Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Crowley sat in the Bentley, and he glared at the bookshop.

He’d driven away, he’d just kept on driving, driving, driving. Non-stop for hours. Hours that turned into days, no destination in mind, just him and the car, and the road unrolling in front of them - his only urge to keep going, to get away. The “to” didn’t matter. “To” was entirely immaterial. It was the “from” that was important. 

Away from the bookshop. Away from Soho. Away from London. Away from everything that reminded him of Aziraphale. 

(Illustration by GayDemonicDisaster. Can’t see the image? Click here.)  

England wasn’t big enough for him. Tacking Scotland on top of it didn’t help. So once he got there, he sought out a ship which could take him and the car across the North Sea, so he could avoid having to drive back down closer to London in order to get past it to Dover to take the more logical route. 

From Norway, he began driving North. He loitered in a remote B’n’B where he’d sit out on the deck at night, wrapped in a blanket, and watching the Northern Lights while he drank far too much wine, night after night. 

Growing tired of the clear skies and gazing up at the stars he’d made, reminding him of what he’d once been, and never would be again - never wanted to be again - he set off driving once more. South this time. Norway, Finland, another ferry to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece. 

But then what?

Turn Eastward, head into Turkey and out across the world? Just keep going? The roads had been hard on the Bentley here and there. He knew if he went that way, there’d be places where it got even worse. She didn’t deserve that at her age. She could do it, sure, but he could feel his beloved car was already feeling confused and disoriented. She loved the open road, true, but she wasn’t a fan of the struggles of long hauling over potholed or unmade roads they’d stumbled upon here and there in the more remote regions. She liked London, he knew that. It may not be much fun for most cars, but she was used to it, as was he. 

He could go West, get a ship and head over to Italy, he supposed, drive back up that way, but then? Spain? Portugal?  Or… Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France… and then see how he felt about returning to London then? It sucked at him - drew him back into its orbit somehow. He’d spent longer living in other places, sure, but there was something about London which just fitted him somehow, with or without Aziraphale.

Crowley had had plenty of time to think on his road trip so far, to sort through his memories and his feelings. There had been times he’d been crying so hard he couldn’t even see the road, and he’d let the Bentley take over driving for him while he curled up and sobbed for a while. Generally she’d explored off the beaten path and taken him to somewhere stunningly beautiful, then just stopped, for him to come to his senses, and look out, and see the landscape he’d been missing. She’d point him at something she thought was pretty, in the hope it’d distract him from his misery. Sometimes she was right, and he was grateful to her for that. 

So they’d sit, in a car park on some hillside or something, he’d watch the world for a little while, dry his tears, pat her on the dashboard, then they’d turn around and carry on. 

He sat atop a hill in Greece, (the Bentley had managed to find a stunning beauty spot with a view of the ocean for him to gaze at), while he decided what he wanted to do. 

“I don’t know,” he told her at last. “You decide. Where should we go? I don’t know what to do any more. Not working for Hell any more. No Aziraphale to keep me centered, no reason to be anywhere or do anything much any more. Just you and me, now. There’s no purpose, there’s no point. What am I even here for? I left Hell for him, and now he left me for Heaven. There’s nothing left for me to…” Crowley looked down, and sniffed. The glovebox popped open. Without even looking, he reached out to take one of the tissues he knew would have materialised there for him. 

“Thanks,” he told her, and blew his nose. “Go on, you go. Show me the way you want to go.”

And so she did. She reversed out of her spot, and took him to the port, where they got a ferry to Italy. Once in Italy, they wended their way Northwards to Switzerland, and, mile by mile, back toward the West once more. 

By the time they drove off the train from the Channel Tunnel, Crowley had resigned himself to the fact that the Bentley thought he should be back in England again. Once they left the M20 for the M25, he had a pretty good idea she was most likely going to head into London. 

She hadn’t headed to his now-emptied flat in Mayfair, which technically, was his again, now that Shax had gone. Although he had little inclination to want to return, after he’d thought on it a while.  The Bentley followed her grille all the way back to Whickber Street, and pulled up to her accustomed parking spot opposite the bookshop, where, as always, the double yellow lines obediently rolled back on themselves to leave a precisely Bentley-sized gap especially for her. Once she’d gone, they’d roll back once more, so his spot was always there. 

And so here he was, glaring at the bookshop. 

“What d’you want me to do here?” He demanded. “He’s gone. He hasn’t come back, I can tell that even without going inside - I can feel when he’s nearby, and he’s not on Earth right now - I’d be able to sense him. I’m pretty sure you know that too - you can find him when I ask you to. He’s not here.”

The Bentley turned her engine off, pointedly, and waited. 

Crowley glowered at the steering wheel. 

After a moment, his door opened on its own. 

“FINE.” He grumbled. “Hint taken. I’ll go. Dunno what you expect me to do there, though.”

First, Crowley headed into ‘Give me coffee or give me death’ to bolster himself with a coffee, although the Bentley started her engine just long enough to growl in disapproval at him going in the wrong direction. 

“I need a drink,” he growled at her. “Be thankful I’m not heading into the Dirty Donkey instead. I’ll go to the bookshop after I have some bloody caffeine.”

She turned her engine off again with a petulant grumble, but kept quiet after that. 

Nina glanced up in surprise when he walked in. 

“I want…”

“Six espressos in a big cup, nothing else.” Nina declared. “I know. More importantly: you’re back.”

“What gave it away?” Crowley asked sarcastically, looking himself up and down. “Was it me, standing here, that gave you a clue?” 

Nina gave him a look. 

Crowley returned it. 

“Coffee.” He reminded her. 

“Explanation.” She replied. 

“Coffee,” Crowley growled, leaning in. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Fine. He’s not there, though.”

“I know.”

“Muriel’s been doing well running the shop while he’s been away,” Nina commented, as she went through the motions of making his coffee. Crowley just grunted in reply. 

His coffee was placed on the counter before him. Crowley looked at it. It was in a to-go cup. 

It was blue. 

He blinked. 

“Something wrong?” Nina asked. 

“Could you pour that into a normal cup, please?” He asked, his voice tight. 

Nina shrugged, and did so. Crowley picked it up, necked it in one go, then placed a couple of tenners on the counter, told her to keep the change, and walked out, feeling a whole lot more shitty than when he’d walked in. He hadn’t accounted for what the sight of that cup would do to him. 

He stood on the pavement, and realised he was shaking slightly. Not because of the coffee, either. Because it wasn’t until he’d laid eyes on the damn thing that he’d remembered that day, the day the Metatron had persuaded Aziraphale to leave him. Betrayal: not for thirty pieces of silver, but for a coffee with almond syrup. 

Crowley blinked back tears, and looked up at the bookshop. He looked at the Bentley. 

Taking two strides forward, he reached for the door handle of the Bentley. It wouldn’t open. 

“Hey!”

He never usually had to unlock the door, but he fumbled in his pocket for the keys, put the key in the lock, and tried to turn it. The door remained locked. 

“You really want me to go over there, huh?”

The Bentley treated him to a stern silence. 

“Bloody-minded bag of bolts,” he muttered under his breath, and stepped in front of her to cross the road. She responded by rolling forward an inch suddenly to bash his knee in retaliation. “Oi!” he snapped. “Less of that. I’m going, aren’t I?” 

The Bentley rolled back an inch, still clearly indignant over the ‘bag of bolts’ comment, but allowed Crowley to cross the road, and into the bookshop. 

Crowley stepped through the door, as he had thousands of times before. Same door, same floorboards underfoot, same carpet in the middle, same muted light, same dust, the same smell of old books and scrolls in the air, but that was where the similarity ended. 

The scent was wrong - there was no cocoa, no tea, no cakes, no cologne. Scent was Crowley’s strongest sense, better than his eyes, and while there was a scent of mild divinity on the air, it wasn’t Aziraphale’s - it was a cooler, brighter scent. It had ‘Inspector Constable’ written all over it, and it didn’t belong in the bookshop where, ever since it opened, the only constant had been Aziraphale’s. 

He looked around. The clock ticked, the dust motes drifted in the afternoon sunlight from the window, the floorboards creaked under his feet. 

“Hello?” A familiar face poked around the corner of a bookshelf to look at him. 

“Muriel.” Crowley said. 

“Mr. Crowley!” They looked surprised. “You’re back!”

“The residents of Whickber Street are amazingly observant today, it seems,” he replied drily. 

“Pardon?”

“Never mind,” he sighed, looking around. Muriel hadn’t changed much around the place that he could tell. 

“What are you doing here?” Muriel asked, approaching him as if he might bite. 

“I don’t know, what am I doing here? You tell me.”

“Um, standing in a bookshop?” They replied. “Did you want to try buying a book?”

“Are you selling Aziraphale’s books?” Crowley looked faintly horrified. 

“Oh no… people are allowed to try buying them though. I just don’t have to actually sell them any.”

“Glad to hear it. Why leave the shop open then?”

“Because I like it when people come in, then I can talk to them,” Muriel replied brightly. “People are very interesting.”

“On that we can agree,” Crowley sighed, then plonked himself down on the familiar leather sofa. It welcomed his shape like an old friend. “You been getting on ok?” He asked, not even sure why he did. 

“I think so. It’s very complicated here, but I’ve been doing my best to learn. The books have been helping a lot.” Muriel sat down in Aziraphale’s chair, at Aziraphale’s desk… in Aziraphale’s bookshop. Crowley couldn’t stop thinking of literally everything as Aziraphale’s. He had to let go of that, but he realised that was impossible - there was no separating the location from the person. He had to just learn to accept it. Accept the loss of Aziraphale, just as he’d had to accept the loss of his entire being when he’d Fallen. 

Crowley had learned to accept himself as damned. He’d got used to it. So now he had to teach himself to accept his new status, as forsaken not just by God, but by the only being in the universe who had ever appeared to care about him. 

‘Appeared to’ being the significant phrasing. 

“Mr. Crowley?” Muriel dropped a girder across the rails of his train of thought. 

“Huh?”

“Are you alright?”

Crowley gave them a level look, considering his options. 

“No.” He said, eventually. “And why did you bother asking?”

“Well, because you don’t look alright, and… it’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?” 

“It’s what humans do, I suppose,” Crowley agreed. “But we’re not human, so why bother? You’re an angel, I’m a demon. We’re hereditary enemies. So why care about how I feel?”

“Because it’s what friends do…” Muriel began, but Crowley snapped and glared at them. 

“I am NOT your friend. Angels do not befriend demons.”

“Mr. Aziraphale did.”

“Yes, and look where that got us. Not very wise of him, was it?”

“Wh… where did it get you?”

“In a whole world of pain, that’s where. Trust me, you do not want to be friends with a demon.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t fucking know.  It’s the only place I have left. Ask my car, I suppose. It was her bright idea.”

“Oh. Ok.” Muriel got up and headed to the door. 

“Where are you going?” Crowley demanded. 

“To your car, like you said.”

“I didn’t mean literally…” Crowley scrambled to his feet and chased after them. Muriel was already crossing the street. “It’s locked,” he called after them, but Muriel got to the car, and hadn’t even touched the door handle when the passenger door swung wide open for them. Crowley stopped in his tracks. Muriel sat inside, and the door closed after them. 

He went to the driver’s door, but it remained firmly locked. When he came back to Muriel’s door, it wouldn’t open for him either. He looked in and saw the radio light illuminated, but couldn’t hear anything - Muriel was nodding and smiling however. Crowley knocked on the window. They looked up and gave him a smile, then turned back to pay attention to the radio again. 

“Muriel!” He shouted. “Let me in!”

They didn’t appear to hear him.  A minute or so later, however, the radio light went off, then Muriel looked up and smiled, then opened the door. 

“Ok,” they said, and began to walk back to the bookshop again. Crowley went to look in the car, but the passenger door shut and locked itself firmly. 

“Traitor!” He growled at the car. “What was all that about?”

The Bentley remained locked, and silent. Crowley glared at her, then turned on his heel, and followed Muriel back into the bookshop once more. Muriel was sitting at the desk again, writing something in their notebook. 

“What the hell just happened?”

“You told me to ask her, so I did.”

“Wha… what did she say? And HOW?”

“She told me not to tell you yet.” Muriel finished writing, then tucked their notebook in their pocket again, and stood up. “So: step one.” They took a step toward Crowley, who frowned, and took a step back.

Muriel took another step forward. Crowley took another step back. 

“What are you doing?”

“I was going to give you a hug, but you need to stand still first,” Muriel explained, looking put out. 

“A what?”

“A hug. It’s something humans do.”

“I know that, but it’s not something angels do. Have you ever hugged anyone before?”

“No, but I’ve seen it done, it looks fairly straightforward.” They opened their arms, and stepped forward again. “Now stand still, I want to get this right…”

“No! Muriel, you can’t hug a demon. You’re an angel.”

“I’ve got two arms,” Muriel protested. “It’s perfectly possible. You can even hug with one arm.”

“Not what I meant. Did you forget the entire ‘angels must not befriend demons’ bit just now?”

“Is that written down somewhere?” Muriel asked. “I have access to all the heavenly archives, but I don’t remember reading that anywhere.”

“Honestly, lose one bastard angel, gain another. Is this what my life is all about now? Angels who force their way through heavenly loopholes?” 

He met Muriel’s honest, open gaze, and caved in. Exactly as he always had for Aziraphale. 

“Fine, get it over and done with. I’ve got things to do.”

“Really?”

“Well, no, but…” Then Muriel was hugging him. 

“Well, you’ve got the general idea down, I suppose,” Crowley grumbled. “All soft and squishy but tight, yeah I guess it’s a hug. Very huggy, as hugs go.”

“Have you been hugged before?”

“No.”

Muriel didn’t let go. “You need more hug. You feel all stiff and you’re supposed to be relaxed by it.”

“I am not in the remotest bit relaxed,” Crowley pointed out.

“I know, that’s how I know you need more hug.”

“So if I relax, you’ll stop?”

“Maybe. You’re meant to hug back as well. I think it works better that way.”

Crowley scowled, and wrapped his arms around Muriel, giving them a brief squeeze. 

“There. Can we stop now?”

“You’re still stiff.”

Crowley did his best to turn into a vertical wet noodle. Muriel was surprisingly strong, however, and simply held him up. “That’s better,” they said, cheerfully. 

“Grnf”, Crowley replied, somewhat muffled. Muriel finally let him go. 

