Chapter Text
One of them has made it rain. Probably Aziraphale. He is angry enough. By the time he gets back to the bookshop lightning is forking across the sky, he has wet feet and rain is dripping from the brim of his hat.
He snaps several buckets into place to catch leaks that have resisted a century of miracles and a roofer from Camberwell who charged thirty shillings for adding an extra hole. Then he gives one a kick, sending it clattering across the floor.
He has worked himself into a temper replaying the script of his argument with Crowley. Crowley, who has never taken the dangers of their association seriously. Who goads, provokes and tempts until the boundary is pushed and they have edged closer to disaster. Now the wretched creature wants him to stick a metaphorical knife in.
Holy Water! One solitary drop would mean the end of him or a fellow demon. Or probably both given how Crowley flaps about when upset.
And that would only be the beginning. Then there would be the questions asked in Heaven and in Hell, one more unanswerable than the next. He could have been more careful with his choice of language, but fraternising is a kinder word than any of the ones their masters would use once the planet is littered with melted demon.
And what if Crowley destroyed himself? Whether by accident or design. How is Aziraphale to endure that? They are not friends. That would be impossible. But their acquaintance has been long and generally agreeable. How dare Crowley ask him to endanger it in such a way?
He glares at a line of wine bottles on his desk. He had brought them up from the cellar in preparation for the pleasantly inebriated evening he had been anticipating. They commence rattling.
“Don’t you dare,” he commands in case they are contemplating falling over or transforming into less impressive vintages.
Aziraphale’s anger lasts two more days during which he has no contact with Crowley and the rain doesn’t stop. He believes he is entitled to an apology but none is forthcoming.
He opens the shop but no customer crosses the threshold. His energies must be so deterring no one dares come near. He is so out of sorts he cannot even take pleasure in this.
On the third day he is disturbed by the sound of something landing with a dull thump on his desk. The shop is momentarily awash with Crowley’s power. Whatever it is, he has sent it.
It is a small, flat package bound in dark cloth. He unfolds the many layers to find within Crowley’s framed sketch of the Mona Lisa. It was given to him by Leonardo himself and is his most treasured possession. There is no note, but it’s arrival can mean only one thing.
“Oh bother,” he says. “Dash it all.”
He snaps on his coat and hat, shuts the shop with another miracle and hails a Hansom.
“Mayfair, as fast as you please.”
Crowley lives in style near Grosvenor Square. Or he did.
The Hansom draws up in front of a pile of fine, grey ash which is all that is left of his house. The ash has been soaked by the persistent rain but smoke still rises in places, revealing how fierce the conflagration had been.
“Blast.”
Crowley as good as told him he was in trouble and he ignored him.
“Damn and blast.”
A demon’s home, like an angel’s, cannot be destroyed by human action while the demon or angel remains on the planet. (Unless the human is Alfred Birdwhistle of Camberwell.) Their house’s natural protections are too strong, and these are usually augmented by miraculous wards. Other demons must be responsible for this destruction because Crowley is still on Earth. Aziraphale can sense him close by.
He calls to the driver, “Can you take me to the nearest public house please.”
*~*
The pub is full of working men in rain dampened clothes, most obliged to stand to drink their lunchtime pint of porter. Crowley has tucked himself away at the far end of the bar and is staring into a glass of spirit. Despite the crowd, there is a space around him which the humans instinctively steer clear of. Aziraphale makes his way through and prods him to get his attention. Crowley looks surprised to see him and then annoyed. He is drunk but not incapacitated.
“Sober up, please,” Aziraphale says.
“Bugger off.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Too late. And you better get lost or you’ll catch it too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Go away, you’ll make it worse for both of us.”
Aziraphale realises what he means when he senses other demons nearby. There are two just outside; an atmosphere of red rage announcing their presence. Crowley has been expecting these two, he has been drinking in preparation for whatever they have in store for him.
“Oh, bother,” Aziraphale says.
He grabs Crowley’s hand, snaps his fingers and transports them both to the bookshop.
By the time they arrive, Crowley has passed out. Aziraphale hefts him on to the sofa while snapping again to set up a new protection for the bookshop. Fifteen minutes later, Crowley groans, turns, flails as he meets empty air and narrowly avoids toppling to the floor.
“Zffswh nhyear?” He enquires.
“Alcohol and transportation miracles don’t mix,” Aziraphale says. “I’ll make some tea.”
