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The angel-warding is on the fritz again.
There’s no rhyme nor reason to the errors it keeps giving him, but no amount of arguing seems to convince it to work. Crowley has tested it time and time again, with Muriel’s help - it goes off perfectly when they enter the apartment, and settles down the moment they step outside, leaving a log of alerts for him to review, exactly as it’s meant to.
But no amount of uninstalling it and reinstalling it seems to make it stop telling him that there’s an angel in the flat.
There is no angel. He’d have noticed it if an angel had taken up residence in his flat, thank you very much. Still, he’d gone through it room-by-room, sought out any angelic presences with his senses, and found absolutely nothing. Of course he’d found nothing, because there’s no angel in his flat.
And yet the warding still blares at him day and night - ANGEL INTRUDER.
He’s got half a mind to get rid of the damn thing after all. He’s never had any warding in his apartment before - it wouldn’t do to discourage Aziraphale from popping in, if he was ever so inclined - but now… well, he can’t quite shake the feeling that Heaven wants something with him.
That something quite likely being his death.
Crowley groans, smacking at the warding in frustration. It works, he knows it works. It’s been tested, and retested, and then tested a third time entirely because Muriel seemed to have fun with it. It works. So why does it insist on giving him such consistent false warnings, but with absolutely no pattern?
Another smack and a swift kick do nothing to stop the alarm, so Crowley gives up, as he always does, and settles for having that nagging warning in his head for the rest of the day.
He never used to spend much time at home, before. He slept there, he stored things he wanted to keep there, and used it as a place to regroup, but it’d never needed to be much more than a set of walls that projected the sense of the human he pretended to be. But now, without a job to do, without someone he wants to spend most of his time with, and no impending crisis? He finds himself at home more and more, and he hates it.
He hates being home, he hates the reason why he’s home, and he hates his home.
It’s not a home, it’s a flat. It doesn’t bring him that sense of warmth, of coziness, that the bookshop always did. Aziraphale knows how to build a home. All he knows how to do is talk Hell into paying his bills for him, even now.
With a sneer at something he couldn’t possibly name, Crowley throws himself down onto his throne, and his TV obligingly switches on by itself, Netflix already open. He snaps his fingers, and the first episode of the Good Place starts playing.
It’s a rewatching one of his favorites kind of day. It has been a rewatching his favorites kind of day for several weeks now, long enough that he swears he can feel his TV judging him for it, but he glares at it every time he senses that righteous judgement coming his way. If he wants to rewatch the Good Place, he will rewatch the Good Place, and he’ll do it as bloody many times as it takes for him to feel something other than that strange emptiness in his chest.
He’d even bought food this time. Donuts.
He’s not sure if he likes donuts, really. The angel does - he calls them deliciously indulgent, just right for certain situations. He doesn’t have them often, usually just when he’s tired or truly stressed.
Crowley isn’t sure exactly what he is now, but donuts seemed appropriate.
The box is in the kitchen now, though, and he’s not even really hungry or particularly in the mood for food, so he’ll get it later. After the next episode, maybe. Yeah, the next time a break seems appropriate, he’ll get it then.
Season 2 is just starting up when Crowley blearily blinks at the TV, wincing as he shifts on his supremely uncomfortable seat. Maybe he should get a couch in here, possibly one of those that pulls out so he can sprawl out to his heart’s content. It’s not the first time he’s fallen asleep in front of the TV, and certainly not the first time he’s regretted it.
But that sounds so much like nesting, doesn’t it? Making things soft and comfortable, that’s like something the angel would do. And maybe he’d always preferred them spending time at the bookshop to them spending time at his place, but that’s besides the point. Something about the idea of making his living space inviting and comfortable just doesn’t sit right with him. It just seems… indulgent. And he doesn’t mind indulgence per se - he’s a demon, it’s practically in the job description, isn’t it? - but that’s when it’s other people. With him, it just seems like something to be doled out carefully. Appearances is fine - expensive clothes, accessories, furniture. But comfort?