“Do you feel better yet?” They asked, looking at him quizzically. 

“I feel hugged.” Crowley said, and sat down on the sofa again. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

“To make you feel better. Bentley said you needed it.”

“Then why didn’t she hug me?”

“Because she doesn’t have arms, silly!” Muriel replied. Then, instead of sitting down at the desk again, Muriel sat down on the sofa next to him. Crowley scrunched up against the arm of the sofa , trying to avoid any more bodily contact. He wasn’t used to sharing furniture with someone else. 

“Why are you sitting there?”

“It’s a sofa, you’re meant to sit on them.”

“You know, I honestly can’t tell when you’re being a bastard, or just being clueless.”

“But I don’t have any parents, so how can I be a bastard?” Muriel asked, looking confused. “I read about them in the heraldry book - they get different bits on their coat of arms don’t they? A bend sinister, I think it was called, and…”

“Ok, that, right there: bastard, or clueless? I have no idea if you’re taking the piss out of me or not.”

“Do you urinate?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, no - I… ARGH! Just…” Crowley crossed his arms and glared straight ahead in frustration.

Chapter Text

Muriel consulted their notebook. “Ok, so the next bit is, you’re supposed to talk to me.”

“What about?”

“About why you’re sad.”

“No.”

“But…”

“N…O… spells ‘no’.” Crowley said, firmly.

“But Bentley said…”

“I don’t care what she said - if she wanted me to talk, she can listen herself. I've been talking to her for literally thousands of miles, she didn’t have anything to say back to me. How did she even talk to you anyway?”

“She didn’t.”

“What? But you said she did!”

“Well, not exactly…”

“Did you just make that all up?”

“No. What I mean is - she didn’t talk to me, she sang.”

“Sang?”

“Lots of different words from lots of different songs.”

Realisation filtered through Crowley’s cloud of gloom. “Using the radio? She made sentences using words from songs?”

“Yes.”

“She’s never done that to me before. She just… she communicates silently, it’s more of a feeling than anything.”

“Well, maybe she knows I don’t speak car as well as you do, so she made it easier for me?”

“Why does she want me to talk to you instead of her, though?”

“I don’t know, but she asked me to, so I’m doing it, and you told me to ask her in the first place, so really, I’m only doing what you told me to - which is to find out why you’re here, and you’re here so you can have hugs, and talk to me.”

Crowley got up and went to the window, opened it, and yelled across the street. 

“TRAITOR!”

Nina looked up from where she was wiping a table on the pavement behind the Bentley. 

“Pardon?”

“Fuck!” Crowley ducked back and hid behind a bookshelf.

Muriel appeared at the window. “It’s ok, Nina! Crowley was talking to his car!”

“Makes about as much sense as he usually does, then.” Nina yelled back. 

Muriel closed the window, and turned around to where Crowley wasn’t. 

“Where did you go?” They called out, before hearing the door to the cellar creaking, and went to investigate. 

Muriel followed the trail of mumbled curse words down the cellar steps, following a well-worn path in the dust. Right at the bottom of the steps, then left into the wine cellar. There they found Crowley rummaging on the shelves, until he found something he liked the look of, then he reached up to a hook by the door to grab a bottle opener, and removed the cork. 

“Should normally let it breathe but…” He snapped his fingers. “That should take care of it.” He took a swig straight from the bottle, then shrugged, and headed back upstairs with it again. Going through the kitchen, he did at least pick up a wine glass from the small bar by the wall near the table, poured himself a generous measure, then retired to the sofa once more. 

“What’s that?” Muriel asked. 

“Wine.”

“Oh, like the humans use for communion.”

“No, like the humans use to get rascally drunk,” Crowley replied, and knocked back some more. “Which is precisely what I plan to do.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

“Oh I like fun, Can I try?”

“Sure, why not? Knock yourself out.”

“What with?”

“Well, with the wine if you want,” he shrugged. “It’s a figure of speech. Whether you want to get paralytic with me or not is entirely up to you.”

“What happens when you get paralytic?” Muriel asked, fetching a glass for themself. 

“All sorts. Sing karaoke, pick a fight with inanimate objects, steal a police horse, wake up with a traffic cone, shag a stranger, wake up wearing a policeman’s helmet, stockings, and suspenders in a gay bar in Amsterdam, wake up in the zebra enclosure at London Zoo having put party hats on all the zebras, and with a hoofprint on your chest and chunk bitten out of your arm…”

“Really?”

“Well yeah, if you’re me, at least. I have done all of those at least once.”

“I’m not sure I want to do all of those.”

Crowley poured them a glass. Muriel looked at it. Then sniffed it, and pulled a face. 

“I have to imbibe it, like you do?”

“You can imbibe it, snort it, or stick it up your arse for all I care,” Crowley muttered. 

“That doesn’t sound very nice.”

“I was joking.”

“Could you tell me when you’re joking, please? It’s hard to tell.”

“Um.” Crowley looked at them, and frowned. “Shit, sorry. That was out of order. I’m just… not dealing with this very well right now.”

“What’s ‘this’?” Muriel asked, putting the wine glass down again. 

“Everything,” Crowley replied, and drained his glass. “Are you going to drink that?”

“No thank you.”

He reached over and drained Muriel’s glass too. 

“More for me then.”

“Why do you want to do all those silly things?”

“When you’re drunk it doesn’t matter. You’re not in control, you don’t care any more, you lose your inhibitions, and you can forget about the world and everyone in it, yourself included.”

“But why?”

“Because sometimes you don’t want to feel things any more.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I didn’t come here for the fuckin’ third degree.”

“No, you came here to talk.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Bentley said you did. She was very emphatic on that point.”

“Fine, I’ll finish the bottle and then you’ll be begging me to shut up.”

Muriel got out their notebook, and waited. 

Crowley was snoring on the sofa. Muriel flipped over the pages of their notebook, scanning through the shorthand they’d scribbled there as Crowley’s drunken rant had become increasingly unfiltered. It had definitely got him talking, and they hadn’t had to beg him to shut up as he’d claimed either. He’d just kind of meandered off into vagueness before falling asleep. It had been a very productive evening, however.

Muriel tidied up the bookshop, put the bottle in the recycling bin, tugged a blanket over the sleeping demon, then wandered off down to the cellar, via the kitchen, picking up a tub of something on the way. 

After a few minutes, they came back upstairs again, and browsed the shelves for books on psychology, depression, loss, grief, and a few other topics, then sat down with their notebook to write some more while Crowley snored on, oblivious. 

Crowley woke up, his head thumping, and very much regretting having fallen asleep before remembering to purge the alcohol from his system. He tried to concentrate to do so now, but it was ten times harder to miracle the alcohol away when you were hungover, versus when you were merely drunk. He winced, and gagged slightly. But finally it was gone. 

“Bleh.”

He looked around, he appeared to be on his own. He yawned wide, and then sniffed the air, something wasn’t quite right. But his human shape was nowhere as good as his snake one at smelling, so he opted to change - his curiosity needed to be quenched, and the smell was bothering him. He knew it somehow…

Now in a snake shape, he modified his size down significantly, so as to more easily slither around the bookshop and into all the nooks and crannies. He tasted the air, waving his head around slightly. 

Crowley could smell something… something familiar, something… His mouth watered. It was tantalising. He flicked his tongue out to taste the air, and followed his nose, slithering between the bookshelves. It wasn’t a scent he associated with the bookshop, it was something that was not usually allowed in here, all the more reason he should find it and take care of it. He slithered through the shadows, flicking his tongue constantly to triangulate the direction, and then there it was…

Crowley bunched up his coils ready to strike. 

Then, just as he launched at the little white mouse, it turned around, wiggled its whiskers, and a teeny tiny lightning bolt of angelic energy smote him on the nose. 

“AAAAAAH!” Crowley recoiled, his snout smarting at the sting.  “What the FUCK?”

“Oh sorry, Mr. Crowley! The tiny mouse squeaked, and hurried over, standing on their hindlegs, they reached up and placed two tiny paws right on the tip of his snout. A miniscule healing miracle emanated from them. “There, is that better?”

(Illustration by IneffableChocolateCheeseCake. Can’t see the image? Click here)

“MURIEL?!”

“Yes?”

“You’re a MOUSE?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“I had to be something.”

“But why are you being a mouse now?”

“Well, why are you being a snake? I was sniffing out bookworm larvae, I can smell a thousand times better in this shape.”

“What do you do when you find them?”

“I smite them.”

“Like you did my snout?”

“Yes!”

“Well that’ll definitely show them,” Crowley grumbled. “I need some breakfast.”

“Oh, I don’t have any food in the…”

“Liquid breakfast,” he replied as he slithered off, morphing back up into a humanoid demon shape, and heading for the cellar door. Muriel scampered after him on four tiny paws. 

“Um, Mr. Crowley…?”

“Drink first, talk later. Or never.”

“But…”

His footsteps descended the stairs. Muriel paused at the top step, looking unsure, and waited. 

“MURIEL!!!” 

The tiny mouse turned and ran.

Crowley thundered back up the stairs again. 

“SALT? You put a fucking circle of SALT around the wine cellar? And that bloody angelic ward over the top of it? And where the hell did you find the sprig of mistletoe to hang over the door?” He arrived at the top of the stairs, and looked around. Muriel was nowhere to be seen. 

“Where are you, you devious little rodent?”

He cast about, then changed back into a serpent form and tasted the air. “There you are, little mousssse…” he hissed, slithering rapidly toward a narrow gap between two shelves. Muriel shot out from the other side and sprinted across the floor to another crevice. 

“You can run but you can’t hide, little moussssse,” Crowley taunted. 

“But I can do this,” Muriel replied. 

Suddenly the scent of angelic mouse was drowned out by a myriad of conflicting overpowering scents criss-crossing the entire floor of the bookshop, assailing Crowley’s sensitive nostrils and tongue. It was too much, he recoiled back, shaking his head, then was forced to change back into a human shape just to stop the sensory overload. 

“You bloody little…!”

There was the pattering of tiny paws on wooden floors, and a white blur zipped across his peripheral vision. 

“What the fuck was that?”

“You don’t get to stay a mouse very long without being discorporated if you can’t look after yourself,” Muriel squeaked at him from somewhere past his left shoulder. Crowley spun around, and spied them, sitting atop a bookshelf nearly at head height, twitching their whiskers at him. 

“You’re not going to eat me, are you?” Muriel asked. “Only, I’d have to smite you again.”

“You took away my first breakfast choice,” Crowley growled. “You made yourself my second.”

A tiny lightning bolt zapped off the tip of his nose again. 

“OW!” Crowley clutched at his nose. “STOB DAT!”

“Stop chasing me.”

“I wasn’t really going to eat you!” Crowley grumbled, flinging himself back on the sofa in a huff.

“Promise?” Muriel was no longer on top of the bookshelf. Now they were peering at him from under Aziraphale’s desk.

“Yes. I promise.”

Muriel appeared on the arm of the sofa next to Crowley’s elbow, and placed two paws cautiously on his hand, sniffing up at him. 

“I won’t hurt you.” Crowley sighed. “Besides, you’re too fucking cute like that.” He reached out a fingertip and booped them gently on the nose. 

Muriel scurried up his arm and sat on his shoulder, whiffling at his ear with long, tickly whiskers.

“Hey! That tickles!”

“Sorry.” Muriel sat and groomed themself fastidiously, washing their face, combing their fur with teeth and paws, then finished by picking up their tail in both paws and licking it clean all the way to the tip until they were pristine, with not a speck of dust anywhere. 

“So when am I allowed in the wine cellar again?” Crowley asked. 

Muriel tipped their head on one side and regarded him with curious dark eyes. 

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Lots of things,” Muriel replied. They inched forward and began grooming his sideburn. 

“What are you doing?”

“Grooming you.”

“You have a lot of ground to cover, that’s going to take you literal weeks.”

“It’s not always about being clean, it’s about being nice,” Muriel said, patting his hair. “You could go and have a bath upstairs. You smell like you’ve been living in your car.”

“That’s because I have been living in my car.”

“I know.”

“Right, I’ll have a bath. It’ll be nice to relax for a bit, I suppose.” Crowley held his hand up to his shoulder, and Muriel stepped on. He placed his hand next to the desk, and the little mouse stepped off, then jumped down onto the chair. 

“Aren’t you going to change back yet?”

“In a bit,” Muriel squeaked back. “It’s a bit tricky sometimes, I just need to concentrate for a  moment…” They closed their eyes tight, took a deep breath, then sneezed, all four paws bouncing into the air, then sneezed again, and re-took their more human shape once more. 

“There,” Muriel smiled. 

“Is the sneezing mandatory, or coincidental?”

“Um, sort of necessary, I’m not sure why.”

“Well it was adorable, anyway.” Crowley headed off upstairs. 

Chapter Text

Crowley lounged in the bath, the water at a temperature hot enough to boil a lobster, but to him, it was just pleasantly warm. He had no idea what was going on, and had decided to just give in and go with the flow, to see where things led him. Then suddenly the door opened, and Muriel walked in. 

Crowley panicked and splashed, grabbing at a towel to cover what was necessary. 

“MURIEL!”

(Illustration by HG_Aneh. Can’t see the image? Click here.)

“I brought you a coffee from Nina’s,” Muriel explained. “Are you ok?”

“KNOCK FIRST!”

“Oh sorry.” Muriel knocked on the door behind them. “Is that better? I didn’t realise you had to do it in your own home.”

“Y… you… it’s a bathroom!”

“It is! I like it here!” Muriel said, sitting down on the edge of the bath, holding out the cup of coffee to Crowley expectantly. It was in a blue to-go cup. He glared at it. 

“Ok, one thing at a time. First: please get that cup out of my sight. Decant the coffee into something that isn’t small and blue with that logo on it, and never let me see it again.”

“Ok.” Muriel stood up and went to decant the coffee into a normal mug. When they came back, Crowley was out of the bath, and wrapped in the biggest towel he could find. He reached out and took the mug from them, and swallowed the contents in one go. 

“Right. Second: Bathrooms are private spaces no matter whose home they are in. You should never go in when someone is in there, unless they have specifically asked you to.”

Muriel nodded, taking out their notebook and writing it down. 

“Why?” They asked, politely. 

“Because people can be naked in here, like I just was,” he pointed out.

“Is that bad?”

“Muriel, you are literally speaking to the serpent who made humans first realise that. Apple - munch, ‘oh shit I’m naked: hide!’ That was me, remember?”

