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Chapter Text

To call Aziraphale's last mission to secure the family's fortune a failure was, in his opinion, grossly unfair. He'd turned a tidy profit after travel expenses were accounted for, and the village had been ever so relieved to be rid of their brownie infestation. He'd also been gifted with two bottles of an excellent vintage of wine, a tin of very fine sweets, and a charming new scarf to replace the one that had been literally eaten in the course of his quest.

"Yes, but a 'tidy profit' isn't a fortune. You can't have a fortune without a fortune," Sandalphon chidingly points out from across his meticulously ordered desk in his richly spartan office.

Aziraphale, travel mud still clinging to his second-best travel gear, half his curls frizzed from the barn fire, and fingernails in an absolute state, can only mutely stare at his third-eldest brother. He feels quite sure the cold glare of the mage lamp hanging from the ceiling is going to bore a hole into his brain via his left eye socket.

"Surely we're not doing so poorly," he tries, voice still hoarse from the shouted incantations he'd had to lob at the manticore he'd run across in the woods on the way home.

"It's not about how we're doing now, Aziraphale," Gabriel adds with an overly enthusiastic lean from where he's standing with perfect posture next to Sandalphon's desk.^[1] "A fortune is about securing our future!" He spreads his hands out and swivels a bit to indicate the room. "This doesn't come from nothing, you know. The Messenger name really means something in this corner of the world. People look up to us, depend on us. If we were to lose status, we'd lose more than just our ability to take care of each other." He squints with heavy meaning. "We'd lose the ability to take care of all those people down in the valley."

Aziraphale immediately feels guilty. Not, as he is sure his brother is hoping for, because he's worried about letting down his family and neighbors, but because he is so bloody tired and drained that he feels he isn't dredging up the proper amount of guilt in the first place.

"Of course, naturally," he capitulates with a weak smile, because he judges it the quickest way out of this conversation and into a steaming hot bath in a dim room. "Forgive me. Still a bit road weary, that's all."

Gabriel bobs his head sympathetically, and—after taking the cue—so does Sandalphon. "I'll bet! Go, rest! You've earned it. Uriel doesn't have any time-sensitive leads at the moment, anyway." Gabriel beams at him and then holds out an arm to drape over his shoulders as he leads Aziraphale back to the door.

"You know, you should really keep up a routine when you're at home between quests," he points out, not for the first time.

Aziraphale grits his teeth in a parody of a smile and keeps his eyes fixed forward as his brother opens the door for him.

"I keep saying you should come running with me! Keep off that holiday weight. It should make those manticores easier to manage, huh? Oh, and don't forget to re-imbue the armory, wards, and estate runes first thing tomorrow—we don't want the lights to go out!" He laughs jovially even as he's slamming the door behind Aziraphale, leaving him in the overly bright, echoing hallway.

Aziraphale is just exhausted enough that he can't help the reflexive face he makes at the gleamingly polished heavy oak door, but then good sense returns and he darts glances up and down the hall to make sure none of the servants or, gods forbid, one of his other siblings saw him. Luck is on his side, for the moment; the hallway is barren, everyone else caught up in their own late-afternoon business. Then, he thinks to himself sourly as he trudges to his room,^[2] being lucky is the whole reason his family pins such hopes on him. Being a seventh son of a seventh son is, as his siblings liked to remind him at every opportunity, a great responsibility. It's also a right pain in the arse.

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The next morning finds him snugly ensconced under two lap blankets in his favorite wingback chair drawn up as close to the fire as feasible without endangering his house slippers to stray embers. There's a plate of fresh pastries and a mug of cocoa from the kitchens at his elbow and a new book he'd picked up on his travels in his hand, and he has a record of something soothing playing softly in the background. It is his first day back home after over a month away, and he is quite looking forward to spending every last minute of it in this exact position—barring breaks for meals, of course.

Naturally, that's when Gabriel barges into his study without knocking, waving a pamphlet over his head triumphantly.

"Pack your bags, Aziraphale!" he crows. "This is the chance we've been waiting for since you gave away the golden goose with Princess Katharina."

Honestly, you turn down an offer of a firstborn daughter's hand in marriage one time, and no one will ever let you live it down.

He wants to say, "Gabriel, that's really not a fair characterization of the events—we were fundamentally incompatible," or quite possibly, "I still brought home an entire wagonful of gold; how could you lot have possibly spent it all already," or even, "Sod off, you wanker, I'm resting." Unfortunately, the most he can manage is a weak, "I haven't unpacked them yet."

"It's handled," Uriel drawls as they trail in after Gabriel, sparing a brief, miffed glare at the back of their elder brother's head—likely for upstaging what was undoubtedly their discovery. "I knew you wouldn't take care of your things properly and took matters into my own hands. I had the servants turn out your bags last night while you were wallowing in the bath. They're already repacked with fresh clothes, and I've ordered travel provisions from the kitchen."

Gabriel rounds on Uriel with a manic grin. "Oh, excellent job, Uriel. I can always depend on you to be looking out for the family's best interests." He casts a significant look back over his shoulder at Aziraphale before pivoting his entire body around to face him. Behind Gabriel's back, Aziraphale sees Uriel briefly roll their eyes to the ceiling.

"What's this about," he asks, hearing the testiness in his voice but unable to dredge up enough familial goodwill in the moment to bury it.

Gabriel levels him with a disappointed tilt of his head but doesn't comment on his tone. "There's an enchanted castle West in the Hellian slopes, and apparently it comes with a prince looking for a bride or bridegroom to free him from a dark fae's curse."

"That is..." Aziraphale trails off, baffled. "That is terribly specific, brother. Let me see that?" He reaches up, and Gabriel obligingly hands over the parchment he's been wielding.

"Apparently the prince drained his magic to send out these missives to the four corners of the land. They were raining from the sky in the village square," Gabriel enthuses.

"A right nuisance," Uriel mutters.

Taking up the bulk of the page is a lovely artist's depiction of a fantastically romantic and fantastically huge castle tucked away in a bit of charming forest with mountains looming in the background. Below the drawing is printed in bold script, "Wanted: A brave soul to free a lonely prince from his unjust, beastly imprisonment.* Reward: A loving bridegroom and an enchanted castle." There's a little asterisk next to the bit about "beastly imprisonment" which leads to some fine print at the bottom of the page with a disclaimer about the dark fae curse owing to a bit of bad luck and misspent youth with the assurance that the curse is non-transferrable and breaking it will not anger the High Court.

"I see," he says finally, when he realizes both Gabriel and Uriel are staring at him expectantly. "You want me to marry a beast?"

Gabriel's mouth flattens. "I want you to take this gods' blessed opportunity to secure your family's future for good. Think of it! No more questing! You can be as lazy as you want all the time." He beams and clasps his hands together, shaking them up and down in entreaty. "Think of the good we can do with the resources of an enchanted castle at our disposal! We could feed and clothe the masses!"

Aziraphale thinks his brother is making quite a lot of assumptions based off of what is, frankly, a deeply suspicious flyer.

"Michael sends his encouragement. He had to leave on business in the next village, but he's looking forward to seeing your success," Gabriel says, going so far as to clasp Aziraphale gamely by the shoulder where he's still sitting in the chair. With his brother looming over him, the heat from the fire suddenly feels stifling.

"Well, if Michael is excited..." He trails off, because really that's all that needs saying. Michael is the head of the family now that Mum has sailed off to the new continent in retirement. If his eldest brother expects him to go, Aziraphale really hasn't much of a choice.

Well, nothing for it, he supposes, and reluctantly sets his book beside his pastries and cocoa, growing stale and cold respectively, and starts to lever himself out of his cozy chair.

He has grave doubts that this quest will really go any better than the fiasco with Princess Katharina. Aziraphale has found most partners find his sort of affection lacking in the proper amount of passion. But at least he can see what's at the root of this flyer. And if there truly is a poor, lonely beast looking for a bit of companionship, well, Aziraphale can see about getting his curse sorted and maybe recommend one of his less off-putting siblings as a workaround solution. Raphael is charming enough.

Yes, there might be a way to help both the poor creature and his family in one go, and perhaps Aziraphale might finally earn himself an uninterrupted day of relaxation in the bargain.

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Crowley lounges on the seat of his throne and admires one of the copies of the flyer the imp had left with him before beginning their distribution work.

The witch had really outdone herself with the artwork and the duplication spell. She'd rolled her eyes at the copy he'd dictated to her, but he'd reminded her that he'd been conning people into quests since before she was a twinkle in her grandmother's eye, and he knew what would sell. And besides, along with the ingredients for the spell to create a human-shaped corporation for him to inhabit, she would be getting a healthy cut of the treasures he'd be collecting.

"Trussst me," he'd hissed, tapping his tail impatiently on the paper where she'd been protesting adding the asterisk. "People love a good fine print. Makes it look real official. Besides, you have to disclose at least a bit about your curse if you don't want to scare off absolutely everyone."

Anathema had given him a deeply judging look but complied. "I don't think I like the quality of hero you're going to get coming out of this as it is."

"The desperate, gullible kind," he'd assured her. "Ready to not look too closely at the details in return for the possibility of untold riches."

"Details like the complete lack of a curse?" she'd drawled as she added the last flourishes with her quill and blew a bit of magical will over the paper to set the ink.

"Lack of opposable thumbs and a digestive system incompatible with alcohol is a heinous curse," he'd protested, arching his neck up and inventing a bit of a hood for his form to flare at her in indignation. "You humans don't know what a sweet gig you've got."

Her look was so flatly unimpressed that he'd had to fight the urge to slink.

Anyway, what do judgemental urban witches know about running a con, he thinks to himself as he oozes to the floor to do another slither-through in preparation for all the heroes he's expecting to begin arriving in the next few days.

As he winds through the front rooms, he hisses out occasional demonic commands to the decor, adjusting things here and there so the ambiance has the right feel of lightly abandoned without slumping into outright derelict. Honestly, the actual, recently un-cursed prince loaning it out to him had done a pretty bang-up job of preservation while he was languishing, so Crowley doesn't have much to improve upon.^[3]

He's in the portrait gallery, looking for a painting that it won't take a literal miracle to adjust enough to pass off as his handsome "true form,"^[4] when he hears a hesitant "halloo" echoing from the grand entrance.

"Shit," he hisses to himself and ribbons his way back to the back entrance of the throne room. He has just enough time to coil up on the seat before the door creaks open and a head of frantically curling white hair peeks around the edge.

"Anyone at home?" the man asks in the sort of posh-bastard tones of one of the gentry. Crowley eyes him up critically. Gentry are typically gullible, which is a point in his favor, but also prone to backstabbing if there's even a hint that they might not come out the other side of the deal with their promised fortune. Not that Crowley holds that against them in particular; he is out to con the poor sod out of quite a bit of hard work and luck for a much-smaller-than-advertised reward.

As the man steps fully into the room, light-colored eyes flitting around the dim room, Crowley gets a good look at his outfit and recalculates. Gentry, but wearing extremely practical "adventuring" clothing, even if the material is higher quality than the usual. Thick-cloth trousers tucked into sturdy, calf-high boots, long-sleeved tunic topped with a short leather jerkin, a leather bracer on his left forearm,^[5] and a thick belt with several deep pouches and at least one obvious sheathed dagger with a utilitarian-looking steel grip.^[6] The color palette is in browns and whites, likely the better to hide stains or submit to bleaching. While the leatherwork is prettily stitched, it's visibly broken in, and the cloth work is unadorned and bearing a few spots of discreet patching.

It's the sort of ensemble Crowley has come to expect from what he thinks of as "professional questers." They tend to be a bit savvier than the odd hero freshly set out from home. Add that to the clear markers of age on the man's face, that suggest that he's not only professional but tenured, and Crowley's fairly certain his first potential mark is a bust.

He's considering a subtle fade into the magically enhanced shadows and a hasty exit stage left when the man's gaze finally lands on the throne and his eyes widen.

"Oh, are you the cursed prince?" he asks, tone dripping with sympathy. "You poor dear!" he exclaims, pacing a few steps further into the room before stopping and folding his hands primly across his belly. "Well, I received your flyer. If you're looking for help, I would be delighted to see what I can do to assist."

Never mind, he's perfect.

Crowley weaves his head in what he's been assured by several acquaintances is a very pathetic-looking manner, and performs a sorrowful flick of his tongue. "I am he, yes," he says gravely. "A fairy from the Court of Night cursed me for trespassing her garden, that I must crawl on my belly like a low beast until I complete seven mystical tasks in her service. But alas, in this form, my powers are very few, and to complete the tasks she's set I am doomed before I start without a helpmeet."

The man's eyes narrow in contemplation. "What are these tasks? Are there any stipulations in the curse that require marriage? Are we working against a time limit, or must things be completed in a certain order?" The questions are delivered in crisp, rapid-fire fashion.

"Er," Crowley hedges, surprised into dropping the melodious cadence he'd been adopting. "I've got a list. No particular order, and no hard deadlines, though I am anxious to get back to my true form as quickly as possible, obviously. And, I mean, magic castles usually come with a prince or princess." Usually being the operative word, he thinks to himself.

"Yes, of course, but it doesn't seem as though marriage is a criteria in breaking the curse. If I were to help you, could I designate a proxy to collect the reward?"

"A proxy?" he demands, incredulous.

"I have a large family," the man explains with a shrug. "If you were to marry one of my siblings, I would still benefit from the reward, and you would have several more chances for a happy match."

"Hold on, are you bargaining yourself out of a royal title right now?" Crowley asks, a touch cross. He's feeling rather on his back coil in this exchange so far, and he doesn't like it one bit.

"Being a prince sounds like an awful lot of work," the man counters with a brief grin. "It might be worth it, for the right partner. But, really, my dear fellow, what if we don't get on? It wouldn't be much of a reward, then, would it."

Oh, he's practical and a bit of a bastard. Crowley kind of likes him already. Shame he's going to fleece him nearly blind.

"I suppose that is true," he allows, carefully festooning his delivery with princely airs again. "Perhaps we should revisit the topic once we have completed the tasks."

"So long as the reward is remanded to either myself or one of my siblings, I will be quite content," the man says agreeably and then sweeps a stiff-looking bow. "I am Aziraphale Messenger of Haven in the north."

The name rings a bell. He thinks he's heard of a professional hero with an odd name rambling around the northern and eastern regions over the past few decades.

"I am Prince Anthony," Crowley lies. "Tell me, Aziraphale of Haven: Are you prepared to pledge yourself to my cause, to do whatever it takes to help free me from this wretched curse? Only, I dare not think what would befall me if your courage should fail part way and I was abandoned to the wilds."

"Yes, you are just a bit of a thing, aren't you," Aziraphale agrees sympathetically.

Crowley bites back a rude retort; he's trying to craft an image here. "Right. Well, are you prepared?"

"Don't you want to know my qualifications first?" Aziraphale counters with what Crowley is fairly certain is censure in his voice.

If he were capable of dramatic sighs, he'd give one. As it is, he's a bit curt when he replies, "Sure, let's hear them, then."

The man straightens imperceptibly—a feat, really, since from what Crowley can tell he was already standing ramrod straight. "I am a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, so I have a fair amount of luck. And owing to several generations of, er, diplomacy with the Day Court, I have a fair amount of magic. I've been questing for, um, quite a while, and in that time I have broken eight royal curses and reversed roughly a baker's dozen animal transformations. Before we enter into any sort of formal arrangement, I would like to hear the nature of the quests, but provided there aren't any particular requirements I am incapable of fulfilling, I should think I will be quite capable of resolving your situation."

Crowley is, reluctantly, impressed. Fae blood and seventh-son status is a potent combination. Honestly, if he's as accomplished as he claims, Crowley's surprised he hasn't heard any ballads about him. Maybe it's down to not being able to easily rhyme anything with a mouthful like "Aziraphale."

"Truly, you sound like a worthy champion," he says. "And it is indeed wise to desire to know more of what is being asked of you," he admits because it's true and it would be a bit suspicious if he were to insist they rush right out.^[7]

He slips from the throne to the floor and slithers over to where he's positioned a stone table just below a window at the proper angle that, especially in the morning, an inspiring shaft of light is typically illuminating the surface. After a beat, he hears Aziraphale following, and by the time he winds his way up the leg to coil on the surface, the hero is already squinting down at the parchment lying there where the seven tasks have been listed:

1. Fetch a fruit red as blood and hard as stone
2. Retrieve the Honest Queen's mirror
3. Gather a pose of Circe's Remorse
4. Rescue the Chalice of Redemption
5. Gain the favor of the Bridge Guard
6. Fetch a skein of Wolf Sheep's wool
7. Receive a blessing from the Chameleon Wizard

"These are the Seven Mystical Tasks," Crowley whispers theatrically.

Aziraphale tilts his head at the list and then produces a pair of small, gold-rimmed reading glasses from one of the pouches at his belt and perches them ridiculously on the end of his nose. Crowley is simultaneously charmed and questioning how long in the tooth this hero must be if his near vision is starting to fail him.

"Hmm, I don't see any enchantments on the parchment itself," Aziraphale murmurs, lifting the paper from the table for a closer look and turning it about as he raises the glasses up and down a few times as he does so.

"Should there be?" Crowley asks, tone faintly indignant despite himself.

"Well, no," the hero concedes, gracing him with an apologetic look as he takes the glasses off and folds the arms down one-handed into his right palm. "This list is just so shockingly straightforward, I thought there might be a hidden puzzle or secret meaning."

"Ah," Crowley says, twigging at last that the glasses must reveal enchantments, and also feeling retroactive chagrin over leaving the cryptic instruction writing to a ruthlessly practical witch who viewed the task as a glorified shopping list.^[8] "So, you know how to fulfill all of the tasks?"

"Oh, yes. I'll need to send some inquiries about the current whereabouts of the chalice and the mirror—those sorts of artifacts tend to change hands over time, you see—but I know where to go for the rest." He rolls up the parchment with an efficiency that speaks of long practice and trades the glasses for a short scroll tube from his pouch to tuck the list into.

Well, bully for him, then. Crowley isn't sure why he's feeling annoyed by how unruffled this posh bastard is by the task list.^[9] The faster Anathema gets her list fulfilled, the faster he gets his own human body. He should be feeling glad that he might get through all seven tasks with just one hero. Nevertheless, he's feeling irked enough that he can't help needling the man.

"I'm so glad to hear," he says silkily. "Should I expect to be freed from my curse within a fortnight?"

Aziraphale blanches and clasps his hands fretfully in front of his belly. "Oh, my apologies if I've given the wrong impression—I don't mean to set your hopes too high. Knowing where to go is honestly a trifling. These tasks will take quite some time and no small amount of luck and effort to complete." He offers a small, anxious smile. "But I do believe they're within my ability. So, if you're amenable, I would be more than happy to help you complete this quest and relieve you of your curse."

Crowley bobs his head in affirmation. "I'd offer to shake on it, but..." he quips before thinking better of it.

To his surprise, Aziraphale snorts a small laugh that he tries to disguise as a cough.

"Yes, given the circumstances, I think a verbal agreement will suffice." With another stiff-looking bow, Aziraphale places his right hand over his heart and says formally, "I, Aziraphale Messenger of Haven, pledge my services to you, Prince Anthony of Hellian, and solemnly vow to do my utmost to free you from your curse."

Crowley feels an uneasy prod of conscience at the pretty vow. It's not like the air shimmers with magical intent or he thinks the gods are listening and will smite the poor bastard if he doesn't deliver, but he just sounds so true and earnest. The dumb sod didn't even include any stipulations about the reward in the vow, like it didn't even occur to him to doubt Crowley will hold up his end of the bargain.

"I, Prince Anthony, solemnly accept your pledge, brave hero," he replies. He's certainly not feeling guilty enough to make any more specific vows of his own unless forced. Luckily for him, and unluckily for the daft fool grinning down at him, it doesn't seem like the hero's suspicious enough to force anything.

"Right, well," Aziraphale says, tucking his hands behind his back and rocking back on his heels. "Shall we be off?"

"Absolutely."

¹ Aziraphale isn't sure he's ever seen his second-eldest brother so much as slouch since he reached majority. ^{[return to text]}

² Even shattered, he still reflexively dribbles a thimbleful of magic to clean the confetti drift of dried mud flaking from his person. He wouldn't want to put out the servants. ^{[return to text]}

³ Crowley had done him a good turn by tempting the young woman who'd blundered into the rose garden to look past the drooling fangs and persistent wet-dog smell and consider taking a walk on the wild side. In return, the prince had promised use of the castle if the curse was broken. He'd been so soppily in love by the end that he'd even held up his end of the bargain. The pair was currently taking a holiday in the South to visit her family. Frankly, Crowley gave it even odds whether the blush of young love would survive not only the road trip and judgemental inlaws but the prince's transformation from a huge, powerful beast creature back to a rather "sure, I guess" young man. ^{[return to text]}

⁴ Honestly, weak chins and unnervingly close-set eyes for generations. He's seriously hoping it was true love and not just the rush of discovering a new kink fueling the woman's devotion. If she breaks off the engagement, will the poor bastard be re-cursed? Though, in that case, a return to fur might breathe new life into the relationship... ^{[return to text]}

⁵ Not, as one might immediately suppose, to aid in use of a bow. The less said about Aziraphale's attempts to achieve weapons mastery outside of a hard-won but tragically utilitarian competence with a dagger and short sword, the better. He simply finds braces inset with magically enhanced steel plates far more practical and stylish than lugging about a shield. ^{[return to text]}

⁶ Regretfully, it's considered unconscionably rude to refit a precious family heirloom gifted unto you by a grateful mother in thanks for being reunited with her newly de-cursed child with a hilt that carries a bit more whimsy. ^{[return to text]}

⁷ Honestly, he's not expecting to complete all seven errands Anathema listed with just this guy. Burning out heros will just add to the mystique of the curse he's advertising, and there's no saying the next hero has to know that it wasn't always Six Mystical Tasks or Five Mystical Tasks to complete, depending on how enterprising this Aziraphale turns out to be. ^{[return to text]}

⁸ He suspects it comes from Anathema's deep-seated loathing for riddles, owing to her grandmother Agnes's obsession with them. Now there is a woman who can write a proper set of needlessly cryptic instructions. ^{[return to text]}

⁹ It is absolutely because when Anathema wrote out her price, he'd been grateful serpent-aspect dark fae didn't have sweat glands. The witch is downright mercenary. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

The first hurdle in the start of what Aziraphale is hoping will be a very fruitful partnership, is travel arrangements. He explains that he has contacts in the township of London, which sits at the center of the five provinces and will serve as a good base of operations between fulfilling different tasks on the list. Of course, there's the matter of getting there, especially when his favored mode of transportation is rather singular.

"Prince Anthony, how shall I, er, carry you on our journeys?" he asks as they exit the front entrance of the castle into the bright, late-morning sunshine. The little serpent hadn't had too much difficulty keeping up with his strides, but it seems like an awful lot of effort for such a small creature, and certainly won't serve for longer travel or, gods forbid, traveling through any villages. The poor thing would be trampled within moments.

"Do you have a cloak?" the prince asks, staring up at him with bright yellow eyes, his head weaving slightly as he stretches it up from the ground. In the sunlight, Aziraphale can see that his underbelly scales are a handsome red.

"Yes, in my pack," he says, placing a hand behind him on the satchel hanging from straps looped over his shoulders.

"If you keep the hood down, I can ride in there. I'll be able to see what you see, but it will be easy to hide if need be."

"Oh, that's quite clever," Aziraphale exclaims, and shrugs off his pack to dig out one of his lighter cloaks.

"That pack is too small for that cloak," the prince observes flatly when Aziraphale shakes it free.

Aziraphale flashes him a conspiratorial smile. "A souvenir from a previous quest. It can hold an entire wardrobe's worth of gear." He shrugs the pack back on and then holds the cloak by the shoulders, offering the basket the hood makes out to the prince, who quickly slips inside. From there, it's just a matter of taking extra care in draping it over his shoulders. A moment after he's affixed the clasp, he feels a slight weight on his left shoulder, and when he glances, he sees the prince has propped himself up so his head is on level with his ear.

"Oh, this is perfect," the prince says, a bit of extra sibilance stretching out the phrase. Gooseflesh prickles Aziraphale's neck at how close and intimate his voice sounds so close to his ear.

"I'm glad it will serve, Prince Anthony," he returns agreeably. "Though, I do recommend ducking back down into the hood for this next bit. I'm not sure how disorienting it will be for, er, a passenger."

"What?" the prince demands in understandable confusion.

"If I will it, my boots can take us to London in seven steps, but the sensation makes even me a bit unnerved, and I'm the one doing the actual movement."

"You have a pair of bloody seven-league boots?" the prince demands, voice a lot more strident than the princely tones he's been taking care to affect to this point.^[10]

"They really are terribly efficient," he offers in conciliatory tones. They're actually a bit notorious for being a pain to use because of how commonly they inflict nausea on the user and how easy it is to miscalibrate your destination and end up gods know where.^[11]

"I'd say so. Another souvenir, then?"

"Er, quite."

"Ugh, good thing I haven't eaten recently," the prince mutters, and Aziraphale feels him retreat back down his shoulder, presumably to coil up entirely inside the cloak hood.

"Well, off we pop," he says with overdone cheer and steps forward with the western road leading into London firmly affixed in his mind.

Seven rushing, jolting steps with scenery kaleidoscoping past, and he comes to a halt just to the side of the road not twenty paces from the official border of the town. His stomach gives an uneasy roil before settling, and he reflexively pulls out a lemon-flavored boiled sweet from one of his deeper pouches devoted to provisions.

"We're here, Prince Anthony," he says, tucking the sweet into his cheek so he can speak around it easily. "Er, how are you feeling?"

A soft moan wafts up from the depths of the cloak hood, and Aziraphale winces.

"Perhaps you should come up and take a look about? Looking at the line of the horizon helps, I've found."

After a moment, Aziraphale feels the soft pressure of the prince emerging from the hood. The serpent stops with his chin pressed flat to Aziraphale's shoulder. He looks down at the prince with some concern; he didn't think it was possible for serpents to look poorly, but here's proof miserably scenting the air with halfhearted flicks of his tongue.

"How is this physiologically possible," Prince Anthony grouses. "I haven't eaten anything. There isn't even anything to be nauseated over." The unspoken "and yet…" hangs in the air between them.

"That's the, um, ineffability of magic for you, I suppose," Aziraphale says in what he hopes is a rallying tone. Judging by the venomous head tilt he gets from the snake, he probably missed the mark.

"Well, let's make our way to my contact's cottage to see about securing a room and getting a few inquiries put out, shall we?"

"Let me know when we get there," the prince mutters and oozes back down into the hood.