The one concession he’s ever made for comfort is his ridiculously large and soft bed, with silk sheets and the fluffiest pillows one is ever likely to find, plus a large and soft duvet paired with a weighted blanket. He slides off it frequently, and the mattress is so soft that it’s often difficult to get up. And that, maybe, is why that one indulgence doesn’t feel wrong.
He should stop thinking about indulgences and just go grab those donuts. No point in letting them go to waste.
With a hiss and a few creaking bones, Crowley flings himself off the throne and makes his way down the corridor to the kitchen. It’s always surprised, he feels, to see him - he stops by sometimes for coffee or alcohol, and of course all sub-par plants are brought there to later be smuggled down to his downstairs neighbor, but even those visits are few and far between.
It’s been seeing a lot more of him lately, and Crowley honestly isn’t sure it likes that. In fact, he’s pretty convinced that the whole flat is vaguely suspicious of him at best.
It doesn’t matter. It’s his flat, and he won’t be run out of it by some vague feeling of unease directed towards him - he’ll stay there for as long as he damn (bless?) well likes, and it’ll just have to deal with it. As if to make his point, Crowley throws the lid of the box open, and reaches in to take a donut -
Only to find that half of the donuts are missing.
Absolutely all of the ones with a filling - the strawberry one, the one with custard filling, the salted caramel, the cookies and cream, all of them.
He knows they were there. He saw them be packed away, he saw them in the box as he left the store, and he’s sure that he would have noticed if half of them just somehow fell out of the box on his way back to his flat. They were definitely there. Which means that unless they grew legs and walked away - and they wouldn’t dare, he’s sure of it - someone took them.
Someone inside his flat who is not him took the donuts.
He slams the lid down on the box once again, and stalks out of the kitchen with a low growl. There is someone in his flat, someone with the nerve to simply sneak into his kitchen and take his food - that he was ambivalent about eating it in the first place doesn’t matter - and their presence didn’t so much as make him stir. That can’t be good, but he was asleep. They could have taken him by surprise, dragged him Upstairs, Downstairs, drawn a silly mustache on him, anything.
And yet there he is, safe and sound, and a quick check in a mirror tells him that there are no silly mustaches on his face. No one touched him.
It doesn’t make sense.
He stalks down the corridor with more energy than he knows what to do with, and starts throwing open his doors. If the thief ran out of his flat, tracking them down is going to be more difficult, but there’s always the chance the bastard is still in there somewhere, enjoying their bounty, and then - well, then Crowley might have a few ideas of how to make sure they don’t go around stealing people’s donuts again.
In a quick, anticlimactic moment, all of his questions are answered just as soon as he opens the very first door.
For right in front of him, huddled on a couch that was decidedly not there the last time Crowley was in this room, is a very familiar angel. An angel, Crowley notes, because his brain doesn’t know what to do with that information and every other thought seems to just send him back an error message, who is very fond of donuts with fillings, and who knows Crowley prefers the ones that are just glazed.
An angel who is very much supposed to be in Heaven right now, and not hiding out in Crowley’s flat and stealing his food.
An angel who has the gall to say, with all the surprise of someone who’s had a demon burst into his home unannounced, “Crowley!”
Crowley blinks. Aziraphale is still there.
He readjusts himself on his seat, fingers fussing in a way that Crowley has long since learned means that they’re looking for something to do, something to pick at, a way to release the nervous energy that simply vibrates out of Aziraphale when he’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t surprise him, then, when he starts babbling, “oh, what a surprise! I didn’t - well, I wasn’t expecting to see you. Would you like a donut? There’s a chocolate custard left. Strawberry, too, but I know you don’t like that one.”
Crowley blinks, again. Again, the impossible angel is still there when his eyes reopen.
Aziraphale hedges, “erm… Crowley?”