“But you’re a demon, not a human,” Muriel pointed out. 

“Yes, but we live in a human world, wearing human-shaped bodies, so we try to fit in, and honestly, after a while, it just kind of becomes habit.”

“Right.” Muriel scribbled more notes. “I also got you a breakfast croissant from Nina, she said you might like it, when I said you wanted breakfast. She knew you’d want the coffee, but told me to take the croissant as well. She asked me if I’d like one but I didn’t. It’s downstairs, when you’re ready to come back down and start part three.”

“Part three?” Crowley was rubbing his hair dry with a smaller towel, and peered out at them from under the towel in his hand. “What?”

“We’ve done part one: the hug, which we need to do again, by the way, Bentley said it was plural - hugs, with an S. We’ve done part two: the talking…”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yes you did. You told me to wait until you were drunk and then I’d beg you to shut up. You were very forthcoming. I understand a lot better now.”

“What the fuck did I tell you?”

“Oh lots of things. I’ve written them all down. I had to miracle more pages for my notebook by 4 a.m.”

Crowley groaned. 

“And so today we have part three: tackling problematic coping strategies. I already took care of the wine cellar.” Muriel beamed. 

“You realise there is literally a pub opposite this bookshop?” Crowley grumbled. 

“Oh yes. I dealt with that too,” Muriel replied brightly. 

Crowley stared at her, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. 

“Muriel… WHAT did you do to the pub?”

“I blessed it, while you were asleep, and gave the landlord a horseshoe to nail up over the door. Well, technically it is a donkey shoe, because the pub is named after a donkey.”

“Where did you find a fucking donkey shoe between now and last night?”

“I looked up in the encyclopaedias to find out where still uses donkeys for working, and miracled a used one over from a scrap pile at a farrier’s in Egypt.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought the pub landlord would find it nice that I’d gone to the trouble to find a donkey shoe as a gift for him for luck from his new neighbour. I was right, he was very smiley about it. He said thank you and everything.”

“How can someone with a face as cute and innocent looking as yours be such a devious, conniving, manipulative little bastard? Is it an angel thing? I mean, Aziraphale had it down to a fine art, did he give you lessons, or something?”

Muriel shrugged and pocketed their notebook again. “Your croissant is downstairs, come down when you’re dressed,” they told him, then left him, blinking in incomprehension. 

“What the fuck did that blasted car land me in?” Crowley muttered, tugging his jeans on.

After a while, Muriel came upstairs again, to find Crowley, in black jeans but no shirt, lounging on the bed in Aziraphale’s little-used bedroom, scrolling on his phone. 

“What are you doing?” They asked. 

“You said to come down when I’m dressed. So if I don’t get fully dressed, I don’t have to come down.”

“I see.” Muriel frowned, then reached behind to lock the door. That got Crowley’s attention, and his head snapped up. 

“What are you doing?”

“If you won’t come down, then I’m coming up.” They sat on the bed, and pulled out their notebook, before reaching out to snatch Crowley’s phone from his fingers. 

“Oi!” 

Muriel put the phone in their pocket, then withdrew a pen, flipped the notebook open, and consulted what they had written there. 

“First subject: why do you feel the need to use alcohol as a coping mechanism?”

“Fuck off.”

Muriel raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Hey, that’s my thing. You do not have the intimidation factor to pull that off, you realise?”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Where did you learn all this bullshit?”

“There are a lot of books in this shop,” Muriel shrugged. “So: why wine?”

“Because I like it.”

“You also like coffee.”

“Coffee doesn’t get me shit-faced.”

“So why do you want to do that?”

“Because it helps me forget reality.”

“And why do you want to forget reality?”

“Because it sucks balls,” Crowley grumbled. 

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it bloody does, that’s all.”

“Is it because you feel rejected by God, by Heaven, by Hell, and by Aziraphale?”

Crowley glared at them. 

“For a tiny mouse, you sure do enjoy poking a deadly venomous snake,” he growled. 

“I’m not a mouse right now, and you’re not a snake. Also, you’re deflecting again.”

“Why should I answer any of this bullshit?”

“Because Bentley wants you to, and so do I.”

“I don’t care what you want.”

“Well you’re stuck in here with me until you do,” Muriel shrugged. “I’ve warded the door.”

Crowley thought for a moment, then transformed into a snake to stage an escape.  Muriel grabbed a pillow, peeled off the pillowcase, then, faster than he’d have given them credit for, lunged across the bed, grabbed him by the tail, and plunged him into the pillow case. 

“Are you just going to keep trapping me in increasingly smaller spaces until I give in?” Crowley’s voice was muffled by the fabric.

“If I have to, yes.”

Crowley’s next words were somewhat more muffled, and by the tone of them, it was probably for the best. Muriel ignored him and carried on.

“I also found a television in Jim’s old room. I watched some episodes of an Australian man who catches snakes. I didn’t realise it’d come in useful,” Muriel told the squirming, hissing, knotted pillowcase. 

“Mice are feistier than I remember,” Crowley hissed from his cloth prison. 

“So, as I was saying…” Muriel continued, as if nothing had happened. 

Crowley had actually found it easier to talk when he didn’t have to look at the person interrogating him, and had grudgingly begun to answer Muriel’s questions with progressively less snark as time went by. He lay coiled in the pillowcase, and pretended he was talking to himself instead. 

He realised he’d been foolish to think that Muriel would be an absolute push-over just because they weren’t experienced at human life - they were as old as Crowley. And ‘nice’ didn’t have to mean ‘stupid.’ 

Eventually, Muriel opened the pillowcase again, and peered in. 

“You can come out now for a break,” they told him. 

“Maybe I want to stay in here with my misery,” Crowley grumbled. 

“You haven’t had your croissant yet, and after a session like that, you should have a treat.”

Muriel picked up the pillowcase and carried Crowley downstairs in it, depositing him on the sofa, where a croissant was waiting on a small plate for him. 

“There. Now have your breakfast, although it’s nearly lunchtime now. Nina said you should eat lunch as well, and to go and fetch something when you were ready for that.”

“I don’t want lunch,” Crowley groused. “I didn’t even want breakfast.”

“You said you wanted liquid breakfast.”

“That was code for day drinking,” Crowley replied, then bit the croissant and wrapped his coils around it, before swallowing it whole. He gave a triumphant smirk at Muriel, then changed back into a human shape again. He was still topless. Muriel tossed his shirt to him. Seeing their expression, he tugged it on. 

“What’s the bloody point of all this, anyway?” He grumbled. “What are you hoping to gain from it all? Why do you even care?”

“I care because that’s what people do about their friends.”

“I am NOT your friend, I told you that already. You don’t need a demon as a friend, and I certainly don’t need another angel pretending to be my friend just to fuck off and leave me abandoned again.”

“And there we see your fear of rejection,” Muriel pointed out. “I can choose which friends I like, and you were kind to me when I first came here, kinder than anyone in Heaven ever was. Plus I have no intention of leaving you. Especially because if nothing else, I’m determined to show you that not every person you put your trust in will abandon you, it isn’t inevitable. I know Nina and Maggie want to be your friend as well, they also care about you. Yes, they’re humans, they will leave sooner or later, but you shouldn’t push them away as well - friendship doesn’t have to be defined only on the length of time, but on what happens in that time.”

“I barely know them.”

“Well why not GET to know them? We haven’t got to step 4 yet.”

“Step 4?”

“Socialising. Girls’ night.”

“Girls’ night?”

“Yes. That’s what Maggie told me it was called, anyway.”

“I’m not a girl, I’m not a boy. I’m a demon.”

“You don’t have to be. I’m not a boy or a girl either, neither is Andrea. It can just be friends' night. But you are coming.”

“Andrea?”

“Mutt’s spouse, who owns the magic shop. They wore the pretty yellow dress at the ball.”

“Ah.” Crowley frowned. “Who else is coming?”

“You, me, Maggie, Nina, Rosie Sandwich, Justine…”

“From the Bistro?”

“That’s right.”

“And they all want to come?”

“Yes.”

“With me?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not paying them, or something?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be fun.”

“And you think I need ‘fun’ in my life because…?”

“Because I said so.” Muriel replied firmly. “Because everybody does. And you haven’t had enough of it, and you need more right now.”

“And when is step 4 taking place?” Crowley asked, glumly resigned to his fate. 

“This evening.”

“So if we’re going out, that means I can drink again, right?”

“Two glasses. That’s the limit on the hot tub boat.”

“On the WHAT?”

“Hot tub boat, on the Thames. 6pm.”

“I…”

“You’ll enjoy it,” Muriel told him. It sounded awfully like an order.

But first, Crowley had to endure step 1 all over again. 

They met at a quayside on the Thames, and everyone insisted on hugging - specifically, hugging him.  And he had to stand there and be polite and let them, and even hug them back, while scowling at Muriel, who looked far more smug than any angel had any right to be. 

They were shown to some changing rooms with lockers for their possessions, and Crowley stepped out in his swimwear to the assembled group of humans (and one angel) in their bikinis and swimming costumes. Every head turned to look at him as he emerged, and every jaw fell open, except for Muriel’s, as they didn’t really get the significance. 

Rosie broke the silence. 

“And here was me expecting something like black trunks, not speedos. The Australians call them ‘budgie smugglers’ but I’d say those are more like parrot smugglers.”

“Who’s smuggling parrots?” Muriel asked, confused. 

“Crowley, in his underwear, by the looks of it,” Justine pointed out. 

“Oh no, it’s pronounced ‘penis’, not ‘parrots’.” Muriel replied. “He hasn’t got any parrots.”

“That one was a joke,” Crowley pointed out. “And I invented them. Easy way to inspire both lust and envy.” He smirked at them. 

“You invented parrots?”

“No; Speedos. Parrots do not often inspire envy, and hopefully only inspire lust in other parrots.”

After a briefing on handling the hot tub boat, the staff set them off on their own on the Thames. The evening was chilly, but the water in the floating hot tub was toasty warm. Crowley was glowering however, as when they’d been asked who would act as ‘captain’, Muriel had immediately volunteered him. As the thought of being in charge had appealed, he hadn’t argued it, until the staff member had pointed out that while everyone else in the boat was permitted two glasses of alcohol during their little trip, the captain wasn’t permitted to drink anything. He’d caught Muriel’s smug smile and narrowed his eyes at them. 

“Cheer up, Crowley,” Nina told him. “Look, you may not get a drink but you do get a cute little captain's hat!” She plonked it on his head and giggled. Crowley stopped short of making it burst into flames immediately, but the water did get noticeably warmer in his immediate area for a few minutes. 

Then an idea occurred to him. He smiled slowly at Muriel. 

“Well I may not be allowed any alcoholic drinks, but YOU’RE allowed TWO, Muriel! Isn’t that nice?”

“Um.”

“So, what do we have here?” He rummaged in the ice box on the side. “Hmm, beer, white wine - oh, some Lambrini, some vodka mixers, ah, Long Island iced tea - you like tea, don’t you, Muriel?” He asked, pointedly. Muriel looked puzzled, but nodded cautiously.

“I do now,” they admitted. But I’m not thirsty at the moment, thank you.”

“Go on, just a sip,” He grinned at Muriel, holding out the pre-mixed cocktail. “It’s what people do all the time.” He hadn’t actually noticed that Maggie was sticking to a lemonade and fruit juice mocktail. 

Muriel took the Long Island iced tea, and cradled the plastic glass nervously in their hands, but they daren’t back down now. Despite their reservations, and Crowley’s demonic grin, they braced themself, and took a sip. 

They swallowed, awkwardly, and gave a strained smile. “It’s um…” They looked puzzled for a moment, not familiar with the flavour explosion on their unused taste buds. “I don’t know how to describe that,” they admitted. Then they took another sip. “It’s… sweet?”

“Wait, you like it?” Crowley had expected spluttering, or a shamefaced climb-down, not for Muriel to actually take a second taste, and apparently like it. 

“I don’t know,” Muriel said, and took another taste. “I don’t dislike it, I suppose?”

“Huh. Well, there you go, then,” He replied, raising his mocktail. “Cheers.” Everyone else in the boat raised their plastic cups as well, and reached out to chink Crowley’s, making him feel suddenly taken aback at the attention. 

“Here’s to having Crowley back!” Rosie said, to a general cheer. 

“Why do you like me being back?” Crowley asked. 

“Because you make life interesting,” Nina told him firmly. 

“So did the plague, but I don’t see people wanting that to stage a comeback.”

“You haven’t killed anyone,” Andrea pointed out, “at least that we know of.” They giggled and sipped their Lambrini. 

“That you know of,” Crowley repeated, and narrowed his eyes, which gained him nothing but a round of laughter from the occupants of the hot tub and an amused dig in the ribs from Maggie. 

“I think we should all tell Crowley why we’re glad that he’s back,” Nina declared. “Muriel said he’s been struggling with self-esteem issues, and we need to cheer him up, so I’ll go first…” She looked at Crowley, raised her glass and told him:

“I’m glad you’re back because even if you try to act like a miserable old sod, you drink plenty of coffee, you persuaded me to hang out with Maggie more, and you protected everyone on the evening of the street trader’s ball.” She took a sip, and the boat cheered. Maggie went next. 

“You pretend to be grumpy, but we can all see you’re lovely deep down, and yes, you protected people when we needed it. Plus you bought records from me sometimes.” She took a sip, and there were more cheers. Crowley sunk lower in the hot tub, his ears going red. 

Justine spoke up. “You have a fine taste in wine when you visit my bistro, you speak excellent French, you’re supportive and polite, and we like seeing you around.”

Crowley’s nose sank under the water and only his eyes were above it now. Rosie held up her glass. 

“You keep tempting people to visit my establishment and have the tightest arse this side of the Thames, plus you have a prodigious parrot in your undercrackers!”

There was a roar of laughter at that one, and Crowley immersed himself completely under the water, but Muriel tugged him up again as Andrea raised their glass. “Your general ‘fuck-you’ attitude to the gender binary makes me feel less alone, and having you around on Whickber Street makes me feel safer.”

When the cheers died down again, Muriel raised their own glass. “From the moment I came here, you’ve made me feel welcome, you’ve been kind to me, and even when you pretend to be horrible, you’re still lovely. You’re one of the few people who understands better than most what it’s like to be me, here, in this situation, and you make me feel less alone too.”