Probably for the best, Aziraphale considers, as he makes his way into the light traffic of merchants, villagers, and miscellaneous travelers streaming in and out of the western entrance to the town. The largely decorative town militia has a pair of guards at the "gate" keeping a beady eye on the travelers, occasionally hailing anyone they deem suspicious by whatever criteria the head of the militia has worked himself into a state over lately.^[12] He doesn't think they'd take exception to the prince's form, but it doesn't hurt to enter on the side closer to young Newton, just to be safe.

"Welcome back, Mr. Messenger," Newt greets with an awkward wave as Aziraphale approaches.

"Good morning, Private Pulsifer," he says, pausing for a quick handshake. "I'm just headed to the cottage by way of the market to pick up a few, er, offerings.^[13] Should I expect to see you at lunch?"

He feels the prince stir in the hood.

"Not today, I'm afraid. Shadwell wants the lot of us for a briefing," Newt says with a put-upon frown.

"I see. Good luck?" Aziraphale offers. "Oh, I shall be setting off on a new quest. Anything in particular I should be on the lookout for on your behalf?"

"Again?" Newt asks, incredulous. "Have you even been home since that business in Soho?"

His smile turns brittle, and it's a fight to keep his tone light, knowing the prince can't help but eavesdrop on the conversation. "Just long enough for Gabriel to give me the news about this new opportunity."

"Mate, if you don't mind me saying—" Newt begins, all low-voiced awkward concern and reaching out a hand to grasp tentatively at his upper arm.

"Another time, if you don't mind, my dear boy," he cuts in smoothly, sidestepping to avoid the tentative offer of comfort. "I'll be setting out first thing tomorrow, and I have a fair bit of preparations to attend to. Send a note to our lady by this evening if you think of anything."

Newt grimaces at him in clear disapproval but doesn't hold him up as he strides away. The prince doesn't comment, but the silence is almost a physical presence radiating from his hood. Aziraphale ignores it and only offers up a few questions regarding preferred diet when they're in the press of the market. The prince grudgingly says a few eggs won't go amiss, though he'll likely "take care of" his own meals for the most part. On this advice, Aziraphale picks up a small basket of quail eggs in addition to the other odds and ends he picks up for lunch.

When the door of Jasmine Cottage opens to his knock, he has a bottle of blackberry-flower mead brandished in a defensive position. This doesn't do as much as he would hope to soften the incredible scowl Anathema gives him when she registers who's on her doorstep.

"Good morning, my dear. I've brought lunch!" he rushes to say, holding the bottle out a little farther and favoring the witch with his most winning smile.

"Aziraphale," she says flatly. "I thought I told you I didn't want to see you darkening my door again for at least a full month."

The prince, who had been coiling a bit restlessly in the hood once Aziraphale had mentioned they'd reached their destination, freezes completely.

"Yes, well, the most interesting opportunity came up, and the whole family was anxious to see me off," he says. "Did I mention I brought lunch? Smoked salmon, those little crusty rolls you like, strawberries, a deliciously pungent goat cheese..." he trails off, voice turning increasingly pitchy as Anathema's glare doesn't waver.

Finally, she steps back, holding the door open wider in silent invitation. He ducks in and shuffles directly to the table in the kitchen, unloading his hoard from the little cloth market bag he'd produced from his pouch earlier.

"Shall I open this up, my dear, or I could put the kettle on?" he offers, waggling the bottle meaningfully when he hears Anathema stalk in after him.

"Kettle. I can already feel the headache coming on," she pronounces darkly and drops, stiff-backed, into her usual chair.

Aziraphale flushes and obediently turns to the cabinets to put away the mead and pull out the tin of dried chamomile. It doesn't escape him that Anathema always does a better job of inspiring actual guilt in him when he fails to live up to her expectations than Gabriel has ever managed.

"Please don't be cross with me," he pleads softly as he puts the filled kettle on the boiler, the stove belly already lit in preparation for midday meal.

"Who should I be cross at, then?" she asks in an affected reasonable tone. "Gabriel? Michael? They're not here for me to be cross at, are they? If this 'interesting opportunity' is so important, why doesn't one of the other Messenger siblings look into it? Gods know there are enough of you."

Aziraphale winces at how quickly she's gone straight for the jugular, though he realizes he shouldn't be surprised. "Er, if you don't mind, could we discuss this a bit later? I'm afraid we have company, and I wouldn't want to bore him with, er, family drama."

"What?" Anathema asks, squinting and looking around the room rapidly, no doubt searching out a different aura. He supposes the prince's is masked by his own.

"Well, the 'interesting opportunity' also happens to be a very noble cause," he says, awkwardly chuckling at his own pun and swallowing it down at Anathema's glower. "A prince cursed by a fae from the Night Court," he clarifies. "I've pledged to help him regain his true form."

"What," Anathema says, much flatter.

He turns his head to try to peer back into the depths of the cloak hood. "Prince Anthony, I know you're feeling poorly, but would you mind coming out for a moment so I may introduce you to Mistress Anathema Device, Witch? I am hoping she will be an invaluable asset to us as we work to free you from your curse." He flashes a hopeful smile back at Anathema as he says this, cold sweat beading on his forehead at the stoney expression on her face.

An eternity of seconds later, the prince slithers up to perch on his left shoulder, tongue flicking out nervously. "Um," he rasps, "hello, Mistress Anathema. Very nice to make your acquaintance."

"No need to worry, Prince Anthony," Aziraphale hastens to assure, worried at the stilted tone and overall nervous energy radiating from the serpent. "Anathema is a consummate professional. She would never let a personal quarrel with me interfere with fulfilling a contract, and I do believe we can convince her to undertake one to help us fulfill our quest to regain your human form."

The prince makes some sort of choked hissing sound at this pronouncement, and Aziraphale throws a desperate look at Anathema, who is still sitting eerily still with a disturbing lack of expression on her face. He widens his eyes in a silent plea. Certainly she wouldn't be so cold hearted as to turn down an animal transformation curse. Her own dear Newton had briefly been subject to a wildly unethical witch's idea of a prank in his home village before he and his mother had relocated to London some years ago.

"Tell me, Prince Anthony," she says, placing a strange amount of emphasis on his name, "do you wish to contract my services to help you gain a human body?"

"Er, yeah, yep," the prince says, head bobbing in an approximation of a nod and voice sounding strangled.

"Hmm," she says neutrally before suddenly favoring Aziraphale with her most melting smile. "Of course I would be honored to help. We'll need to draw up an official contract, and I'll, of course, need to charge my usual fees. I'm assuming you'll want to rent the spare room and make use of my network, at minimum. If you need to acquire any enchanted objects, I can also provide my services verifying their provenance."

The rush of relief at the about-face has Aziraphale feeling weak at the knees. "Oh, bless you, Anathema dear. That is exactly what I was wanting to discuss with you. You really must have your grandmother's talent for prophecy."

She grins, showing a few too many teeth. "Not at all. Sometimes things are just terribly predictable."

He swears he hears Prince Anthony whimper, but the kettle begins to sing so he can't be sure.

Anathema takes an undue amount of relish in drawing up the contract after lunch, but he does appreciate the care she takes in explaining each service and the corresponding fee to the prince. These things can get pricey in a hurry, and to those uninitiated in questing, the costs can come as a nasty shock.

Aziraphale is already doing the maths in his head of how much extra of certain items on their task list he should plan to collect to help offset her fees. It seems a fitting dowry for whichever of his siblings he can match to the prince.

The fleece, herbs, and crystal fruit are the most obvious choices; the Chameleon Wizard is a right prick and trolls are a little too unpredictable to count on getting more than the one blessing and favor, respectively. Everything else is a one-and-done artifact, but there might be opportunities to pick up or barter for a few other items depending on their current locations.^[14]

Honestly, this is where having a Seventh Son's luck does make the difference in his success rate. Finding the capital to fund his quests does always seem to work itself out, with a bit extra. Too bad it's never quite enough to fulfill his brothers' definition of a "fortune."

.

.

.

When Aziraphale announces after lunch that he needs to run some additional errands in preparation for their first few quests, Crowley begs off, feigning the lingering effects of his improbable nausea. The hero, who Crowley is beginning to suspect might actually shit sunshine, fusses and installs him in the room they'll be renting in a veritable nest he whips up out of a wide, shallow bowl borrowed from a suspiciously straight-faced Anathema and an ever-warm afghan he produces from his magical knapsack.

"I won't be long. Just need to visit the post master to send out a few inquiries and pick up a few items I think will be of use. Any requests for dinner? Contract or not, I do believe it would be in our best interests to ply our witch with something scrumptious." All this is said as he fusses with the drape of the blanket and eyeballs the trajectory of the sunbeam inching across the floor so he can scoot the bowl just so in its path.

"I'll be fine. I'll have a few of those eggs, and when we get on the road tomorrow, I'll… take care of things." He's found it's better with marks to be tactful about the fact that he semi-regularly ingurgitates cute furry things whole. "Go on, I'll just have a kip."

Aziraphale obligingly holds his arm out so his hand hovers, palm down, just next to the bowl, allowing Crowley to sidle down and coil up in the, admittedly, perfectly toasty blanket. So toasty, in fact, and so nicely positioned in the warm afternoon sunlight, that Crowley allows himself a short bask as he listens to the sounds of the hero navigating the creaky stairs, bidding the witch farewell, and firmly closing the door behind him. After a full five minutes—long enough to guard against the possibility of a quick pop back round in the event something was left behind—he reluctantly oozes out of the nest and hustles down the stairs to find Anathema.

"Crowley," she says in a dark tone from her worktable when he enters the front room.

"Don't even start with me, witch," he grouses, slinking up the leg of the table and coiling around a sturdy ceramic jug of something-or-other on the edge of the table. Crucially, it's just far enough that she'd have to overextend her reach to get at him and also risk upending said jug all over her current project—something with herbs and ribbon.

"The only reason I didn't expose you on the spot is because it would violate our contract," she continues, blatantly ignoring him.

"It would absolutely violate our contract," he agrees mildly. "But, really, Anathema," he says, drawing out the vowels of her name, "how many years have we known each other. You wouldn't throw me over for some gentry ponce."

The way her eyebrows practically levitate off her brow eloquently suggests otherwise, and Crowley fights to keep from squeezing the jug in agitation.

"I haven't known him long, but that man is as close to the heroic ideal as I've ever encountered," she says with a surprising amount of vehemence. "The town adores him. Madame Tracy bakes for him."

"How come I haven't ever encountered this paragon of virtue, then?" he grouses. If he were in the practice of letting himself feel shame, he imagines he might start feeling it right about now. But honestly, Aziraphale may seem nice enough on the surface, but he's still an obviously rich member of the kind of class high enough to feel the need to put on holier than thou airs and not nearly high enough to remotely justify it. He probably has an oil painting of himself holding a small, yappy dog hanging over a fireplace somewhere, for someone's sake.

"He's been questing mostly in Haven or along the border between Brittany and Norseland these past two years." She waves a bundle of dried sage in the air distractedly eastward. "You've only been this far east regularly in the past year or so. Bad timing."

He briefly considers interrogating her further about what the hero has done to be bestowed the honor of Tracy's infrequent but famous culinary favor but figures it wouldn't be very self-preserving to learn more about what a nice person the man he's about to screw out of a lot of time and hard work and money is.

"What's the deal with his family," he asks instead, hoping for drama and also curious about just who Aziraphale thinks he's going to foist Crowley onto at the end of the quest.

Anathema scowls and knots a bit of ribbon around a bundle of lavender so viciously the tail snaps off at the knot. "Ask him. He doesn't like people gossiping about it."

Crowley lets out a skeptical hum but, eyeing the mangled stems of the lavender, drops the subject.

"Crowley," she says quietly after she's set aside the unfortunate lavender and tied up a few more bundles in relatively peaceful silence.

He raises his head from the lip of the jug where he'd been idly resting it to let her know she has his attention.

After a moment of grim-faced contemplation, she locks eyes with him. "I think you should just tell him. He might be a little upset, but he's a soft touch. If you get poetic enough about your dreams, I think he would help you regardless."

He twitches the tip of his tail in what he likes to think is a very sarcastic manner. "Think or know?"

She shrugs.

"Yeah, not good enough for me. If this guy is good enough at his job as you and, apparently, the whole of London seem to think he is, this is probably my best shot at getting everything together in one go. I'm not getting any younger—"

"You are full-blooded dark fae—you are effectively immortal."

"—and I'm tired of trying to make my way in the human world with only this body. I have been working toward this since before your grandmother was a twinkle in her grandmother's grandmother's eye. I finally have the spell, the list, the willing witch, and the means to get the ingredients. I'm not wasting this opportunity on a 'think.'"

"Just…" she trailed off with a huff. "Be mindful. He is a genuinely good person. Practically an angel—they call him that, you know. I don't think you'll like yourself at the end of this if you don't at least try to avoid completely screwing him over."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I con people for a living."

"Not kids," she shoots back. "Not sweet old people and kind beggars and those afflicted in mind or body. You have a code, serpent, even if you won't admit to it."

"Yeah," he drawls, "and he's a middling-aged, rich, able-bodied toff. He'll get over it."

Anathema lobs a slightly crushed clump of dried chamomile at him so it bounces off his coils, but mercifully drops the subject.

When Aziraphale returns that evening, Newt in tow, he proudly presents Crowley with a skewer of three whole-roasted mice lightly glazed with honey.

"I thought perhaps it would be a nice compromise between your former and current, er, anatomy and palate, and it saves you the trouble of hunting tomorrow," he explains with a pleased purse to his mouth.

Crowley gracefully accepts them and praises the meal as both thoughtful and delicious. It's not even a put on, he grudgingly admits to himself. He tries to convince himself it's a good thing that, if he's going to be in the man's company for several weeks or months, he can continue to look forward to these small luxuries.

Anathema makes a lot of pointed eye contact with him while sipping her tea but thankfully remains silent.

¹⁰ It doesn't occur to Aziraphale that there might be anything suspicious about the change. As a member of the gentry, and even in some of the necessary interactions in his role as "the hero of the quest," he is intimately familiar with the necessity of putting on certain airs. ^{[return to text]}

¹¹ Crowley is merely outraged by the distressing number of highly rare, highly enchanted, highly valuable items Aziraphale is casually whipping out. ^{[return to text]}

¹² A few years ago Shadwell had gotten into a lather about witch familiars, never mind the tidy cottage industry of witches of varying specializations that support roughly a quarter of the township's economy. He'd only backed down once Madame Tracy, head of the Witches Guild, had intervened. It didn't hurt that his apprentice Newton had recently started dating a witch as well. ^{[return to text]}

¹³ Read: bribes ^{[return to text]}

¹⁴ In his experience, hoarders of treasure are shockingly blasé about trading over items from their stash in exchange for a bit of home repair or pest control. Sometimes he thinks he should have cards made up titling him Seventh Son and Magical Handyman. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

When Aziraphale opens the door to leave Anathema's cottage the next morning, it reveals Madame Tracy, Witch, Head of London's Witches Guild, Certified Veil Parter and Love Magic Purveyor, smiling sweetly up at them from the stoop. Her painted lips purse in a knowing grin as she glances at Crowley perched on Aziraphale's left shoulder, which the demon finds deeply disconcerting. He's not met her in person before, but receiving the pointed attention of any witch is, he's found, something to sweat over.

"Hello, love," she coos when she drags her gaze back to Aziraphale and holds out a bejeweled hand in greeting.

"Ah, Madame Tracy," Aziraphale greets, sounding as though he's trying to power through the awkwardness as he takes her fingers and raises them for a gentle buss to the knuckles. "How lovely to see you. I was just stepping out, but Anathema is just through in the kitchen."

"Oh, but I'm here for you, dear," she exclaims, taking her hand back to clasp it dramatically to her chest. "I heard you had found yourself an animal bridegroom and thought I'd drop buy to offer my services if you had a need."

"Well, I..." Aziraphale hedges, a blush springing to his cheeks.

She turns her attention fully to Crowley then, offering a dainty curtsy. "And this must be the lordship himself," she says. "Cor, but aren't you a handsome one. I'll bet you turn heads when you're in your proper form."

"Er," Crowley says.

"And a serpent!" she goes on, either oblivious or looking to see how badly she can fluster the hero. She leans in with a conspiratorial eyebrow lift. "That's a bit naughty, isn't it?" she murmurs, as though Crowley isn't literally right there.

"Madame Tracy!" Aziraphale splutters, practically glowing in mortification.

Crowley can't help being reluctantly impressed by the sheer nerve.

"Well, but you two are going to be thick as thieves during these quests," she admonishes, giving Aziraphale's arm a motherly pat. "Best use the time to get to know one another," she says with far too much significance. "No sense in getting into a marriage with someone without knowing if you're compatible, I say."

Crowley can't decide if he's delighted or horrified to be hearing echoes of the very same arguments he'd made to the blushing maiden in the beast's castle to tempt her into giving the furry bastard a chance.

Because he can actually feel the delicious heat of Aziraphale's blush, and wonders if he might actually start steaming at the ears like a teakettle, he gives in to instinct and drags up an extra coil from the hood and drapes it over the hero's opposite shoulder. He's better than a sunning rock and vastly more entertaining.

"Alas, our hero is too self deprecating," Crowley says with affected sorrow. "He seeks to offer up one of his siblings in his stead, thinking they would better satisfy."

Madame Tracy gasps in what looks like legitimate outrage and swats at Aziraphale's arm. "Oh, don't you dare," she scolds. "How would anyone end up with a happily ever after that way?"

Aziraphale lets out a sigh so exasperated he doesn't even have to roll his eyes to get his point across. "It's just an idea. You know I'm not much of a suitor."

"Don't believe that tosh," Madame Tracy advises Crowley with a reproving look for Aziraphale out of the corner of her eye. "Our Aziraphale here is the closest thing we have to an angel in these parts. He'd make a proper prince for the right sort of kingdom."

Crowley is really glad it's difficult to emote as a snake. So long as he doesn't let his big mouth get away from him, he has a sterling poker face. "I'm looking forward to questing together," he says, because it's true and implies a hell of a lot without committing to anything in particular.

"There you are," she says as though something has been decided. "Oh, and here's me prattling on when you two will want to be saving daylight." She flaps an airy hand while simultaneously rummaging around in a knit satchel hanging at her hip. "Here, love, I stopped by Teresa's for some top-off tonics, and here's some fresh biscuits for tea," she says, piling a few vials of murky-looking liquid and a paper-wrapped bundle into Aziraphale's arms. With a coy glance at Crowley, she adds, "Would you care for any of my specialty tonics now, or will you be wanting to wait until the honeymoon?"

Aziraphale doesn't dignify her question with more than a glare as he awkwardly stuffs the tonics and biscuit package into different pouches. Well, doesn't dignify it with more than a glare and a fantastic blush.

"What's your specialty, Madame Tracey," Crowley inquires with studious politeness. He's not meant to know who she is, after all. It would be suspicious if he didn't ask.

The minx dimples at him. "Well, I—"

"The particulars aren't material since they're not required at this time," Aziraphale interrupts firmly. "Suffice it to say that she is a master of her trade, and very deserving of her position as Head of the Witches Guild. Which—oh," he flusters, "forgive my lack of manners, I beg the both of you. Prince Anthony, this is Madame Tracey, Witch, and, well, you've already heard her most auspicious title."

Aziraphale's mouth crimps as he obviously wars with himself over adding all the embellishments that polite society likes and contradicting his earlier assertion that Crowley didn't need to know the particulars of her specialities. After a brief pause, he finishes, "And Madame Tracey, may I present his royal highness, Prince Anthony of Hellian."

"Oh, charmed, I'm sure," she giggles. "Should I curtsey again, do you think?"

Aziraphale makes a disgruntled sound, obviously displeased at having let the social niceties slip into such shocking disarray.

"Absolutely not, Madame," Crowley assures her. "It's not like I'm in much of a position to give a proper bow back." Though he does give her a little head-dip nod of recognition because humans seem to find that charming coming from a snake. Madame Tracey is no exception, as she coos and goes a bit pink in the cheeks.

"Well, royalty or not, you'd best take care of our Aziraphale," she says, tone going over surprisingly sharp for all she's still fluttering her lashes at him a bit. "He's a habit of getting himself into trouble."

"I expect we can't avoid some trouble, at least," he counters in his most charming tones. "But I shall do my best to make sure he doesn't get into too much." At least, none more than what Crowley is already causing him.

"Well, if you two are quite finished," Aziraphale huffs and then immediately seems to remember himself and takes Madame Tracey's hand again for a quick kiss farewell. "Thank you for the biscuits and the tonics, and pass my regards to Ms. Teresa. I'm sure both will come in quite handy."

"Of course, love," she says warmly. "Best of luck to you both. Happy questing!"

After a few more pleasantries, Aziraphale finally extricates them from the witch's tender mercies and points them in the direction of the eastern gate of the city.

"She seemed nice," Crowley says, eyeing the villagers they pass. To a one, they clock the snake, have some sort of strong facial reaction, then see just who is walking through town with a snake on his shoulders, and go about their day like they expected as much. Seeing as the hero's reputation can likely take it, he settles further in with his coils draped around the hero's shoulders like a shawl to better soak up the weak morning sunlight.

"She is," Aziraphale grouches, "and incurably nosey, though I suppose that's half a witch's trade, gossip."

Crowley snorts a laugh. "Love potions, is it?" he asks because it wouldn't be a far leap to make even for someone who didn't already know who she was.

"Worse," Aziraphale bemoans, "potions for those already in love, or looking for a bit of, hmm, extra fun in their love life. Her tagline is 'putting magic to bed.'"

Crowley laughs, or hisses—it's honestly difficult to tell the difference. "And she offered you some right there on the front stoop," and in front of a presumed prince. The brass ones on that woman—oh, he definitely likes her.

"She's a menace."

"What's a top-off tonic, then," he says, feeling very gracious about changing the subject. He's getting curiouser about why the hero is so reluctant to put himself forward as the bridegroom—he's the one who will be doing all the work after all—but it's something he thinks he'll have more success slinking up to rather than boldly striking, so he'll leave it for now.

"Oh, well," Aziraphale says, blushing almost as deeply as he did at the offering of randy-making tonics.

Crowley stretches out and twists back around so he can look in the hero's face directly. "Hmm?"

"It's for when your magic level is low and you don't have time to let it regenerate the natural way," he admits.

"Like, if you do too much questing back-to-back," Crowley surmises, feeling just the very faintest twinge of guilt.

"Well, we can't always control when opportunities arise, can we," Aziraphale points out. "They're very useful in that case. It was quite thoughtful of her to pick some up."

Crowley makes a humming sound that is noncommittal enough that Aziraphale can make of it what he will. He doesn't like that every single person he's run into while in Aziraphale's company has remarked on how overworked he is. At best, he might make a few mistakes that drags the questing out. At worst, he could really bollocks something up and put himself and, more importantly, Crowley at risk.

"You remember the part about there not being a set timeline on this curse, right?" he says dryly. "Don't push yourself. I'd rather see this done right than quick."

Aziraphale smiles at him nervously. "My friends have a tendency to fret. It's not so bad as all that."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to keep an eye on you," he decides.

.

.

.

They use the boots to get them to their first destination: The edge of the Deep Woods in eastern Brittany that borders an estate that is rather famous for its well-guarded crop of crystal apples.

"And how much magic did using those things just take out of you," Crowley thinks to ask when they come to a stop in a clearing in the forest with a large rock formation with runes carved into the side.

"Er."

He arches around to fix Aziraphale with a gimlet eye. There are a few beads of sweat gathered at his hairline that weren't there before they left the town.

"Right, enough of that unless it's absolutely necessary," he decrees. "I don't mind camping. If provisions are an issue, I can, um, help with hunting."

Aziraphale briefly casts his eyes to the heavens but doesn't argue in favor of taking a lacy handkerchief from his belt and daintily dabbing at his forehead. There's a fussy, monogrammed "A.M." done in blue at one corner.

"Well, we won't be approaching the orchard until false dawn, so we have a bit of time on our hands to gather a few supplies and get in a good rest."

"Resting, good," Crowley approves, withdrawing back to his position propped on Aziraphale's left shoulder. "I'm assuming false dawn is strategic and not just because you're an obnoxious morning person…?"

"Correct. The orchard is guarded by a hundred heavily armed simulacrums during the day and a small army of undead at night. There's a small window during false dawn when the undead go back to their rest but before the simulacrums activate that one can take advantage of if one has the proper spells and luck."

"That time gap seems awfully convenient."

"Oh, the gap is entirely manufactured, my good fellow," Aziraphale says cheerfully, walking up to the stone and tapping absent-minded fingertips against the carvings as he looks down at his feet and shuffles in place.

"Manufactured by who?"

Aziraphale slants him a glance and gives a rather puckish grin.

"No, go on," Crowley says, impressed despite himself.

"Well, I can't take full credit," the hero says but doesn't elaborate.

Finally seeming satisfied with his foot placement, he turns to put the rock at his right hip and begins taking long, measured strides into the woods, counting under his breath. After thirty paces, he stops and turns to face an innocuous looking tree whose only distinguishing feature is that its bark looks a bit smoother than its neighbors, like it's a favored scratching or rubbing post for the local wildlife. Or, Crowley supposes, as Aziraphale rubs careful hands over the surface, intriguing hero types. Said hero lets out a satisfied hum when he has, apparently, found the right grip; a set of ten runes flare from nothing to gold beneath his fingertips, and the space between his hands goes a bit fuzzy looking.

Aziraphale reaches into the fuzzy bit of the tree, his hand disappearing past the wrist into the bark, and pulls out what looks like a bundle of rope and wooden slats from the heart of the tree. Once freed of its secret prize, the tree resolidifies, leaving it looking once again like a normal tree.

"What," Crowley prompts flatly.

Aziraphale shakes out the rope and holds it up with both hands, revealing it to be a long rope ladder that resolves to a sturdy-looking iron hook at the top.

"There we are," he says, and begins running his palms systematically over each of the wooden slats that serve as rungs.

"Why. Is there a ladder. In a tree," Crowley prods acerbically. "Not enough room in your magic backpack?"

"Oh, this isn't my ladder," Aziraphale says absently, "or, at least, not my ladder alone. In fact—aha!"

He actually, legitimately, says "aha" like a troubadour in a street play. Crowley goes back to questioning his every life decision leading up to this point.

"There, you see?" Aziraphale says, holding up a slat about a third of the way down the ladder from the hook for Crowley's inspection. He angles his head to get a better look and realizes there are a series of small, neat tally marks etched into the wood. They're grouped in small bunches, usually no more than two to ten marks in a grouping and always followed by a set of two-to-three letters and four numbers. The letter patterns, he realizes a moment later, sometimes repeat, and the numbers are sequential; when he sees a grouping of three tallies followed by "A.M." it comes together in a rush.