Somehow, that seems to do it - it snaps Crowley out of his trance, and allows him to stalk forward, the anger flooding back into him. That’s good, he thinks absently. Anger is better than pain, it’s easier to deal with, more useful. Anger can get some answers, pain and hurt would only have him running out of his flat and perhaps moving permanently to St. James’ Park.
Or maybe somewhere else, somewhere he doesn’t associate with Aziraphale as much.
How about the transportation museum?
“What,” he starts, punctuating the question with a large step he hopes is at least a little menacing, “are you doing - ” another long step - “in my -“ he takes the last step, arriving just across the coffee table that also most certainly hadn’t existed before, “flat?”
Aziraphale’s nervousness skyrockets, green-blue eyes staring at Crowley like he’s suddenly become the single most uncertain variable in the universe. Somehow, though, he doesn’t seem the slightest bit intimidated. Oh, well, that’s probably for the best - who is he kidding, Crowley never actually wanted to frighten Aziraphale. He just wanted to make sure that it was known that he’s not the kind of person who’ll just accept people sneaking into his flat and secretly living there, especially when said ‘people’ is an angel who’s very recently broken his heart and left for Heaven.
“Oh,” Aziraphale whispers. “Oh, dear.”
Crowley knows that tone. He waits.
It takes a moment, but Aziraphale continues, “I… things didn’t go as I expected in Heaven. I’m afraid that I… I needed somewhere to stay for a while.”
Of course. Of course everything with Heaven was a shitshow, of course Aziraphale had to run back to Earth. It was always going to end like that, it’s Heaven. They can’t be changed, no matter who sits at the helm, the rot is down to the very foundation of Heaven and Hell. There’s no easy fix, not even a bandaid you can slap on - it needs to be torn down. That’s what Aziraphale couldn’t understand back at the bookshop.
Maybe he does now.
Crowley sighs, shaking his head. “And you just thought you’d come and stay at my flat, and what? I wouldn’t even notice?”
“In my defense, I have been here for weeks and you haven’t noticed,” Aziraphale points out, and there’s a hint of mischief in his eyes that almost makes Crowley want to drop everything, that almost makes him want to forgive and forget right there and then. Bastard Aziraphale has always been one of his favorite Aziraphales.
Thankfully, that train of thought is quickly hijacked by another. “Weeks? How can you have been here for - oh, for fuck’s sake, Aziraphale, are you the reason my angel warding has been driving me up the walls almost since the day I installed it?”
Something fragile makes its way into Aziraphale’s voice as he says, “you have angel warding now?”
“Yes, I have angel warding, Aziraphale. Have you forgotten both Heaven and Hell would currently love to kill me?”
Aziraphale bristles. “I never had demon warding in the bookshop.”
“Because the bookshop was safe! My flat isn’t an independent embassy, it’s just a flat!”
On some metaphysical plane that isn’t currently Crowley’s focus, he swears he can see Aziraphale’s feathers ruffle. His nose wrinkles slightly before tilting higher, and Crowley suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. That wouldn’t be a gesture this conversation would be coming back from.
“Well. You could have stayed there.”
“Settle in there with all your books and what, give Muriel this flat? No, thanks. ‘Sides, your bookshop would be terrible for the plants. Too dry and dim.”
Aziraphale huffs slightly, but doesn’t offer an argument. Crowley chalks this one up as a win - it’ll probably be only the beginning of the war, though, from the way Aziraphale is acting. He knows this mood, he knows it well.
Still, he forges ahead. “You do realize you can’t just sneak into my flat and live there, right? That’s not - you can’t do that.”
Instead of another full argument, though, that sentence earns him a pained frown, Aziraphale’s nervousness returning in full. He glances down at his hands, fingers playing with his ring. “Well, uh… it wasn’t quite that simple. I didn’t leave Heaven on the best terms, you see, and I was afraid some angels might follow me.”
“And you couldn’t just ask?” Crowley raises an eyebrow at him.