Crowley growled and plunged back under the water again, scowling, but Muriel knocked back the remainder of their drink while everyone cheered, then reached under the water to haul him back up again, and hugged him tight. 

“Thank you.” Muriel told him. 

Before he knew it, everyone was trying to hug him at once, and he couldn’t very well turn into a snake and wriggle out of it, so he was stuck, immersed in a soft but inescapable grip of affection. 

After the hot tub boat, their next stop was a special booking at a beautician’s who worked evenings, where everyone got manis and pedis, which had been Justine’s idea. After that, Rosie’s plan for the night was to drag Crowley to a karaoke bar. He had been allowed a couple of drinks there at least, although Muriel put their foot down about limits. At least he had begun to relax considerably during the foot massage part of the pedicure, and by the time they hit the karaoke, he’d given up resisting, and before he knew it, Nina had put on “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor, and thrust a microphone into his hands, so shrugged and just rolled with it.  

Chapter Text

Crowley blinked awake to the sound of Muriel retching in the bathroom next door. They may have set limits on Crowley’s alcohol consumption the night before, but at the karaoke, had forgotten to do so for themself. 

He briefly pondered filling Muriel in on the little secret of miracling alcohol out of your bloodstream, but after all they’d put him through recently, he decided to let them enjoy their hangover just a little bit longer first as punishment. 

“Crowley?” Muriel’s plaintive voice echoed off the tiled bathroom walls. 

“Yeah?” He called back, not bothering to get out of bed yet. 

“I think my corporation has developed a fault, do you have a service manual around so I can troubleshoot it?”

Crowley sighed and levered himself out of bed, then stomped through to the bathroom. 

“You’re hungover. It’s fine, you’ll be fine. It was from the alcohol last night.”

Muriel groaned into the toilet bowl. Crowley was impressed that they’d had the instinct to actually know to go there when feeling sick. 

“Why is that stuff coming out?”

“It’s called vomiting, AKA ‘talking to God on the big white telephone’, Crowley told them, soaking a flannel in cold water and nudging Muriel to kneel up a bit straighter so he could pat their face with it. 

Muriel was looking mortified.

“I’m vomiting in God’s telephone?”

“It’s a euphemism, relax. Look, you can miracle the toxins out of your corporation, hold my hand, I’ll show you how it feels to do the miracle, then you replicate it yourself.”

Once Muriel had got the hang of the miracle, he wiped their face again, then flushed the toilet. 

“Right, now in response to your question the other day: yes I do urinate on occasion, and as such it’s time for you to get out of this bathroom and get me some coffee for when I’m done. Go on: scram.”

When Crowley came downstairs, his coffee was there on the coffee table in front of the sofa. It was in a big mug which had the words ‘NOT TODAY, SATAN’ on it. Muriel had seen it at one of the many novelty souvenir shops the night before, and refused to come home without it, clearly deciding that Crowley needed it. 

Next to the ‘NOT TODAY, SATAN’ mug was a pain au chocolat on a disposable plate from Nina’s. The paper napkin tucked under it had a note written in biro which said: “we all had fun, so we decided we’re doing ‘girls & gender noncompliants night’ every month now, put it in your calendar.”

‘Gender noncompliant’ being what Muriel had called themself and Crowley when discussing it the night before.  Andrea had been delighted and declared that henceforth they were also not going to be ‘gender nonconforming’ but ‘noncompliant’, as it sounded far better. Crowley couldn’t agree more. 

He dipped the pain au chocolat in his coffee, and ate it while staring vacantly out of the window at the humans getting on with life outside. 

It took him a moment to realise what was missing. 

He spat out his coffee and ran to the door, still in his black silk pyjamas. Rushing out onto the street, he looked up and down in a panic. 

No Bentley. 

He looked back inside the bookshop and yelled. 

“MURIEL!”

No Muriel.

“No. No no no no no….” Crowley grabbed at his unbrushed hair and ran outside again, looking every which way, frantic. He flicked his tongue out, tasting the air, picking up on the unique scent that such an old engine left behind, and found it still strong, heading Northwards up the street. He gave chase. 

Crowley came to a stop, breath rasping in his lungs, red-faced, dishevelled, and sweating buckets. His car was parked outside a supermarket. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” He demanded. 

The Bentley said nothing. 

Crowley grabbed the door handle, to find it locked firmly against him. 

“Oh come ON, not this again, what’s the problem now? Let me in!”

“Well she’s hardly going to let you drive her off when she’s waiting politely to bring me home again, is she?” Came Muriel’s voice from behind him. 

Crowley turned around to find Muriel with a trolley full of groceries. They went to the boot and opened it, then began loading it up with bags. 

“What d’you think you’re doing?” Crowley demanded. 

“Shopping.” Muriel replied, still unloading the trolley. 

“Who said you could take my CAR?” 

“Bentley did. She offered. Here, you can take the trolley back if you like.” Muriel pushed it towards him. Crowley caught it, and shoved it aside with a growl. Muriel sighed, closed the boot, and took the trolley a few feet further away to stash it with the others and get their pound coin back again. 

“You’re still in your pyjamas,” Muriel observed, opening the passenger door for Crowley. 

“It’s called fashion, sweetie: look it up.” Crowley glowered, and went around to the driver’s door instead. Fortunately, the Bentley was smart enough not to push her luck, and allowed him to open it this time. Muriel got in the passenger seat without complaint. 

“How did you even know how to drive, anyway?” Crowley groused. 

“I don’t.”

He stared at her, wide eyed. 

“Bentley does,” Muriel explained. “I told her I wanted to go to the shop, then she brought me here.”

While Crowley was well aware that his car could drive herself, he somehow hadn’t considered the possibility of her doing so for anyone other than him. He started the engine, and pulled off with a screech of tyres.  They drove home in silence. 

Once home, Crowley left Muriel to put the shopping away, and stomped upstairs to run himself the hottest bath possible, where he proceeded to soak and sulk simultaneously. 

When he came downstairs again afterwards, finally dressed, he found fresh coffee in the ‘NOT TODAY, SATAN’ mug, and knocked it back in one go. Then he heard voices coming from the big kitchen downstairs in the cellar, and headed down to investigate. 

There he found Justine messing around with ingredients, apparently showing Muriel how to bake a cake. 

“Oh good, you’re here,” Justine declared, handing him a bagful of carrots. “Peel these.”

Crowley accepted the bag, brow furrowed in confusion. 

“... Why?”

“Because it’s a carrot cake, now get peeling,” Justine told him. 

Crowley grabbed a peeler and sat down to do as he was told, still not looking any happier about it. 

“But why a cake?”

“Because it’s Mrs. Cheng’s birthday tomorrow, so we’re taking her a cake and a little gift from all of us. Nina and Maggie are doing the gift, so we only need to worry about the cake.  Muriel told me they wanted to learn how to bake, and this was as good an opportunity as any.”

“Whose bright idea was it to put carrots in a cake? What’s next? Turnips? Cabbage? Celery?”

“It works, just trust the process,” Justine tutted. “You don’t have to have carrot cake for your birthday if you try it and decide you don’t like it. I’ll show Muriel how to bake a chocolate cake or something instead.”

“I don’t have a birthday,” Crowley protested. 

“Nonsense. Everybody has a birthday.”

“No, he’s right,” Muriel interjected. “I don’t have one either.”

“So when do you celebrate it?”

“We don’t.”

“Well, that’s just silly. You can choose your own day then,” Justine said firmly. 

“In that case mine is the 31st of February,” Crowley stated, flatly. 

Muriel looked confused for a moment, then went to consult the calendar hanging on the wall.

“But…” they began to protest. 

“Don’t you want an excuse to be spoiled rotten, to get gifts, go out, have fun, and get drunk?” Justine asked him. 

“Never needed an excuse before, I do what I want. Besides, who’s going to spoil me or get me a gift? I’m a demon.”

“No one ever did that before? Not even Mr. F…”

Crowley cut her off, glowering. 

“No. and I don’t want to talk about it either.”

“Well in that case, you’re long overdue a birthday,” she replied.  “Maybe you can be like a racehorse, and have it on the first of January.”

“What, when everybody is partied out and hung over from New Year? No thanks.”

“Well, choose.”

“Sixth of June then. 1966.”

“You don’t look old enough for 1966, no one will believe that, but we can go with the 6th of June,” Justine agreed. “Muriel, put it on the calendar. When do you want yours to be?”

“I don’t know, which one’s best?”

“There’s no ‘best’, but in France we have saints' days for every birthday, Saint Laurence’s day is the 8th of October, and the name Muriel is associated with that day as well - you could choose Muriel day as yours?”

“Oh I like that idea!” They declared, flipping the calendar to October and proudly writing their new birthday down in small, neat lettering, followed by a small drawing of a birthday cake with a smiley face on it.  As an afterthought, they flipped back to June, and added a cake with a grumpy face on it to Crowley’s. 

Once he’d finished peeling and grating the carrots, Justine had whisked the bowl away, then set out an open cake decorating book in front of him on the kitchen table.  She left him blinking at the instructions on the page for a moment before returning with some marzipan, food colouring, and various clay sculpting tools, and told him to start making small marzipan carrots to decorate the top of the cake later. 

Seeing that he had been well and truly roped in by this point, Crowley sighed and got to work. If one or two of the multitude of tiny marzipan carrots ended up looking suspiciously… phallic… by the time he’d finished, that was just his passive-aggressive way of pushing back against being helpful by being childish about it. Justine noticed, of course, and simply rolled her eyes. She picked one up and bit it in half while scowling at him, then began to arrange the rest on the top of the finished cake. 

Still, when Justine went to leave, she insisted on hugging Crowley and air-kissing each cheek. He stood ramrod-straight and unmoving as she did so, a grimace firmly plastered on his face. 

“Did Muriel put you up to this?”

“No, I’m French, we do this to everyone, it’s rude not to reciprocate, where are your manners?”

“I’m a demon, we don’t have any.”

“Well you should learn some.”

“I feel like I just got adopted by a bunch of mothers at once,” Crowley grumbled sullenly.

“Good.” Justine declared, and whisked the cake away upstairs, leaving Crowley tidying up the kitchen with Muriel. As Muriel washed up, and Crowley dried, amping up his demonic body heat to speed the drying process of every plate Muriel passed into his hands, he noticed that the angel kept giving him sneaky, slightly smug, smiles. 

“What’s got you so bloody cheerful?”

“You’re making friends.” Muriel beamed. 

“I don’t need new friends. I have friends already.”

They looked skeptical.

“Name one.”

Crowley was silent. Aziraphale’s name bounced around inside his skull, but absolutely nothing else came to mind. He had acquaintances, although he’d be hard pressed to remember more than a forename or a surname of half of them. The rest he tended to think of in terms of descriptives - Mobster guy, that weird car geek who got excited and photographed the Bentley whenever he saw them drive past, off-license woman, downstairs neighbour with the loud baby from his old flat, book girl. He was still trying to remember not to think of Muriel as ‘Inspector Constable.’

Muriel spent almost a minute of watching Crowley’s befuddled expression, as he’d tried desperately to work out if any human currently alive could reasonably have been described as a ‘friend’. The only ones he could think of tended to be long dead, like Leonardo DaVinci. Back in the days before he’d given up bothering to befriend humans. There just didn’t seem to be any point any more, they didn’t last long. One minute you’re discussing solar orbits with one, then you pop off for five minutes, or maybe it was five years? Then come back and bam: they’re six feet under. Blink and you’d missed them. It was so hard to keep track, so he’d stopped bothering. Aziraphale had always been more interesting, and could keep a conversation going for decades without drifting off topic. 

“See?” Muriel said. “You didn’t even think to say my name, let alone a human’s.” 

“You still want to be my friend?” Crowley blinked at them.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do over the past couple of days, yes.”

“Why?”

Muriel rolled their eyes. “Because everybody needs a friend - especially you, especially now. Anyway, you do have friends, whether you like it or not. There’s me, Justine, Nina, Maggie, Rosie, and Andrea at least, and probably Mrs. Cheng after we’ve dragged you along to her birthday brunch. Then there’s the other people around here who I’m sure would be happy to become your friend too: Mutt, Mr. Arnold from the music shop, Mr. Brown…”

“Mr Brown is NOT, and never will be, my friend.” Crowley growled. “Cross that odious creep off the list immediately.”

“But you brought him back from the dead the morning after the ball.”

“That doesn’t mean I like him. Just means Aziraphale would probably have been all sad if I hadn’t.”

“You only really do things to make other people happy, like Aziraphale, how about doing things to make yourself happy as well?”

Crowley shrugged. 

“You need to learn to live for yourself.” Muriel said softly. 

Later, Crowley found Muriel hanging something on the wall next to the calendar. They were sticking things to it. 

“What the fuck is that?” 

“It’s your rewards chart, look: you get stickers for every progress you make, then at the end of the week you’ll get a treat, like a glass of wine.”

Crowley peered at the chart. It had some gold stars stuck on it already: ACTUALLY GOT OUT OF BED’, ‘DIDN’T GET DRUNK TODAY’, ‘ONLY CRIED ONCE TODAY’, ‘WAS NICE TO HUMANS’, ‘SWORE LESS THAN 5 TIMES TODAY’, ‘DIDN’T BITE ANYONE TODAY’, ‘GOOD NOODLE’. 

(Stickers from a popular handmade selling site, but unfortunately ToS forbids me linking it, you can, however search “did not commit arson, didn’t bite anyone today” and you should locate the relevant item. Can’t see the image? Click here.) 

“Where did you even GET these?”

“Nina found them online and gave them to me, it was her idea.”

He sighed, glared at Muriel, and walked out again. There was a pause, then he poked his head around the door frame. 

“... How many stars do I need for the glass of wine?”

“Ten.”

He glanced at the chart again, shrugged, then said “Thanks.” He looked at them expectantly. 

Muriel looked blank. 

“What? One of those stickers reads ‘SAID THANK YOU TODAY’. Go on: stick another one on the thingy.”

“You said ‘thanks’, not ‘thank you’, besides, it doesn’t count when you’re obviously just doing it to try to cheat the system. I might even take a sticker off for that.”

He growled in exasperation, and disappeared again. 

The next morning, Crowley came downstairs to find his ‘NOT TODAY, SATAN’ mug again full with fresh coffee. It seemed that Muriel was taking it across to Nina every morning to be filled directly with his preferred brew. This morning’s pastry was a chocolate chip brioche. 