When Aziraphale returns with a tray, Crowley is sitting up pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead. Aziraphale pours him a cup of tea which he downs in a couple of thirsty gulps.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Crowley demands. “I’m in enough trouble.”
“Why? What have you done?”
Crowley glares at him and reaches for a biscuit. Then, in angry silence, he works his way through the plate and two more cups of tea. Thus, supporting Aziraphale’s contention that Crowley eats and drinks quite as much as he, but pretends not to in public.
“You’ve run out of Dutch Macarons,” Crowley accuses.
“We soldier on.”
Crowley makes an attempt at standing, “I’m going.”
“Oh, sit down.” Crowley abruptly does. “Look, I won’t apologise for refusing your request for holy water. There isn’t anything more lethal you could have asked me for. Is there?”
Crowley doesn’t reply.
“Is there?”
Crowley makes a noise.
“But I do feel I should have taken the time to find out why you asked me for it. Why now, I mean. Why are Hell after you?”
“Mind your own business.”
“You are extremely vexing. Tell me.”
Crowley sighs, “Hell noticed the blessing I did for you in Milan. They think I’m working for Heaven.”
“What blessing in Milan?”
“An inventor, the writing machine man. I was going for an uprising anyway.”
“But that must have been a decade ago.”
“More. Hell takes its own time.”
“Oh Crowley, then this is my fault.”
“It isn’t. The Arrangement was my idea.”
“I still feel responsible. I wish you would have told me rather than just making impossible demands. So, they burnt down your house and sent furious demons after you. What will they do?”
“Torture first, ask questions later.” He abruptly puts down his cup. “I ought to go. I don’t want them to find me here.”
“They won’t. Can’t you sense the ward?”
Crowley sniffs the air, “It’s new, what is it?”
“As far as Hell, or even Heaven, is concerned there is only an angel in this property.”
“I’m concealed,” Crowley says softly.
“I don’t know why I didn’t put it up before. So that’s settled. You’ll stay until you’ve thought of something.”
“Thought of something? This isn’t complicated. Catch Crowley. Throw Crowley to the Hellhounds.”
“You are considerably cleverer than the rest of them, or so you keep telling me. Stay here until you’ve come up with a solution. I can assure you it’s a safer proposition than throwing holy water at whoever comes for you.”
Crowley is silent but Aziraphale can see his aura changing and opening out.
“Have you finished your tea? I’ll show you the spare room.”
Crowley frowns, “In your flat, you mean? I thought that was more book storage.”
“Not the flat. There’s another floor above.”
The bookshop geography does fluctuate but Crowley needn’t look so sceptical. He slouches upstairs after Aziraphale and then up a short spiral staircase to the top of the house. It is not a miracled room but neither is it quite as the architect intended. It has obligingly stretched itself to accommodate the accumulations of centuries; knickknacks, papers, ephemera, trunks of clothes from other centuries, furniture from other homes.
“Satan, what’s all this junk?”
“It’s not junk. I have been on Earth for a long time. One acquires the occasional keepsake.”
“Occasional keepsake, it’s like the British Museum after the apocalypse. Can’t I sleep on the sofa?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Aziraphale snaps his fingers and the room is empty apart from a wrought iron bed frame.
“I put everything in the basement,” he says.
“You have a square foot of wine cellar not a basement.”
“I do have one,” he says. “Now. They can put their underground railway elsewhere.”
The room takes up the whole top floor of the house but one end is dominated by large windows and a glass dome.
“I think the previous occupant used it as an astronomical observatory,” Aziraphale says. “You can renovate as you wish.”
In another snap the room is clean, the walls whitewashed, the wooden floor polished golden and the bed made up with a new mattress, sheets and blankets. The sparkling windows reveal views over London all the way to the river. The rain finally stops and sunlight draws geometry across the empty floor.
He snaps again and Leonardo’s sketch appears on the wall.
Crowley almost smiles, “There she is.”
“Sleep well,” Aziraphale says and leaves Crowley to it.
*~*
He hears footsteps on the stairs as he closes the shop a few days later. Crowley appears dressed for the street in coat and hat, carrying his cane.
“What day is it?” He asks.
“Thursday, you slept for four days.”
“Satan, and I’m still tired.”
“Would you care for a drink?”