"Is there a whole gaggle of heroes who have, what, created a blind spot in the orchard's defenses so you lot can conduct regular raids?" he demands, outraged and impressed in equal measures.

"Well, I don't think 'raid' is quite the right word," Aziraphale tutts, beginning to roll up the ladder into a neat bundle. "Those of us who quest regularly have just worked out a system, that's all. We take turns renewing the bit of spellwork that keeps the simulacrums, hmm, chronically challenged, shall we say, and keep track of who's been by and how much has been taken and when so we don't take too much too often and draw unwanted attention." He tucks the bundle of ladder under his arm and begins walking back deeper into the forest.

"Unwanted attention, like from the poor bastard whose property you're stealing?" Crowley drawls, mostly for show. It's clever, which he likes, though a bit too teamwork-y for his tastes.

Aziraphale scoffs. "We could strip half the trees bare per harvest and barely make a dent in that horrid man's wealth. Do you know he's part of a consortium to control the market on precious gems? He and four other barons across the continent have worked it out—each has an orchard specializing in a particular fruit. They run regular campaigns to sour relations with the dwarves to keep competition practically nonexistent. It's dirty pool, every way you examine it, and it drastically limits the opportunities to use the fruits for some of their lesser-known properties," he rants.

Crowley wishes he had an elbow and fist he could prop his head up on as he leans back and basks in the fussy ire radiating from the hero. "Oh, and what are those?"

"Emerald apples and ruby apples and pomegranates all have medicinal uses when properly ground down. Topaz oranges when juiced enhance spellwork. Diamond pears are just—well, they're delicious," he says with the vehemence of a person who has sampled a delicacy exactly once and begrudges any and all forces that have prevented them from indulging again.

"Are you telling me, in all seriousness, that you think people should be eating diamonds?" He packs as much delighted incredulity into his tone as is possible without hissing all over the place.

"It's a renewable resource!" Aziraphale bellows, flinging up his spare arm. "Their value only derives from artificial scarcity."

"And the fact that it's a bloody nuisance to grow crystal fruit trees," Crowley points out dryly. When Aziraphale shoots him a surprised glance, he shuffles his coils in a serpent-shrug. "Tried growing them one time, as an investment, and it's not bragging to say I have a bit of a green thumb, but… the buggers just wouldn't fruit."

Aziraphale's face softens into a mischievous grin. "Oh, you just need a bit of luck."

Crowley stares at him. "Are you having me on right now."

The hero beams and shrugs the shoulder Crowley isn't sitting on. "Well, I might be underselling it, a bit, but you just need to nudge them into fruiting once, and then they take care of themselves. An, um, infusion of luck in the soil usually does the trick."

He doesn't seriously think it, but because the hero has left a lot of room for interpretation: "Aziraphale, are you seriously suggesting I need to down a luck tonic and get frisky with a tree?" he asks with a lot of judgement.

As expected, the hero blushes crimson and splutters adorably. "No—NO! Blood! The blood of a seventh son of a seventh son, or someone else with a similar degree of luck in their pedigree—a tonic wouldn't do it. Just…" he makes a confusing gesture with his free hand like he's stirring something. "You put a bit of blood into normal fertilizing liquid. Works a treat."

"So you have your own orchard?"

"No, I… I discovered the trick by accident when I was younger," he says with a nervous tick of a smile. "Michael was adamant we'd violate some trade deals he has with the fruit barons and made me chop it down. I only tried again as a parting gift for my mother when she left for the new continent a few years ago; no one can get mad if it's not planted here." He smiles, sad and wistful. "She loves the taste of diamond pears."

That is… a lot of soppy emotions leaking out of the hero. It's making his scales itch.

"Yeah, but what's at the root of what makes the blood work, hmm?" he presses. "I know a bit of magic theory, you know. it's probably just that it's a, whatsit, a 'vital essence,' right? What's more vital than, well, you know…" He stretches his tail out and makes a pistoning motion in demonstration.

"Anthony," Aziraphale protests in aggrieved tones.

"S'what some clerics think the gods did to kickstart creation, isn't it?" he posits. "Just a thought. An alternative method for any seventh sons who find themselves a bit squeamish about blood."

"You are a prince," Aziraphale practically wails. "Shouldn't you have some sense of decorum?"

"I'm beginning to doubt how many royal curses you've claimed to have broken, if you still think royalty has any sort of decorum. Honestly, is this why your nickname is 'angel'?"

Aziraphale groans, rubbing his free hand over his face and coming to an abrupt halt. Crowley, who had found watching the play of horrified emotions across the hero's face far more entertaining than the passing greenery, looks around to discover they're in a small clearing with an established firepit, several large logs serving as benches, and a small pile of firewood next to a tree. There's even a bundle of even-length sticks wrapped up in a bit of broadcloth that he'd bet good money could be set up as a lean-to in poor weather.

"This is ridiculously organized. Seriously, who founded this fruit liberating scheme?" he prods. "Was it that prick Robin of Loxley? Are you part of a band of merry men? Is there a magical treehouse hiding in the foliage above our heads?"

"Oh, do shut up," Aziraphale gripes, dropping the ladder by one of the stumps and making toward the firewood.

Later, after Aziraphale had gotten a small fire going and they'd respectively taken care of their own feeding arrangements (Aziraphale via his pouch and Crowley via the nearby brush), Crowley makes it a point to nose about the ladder.

"Aziraphale, you're all over this," he says, outraged as he does up the sums automatically in his head. "If you'd kept even a fraction of a fraction of what this would net you year over year, you should be able to buy your own castle, never mind chasing a magical dowry."

Aziraphale looks up from where he's pulling out a dark brown set of trousers and a crimson shirt from his wardrobe pouch. "Oh, I only manage what finances I need to keep track of related to questing. Sandalphon and Michael manage the family finances."

Crowley fixes him with a stern look. "That does not answer my question."

"My dear fellow, you didn't ask me a question," Aziraphale says tartly, taking shirt and trousers and stepping behind a nearby tree, presumably to change.

He really wishes snakes could roll their eyes. "So why hasn't your family bought their own castle, then? Are you running your questing operations that close to the margins?"

"Oh, well, no," he says, voice hesitant and disembodied from behind the tree. "I'm meant to be securing the family fortune. Gabriel is quite sure that fulfilling this quest should, er, do it."

Crowley really doesn't like the sound of that. Because it sounds like he's standing between this ridiculous, nice-seeming sod and retirement. But, he reasons, if he's really as close as all that, it shouldn't take more than a few more quests to do it. He's really just delaying things, not completely mucking them up. Still, he thinks, eyeing the number of "A.M." engravings he can see going all the way back up to the first rung below the hook, something about this isn't adding up.

"What constitutes a fortune, then?" he asks.

"I'm sure I don't know," Aziraphale says, sounding a bit waspish as he comes back around the tree, changed, with his fawn colored trousers and white shirt in hand. Apart from the shock of white curls, he overall blends much better into the evening gloom, which Crowley realizes with some delight is likely the point. Oh, there's going to be skulking involved on this fruit mission, isn't there.

"I suppose there is seven of you, at least, never minding partners and kids," he concedes, realizing that he's finally found the nerve Anathema had been hinting at.

"Nine, actually, or ten if you count Daniel—that's Michael's husband—he's the only one of us married yet." Aziraphale tucks the clothes back in his pouch and then settles primly on a log. Crowley idly winds his way closer.

"Just trying to understand what I'm about to marry into, angel," he says in his most charming croon.

Aziraphale visibly winces and then looks caught out at having done so. "Well, I'm not privy to the particulars. It's not my area," he says with a particular cadence that Crowley thinks means it's something he's repeating. "I do know that our, um, estate is attached to and supports several nearby villages and hamlets. Michael says he's been investing in the region. And of course that means hosting and staying on friendly terms with a fair number of dignitaries and well-to-dos to ensure proper trade routes and, erm, suchlike."

"Villages doing well, then?" Crowley asks, coiling up next to him on the log.

"I'm assured they are," Aziraphale says with an apologetic sort of smile. "I'm afraid I'm not home often enough to make it down to see for myself, and Uriel doesn't like it when I 'check up on them.'"

This is, Crowley realizes with dawning fascination, an honest-to-goodness family intrigue that the hero doesn't appear to realize he's at the center of, or more likely the victim of.

"So Michael is the acting patriarch, Sandalphon does finances, sounds like Uriel is in charge of local management, and Gabriel… what, delegates?" he lays out. "What do your other brothers—siblings—do? Are they questing types like you?"

"Oh, of course not, I'm the only one with the proper amount of magical power and luck. It wouldn't be fair to expect the others to quest when they don't have my advantages," Aziraphale protests halfheartedly. "Well… Jophiel is an artist and musician—he helps Michael with the entertaining. And Raphael is apprenticing with the local physician. He's—well, he's considered a bit of a black sheep for it. He was in law for a while with Raguel at Michael's insistence, but he hated it." Aziraphale grins to himself, and then his face lights up in realization. "Oh, I really should give you proper profiles of them all, so you have a clear idea of your choices at the end of all this."

Crowley, who thinks he's beginning to understand the brand and splatter pattern of this particular shitshow, drawls, "Don't know that I could do better than the angel of the bunch."

Aziraphale blushes and frowns. "Oh, I doubt we would suit. I'm rather famous for not suiting, actually. Or infamous, as it were," he says with a shrug. "Well, we certainly have time, with the number of quests in front of us. You should get some sleep, your highness. I'll stand guard until it's time to make our way to the orchard."

"Absolutely not," Crowley says firmly. "You're going to try skulking without a good night's sleep? After a bit of seven-leaguing took it out of you earlier? Doesn't sound very professional to me."

Aziraphale huffs. "Well, someone has to stand guard, and you're right that I'd prefer not to spend energy on a spell before an endeavor like this. The sentinels are… formidable. Though I was planning on taking one of the top-off tonics before we embarked; I do know how to manage my own reserves, thank you."

"Yeah, not sure I'm ready to trust a tonic over something more surefire, no matter who recommends it. And, look, here's one area where I can earn my keep in all this," he says, puffing up a bit and oozing over the back of the log onto the forest floor. "Just don't... freak out," he cautions, and then before Aziraphale will have time to overthink what that means, he expands into his true size.

"Oh! My… word," Aziraphale exclaims, half rising from his seat in surprise. "Is this… part of the curse?" he asks faintly, eyeballing Crowley's giant girth and length warily.

"This is me full scale—ha!" he chuckles. "Bit like the magical speech, isn't it? Difficult to woo people, or fit into most indoor spaces, when you're big enough you can swallow most people whole. So, I shrink to a more manageable size."

"Manageable," Aziraphale echoes. "Quite. Yes, I suppose it would be difficult for you to ride in my hood like this."

"Yep. But!" he points out, curving and coiling into a crescent shape and patting the ground in the curve with the tip of his tail invitingly. "Very intimidating to would-be predators of professional questers. And, I, er, don't really need to sleep in this form. Part of the curse, I'm sure, meant to dwell on my misdeeds, really feel the march of time, you know." Certainly not part of his basic fae physiology.

To his credit, Aziraphale only hesitates a moment before settling down in the semicircle of space Crowley's created, using his pack for a pillow like any good traveler and instructing Crowley on what position the moon should be in when he should wake him. Crowley rests his chin on the curve of his coils and, once he's assured Aziraphale is truly asleep and unlikely to notice,^[15] unfurls and pins down a general aura of demonic menace around the clearing to serve as a "watch" so he can get a quick kip in as well.

.

.

.

Finding a pair of gigantic, golden snake eyes hovering over your prone form isn't the absolute worst way Aziraphale has woken up in recent memory, but he wouldn't recommend the experience. Luckily, or unluckily if it were different circumstances, he reaches first for his dagger and not his magic, which would likely have been far more devastating. As it is, the prince barely manages to rear back out of range of the instinctive swipe Aziraphale takes before his brain catches up with him. He aborts the follow-up lunge, which causes an unholy twinge in his lower back.

"Gods' sake, it's me—it's me!" Prince Anthony yelps, slithering clear to the other side of the fire and coiling up in an offended-looking boulder shape with his head sticking straight up and held back at an angle. "Are you this stabby with all of your betroth-eds—be-trotheds? Betroves…?" The tight spiral of coils relaxes somewhat as his outrage derails into the conjugation puzzle, leaving Aziraphale a moment to breathe through the pounding of his heart and resheathe his dagger.

"We are most certainly not betrothed," he says firmly, because it's true and practical and not at all apparently life-threatening. Though, perhaps, lifestyle threatening. But that isn't a productive thought, so he shelves it in favor of dragging himself to his feet and manually dusting down his trousers and shirt to give his hands something useful to do instead of tremble.

"It is traditional to save the spouse stabbing for after you've secured the throne," the prince agrees cheerfully. "Here, does this help?" And in a blink he's back to his smaller size: a manageable, slender two metres.

It does, but Aziraphale doesn't want to give him either the satisfaction or a potential complex, so he skips right to, "My apologies, dear fellow. You gave me a bit of a startle."

"'A bit'?"

"Yes, well, there is a little feel of something dangerous lingering about, now that I'm paying attention. Perhaps some nefarious creature passed us by in the night. I think I was subconsciously a little keyed up." He pauses to see if he can pinpoint exactly what he's sensing, but it's like smoke on the wind.

"Oh, really?" the prince asks, craning his head about and looking into the darkness of the woods. "I didn't hear anything."

"Well, they probably saw an intimidating giant snake and thought better of coming close," Aziraphale says, unable to keep the tart finish off his tone. Really, did the silly thing not have a lick of sense? Anyone would have been startled by such a wakeup.^[16]

"Maybe I'll just shout at you from across the clearing next time," the prince says. "Is it safe to come back over?"

Aziraphale is still too ruffled to resist rolling his eyes. "Yes. We really should get a wiggle on if we want to reach the orchard in time."

"Excuse m—a wiggle on?" the prince demands.

"Er, well." He blushes. "In retrospect, that does come across a bit species-ist in present company, doesn't it," he acknowledges. "My apologies."

"First, attempted regicide, and then name calling?" the prince says, slithering over and crawling up Aziraphale's outstretched arm without hesitation. "Someone needs to explain to you orders of escalation."

Aziraphale thinks the prince sounds far too delighted to have taken true offense to any of his admittedly poor behavior in the past, good gods, only five minutes, so he settles on a beleaguered sigh instead of any verbal objections.

The prince twines twice around his neck, leaving a few loops of his tail around Aziraphale's upper arm—his non-dominant arm, at least—like a bit of tacky jewelry.

"Comfortable?" Aziraphale asks dryly as he observes the lazy coils and tells himself it's likely a good thing the prince seems at ease enough to use him like a mobile tree, given the givens.

"You might consider a softer fabric for your cloak," the prince says, turning his neck like a scaley periscope and flicking his tongue out close enough to Aziraphale's eyes to make him flinch back on instinct.

He can't resist the bitchy squint he lobs back, though a faint blush rides hard on the heels of it. The prince, who is (currently) a snake, wins the staring contest, obviously.

.

.

.

The walk to the far wall of the orchard that faces the forest is blessedly silent, and they arrive with nearly twenty minutes to spare. Plenty of time for Aziraphale to walk a fair length of it, running his fingertips and just a trickle of magic along the brickwork to find an area with relatively few sentinels nearby. He silently encourages the prince to decamp his person, and then sheds backpack, cloak, and all but one pouch. He extracts dark leather gloves and a bit of dark cloth from his backpack and uses them to hide his pale hands and hair respectively, leaving only his face to reckon with for the notice-me-not spellwork he's going to layer over himself.^[17]

"You look like a pirate," says Prince Anthony, somehow infusing both deep judgment and amusement into an almost soundless whisper.

He glares and carefully unravels the ladder, running a hand over the length of it with a stern admonishment to Be Quiet so the hook landing and any inevitable scrapping when he climbs up won't be noticeable.

"Can I come? Or should I stay here?" Prince Anthony asks, and Aziraphale blinks down at him. Well, it would certainly be safer for the prince to stay behind, but he can already see the value in sending him along some of the higher, further-flung branches and potentially increasing their haul without affecting either their speed or likelihood of the removals noticed.

"If you like," he whispers back. "The extra help wouldn't go amiss."

Soon enough, it's time, and Aziraphale quickly ascends the wall with the prince wrapped rather more snuggly around his shoulders than usual. At the top, he pauses to confirm the undead sentinels are indeed shuffling slowly back toward the center of the orchard where their mausoleum resides, and that no simulacrums have yet emerged.^[18] The prince, following his gaze, makes a muffled, outraged-sounding noise and squeezes tight enough that Aziraphale is obliged to shrug pointedly to get him to loosen his grip.

Once he judges the sentinels are a safe enough distance away, he swiftly draws up the ladder and repositions it on the other side of the wall for both their descent and upcoming exit. From there it's a quiet, semi-shuffling walk (to imitate the sentinels, just in case) on spell-muffled boots to a tree a few rows in from the wall.

He urges Prince Anthony to start slithering up the trunk before he rather ungracefully pulls himself up on one of the lowest branches and swings a leg over so he can clamber upright. The apple pruning is done selectively, with only one to two apples taken in carefully spaced intervals to avoid obvious holes in the fruiting clusters. His gloves are pre-spelled to help loosen the fruits from the branch to minimize tugging and rustling, so it's quick work to gather seven from the furthest points he can reach, shoving them unceremoniously into his pouch. A faint hiss catches his attention, and he turns to see the prince has contorted himself to carry two fruits awkwardly in his coils as he scootches closer on a branch, a third held in his unhinged jaws.

Aziraphale urges him closer, relieves him carefully of the fruit, and bags the apples as the prince launches himself up his chest to hook over his shoulders and coil back up. Aziraphale spares a hand to clutch the prince to him as he jumps down from the branch and then quickly walks back to the wall. Back up to the top, and he tosses the ladder down and themselves after. He barely pauses to bundle all his discarded things up before he's jogging back to the treeline, the prince twining more securely around his upper arms to offset the bouncing.

Once they're back in the shelter of the trees, he ducks behind a large trunk to catch his breath and mutters a quick focusing incantation to cast out his senses and see if there's any unusual activity buzzing about the orchard.

"What's wrong?" the prince whispers, snout nearly inside his ear. Aziraphale jumps.

"Shh, nothing so far—let me concentrate," he snips, quietly.

To his credit, the prince doesn't say anything or even move for the following ten minutes Aziraphale spends casting his awareness out. When he's relatively sure the simulacrums have deployed and no one's noticed their infiltration, he lets out a long breath and sags onto the ground in relief.

"All clear?" the prince guesses with a murmur.

"I believe so," Aziraphale breathes out.

"Why do I get the impression that for all you said that was a dangerous thing to do, that, actually, it was batshit insane and nearly suicidal?" Prince Anthony asks in a conversational tone.

Aziraphale can't help the giggle that escapes him, his head swimming a bit from the adrenaline crash. "There's a reason so much prep goes into it, and that only people predisposed to luck even make the attempt."

"I got a look at those nightmares—those were honest to gods zombie warriors, weren't they. What, do the simulacrums have whirly blades and can shoot fireballs?" Anthony demands, sounding like he's warming up to his outrage.

"Nonsense, blades and fire might damage the trees. They have eyes all over them with movement-trigger spells that will turn flesh creatures to stone."

"Oh, of course, of course. And here I was thinking you were easing us into all this with one of the easier quests."

"This was one of the easy ones," he retorts. "Most of the factors here are well understood and unchanging, which means almost every element can be prepared for well in advance. And as you well know, I and others have further rigged the situation for success and have had quite a lot of opportunity to work out most of the kinks between us."

"Wonderful."

"Well, we did come away with more than I had hoped for, thanks to you," Aziraphale says, turning to favor the prince with a smile. "Very well done, dear fellow."

The prince makes a few scoffing noises before slinking to the ground. "Don't mention it. Here, get yourself put back together so we can get the hell away from the Orchard of Doom and go leave your merry men a love note."

Aziraphale grins and doesn't argue, feeling too chuffed to let grumpy princes ruin his mood. It's always auspicious to begin a quest with an unqualified success, and he's feeling optimistic about the tentative if prickly partnership forming with the prince. Perhaps he'll come away from this whole thing with a friend.

¹⁵ He snores just a little, which Crowley tries and fails not to find a tiny bit adorable while he files the information away as potential blackmail. ^{[return to text]}

¹⁶ In fact, Crowley had thought it would be a smashing good prank to play on the hero and hadn't counted on him having quite so well-developed reflexes. ^{[return to text]}

¹⁷ He'd tried different types of masks over the years, but they inevitably shifted or itched or muffled the enunciation of the sorts of spells that required actual words to ensure accurate intention. In the end, it was easier to just put a few more layers of the spell over his face. ^{[return to text]}

¹⁸ He'd checked the runework etched into a portion of the wall that controlled what one of his colleagues liked to call the "alarm clock spell," and everything had seemed in order, but it didn't do to get sloppy. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

"OK, first of all, did you know about the zombie warriors and medusa simulacrums?" Crowley demands the very first instant he corners Anathema alone upon their return.

"Keep your voice down," Anathema advises, looking far too relaxed and cozy and not risking her own neck in her chair by the fire. "You'll wake Aziraphale, my liege."

Crowley winds up and down the hearthstones restlessly, keeping his gaze fixed on the witch so his neck does the weird unmoving thing she's said creeps her out. "This isn't even a proper spell ingredient. There are so many other options for sources of income that you could have bullshitted a quest item around," he yells, quietly.

He and Aziraphale had weighed the pros and cons of the three-day journey on foot back to London versus the magical strain of using the boots. In the end, Aziraphale had admitted he'd probably net more magical renewal if they spent the three days resting in London where he'd have a proper bed. And so, just as soon as he'd shaken the motion sickness off, Crowley had bullied the hero into eating a full breakfast and then taking a nap.

Anathema placidly continues working on the shawl she's knitting stylized, renewable "never lose" runes into. "I happened to have heard through a mutual friend of ours that there's a whole network of heros and seventh sons who have a system worked out for retrieving crystal apples relatively safely. It seemed likely that any hero who answered your advert would either be part of the network or could be referred to someone who is."

It's sensible, is the thing, which just infuriates him even more.

"How do I not know about this network?" he hisses instead.

"It's a very discreet club, by necessity," Anathema points out, "And only really useful to people who fit a certain, er, type."

"It's discrimination is what it is."

Anathema rolls her eyes. Given that Crowley is only protesting as a way to vent his ire at accidentally volunteering himself for far more peril than he'd intended, he thinks that's probably fair. He wouldn't want to join the club even if he was invited.^[19]

"I have a lead on the mirror," she says, with the firm authority of someone prepared to dig a grave for the previous topic of conversation, if necessary. "Apparently it was in the wind for awhile because it got mis-tagged at an estate sale. A family in Tadfield ended up with it. I sent an inquiry and they're willing to negotiate since it isn't what they were looking for in the first place."

"Tadfield," Crowley muses, "that isn't far. Can walk that easy."

Anathema quirks an eyebrow at him. "Not a fan of the boots?"

Crowley invents a temporary rattle for his tail just to shake it at her. "The blessed idiot is running on magical fumes, and the boots tap a lot of power from the wearer to operate—very inefficient rune work, if you ask me. Anyway, I told him to lay off unnecessary magic."

Anathema gets a queer look in her eye. "You're telling him how he's allowed to use his magic?"

Crowley, who has a finely developed sense for when he's accidentally slithered into deep shit and needs to beat a hasty retreat, freezes. "Er. Technically, yeah. But, look, Anathema, work with me, I need him alive and healthy to complete these quests, yeah? I just told him it's not like we're on a deadline, so he doesn't need to push himself." At her skeptical look, he jabs the tip of his tail toward the stairs where the hero is up sleeping in their rented room. "Weren't you the one telling him literally two days ago what quests he should and shouldn't be taking on? Convinced him to take a three-day holiday, didn't I?"

Anathema blinks and glances up toward the stairs in surprise. "You're staying?"

"Can't have him passing out in the middle of a quest," he says reasonably. "Magical exhaustion takes weeks to recover from. An ounce of prevention and all that."

She squints down at him. "And he listened to you?"

"I'm very charismatic."

She makes a disbelieving sort of noise, but then she glances back up at the stairs again, thoughtfully. "Well, I can't argue with the results. But don't get into the habit of regulating his magic use. It should be his to use as he sees fit, even if it's stupidly."

"I'm sensing this is a 'don't be like the Big Bad Brothers' thing," he says dryly. She doesn't say anything, but the look she gives him is very speaking.

.

.

.

When Aziraphale can manage to quiet the nagging little voice in the back of his head admonishing him that his client or his brothers or the people who depend on the Messenger name to subsist are counting on him and so why isn't he doing more and doing it more efficiently and with more aplomb, he's representing the family after all, what will people think you wouldn't want to disappoint them…

Well, when he can muffle it, he knows how to wallow in a perfectly good sloth. The trick is figuring out how to settle his nerves enough to ease into it.

On the first day of their holiday in London, he offers to help Anathema with her current scrying project three times before Prince Anthony gives up merely heckling him into continuing to read his book and demands Aziraphale take him upstairs and read aloud to him. The serpent drapes himself over the headboard and complains loudly in Aziraphale's ear about how dreadfully depressing his current selection is until he gives in and switches to something more lighthearted.

At dinner, he's eyeing the stew pot wondering if he dares impose for another serving when suddenly the prince, who to that point had been content to lounge over the back of an empty chair, suddenly insists that Aziraphale describe to him, in detail, how the stew tastes since he's a "big fan" of stew and isn't in a fit state to enjoy it. Aziraphale narrows his eyes but doesn't comment. By dessert, Anathema is in on the conspiracy and keeps sneaking cookies from the tin Madame Tracey left on his plate and insisting that once they've left the tin they can't be put back. Newt, with a goofy smile, gamely tops off his wine glass without prompting. Aziraphale wants to be put out at the obvious and obnoxious manipulation, but it doesn't hold quite the same sting it does at home when it's friends encouraging him to enjoy himself to the fullest.

By the time dinner wraps up, the three humans are pleasantly tipsy, and the serpent prince is radiating smug satisfaction.

"Read me another funny one," he demands imperiously, slipping up the side of the armchair in front of the fire and coiling up on one of the arms.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. "I'm not your court jester," he says in what even he realizes is a prissy tone. With a twinge of chagrin, he immediately relents. "Oh, all right."

After an hour, when his throat is beginning to feel a bit scratchy, and the fire is making him pleasantly drowsy, the prince slinks up over his shoulders.

"Take me up. The witch's stairs make my scales itch."

The witch in question, snugged up to a dozing Newt on the facing loveseat, shoots the prince a fairly murderous look for the insult but goes back to her own reading without comment.