(Illustration: GayDemonicDisaster. Can’t see the image? Click here.)

No sooner had he finished his compulsory breakfast, which he had to admit was very tasty, than the bell above the bookshop door jangled and Maggie swept in. 

“Morning Crowley, how are you doing today?”

“Best I can say is I’m caffeinated, so you’re relatively safe.”

She giggled, then sat herself down next to him on the sofa. Crowley squished up against the armrest uneasily, leaning away from her. Maggie held out a box. Crowley looked at it. 

“Go on, take it, it’s for you.”

“Why?”

“Just open it, silly.”

Crowley opened the top cautiously. Inside was a small stack of records - a mix of LPs and singles. He lifted them out and began leafing through them. 

“I got in a batch of house clearance records last week and have been going through them - there were a few Queen ones, including those singles, one of them is even signed by Brian May, although I haven’t got it authenticated. But I also put some other 70s and 80s albums and singles in there by other similar artists of the era who I thought you might like.”

“Uh… thank you?” Crowley tried, unused to being the person receiving gifts. He had always been the one finding things for Aziraphale. He picked out a Status Quo album and pulled it out of the sleeve, then got up to go and try it on the gramophone. It was only then that he realised there was no speed selector on the antiquated device: it could only play old 78 speed records, not the more modern 45s. Maggie spotted his hesitation and saw the reason. 

“Oh, of course, Mr. Fell only ever bought the very old records from me, doesn’t he have a more modern record player as well?”

“Not that I’ve found. I used to have a nice Bang & Olufsen one at my flat, but Shax kept all my stuff.”

“Well I’ve got a few in the back of the shop, nothing too fancy, but you can borrow one if you like, until you get your stuff back, or get a nice new one.”

“But why are you giving me these?”

“They’re a gift. I’ve got more copies of all of those in the shop anyway, and I remembered that you always play Queen in that car of yours - it’s all we hear whenever you pull up, so I thought you might like these and some other artists in a similar vein.”

“She doesn’t just play Queen,” Crowley protested. “They start out as other music, she just kind of… changes them into Queen after about a fortnight. There’s Mozart in there too, Tchaikovsky, William Byrd, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams…”

“Oh so you like classical too?”

“I like everything, really,” he shrugged. 

“Well, I’ll bring you some of those too if you like!”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Maggie told him firmly. “I’ll pop round later and bring a more modern record player around with me while I’m at it. See you later!”

Crowley stood there, baffled, then began leafing through Aziraphale’s old record collection which were compatible with the gramophone, until he found something he liked, and put it on. 

Muriel came back from wherever they’d been, and smiled to see that Crowley was listening to music. 

“Are you enjoying yourself then?”

“‘Enjoying’ is a bit of a strong word for it,” he replied, stretched out on the sofa and scrolling on his phone. “‘Existing’ might be more accurate.”

“Well what do you enjoy doing then?”

Crowley regarded the ceiling for a moment, thinking. 

“People watching,” he said at last. “Particularly watching people be idiots. Pushing a door marked ‘pull’, or trying to pick up a pound coin off the pavement that someone super-glued down. Always good for a laugh.”

“Anything else?”

“I like seeing what they create. Dashed clever when it comes to inventing, and art.” Crowley was still gazing at the ceiling, lost in thought. “Well, the arts, really: art, music, theatre, cinema…”

“Literature?”

“I’ll leave that one to…” Crowley paused, then finished with a sigh “...you, I suppose.” 

Muriel was scribbling notes in their little notepad again, then tapped the pen against their teeth, thinking. 

“Ok,” they said finally, then folded their notepad again, and disappeared upstairs. Crowley watched the stairs for a minute or so until it became clear that Muriel wasn’t coming down again yet, then sighed and carried on scrolling on his phone. 

Finally, Muriel came downstairs, flipping through the pages of their little notepad and smiling. 

“What did you find up there?” Crowley asked, intrigued. 

“Aziraphale had the travel, tourism, and local history books in the back bedroom,” Muriel explained. “I was looking into things to do in London that might align with your interests. It turns out there’s a lot.”

“And a lot of it probably a century out of date, knowing his collection. Show me that list.”

Muriel held the pad of paper to their chest protectively, and Crowley could read their thought process as clear as day - the angel was afraid that he’d either steal the notebook, rip it up, or read secret things in it and get angry. He sighed. 

“It’s fine, just hold it up so I can read the pages with what you’ve just written on them - you don’t have to show me the whole thing.”

Muriel hesitated, then turned it to face him, allowing him to scan down the list. 

“Yeah, some of these places no longer exist, most of those are tourist attractions from a hundred years ago. Look, I may come to regret this, but if you want to research more modern, relevant stuff, you need the internet, and Aziraphale’s old Amstrad computer can’t do that.”

He regarded his own phone for a minute, then got up and walked to the door, flicking his head to indicate that Muriel should follow. 

“Come on, little mouse, time to get you a mobile.”

Crowley spent the rest of the day teaching Muriel how to use their new smartphone, and the basics of the internet. They were an amazingly fast learner, and soon enough he was able to leave them researching the things they’d been looking for earlier with updated answers, and updating their notebook accordingly. 

“What’s all this in aid of anyway, some kind of tour guide thing?” Crowley asked after a while. 

“They’re places associated with the arts, where it’s also good to people-watch. I think we should do the British Museum first, it’s one of the closest, largest, and there’s art from all around the world and throughout history, plus a load of people from all over the world visiting to look at it all.”

“Yeah, and probably wondering how to go about getting half the stuff back to its rightful place in museums in their own countries while they’re there,” Crowley pointed out. 

“Well you can tell me all about it when we’re there, then.” Muriel told him with a bright smile. 

“Why?”

“Because I like watching people too, and so I can learn from you how to do it right.”

“There’s no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to do people-watching, it’s just…” he waved a hand vaguely. “... A thing. You just do it.”

“Well, I want to learn how you do it. There’s bound to be all sorts of things you notice about humans that I won’t even know to look for. Besides, friends should enjoy hobbies together.” Muriel grabbed Crowley’s hand and dragged him towards the door. “Hurry up, we’ll walk, it’s not far, and it’s a nice day, plus we can watch people on the way, to get warmed up!”

Crowley stared at their hand in his, still not used to such spontaneous bodily contact from anyone except for Aziraphale. Muriel didn’t seem to have grabbed him with any indication of anything more than sheer enthusiasm to get him moving, but it still felt weird. People did not hug demons. People did not grab demons by the hand unless shaking on a deal which would undoubtedly result in their downfall. Even angels up in heaven didn’t go around hugging each other or holding hands. It was a human thing. But Muriel was Muriel, so Crowley knew he had little choice but to follow along. At least once they were satisfied he was coming with them, he was able to tactfully extract his hand from theirs, and slouched alongside, quietly exasperated. 

Chapter Text

Crowley had to admit, that after they’d battled their way past hordes of tourists, people-watching in the lobby of the British museum was fun. He’d had millennia of experience to learn how to cold-read people, and to intuit their backgrounds and preferences from a brief overview, in a way which would put Sherlock Holmes to shame. It wasn’t just for fun - it came in useful for his demonic job as well - he had to be able to work out quickly how best to tempt someone after just a glance. 

So they sat at a table in the café and sipped overpriced coffee while he imparted a lifetime’s worth of knowledge to Muriel, who, as always, took reams of notes and soaked up the information like an enthusiastic sponge. 

Later, they sauntered vaguely around the halls and exhibits, while Crowley described the real history around some of the artefacts, where the archaeologist’s and historian’s educated guesses had missed the mark. 

“Why don’t you tell the curators, so they can fix the descriptions?” Muriel asked, puzzled. 

“Because, ‘sources = me’.” He replied shortly. “You can’t just go around saying ‘actually, it wasn’t really like that, trust me, I was there.’ You’d sound like a lunatic. I can’t just go around fabricating evidence either - just let the humans believe what they want to believe so long as it’s not doing them any harm.”

(Illustration: GayDemonicDisaster. Can't see the image? Click here.)

“You really do have a soft spot for them, don’t you?” Muriel smiled up at him. 

(Illustration: GayDemonicDisaster. Can't see the image? Click here.)

“What?”

“Humans.”

“Don’t be ridiculous”, Crowley scoffed, with an offended expression. 

“You said ‘so long as it’s not doing them any harm.’ That seems to be a defining factor in most of your interactions with them.”

Crowley grumbled a series of unintelligible consonants in response. Muriel nudged him with a grin. 

“Stoppit,” he groused. 

“Oh look, that angel painting looks just like you!”

“Eurgh, shut uuuup. He couldn’t even get my nose right, probably because he was always drunk.”

“Wait, it is you?”

“He paid me to sit for him, and I was bored.”

“Wow.”

“Artists are interesting people to hang around with, especially when you get them drunk - same with philosophers, and scientists. Hell: humans in general, to be honest.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Hanging around with them, getting to know them?”

“Wellll…” Crowley shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged as they walked. “...It got kind of depressing after a while - you’re just getting to know them, then next thing you know, poof: gone.”

“Gone?”

“They die, Muriel,” he said gently. “Humans die. They don’t live as long as we do. You get to know them, you get attached, and then they’re gone.” A tinge of sadness wove through his words. 

“Oh.” Muriel’s brow furrowed. “How long do they live?”

“Depends how stupid they are, or more honestly - where they live, what situation they grew up in, what chances they had in life, what the standard of living, healthcare, and education is in the country where they live, social class and so on. Poor people, minorities and marginalised groups, especially in countries which don’t have good infrastructure - they live the shortest. Richer countries - mostly old colonial ones who made their billions by siphoning resources off their colonies - they tend to have longer lifespans, although get to a certain point and they make such poor decisions over living and health that it drops down again sometimes.”

“So how long do they live?”

“I suppose 80 or so is a good age,” he shrugged. “Many live longer, but not enough to skew the average higher globally. This is a guess, mind you - not real-world statistics. Many never even get close to 80 though. They die young, often from entirely preventable causes, but because of where they live, or who they are, they can’t access resources to prevent it.”

“You really do love them,” Muriel told him quietly. “You care so much, you pretend you don’t, but you really do.”

Crowley sighed. 

“Please stop saying that.”

“But it’s true.”

“But now you see why I stopped bothering befriending them, it all just seems… pointless.”

“But it’s not!” Muriel protested hotly. “Think of the memories, even after they’re gone - think of all the things they can teach us! The laughter, the appreciation of the little things in life, they can make us smile, and then we can remember that smile long after they’ve gone. Like humans with their pets. Mrs. Cheng was telling me about her pet cat a while ago. She had it when she was a little girl, and even though the cat died years ago, she still keeps photos of it, she still remembers all the silly things it did that made her laugh, its existence still makes her smile to this day, even when it’s long gone.”

“So?”

“So don’t be afraid to have human friends, even if they’re like pets, they can still make you smile, and the smiles can remain after the human has gone.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he agreed, grudgingly. 

“Good. So you can start with the Whickber Street crew. They already love you.”

“Demons aren’t meant to be loved.”

“Is that written down somewhere?  I don’t recall reading it anywhere in the archives: ‘demons aren’t meant to be loved’ - never seen it anywhere at all. So there’s no reason why you can’t be loved. Besides, who are we to tell someone who they should or shouldn’t love - they can find out for themselves, and most of them have already discovered that they do love you. Who are you to tell them they’re wrong?”

Crowley emitted another string of loose consonants in a sort of generalised, non-specific protest, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Later, he let Muriel drag him to Mrs. Cheng’s birthday celebration, where he found himself inadvertently relaxing, and even smiling from time to time. When Justine told her how Crowley had helped decorate the cake, he found himself wrapped up in another hug, and bore it stoically, feeling awkward, but didn’t grumble quite as much as he usually did. He had to admit that the cake did actually taste very good. 

Somehow, during the course of the evening, he also found himself agreeing (or at least, not sufficiently DISagreeing), with coming to a pizza and movie night at Mr. Arnold’s, above the music shop. 

The flat was decorated with a mixture of Doctor Who posters, figurines, and memorabilia. There was also a lot of music paraphernalia, and a Hammond organ sat in the lounge near the TV, the purpose for which soon became apparent. 

It seemed that movie night consisted of a routine, and part of that routine was selecting a random old silent movie as a starter before the main feature film. Mr. Arnold, whose first name was apparently Dave, would play the organ with sufficiently ridiculous music accompaniment to the action on the screen, and handed out other instruments to the guests, like a comedic slide whistle, or a kazoo, and encouraged the audience of friends to add sound effects whenever they thought it’d be funniest, and to make up their own dialogue for the movie reel. 

Once the laughter had died down, out came the wine and popcorn for the main movie, which was something from Hollywood with car chases and lots of explosions - which fortunately was exactly up Crowley’s alley. Although he did grab hold of the slide whistle to add a suitably comedic note to a bit when he thought it was getting too serious, and they had to pause the film while everyone settled down from laughing too much. 

And only then did Crowley realise he’d been laughing along with them, and his face was aching from smiling so much. He felt lightheaded, and… happy. 

… He felt honestly happy. 

It was the start of something good. He didn’t just grudgingly go along with all the invitations for activities, socialising, and fun that Muriel suggested - he actually came to look forward to them. He did, of course, keep up his façade of being grumpy about it, but Muriel could increasingly see that he didn’t mean it, and their unrelenting enthusiasm was hard to ignore.

Plus, he had come to discover that teaching Muriel more about human stuff was also fun. He’d never had someone so eager to learn from his thousands of years of experience before. And yet somehow, almost everything he taught them, they managed to sneakily work in some example of how he could use things like that in his own life. 

He’d be even more annoyed if Muriel wasn’t so consistently right about it, too. Which was annoying in itself. 

Muriel seemed to be gently training him to enjoy life more as himself, not as one half of ‘Aziraphale and Crowley’, but also not as Crowley alone - as Crowley with other friends, not isolated. 

They’d had an idea for Crowley’s turn to host a fun evening at the bookshop one month. The theme he hadn’t put up as much resistance to as all the other suggestions was a murder mystery evening, and had even ended up getting into character to run the whole event. 

After that, Muriel had decided to use the bookshop as a regular monthly meeting point for a Whickber Street book club. Crowley had helped them to get a load of beanbags and throw cushions to scatter around under the cupola for people to relax on, and people could browse the shelves for inspiration, or bring something in of their own to suggest to the group. 

