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The world hadn’t ended, for a start.
It was a triumph, saving the world, but it tired one out. All that freedom had been laid so suddenly a heavy weight on the shoulders of supernatural entities so used to listening. Well, sort of listening. Crowley usually had tuned meetings out, and Aziraphale over the years had learn to disobey when it tickled his fancy.
But now there was so much freedom, heaps and bounds of it, so much time, and for what? To go for long rides, to dine at the Ritz, sit at each other’s sides without looking over their shoulder? It did sound rather nice. Though Crowley had noticed that Aziraphale still did exactly that: glancing nervously over his shoulder, as if Gabriel or the lord herself would materialize and give them a good scolding.
Aziraphale was doing more of the scolding these days.
An angel and a demon sat at a round table–It was a valued mahogany antique from the 18th century, a time when the British Parliament lifted import taxes on timber sourced from British territories. Aziraphale had snatched it up from a trading ship with a hefty sum of cash and a flutter of his eyes for good measure. He was always picking up odd things like that over the centuries.
Aziraphale’s antique table was currently being defaced by the evil of Crowley’s glass of whiskey, which was wet with the condensation of melting ice and leaving ugly wet marks on the shining dark chestnut surface. He had refused a coaster, much to the angel’s annoyance.
Now Crowley was tapping the table with lazy boredom as they pondered over a game of draughts, or checkers, the name didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was less like checkers and more like utter chaos. Aziraphale swore up and down that Crowley was moving the pieces when he wasn’t looking, because he was doing that lazy half smile of his with the twitch of his lips to hide a smirk when Aziraphale looked back to glare at him.
“I’ll win, of course,” muttered Aziraphale. “I always do- or I would, if you didn’t cheat.”
“I’m not cheating,” was the protest from the demon across the dirtied table. “Just using the tools to my advantage.”
Aziraphale let out a soft sigh and moved his checker piece forward diagonally, right into Crowley’s line of view. Barely smothering a smug grin, the angel sighed theatrically as Crowley overtook his piece.
“Bad move, angel.”
“Good one, rather.”
“Don’t look at me like that.” Aziraphale got all twitchy when he was planning something. “You’re not trapping me, you’re just wasting pieces.”
Aziraphale wasn’t listening, just staring down at his pieces with furrowed, thoughtful brows. His hand hovered in uncertainty. Then he took a sip of his cup of Earl Grey, which he placed back down on a fancy coaster.
He touched the piece and then let go, wavering.
“You touched the piece.”
“Did not.”
“Did so. You have to move it now.”
“That’s not the rules,” Aziraphale protested, knowing that was in fact, the rules. He was fostering a headache.
“Oh, so the rules only apply to me, now, huh?”
Aziraphale ignored him again in favor of moving his touched piece with a sudden clack. A bold move. If Crowley could understand it. They had been moving pieces for a while now in this game, and the board had turned into a battlefield of fallen pieces. Crowley licked a forked tongue over his teeth, catching on his fangs. The narrowed eyes of the angel followed the movement.
The demon moved one of his pieces to the edge of the board.
“Checkmate,” said Crowley, as he flicked it off and placed a king piece down in its place. From another board game. The angel watched it sourly.
“That’s chess.”
“Same difference.”
Aziraphale rubbed his eyes wearily. “What?”
“Same- whatever.”
The game progressed into armageddon. Several pieces had been replaced with other board game pieces, from Monopoly to Battleship to spare coins and jellybeans. The headache persisted.
“You can’t just ignore the rules,” Aziraphale argued, as Crowley slapped a jellybean down with malicious satisfaction
“Can so,” Crowley retorted. “Doing it right now.”
“But you can’t,” Aziraphale was growing steadily more distressed, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “You shouldn’t, rather. It’s simply not how one plays. Your turn.”
“Why not? This is how I play,” Crowley said, leaning forward. “Maybe we don’t need to play the way they told us to.”
“Well now, that’s absurd,” Aziraphale huffed, as if Crowley had just suggested replacing a rook with a teapot. “What’s the point of a game without rules? It’s chaos, pure and simple.”
