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So, so you think you can tell / Heaven from Hell? Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? / A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?
It was a nice day.
Of course, every day he got to work in the Garden was nice. The others treated their Earth rotation as a burden; an inconvenience at best and a punishment at worst. He didn't understand his fellow angels; how could they not revel in the glory of God’s creations? To feel the soft loam beneath one’s feet, to hear the birdsong carried so sweetly on the wind, to–
Ah.
Grimacing, the seraphim moved to drag his heel through the grass. Yes, alright, he could concede that there was one downside to all this free-roaming fauna. They did produce an awful lot of… droppings.
Just as he thought he’d have to resort to some tricky maneuver with his hands and a leaf, a tingle of unfamiliar power made the excrement on his skin—and the pile of it he’d been perilously close to stepping in a second time—vanish.
A figure seemed to form out of shadow itself in the copse of trees just to the east. The seraphim wrapped a metaphysical hand around the band that connected him to Heaven, ready to pull his full might upon one of the Fallen. That was the only thing that could be coalescing into a humanoid shape mere yards away; the only thing he’d been told to be on guard against, the only thing whose miracle could wash over him and cause a same-but-different shiver of recognition. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but the signature of the demon strolling toward him was weak; perhaps he could take wing before he was caught.
Body tense, the seraphim readied himself for anything—anything except what happened next.
“If you’re going to explore, you really ought to have some footwear,” the demon said mildly, coming to a stop well out of striking range.
He blinked, feeling a little stupid in the aftermath when all he could say was, “What?”
“Footwear,” the demon repeated, rocking back to expose how he wiggled his toes in his sandals. “Marvelous, really. The humans are quite inventive. Though I suppose needs must, with all that hot sand.”
Conversing with a minion of the Damned didn’t seem like a good idea but–
“They are, aren’t they?” he allowed with a small smile. The demon grinned back more broadly, and surely sharing this moment, appreciating the Almighty’s brilliance could be allowed? Besides, this demon hardly looked like a demon at all! Radiant blue eyes set in an expressive face, little cloud-puff curls of white-blond hair offset by cream-coloured robes. He knew this fiend—or had met him, at least, at the birth of a nebula, a long, long time ago.
“So what are you doing here? Pulling Earth duty is a bit below a seraphim, isn’t it?”
The seraphim in question couldn’t parse any malice in the demon’s question; if anything, he seemed a bit bored. Yet something defensive twisted in his stomach.
“It’s an honor to spend time in Creation,” he snapped. “The humans will start populating the rest of the world soon, and the native flora needs to be relocated to its proper home before they do.”
“At ease, seraph,” the demon said, though there was a twinkle in his eye that the angel couldn’t quite define. “I thought perhaps you would have greater things to attend to. Singing hymns and holy, holy, holy and all that.”
“I like plants,” the seraphim said firmly. At the demon’s raised eyebrow, he dropped his eyes to the ground and softly added, “They’re easier.”
“Yes, I imagine so,” the Adversary agreed, and the angel categorically did not want to think about what that could mean.
“What are you doing here then, demon?” he demanded, pulling himself to his full height. It only gave him a few extra inches to work with, but he would seize any advantage if it meant rebuilding some of the wariness the demon had so effortlessly disarmed.
“Aziraphale.”
“Gesundheit.”
“My name,” the demon said, exasperated, “is Aziraphale.”
“What? No it isn’t.”
“No? Whyever not?” That twinkle returned, joined by the amused upturn of the demon’s mouth.
“You– you can’t just decide to take an angel’s name!”
“Obviously I can, seeing as I have,” the demon—Aziraphale—drawled, hands tucked into his robes.
“But– but what’s to stop anyone from just deciding anything then?!”
“Mm, what. In. Deed.” Aziraphale tilted his head. “Don’t you ask questions, seraph?”
The angel couldn’t help it; he flinched. Aziraphale couldn’t be remembering it too, could he? That moment where they floated at the edge of the cosmos, long before day was Day and night was Night, and watched new stars come alive under let there be light.
Yet it had been that nervous, fresh-faced cherub, anxious about anything that didn’t toe Heaven’s line who had been cast Down while he—opinionated, cocksure, pushing every boundary and likely saved only by being pulled under Lucifer’s protective wing—retained his Grace.
“Too many,” he said in a voice that shook.
Aziraphale’s gaze immediately sharpened. “I seem to have touched a nerve,” he said, quiet and apologetic. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“According to everyone else, I have a lot of it,” the angel muttered before he could stop himself. One hand flew to clap over his mouth, eyes wide.
The laugh that followed was anything but unkind, and burst from Aziraphale as if he’d finally lost the battle against it. “Oh, I like you,” he said with a completely undemonic wiggle. “What’s your name?” The angel barely got his mouth open before Aziraphale waved away his answer. “No, not what they call you; I want to hear the name you choose. Though if that happens to be the one that She gifted you with…” His lips pulled back in distaste before he sighed. “Well. It wouldn’t be much of a choice if I excluded that, now would it?”
A name he chose? What? How? Where would he even begin?
Should he even give the suggestion weight, reflect within himself based on the influence of a demon?
Aziraphale smiled again, as if reading his thoughts. “Take your time, seraph. We have an awful lot of it ahead of us.” He tucked his hands back into the slits in his robes and ducked his head, almost in a bow. “I have to return Downstairs, but. It was a genuine pleasure.”
Despite himself, the angel felt the same way.
~*~
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? / Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange / A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
“What’s all the hullabaloo?”
The angel barely spared a glance at the demon who appeared on his left. He was dressed in all the finery of a merchant grown comfortable with the weight of his purse, in creams and golds and blues that set off the fierceness in his ocean-storm eyes. Aziraphale, softer around the middle than he had been, was a representation of vanity, of gluttony, of greed, and he clenched his jaw that Aziraphale would appear to him here, now, dressed like that.