Crowley generally sat out the actual literary part of things, but still lurked, ostensibly to make sure no-one messed with the merchandise, but mainly because he enjoyed listening in, and people-watching. Plus, the bean bags were the most comfortable bit of furniture in the entire place. He ended up taking one of the giant bean bags upstairs as he found it even more comfortable than the ancient bed with a sagging mattress which was in his room. 

Besides, any complaints he may have had about the book club, or any of the other shenanigans that Muriel roped him into, he couldn’t push back against too much, just for the fact that they made Muriel so very happy. And if there was one thing he couldn’t bear to do, was to make them sad. It was like looking at a sad puppy. They could do the big, doe-eyed thing just as well as Aziraphale, and he’d always been quick to relent to tactics like that. 

Crowley had driven them out to a trading estate for Muriel to pick up some items from one of the big DIY stores there, one big warehouse-sized superstore in a line of several similar big-brand ones. And of course Muriel, intrigued, wanted to browse the others as well, ‘for inspiration’. And so with a resigned sigh, Crowley trailed along behind them as they explored the enormous hobby and crafting shop (leaving with bag loads of art supplies and crafting projects, which he had to miracle the boot of the Bentley to be bigger on the inside to accommodate.)

Then Muriel worked their way along the row of shops. He managed to dissuade them from buying him fluffy dice or a stinking novelty magic tree air freshener as a gift for the Bentley from Halfords, put them off buying loads of unnecessary and frankly boring ‘interior decor’ items from another shop, and pointless cookery and homeware knick-knacks from the next. He even resorted to threatening to set fire to a hideous ‘live, laugh, love’ sculpture that Muriel took a shine to. 

Then came an annoying half hour in Boots as Muriel asked him about the medicines on display for humans, then asked about all the cosmetics, coming out with a load of nail polishes and make-up starter kits the salespeople had persuaded them were ‘simply essential’. He had, however, agreed to paint Muriel’s nails for them later, and try some of the nail art tools they’d bought. He was secretly intrigued to try painting little stars and galaxies on their nails like in a photo the sales assistant had showed them for inspiration.

Next stop was pets at home, where Muriel immediately went into meltdown about the cuteness overload of so many tiny adorable creatures, many of which they’d never seen before. It was bad enough when they squee’d over the bunnies, but then Muriel found the tank full of little fluffy mice. 

“Oh, they’re so cute!” They exclaimed. “They look just like me when I change shape!”

“They look like snacks,” Crowley countered.

“Don’t be horrible, they’re not snacks!” Muriel scowled, placing themself between Crowley and the tank of fancy mice. “You can’t eat them. I’ll smite you.”

“Fine, I won’t eat them. But you can’t bring them home with you either.”

“Why not? I’m in charge of the bookshop, not you.”

“Are you pulling rank on me?”

“Apparently, yes.” Muriel declared firmly. “And I’d like another non-human friend.”

“You want to buy a mouse.” Crowley said flatly. 

“Two. So they have a friend.”

“You want to bring mice, into the bookshop.”

“What’s the problem with that?”

“They chew on stuff.”

“They’ll be in a cage, or a tank, or some kind of enclosure, not running around the books.”

“And you still expect me not to snack on them.”

“YES.”

“Suit yourself.”

Crowley watched as Muriel began to assemble everything they’d need in a large trolley, finding the largest enclosure, substrate, nesting material, hides, chew toys, wheel, food, treats, and generally getting carried away. 

“You do realise that they don’t live long, right? Like only a year or two.”

“They don’t know that.” Muriel declared, as they headed out to the car. They held the precious travel box with two little black and white pied mice carefully in their hands while Crowley pushed the trolley. 

“What d’you mean?”

“Well to them, two years IS a lifetime, like 80 something is to a human - it’s short to us, but it isn’t short to them. They have no idea, so it isn’t important how much time you have to spend with them, so long as whatever time you do get to spend with them, is good time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Even if it’s short, make it the time of their lives. Make sure they want for nothing, give them love, make them happy for however long they have on earth, then it doesn’t matter how long or short it is, so long as it’s a life well-lived.”

“You really do read too much,” Crowley sighed, miracling even more space into the Bentley to accommodate all the supplies. 

Crowley helped lug all of the day’s purchases into the bookshop, and then helped Muriel set up the mouse habitat in a quiet corner of the bookshop near the office area, sneezing as Muriel filled it with substrate and then began to arrange the toys, hides, water bottles, and food bowls around it. 

“Why two water bottles?”

“In case one gets blocked or leaks. It’s always wise to have a back-up, so they don’t get dehydrated if you don’t notice one isn’t working.”

“Huh.” Crowley regarded the two quivering little fluff-beasts in the travel box. “You two are going to be the most spoiled rodents this side of London,” he told them. “But don’t go thinking I’m going to be giving you any special treatment just because you’re Muriel’s. If you escape and nibble on the books, you’re in big trouble.”

The mice peered back at him, whiskers trembling inquisitively. 

“Don’t be mean to my new friends,” Muriel scolded, gently scooping one out of the box and placing her into the new enclosure, and then scooping up her companion and putting her in too, securing the lid carefully. 

“There you go. You should be happy in there. I might come in and join you on the wheel when it’s not busy in here. It looks very fun.”

Muriel sat and watched as the two little mice set about exploring their spacious new habitat, sniffing and investigating, running on the wheel and generally having a lot more fun than they’d ever had in the small, plain, petshop tank. Muriel was so absorbed in watching them that they didn’t notice the time until Crowley nudged them and offered them a cup of tea. 

“You’ve been staring at them for an hour,” he told them. 

“They’re so cute.”

“Well that’s what you look like when you’re in your mouse shape,” he reminded Muriel. 

“Does that mean I’m cute too?” Muriel’s eyes were wide. Crowley shrugged. 

“I mean, objectively…? Probably? I dunno, I’m not an expert on these things. Best ask the humans, they’re good at that sort of thing.”

Later, Crowley found Muriel sitting frowning, the packet of mouse food in one hand, and their new mobile phone in the other, scrolling. 

“‘Sup?” He asked, flinging himself across the sofa. 

“I tried some of the mouse food. It tastes like junk.”

“Give it here.”  Crowley caught the tossed bag of food, and scanned the ingredients. “Yup, seems about right.”

“That’s what I thought, anyway I’ve found some sites with better diet plans so I need to order different mouse food. Can I borrow your card again so I can order it online?” 

“You need to get your own card at this rate,” Crowley sighed, but handed it over anyway. “You can’t just use cash from the till for everything, we need to get you set up with a proper bank account and stuff, we can do that tomorrow if you like.”

Muriel spent some time ordering various organic seed and grain mixes from a specialist rodent feed suppliers online, before wandering off into the pages where there were even more pet toys, hammocks, hides, chews and other things. 

After that, Muriel took their mouse form then joined their new pets in the tank to get to know them, and before long, all three were grooming each other, then fell asleep in a little cuddle puddle together. Crowley watched, then let out a long sigh, then grabbed a few of the beanbags littering the area for book club, pushed them together, and sprawled across them for a nap himself. 

Chapter Text

Crowley woke up some time later, and blinked. 

A tiny white mouse was curled up on his chest, asleep. 

At some point, Muriel had left their real mouse friends to come and nap on Crowley instead. Their long pink tail was curled up and cuddled between their front paws. He regarded them for a while, sleeping so peacefully - tiny chest rising and falling, whiskers twitching, and he smiled, and resisted the urge to reach out and stroke their fur with a fingertip. It was still Muriel, not a pet mouse, no matter how soft and fluffy they looked. 

After a while, Muriel woke up and stretched out their tiny paws, letting out a big yawn, then set about washing their face fastidiously. 

“Nice nap?” Crowley asked. 

“Yes thank you.”

“Why did you choose that spot?”

“You looked comfortable.”

“And was I?”

“Yes. You’re nice and warm.”

“Must be my demonic glow,” he replied sardonically, and placed his hand flat in front of Muriel. They accepted the invitation and stepped onto it, so Crowley got up, then deposited Muriel on the desk. They hopped down onto the chair, then screwed their little eyes up, concentrated, and sneezed, all four paws lifting into the air, then changed back into a human shape once more. 

(Illustration: IneffableChocolateCheeseCake. Can’t see the image? Click here.)

Crowley looked in at the new acquisitions, one of whom was running on the wheel, while the other peered back at him from a toilet roll tube. 

“So what are you calling these girls?” He asked. 

“I wasn’t sure. I was kind of thinking… Squeakiel and Scratchiel?” Muriel said, hesitantly. Crowley tried not to laugh, but nodded. 

“‘S good names. Yup. Very… mousey.” He watched them a bit more, fascinated. “Do they talk to you?”

“Do snakes talk to you?”

“No.”

“There you go then.”

Muriel opened the lid and put their hand in the tank. “Be not afraid,” they said, and scooped up Squeakiel gently, cradling her in their hand. “Do you want to stroke her?” They asked, holding their hands up to Crowley. 

“Um…”

“She doesn’t bite.”

Crowley reached out and stroked the tiny creature with a fingertip, tickling behind her ear. Squeakiel put her head on one side and closed her eyes in contentment. 

“Huh, she likes it.”

“She does!” Muriel said encouragingly. “Here, you hold her while I get Scratchiel out.” She deposited the little black and white mouse into Crowley’s unresisting hands, then went to extract the other. Crowley stared, wide-eyed, at the fragile tiny creature now sitting in the palm of his hand. 

(Illustraiton by GayDemonicDisaster. Can’t see the image? Click here) 

“Um, hi?” He said. 

She sniffed at his fingers, then began licking him. 

“Oh.” Crowley exclaimed softly. “I…, er…, um, thanks?”

He found himself sitting on the sofa while two little mice explored all over him, scuttling up his arms, poking noses down his shirt, crawling up his sleeves, then sitting on his shoulder to groom and whiffle in his ear with tickly whiskers. Eventually, Scratchiel snuggled under his shirt and fell asleep, while Squeakiel was somewhere up his left sleeve. Muriel giggled. 

“They really like you.”

“I seem to have turned into a mouse playground.”

“I’ll get her out for you,” Muriel said, taking their mouse form, they scuttled up his sleeve as well, and chivvied Squeakiel out and onto his palm, so they could put her back in the tank again, leaving Crowley to extract Scratchiel himself. 

The next afternoon, Crowley’s phone pinged with a message. He fumbled for it in his pocket, trying not to disturb the mouse sitting in his lap grooming her whiskers, while the other was asleep on his shoulder. 

The text was from Maggie, asking if he was able to come and help her with something. 

Crowley considered his options, then sighed, and gently picked up Squeakiel from his lap in one hand, then Scratchiel from his shoulder in the other.  He stood up, and deposited the pair of them on Muriel’s shoulders instead, where they sat at the desk. Muriel looked up. 

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah, you look after the little chaos potatoes for a while; Maggie needs a hand, so I’m popping next door.”

He stepped into the record shop, to find no one manning the till, but there were swear words from the open door to the back room and stairs that led up to the flat above. He headed through there to find Maggie struggling at the back door with a large sofa. 

“You summoned a demon?” He prompted. 

“Oh!” She giggled at that. “Yes, I suppose I did. Should I have drawn a circle or sacrificed something?” She asked. 

“Yeah, prepare a very small circle of salt, rub half a lemon around the rim of a glass, dip it in the salt, fill with a sacrifice of tequila - that’ll do,” Crowley replied. “What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you could help me get this sofa upstairs?” Maggie asked. “Nina was going to help but she’s sprained her wrist.”

“Sure,” He said. “Show me where it’s going.”

Maggie showed him upstairs to the lounge of the flat above the shop. He considered the space for a moment, pursing his lips, and then snapped his fingers. 

The sofa appeared in the prepared space. Maggie’s jaw dropped. 

“How did you do that?” She asked, stunned. 

“Little demonic miracle, it’s no big deal, and a damn sight easier than struggling up the stairs with the bloody thing. Anything else?”

“I… well, I hadn’t planned for it to be that easy. I’d bought pizza to share to say thank you, if you like?”

“Provided it doesn’t have pineapple on it, you’re on.” Crowley flung himself onto the new sofa with a satisfied sigh. Maggie fetched two large pizza boxes from the kitchen. 

“There’s rather a lot, do you suppose Muriel might like some, too?”

“Probably, I’ll text them.”

Muriel arrived a few minutes later, joined Crowley on the new sofa, and the three of them shared pizza together. Crowley and Maggie chatted about old music, occasionally getting excited enough that Maggie would rush downstairs to grab a record to play for Muriel, as they educated them on human music through the ages. 

 Afterwards, Muriel took some of the edges of the crust home for the mice to enjoy as a treat. Unnoticed by Muriel, Crowley also took some crusts, and slunk off down to the cellar with them, before sauntering back up again a few minutes later, empty handed. 

Next morning, Muriel got up and dressed, then headed to the stairs to head down to the ground floor, but paused with a foot on the top step, hearing Crowley talking to someone in a strange voice. 

Muriel crept down a step or two, craning to hear better, as the words became decipherable. 

Crowley was baby-talking to the mice, and giving them small pieces of breakfast cereal, then chuckling at them shoving at each other to grab the pieces, then bouncing away to eat them. 

Stifling a giggle, Muriel coughed loudly, then stomped extra hard on the steps as they descended. Crowley coughed as well and quickly straightened up, turning away from the mouse tank, pretending he hadn’t been doing anything. 

“Morning.” He said, looking flustered. 

“Morning!” Muriel replied. 

“I just boiled the kettle, if you’d like some tea,” Crowley hastened to make them a cup, while Muriel went to say good morning to the mice, seeing each of them happily munching on their pieces of cereal. 

They sat at the desk, then accepted the cup of tea from Crowley and sipped at it. “Up to anything interesting today?” They asked as Crowley sat down on the sofa. 

“Going round to Dave’s this afternoon, going to watch some James Bond films, then he wants to show me his Doctor Who memorabilia.”

“Who?”

“Exactly.”

Crowley was enjoying snacking on popcorn, hanging out with Dave while watching one of his favourite films. He’d never really had anyone to geek out with over cinema before. Aziraphale wasn’t into the same action movies as Crowley, preferring more cerebral cinema, so to have a friend who loved bouncing around the same ideas as he had was a revelation for Crowley, and he was thriving. 