Crowley grinned, sharp and fierce. “Exactly. Isn’t it brilliant?”
“It’s not brilliant, it’s dreadful!” Aziraphale’s hand fluttered over his teacup in agitation. “You can’t just pick up a chess piece and declare ‘checkmate’ in checkers! That’s not how it works.”
“The rules are there for a reason,” Aziraphale reasoned (as if repeating himself with great logic would change the demon’s mind). “They create order. They make the game fun. Enjoyable. This is chaos.”
“I’m having fun,” Crowley’s eyes narrowed, slits behind the shadow of his shades. Aziraphale wished he would take them off. He always had them off. “Are you not? Your turn.”
“I. Well.” Aziraphale hesitated. His fingers paused on a coin, heavy with glue of pranks long past.
“See?” Crowley began tapping the board in irritation. Tip tap tip tap. He sped up until he was nearly piercing the board. “You’re having fun.”
“But I shouldn’t!” The angel’s hand flew up helplessly. He gestured at the board of chaos, increasingly frustrated. Why was Crowley being so dense? “I see nothing but you being petty. We should follow how it’s supposed to be.”
Crowley stilled. His tapping stopped with a dangerous final click. “Petty?”
Aziraphale blinked. “Yes, well, you’re twisting the game until it doesn’t even look like the game at all, so yes, I should think petty.”
Crowley leaned back, mouth curling sharp. “Right. Petty. All this-” he waved a hand over the mismatched battlefield of jellybeans, coins, and pawns “-is just me being petty.”
“That’s not what I-”
“Then what do you mean, angel?” Crowley’s voice dropped low, and Aziraphale realized belatedly he’d said the wrong thing.
“I only meant-”
“You meant I’m wasting my time. That’s what you meant. That I’m just… fiddling with scraps on a board. Because you’d rather play it ‘properly,’ like good little Heaven told you.”
Aziraphale’s lips parted, stammering silence. “We’re playing checkers.”
“It’s about the whole damn thing!” Crowley snapped. His hand slammed down and swept across the board, scattering coins and tokens. “The world’s just one big board, and She’s been moving the pieces for fun. Well now She’s not. And we don’t have to either. Don’t you get it?! We’re free. I thought we were on the same page!”
Aziraphale blinked, and his mouth opened and closed, lost for words. He took on the appearance of a flapping fish, the sort that accidentally leapt out of a barrel on market day and was now both out of place and dreadfully aware of it. He felt foolish, terribly foolish, because Crowley wasn’t smirking anymore, wasn’t playing. It was about more than the game, apparently.
“...Apparently not.” He said carefully, lips twitching in a failed attempt at a smile. “Crowley, what is this about?”
“Nothing.” Crowley slumped in his chair like a sad deflating balloon, his limbs spilling over the armrests in dramatic angles.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.” Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, though his hands were fidgeting. He picked up a Monopoly car piece, weighing the cold little thing in his palm. “It looks like something.”
Crowley growled low in his throat, a sound like the engine of a car refusing to start, and deflated further, melting into the shape of an annoyed puddle. Aziraphale softened, guilt pricking the edges of his sternness.
“We’re free,” Crowley mumbled at last, his eyes fixed somewhere on the ceiling as though the words were easier to say if he wasn’t looking at the angel. “But you don’t act like it.”
“It’s just a game, Crowley.”
“So is the world!” Crowley’s palm hit the table with a sharp slap. Wooden legs trembled, and the board scattered like startled birds, jellybeans, coins, and pawns rolling to the floor in clicks and clatters. “The world’s just one big board game for Her amusement, and now we’re free, the rules are gone- or at least we don’t have to listen to them , so why do you still act trapped?”
Aziraphale swallowed. His hands folded firmly in his lap, as though by imprisoning them he could keep the rest of himself from shaking. “I’ve been trying.”
“Oh yeah?” Crowley sat forward. “You can’t break a singular rule like you used to. Just the other day, you let the traffic warden give us a ticket and looked guilty about it the whole time. You keep asking about the rules, what you should do, what you ought to do, even when you enjoy yourself more without them. You can’t even go outside without looking up! I’ve noticed that, by the way.”