Aziraphale’s expression somehow manages to turn even more miserable. “Oh, I was… I worried you would say no.”
“What, that I’d turn you out into the cold? That I’d leave you out there to deal with whatever Heaven is bringing down on you alone? You really think that I’d - no, of course you do. I’m one of the bad guys, yeah?” He shakes his head and turns around, not sure of where he even wants to go, but knowing that he needs to move, he needs to… not be there. Anywhere but there.
Aziraphale’s voice keeps him in place, though. “Oh. Oh, Crowley, I never meant… not you. Never you. It’s just… there’s a lot about this situation that you don’t understand yet.”
“A lot - then enlighten me, Aziraphale,” he snaps, turning around once again and focusing the full force of his most demonic glare on Aziraphale.
As always, it has little effect but to elicit a look that Crowley would once have called fondness. “Just - promise me you’ll let me finish explaining before you say anything. No matter what, just let me finish. Please.”
Before Crowley can answer, there’s a small sound from behind a bookshelf.
Something not unlike a baby gurgling.
Crowley moves towards it as if in a trance, knowing full well what he’ll find there, hidden between two stacks in a library he’d deny having to anyone who asked him, but not wanting to accept it. It can’t be - Aziraphale wouldn’t… would he?
“Oh,” says the angel in question. “I’m afraid we must’ve woken her.”
Indeed, the baby in the bassinet, a tiny little thing that couldn’t be more than a few months old, is awake, wide baby-blue eyes staring up at Crowley with rapt attention. She gurgles again, and her arms break free from her blanket, waving up and down in what Crowley chooses to interpret as excitement.
If she is who he thinks she is, then they should be hereditary enemies. Still, he sees nothing but curiosity in her eyes, not even the slightest hint of fear.
“Aziraphale,” he manages after a long moment. “Did you… did you steal a baby?”
A pause, then a hushed, sheepish, “yes.”
“Aziraphale,” he says again. “Did you steal the baby?”
This time, the answer comes in a wail, “yes!”
“What were you thinking?” Crowley hisses out. His heart, useless organ as it might be in a demon, is pounding in his chest, his ears ringing, and he knows he needs to sit down, but he also knows that he couldn’t possibly do that, he couldn’t possibly be still. “Do you have any idea how many people are going to be looking for this child? And you just what, stashed her here? Without even telling me? And you didn’t even know I had warded the place against angels?”
“I know! And I’m sorry, Crowley, truly, but - I thought they wouldn’t look for her here! They know about our - our… falling out. And I thought they wouldn’t even consider me housing the new Christ child with a demon,” Aziraphale rushes to explain, eyes wide and pleading in a way that Crowley knows he’s never been able to resist.
The words still sting. “Right. Because that’s it, isn’t it? I’ll always be just a demon to you, you can’t - it’s always got to be about sides with you doesn’t it? My side, your side, never mind the fact that both sides want both of us dead!”
The baby lets out a loud cry of distress, and Crowley winces, turning his attention immediately to her. He rocks the bassinet with slow, careful movements, shushing her as she slowly settles, her wide eyes still fixed on him.
He’d like to think that the quirk of her lips is a true smile. She does seem happy.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Aziraphale assures him, and if there’s a hint of exasperation in his voice, Crowley chooses not to comment on it. “But don’t you think we have bigger concerns than - than a silly fight?”
“Wasn’t silly to me,” Crowley mumbles, glad for the excuse of minding the baby so he doesn’t have to look up.
“Perhaps,” Aziraphale grants. “But the Second Coming…”
“I’d have warned you about that if I’d had the chance. ‘S what Gabriel’s whole… running away thing was about. Heaven wanted a new Armageddon, Gabriel said no, and they demoted him, wanted to wipe his memories. Was causing too much trouble, him,” Crowley explains. “Thought that was supposed to be Jesus coming back to Earth and, y’know, kind of judging everyone. What’s with her?”