He’d never smiled so much or so often as he had in the past few months. Every now and again he realised it. Muriel had continued to give him regular talking therapy sessions, and so assessing his own feelings was becoming a habit. It was strange to consider that he’d somehow broken free enough of his heavenly and hellish conditioning to be able to indulge in joy more than the stolen, brief moments of joy he’d managed before. 

Always being under control of heaven or hell, life had always been a battle. He’d never been his own person before, just a tool for use by one side or the other to achieve their own ends - never expected to have an independent existence. Once free from them, he hadn’t quite known what to do with that freedom, and now he was learning. He could simply be him. He was allowed to relax, allowed to smile, allowed to be happy, without repercussions. It was still novel to him, always living in fear that something would come along and tear away his quiet, peaceful existence. But he resolved to make the most of it as best he could. 

Crowley had friends, he had hobbies, he had become part of the social ebb and flow of the human world around him, and he was enjoying being part of it. 

He’d sometimes hang out in Nina’s café, chatting and drinking coffee when Muriel was busy in the shop. Justine had told him how well he’d done helping decorate the cake, and so he’d occasionally pop around and help her with other cakes, learning new techniques and trying out his own. 

Soon it became an in-joke amongst their friends in Whickber Street, of ‘summoning a demon’ to help with little everyday things, or just to invite him to come and hang out. 

It was when Andrea’s car developed a fault that Crowley finally hit upon something he wanted to do with his life, job-wise. He’d been floating about at a loose end, not sure what to do, and bouncing vaguely from one thing to another, with no inclination to actually get a job - it had never occurred to him, as a demon. He certainly didn’t want another boss.

But he had to admit he was bored with nothing to do, so when Andrea’s car began acting strangely, and they asked him for help, on the basis that Crowley was a ‘car guy”, he was happy enough to step in and take a look. 

True, the Bentley never went wrong, she was too well behaved and sentient for that, but Crowley had been around for a long time, and you can’t stay on earth and have an interest in things that go fast for that long without picking up a thing or two. He’d always been fascinated by humans’ engineering progress, and took an interest in cars, particularly racing ones. Over time he’d learned a lot from fellow petrolheads. 

So he cleaned out the idle control valve on their Vauxhall Astra with a bit of carb cleaner, fixing the problem of the revs ‘hunting’ at idle. Andrea was thrilled, and their spouse Mutt very grateful, as they’d been struggling financially a little and couldn’t face a huge garage bill. 

Crowley found himself feeling proud of his achievement, and pleased to have made his friends happy with his knowledge. Muriel found him in the backyard of the bookshop the next afternoon, poking around at decades of discarded junk in the outbuilding there. 

“What are you looking for?” They asked him, curious. 

“Nothing really, just need to hire a skip to get rid of all this rubbish - it’s just rotten wood, scrap metal, and trash that nobody wants or needs. I wanted to clean this building out and turn it into a workshop, then I could use it as a garage and work on people’s cars for money.”

“Oh that’s a lovely idea!” Muriel enthused, and began to help him sort through the rubbish. 

Later that evening, Crowley lounged on the sofa, scrolling on his phone for workshop tools and secondhand high-lift ramps on his phone, while Squeakiel and Scratchiel scurried up and down his chest, shoulder, and arm, occasionally pausing to whiffle in his ear or attempt to groom his sideburns, then scurrying away again. He’d sometimes pause to tickle one behind a tiny ear with a gentle fingertip, while Muriel watched and tried to hide a smile behind their book. 

Eventually, he put his phone away with a sigh, scooped up the mice, and returned them to their tank, giving each one a dab of malt paste as a treat. Either he’d forgotten that Muriel was there, or he’d decided he no longer cared if they saw him indulging the little squeakbeasts. 

Muriel took it as a good sign, that he was no longer quite as defensive about being seen to be ‘nice’. He must have learned not to care what others thought of him, or at least, learned that it didn’t matter, because no one around him would judge him for being kind.

They didn’t notice that he slipped the tube of malt paste into his pocket and sauntered off to the cellar afterwards though.

Over the coming weeks, Crowley cleared out the workshop in the backyard of the bookshop, repaired the roof, painted it, fixed up the half-rotten doors, then set about installing the new ramp, and fitting it out with racks of tools. Muriel helped where they could now and then, but didn’t want to interfere too much, as Crowley seemed to find pleasure in doing a lot of the work himself.

Maggie printed off some little adverts for him, and posted them up in the shop windows of their friends and neighbours on Whickber Street and the surrounding areas of Soho. 

Things were slow to start with, so he began with buying cheap cars at auction, doing them up, and selling them again for a profit. People got to see how good he was with them, and with him always seeming to be busy, with a couple of cars queued up in the yard, it soon attracted business from people who wanted minor repairs to their own, and word spread. 

It kept him occupied, and he found satisfaction in his work. He developed a reputation for being able to fettle the most difficult or troublesome of issues when other garages couldn’t get to the bottom of a mysterious fault. Mainly because if it was so obscure and hard to fix that no one else could do it, Crowley wasn’t above just using a miracle to fix it when all other methods had failed. 

Muriel flipped the page on the calendar to add in an upcoming cinema trip with the Whickber friends, then paused, noticing something. They pondered it thoughtfully, then finished writing in the cinema trip and let the page drop back again. 

A few days later, Crowley found himself banned from the kitchen for the afternoon with no explanation, but Muriel was often up to indecipherable schemes, and he’d long since found it best to just let them get on with it - it was usually for the best. 

Then the day after, Muriel began setting up the bookshop as if for the book club meeting, and preparing snacks, simply telling Crowley that they were having a bonus meeting that month. He raised an eyebrow but shrugged and again let them get on with it. He headed out to the garage to carry on working on a car he had in for a service. 

Later, he came indoors, accepted his customary cup of coffee from Muriel, in his “NOT TODAY, SATAN” mug, then headed upstairs for a bath to wash off all the grease and grime. Once he was dry and dressed, he headed downstairs to join in on the book club meeting, but stopped mid-step on the stairs, eyes wide, and took in the scene before him. 

“SURPRISE!” Everyone yelled out. 

There were balloons. 

Crowley hesitated, pondering briefly if he should just turn around and go back upstairs again, then hide under the duvet. But curiosity got the better of him. 

“What the fuck is all this about?”

“Happy birthday!” Muriel told him, grabbing his hand and leading him the rest of the way down. 

“I don’t HAVE a birthday,” he protested, as a present was shoved into his hands. 

“Of course you do,” Justine protested. “You chose it yourself, remember? The 6th of June.”

“I only said that to shut you up,” he grumbled, as Nina pushed another wrapped present into his unprotesting hands on top of the first one. 

“Tough,” Rosie Sandwich declared, passing him another slim package, then making way for Dave, who repeated it, until Crowley had to sit down on the sofa looking bamboozled as the presents piled up around him.

Muriel’s gift was a heated blanket for him to curl up with in the winter months, Nina’s was a packet of “death wish coffee” which purported to have three times as much caffeine  as regular coffee, “So you can get all of your caffeine in half the time, you fiend,” she said. 

Justine gave him a cake decorating starter kit, Dave gave him a James Bond movie poster signed by one of the actors. Rosie’s present was a gift voucher for a local sex toy shop, with instructions to indulge himself in something he’d enjoy, which led to giggles from most people, and bafflement from Muriel. Andrea and Mutt gave him some gift vouchers for snap-on tools for the garage business, and Mrs. Cheng gave him a home-knitted jumper to keep him cosy in the winter. It was mostly black, with a little red serpent motif around the hem. 

Next, Muriel proudly brought out the cake they’d baked - devil’s food cake, Crowley’s favourite, and he sat hiding behind a cushion while everyone sang happy birthday to him. 

“So how old are you?” Maggie asked. 

“Time is a human construct,” Crowley told her, before stuffing his face with cake. “I’m 6,000 years since Eden, but I was around for much longer before that, and we didn’t have words for time back then, so I can’t explain it for humans.”

After a while, he relaxed enough to start enjoying himself, having got the cringiest part of the evening over and done with, and he allowed himself to accept the love of the people around him, hard as it was for him. Muriel had been working with him on that concept for quite some time in their makeshift therapy sessions, and he found himself wanting to show Muriel that he was capable of it, when he wanted to be. He even gave some tiny cake crumbs to Squeakiel and Scratchiel.

He ended the evening not as annoyed as he thought he would be, and even allowed everyone, not just Muriel, to hug him as they left. 

It felt… nice.

Once everyone had left, and Muriel had gone to bed, Crowley took a slice of cake down into the cellar. 

Chapter Text

Time moved on, Muriel continued to enjoy running the bookshop, while Crowley continued to enjoy building up his garage business, starting to specialise in classic cars more than modern ones. Having older cars to work on meant he found more like-minded humans to chat to, and he began to branch out with friendships outside of those that Muriel had pushed him into locally. 

He continued to have semi-regular therapy chats with Muriel, and even relaxed enough to go on a short holiday to Spain with a few of the Whickber “ladies and gender-noncompliant” crew. He’d avoided Spain like the plague since the Spanish Inquisition, and he did grumble somewhat that the influx of drunken British tourists made it almost as much of a hell-hole. But nonetheless he’d eventually settled down and enjoyed lounging in the sun by the pool in a heat that warmed his bones and fulfilled his snakey need to bask, something that was hard to come by in the UK for the most part. 

Holidays and relaxation had never featured largely in Crowley’s existence before, and as such, he had no frame of reference about what one should do on a holiday. The historical locations didn’t impress him much, largely because he’d seen them when new, and partly because many of the historical descriptions were inaccurate enough to annoy him. 

Muriel was still enforcing the ban on drinking as a form of escapism so that was out, so mostly he just enjoyed the sin of sloth and relaxed. Did nothing. Listened to podcasts and basked in the hot sun. It was peaceful. 

They’d come home and got back to the everyday humdrum life of Whickber Street. It felt odd to find pleasure in predictability, but when one’s entire existence has been at the whim of higher powers, without being permitted true free will, then the opportunity to just do as you please, at the pace you please, was refreshing, and still enjoyable to Crowley. 

He was sprawled on his back underneath a classic Lagonda, doing an oil change, when he heard footsteps, and Muriel’s quiet, anxious little cough. 

“What’s up?” He asked, already feeling that somehow they had bad news to impart. “Did you have to smite someone for shoplifting?  Did someone mis-handle a book again?”

“No… nothing like that. Quite the opposite in fact, um…”

“Out with it, Muriel,” Crowley sighed, hauling himself out from underneath on the crawler board and regarding them with a furrowed brow. He hadn’t seen Muriel quite this out of sorts before. His concern grew and he scrambled to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

“Um, there’s someone here to see you,” Muriel said, hesitantly. 

“Unhappy customer? Did I fuck up someone’s car?”

“No, you’d just er, better come inside.”

Crowley followed, and began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach - foreboding almost - and his anxiety grew. He’d finally achieved what he’d wanted all along - a peaceful, uncomplicated existence, ignored by most, and able to get on with whatever he liked. And now the fear was back. He followed Muriel through the back door of the bookshop, wiping his hands off, and stopped in his tracks as the scent hit him - the fresh, sterile smell of heaven, devoid of life or character. Muriel noted his hesitation and paused as well, reaching out to take his hand in their own. 

“It’s ok,” they said. “I’m here.” 

Muriel led him on, and they rounded a bookshelf to see who was waiting in the office area, curiously watching the mice playing in their tank. 

“Aziraphale!?”  

“Ah, um… Crowley…” Aziraphale stammered, turning away from the mice, and looking awkward. “Er… hello.”

It was strange, for so long he couldn’t even remember, Aziraphale had carried with him familiar scents - his favourite foods of that century, warm tea, cocoa, the vanillin of old books, scrolls, or papyri, dust, leather, wood, sweet treats, expensive aftershave, a slowly-evolving mixture of scents of warm, safe things over the years as delicacies fell out of fashion or new ones arose and took his fancy. 

But always, they were overlaid on a base scent of angelic holiness. He could barely remember what Aziraphale had smelled like in the thousands of years before the earth was made, before all those other comforting scents had been added to his multi-layered complexity. But that’s all that he carried right now. The sterile, ozone-like scent of heaven, with no trace of all the earthly things that had made him smell so familiar. It had all worn off with his time in heaven.

It’s why Crowley hadn’t expected him - not exactly. Perhaps at the back of his mind, but mostly he had expected it was going to be some other angel come to visit and to bring discord and disruption to his life somehow. 

Muriel let go of his hand and stepped back, but not away, remaining nearby for moral support, or possibly to adjudicate if things got out of hand. 

“I, er, see that Muriel has brought in some little friends,” Aziraphale tried, with a forced smile. 

“Yes.”

“It rather puts me in mind of your little ratty friends who used to help you out…”

Crowley grunted, and tried to avoid making eye contact with Muriel too. He still left out treats for his army of rats - it was good business sense to keep them sweet, in case they ever came in useful again, but he didn’t want anyone to think he was being soft by doing so.

“They tell me you have a burgeoning little business going out the back.”

“Yeah.” Crowley shifted uncomfortably. 

“Business going well, I trust?”

Crowley shrugged. This wasn’t what they needed to talk about, and they both knew it. 

“Perhaps I should put the kettle on,” Muriel piped up, helpfully. 

“You could try, but I doubt it’d fit you,” Crowley replied out of habit, making Muriel giggle, and Aziraphale crack half a smile. 

“Perhaps something a little more alcoholic?” Aziraphale suggested. 

"I'm not allowed to drink,” Crowley replied. 

"What do you mean, not allowed to…" 

Crowley made a big floppy gesture towards Muriel with an exasperated sigh. “Ask THAT one!”

Muriel gave Aziraphale a wave and a grin. “Yes, Mr. Crowley is not allowed to drink alcohol.”

“Why?” Aziraphale asked, confused. 

“Because he uses it as an unhealthy coping mechanism and an unhelpful way to avoid addressing his feelings in a productive manner.”

“They put a salt circle around your wine cellar,” Crowley added.

“They WHAT?”

“I did.” Muriel confirmed with a proud smile. 

“....Am I allowed to drink?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Probably not. Try hugging Mr. Crowley and then we'll see.”

“WHAT!?”

"You love Crowley, right?"

Aziraphale let out a flustered spluttering sound, caught on the back foot. “I… I mean of course I…”

"And Crowley, you love Aziraphale too, right?"

Crowley let out a complicated string of consonants which could not adequately be conveyed by mere characters on a page. Muriel frowned at him, their next words in a stern teacher voice. 