Because he recalled with aching clarity the day the man—for there was no other way to describe Yeshua in this moment other than horribly, painfully human—before him had condemned such avarice. The same figure gasping for breath on the cross and using the little energy He had left to cry out to God had been so incensed at His temple that He had taken long days to craft a whip with His own hands in order to cleanse it.
Was that the sin that justified such torment? A righteous fury that rose in a form both fully man and fully Divine, claiming the birthright of neither and requiring the sacrifice of both? The angel breathed out a sound like a fist had found its way into his stomach, his own crystalline wrath ascending with Christ’s wail until He once again succumbed to shallow, suffocating gulps of air.
“Come here.” The words, soft and gentle, were almost as jarring as the broad hand that curled around his elbow, tugging him away.
“No.” His own throat was nearly as raw as those of the condemned men. “I should watch. I owe it to Him to watch.”
“You owe no one anything,” Aziraphale hissed, finally coming to stand between the angel and the dying Son.
“No one else has come to bear witness, and so it falls to me,” he hissed back, yanking his arm from Aziraphale’s grip. “For all I know, this is your doing. You tempted him, didn’t you?”
“And he was quite the gentleman as he told me where to stick it,” Aziraphale said snidely. “But what, you’re looking for a reason, seraph? You want to know why God abandoned Him? I can tell you. Ineffability.”
The angel’s snarl was enough to startle several humans into warily stepping away. Aziraphale merely pursed his lips.
It was the same argument they’d had when they’d watched rivers rise and animals drown and families sob atop hills, knowing the only safety was aboard the Ark. Aziraphale had whispered it then—ineffable—as the rains fell on Noah’s shoulders, and had used it to explain away every one of the angel’s questions, the same answer every time he demanded a reason.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” he growled.
“Then what’s your rationale, O Mighty Emissary,” Aziraphale returned, hands fluttering about like mocking wings. “Do you think that make this torture any better? No matter the reason, He’ll be just as fucking dead.”
“Leave.” The order came in a thousand voices, thankfully—ineffably—distorted by the sky rending in twain as Christ shouted his last.
“Seraph–”
“My name is Crowley, and I suggest you leave before you’re forced to.” Crowley was surprised that his skin wasn’t shimmering with the force of his rage.
Later, long after Yeshua returned, reunited with his followers and then taken to the sky, Crowley would realise that Aziraphale must have warped a bubble of reality in order to shield the mortals. Later even than that, he would even appreciate it.
Just then, watching the Romans bleed holy blood, Crowley couldn’t appreciate anything; Yeshua’s body went cold and still and the humans wept and he had just sent away the only creature who could understand. As always, he was alone with the churning of his guts and the deep-seated need for an outlet of emotion that angels weren’t supposed to possess.
~*~
How I wish, how I wish you were here / We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground, what have we found? / The same old fears, wish you were here
Sir Antony Crowley, Knight of the Round Table, gaped as his sworn nemesis, the White Knight, flipped open his visor. “It’s you?”
Aziraphale, a vision in blinding armour and a billowing white cape—which made Crowley, in his dull and damaged grey plate feel drab and filthy—grinned as if genuinely pleased at the surprise. “Well, hello!” He half-turned to call, “Leave him be, fellows, I know this one!” before snapping his eyes back to Crowley with a warm gesture of welcome. “Can I tempt you to a midday meal?”
“You… can’t be serious,” Crowley said, even though he very much knew that Aziraphale was, indeed, serious.
“Oh, but I am! This area has the most delicious cheeses, and, as you can imagine, the kind of folk who would wreak havoc on their own land tend to be rather awful dining companions.” Aziraphale cocked his head, eyes sparkling. “And besides I have a rather interesting business proposition for you.”
“Business? Really.” Crowley felt his expression turn as disbelieving as his voice.
Aziraphale wiggled excitedly. “Oh, it’s ingenious, if I do say so myself. Come to my tent. We can eat and talk and make merry, and perhaps I’ll even have a wile or two for you to thwart.”
Lord Above, Aziraphale was so chuffed at the very idea of entertaining. He was delighted because of this run-in, and Crowley, who hadn’t seen him in decades, was so tempted–
He took half a step back, something in his chest twisting as Aziraphale’s brilliance dimmed. “I– erm. I don’t think I should.”
Aziraphale smiled, but Crowley could see the falseness in it, the strain. “Well, that’s your prerogative, seraph. I certainly won’t push you to accept my company.”
Desperate to regain some of their earlier camaraderie, Crowley swept out his arm in a motion that even he couldn’t interpret. “May– maybe next time. Yeah?”
That seemed to do the trick; Aziraphale lit up again, the stretch of his cheeks crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Next time, then, Crowley.”
~*~
It took two more invitations before the angel named Crowley gave in to the demon named Aziraphale.
It took another century before Aziraphale stopped asking to meet, and simply started assuming.
It took sixteen more years until Crowley agreed to Aziraphale’s venture—an Arrangement to split their work.
It took another two decades for them to decide that they rather liked travelling together. Being together.
It took until the day after the antiChrist turned eleven for them to say any of that aloud.
(It didn’t take long at all, then, for their mouths to meet, for hands to wander, for much of what they had said at the frayed, crackling edges of the world to be repeated, breathless and passionate, in the night as they moved together.)
It took two hours, ten minutes, and eighteen seconds to part at the door, each looking into a too-familiar face as they said what might be their last goodbyes.
It took three bags of frozen peas and nine very contented ducks to soothe their frazzled nerves on a bench in St. James’ Park, hands clenched on the wood between them, intending to never let go.
(It took four short years after that for their peace to be shattered.)