The bottles he had put aside for their last meeting are still on the desk. He opens one and pours them each a glass.
“Has anyone been round?” Crowley asks. “Any sign of Hell?”
“Not a peep.”
He accepts his drink, “I haven’t come up with anything.”
“No? Well, me neither, I’m afraid.”
“I should go. Should I go? I can’t just stay here.”
“You can, I’ve already said you can.”
“I know but I should probably get this over with.”
“Tish tosh,” says Aziraphale. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”
“Tish - what?”
“Just drink your wine.”
Crowley drinks his wine.
“What about Heaven? What if an archangel pitches up and finds me here?”
“Lately, they’ve been summoning me if they want me. No one has visited since I opened the shop sixty years ago. And anyway, I’m certain I will be sent to the war in America soon, so they will find me there if they want me.”
“You’re leaving?”
“If I’m ordered, yes.”
Crowley contemplates this. “It’s still dangerous,” he says.
“The risk is small. Come now, we have an Arrangement.”
“Yeah. Perhaps we shouldn’t.”
“Perhaps not, but let’s get through this first.”
They raise their glasses to each other and Crowley removes his hat.
*~*
Crowley sleeps through the next day but gets up in time to spend the evening wandering the shop, glass in one hand, bottle in the other.
The day after that there is pacing, peering out of windows, disturbing the books, rifling through the books, mis-shelving the books. He wanders about on the ceiling for a while until the shop bell rings and Aziraphale shoos him down with a broom.
Crowley has never been one to keep inside. In normal circumstances he is out day and night creating mayhem or simply sampling all the planet has to offer. Aziraphale fears he is too restless to remain within the confines of the bookshop. But a week passes, then another, and he shows no inclination to leave.
One day he finds Crowley looming over him with a potted fern in each hand.
“What in Heaven are you doing to these plants?”
“Oh, I had a clever thought,” Aziraphale says. “Withered plants in the windows deter customers and I don’t even have to use powers.”
It has been a successful project; the fronds have already started to yellow at the tips as well as droop.
“You mean you’re doing this deliberately?” Crowley waves the pots at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be an angel?”
“Last time I checked,” he says warily.
“You’re supposed to love all living things.”
“I do love them, they’re helping me.”
“You’re torturing them.”
“Well, that’s a bit much. I’m just trying to not run my business.”
“I’m taking your plants upstairs. I’m rescuing them.”
“Really? Must you?”
“I really must.”
Which is how, unexpectedly, Crowley becomes a gardener.
His half dozen declining plants go upstairs to be given light, water and a new lease of life. Despite them being useless to Aziraphale, he is regularly dispatched to the nearest nursery when gardening supplies, expert advice or new specimens are needed. The collection grows and quickly thrives but no one cares about the hordes of sweaty, acquisitive customers Aziraphale has to fend off. (“Hordes, angel? You had two customers today and one of them was asking for directions to Hatchards.”)
The plants are not enough to fill Crowley’s days. He miracles a telescope but star viewing can only take place at night on the rare occasions London smog and light pollution allow. He even gets bored with pointing the device into neighbours’ houses and reporting to Aziraphale what they are getting up to.
Aziraphale also has to ban him from helping in the shop. Or more accurately, draping himself in a disreputable manner all over it. For some reason, his presence attracts a young, mainly but not exclusively, female clientele into the establishment. Aziraphale is not happy with the increased foot traffic.
“Why don’t you take up a course of study?” He suggests to the bad-tempered demon who has once again distributed his numerous limbs across the sofa. “I have volumes covering many different topics.”
“Such as?” Crowley asks. “I was there for history and I know all the languages.”
“Oh, I don’t know, mathematics, natural sciences, philosophy.”
“Hmm.”
“Or something more creative like painting or sculpture.”
“I don’t know, angel. It’s not very demonic.”
“Or perhaps the law or medicine. Very useful to a demon, I imagine.”
Crowley grins, “I could take up surgery. You could bring me broken humans to fix.”
Aziraphale purses his lips, “Perhaps not.”
*~*
Summer arrives, the temperatures rise, the air is heavy and still. Crowley spends most days horizontal and distractingly under-dressed on the backroom sofa. He goes upstairs only to tend to his plants which, apparently, have to be regularly rotated to shady spots. He then resumes languishing and complaining about the heat.