“Crowley…!”

"Yes, fine, madly in love, blah blah…”

"Have you tried kissing?"

This time both angel and demon responded in tandem with a very sharp “Don’t even GO there!” or words and noises to that effect, lost in the hubbub of awkward indignance.

"Oh. Well, maybe you should try again."

Both stared at Muriel, who clarified “after appropriate couples counselling, of course.”

“What?” Crowley blinked. 

“Couples counselling. I’ve been reading up for it, for exactly these circumstances,” Muriel replied cheerfully, reaching for their notebook and flipping through the pages. 

“You’ve been preparing a therapy session for us on the off chance that I would return to Earth?” Aziraphale asked, confused. 

“Yup! Now both of you take a seat while I get the tea and biscuits.”

They sat, too stunned to argue.

“... So, Crowley does have a fear of abandonment and rejection, understandable with his background, sometimes being a loner, or ‘independent’ is a trauma response. You’re so used to people abandoning you, giving up on you, walking away, letting you down, or grown in a toxic environment. The only person you can depend on is you, so you only feel safe when you’re alone - and this feels like where Crowley is at right now, perhaps he feels that you don’t hear what he’s saying, and what I’m getting is a real cross-purposes talking habit between the two of you. Like you’re using the time the other is talking to overthink, rather than to actually listen to what they’re really saying…”

Aziraphale had stress-nibbled through half of the biscuits already, and the box of tissues that Muriel had put on the table between them was rapidly emptying, but progress was being made. 

“The important thing I’m getting, is that how can you two save the world, if you can’t even communicate effectively with each other?  Because the way I see it, Aziraphale has a solution to the current world predicament, but needs your help to carry it out. Historically, you have a knack for working well together, bringing out the best in each other and balancing one another’s weaknesses, so you need to draw on that, put aside your differences, and work together again.”

There was some bluster from Aziraphale, and some incomprehensible noises from Crowley, as expected, but another hour in (with a break for cake and more tea, plus some mouse cuddles as ‘pet therapy’) and progress was being made. 

Crowley found it a lot harder to be angry when a small black and white mouse was nestled into the crook of his neck, snuggling. Aziraphale, likewise, found it hard to be bitchy while the other mouse sat on his lap, grooming her whiskers. 

Muriel, refreshed by their tea, and undeterred by Aziraphale and Crowley’s resistance, carried on. 

“So I’m not saying you need to decide about being together in a romantic sense right now, that’s a subject for further on down the road. In order to have a world to enjoy retirement together in, first you have to save it. So we’ve got far enough that you can work as team-mates, as friends, and then you can explore how romantic feelings work for you once everyone is safe, yes?”

Angel and demon regarded one another for a long moment, then nodded. 

Aziraphale let out a relieved smile, and Crowley followed suit. Muriel stepped in and retrieved Squeakiel and Scratchiel from them, placing the mice back in their tank again. 

“Now, time to try that hug,” Muriel informed them briskly. 

“Wait, what?” Crowley did a double take. “Oh no, you’ve been having me practising hugs with humans all this time for THIS?”

“Yes. Aziraphale?”

“I have to hug as well?”

“Yes.”

“But I haven’t…”

“It’s easy, look, I’ll demonstrate:” Muriel opened their arms wide, and advanced towards Crowley, who rolled his eyes with a weary sigh, and opened his arms in response, accepting the hug and grumpily returning it, as usual. 

“See? He’s got the hang of it, I’m sure you can as well. Here, practise with me.” Muriel let go of Crowley, and turned to face Aziraphale, arms wide. “Just open your arms like this… that’s right, good job! Now step forward, nothing to be scared of. There you go, you can close your arms again now.”

Aziraphale did, cautiously, feeling awkward and stiff, and Muriel gave him a happy squeeze. 

“There! Easy as pie. Now try with Mr. Crowley.”

They eyed one another again, wary.

“Ok, both of you, arms open, and now step forward…”

Aziraphale and Crowley were toe to toe, both cringing, but following orders. 

“And now: hug!”

They wrapped their arms around each other, stiffly. 

“And squeeze!”

Crowley growled under his breath, but gave a squeeze nonetheless. Aziraphale returned it. 

They stood there. 

Each became slowly aware that the other’s embrace was gradually melting into something soft. 

Then Aziraphale sniffed, and began to cry. 

Crowley followed suit, and held him tighter. 

Soon both of them were sobbing with release, and clinging to each other, loath to let go. Muriel simply waited, on standby with the box of tissues for whenever they were ready to let go again. 

The rubbish bin was now overflowing with tissues. Aziraphale and Crowley sat side by side on the sofa, both had red, puffy eyes. Each now had a mouse to cuddle again, and Aziraphale was gently stroking Squeakiel’s cheek, while the little mouse leaned into the petting with her eyes closed in bliss. Angel and demon leaned on each other, sniffed, and took comfort from their furry little therapy assistants. 

“Right,” Muriel declared, closing their notebook. “I’m going to start getting the snacks ready for book club, they’ll be here in two hours.”

Aziraphale looked confused. 

“Pardon?”

“Book club,” Muriel said, starting to drag some bean bags out from the corner. “It’s this evening. And we’re not missing it just because of you two. You should join in. It’ll help take your mind off things.”

Aziraphale looked to Crowley, still confused. 

“They're right,” Crowley agreed, getting up, passing Aziraphale Scratchiel to hold, and going to grab more beanbags. “It is a nice way to relax.”

“You’ve been attending as well?”

“Yeah.” Crowley flung a beanbag down. “And movie night at Dave’s.”

“Dave?”

“Mr. Arnold, music shop.”

Aziraphale gaped in surprise. 

“What? I have a life apart from you, you know. I have friends now, and hobbies, ways to fill my time. What did you think I’d been doing all the time you were gone?”

“I… I wasn’t entirely sure.”

“Well, now you know.”

Maggie and Nina especially raised eyebrows to see Aziraphale back in the shop, but Muriel took them aside and explained things a little, so rather than making a fuss, they resisted the urge to bombard him with questions, and gave him space to spend some tenuous time trying to relax alongside Crowley amid friends. 

Aziraphale soon found himself relaxing, watching the people around him expressing such a passion for literature in his beautiful old bookshop - it made the place seem extra loved - that the tomes around them felt wanted, appreciated, and that Aziraphale’s love of books was being shared and spread amongst the humans. It had become a safe space to relax, and somehow, it had made the bookshop more of a haven than it had even been before. 

Crowley could tell that some of the Whickber Street humans were itching to ask Aziraphale questions, but that they also respected Muriel’s request to give him space - they’d just spent many months carefully fixing Crowley’s mental health, and several hours of couples therapy trying to make a start on Aziraphale’s place in it as well, and didn’t want all that hard work undoing by the humans bringing up awkward topics. 

Book club evening wound to a close, with Crowley’s friends hugging him and saying goodnight, leaving Aziraphale slightly stunned to see Crowley actually smiling, and returning those hugs - quite different to the initial awkwardness of their reconciliatory one earlier. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Crowley this at ease with humans. No longer aloof, he was showing a genuine interest in them, and the care they had for him was equally obvious. 

As they waved the humans goodbye and goodnight, Muriel then locked the door behind them, and turned to face Crowley and Aziraphale. 

“See? Crowley has made progress. He has friends, and a life of his own now. He has space for you, but he’s not entirely dependent on it. I think that’s a healthier place to start from, don’t you?” 

Aziraphale nodded, not sure what to say, but he’d never really considered how co-dependent the two of them had been for so long. It made sense, true: they were the only two beings who could truly understand what it meant to be immortals on earth amongst humans, but now Muriel had shown them there was more to be had from life than just each other. Having each other was fine, but they needed something more. And now Crowley had it.

Perhaps, in time, once the world was safe, Aziraphale should work on that, too. 

“Right,” Muriel declared firmly. “Bedtime for everyone. I’ve made up Jim’s old room for you, Aziraphale. I bring the breakfast order over from Nina’s at 9am - coffee and croissant for Crowley, what’ll it be for you? English breakfast tea and brioche?”

“That’s one heck of a lucky guess,” Aziraphale admitted. 

“No, I just listen to Crowley, and if there’s at least one thing he’s listened to you about all these years, is what food and drink you like.” They hustled Aziraphale and Crowley towards the stairs. “And in the morning, when we’re all rested, THEN you can tell us all about your plans for saving the world.”

Aziraphale lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, somewhat bamboozled by the turn of events he’d discovered since his return. He wasn’t entirely sure how the reunion with Crowley was going to go, but he certainly hadn’t expected what he’d found: Crowley living a seemingly peaceful and content life, tinkering with cars, socialising with humans, baking and decorating cakes, enjoying literature, and helping Muriel run the bookshop.

He felt bad to stomp in and rip him away from it all, but at the same time, he needed Crowley’s help for what he intended to do to stop the Metatron’s plan, and that would then enable them both to have a world to spend quality time in, hopefully together. 

Eventually, he drifted off, mentally exhausted by the day. He woke with the dawn breaking through a gap in the curtains. He yawned, stretched, and went to freshen up, descending the spiral staircase a little later to the scent of fresh-baked brioche and croissants, and an insulated cup of tea waiting for him. 

“Morning,” Muriel said, sipping their own tea. “Crowley will likely be up in a while, but he doesn’t tend to get up very early without good reason.”

He noticed that they had a little mouse sitting on each shoulder. Occasionally Muriel reached up and handed each one a little crumb of their croissant to nibble on, and an idea began to form. 

“Muriel…?”

“Yes?”

“Has Crowley ever told you about his own rodent friends?”

“He has other rodent friends?”

“Yes, aside from your two.”

“Three - don’t I count as well?”

“As a rodent?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you count as a rodent?” Aziraphale was genuinely baffled. Muriel sighed, and scooped up Squeakiel and Scratchiel, placing them on his lap. Then they closed their eyes tight, concentrated, sneezed, and a tiny white mouse with dark eyes sat on the carpet in front of him. 

“Good lord!”

“See?”

“You’re a mouse.”

“Yup.” Muriel groomed their whiskers briefly, then ran forward, onto Aziraphale’s foot, up his trousers, and joined the other two mice on his lap. 

“Well, I never knew that.”

“I’ve been sniffing out the bookworms and smiting them,” Muriel explained. “Anyway, what do you mean about Crowley having other rodent friends?”

“Ah, well you see it began with a hellish assignment to cause disruption and irritation to humans, so he chose to carry it out by sabotaging the phone network…”

Crowley sauntered downstairs a little while later, finding Aziraphale sitting with three mice on the sofa, discussing something with Muriel. 

“Morning,” Crowley yawned, picking up his coffee in his “NOT TODAY, SATAN” mug, then taking a bite from his croissant, and plonking himself down on the sofa next to Aziraphale. He tore off a bit of croissant and held it out to the mice. Squeakiel and Scratchiel grabbed it and shoved at each other, squabbling over it, until Muriel intervened, and ensured they got half each. 

“Stop sowing discord,” Muriel chided him gently, while Crowley chuckled. “Anyway, Aziraphale has come up with an idea which you may want to hear.” 

“That’s right,” Aziraphale said, finishing his tea. “Tell me, dear - do you still have that old donkey jacket you like to wear while getting up to nefarious activities?”

“The Fuck Shit Up jacket? Yeah, why?”

“I think you may want to break it out for this one.”

“Oooh, I like the sound of that, Angel,” Crowley grinned, knocking back his scalding coffee in one gulp, then chewing on the rest of his croissant. “I’ll go get it.”

“And put a call out for your little army of rats while you’re at it!” Aziraphale called after him. Crowley paused partway up the stairs, and looked back at him, an eyebrow raised. 

“Rodent horde too? Sounds extra fun. Got it. See you in ten.”

Squeakiel and Scratchiel lifted their heads, as did Muriel, whiskers twitching, all three of them sniffing the air. 

“Er, how many rats, exactly, did you say Crowley had befriended?” Muriel asked, nervously. 

“I’ve never actually counted,” Aziraphale admitted. 

“Would you mind putting these two back in their tank again, please?” Muriel asked, and watched as Aziraphale lifted them up and returned them to the safety of their home, just as hundreds of rats burst through the cellar door of the bookshop and swarmed them, while Crowley descended from upstairs, shrugging on his Fuck Shit Up jacket with a grin. 

“Aaah, feels good to be wearing this again, hi gang, good to see you all here - there’s some mouse treats in the cabinet under the tank over there, help yourselves to a snack while you wait.”

“Have they been living in my cellar?” Aziraphale asked, aghast. 

“‘Course not. But there is a little back door in there for them. There’s not many places my little buddies can’t get to if they put their mind to it. Every now and then I leave them some treats on the other side of the rat door to keep them sweet.”

“Well, I suppose that should help somewhat with the plan. So. Are you ready to lic… to kick some serious butt?” Aziraphale offered with a smile. Crowley met it with a grin of his own. He held his hand out for Muriel, still mouse-shaped, to climb on board, and up to his shoulder.

“You bet your sweet arse I am.” 

Aziraphale sat down on the floor with the rats to whisper some instructions to them, received a bevy of whiskery nods in reply, then nodded to Crowley. “I’ll explain the rest en route, but I’ll need to send you up the back way while I take your horde in with Muriel to create a distraction.”

“Even better,” Crowley’s grin grew wider, and he brought his wings out, spreading them wide. 

“Let’s do this.”

(Illustration: Sweet Illustrations, colour by SleepySkele. Can’t see the image? Click here.)

~ Epilogue ~

How Crowley, Aziraphale, Muriel, and Crowley’s furry friends took down the Metatron is a story for another day, or for your own imagination. It’s going to be told many times in many different ways, just know that they will succeed. They have an eternity of happiness ahead of them. This was the story about sorting out what life means to them, and what makes it worth saving in the first place.

And what of Muriel? After fighting alongside Aziraphale and Crowley for the Earth’s freedom, they decided to study to become a properly qualified psychiatrist, and set up a small practise in the back room of the bookshop. There, they accepted angels and demons alike, many with  PTSD from centuries of conflict, for therapy. They could wait in the bookshop on the comfy chairs and beanbags, read a book, and even join in on the book club and make new friends as well if they liked; which was encouraged. Those new friends may be humans, angels, or demons.

Having Muriel in the bookshop also meant that Aziraphale and Crowley could safely leave it in their hands when they wanted to travel and spend time together, which they intended to do a lot. They had a lot of lost time to make up.