Aziraphale lets out a sigh, but he is still feeling worn down now that he doesn't have anything immediate he has to do, like his body realizes it has permission to feel the effects of too much questing. "Very well," he says and ascends the stairs to deposit the prince in his blanket nest and himself on the bed. He's out within minutes.

After breakfast the next morning, Anathema shoos him back upstairs so she can host a client consultation in the living area without interruption. At a loss, he slumps back onto the bed and picks his book up again. The prince stirs from where he'd been dozing on the windowsill.

"You going back to bed?" Anthony asks, sounding adorably fuzzy, head weaving a little as he raises it from his coils to get a better look at Aziraphale.

"Oh, no. Just waiting for Anathema to finish with some clients."

The prince makes a displeased hum and then stretches from the windowsill to the bed's headboard and down over Aziraphale's near shoulder, forcing him to raise up his arms to give him room.

"Whatever are you doing," Aziraphale grumbles, although he thinks he knows the gist, based on the previous day's precedents.

"Finding myself a better warm spot," the prince replies easily and then oozes into a looping drizzle on Aziraphale's chest, somehow managing to feel as immovable as a bag of wet sand. Aziraphale squints and tries to determine if he's made himself just a tiny bit bigger to achieve the effect.

"I know what you're doing," he says eventually.

"Trying to sleep?" Anthony counters. "'Trying' being the operative word?"

"I don't like being manipulated." Though he tries, he isn't able to keep all the brittleness from his voice.

The prince, who wasn't moving in the first place, manages to give the impression of having turned to stone. After a long moment, he raises his head to look Aziraphale in the eye.

"Sorry," he says, and actually sounds it. "You didn't seem like you were going to actually let yourself rest. Thought you wouldn't like me nagging you to do it, so…" Somehow, a small undulation gives the impression of a shrug.

Well, that's certainly true, Aziraphale concedes. He wouldn't like to be nagged any more than he likes the creeping feel of being manipulated, even as well intended as these recent ones have obviously been meant.

"Why don't we compromise, hmm?" he suggests. "I will endeavor to try harder to rest, and if I start to slip, you may remind me of my promise to do so."

Anthony bobs his head once in acknowledgement. After a moment, he adds, "Are you going to take a nap or what. Because I wasn't lying when I said you're a superior warm spot." His tail twitches and he hastily tacks on. "Er, if it's not too weird. I've been a snake long enough now that I, ah, sometimes forget people don't normally..."

"Treat other people like a particularly convenient tree? Or hot water bottle?" Aziraphale offers archly.

"Right."

Aziraphale stops holding back his grin. "This is not even in contention for the list of strangest things I've been asked to do. I once traveled with a woman who insisted I never look her in the face because she feared I would be struck dumb by her beauty. We had to climb a mountain. It was an absolute nightmare."

The prince relaxes back into his oozing posture, resting his chin on the topmost coil. "Did anyone else succumb to her face?"

"Well, she certainly seemed to turn heads, but I certainly didn't see anyone lose their power of speech. And in any event, it was inevitable that I ended up looking at her quite a lot, by accident, and I can't say I ever lost my head over it."

The prince makes an agreeable sounding noise, and though he doesn't have eyelids to slip closed, Aziraphale gets the distinct impression he's starting to drift off again.

"Oh, go on," Aziraphale says, giving up and setting his book aside so he can settle properly with his head on the pillow. "I suppose it's true that sleep is the fastest way to restore my magical reserves."

The prince grumbles, "S'the whole bloody point of the break."

After that, Aziraphale unkinks enough to fully indulge in a good sloth: cozying up to the fire with a book and a cocoa, waking up indulgently late, and only stepping out once to pick up a few delicacies to share with his hosts, including a few more of the honeyed mice for the prince.

The prince, for his part, keeps his word and quits the demands. When Aziraphale thinks on it, he finds he's rather touched that Anthony, who must be chafing to get back to his true form, can accept such a significant delay in the quest so wholeheartedly.

The serpent rotates between lightly roasting himself on the hearthstones, disappearing into the folds of his blanket nest in their rented room, and stuffing himself in the small space between the back of the wingback chair and Aziraphale's neck.

"I can tell your magic's coming back," he slurs happily on the evening of the third night. "You're better than that bloody blanket at this point."

Aziraphale shifts awkwardly and with a huff reaches up and plucks meaningfully at a near loop of scales. "You're going to give me a crick in my neck, you silly thing. Here, just, bring at least a little bit of you out from behind there."

The prince mutters something that sounds uncomplimentary but gives in to demand and droops down the back third of his tail to wrap snugly around Aziraphale's upper arm, freeing up enough space that Aziraphale can tip his head back without feeling like he's crushing him.

"Do you think you'll have a spring wedding?" Anathema asks from the facing couch, having watched the proceedings with a suspiciously blank expression.

Aziraphale feels his face flame up but casts a significant look at where Newt is currently curled up next to her, head in her lap and snoring softly. "And has dear Agnes written to congratulate you on the number and disposition of your children yet?" he lobs back in the same politely curious tone.

Prince Anthony pauses in his restless repositioning and snorts a laugh.

Anathema narrows her eyes at him but yields with a regal nod of her head. Aziraphale purses his lips in satisfaction and resolutely ignores the muffled snickering tickling behind his left ear.

.

.

.

The morning of the fourth day, Crowley watches the neighborhood rooster in the next yard over and, when he sees the daft thing starting to stir, turns and wakes Aziraphale with a loud, "Morning, angel. Rise and shine!" from the safe distance of the windowsill.

Aziraphale starts awake and then whines a wordless protest as he rubs a freshly manicured hand over his face.

"Ready to go pick up a great honking mirror?" Crowley asks at the same just-too-loud volume. He's not a morning person either, but he can also choose to stay awake right through the night without consequence, so.

"I thought you wanted me to sleep. Oh, good gods, what time is it," the hero pouts, draping an arm over his eyes.

"How're your magical reserves? Feeling tip top?"

"... Full enough."

Well, that's certainly a thing, Crowley thinks in bemusement. Three days of rest has Aziraphale fairly glowing with the delicious warmth of banked magic. He thought the hero just recovered faster than the average sorcerer, perhaps as a quirk of either his lineage or his status. If this is just a fraction of his full power, though… Well, reasons motivating some shithead siblings become just a bit easier to deduce is all.

"Well, then," he says, scooting over to the headboard so he can hang obnoxiously over Aziraphale's prone face, "chop chop, let's get a move on. This curse won't break itself."

Aziraphale's mouth purses. "You are a terror."

"That's no way to talk to your fiancé."

The careful way the hero shifts his arm to grab at the pillow under his head as he squints a glare up at Crowley makes the serpent hastily ribbon back to the windowsill, cackling.

Later, weighed down with provisions and camping equipment enough to last them the two-day round trip it will be to fetch the mirror, they bid Anathema farewell and head east out of the township.

It takes exactly forty minutes for Crowley to remember why he hates traveling by (relative) foot everywhere, and why Aziraphale likely over relies on the boots.

"Booooooring," he groans, slipping further out of the hood so that the way he languishes over Aziraphale's shoulders has the proper dramatic effect.

"I seem to remember a certain someone telling me how irresponsible it would be to use the boots for such a short trip, when I'm still not fully recovered."

"That was before someone realized your reserves are like a bloody bottomless well," Crowley protests, stretching up to drape his head upside down over the top of Aziraphale's curls in proper despair. Ooh, that's nice and tickly-soft and warm.

"No, I'm afraid I've been quite convinced," Aziraphale says breezily, though Crowley can feel that he's begun to break out in a light sweat in the warm morning air. "What if I'm called upon to do some sort of daring feat of magic to convince Deirdre to part with the mirror, and the tiny bit of power that it would take to cross such a short distance is what would leave me just shy."

"Hold on, Deirdre?" Crowley asks, flopping off Aziraphale's head so he can stretch out and back around to look him in the face. "Do you know the woman we're meeting?"

Aziraphale blinks back at him innocently. "Didn't I mention? The Youngs are dear friends. I'd wager they'll put us up for the night if we ask nicely."

"You," Crowley pronounces, "are a bastard. So I take it whatever you use up would be offset by a night in a proper bed?"

The hero hums in satisfaction, looking far too smug.

"Yeah, all right, point taken. You know your business, and I should keep my scales to myself," he gripes, slithering back and going full into the hood for a sulk.

"Oh, don't be like that," Aziraphale says, sounding contrite. "I was pushing far beyond what was reasonable or safe, and you were right to point it out. It wasn't only myself I was putting in danger, and that was inexcusable."

"This is just you making me stew because I woke you up early, then, isn't it."

"Hold on tight, my dear!" Aziraphale advises before fixing the outer borders of Tadfield firmly in his mind and stepping with intention.

¹⁹ False. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

"Oh, Aziraphale, I was hoping it would be you," Deirdre Young says when she opens the door and sees him standing on the front stoop. "Be a dear and fetch the Them in for lunch? They're in Hogsback. That and keeping them entertained this afternoon can be payment in full," she adds, reaching out to give him a fond pat on the cheek and then closing the door in his face.

Aziraphale sighs into the ensuing silence.

"Dear friends, eh?" Prince Anthony remarks from the caverns of the cloak's hood.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale says, turning and heading back down the lane to find the trail that leads to the abandoned quarry the Them like to haunt.

"Not even an offer of a glass of lemonade," the prince says, sounding like he might genuinely be offended on his behalf. "S'bit rude." He slinks out of the hood and makes a few agitated loops around Aziraphale's shoulders until he's settled in like an indignant scarf.

"It's just how questing is," Aziraphale assures him. "Tradition dictates that you must prove yourself before you can receive a favor."

"I thought she wanted to be rid of the bloody thing."

"Well, I'd hardly call fetching in a group of children from the woods and playing games with them for a few hours much of a hardship."

Crowley makes a skeptical sound but keeps further comments to himself, for which Aziraphale is grateful.

Halfway into the woods, Aziraphale hears a low whine from somewhere to the left of the trail, and he pauses.

"What's wrong?" Prince Anthony asks, raising his head from where he'd been idly resting it looking over Aziraphale's shoulder.

Aziraphale shushes him half-heartedly, peering into the brush. Without the noise of his own footsteps, it's easier to pinpoint the sound when it starts again. This time, the whining is accompanied by a rustling sound. He sighs and turns off the trail.

The prince flicks a tongue out to taste the air. "Is that... a dog? No, not..." he trails off, sounding disgruntled.

Aziraphale rounds a large outcropping of rocks and brush and discovers a small terrier cowering in the leaf litter, his back paw caught in some sort of archaic-looking hunter's snare.

"Honestly," he tuts, "no one in Tadfield has set snares in the last generation." He pulls out his spectacles and peers at the seeming dog, just to confirm his suspicions. "A hellhound."

"You—what?" Prince Crowley shrills, shifting in agitation.

"Based on the completely inappropriate trap, likely from the Night Court. They're not as up-to-date on modern technology, I find." He sighs and kneels down in the brush, digging out a bit of jerky from his pouch. "Anthony, would you mind terribly relocating to one of these trees for a tick? I'm not sure how he'll react to you once I've loosened the snare."

"Oh, so we're freeing the hellhound?" the prince demands, but nevertheless shimmies with admirable haste down from Aziraphale's shoulders and up the trunk of a nearby oak.

"The glamorous life of a seventh son, I'm afraid," he says in a cooing voice as he awkwardly scootches closer to the glamoured terrier with the jerky extended. "I'm sure my bloodline doesn't hurt either, does it, you bloodthirsty little thing," he says with shammed enthusiasm.

It's working, at least. The dog's short tail has relaxed and made a few cautiously hopeful wags, and his ears are pricking forward in interest.

"Are you saying someone intended you, in particular, to find this beast?" Anthony asks doubtfully. He's made his way out onto a branch so he can hang his head down just above where Aziraphale is kneeling.

"Of course not. But he is obviously a quest element, and those tend to gravitate toward the path of those particularly inclined to questing," he says, cautiously extending a hand toward the hound's back paw now that the treat seems to have made the daft thing look less likely to snap his fingers off in fear.

"So we're due to find mysterious youths deep in the forest begging for a crust of bread? Maybe an old woman who needs help finding her walking stick?" the prince drawls.

"You jest, but…" Aziraphale says lightly, freeing the dog's paw and stroking a bit of healing intention over the rumpled fur. "There we are, little fellow. If Adam's not your intended master, I'll eat my hat."

While he straightens and brushes the dirt from his knees, the dog makes a few snuffling circuits of his feet before plopping down by his left foot and looking up at him expectantly. Aziraphale fixes him with a stern look. "Now, this is my friend, Prince Anthony," he says, pointing up to the serpent dangling from the branch above his head. When he's certain the dog has spotted the prince, he continues firmly, "A good dog would leave him be. And you are a good dog, are you not?" The dog gives a low-voiced woof, tail ticking briefly in acknowledgement. Aziraphale beams at him and fishes out another tidbit of jerky in reward. "Very good," he praises as he hands it down to the dog's delight.

When he looks up to Prince Anthony, it's to see possibly the most judgmental expression he's ever seen on a serpent before aimed at him.

"Is a white stag about to appear in a clearing? Are birds going to start alighting on your shoulders?" he asks flatly.

Aziraphale draws himself up with dignity. "No, but I expect an irritable serpent will if he doesn't want to muss his scales in the dirt."

The prince makes a few protests composed almost entirely of consonants but doesn't hesitate to lower himself down to meet the downturned palm Aziraphale extends up to him. Just to make a point, Aziraphale thinks, Anthony slithers down his arm not to his shoulders but the cloak hood instead.

The dog trots amiably at his side the rest of the way to the quarry. His ears prick forward in excitement as they get closer and begin to hear the indistinct, high-pitched voices of children drifting up from the carved-out earth. Aziraphale is just able to distinguish Adam's voice from the rest of the group when the dog gives a sharp yip and sprints ahead.

By the time Aziraphale reaches the lip of the quarry and looks over, Adam and his friends are shrieking with delight over the dog, who is rolling in ecstasies in his young master's lap.

"Oh, come on," Prince Anthony mutters, and Aziraphale startles, not having felt him creep up onto his shoulder. "How could you have possibly known the dog was for that kid."

"Oh, well," he says, realizing with a prick of guilt that he probably shouldn't have been so chatty about his suspicions. It's a fairly open secret, he supposes, to all but Adam's parents, which he's always assumed is something inherent in Adam's magical circumstances. Still feeling a bit wrong-footed about it, though, he admits, "Er, Adam is a changeling. Night Court, I think. And I remembered that today would be his eleventh birthday." He scowls as it suddenly occurs to him why Deirdre was keen on him "entertaining" for the afternoon.

"An… eleven-year-old Night Court changeling?" Prince Anthony confirms, sounding a bit faint.

Aziraphale turns to look at him. The prince looks positively green in the scales. "My goodness, Anthony, are you feeling all right?"

"Er, sure. Yep. Very all right," he says, staring intently at the group of children.

Aziraphale squints at him, but before he can follow up he hears a cheerful, "Halloo, Mr. Messenger! Did you come for my birthday? Did you bring Dog?" from Adam.

He turns his attention down to the children, who are clambering up the partial staircase, partial ladder they've constructed up the near side of the quarry with bits of smaller, loose stone and sturdy tree branches.^[20]

"Happy birthday, dear boy," Aziraphale says. "I came to fetch something from your mother, but as luck would have it I happened upon your new friend along the way here."

"Proper luck or your sort of luck?" Pepper asks shrewdly.

"My sort, quite likely," Aziraphale admits, awkwardly accepting a rather sticky hug from Brian, a more enthusiastic one from Adam, and a polite handshake from Wensleydale. Pepper merely offers him a regal nod, which he returns solemnly because he doesn't dare return it any other way.

"That's brilliant," Adam enthuses, hugging the dog to his chest, who is enduring the treatment with a martyr's rapture. "Mum can't say no if you found it, Mr. Messenger. Might lead to a curse," he says with rather more verve than Aziraphale feels is appropriate. "Oh, he's just how I imagined!"

"What's that on your shoulder?" Brian asks, and then immediately answers himself with, "Cor, is that a snake? Wicked!"

The children cluster impossibly closer on his left side, and he feels the prince stiffen and then swing back around the right side of his neck. A coil braces itself on his right shoulder as the prince rears up and peers down at the children from over the top of Aziraphale's head.

"Ah, well," he hedges, wondering whether the prince will feel comfortable being exposed to others they meet on their quest. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought to ask before leaving Anathema's this morning.

"It's not a snake, it's a fae demon," Adam pronounces, staring up at the prince with his admittedly sometimes quite unnerving gaze.

"Er," Aziraphale says, not sure where to go with that without the prince's input. He's not surprised the enchantment would be obvious to a child like Adam, though of course the dear boy hasn't enough experience to grasp the nuance.

"Young ones, I am in fact a prince cursed to this wretched form until a hero can complete seven mystical quests," Prince Anthony says, adopting the charming, lofty airs he'd first spoken to Aziraphale with before they'd gotten comfortable with one another.

Adam's face screws up into a disbelieving grimace. "Sure, mate."

"Oi, Mr. Messenger, is this nob exploiting you?" Pepper demands.

"My dear, may I remind you that I am also a 'nob'?" he sighs. "And no, my family will be rewarded for my help, as is proper. And in any case, it's the right thing to do," he admonishes. "Rich or poor, no one deserves to be unjustly cursed."

Pepper rolls her eyes, and Wensleydale pipes up, "Actually, my mum says you barely make poor clients pay anything and make the rich ones pay through the nose."

Uncomfortably aware of the prince using the top of his head as a footstool, Aziraphale blushes. "My dear, it's called sliding scale rates."

"I really, really want to hear more about this," Prince Anthony says fervently, already losing the grand tone. "Do you have service tiers? Or do you turn it around and say you offer discounts and payment plans for special circumstances?" He lets out a theatrical gasp. "Angel, are you fleecing me?"

Aziraphale sighs so hard he feels a little lightheaded. "If you'll recall, my dear, you put out an advert and preset the terms of the reward."

"Yeah," the prince drawls, "didn't stop you from immediately trying to weasel out of marrying me. And hearing a bit about your siblings, I'm starting to think you're trying to short change me."

The children immediately break out in a clamor.

"Are you getting married, Mr. Messenger?"

"My aunt says she'd cross the street sooner than meet one of the other Messenger brothers."

"Offering a person as a reward is a form of human trafficking!"

"I didn't know you could get married to a fae demon. Pretty wicked, though, I guess."

Aziraphale raises his hands in a bid for peace. "Enough!" he exclaims. "Adam, your mother sent me to fetch you all back for your birthday lunch. We should really be heading back."

"Are you staying?" Adam asks, reluctantly setting Dog down when the hellhound wriggles and whines.

"For the afternoon, at least," Aziraphale promises. "Your mother asked me to be the birthday entertainment."

Pepper groans. "You're not going to do your magic act are you?"

He feels the prince perk up with interest and fights down the instinct to beg him to get off of his head and resume a more dignified position. He has a feeling it would only lead to the prince trying to relocate even more of his length atop his head.

"Not if you're going to be rude," he says, fighting to keep the petulance he's feeling at being bullied by an eleven-year-old out of his voice.

"He has a magic act?" Anthony asks with undisguised glee.

"Yeah," Brian confirms, sounding remarkably judgemental for a boy with dirt smears over roughly seventy percent of his face, "he's sort of rubbish at it. We like it better when he lets us test luck games on him."

Deciding he's quite finished with the whole scene, Aziraphale simply starts walking back the way they came. As expected, the children trail after him. Unsurprisingly, they strike up a friendly debate around which of his sleight of hand tricks is the worst.

Prince Anthony slides down off his head and resumes his impression of a black-and-red scarf. "Children: absolute devils, but what can you do?" he says in a tone that Aziraphale supposes is meant to be commiserating but comes off as charmed.

.

.

.

Lunch is a raucous affair, and Crowley is content to spend it feigning a nap by resting his chin on Aziraphale's shoulder and very quietly panicking. Deirdre had taken Aziraphale's introduction of him as a cursed prince in moderately sympathetic stride. Her husband, Arthur, had seemed a bit more skeptical, but in a non-specific way that made Crowley think he was confused about the concept more than truly suspicious. This and Aziraphale's apparent willingness to roundly disregard Adam's pronouncement of his actual true form were the only things keeping Crowley from completely spiraling.

Story time:

Once upon a time, one of Crowley's cons saw him serving in a temporary, minor capacity at the Night Court. In a twist that, really, he should have seen coming given his luck, he'd committed the sort of stupidly banal but unforgivable faux pas that had put him in the bad books of one of the princes. The only way to discharge the debt, he was told, was to perform an Important Task.

The prince and his consort were expecting both a son and a correspdonding infanticide attempt in the coming months. There were already plans to feign the child stillborn and have the prince's trusted assistant turn up a child. But in a double-bluff that even Crowley found a bit paranoid, they wanted Crowley to exchange the fae infant with a human child.

To the prince's specifications, he'd chosen a gentry family called the Dowlings and called in a few favors to ensure both a pilgrimage to a nearby city near her expecting time and a freak summer storm that would waylay their return home near a specific temple where he had an insider ready to make the swap.

Everything, he thought, had gone to plan. And yet, here was a full-blood fae child with (now) King Lucifer's chin and Lillith's eyes spending his afternoons playing pretend with the local village kids instead of being trained in the running of an estate and how to be a pretentious twat.

Crowley is so fucked.

"Oh, Aziraphale, let me show you that mirror," Deirdre is saying when Crowley tunes back in. The children have tumbled out of doors with the glamoured hellhound, and Aziraphale is helping her and Arthur clear the table and stow the leftovers.

"Oh, excellent. It will be good to see how big it is, in case I'll need to charm it to carry back," Aziraphale says as he, hold on, renews the preservation spellwork on the Youngs' icebox.

"Ta for that, mate," Mr. Young says.

Crowley prods him in the back of the neck irritably with the point of his tail. Aziraphale turns to look at him as he follows Deirdre down the hall and, at Crowley's accusing look, makes a face.

"She already said fetching and entertaining the kids was payment in full. What are you doing performing more services?" Crowley hisses quietly as Deirdre ducks into a small closet under the stairs to the first floor.

"They're my friends," Aziraphale insists. "One does favors for friends. She already agreed to let us stay the night, didn't she?"

"On the couch, because you don't want to kick 'the birthday boy' out of his bed for the night."

Aziraphale huffs and turns back a bright smile as Deirdre shuffles backward out of the closet dragging a medium-size mirror after her.

"Is that solid gold?" Crowley blurts out, unable to keep the incredulity out of his tone.

"Yes, the Honest Queen's mirror is rather famous for it."

Deirdre shoots them a rueful look as she leans the mirror wrong-facing against the wall. "It was so covered in grime that we assumed it was iron or pewter. It wasn't until I cleaned it up and realized it wasn't working right that I knew I had something special on my hands and put out word to a few guilds I knew I could trust."

"What did the seller say it would do?" Aziraphale asks, sounding intrigued.

"Oh, the poor dear was blind as a bat. She thought it was self-lighting, which for the price and the nice etchings I thought made for a nice find. As it is, I have no need for a truth-revealing mirror, and solid gold besides. If word got out we'd be burgled in a heartbeat."

"Truth revealing," Crowley echoes, and it sounds like his voice is coming from a down a long tunnel.

"Oh yes," Aziraphale confirms. "I've read about it. Looking into it reveals glamours, curses, and auras—the aura bit was probably the glow the last owner saw." He clears his throat a bit. "Your family has a bit of fae and witch heritage, does it not, Deirdre? Did you, hmm, take a peek at your own auras?"

Crowley dimly realizes the hero is likely nervous about the Youngs realizing they're parents to a changeling. Meanwhile, his brain is rapidly cycling through about twelve different bullshit stories he can spin for why he absolutely cannot look in the mirror, trying to decide which is the most believable. He is so fucked. Possibly, beyond fucked—so far out the other side that everything might turn out all right, he thinks hysterically.

"Oh, no, I tried when I was a girl but never got the feel for it, you know?" Deirdre says. "Do you know how? Might be a bit of fun for the party."

"No!" he and Aziraphale yelp at roughly the same time. When Aziraphale looks down at him in bemused shock, Crowley trips out the least-terrible excuse he's come up with in the past twenty seconds: "It's, um, part of my curse that no one may look upon my true form before the curse is broken or, ah, I'll be trapped in this form permanently. I... don't want to risk it."

"Oh, that's a bit particular," Aziraphale says, sounding put out. Probably, Crowley thinks in giddy panic, because he was hoping to convince Crowley to look in the mirror later, once they're away from the risk of revealing Adam's origins. "I don't think I've come across that sort of stipulation in an animal transformation curse before."

"Er," Crowley rejoins.

"Oh," Deirdre says with a knowing sort of air. "I'll bet it's because he's very handsome, and the evil fairy probably thought it would be an unfair advantage."

"Yes, exactly," Crowley says, bobbing his head emphatically. "Didn't want it to seem like I was bragging, but you've sussed it out, well done."

Aziraphale makes a disgruntled humming noise but doesn't push, and Crowley feels a bewildering sense of relief that one of his plots coming around to bite him in the tail has somehow headed off him getting bitten by an entirely different plot.

As they make their way outside to entertain the children, he bemusedly wonders if perhaps his own historically not great luck is somehow getting tangled with Aziraphale's, because certainly the hero's level of willful blindness to the universe trying to give him a leg up where Crowley's deceit is concerned today is tragic.

"Mr. Messenger!" Brian calls as they step outside to confront the children, who are clustered around a low table covered in a scattered deck of cards, several marbles, some overturned walnut shells, and what he's guessing is a bag full of buttons or beans. "Come do 'is this your card' with us!"

He swears if Aziraphale sighs any harder the hero is going to deflate.

"Do you always guess their card?" he asks, sotto voice.

"Yes," Aziraphale admits.

"... is it because you're really good at card manipulation?" he asks in a commiserating sort of way, already suspecting the answer.

"Not… especially, no," Aziraphale says on an exhale. "Somehow it's always just the right card and also very apparent that I've done it completely by accident."

Seems a shame. If he could manage a decent affect, he could be a fantastic grifter.

"Yeah," Crowley admits, patting the end of his tail against the hero's collarbone bracingly, "I still really want to see that."

An hour later, Crowley's sitting in a coil on the end of the table watching Aziraphale soldier his way through a third attempt at a simple coin trick with the same sort of fascination he views structure fires. Adam, bless him, is offering helpful suggestions for how to position his hands, which the hero is weathering with increasingly wobbly grace. To be fair to both of them, Adam appears to be the sort of "natural" at sleight of hand that means he's shockingly bad at offering practical advice.

