not today?
“What a terrible waste of a day,” Aziraphale sighed. “Is it possible that the pain was so sudden and so acute that I was simply too distracted by it to remove it?”
“Was it that bad?” Crowley sat next to Aziraphale and helped him sit up.
“It was bad but, honestly, I've been stabbed before and I was still able to focus enough to heal myself then,” Aziraphale waved off Crowley's look of concern; this had been ages ago, back when humans had first invented stabbing and were all simply going around stabbing each other. “And I was thinking about healing myself. I could hardly think about anything but healing myself. So why wasn't I able to?”
Crowley's wince of sympathy was clear even behind his sunglasses and he was nervously kneading the fabric at Aziraphale's shoulder. So Aziraphale took both of Crowley's hands in his own to still them.
“There now, it's over. Thank you for helping me, my dear boy. Truly.” Aziraphale soothed, his still over warm hands squeezed Crowley's in a way that never failed to turn the demon's spine into a receptor for every positive sensation in the world all at once, heat and cold and electricity shooting up and down his back one after the other, too rapidly to be identified.
“Are you up to some dinner?” Crowley asked. “Might be just the thing! Or do you need tea and a lie down?”
“Perhaps-,” Aziraphale started but then winced.” Oh! Ouch--oh dear...not again...” Aziraphale fretted and began to rub at his head. Crowley knocked Aziraphale's hand out of the way with is own and performed a second healing. Again, the pain evaporated like dew but this time the angel was more miffed than relieved.
“Alright now really! What the – what in heaven's name!” he huffed.
Crowley was also becoming miffed, though being a demon, he would not have used that word to describe himself. He stood up so that he would be free to pace and gesticulate as much as he needed to to release his agitation.
“If this is another demon, I am going to be bloody... I have made it extremely clear that..-” Crowley turned to Aziraphale with a genuinely apologetic look. “I really have, Angel. I've told downstairs that I have a very sensitive project going on in London and that other demons barging in would blow the whole thing.”
“I don't think it's another demon. I think I would pick up on a demonic presence.”
“What else could it be? There isn't any natural explanation, unless you've suddenly developed a catastrophically violent allergy to old books after 6,000 years.”
“My dear! Don't even joke!”
“So if there's no natural explanation, there's an occult one.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps occult, but not demonic. Now that I have cause to think of it, there was a small, ah, incident recently. Three youths, who I believe I recognized as working in the record shop down the street, came in a few mornings ago but I was in the middle of a chapter so I did not respond immediately. By the time I finished, they had gone. It was then that I noticed that one of my very favorite bookmarks, which I know had been left in the fourth best copy of 'An Ideal Husband', which was out on the counter, was gone!”
“A bookmark?”
“I've had it for a very long time. It was, in fact, made from a scrap of fabric from an old tunic, which had been a favorite of mine for an even longer time... It had been cut down from a toga which had been a favorite for a long time before that. I did not think anything of it at the time, but a practitioner of the unsavory arts could do a lot with an item of such personal significance.”
“Yes, I suppose they could, if one were to leave such items laying carelessly about everywhere, which, frankly, sound like a terrible idea. And if one recognized such items for what they were instead of assuming they were just random scraps of fabric, as any casual visitor to the shop would.”
“Well, I don't know,” Aziraphale pouted. “I'm sure it was there when I closed the night before, because I'd been reading that book, and then they were the only customers I'd had so far, and then I noticed that it was missing, so that seems suspicious to me.”
“I guess,” Crowley sighed. “It's, theoretically possible that some random teens are fucking around with the occult in order to revenge themselves on you for you, frankly, abysmal customer service... but it feels like a long shot. Especially compared to my theory, which is that there are some demons who are complete pricks and who can not follow simple instructions, which is actually a scientifically proven fact.”
“Mmph...”, Aziraphale shrank back against the couch. “Ah! For- Crowley, it's happening again--would you...be a lamb and-?”
Crowley performed a third miracle and this time in addition to just thinking about seeing Aziraphale well again, also decided that any curse hanging about could go ahead and fuck off too. Curses were not an area of expertise for Crowley and he had no idea if this had any effect or even if he should have expected some kind of indication if it was effective.
“Well, something is clearly wrong,” Aziraphale said, breathing heavy and sounding a bit defeated, or at least temporarily stymied. “Something is going on. This isn't just a one time fluke.”
“I'll stay here tonight,” Crowley said without thinking, and then, to make up for it, immediately thought a lot, all at once, about how that had sounded and how Aziraphale would take it the wrong way. “I'll stay and keep it from coming back, I mean, so that you can get some rest. I know, I know, you don't need to sleep, but you've been through the ringer today and I think it couldn't hurt to rest up. Then, I'll pop over to the record shop as soon as it opens, and sort out the little cultists, alright?”
“Yes, alright Crowley. That's actually rather lovely of you to offer,” the angel said, beaming at him.
Within moments, pajamas and blankets were manifested, all tartan. Aziraphale had no bed but said the fainting couch would do perfectly well so a comfortable chair was pulled up next to it to allow Crowley
to keep an eye and a hand on Aziraphale. Aziraphale, for his part, must have been even more exhausted than he let on and was fast asleep in no time.
This left Crowley with a lot of time to think, not to mention worry. Crowley prided himself on being a very modern sort of demon and it was not modern to worry about someone with the flu or a bad headache. A modern person threw some over the counter medication at those things and, perhaps, took a day off of work but usually felt bad about doing even that much. Of course, Crowley had also lived through the thousands of years when sick beds very quickly and easily turned into death beds.
He also speculated wildly about which demon or demons might be involved, because he didn't give a used handkerchief for Aziraphale's bookmark theory. Of course, it was pure paranoia to think that some demon was targeting Aziraphale not simply because it would earn them some kudos from Hell, but specifically to fuck with Crowley, after somehow discovering that the angel was the object of Crowley's several millennia long secret pinning. But Crowley was, after all, 50% paranoia, so that is what he was half sure must be happening.
The other 50% was secret pinning, which he may have also spent some time indulging. After all, the chance to look at Aziraphale's face as much as he wanted, without having to worry about being caught doing it, didn't come along every day. He kept up a steady motion all night, running a hand from the angel's brow up to his hair, banishing any hint of pain each time, until the first rays of morning light began to leak in through the windows.
All at once, the bookshop was filled with light. Not the soft first rays of dawn but a harsh supernatural glare. A trumpet blared, sending Aziraphale sitting bolt upright and Crowley scrambling up a ladder attached to a very tall bookcase. A figure formed in the light and a voice proclaimed:
“Be not afraid brother Aziraphale! I have heard your prayers and am here to end thy suffering!”