“Oh. I thought you knew. You said the baby.”
“Yeah, well. Heaven and Hell like to copy each other, don’t they? Figured, well… if you’re turning up here with a baby, it’s not because you found her in a church doorstep, is it?”
Something lights up in Aziraphale, and Crowley knows that he’s about to get an Explanation with a capital ‘E’. He tries, and fails, not to be charmed by that. “Well, the original plan was, indeed to send Jesus back to Earth, but when they spoke to him about the plan, well…”
“Let me guess, he didn’t want to do it?”
“No,” Aziraphale confirms, and Crowley lets out a laugh of delight. “He didn’t. He didn’t want to end life on Earth. And since he’s the child of God, I suppose no one really wanted to argue. So they made a new Christ child, and I was meant to deliver her to her new parents. It’s all meant to go a lot like the first Armageddon.”
Crowley sighs. “Great. Who’re the parents, then?”
“They were meant to be a priest and his wife, two very, very dedicated members of the church. But… I’m not delivering her to them.”
“What’s your plan?” Finally, he lifts his eyes to look at Aziraphale.
The sheer hope he finds in his eyes is so blinding, so painful, that he almost immediately regrets the gesture. “We raise her. And when the time comes, she won’t want to end the world. She’ll see it as we do. It won’t be about good or evil, it’ll be about… loving the Earth, and her life, and her friends. About compassion.”
Crowley shakes his head. “And then they’ll send another. And another. Angel, we can’t keep raising every child that Heaven or Hell send to Earth. We need to end this for good.”
“I don’t know how!”
“Me neither!”
They stare at each other for a long few seconds, and finally, Crowley sighs. “Fine. Suppose if neither of us has a better plan… we’ll keep her for now. But she’s not living in the library, she’s not you!”
A smile blooms on Aziraphale’s face, and he nods eagerly. “Oh, thank you! I knew you’d come around!”
“Don’t - don’t say that. Makes it sound like she’s a puppy you brought in from the street. She’s a child, Aziraphale, and if her keep her for long enough… she’ll be ours. Do you understand what that means? We’d have to raise her. ‘S not like with Warlock, he had his own parents.”
“Oh, they were hardly ever around,” Aziraphale argues, waving a dismissive hand.
“Still counts. We’d have to… enroll her in school, worry about her future beyond Armageddon, pick after school activities for her, host sleepovers, and I don’t even know what else.”
Aziraphale places a hand on the bassinet, right beside Crowley’s but without touching his. The distance between them feels like an uncrossable chasm. “You’ll be a great parent, dear. We both will.”
Crowley swallows. “I hope so.”
Mary falls asleep looking up at the stars.
Crowley thinks they did a good job of setting up her bedroom. A crib in the middle of the room, the decorations set up so the whole space looks not unlike the Garden of Eden. But when they turn off the lights, the stars light up all over the ceiling and she can look at them and see skies that humanity was never supposed to see. Faraway galaxies, parts of the Milky Way that remain undiscovered, beautiful nebulas and strange constellations, the secrets of the cosmos laid bare.
It’s all there for Mary to see. And they made quick work of it, too, once they stopped arguing about names.
Thank Someone for Mary Shelley, Crowley thinks to himself, or they might never have solved that dilemma - he was not going to name their child after a Jane Austen novel - no, not even Emma, he’s never read it and why would that be his favorite? - and certainly none of those biblical names. Except for Mary.
Yes, he would honor Mary Shelley that way.
“Doesn’t she look so peaceful among the stars?” Aziraphale asks, tone hushed as he leans towards Crowley, a smile on his face.
They’re standing at the door of Mary’s bedroom, and anything louder would risk waking her up. She’s a peaceful sleeper, it seems, but still, it’s not worth the risk.
“They’ll come for her,” Crowley points out, and he can hear the tightness in his voice.
Aziraphale nods. “I know. We’ll be ready.”