When the coin Aziraphale is working with pops out of his fingers for the fourth time, Crowley slaps his tail down over where it lands on the table to prevent its recovery and says loudly, "Hey, you kids want to see me change size?"

As expected, the young ones betray their cavalier disregard for their own mortality by not showing even a glimmer of fear when he relocates to the ground and expands. Their excitement is infectious enough, and Aziraphale's relief over getting a break in attention palpable enough, that he even submits to letting them take turns riding on his back as he winds at high speeds in circuits around the yard. Their shrieks of delight draw Deirdre out of doors to investigate

Crowley's too far away to hear their discussion, but after a brief moment where she goes a bit pale at discovering her only son getting a ground-level equivalent of a piggy-back ride from a giant serpent, she's soon chatting with Aziraphale in a way that's causing him to blush increasingly red. Aziraphale doesn't seem to be making any move to either defend himself from whatever she's saying or extricate himself from the conversation, though, and after a minute Crowley mentally rolls his eyes. Honestly, the amount of saving this supposed hero needs.

He changes course to bring him and Adam closer to where the adults are standing. Adam is giggling a fit and declaring it the best birthday ever to his mum. She abandons whatever line of conversation she was bludgeoning Aziraphale with in favor of by turns cooing over her son's enjoyment and admonishing him not to wear "his poor majesty" out with games.

"My good lady, do you have any fruiting trees or bushes nearby?" Crowley asks in a natural break in conversation. "We could take the children out and hopefully bring back a little something for the table as thanks for letting us intrude upon your hospitality." He makes sure to exude an aura that, were he in possession of limbs, he would be sweeping her hand up for a courtly kiss.

The unimpressed look Aziraphale lays on him is, he thinks, a little uncalled for. Then, Deirdre does look a little flustered, so maybe he laid the charm on a bit thick. In any case, within ten minutes he's resumed his smaller size and his preferred perch on Aziraphale's shoulders while they trail after the kids, who are pelting down a forest trail with a wicker basket bouncing off Wensleydale's arm and Dog yapping excitedly at their heels.

"What was Deirdre saying that had you looking like you were going to combust?" he asks when he judges no one's likely to overhear.

Aziraphale groans. "Suffice to say Madame Tracy's not the only one overly invested in my love life."

"Ooh, was she going on about it being scandalous me being a serpent?" he prods, not above putting the hero into the exact same sort of embarrassing conversation he just went out of his way to extract him from. "You were practically turning purple. Was it a size joke? I'll bet it was a size joke."

Surprisingly, though his cheeks do pink up adorably, Aziraphale slants him a knowing sort of glance and says, "She used the term 'girth' completely unironically. I have half a mind to ask Arthur if he needs Tracy's card."

Crowley would like to say that he does something substantially cooler than guffaw, but is too tickled to be embarrassed. "Angel," he says, slathering on overdone shocked reproof even as he can't help giving his shoulders an approving squeeze.

Aziraphale glances at him again, mouth pursed in self-satisfied enjoyment.

The look makes a shivery sort of twinge race down Crowley's spine, and with cheerful horror he realizes he's tripped right into liking this slightly petty bastard of an honest-to-gods hero far more than is healthy considering he's in the middle of conning the daylights out of him.

And there it is, he thinks to himself fatalistically, right on schedule: he's somehow yet again made an ouroboros of himself.

²⁰ There's a perfectly serviceable switchback ramp leftover from when the quarry was still active, but he's been patronizingly informed on previous visits that it's not interesting enough to use except when they need to bring a hand wagon down. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

It's fine, Crowley tells himself as Aziraphale sweetly holds out his arm, hand chivalrously palm down, for him to use to crawl up to what's becoming his usual sprawl on the hero's shoulders. And that, he thinks, should perhaps have been the first clue that he's a bit smitten: how quickly he became unselfconsciously comfortable draping himself all over the human's everything. He certainly doesn't have any inclination to treat Anathema or Newt or any other of his loose circle of acquaintances like a cuddly toy.

All he has to do, he reasons with himself as Aziraphale calls out a farewell to Anathema and steps out onto the road, is find himself a castle. Maybe good ol' Prince Beady Eyes will be willing to consider a timeshare. His fiancé's loaded; Crowley can probably convince them to buy a summer palace.

"Anthony," Aziraphale says, in the sort of carefully cheerful way that means he's anxious about what he's about to say, "I've never been to the estate we're visiting today, but… I do know it's a reasonable carriage ride from, well, from my family's estate. I thought perhaps…" he trails off with an airy wave.

Crowley catalogues the hunch to the hero's shoulders he can feel beneath his scales, the quick shortening of his strides, the twitchy half smile that keeps wincing onto his face, and resigns himself to the feeling of protective ire that wants to swell up.

"Hmm, they'll want us to stay awhile, socialize," he points out. "Might slow us down more than it saves us time." He fights to keep his tone believably nonchalant, even as he's tempted to slather on some persuasively leading inflections, maybe a bit of a wheedle. "You said there's a village near your estate, yeah? We could pop in there and hire a carriage."

Aziraphale shakes his head decisively. "Word would get back to Uriel, and I wouldn't hear the end of it." He spares Crowley a baldly unconvincing grin. "Think of it as an opportunity. Depending on who's home, you'll have the chance to meet some of your prospective spouses in person!"

It should be worrying that his first instinct is to protest he doesn't have any interest in marrying anyone other than Aziraphale. As it stands, he's far enough into his acceptance spiral that he's able to fatalistically anticipate that if he tried he'd come across far too sincere for comfort. He settles for a vague noise that he'll let Aziraphale interpret as he will.

"Well, then it's decided," Aziraphale says, voice too pitchy to pull off the happy satisfaction he's desperately trying to telegraph.

Crowley doesn't dignify the sad attempt with a response.

The estate, when they arrive, is unambiguously an estate. Possibly, with a capital E. Aziraphale seems to be taking far more time than is strictly called for sorting himself out after the use of the boots, pushing their standing about at the end of the wide path leading up to the main entrance of the main structure dangerously close to full-on loitering.

"What's its name," Crowley asks when he can form words around the nauseated roil of his guts.

"Sorry?"

"The estate. It's got a name, doesn't it?" he presses. "Places this big do."

"Ah. Well, none officially, but Sandalphon keeps trying to make 'Haven' a thing."

"As in, the name of the region? The region the estate is located in?"

Aziraphale sighs. "'You can't have a Haven without a Haven,'" he quotes. At Crowley's blank stare, he elaborates: "You see, he made this, er, wordplay joke one time that Gabriel found hilarious, and now it's become an unfortunate series."

Crowley pokes him in the cheek with the tip of his tail. "Are you trying to set me up with a man who has a catchphrase?"

Aziraphale makes a half-hearted swat at his tail but, tellingly, doesn't disagree. He's looking, in fact, a bit gray around the edges.

"I'm pretty sure that constitutes an attack on the crown," he says, and feels a disgustingly soppy thrill when the corner of Aziraphale's mouth twitches up. He'd follow it up with another crack about Aziraphale trying to fleece him out of a good deal, but in light of his unfortunate assault of self discovery, it feels a bit too dramatically ironic even for him.

Luckily, either the teasing or whatever internal bucking up Aziraphale was undergoing has done the trick, and the hero squares his shoulders and walks purposefully up the drive.

They're welcomed warmly by the staff, who greet Crowley with a sort of unphased, graceful protocol that Crowley hasn't seen performed half so well at some literal, actual courts. He gives regal nods in acknowledgement with increasing alarm as he mentally tallies the number of people performing various duties just in the short walk from the grand entrance to one of the family parlors.

Once again, he's grateful for his serpent-y flat affect that lets him boggle without restraint at the spotless opulence that's so understated it's a declaration. The walls and wood floors are gleaming white, with plush white rugs with just a hint of tasteful gold patterning. A hallway might only have one small ornamented pedestal to give it character, but the materials and artefacts could feed several small villages for a year.

They're led to a room off an out-of-the-way corridor.

"Here you are, your highness, Master Aziraphale," the woman serving as their guide says, opening the door wide and stepping back for them to enter. "I'll have Chef send up some refreshments while the carriage is readied for you."

"Thank you, Ms. Reid," Aziraphale says with personable warmth that, by this point, Crowley doesn't find surprising. "I found that merchant you remembered in London, and I ordered a sample book and a few yards of several different styles to be delivered under your care. Please send my regards to staff." He looks adorably pleased with himself, especially when Ms. Reid's pleasantly neutral expression pinks the tiniest amount.

"You're too kind, Master Aziraphale," she replies stiltedly, flicking the barest glance at where Crowley's baldly staring at her, before making a swift exit.

"What was that about," Crowley asks as they enter the room, which seems to be trying its damndest to make up for the lack of color and clutter in the rest of the house. The space is crammed full of overflowing mahogany bookshelves, colorful rugs, and tables ladened with bric-a-brac.

Aziraphale makes a beeline to the overstuffed wingback chair positioned in front of the fireplace and settles in with a pleased wiggle. "Oh, I've embarrassed her, surely, but I didn't want to risk forgetting to find her again before we left. The staff is mad for London fashion, but the trip south is too far to keep up with trends properly. However, since I travel so frequently, I try to help where I can."

"Making them the envy of every other household staff in the area, no doubt," Crowley remarks dryly as he slips down to drape himself over the left arm of the chair and shamelessly crane his neck around to ogle.

"Oh, well…" Aziraphale trails off, sounding like the prospect genuinely hadn't occurred to him.

"Good gods, angel, how do you not get claustrophobic in here?" Crowley asks, hooking the upper half of his body on the top corner of the chair to get a better view of some of the titles on the nearest bookshelves.

"It's cozy," Aziraphale insists, with a fierceness that confirms it must be his personal study-parlor thing.

"Better than that bloody blank hallway," Crowley concedes easily, corkscrewing back down into an elegant slump on the armrest. "That much white must be a pain in the arse to keep clean." Some of his coils spill innocently onto the hero's near thigh. Aziraphale's still radiating magical warmth, even after the short jaunts using the boots. It's taking considerable self control not to drape wantonly over his lap and bask.

Aziraphale appears mollified, though he is giving the encroachment into his personal space a speculative look.

Crowley is just wondering if he can get away with imperiously demanding to use the hero's lap as a hot rock when the door swings open and uniformly boringly suited people stream in like imps from a crack in the earth. Beneath his scales, Crowley feels Aziraphale tense up.

"Aziraphale!" the lead person booms with a smarmy sort of smile that looks convincing until you register how flat the eyes are. "I heard you stopped in. Please!" he exclaims, waving his arms out to present the precise row the eight other men and women have arranged themselves in on either side of him. "Introduce us to your betrothed." He concludes with a beaming smile and steps back like he's a final brick slotting itself into a gray-and-white wall.

Crowley's close enough that he can hear the fortifying breath Aziraphale takes before coolly replying, "Of course," and turning to regard Crowley with a pleasantly blank expression.

"Prince Anthony, may I present my siblings," he says, offering his left arm out with the elbow crooked, palm down. It's an oddly formal gesture, and after a beat, Crowley realizes he's trapped Aziraphale on the seat, and the hero is offering him a perch.

"I would be delighted," he replies in his most dulcet, regal tones, and does his best to exude princely decorum as he rearranges himself on Aziraphale's arm.

Aziraphale takes him to the start of the line and makes introductions on the way down: Michael, his husband Daniel, Gabriel, Sandalphon, Jophiel, the twins Raphael and Raguel, Uriel, Haniel. Crowley mentally tucks Aziraphale between Raguel and Uriel in the seventh son slot.

On balance, they're a stiff-looking lot, lined up like a firing squad. Jophiel and Raphael aren't quite as neatly pressed as their siblings, the former with a smidge of white paint under his jaw and the latter looking like he's put his long hair up in a queue about fourteen times today in the course of whatever he's been doing. Haniel, the only woman-identifying member of the brood and absolutely spoiled baby sister Aziraphale had confided, is the only one who flashes him a genuine-seeming smile as she's introduced.

"Everyone, may I introduce His Majesty, Prince Anthony of Hellian," Aziraphale finishes with a perfunctory flourish.

"May I just say, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you," Gabriel says with a confiding sort of lean forward. "We saw your flyer and just knew we had to do something to help."

"Oh?" Crowley asks, affecting surprise. "You've been helping?"

"We sent Aziraphale," Sandalphon says, sounding far too pleased with himself for having admitted to not actually doing anything directly.

"Well, Aziraphale has certainly been a godsend," Crowley says with passive-aggressive relish.

"He's been performing adequately?" Michael asks with just the faintest hint of surprise. Not enough to imply he's doubting Crowley's judgment, but there's definite insinuation there, and it makes Crowley's retracted fangs itch.

"There's no one I'd rather have helping me complete this quest," he very consciously doesn't hiss. "And as much of a pleasure as it might be to linger, I'm sure you'll understand how keen I am to see this through."

As if he'd summoned her, Ms. Reid says clearly from the door, "Your Majesty, Master Aziraphale, the carriage is ready. I took the liberty of having Chef pack up a meal for travel."

"Excellent," Crowley declares. "Shall we?" he asks, tilting his head up and doing his best to project regal adoration as he gazes up at Aziraphale's pale, distant expression. When Aziraphale looks down at him, Crowley discreetly squeezes a loop of tail around his forearm in solidarity, which earns him a wan smile.

"Of course, your highness," Azirpahale says, and the use of the title grates.

"Please send a message if there's anything we can do to help speed you toward a swift curse lifting," Gabriel says, recovering quickly and swinging around to hover at Aziraphale's left side with an obsequious smile. Crowley flinches back at the unexpected proximity. "Gods bless him, our little brother has been known to dillydally."

"I can't say I've noticed," Crowley replies coldly.

Aziraphale doesn't protest or make any polite goodbyes, just marches stiffly toward the door through the gap that his siblings reluctantly open up for them.

The whole set of Messengers trail awkwardly in their wake to the front of the house, where the open-air, horse-drawn carriage has been pulled up. Aziraphale's backpack and a covered basket Crowley assumes holds the promised provisions are tucked into the corner of the driver's seat.

"Do not forget," Michael says with too much emphasis, "to give our regards to the Dowlings."

"Of course," Aziraphale says woodenly as he gets settled in the seat and lowers Crowley into the space beside him. Crowley feels his tail twitch as the name twinges familiarly somewhere in his brain but impatiently shrugs the feeling off in favor of holding himself back from using infernal influences to goose the horses into taking off immediately.

"And your reports," Gabriel says gamely, "don't forget to send those, and promptly! We want to be kept up-to-date!"

Before Aziraphale can agree to that lunacy, Crowley cuts in smoothly, "I'm afraid we'll be too busy curse breaking. Ciao!"

Aziraphale takes that as his cue to flick the reins to urge the horses into a trot that puts swift distance between them and the house.

"Good night," Crowley exclaims when he judges they're well out of earshot. "Can't speak to the ones who just stood there like numpties, but your eldest brothers are right wankers."

"Anthony, please," Aziraphale says, voice thready.

"Yeah, all right," he grumps, and decides to give up any pretense and drapes himself proprietarily across the hero's lap. "S'cold," he comments as a thin excuse, but Aziraphale doesn't respond and doesn't relax until they've put a solid hour's drive between them and the house.

The quiet gives Crowley enough time to wind down from feeling hyper alert to vaguely worried to bored, back to worried for a brief tick, and finally mulling over the earlier feeling that he'd recognized the name of the family whose estate they were heading toward.

"What was the name of this family again?" he croaks out, embracing the feeling of dread like an old frenemy.

"The Dowlings. Old friends of Michael's, though I've never had occasion to visit them at their own estate," Aziraphale says quietly, finally sounding a bit less brittle around the edges. "Do you know them?"

Crowley holds in a hysterical cackle. "Only by reputation."

.

.

.

The Dowlings aren't at home when they arrive, but Aziraphale had written ahead and arranged for them to take the chalice in their possession out on loan. They're greeted by the head housekeeper, who informs them the artifact is on display at the center of an ornamental hedge maze in the gardens.

"They couldn't have fetched it in for us?" Prince Anthony asks, affronted, as they make their way down the back terrace. At least he had the good grace to wait until the staff were out of earshot to complain.

"The maze makes it a proper quest," Aziraphale explains as he trudges across the meticulously evenly shorn lawn toward the entrance of the maze.

"Oh, and your friend hauling that mirror out of a cupboard in exchange for a bit of babysitting was all right?" The prince shoots back.

Instead of playing the role of a scarf, he's ruthlessly wrapped himself in a snug corkscrew up the length of Aziraphale's left arm, leaving only a single length of tail draped over his shoulders like the world's most inconvenient stole. It puts his head on level with Aziraphale's right ear for once, which is a little disconcerting both in placement and for the realization that Aziraphale has become so accustomed to the prince lurking on his left side.

"It's not even a proper maze," the prince continues in mildly aggrieved tones. "How can it make for a proper quest?"

To be fair, the maze is only about hip height and six metres squared in size, making it easy to discern the proper path to take even from the entrance.

"It's about the tradition of the thing," Aziraphale insists. "It's important to honor tradition, in a quest, you see, or it can upset the outcome."

"Says who?"

Aziraphale just barely remembers not to throw up his be-snaked arm in exasperation. "Storytellers, the gods, the fae, people who are unaccountably willing to give up priceless artifacts to virtual strangers?"

"Oi, there's no 'giving up' involved. It's always an exchange, right? You said so yourself: you're expected to do something first," the prince points out, predictably choosing to home in on Aziraphale's most sarcastic example. "That's not tradition. That's just good business sense."

He levels the serpent with what he thinks is his most flattening disapproving stare and receives only a saucy tongue flick in response. The cheek.

"Mr. Aziraphale," calls out an excitable voice from behind them, and Aziraphale turns his head to see the Dowlings' son pelting toward them across the lawn.

"Warlock!" he cries back in genuine delight, turning fully to greet the boy as he draws up to an awkward stop, gangly limbs flailing as he half slips on the slick grass.

"Ms. Jones said you were here. Mum and Dad didn't want me bothering you, but they aren't here so I'll do what I like," he pronounces breathlessly, grinning up at Aziraphale fit to burst.

Aziraphale sighs and opens his mouth to gently remind Warlock of one's duty to mind one's parents' wishes, but the prince beats him to speaking.

"You're the heir, then?" he asks, leaning close and flicking out a curious tongue.

Warlock screws up his nose, obviously baffled by the unexpected attention of a talking snake.

"Yeah. And who are you?" he asks with all the blunt affront of a child raised more by indifferent luxury than genuine care.^[21]

"This is His Majesty, Prince Anthony of Hellian," Aziraphale supplies. "Prince Anthony, may I present Warlock Dowling, heir apparent of the Dowling Estate."

"Are you the prince of all Hellian?" Warlock asks, sounding reluctantly impressed. Hellian is rather a big region.

"Er, no, obviously," Anthony says, sounding a bit defensive, the poor dear. "Hellian doesn't have a king."

"Then what are you the prince of?" Warlock demands.

"Can't say," the prince says, clipped. "Part of my curse. Got a nice castle, though. Very… enchanted."

"Warlock," Aziraphale admonishes, "surely your parents have taught you better than to ask a cursed individual about their circumstances. Their curses often forbid it."

Warlock rolls his eyes dramatically. "You've taught me, maybe," he protests, but spares a contrite expression the prince's way and mumbles, "sorry."

"No worries, mate," the prince says breezily. "Tell me, does this maniac adopt all the children he meets or just the preteens?"

"Anthony," Aziraphale says in despair.

"Oh, he's always making friends with everyone," Warlock confirms with the glee of someone who considers themselves to be spilling the most embarrassing of secrets. "S'like he thinks it's his job or something," he continues blithely, and Aziraphale resolutely doesn't meet the smug gaze he can feel the prince turning on him.

"Well, it is kind of his job, isn't it?" the prince says. "Big hero, right? Has to be friendly if he wants to succeed on his quests." He draws out the final 's' with far too much relish.

Aziraphale does spare the prince an irritated look then, not wanting Warlock to get the wrong end of the stick.

"It's my job to be helpful," he says primly. "Sometimes, being helpful leads to making a friend. People tend to like helpful people."

"Like to walk all over them, sure," Anthony quips, but seeming to sense Aziraphale's growing ire, changes tactics. "We're supposed to walk the maze," he says to Warlock. "Bet you've solved it a hundred times over, though, eh?"

Warlock scoffs even as he straightens up at the implied praise. "It's not even a proper maze," he protests, to Anthony's obvious delight. "I can walk it with my eyes closed."

"Go on," the prince says, sounding impressed. Aziraphale is struck anew, as he had been the other day during Adam's party, that Anthony really is quite good with children. He's too self-aware not to know the reason he's as comfortable with Warlock and Adam and the Them as he is has more to do with prolonged exposure than genuine affinity.^[22] The prince's ease is both endearing and enviable.

Warlock puffs up like a proud rooster and proceeds to lead them through the maze, keeping up an easy stream of one-way chatter with Anthony, who alternatively asks appropriately engaged questions and makes indulgent-sounding noises.

When they reach the center of the maze, the chalice is resting in the center on a low pedestal. It's a wide, shallow basin made of a white-veined black marble with fae runes carved all around the thick lip of the rim. It looks like it will be awkward to lift up, never mind carry all the way back to the carriage.

"Aziraphale," the prince asks in an overly conversational tone that has Aziraphale preemptively despairing over whatever is going to come out of his mouth.

"Yes, my dear?" he sighs.

"Are the Dowlings using an ancient, powerful artifact from the Night Court as a bird bath?"

"It certainly seems that way," he agrees, noting with some distaste the thin layer of muck resting at the bottom of the water, the surface of which is currently hosting the floating carcass of a beetle.

"Questing," the prince concludes, "is wild. Not sure why I haven't done it before."^[23]

"Only youngest children or magic users or seventh sons and daughters can quest," Warlock pipes up helpfully, walking up to the pedestal and hoisting himself up by his arms on the edge so he can peer down into the water. "Things won't go right otherwise and you'll die," he states casually, and then, "Are you really going to marry a snake, Aziraphale? No offense," he says with a quick glance in Anthony's direction.

"Well, that's not entirely decided—" he starts at the same time the prince protests, "What sort of gloom and doom nonsense have you been telling him, angel?"

Aziraphale flusters. "Whenever they visit, Warlock keeps attempting to sneak into my backpack to come with me—who knows what the holding charms would do to a living creature! And it's not like I'm telling him anything untrue. If you don't have the right qualifications and don't observe the right traditions, questing is dangerous. It's dangerous even when you have everything going for you."

The prince rears his head back in a way that somehow conveys incredulity, and Aziraphale rolls his eyes. "The first quest was dangerous, just well managed. The mirror and chalice being in possession of families I know is lucky," he emphasizes, even going so far as to gesture to his person with his free arm.

Surprisingly, the prince gives ground easily with a little sideways bobble of his head. "Yeah, okay, luck."^[24]

"Who's going to marry the snake if you don't?" Warlock asks, unperturbed by their bickering and now hopping down so he can try to lever one side of the chalice up to get it down. Aziraphale leaps to his side and chivvies him out of the way.

"Oh, my dear boy, you'll break the chalice or your foot or both, step aside please, there's a dear."

Warlock submits with a groan and goes to stand by the opening that leads back out of the maze. Aziraphale considers him and then looks down to the prince still inconveniently adorning one of the arms he's going to need for this next bit.

"Anthony, I'll need my arms free to get the chalice. Would you like to get about on your own, or do you still... desire a lift?" he asks in what he hopes is a leading sort of tone and slants a look Warlock's way once he's caught the prince's eye.

Anthony, thankfully, catches on immediately and doesn't even look put out. "Oh, I'm not a fan of mazes," he says and looks over to Warlock. "You up for giving me a ride, kid?"

Warlock's eyes round with barely suppressed excitement before he seems to catch himself and straightens up with a haughty sort of expression. "It would be my great honor, Your Highness."

Aziraphale bites back a smile and walks close enough to put a light hand on Warlock's shoulder, which Anthony uses to quickly transfer over, having to make several more rounds than usual to make himself a scarf on slimmer shoulders. Warlock practically vibrates with joy as he holds himself still through the whole process.

"Very good," Aziraphale praises, though feeling a little bereft seeing the prince riding on someone else's shoulders. His own feel disconcertingly bare.

Shaking the feeling off, he turns and makes short work of tipping the chalice up carefully to dump out the water. After a stern admonition for the muck to relocate itself to the ground, and the chalice is ready for transport. After careful consideration, Aziraphale arranges it so the wide mouth rests against his chest and he can hold it up by the bottom lip with both hands. It's heavy and awkward, but he thinks he can manage until they reach the carriage.

"All right, then," he says once he's satisfied with his grip, and he turns back to Warlock and the prince, who are staring at him with twin expressions of shock. "What?"

"That thing has to weigh at least eight or nine stone," Anthony says, almost accusingly.

"I'm not using magic," Aziraphale says defensively. "No need to fuss."

The prince makes a shrill-sounding noise in the back of his throat.

"You're awfully strong," Warlock says. "Is it from wrestling manticores? Mum said Mr. Messenger said you wrestled a manticore the other week."

"I ran away from a manticore," Aziraphale corrects. "Like any sensible person would."

"A manticore," the prince sort of shrieks, coils flexing in agitation until Warlock sways under the weight and he freezes.

"Questing," Aziraphale reiterates, "is dangerous," and he doesn't feel a jot of guilt when he hears how patronizing his voice sounds.

"Is that why you're going to marry him?" Warlock asks of Anthony, like a dog with a matrimonial bone. "Because he can wrestle manticores?"

Anthony forgets his preoccupation with Aziraphale's handling of the chalice to give Warlock the most dejected looking expression he's ever seen achieved without eyebrows.

"He's trying to fob me off on one of his siblings."

Warlock obligingly gasps in shock. "No way, they're a bunch of tossers." He pauses and considers. "Well, I guess Raphael and Haniel are all right, but the rest of them are jerks." Then, he swings doleful eyes toward Aziraphale. "That doesn't seem very nice, Uncle Aziraphale."

And that's just dirty pool—he's never "uncle" unless the little ingrate wants to make him feel guilty, or wants a favor.

Anthony turns equally pitiful eyes Aziraphale's way. "Yeah, doesn't seem very nice to me either," he agrees sadly, and Aziraphale narrows his eyes at him.

"I'd think," Warlock continues, "with the way you are, marrying a snake might not be too bad, yeah? He's got real pretty scales, don't you think?" He points to the red glimmer of the prince's underbelly, careful not to touch.

"I certainly think so," Anthony says demurely, the absolute wanker.

"And I'll bet he gives fantastic hugs."

"World-class hugger, me."