The face of a guilty angel stared back at him. Aziraphale’s expression shifted: guilty, then saddened, then guilty again, as if each guilt had a new flavor he had to try on his tongue before discarding. His eyes kept darting elsewhere: to the bookshelf, the teacup, the window.
Anywhere but Crowley. Crowley hated it.
The demon dragged his shades off and fixed Aziraphale with a flat, unflinching stare. It wasn’t cruel, but it was bare in a way that made Aziraphale squirm.
“Why can’t you let go?”
A moment passed. Aziraphale hesitated, seemed to weigh the questions on his tongue like heavy stones. “The cage is gone, but the heaviness persists. Does that make sense?”
“But the ‘cage’ is gone,” Crowley pressed, leaning forward, voice rough. “The door is open. Walk out. Go for a little prance in the countryside. We’ve come so far. Why are you still in there?”
The angel’s lips stretched sadly into something that might’ve been a smile if one squinted, but it was pathetic really. The sort of smile you’d give when someone asked if you’d like another slice of poisoned cake.
“The cage is all I know.”
The room held a cold, stifling silence. Crowley felt the weight of it wrap around his shoulders like a sodden cloak. He wanted to throw it off, throw something, yell until the walls shook. They were free. It was over. Aziraphale had disobeyed before; what was different now? Was it the weight of too much freedom at once? Or that the angel was afraid of something Crowley couldn’t fight?
Crowley wished Aziraphale would just look at him .
“Okay,” said Crowley finally, voice low. “...Okay.”
With the wave of a hand, the chaos vanished. Pieces zipped back into their boxes, coins clinked back into pockets across the city, and the jellybeans met their tragic end in the bin.
Aziraphale’s mouth held that sad little puppy frown Crowley hated. A sad Aziraphale was the worst. His sadness seeped everywhere, quietly miserable.
“I bet you can’t go get yourself that book over there,” Crowley said at last, gesturing lazily to the works of Shakespeare. Aziraphale eyed him in confusion. Crowley went on, “In fact, I forbid it.”
“What-?”
“It’s against the rules. The rules I have just made up. But they are rules. Don’t go get that book.”
Aziraphale’s brows shot up. He understood, dimly, and yet still hesitated, swallowing thickly as though the mere act of disobedience was terrifying. He stood slowly, teetering on his feet. “But it’s just you.”
“Still a rule. Start small. DON’T get that book. It’s a rubbish book. Shakespeare was a horrible playwright.”
That did it. Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed with burning fire. That special spark Crowley adored. “You don’t know anything about anything ,” he huffed loudly and stormed to the shelf. He snatched up Hamlet and stormed back. He would have dropped it triumphantly in front of Crowley, but it was aged, and Aziraphale had too much love for books – so he gently laid it on the table with a smug little tilt of his head.
“Wow,” Crowley drawled, giving him his best look of mock horror. “I can’t believe you just broke a rule. Naughty, naughty angel.”
Aziraphale smiled, smug at first. Then he shivered, shoulders trembling. “It’s a weird feeling.”
“How’s it different than before?”
“I don’t know. This freedom. Just all of it. It’s… A lot.”
Crowley tilted his head, lips twitching into the barest smile. “I think you’re doing rather well at it. Now, how about we see if we can stay at St James past visiting hours? Oh, we can park illegally, sit on our bench with a bottle of wine we didn’t pay for, and stare up at Heaven while giving them a big middle finger. Maybe we’ll even get you to curse.”
The smile returning to Aziraphale’s face was worth every year of boring, rule-bound checkers.
That night, an angel and a demon sat under the stars, relishing the high of rule-breaking. Aziraphale ranted to the heavens, voice becoming louder and more agitated as he went – he even cursed for the second time in centuries, and looked bloody beautiful while doing it. And Crowley thought, not for the first time, that he wished Aziraphale would break every rule left in the cosmos and kiss him.