All the doors and windows stay open in the hope of an occasional breeze blowing through. A stray tabby cat climbs in and stays. They name her Kit because it is too hot for imagination. She often reclines on the back of the sofa in identical poses to Crowley.
The nineteenth century has brought many innovations and Aziraphale is especially appreciative of the hokeypokey cart from which he can buy ice cream when it rolls by twice daily. Crowley also buys chunks of ice from the sellers who supply Soho businesses. He uses it when he mixes alcoholic drinks called cocktails. They pass the evenings experimenting with recipes from a pamphlet written by an American barman.
In the early hours of the morning when it finally feels cooler, they buy the first bread produced by a neighbouring baker and eat it with butter, cheese, ham and lots of tea. Then the sun rises and it all starts again.
The heat causes Soho’s industrial and residential stink to worsen and this deters customers. Aziraphale is grateful but has little energy for his usual alternative pursuits of expanding his book collection, delivering blessings that Heaven won’t notice and writing letters of complaint about Crowley to newspapers.
“You should write to the Times about On The Origin of Species,” Crowley says. “Evolution was one of mine.”
“Was it? I did wonder. I thought it was another of Her jokes.”
“Nah, it’s my best work. They’ll be arguing about it for centuries.”
Usually though, it is too hot even for conversation. Aziraphale passes days with Crowley and Kit in a pleasant haze of cocktail-enhanced companionship.
A storm finally breaks through the humidity and the shop is filled with the sound of water pattering into buckets.
“Why does your ground floor leak and not any of the floors above?” Crowley asks.
Aziraphale gives him a sour look, “Please direct that question to Mr Alfred Birdwhistle of Camberwell.”
“Birdwhistle?”
Crowley does not pursue the matter. Aziraphale supposes this is because Mr Birdwhistle’s soul already belongs to Hell.
Crowley suggests instead going upstairs to watch the storm. His room proves an excellent spot from which to observe the lightning crashing over the city. Kit sticks her head in Crowley’s armpit for safety.
The next night is cool and clear and the three of them go upstairs again to stargaze, at first with the telescope and then just lying on the floor looking at the heavens through the glass dome. Crowley, always so engaging when his guard is down, tells stories of the creation of the constellations.
There are no stars to be seen on the following night but they find their way upstairs anyway, to lounge on the sofa Crowley has manifested there. Aziraphale reads aloud, Crowley closes his eyes to listen and Kit paces between them.
The weather continues warm but pleasant. Aziraphale wonders if one of them has made it happen out of their mood of quiet contentment. He realises they never speak of Crowley’s precarious situation with Hell. He finds he does not wish to raise the subject.
With the cooler weather, Crowley resumes restlessly patrolling the bookshop. He pulls books from the shelves, he rifles, he puts them back. He is perfectly aware of how irritating he is being.
Eventually he lands on an eighteenth-century volume entitled, The Self-Informing Clavier Player. It contains instructions on how to play, among other instruments, the piano.
“Isn’t the violin traditional?” Aziraphale asks, looking over his shoulder.
“I think we’ve all had enough of Lucifer scraping away on that fiddle.”
Crowley summons a piano from the basement. It is an old-fashioned model, having been in the shop when Aziraphale moved in but a musical instrument belonging to an angel will always stay in tune.
There follows several weeks of piano torture, or at least that is what it sounds like from downstairs. Aziraphale concludes Crowley is not teaching himself to play but keeping his demonic hand in by spreading (literal) discord among the local population. The devil may have the best tunes but Crowley doesn’t. The Self-Informing Clavier Player is flung at the wall so many times it learns to fly and land softly to preserve itself. Kit drops mice on the keys, the plants wilt until they are told not to, and a typhoon tears along Greek Street.
Aziraphale is almost relieved to be dispatched by Heaven to America because he assumes the war will be quieter.
On the day he leaves for Liverpool from where he will sail, the piano is abandoned and Crowley lurks downstairs while he selects reading for the boat.
When he is ready to leave, he offers Crowley a hand to shake which he ignores.
“Don’t do anything stupid and get yourself discorporated,” Crowley instructs handing him a wrapped packet which turns out to be a round of ham sandwiches and a slice of cake. “I’m not getting landed with all these books, I’m not a flaming librarian.”
And if the lump in Aziraphale’s throat won’t let him muster more than a choked, ‘goodbye’, it is only because he is in a hurry and liable to miss his train.