"And mum says you 'aren't getting any younger,' which I don't really understand, because you're like ninety-something already and don't even have as many wrinkles as my nan, and she's got a boyfriend—"

"Warlock!" Aziraphale cuts in, a little sharper than he means to, and tries to soften it with a smile when the boy scowls at him. "I appreciate you looking out for me, I truly do, my dear boy, but for one, Prince Anthony isn't really a snake, and for another, you and I have spoken before—at length—about all the ways that compatibility isn't always so straightforward as the stories like to make it out to be."

Warlock sighs in a way Aziraphale is sure is meant to convey how silly he thinks Aziraphale is being, and rolls his eyes. "Whatever. I just think it'd be neat if you got a happily ever after, that's all."

The prince suddenly finds the ground highly interesting, and Aziraphale can hardly blame him. It's a sweet notion, but like many of the ballads glosses over the messy reality of politics, duty, and the practicalities of life.

"I know, my dear, and I love you dearly for it." He adjusts his grip on the chalice pointedly. "But in the meantime, this is very heavy and I'd quite like to put it down, so what say we head back to the carriage."

The awkward silence lasts until the prince decides to put them collectively out of their misery, which Aziraphale rather sourly thinks is the least he can do after encouraging Warlock so abominably.

"So, Warlock, have you ever met any of Aziraphale's other kids?"

Oh, good gods.

"Do you mean he actually has kids?" Warlock demands, looking back over his shoulder at Aziraphale accusingly. Aziraphale rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

"Nah, not like kid-kids. More like how he seems with you: little ankle biters he looks out for and who look out for him too." He says the next with such magnificent nonchalance that Aziraphale wants to chuck the whole bloody chalice at him: "Met a few over in Tadfield yesterday. Whole gaggle of them who have a secret hideout and a dog and a gang name and everything. Surprised he's never introduced you."

Warlock whirls around to walk backwards, glaring fiercely at Aziraphale, who can only look back in resigned aggrievement.

"They're not the sort your parents would find improving company," he says and then wishes he had the hands to facepalm himself. Of all the excuses he could have come up with...

"I want to meet them," Warlock says vehemently as Prince Anthony attempts to hide a snicker into a fold of his own coils.^[25]

Later, once they've secured the chalice, said their goodbyes to Warlock, and gotten back onto the road to return the carriage, Prince Anthony sidles up next to Aziraphale on the driver's seat, draping a loop of scales over his leg like a human might lean an elbow on a friend's shoulder. Aziraphale squints down at him in suspicion.

"What did he mean, that you might like to marry a snake, with the way you are?" Anthony asks in an overly neutral tone that speaks to someone making a monumental effort not to leap to conclusions.

"I don't tend to get on with people, romantically," Aziraphale says, choosing his words carefully. "It's why I'm trying to give you options. I believe Warlock thinks if it weren't a human on the other side of the equation..." He trails off with a shrug, not sure where to go with it.

On the one hand, Aziraphale thinks it's an overly simple way of looking at things and an erasure of all the highly successful interspecies romances he's been witness to over the years. On the other, Aziraphale is uncomfortably aware that if he had any hint that the prince's lack of sexual overtures was due to nature and not his present circumstances, Aziraphale could see himself quite happily marrying Anthony whether he ever regained his true form or not.

"So no snake kink, then," the prince confirms, because he is an absolutely horrible creature.

"Had your hopes up, did you?" Aziraphale returns coolly, and is gratified by the shocked hoot of laughter the response elicits.

²¹ Honestly, Aziraphale still doesn't know why the Dowlings didn't choose to adopt a deserving younger relative. Then he reminds himself of every interaction he's ever had with Thaddeus and the unavoidable vanity involved in fashioning a blood legacy. ^{[return to text]}

²² He finds babies and toddlers adorable from a safe distance, and young children rather too fae for his comfort. It's not until they reach young adulthood that he finds it more natural to connect. He tells himself it's because by this point they've acquired enough life experiences to make it easier for him to find common ground. It absolutely has nothing to do with finding the inevitable anxiety and self-consciousness that seems to plague all teenagers extremely relatable. ^{[return to text]}

²³ This is, in fact, one of the few times he's deigned to join his mark on the actual legwork, and only because Anathema had made it one of her terms in their contract, citing some claptrap about increasing the potency of the end spell. ^{[return to text]}

²⁴ Crowley is recalling that while it's been decidedly lucky for Aziraphale, it's been unquestionably unlucky for Crowley, which he figures balances the whole thing out, cosmically. ^{[return to text]}

²⁵ Crowley has a half-formed idea that if he can get the two kids in contact, he might be able to sort of fulfill the requirement to get the fae prince exposed to high society and therefore successfully con the court that his plan was to execute a triple bluff all along. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

"Have you heard of any kingdoms that need claiming?" Crowley asks once Aziraphale has left the cottage to run some errands. He'd declared a day's rest to prepare for the next quest, since Aziraphale said they'll actually have to do a fair amount of walking and camping to reach the next destination even with using the boots to cheat.

Anathema looks up from star charts she's referencing for some location spell or other and stares into the middle distance, looking preemptively done with his line of inquiry.

"Any swords lodged in great boulders? Sacred crowns mouldering in dank caves? Heirless kingdoms hosting auditions?" he persists, levering himself up onto the wooden worktop and draping himself in the middle of her maps and notes like a scaley cat.

"I thought you already had a kingdom, oh great and wise prince," she says finally, voice sweetly poisonous.

"Tired of the sublet situation," he says flippantly. "Looking for a more permanent homestead."

A smile spreads across her face until it shows a rather terrifying amount of teeth. Crowley eyes them warily.

"You like him," she accuses.

He stretches a coil out, menacing a piece of paper close to the edge of the table. "He's a soft, gullible, self-sacrificing hero type—a spectacular mark—who throws magical heat like a bloody stove. What's not to like?"

She shakes her head, looking mildly incredulous. "No, you like-like him—"

"Well, that's juvenile…"

"—You don't want him to know you're lying," she says over him, blatantly ignoring his deflections, which, rude. "Are you seriously planning to find a whole new castle and hope he doesn't notice the difference?" She gasps. "Do you actually want to marry him?"

"Hold on, I think you're jumping to a lot of conclusions right now," he protests, unable to help a shifting squirm that rustles the papers on the table. This isn't going the way he hoped it would, though in hindsight he's not sure why he thought it would have gone any other way.

"Crowley," she says sternly, going so far as to place her hands on her hips, "you need to tell him the truth."

"Truth is relative," he says flippantly. "If I'm a licensed prince by the time we finish the quests, will it really have been a lie?"

"Yes," she says with far too many syllables for the word. "There isn't a loophole here for you to exploit, Crowley. The moment you chose to use him as a mark, you betrayed him."

"Well, yeah, that is one way to look at it," he concedes. "But, look, I think he likes me well enough. I'd even say we're friends."

"He's not friends with you," she snaps. "He's friends with Prince Anthony."

"I am Prince Anthony."

"No, you're a lying serpent demon with hundreds of years of lying under your lying scales. He thinks you're a human trapped in a snake's body with a kingdom to run."

"That's just history," he protests, agitation making him tense and loosen his body in undulating patterns. "I'm still me when we talk. You've seen it!" he insists. "I don't act all that different with him than I do with you or Newt."

"Except for the embarrassing crush," she says repressively.

"Oh, ssstuff it," he hisses, abruptly deciding he's done with the conversation. It was a mistake to think Anathema would help. She's made her opinion on this whole thing clear from the start.

"Crowley," she says with a sigh as he lowers the front half of him from the table to the floor. "It's not that I don't sympathize. You two are… sweet together," she admits. "But that doesn't change that whatever connection you two have is built on lies. The only way you can salvage this is to come clean, apologize, and hope he forgives you."

He shudders. Admit wrongdoing? Apologize? Not something he's had much practice in when it wasn't in active service of a con. And besides, other than the prince thing, it's not like he's been doing all that much lying. Maybe a heavy dose of omitting the truth, but…

Okay, yeah, fine, he's a lying liar. But, he's just doing what he needs to do. He'll be damned before he goes crawling back to the squirming underbelly of the fae realm, and it's not easy to get on in the human world without opposable thumbs. This is just survival, and as Anathema knows perfectly well, he has his own brand of morals he follows.

Aziraphale is just surprising, is all. Crowley hasn't felt this comfortable and companionable with someone in a long while, and it's making the ruthlessly quashed "ethics" corner of his brain itch.

No, like he'd told Anathema at the beginning of all this, he's too close to success to risk it. Maybe once he has his body secured, and the jig is officially up, he can think about trying to make it up to the hero, see if he can salvage anything from the admitted wreckage he knows he's speeding toward creating.

"I'll think about it," he lies as he makes his way toward the staircase to take a nap.

From the groaning sigh Anathema gives behind him, he's pretty sure she doesn't believe him.

.

.

.

"Whatcha doing, angel?" Prince Anthony drawls from behind, and Aziraphale jumps guiltily.

He turns from where he's been laying hands, so to speak, on the horseshoe hanging above the cottage door.

"Just a top off," he says, and resolutely doesn't remove his hand as he coaxes the cold iron to ignore the fae bits of him and focus on the Seventh Son bits instead.

"Hmm… what for?" the prince asks, stretching up until he can hook his upper body onto the window planter and hoist himself up to be more on a level.

While the prince has backed off from nagging him about how much magic he's using, what he's started instead is asking questions.

"Because it's a bit worn down."

"Let me rephrase: why are you, in particular, doing this instead of Anathema? Or the guild? Don't they have a whole system worked out for keeping each others' wards tiptop?"

Aziraphale eyes him warily, but while Anthony's tone is certainly judgmental it also seems genuinely baffled.

"Well, because I can. And she's a friend. And friends do nice things for each other. She's letting us stay with her, after all."

"Yes," Anthony says patiently, "and we are paying her very good money for the privilege. And yet I've seen you do more chores than her boyfriend and perform at least two or three little charms or power renewals every time we've been back. I don't see her tucking extra tonics in your bag or baking you treats or what have you."

Aziraphale turns astonished eyes on him. "Well, I certainly wouldn't expect her to. She's quite busy and has her finances to think of."

"So do you," the prince points out, sounding even more confused. "Why are you doing more for her than she's doing for you? I don't take you for someone to dangle a debt."

"Oh, gracious, of course not. It's not about keeping score." He frowns down at the prince. "My goodness, is everything so measured in your kingdom? Don't friends just do for each other because they can, because they like to?"

The prince stills and then tilts his head consideringly. "Yeah, that's fair, I might be a bit biased. In… the kingdom, where I grew up, it's not really safe to let someone do you a favor. It's always a debt in disguise."

Aziraphale frowns even harder, feeling his heart strings tug. "Oh, my, how stressful. How… well, how very fae."

The prince hems and haws for a minute before settling on, "Close borders and all that."

"Well, I like doing nice things for my friends. It's a little reminder for them and for myself that they can count on me."

The prince squirms uncomfortably, though taking care not to crush the sage in the planter. "Sure, just… look, I'm really not trying to be an arse about this, just… it was the same with the Youngs. Do they need so many reminders? Even taking my probable bias into account, it seems... unbalanced."

Aziraphale's immediate impulse is to dismiss the concern. The poor boy just admitted to growing up in quite a ruthless-sounding environment—hopefully not something that endures in his kingdom, for his eventual partner's sake if nothing else. But, Anthony is looking up at him with such patience, Aziraphale can't help but give his questions due consideration.

When he thinks back on their time at the cottage over the past week, he realizes with a bit of a shock that it hasn't only been the two or three boosts or charms the prince has evidently seen. He looks down at his hands in bemusement. Is this part of why he's been running so low on reserves for so long? Not just the constant questing, but all the little "nothings" he's been doing along the way—a steady leak of power.

"I…" Aziraphale starts and then pauses, disgruntled, as he tries to find the words. "I suppose I hadn't noticed how much it had become. You might be right. I might be overdoing it."

"Overdoing what?" Anathema asks, coming to the door. "I'm expecting a client soon, so you two either need to head up or head out until dinner."

Anthony tips his head up at the lintel. "He juiced your horseshoe."

Anathema looks up, frowning, and Aziraphale feels unaccountably caught out. He hadn't intended for her to notice so immediately.

"Aziraphale, you didn't have to do that," she says, sounding bewildered. "Janice's new apprentice is coming by tomorrow. She was going to do it as part of her work-study." She looks back into the house, eyes darting around, and says vaguely, "I suppose I can find something else for her to do."

The bottom drops out of Aziraphale's stomach. "Oh," he says faintly. He's not only done something unuseful, he's actively made Anathema's life more difficult.

Something must show on his face, because Anathema rubs a hand briefly up and down his upper arm. "Don't worry about it," she says. "But maybe just relax, hmm? You're already paying me. Don't feel like you have to work too."

She bustles back inside with a swish of skirts, leaving Aziraphale feeling cored out.

After a moment staring after her, formless anxiety swirling up into the twist of his fingers, he feels a weight press lightly down on his shoulder. He reaches up automatically and then jerks his hand away when he registers it's just the prince, reaching up and out from the planter to assume a perch on his shoulders. Anthony drapes long loops of his body down Aziraphale's back and chest like a living livery collar. The weight of it is grounding, and Aziraphale focuses on it as he waits for the prince to finish his relocation.

"All right?" Anthony asks, quiet and casual as he settles.

Aziraphale nods, tight lipped. He sees the prince nod back in the periphery of his vision.

"You heard her," Anthony says, lightly. "Up or out?"

"Out, I should think," Aziraphale says after a moment, still feeling a little breathless, but the kind that comes from feeling yourself caught back from almost stepping off an unexpectedly steep drop.

"Let's get you a pastry," Anthony says decisively. "Lecturing horseshoes is hungry work, isn't it?"

Aziraphale knows it's a diversion, but it's effective. "Not especially," he says mildly. Then again, a pastry does sound good right about now. "Oh, fine. We can take tea at that lovely place by the park."

Anthony thumps his tail against his breastbone like a friendly shoulder clap. "Lead on, angel."

Chapter Text

The first day out on their trek southeast, Crowley convinces Aziraphale to let him down the moment they're in the cover of trees so he can assume his full size and keep pace alongside him.

"Really, my dear boy, I don't mind carrying you," he protests even as he crouches down and holds out his arm for Crowley to decamp.

"Nah, don't worry about it. If I don't get down and move, I'm going to go spare within the hour."

It feels good to stretch out in his full size, and they pass the day companionably bickering about fae court politics. Aziraphale's family has been in bed with the Day Court, often very literally, for at least ten generations, to the point where they can lay claim to a small bit of territory.

"It's in an utterly undesirable location on the border with the Night Court. Mother liked to visit—there's a proper enchanted cottage in the woods we keep under wards—but in the end she decided to visit the new continent for her retirement instead of settling there."

"Loyal to your blood's side, I take it?" Crowley had needled, gently. He was maybe inventing a bit of improbable involvement between his borrowed kingdom and the Night Court to explain his knowledge.

Aziraphale makes a face. "Maybe when I was young. My eldest brothers are a bit fanatical. But, I've encountered too many fae from both sides over the years to hold much credence in there being any true difference beyond a slavish commitment to opposing aesthetics."

Crowley crows in delight. "S'what I say. From the same bloody stock, aren't they? All liars by omission, obsessed with contracts, like playing silly buggers with mortals."

"Mm, quite."

A funny look crosses the hero's face then, but Crowley is too busy having a quiet conniption realizing he's basically described himself to question it. But when they've finished dinner at the small camp they've set up that evening, he immediately knows when Aziraphale begins fidgeting the last piece of dried apricot from afters in his fingers that they're going to be revisiting the earlier topic.

"Anthony," Aziraphale starts, pursing his lips at the small fire they've built in a small clearing.

Crowley has assumed the same half-circle sprawl he'd taken the first time they'd camped together, bracketing the hero between himself and the fire. He turns his head sluggishly from where he'd been idly staring at Aziraphale while pretending to stare at the green gloom of the forest beyond the fire.

"Aziraphale," he parrots back and more comfortably adjusts his chin on a switchback curve of his belly.

This, at least, earns him a slightly bitchy look before the hero falls back into a vaguely fretful expression. Crowley waits patiently, counting on the unblinking stare of a giant snake to do its unnerving work. Aziraphale makes it through the final bit of his make-do dessert and even packs away the rest of his travel tea things before he comes back around to it.

"Well, you know that my family has quite a bit of fae blood in our, hmm, pedigree," he says finally.

"Sure," Crowley agrees easily. "S'where the magic comes from."

"Yes, and…" Aziraphale winces. "Well, I'm afraid it's also where the functional immortality comes from."

Crowley desperately wishes he had eyelids to blink with. To be honest, he had sort of been taking the hero's practical immortality as a given, since he's known a handful of humans in Aziraphale's situation over the course of his long life. But it's just now occurring to him that this isn't something that likely would have occurred to "Prince Anthony," and he's caught between the awkwardness of needing to act surprised and the genuine surprise that Aziraphale would reveal something so private.

"Uhhh," he stalls.

"It's something to consider, when you… marry one of us," Aziraphale continues, plucking at the straps of his bracer. "If you have any advisors or succession laws, you'll need to be sure to write necessary provisions for your partner to step down or retire in favor of your designated heir by a certain age. Mother and Michael worked it out between themselves—that's why she moved to the new continent, you see—but I know these things are more formal in royal lines."

Crowley can't help but wonder what "worked it out between themselves" really means, but realizes it's probably something to poke at another time.

"So, does ‘functional immortality' come standard with fae ancestry?" he settles on finally, keeping his tone neutral.

Aziraphale winces. "No, it requires many, many generations and certain agreements and, ah, rituals, I believe. I'm told it only really showed up with consistency in my grandmother's generation."

"I see. I'll… take that under advisement." Crowley considers and adds, "I had kind of wondered why so many of you were available for marriage when you're one of the youngest and already so—" He nearly chokes on his own tongue swallowing back the end of the sentence, remembering at the last second that humans are touchy as anything about their mortality.

Aziraphale honest-to-goodness smirks at him. "Well seasoned?" he suggests, dry as dust.

"You said it, not me," Crowley says defensively, a little flustered at how much the little glimpses of bastardry make him want to wrap his entire self around the hero and gently squeeze, just a little, just so he'll feel how unequivocally held he is.

"Look, I think the more important question is why, if securing a family fortune is so important, none of the rest of them have married well. Most of them are all right looking."

Aziraphale snorts. "High praise, indeed."

Crowley sticks his tongue out at him in the way he's seen humans do—prolonged and straight as an arrow—which makes Aziraphale blink and then giggle in shock.

"But seriously, angel," he says, idly winding his body up a bit tighter so the semicircle he's making around Aziraphale shrinks closer and gains height. "Why are you the only one expected to be out here fortune hunting when the rest of them could be putting themselves on the marriage market?"

Aziraphale eyes the much smaller gap between them. Crowley waits with what he thinks is extreme patience.

"Sandalphon was married once," Aziraphale says, voice coming out almost speculative as he glances over his shoulder and sees that barely two inches separate him from a serpent-shaped backrest. "An heiress. They were married thirty years before she died."

"Sandalphon was married?" Crowley asks incredulously, and then immediately, "Wait, how old does that make him? How old does that make you? Is Michael's husband immortal too, or is he spouse number two—three?" He shifts in agitation, which has the unintended benefit of closing the scant gap between him and Aziraphale's back. Because he can't help himself, he adds, cutting the hero off when he opens his mouth, "No, really, Sandalphon? Not, I don't know, literally any of the rest of you lot?"

Aziraphale looks simultaneously conflicted and highly entertained. "Love is ineffable," he says, and then gets a strange sort of squint around his eyes. "I'm afraid I'm likely quite a bit older than you, my dear," he says almost apologetically, though he does relax by inches into the support of Crowley's stacked coils.

Not bloody likely, Crowley thinks privately. Surely if they were that close of contemporaries, they would have run into each other before now. As it is, it's boggling him that they haven't crossed paths. Sure, he doesn't tend to participate in the quests he dupes heroes into this directly or consistently, but he's been out and about sometimes in the past couple centuries.

"Daniel is also from a family with some immortality, though it's not fixed in the bloodline yet. He's singular amongst his siblings. It's one of the reasons he decided to come live with the family instead of insisting on his own home with Michael."

Aziraphale leans back against Crowley more decisively, even going so far as to wiggle his shoulders in to get comfortable. Taking this as unqualified acceptance, Crowley shifts so he can lay the end of his tail over Aziraphale's lap and then rest his chin on top of that.

"I guess it must be difficult finding a spouse when you know you're going to outlive most everyone you meet," he concedes, tucking all the bits of himself more snuggly around the hero's semi-reclining form.

"Yes…" Aziraphale says softly, his hand coming down to rest tentatively on Crowley's neck just behind his head. "It can be quite painful."

Crowley winces as he belatedly realizes he's been perhaps a bit too blithe about the subject for someone supposedly human who is not so subtly courting someone who just went out of their way to warn him they'll certainly outlive him.

"Well…" he says after a moment. "Didn't some guy say something about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, or whatever."

Aziraphale hums vague agreement. When Crowley tips his head slightly to see his face, Aziraphale's staring into the fire, a pensive look on his face. It makes Crowley's insides squirm uncomfortably.

"You're like a giant hot water bottle with your magic up," he mutters, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.

He gets a weak chuckle in response and a brief squeeze to the back of his neck.

It's not a great response, but it also wasn't his best attempt. Still, he's in a bit of a quandary. The functional immortality thing is literally a nonissue; however, he also doesn't think he can concoct a reasonable justification for being a heretofore unknown immortal human prince. As it stands, his backstory only survives due to Aziraphale's alarming levels of gullibility.

Perhaps this is something he can offer as an olive branch, when he finally has his human corporation secure and can break the news about the whole prince thing. Even if Aziraphale is too pissed to still consider marrying him, surely he wouldn't turn down a bit of immortal friendship.

"Go to sleep, angel," he says when the melancholy silence stretches on for too long. "I'll keep watch."

He can feel Aziraphale's stare boring into the back of his skull, but he refuses to tilt his head to meet it.

"All right," Aziraphale finally says, and tips his head so his cheek and temple rest against Crowley's side.

Crowley focuses on the warm breath puffing against his scales with every one of Aziraphale's lengthening exhales because it's easier than focusing on anything else in his traitorous brain for the moment.

.

.

.

Finding yourself loosely entangled in the coils of a giant snake isn't the strangest way Aziraphale has woken up in recent memory, but for the more adventurous sort he thinks he could highly recommend the experience.

During the night, the prince must have rearranged the great, long loops of himself so that Aziraphale is now resting entirely on him, back and neck propped up just a bit. The snake's chin is settled on Aziraphale's chest, head angled so he can gaze out toward the rest of the clearing. Aziraphale regards the prince silently as his mind leisurely wakes up.

He's not unmoved by the prince's subtly brash style of courtship. No poetry or adoring words, but he finds the sweetly escalating physical affection and indignantly insistent care of his well-being charming. Oh, it's been delightful, if he's perfectly honest with himself. If he could only trust that it would persist beyond the breaking of the curse, he might do more than passively accept these escalations. It feels false, though, to actively encourage the attachment, to drop the pretense that the prince might be considering anyone but Aziraphale as his bridegroom.

Aziraphale knows his own shortcomings: he is a passionless creature in a passionate world. Once the prince has his human body and human urges back, the sweet escalations will become hotter, sweatier, and Aziraphale knows from painful experience it isn't something he can pretend.

If he were less selfish, he would come right out and reveal all, nip the romance Anthony is trying to cultivate in the bud. But this, here, waking up feeling held and cherished, makes the hollow of his chest ache so wonderfully.

Succumbing to the bittersweet slant of his thoughts, he raises a hand and draws his fingertips lightly over the top of Anthony's head, smoothing over the silky scales between his eyes and down back over his neck. Something like a shiver ripples through the length of the serpent's muscles, and Aziraphale feels a smile tug at his lips as the movement jostles him all over.

The prince makes a noise devoid of vowels and swivels his head around to fix Aziraphale with wide, golden-yellow eyes. "You're awake," he says, in the tone of voice of someone uncomfortably aware they are stating something very obvious.

"Well spotted," Aziraphale murmurs, because the prince never seems put off when he teases him. Quite the opposite, in fact, which is painfully lovely.

"Shut up," Anthony grumbles back, sounding too mellow to be believable. He resettles his chin on Aziraphale's sternum. "How far do we have to walk today?"

"All day, I'm afraid," Aziraphale says, making no move to get up. They have, in fact, at least three more days of travel to clear the forest, assuming no setbacks, then another half day through farmlands to reach the outskirts of the city of Eastgate where the gardens they need to visit lie.

The prince groans, twisting his head dramatically so the soft, red scales of his chin are exposed to the sky.

Aziraphale grins. "Do you want me to carry you today?" he asks. The temptation to feel how soft the vulnerable underbelly scales might be is almost irresistible, but he thinks it would be rude to pet someone's throat without asking. He's already dared more than he should with the earlier touch.

Anthony doesn't say yes, but he does pointedly start rearranging himself in a way that allows Aziraphale to carefully find the ground with his feet and hands so he can lever himself up without putting too much weight on any one bit of snake.

By the time Aziraphale's come back from freshening himself up in a nearby copse of bushes, the prince has assumed his smaller size and is lounging on one of the large boulders that form a half circle around the semi-permanent firepit in the middle of the clearing.

Aziraphale silently offers his downturned palm. This time, though, when Anthony is lazily winding himself up into his scarf impression, he arches up to rub the top of his head and a significant length of his neck against the underside of Aziraphale's chin before he settles. Aziraphale's breath catches in his lungs.

"Oh," he lets slip, breathless, hands fluttering up but holding back from touching the serpent draped over his shoulders.

Anthony drops his chin on the juncture of Aziraphale's neck and shoulder, only a few inches closer than usual, but shocking all the same.

"All right?" he asks, subdued.

Aziraphale swallows and reminds himself firmly who they're to meet in Eastgate to gain access to the Eden gardens. It helps forestall the urge to reach up and press gentle fingers to the scales resting against his collarbones.

"Of course," he replies, unable to do anything about the embarrassingly gooey quality to his tone.

The three days blur together, stretching and collapsing like taffy being pulled. They mostly stay away from deep topics, keeping to lighter stories and friendly debates about inconsequential things.

Every night, Anthony arranges himself like a backrest before whatever fire they've managed, whether in an established waypoint along the trail or in a smaller clearing if they've not managed to make good enough time during the day. Every morning, Aziraphale wakes up cradled and kept. He doesn't offer any spontaneous touches, but he does lean in to the occasional, intentional caress Anthony grants his arm or his neck when getting settled. It feels like there are champagne bubbles in his chest, even as anxiety grips him by the diaphragm when he thinks about their destination. He tries, once or twice, to bring up the topic of his unsuitability again, but loses his nerve before he can get even the first word out.

Finally, on the last day of the journey, as they approach the main gates of the towering city walls from the main road leading north, Anthony calls him out.

"Look," he says, back in the hood of Aziraphale's cloak and only one casual loop perched on his left shoulder, "before we get to the city and meet whoever this contact of yours is, will you level with me what's got your pants in a twist?"

Aziraphale grimaces. "Well, I said contact, but…"

The prince's silence is extremely judgmental. "Who is it?" he asks finally.

"The princess."

"Oh, of course it is."

"Who is…" Aziraphale trails off.

Anthony hisses in frustration.

"Well, do you remember when I said that I don't tend to get on romantically with people?" he hedges.

"Yes? Oh! Oh." Anthony lurches forward so he can swivel around and make eye contact. "Are we about to meet one of your exes?"

He sounds, Aziraphale thinks, far too excited about the prospect.

"Yes," he says repressively, which seems to remind the prince of his manners, because he ducks back down lower on Aziraphale's shoulder.

"Right, sounds awkward," he says brightly. "Actually, I'm not sure why I didn't expect something like this. Do you think there's any of these tasks we'll be able to complete and not meet someone you know?"

"It's networking," Aziraphale says, trying to snap but just sounding sulky.

"Sure, angel," Anthony says breezily. "Ooh, how do you want me to play this? All cool and regal? Maybe possessively jealous? Or should I pop up all big and fangy and—?" He hisses, in what Aziraphale assumes is supposed to be a demonstration.

He sighs. "No, thank you. But you might want to stay close."

"Yeah?"

"Katharina can be… enthusiastic."

.

.

.

At Aziraphale's recommendation, Crowley hunkers down all the way in the hood of the cloak once they enter the city.

"I've never visited here before," Aziraphale had fretted lightly as they approached the gates. "I don't know what sort of reaction we might receive. Let's get a lay of the land, hmm? And then we can reassess."

Crowley had hissed an approximation of a tsk-ing reproval. "Ashamed of your own fiancé?"

Aziraphale had wordlessly reached up over his shoulder and pushed Crowley back down into the hood by the snout.

Now, Crowley watches the blue of the sky, the increasingly regular silhouettes of two- and three-story buildings done in some sort of ochre-colored stucco or render finish as they move steadily further into the city. The gentle sway, the relative lack of stimulus, and the seeping warmth of Aziraphale's back through the cloak material combine to lull him into a half-stupor.

He doesn't rouse again until he realizes that the hubbub of the city has abruptly fallen away. Groggily, he peers over the lip of the hood and watches the towering walls of a palace recede as they follow a crushed-shell path leading into a flourishing tropical garden. A cautious swivel around reveals Aziraphale is following a pair of guards bristling with weapons deeper into the garden. He ducks back down into the hood when one of them starts to turn his head back.

"Pardon my asking, sir, but I recognize you from Her Highness's Aunt's estate," the guard says in a jovial tone that in Crowley's experience means the person is about to ask something a little daft and a lot awkward.

"Oh?" Aziraphale says with distant politeness.

"Is it true you're under a curse, yourself?" he asks, curious and eager.

"I—I beg your pardon?" Aziraphale splutters.

"John, you numpty," the other guards sighs, aggrieved.

"Oh, like you aren't dying to know too," the first one shoots back.

"I'm not going to ask about it though, am I?" the second one returns, affronted. "You ain't got any class is your problem."

"Gentlemen, I can assure you—" Aziraphale starts, tetchy as anything, when he's cut off by a delighted shriek of "Aziraphale!" from across the garden. "Oh, dear," he says, voice thready.

Crowley hears the sound of pounding footsteps coming closer and ducks into the smallest coil he can manage, tucking his head in the middle defensively. Barely a second later, Aziraphale rocks back slightly as another body crashes into his.

"It's so good to see you, you daft bastard!" a woman's voice booms from just above, and Crowley unclenches just enough to peek up and see a pair of pale arms wound around Aziraphale's neck and a mass of ginger hair spilling over his shoulder.

"Katharina," Aziraphale replies, sounding a little strangled but fond. "I am quite pleased to see you as well."

"John, Sam, beat it," she instructs the two guards as her arms disappear and Crowley assumes she steps back.

"Your Highness," Sam pleads, sounding exhausted.

"I hardly think Haven's Angel is going to do me dirty in my own gardens," she says. "Especially since he's already turned down the opportunity at least once—ha!" And after a pause, "Oh, unless you've changed your mind, love?" she asks with so much overdone lasciviousness in her tone that Crowley thinks he might have spontaneously figured out how to blush.

"Really, my dear," Aziraphale says reprovingly, and the tone and delivery is so familiar that Crowley feels his spine twitch with the urge to possessively wrap up a limb or two.

"Go on," she says, theoretically to the guards, and a moment later Crowley hears a pair of mismatched sighs and the sound of receding footsteps.

"Katharina," Aziraphale says again, warmly, "thank you for agreeing to see me."

"Of course!" she exclaims, "Anything for my favorite hero." And that's genuine affection in her voice, Crowley can hear it.

Not thinking too hard about it, he slinks up out of the hood and sets about spooling most of his length on Aziraphale's left shoulder, leaving just the last couple feet of his tail to casually drape over Aziraphale's right like he might do with an arm if he had one. The woman, now that he gets a look at her, isn't quite what he expected. She's of a height with Aziraphale, with big bones, big red hair, and a big mouth, which is currently slacked open as she regards him in return.

"Oh, who's this beauty, then?" she breathes, and Crowley can't help the reflexive preen, tilting his head up a bit so the sun will catch the flashy red of his underbelly. Maybe "big" was a bit harsh, he thinks; "generous" is a better descriptor of her everything.

"This," Aziraphale says, "is Prince Anthony of Hellian, and the reason for the visit. I'm afraid he's gotten himself a bit cursed."

Her eyes widen, looking from Crowley to Aziraphale and back, then narrow shrewdly. "Animal husband curse, is it?" she asks consideringly.

Aziraphale tenses. "Er, yes."

"Have you tried the classics yet?" She flips the ends of her hair back over her shoulders and squares her stance.

"Well…"

"Of course not, you lovely bit of fluff," she says affectionately. "Bet it didn't even occur to you." She fixes her gaze on Crowley, a determined glint in her eye. "No worries, Katharina's here now. We'll have you fixed up in a trice," she declares.

Crowley, of course, has enough gods' given sense to be apprehensive about the direction the conversation has veered into, but he still yelps in surprise when she all but lunges toward him, lips puckered. He rears back at the same time Aziraphale takes a stumbling step back, and it's enough of a jostle that he has to quickly redistribute himself around the hero's shoulders, gripping for dear life.

"Katharina!" Aziraphale squeaks. "My dear, it's not that sort of curse."

To her credit, she immediately stops when she clocks their reactions, though she does cock a hand on her hip and squint speculatively. "Are you sure? Sometimes the old pucker-oo is a loophole for these things."

"No loopholes," Crowley assures her hastily, relocating his face to the top of Aziraphale's head out of kissing range. "Got a neat little list of tasks to complete."

"Oh, he talks!" she exclaims mildly. "That's handy, I guess."

Crowley almost hisses before reminding himself they need her goodwill to access her gardens. He settles for reshuffling his length more demonstratively around Aziraphale's shoulders, giving each upper arm its own loop.

Katharina watches the display with a small smirk. "Mm, I see how it is," she says. "Just be sure you have a good talk before you make any firm plans."

Beneath him, Aziraphale tenses again, and Crowley reflexively squeezes around his arms and shoulders.

"Katharina," Aziraphale laments.

"What?" she replies, spreading her hands wide. "It's not a criticism. I appreciated you being straight with me. Wish my ex-husband had been half so open. Could have saved us both a lot of heartache."

Crowley, intrigued, asks, "Were you not compatible?"

She cocks an eyebrow. "Me and Peter, or me and Aziraphale?"

"Either. Both?" He tips his head to try and gauge Aziraphale's reaction but can't see more than downturned eyes and a clenched jaw from this angle. "Don't tell me anything he should do," he corrects. "I can wait."

She hums consideringly. "Aziraphale and I had different needs, and I'm grateful he let me know instead of just letting me jump into another unhappy marriage. I'll let him fill you in on the particulars." She grins wickedly. "My first husband cheated on me, and when I called him out in front of the court he sold me out to a dragon. My aunt hired Aziraphale to rescue me."

"You slayed a dragon?" Crowley shrills, slipping off Aziraphale's head so he can lean around to get a better look at his face.

Aziraphale looks torn between misery and amusement. "I didn't slay him." A sneaky sort of smile tugs at his lips. "I trussed up the consort in his finest robes and a great deal of rope, presented him to the dragon, and brokered a trade."

Crowley cackles his approval.

Katharina snickers. "The absolute brass balls you have on you, Aziraphale," she says admiringly. And then, "Anyway, I owe you about three lifetimes' worth of favors for the entertainment value alone. What did you need from my gardens for your quest, exactly? Name it, and it's yours."

Aziraphale straightens and relaxes back his shoulders, obviously feeling back on steadier ground. "We need a pose of Circe's Remorse."

"Oh, yeah, that would probably work a treat on an animal transformation," she says, bright eyed, and turns to lead them down a side path of the garden toward what looks like an orchard. "Maybe I should market it. I'd probably make a mint."

"My dear, I shouldn't like you to get a reputation for poisoning your guests," Aziraphale returns amiably. "We have the chalice of redemption and a few other prohibitively troublesome ingredients rounding us out that should soften the side effects."

"Suppose you're right. Besides, they're a terror to grow. Can't say I'd be eager to try to get another patch established."^[26]

She leads them to a large peach tree, the base of which is surrounded by a blanket of dark-leaved, thorny brambles topped by delicate, tear-shaped purple blossoms.

As Aziraphale crouches down and retrieves a cloth bag and thick leather gloves in preparation to harvest some of the blossoms, Katharina catches Crowley's eye.

"You are intending to marry him, aren't you?" she asks baldly.

Crowley and Aziraphale freeze simultaneously.

It feels like there's a mouse lodged in his throat. "If he'll have me," Crowley admits in a croaking sort of voice, too honest by half but feeling pinned by the woman's blazing, green-eyed stare.

Aziraphale swallows audibly and resumes his task, ignoring the conversation so hard he's almost vibrating with it.

"Good. He's one of the best people I've ever met. If he'd have let me, I'd have put a ring and a crown on him in a heartbeat." She flicks a wistful sort of look down at Aziraphale's halo of white curls. "Here's hoping you two are a better fit for each other. He deserves to be happy."

Crowley feels all of his insides clench as a wave of pure, breath-stealing anxiety and guilt ripples through him. Maybe it's due to the unrelenting parade of people proclaiming Aziraphale's simmering unhappiness and its unfairness, when meanwhile Crowley knows he's holding a metaphorical sword over both their heads. Or maybe it's because this woman, who clearly believes it was the right thing to let Aziraphale go, obviously mourns their could-have-been.

In any event, he's feeling like a world-class arsehole and is, for the first time, seriously considering whether he's making the right call in not just admitting all to Aziraphale and throwing himself upon the hero's mercy.

Unable to form words around the knot of anxious misery lodged somewhere in his gullet, he settles for nodding.

They don't linger once Aziraphale is finished, for which Crowley is devoutly grateful. At the garden gates, Katharina gives Aziraphale a bone-crushing hug goodbye and boops Crowley on the snout before he realizes what's happening. He splutters indignantly while she cackles and turns away, calling a cheerful, "Take care of him or I'll hunt you down and sell you to a dragon," over her shoulder as she sashays back down the path.

"Hmm, I don't think she's joking," Aziraphale observes, sounding not a little amused and flattered by the threat on his behalf.

Crowley's too shaken by his cresting existential crisis to reply beyond a weak, hissing protest and uses the excuse of walking back through the city to sulk in the depths of the cloak hood.

He's still pensive and quiet that evening when they arrive back in London by way of the boots. He lets Aziraphale chalk it up to nausea and doesn't protest when Aziraphale suggests he take a nap in his bowl before supper. When Aziraphale checks on him later to call him down to eat, he feigns sleep, but the hero must realize something else is up because he returns straight to their room once the meal is over.

"Anthony, dear," he murmurs, sitting on the edge of the bed and angling toward the bowl, which is currently perched atop the bedside table.

Crowley considers continuing to pretend to sleep, but Aziraphale is looking quietly miserable, which is an expression he's quickly finding himself helpless not to respond to.

"Yeah?" he returns, just as quiet. He shifts his head just enough that Aziraphale will know he's looking at him.

"I feel I've not been quite as honest with you as I should be, considering our situation," he admits, haltingly.

Well, that's ironic and shatteringly hysterical.

Crowley chokes down an inappropriate giggle and waits for Aziraphale to continue.

"Saying that I don't get on well romantically with people is, perhaps, underselling things to a misleading degree," Aziraphale says, words jaw-achingly deliberate. "The truth is… well, I'm not attracted to people in a carnal way. I don't feel much in the way of carnal urges at all, actually." He pauses with a wince. "So, you see, it's not really fair of me to let you think that I'm a serious candidate for a spouse, and I'm so sorry to have let you operate under such gross misapprehensions."

Crowley feels like he's hovering outside his body, maybe on the ceiling. His blood is rushing helter-skelter in his demonic veins.

"Are you ssserious?" he gets out finally. "That'ssss your big sssecret? You're not into ssshagging?" And he realizes he sounds far too accusatory for the admission, given how little it changes his regard, but he can't help the sharp way the words come out.

Aziraphale flinches. "Yes. I know I should have said something earlier. Oh, I'm so terribly sorry, Anthony," he says, voice catching on the name.

Crowley feels it like a boot to the spine and has a brief, ruthless conversation with his inner angst. Now's not the time to wallow in the surprisingly painful irony of this possible literal angel apologizing for something he can't help and that he has no reason to feel guilty over when Crowley is, in fact, realizing how deeply demonic a creature he is and how distasteful he finds it. Now is the time to reassure the man he has developed all kinds of irrevocable and deeply embarrassing feelings for.

He sucks in a deep breath. "No—argh—Aziraphale, wait," he protests, hauling himself out of his bowl and slithering his way around the hero's torso in a serpent-y approximation of a hug. He presses the top of his head firmly against the underside of Aziraphale's chin. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I was just expecting something... I don't know, something you should actually feel guilty about. Not wanting sex or not finding people fit isn't a bad thing, and damn anyone who's told you otherwise," he concludes fiercely.

Aziraphale lets out a humorless huff of laughter. "Whether it's a bad thing is neither here nor there, my dear. It doesn't change the fact that it makes me incompatible with the majority of people, and not a good candidate for a happy marriage."

"Is this why you and Katharina didn't work out?" Crowley guesses, squeezing lightly.

"Yes. She confided to me her appetites, and when I didn't share them, she suggested we could negotiate some sort of arrangement so that we'd both be satisfied, but I'm far too selfish to trust I could be happy sharing my partner with another. Oh, I suppose I've never tried, but it's an awfully big gamble to take when entering into a marriage. And, well, I like her well enough, but I couldn't say I love her—not romantically, at least."

Crowley hums consideringly. "Well, just because you and Katharina didn't work out doesn't mean you couldn't make it work with someone else."

Aziraphale snorts. "My brothers are quite impatient with me to find someone and make do, regardless of compatibility."

Crowley nudges upward in protest. "I don't mean like that. I mean, there are other people in the world who aren't interested in sex, or who are but are happy taking care of themselves if their partner isn't."

Aziraphale scoffs. "Oh, who would ever—"

"I'm not," Crowley blurts out, cutting him off. "Interested in sex," he clarifies quickly. "I also don't find people, er, shaggable." His heart is racing in terror; this isn't something he shares. It isn't something he's ever needed to share. But maybe it's bit of truth he can pay in preemptive penance.

"Oh," Aziraphale breathes. "Truly?" he asks, voice trembling.

Crowley twines around him tighter, nudging his snout up behind Aziraphale's ear with a nervous sigh. "Yeah. Imagine the odds, you of all people answering my flyer."

"Oh," Aziraphale repeats, and then, again, brokenly, "Oh, my, yes, it's quite lucky isn't it." And while his voice is still all wobbly and heartbreaking, there's a bit of incredulous relief in it. He raises his arms and lays careful hands on Crowley's coils where they wrap around his chest. "I suppose that means I'm still in the candidate pool?"

"You are the candidate pool," Crowley returns grumpily. "Your siblings are nightmares. It's cruel of you to even make me consider them."

Aziraphale giggles, drawing gentle fingers over Crowley's scales. "Raphael really is such a dear. And Haniel is quite sweet."

"Fuck off. I'm exhausted. I'm going to sleep," he declares, and doesn't make a move to release Aziraphale from his constrictor grip.

Eventually, he relents long enough to let Aziraphale leave to prepare for bed, but as soon as he returns, Crowley bullies him into the bed and takes up place of pride on his chest, burying his head in the center of his coils. Aziraphale runs a gentle finger down the back of his neck but doesn't attempt to draw him into further conversation.

Crowley spends the night mentally composing drafts of confessions and imagining their fallout. By morning, he's gritty-eyed and grouchy, and no closer to deciding how he's going to fix any of it.

Aziraphale is practically radiating joy, and it twists Crowley's guts.

²⁶ This is because "Circe's Remorse" is a name bestowed more out of wishful thinking than a clear-eyed assessment of character. A better name might be "Circe's Extremely Put Upon Concession That Maybe Sometimes She Might Be Inconvenienced By This One Person In Particular Remaining Cursed To An Animal Form." And like most grudging admissions, it's a bitch to draw out. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Trolls are very traditional creatures, which Aziraphale is counting on to resolve this odiferous quest quickly. A debt cleared for a favor, maybe a riddle for the ceremony of it all, and then they can be back to Jasmine Cottage by supper.

Prince Anthony is sulking in his cloak hood again, but Aziraphale can't blame him. The air underneath the bridge is heavy with the smell of mold, rotting plants, and general decay. Water from the wide creek at the bottom of the gorge collects in stagnant pools, and what movement that persists down the center is sluggish. Aziraphale is tempted to pull out a scented handkerchief and only restrains himself in fear he might offend the guard. He can't imagine how overpowering this must be to a snake's heightened sense of smell.

"Bridge Guard, Bridge Guard, hear my petition," he calls for the third time in as many minutes. There's a palpable sense of menace hanging in the gloomy underbelly of the bridge high above their heads, so he knows it's still managed. Hopefully still by the same troll.

"Who dares disturb the guard's rest," a phlegmy voice bawls from the shadows, and then one peels itself off and resolves into a lurking man-shaped dark fae with fish-belly-pale skin and black eyes.

In the hood, Prince Anthony stiffens, and Aziraphale resists the urge to reach up and run reassuring fingers over the lump of serpent through the cloak material. No need to draw the prince into this bit of nasty business if it can be avoided.

"Aziraphale Messenger of Haven," he announces himself, and then adds with heavy intonation, "Brother to Michael Messenger."

"Aw, bollocks," the troll grimaces elaborately and shuffles further out of the shadows to squint nearsightedly at Aziraphale. "Which one are you, then? That bastard has too many siblings."

Aziraphale stifles a sigh. "The seventh son," he says, because that's usually enough for anyone familiar with their family.

The troll draws cracked lips back over too-sharp teeth in a rictus of a smile. "What brings Haven's Angel to my domain?"

He thinks calling a backwater, ill-used bridge a "domain" is a bit overstating it, but it won't do to insult him, especially since he's unlikely to like the request.

"A trade," he says simply.

As predicted, the troll's eyes sparkle with glee. "Oh, and what have you to trade Duke Hastur?"

"Your debt to Michael cleared in exchange for a Guard's Favor: safe, unrestricted use of one of the managed bridges in the region for the performance of a ritual."

Prince Anthony squirms slightly in the hood before going abruptly still again.

"What sort of ritual?" Hastur asks suspiciously, but he's already flexing his hands in excitement, no doubt at the thought of discharging the debt in a way that lets him fob off the responsibility to another of his cohorts.

"Nothing that would damage or alter the bridge," he reassures. "It's a ritual to reverse an animal transformation."

The troll's face screws up. "Don't love's kiss usually do the trick on those?"

"Not in this case, I'm afraid," he says, fighting to keep the tetchiness from his voice.

"Who's it for?" Hastur demands. "Don't think I like the idea of writing out a favor for just anyone. What if they aren't worthy?"

Aziraphale heroically keeps his opinion on the relative worthiness of just about anyone compared to most trolls he's met and especially this troll in particular. He's never had the misfortune of meeting "Duke" Hastur in person but has certain opinions based on Michael's rather too-clinical assessment of their previous run-in.

"A prince," he replies, hoping it's enough.

"A prince of what?"

"Hellian."

"Which prince of Hellian? It's a big place."

He catches himself just before rolling his eyes and sends up a silent apology to the prince. "Prince Anthony of Hellian," he says testily. "He's been cursed to the form of a serpent by a member of the Night Court."

"Anthony? A serpent?" Hastur says incredulously, and then his face creases in what Aziraphale supposes counts for glee in a troll. "You know, I think I might know just who you're working for," he says with awful relish.^[27] "Tell me, is this serpent black and red with yellow eyes?"

"Er," Aziraphale stutters, taken aback. He can't imagine what circumstances would have led to the prince in his cursed form crossing paths with this troll, whose bridge is deep in the territory of Brittany.

"I've got a trade for you, Seventh Son," Hastur sneers. "The favor, just as you've asked, no tricks, in exchange for three things: a clearing of my debt with Michael Messenger—which is a trifling thing—the answer to a riddle, and for you to bring here this Prince Anthony with you so I can look him in the eye when I grant him this favor."

The last word is drawn out and said in a tone so nasty that Aziraphale is already doubting the trustworthiness of the "no tricks" qualifier. Then again, he'd expected a bargain, and the pattern of three tasks and the riddle are quite traditional. He can't immediately work out what the harm would be having Anthony reveal himself, except that the troll seems in too much spiteful ecstasy from the idea for it to be completely safe.

While he's dithering, the prince decides for him by slowly slinking up out of the hood and hovering just above his left shoulder. Aziraphale turns to look at him and then down at the forbidding gap between the prince's body and his shoulder in surprise.

"Hastur," the prince says, grim and flat.

"Oh, you've tagged along, Prince Anthony?" the troll cackles in delight. "This is shaping up to be a brilliant day."

Aziraphale glances between the two in befuddlement. Clearly they know each other, and just as clearly there are undercurrents, though he's too blindsided to begin to suss them out.

"Got Haven's Angel dancing to your tune, do you, you old bastard?" Hasture continues, practically vibrating with glee. "This is for your big human project, isn't it, you traitor. Oh, I'm going to enjoy this, so much."

Prince Anthony is stock still beside him, his usual restless energy frozen.

"Anthony?" Aziraphale whispers, enough of his magic or luck or something warning him that something painful is coming, but too out of sorts to sift through whatever clues are being put before him.

"Answer me this riddle, friend, and I'll grant thee a boon," Hasture begins, growling and sing-song. "What's black and red and a liar all over? What crawls into an angel's nest and cuckolds him out of a princely fortune?"

Aziraphale frowns, baffled. It's too specific not to be personal, but his brain is feeling too sluggish to parse the words into something concrete.

When neither he nor the prince respond immediately, Hastur grins and jeers, "Come on, Prince. I'm a traditional sort of troll. This daft toff has a reputation—I know he'll keep his end of the bargain. Just answer the riddle and the favor is yours. One slither closer to your goal, right? Though maybe you'll have to find another hero to con after this one drops you."

"What is he talking about?" Aziraphale asks, not liking how fretful he sounds but anxiety pulling too sharply at his ribcage to be able to smooth out his tone.

"He's talking about me," Anthony says, tonelessly, and then louder, pitched toward Hastur: "It's me, you arsehole. Now give over."

The troll wheezes with laughter, half bending over with it, and flicks his hand up to reveal a rolled up bit of parchment sloppily tied with a bit of twine. There's a small ripple of demonic power, and the parchment vanishes from the troll's hand.

"What?" Aziraphale asks, lost and feeling increasingly numb.

"I've got it, Aziraphale," the prince mutters, still sounding blank. "Come on, get us back to Anathema's and I'll explain."

"Explain?" he echoes shrilly.

"Your prince charming is a fraud," Hastur cackles. "I hope you weren't betting the family farm on whatever he promised you. I can't wait to rub this in Michael's smug face—his famous baby brother tricked by the demon Crawly! "

"Oh, fuck off, Hastur, you tosser," the prince says, some heat finally creeping back into his tone. "Go back to shaking down farmers for loose change."

"I don't understand," Aziraphale tries again, and it sounds like his voice is coming from far away.

"Shit," Anthony says, and somehow he's on the ground in front of him and huge, and he's gently prodding Aziraphale in the sternum with his snout. "Let's go, angel, aboutface. No use hanging around this dump."

Numbly, Aziraphale turns and starts walking, feeling the occasional nudge between his shoulder blades whenever he slows down. He feels disconnected from himself, the press of understanding bearing down in a way that makes him shy away from fully engaging with anything. And so, he lets himself be guided by a giant serpent back into the forest they'd traveled through this morning to get to the bridge. He knows he should try to focus. With focus, he should be able to will the boots to get them home in time for lunch. Anathema is expecting them. Newt has the day off and said he would cook a frittata.

"Aziraphale?" the serpent says after a while, and slithers around to cut him off.

Aziraphale stumbles to a stop and absently registers they're in a small clearing and likely quite a ways off from the bridge. The serpent draws himself up in a twitchy mass of coils, head lifted so they're eye level. He sways ever so slightly back and forth. There's an aura around him now that must have been tamped down or warded previously. It's subtle and slippery, difficult to get a read on other than very clearly being fae and demonic.

"Prince Anthony?" Azirphale tries, sounding feeble and breathless in his own ears.

"Crowley," the serpent admits. "Just… just Crowley."

"You're not a prince," he says, because it's apparently what his sluggish mind has decided to seek clarification on first.

"No."

"You're not a human."

"No."

"Are you even cursed?" The tips of his fingers are tingling, and he realizes he's begun to breathe too fast, too shallow, and forcibly lengthens each inhale and exhale. Now isn't the time to get emotional, his inner voice scolds, sounding remarkably like Michael.

"No. There's a ssspell I've been researching," he says, haltingly. "To get a human corporation. Finally worked it out. It'sss taken centuries. This is the last bit, gathering the ingredients."

"You couldn't get them yourself?"

"Not easily. Not, uh, sssafely."

"So you decided to trick some fool into doing it all for you?" Aziraphale is surprised to hear a note of bitterness in his own voice, and it's like closing a circuit.

Suddenly, he's flooded with an awful, trembling anger. Power rushes up within him, clogging the back of his throat and itching behind his eyes. He resolutely presses his lips together and balls his hands into fists. If he opens his mouth right now, he can't be sure he won't breathe fire or vomit acid. So, he takes a shuddering breath through his nose and tries to stuff the power back down before howling will and raging intention makes him do something he's sure he'll later regret.

The serpent, Crowley, shifts in place, restless. "Yeah. It's kind of what I do. Demon and all."

Aziraphale nods sharply, whether to himself or to Crowley he's not sure. He's too distracted by the roiling anger and devastation that's like a hot fist clenched around his sternum, shaking him like a ragdoll.

The worst part, he thinks, is that he's not even angry for the right reasons. He should be furious that he's been jilted out of a princely title, or at the very least out of his promised retirement from the neverending quest for the elusive family fortune.

But just like he never truly expected to be chosen as the groom-to-be, despite all of the supposed-prince's complaining about the alternative choices, deep down he never believed Gabriel's assurances that this was it, the last quest. Something would have been found wanting, in the end: Prince Anthony's castle not magical enough, his fortune too meager. Maybe Aziraphale would have gained a month's reprieve, but he doesn't doubt that by then one of his siblings would have found some quest he absolutely had to take, for the good of the family.

What really has him by the throat is the shattered foolish notion that he might actually have found a partner. Someone who not only likes him for who he is but isn't put off by the unusual way he loves.

And then he finds, when it comes down to it, he's not even all that angry with this Crowley demon after all. He might have been leading Aziraphale on, but Aziraphale is the fool who fell for it. Of course no one could find him a suitable partner. The visit to Eastgate should have reminded him of that. If someone as lovely as Katharina, who actively wanted to try for something with him, could admit it would never work between them with the way he is…

Well, he thinks, taking a few more shaking breaths, there's no use getting worked up over what can't be changed. And, with as much will as he's ever mustered in his long life, he resolutely shunts the whole messy business somewhere to the back of his mind.

"Well… this certainly is unfortunate," he says through partly numbed lips, and is proud that his voice is only a little wobbly. With a step to the right, he attempts to get around the serpent, already half composing in his head a placating speech for Gabriel and the others.

"Um," Crowley chokes out, sounding baffled, and sidewinders his way into blocking Aziraphale again. "Is that it?"

Aziraphale fixes him with a blank look. "What were you expecting," he says, toneless.

He swears the serpent's eyes narrow, despite a distinct lack of eyelids. "A bit of yelling—some swearing? Maybe even a little smiting, if I'm honest."

"So sorry to disappoint you," Aziraphale says frostily, and pushes down the petty thrill he gets when Crowley visibly flinches. He uses the distraction to sidestep around the bulk of the snake and start a resolute, ground-eating pace deeper into the forest and back toward London.

"Oi, Aziraphale, look, just so you know, it wasn't personal," Crowley says, frank and sounding vaguely apologetic as he slithers up on his left to keep pace. "There's a lot of stuff to get for the spell, and I can't exactly get it myself, can I? Need arms at minimum for most of these. I've been working on this for literal centuries, and I'm so close. And I know now that you're a ridiculously standup sort of bloke who probably would have done it if I just asked nicely from the start, but I didn't know that then, did I, and by the time I did know, it was too likely you'd be too mad to keep helping if I told you the truth. Which, by the way, I realize this isn't the best time, but—are you?"

Aziraphale, who can feel his blood pressure rising with every step and every word out of the lying serpent's mouth in that reasonable tone as he justifies his deception, fights to keep his voice level when he asks, "Am I what?"

"Er," Crowley hedges, because Aziraphale lost the fight and the question had come out sharp and pointy. "Too mad to keep helping me?"

Honestly, he wishes he were more surprised, but it is exactly the sort of tactless question he's come to expect from Prince Anthony—and that realization is too disturbing to contemplate. He sublimates the nauseated roll in his gut into stomping to an abrupt stop and delivering his most incredulous stare to the serpent.

Crowley has the grace to look as sheepish as Aziraphale supposes it's possible to look as a terrifyingly gigantic snake demon: ducking his head a bit and coils coming to a juddering halt like a massive spaghetti pileup.

"Just, ah, want to know what my next move is," Crowley clarifies. And then, straightening up in a determined sort of way, he plows on. "Look, I know it isn't fair, me asking you to do this pro bono, especially after…" He makes a series of awkward gurgles and blurts out: "I have contacts. I could find you a real castle. Or at least track down a big enough treasure to get your family off your back. I'm very good at scaring up leads on big hauls," he says, verging on smug. "What I mean is, I'm not expecting you to do this for free, obviously—we can come to some sort of arrangement. I was already trying to figure out how I could make it up to you even before you found out, er…" He trails off and shifts uncomfortably.

Aziraphale stares at the writhing mass of demonic anxiety—and it is anxiety; he's too familiar with the symptoms not to recognize them in another—and wishes he could delude himself into believing he had for even a second considered not continuing the quest. But he hadn't. Not for a moment. Because, he thinks with cold clarity, he is a gullible idiot who tumbled into a thorny patch of achingly unfortunate feelings.

Probably, he deserves everything he's going to endure from now until however long it's going to take to finish this.

"Why do you want a human corporation?" he asks, belatedly, both in terms of the exceedingly tense silence that has passed and in the order of options of sensible decision making.

"'Why'?" Crowley boggles. "Why wouldn't I want one?" he challenges, irate. "Do you lot not realize how clever opposable thumbs are? Limbs—of any kind!—for that matter? Why do I want a—? I want a human corporation because it's bloody well difficult to get on in the human realms without one, isn't it? Not if I want to do anything for myself—hence, the, well, you know..." He splutters a bit, tipping his snout vaguely in Aziraphale's direction.

"Why not stick to the fae realms?" Aziraphale counters placidly.

"You've visited the Night Court," Crowley says, tone abruptly forbidding.

No room for demons at court—at least, not demons that aren't considerably more terrifyingly beautiful or terrifyingly horrific than Crowley's comparatively modest form—and in the wilds, it's literally eat or be eaten.

Aziraphale tips his head in acknowledgement, clasping his hands so tightly over his belly his joints creak. "It's not for any nefarious purposes?"

Crowley rolls his whole head around in lieu of his eyes. "Look, I just want to be able to get pissed and, I dunno, take up gardening or something. Can't promise I won't run the occasional con, but at least with a human body I can try to do something more, eugh, 'respectable,'" he grates out with a disgruntled flick of his tongue. "I'll have choices."

Aziraphale contemplates Crowley, looking over the sleek, unsettling length of his body, the glittering shine of his scales, and the unnerving glow of his eyes. Aziraphale's mildly embarrassed to discover he still finds the overall effect charming, but he can readily concede that he's biased. Crowley's options for making his way in the human realms without either putting himself uncomfortably in someone else's power or exerting undue power over someone else are likely quite limited.

"I'll continue helping you," he says, voice working a half-step ahead of his mind, and fights back the numbness threatening to creep back into his limbs by resuming his brisk walk.

Crowley doesn't move to follow. Instead, he blurts out—rather perversely, Aziraphale thinks: "What, just like that?"

"Do you want to fight about this?" Aziraphale counters in overly reasonable tones without looking back.

"No. No!" Crowley snaps, and from the sudden rustling Aziraphale assumes he's moved to catch up. "Just. Well, what do you want? At the end. Treasure? A guild-certified castle? More favors that your brother can lord over arsehole trolls?"

The questions jab at places Aziraphale can't yet fully acknowledge are slowly bleeding out, so he snaps back, "I don't want anything from you."

Crowley splutters. "Come on, you must do. Look, I'm in your debt, and I always settle my debts."

It's a big concession, for a fae, to acknowledge voluntarily a debt, but it just lances through Aziraphale like a poisoned barb.

"No debt," he bites out. "I made a promise, you remember? I am merely keeping it."

"Well, that doesn't seem reasonable under the circumstances," Crowley prods, like he's made some sort of blood pact with the tiny inner voice Aziraphale regularly quashes that likes to point out every time Gabriel's acting like a twit or Uriel sneers at him or the whole passel of them just demand and demand and demand of him.

"Reasonable!" Aziraphale barks out on a laugh that even to him sounds a bit unhinged. "What does reason have to do with this, ever? I made a promise. I am bound to keep it."

"Ugh, you are so annoyingly nice," Crowley laments. "Just who is binding you, anyway? Not me, obviously."

Aziraphale feels his temper abruptly reignite and immediately boil over. As it rushes up his throat, he rounds on the serpent. "Who isn't binding me?" he yells. "I am a seventh son of a seventh son, the bloody Angel of Haven, a proper sanctified hero with an embarrassing amount of power." He clenches his fists and fights to keep the power bubbling up under the anger from exploding like a geyser.

"Oh, leave off," Crowley sneers. "I already know your holier-than-thou V.C."

"Yes, being a hero is my job," he stresses, feeling flushed and jittery. "And more!" He says, waving his arms in an attempt to dispel some of the trembling energy roiling inside. "It's my duty to use my gods' bestowed gifts to help others, to keep my promises, to—to honor my family and the people who look up to them and to me to keep things safe."

"You're acting like a martyr," Crowley protests in a tone that doesn't quite know if it wants to be a plea or a sneer. "No one's forcing you to do anything. You've just got a heroic stick up your arse."

"And what would you know about being heroic," Aziraphale snaps back. "A liar living up to every stereotype about demons and dark fae in the book!"

"Oh, so you think you're better than me?"

"Which of us lied to the other, Crowley? Hmm? Which of us pretended to—" He cuts himself off and swallows down bile, feeling tears stinging his eyes and hating himself for it just a little bit. That part is his own fault, he ruthlessly reminds himself. It's no fair dragging it into this utterly nonsensical fight.

With a frustrated snarl, Aziraphale stomps down the overflowing power out through the heel of his foot, focusing as best he can on a general command to be fruitful and multiply. The trees and bushes around them abruptly gain at least a centimeter of girth and a veritable riot of new growth.

Crowley yelps as a nearby sapling shoots up in ecstatic glory and threatens to take parts of his tail with it. "Oi, watch it, you bastard."

"Just—just leave it alone," Aziraphale says, sounding desperate in his own ears and struggling to modulate his tone. "I said I will see this through. I can't see how it could possibly benefit you to argue against it."

Crowley slinks down further to the ground and eyes both him and the unseasonable flowers rapturously bursting into bloom on the nearby fruiting trees and bushes. "Yeah, fine, you daft toff."

Aziraphale nods and takes a deep breath, doing his best to smooth out his tunic and his mental state with brisk flicks of his wrists. "Yes, well, you'll need to change size now," he advises and unhooks his cloak. He drapes the tail of the fabric over one arm and holds out the bowl of the hood between his hands.

Crowley stills, eyes fixed on where Aziraphale proffers the small pouch of fabric. Aziraphale jostles it impatiently.

"Quickly, if you please. I'm tired of walking. We'll use the boots."

Slowly, Crowley unspools, shrinking down as he closes the distance between them. Aziraphale obligingly lowers the cloak closer to the forest floor. Once the serpent has disappeared inside entirely, Aziraphale straightens, holding the cloak away from him, and fixes the entrance to London firmly in his mind.

²⁷ Owing entirely to the fact that Crowley is equal parts unreasonably fond and extremely lazy when it comes to his pseudonyms. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Because he's a bloody saint, Aziraphale gently settles the cloak onto the seat of the armchair nearest the fire. Because he's also a dramatic twit, he spins around and immediately leaves the cottage again, nose tipped up to the righteous heavens. The door doesn't slam, but it closes emphatically.

The noise draws Anathema from the adjoining kitchen into the living room. "Aziraphale?" she calls out, and frowns when she spots Crowley sulking in the puddle of cloak on the chair. "How did it go? Where's he off to again so sudden?"

Crowley briefly contemplates going the way of the angel and postponing this conversation a bit longer. He's not looking forward to the avalanche of "I told you sos" he can hear rumbling on their way to crush him.

"The troll that owed his brother a debt was Hastur," he says, voice flat.

Anathema's brows furrow briefly before shooting up, and she looks toward the door where Aziraphale just departed. "Oh," she says, somehow managing to fit about three buckets of softly sympathetic anguish into one syllable.

"Yeah, it didn't go well," he says, trying for sarcastic and just coming off tired as he slinks out of the cloak and winds up the wingback to perch sullenly at the top of the chair.

Anathema turns back and absolutely levels him with an expression so empty of emotion it scalds. She doesn't say anything, just holds his gaze for a few searing moments before turning back to the kitchen to resume whatever it was she was doing.

Somehow, it's worse than if she'd laid into him.

That afternoon and well into evening, Crowley makes himself scarce, lurking in the ceiling beams and using the lightest of demonic suggestions to blend in with the shadows. Because he knows how to read a fucking room, thanks.

Aziraphale returns just before dinner, bearing a tin of biscuits and a whiff of rosewater perfume that suggests he spent at least part of his afternoon at Madame Tracy's. He immediately clocks Crowley's perch, but beyond a neutral half-second stare, he doesn't further acknowledge him. Crowley wavers between being grateful and the perverse desire to just drop down right onto his ridiculous poof of curls as he passes under him, just to hear him yelp.

Dinner is tense and quiet. Newt, bless his awkward soul, gamely tries to make conversation, but Aziraphale doesn't answer beyond one- or two-word responses and weak smiles, and eventually Anathema catches Newt's eye and shakes her head.

After dinner, Anathema waylays Aziraphale at the top of the stairs as he tries to escape immediately to their shared (well, not anymore) room. Crowley assumes the stairwell will amplify the conversation enough for him to eavesdrop, and so it does.

"I'm so sorry, Aziraphale," she murmurs, urgent and earnest. "I'd already signed a confidentiality agreement or I would have told you straight away. I tried to convince him to just tell you himself, but he wouldn't budge. It's… it's really important to him," she admits, which briefly warms the cold cockles of his demonic heart. But then she immediately follows up with, "He's just scared," and he resumes his low-level irritation with her person overall.

"My dear, I don't rightly care one way or the other," Aziraphale says, sounding drained. "But I don't blame you. You can't violate a contract—you have your reputation to think of. I understand completely." And damn him for sounding completely sincere.

"Maybe you should blame me a little," she counters, sounding impatient. "I knowingly aided in the deception. You're well within your rights to be angry with me."

"Anathema, please," he pleads. "When all of this is concluded, we can have a proper talk. Right now, I'd just like to go to bed. I'm tired."

Silence stretches for a long moment, before Anathema murmurs something in agreement, and Aziraphale's steps sound over the ceiling as he completes his journey to his room for the night.

Anathema paces back downstairs and comes to a halt directly under Crowley's beam.

"You. Kitchen. Now," she hisses before sweeping there herself with a dramatic swish of skirts.

Crowley slumps in exasperation. At least Newt hadn't spotted him, he consoles himself.

When he slips into the kitchen, Anathema is aggressively preparing herself a cup of chamomile tea.

"What are you going to do?" she asks, cold and hot at the same time.

"Uh, finish the quest, obviously," he replies, winding up a table leg to coil up on the edge of the tabletop.

"You miserable snake," she snaps, slamming the kettle down on the hob. "What are you going to do to make this right with him."

All the perverse anger he'd been feeling earlier when he'd been having the most self-defeating fight of his existence flaring back up. "There's nothing I can do. I tried to make things right, but he doesn't want anything from me. Too obsessed with being the perfect hero."

Anathema skewers him with a look. "You've met his family. You know why he has hangups."

"His hangups, not mine," Crowley insists. "All I can do is make the offer. I can't make him accept it. Or, are you suggesting I dictate his feelings to him?" he asks, because he is not above being a raging hypocrite if it helps his argument.

She rolls her eyes and throws her hands up. "This isn't the point," she says to the ceiling. "The point is that you like him, and he likes you, and you'd be an idiot to give up trying to work things out with him, and you are many unsavory things, Crowley, but you are not an idiot," she says, snatching the kettle from the hob just as it starts to whine and drowning the infuser in her mug like she wishes it were Crowley's head she was dousing with boiling water.

Crowley hunkers down into himself on pure instinct, not liking the irritated menace rolling off the witch.

"Yeah, all right, I'll keep trying," he says, but very much in the tones of "But I'm going to complain about it the whole time."

"Good," she says, sounding mollified and a little off balance by how quickly he's capitulated. "Great."

"Grand," he drawls.

"Oh, go choke on a bug," she says and flounces off with her tea.

Chapter Text

When Aziraphale wakes up the next morning, he stares at the plaster ceiling and tries not to miss the weight of droopy coils of serpent sprawling on his chest. When despondent tears prick at the back of his eyes, he reminds himself that nowhere in any of the babbling and wheedling and tempting yesterday did the demon once say he was sorry for what he'd done.

This, unfortunately, does little but transmute the despondent tears to angry ones.

With a huff, he scrubs over his face and resolves to show the mercenary fae exactly what a proper hero is. Aziraphale will deliver the final ingredients with poise and skill, and Crowley can drown in Aziraphale's virtuous competence for all he cares.

He is the picture of aplomb when he descends the stairs for breakfast, travel attire given a quick reprimand toward freshness and his expression a much stronger reprimand in the looking glass toward casual indifference.

"Good morning," he greets the kitchen broadly, and moves to the sideboard to slice bread for toast.

"Good morning," Newt replies, eyes wide and hand frozen where he's been scrambling eggs in a skillet.

"Good morning," Anathema echoes, setting out plates and utensils with brisk efficiency. "Newt, the eggs."

Crowley, still sulking in the rafters of the front room, does not reply, and Aziraphale does not care.

When it's time to depart, he produces a lidded wicker basket lined with fleece and places it pointedly beneath the beam where Crowley is residing.

"What's that supposed to be," he hears from the infernal shadows stubbornly resisting the bright morning sunshine illuminating the room.

"I thought you might be more comfortable in this when we need to use the boots," Aziraphale says diplomatically. Crowley may accuse him of being a martyr, but there's no way he's going to endure the serpent clambering all over his person now. He's not that much of a masochist.

Crowley makes a noncommittal hum, but oozes down from the rafter and into the basket without protest.

The silence as Aziraphale makes his way out of town, basket handle looped through his arm and balanced on his hip to keep it from swaying, is almost sentient. Townsfolk he passes on the street eye the basket warily, to the point he's almost certain he's not imagining the aura of sulky menace emanating from under the lid. Well, if that's the serpent's game, he won't give him the satisfaction of complaining.

Seven steps bring them to the inner edge of a dark wood, beyond which the depressingly cliche tower the Chameleon Wizard lives in stabs at the sky by the shore of a mirror-smooth lake. Late-morning sunlight catches on the iridescent sheen to the stonework, which in some lights reflects back rainbow hues and in others perfectly reflects the color of the sky so the tower blends into the flat horizon.

Aziraphale eyes the forbidding, iron-studded door at the base of the tower and can't help a weary sigh.

"What's wrong," Crowley mutters from the basket, and out of the corner of Aziraphale's eye he sees the lid shift as the serpent pokes his snout out.

"The Chameleon Wizard and I don't get on," Aziraphale admits, because it's not like it won't be obvious from the moment they exchange frosty glowers.

"Oh, Ligur, yeah, he's a right bastard," Crowley snorts. "I was going to try to find some way to sit this one out, before," he says. "But now… He and Hastur are buddies, anyway, so he probably already knows I'm involved."

"You know him?" Aziraphale asks, surprised into engaging in conversation.

"I may have conned him…" he says, almost apologetically. "Twice," he concedes further. "That he knows about, anyway."

Aziraphale groans. "Are you telling me we're about to go ask for a blessing from a notoriously difficult wizard who doesn't like either of us?"

"You find me a finer craftsman of form-changing spellwork," Crowley retorts, rearing up far enough that the half-lid of the basket smacks Aziraphale's forearm. "He's the best there's been in three generations."

"Oh, hush, I wasn't doubting you," Aziraphale snits, ignoring the way Crowley whips his head around to fix him with a serpent-y glare for his word choice.

When they knock on the door, Ligur himself answers it with enough alacrity that he must have seen their arrival from one of the narrow windows and been hovering nearby.

"My, my, Haven's Angel and the Serpent of Pandemonium, come to my door to beg a blessing," he drawls with obvious relish. "Come in. I've already prepared your trial."

Aziraphale is distracted from how poorly the wizard's eagerness bodes for them by the honorific given to the demon.

He dawdles on the stairs behind Ligur so he can discreetly demand, "Are you a member of the Night Court?" in an undertone.

Crowley bobbles his head from side to side. "Not officially—m'not the right pedigree—but Lucifer likes me, unfortunately."

Saying it's "unfortunate" that one of the Fae Kings likes you is like saying being in sudden, unarmored possession of a nest of excited hornets is unfortunate. Aziraphale feels an unconscious stab of sympathy for Crowley's desire to stay well out of the fae realm and then catches himself and shakes it off.

Ligur leads them up to the highest floor of the tower, a dim magelight floating above his head and casting his face in dramatic shadows while his robes swirl behind on what has to be a magically manufactured wind. Aziraphale purses his lips and resists the urge to produce his own, more sufficiently luminous magelight; it won't do either of them any good if they trip and break their fool necks just to preserve an aesthetic. However, Ligur is a staunch traditionalist,^[28] and the last thing they need is to irritate him.

When they reach the top of the stairs, the Wizard Chameleon draws up to a dramatic stop and spins around, holding an imperious hand up and thereby forcing Aziraphale into an awkward pause with only one foot on the landing.

"Oh hero," he intones. "You seek my blessing?"

Aziraphale briefly contemplates sitting down right there on the stairs and taking a long nap. "I do, oh Chameleon Wizard," he says instead in a tone perhaps a shade too crisp to be completely flattering.

Ligur narrows his eyes but ultimately decides to press on.

"You show wisdom to seek my counsel, and fortitude to endure the long journey through the Dark Wood and to the top of this tower." Aziraphale privately wonders when Ligur will figure out about his boots, but decides it's unlikely to be during this visit and so he'll worry about it at a more convenient hour. "Now," the wizard continues, dropping his voice ominously, "you must prove to me your cunning and patience."

He flings open the door at the end of the landing, revealing an improbably large room filled to bursting with all manner of grain and seed. Aziraphale fights to keep his expression neutral even as his stomach plummets. Clearly, Ligur has heard tell about his quest before last.

"Sort the contents of this room, like with like, without rune or spellwork, by dawn, and the blessing is yours. You may not leave, and no one may enter, once the door closes. These are my terms. Do you accept?"

"Dawn is far away," Aziraphale says, voice coming out flat, mind already a whirl of potential cheats he can try to employ. "May we beg a crust of bread? A waterskin?"

Ligur snorts. "You have your bag of cheap tricks. I'm sure you can look after yourself."

Aziraphale shrugs and nods. "I accept."

"And you, demon?" Ligur prods. "I know this is for you, in the end."

"Yeah, fine, whatever," Crowley mutters, hunched low in the basket and chin resting on the lip.

Ligur grins, feral and delighted, his eyes shifting color strangely in the dim light. "Well then, boys. To work with you!" He waves a hand toward the doorway with a mocking lean. Once Aziraphale crosses the threshold, the wizard slams the door closed with a rattling boom, and the sound of a bolt sliding home echoes obnoxiously through the wood. Ligur's slow, dark laugh fades into nothing as he descends the steps.

Alone, Aziraphale sets the basket gently on the floor and then gingerly settles himself beside it.

"I'm afraid we might need to find your second pick for a wizard's blessing after all," he says brightly as he detaches his largest pouch from his belt and upends it into his lap. Glittering combs, faintly glowing rocks, an assortment of increasingly bizarre spectacles and diadems and amulets, and all manner of other odds and ends tumble out, creating an improbably large pile in his lap for the size of the pouch.

"What," Crowley mocks, "afraid of a little grain?"

Aziraphale pokes through the pile, refamiliarizing himself with some of the more exotic objects in his collection and their properties, hoping against rapidly fading hope that he has something that will suit.

"I'm afraid of the time limit," he snaps, feeling his chest begin to clutch tighter with every piece he thrusts back into the pouch in rejection. "Obviously there's no way to get it done without some sort of magical interference, but I can't just snap my fingers. I have to use some sort of intermediary. Oh, that… that bad wizard," he frets, shoving the pouch and remaining objects out of his lap and jumping to his feet to begin pacing, feeling too jittery to keep still. Maybe the movement will shake an idea loose.

Crowley watches for what feels like a needlessly judging minute before nosing through the scattered objects on the floor. "He's just doing his job," he points out mildly, and Aziraphale skewers him with a stare cold enough Crowley actually flinches back. "Well, I would have figured you'd have some sort of doohickey that would get it done in a miraculous amount of time, anyway."

"I did have the exact 'doohickey,'" Aziraphale says, prim. "And he knows I don't have it anymore, which is why he was so eager to set the terms. He knew I wouldn't be able to complete the challenge and just wanted to humiliate me—or us, I suppose."

He fetches up against a wall and slumps down its length, suddenly exhausted.

Crowley eyes him from across the room. "What was it?"

"An enchanted rake. It would sort whatever you used it on," he says, rubbing a hand through his hair distractedly and staring at the looming pile of grain without really seeing it. At this rate, they'll have to find another wizard. And what if Crowley doesn't have a backup already picked out? This could set the quest back months. He'd been counting on having to endure no more than a couple of days, perhaps a week at most.

"How do you lose a bloody enchanted rake?" Crowley demands, sounding far too gleeful, given Aziraphale has admitted he's going to fail.

"Gave it away," he mutters, crossly.

"You what?"

"I gave it away!" he exclaims, throwing his hands up and letting them drop back into his lap like stones. "There was this mill with the most charming couple, and they'd just lost their only source of help, and she was expecting, and I thought, well, they could certainly use it more than me, especially with the rainy season coming and the risk of mold, and… oh, stop looking at me like I'm a fool, I already know," he laments, wringing his hands together and turning away from the fixed stare the serpent is giving him.

"What you are, is soft," Crowley says firmly. "Too soft for the line of work you're in, I think." He slithers closer and winds himself up in a loose spool next to Aziraphale's knee. "So, what I'm hearing is that you gave your sorting stick away, and this magical snob who thinks you have too many magical gadgets heard about it and decided to make a point, eh?"

Aziraphale tips his head back against the cold stone of the wall and closes his eyes wearily. "That's about the size of it, yes."

"Have to admit, it's brilliantly petty," the serpent muses.

Aziraphale cracks an eye open and sees Crowley looking out over the grain with an almost smug curve to his jaw.

"You don't seem very upset that I won't be able to get the blessing for you," he notes, the warmth of suspicion blooming in his blood.

"Oh, I would be," he assures, still sounding annoyingly self assured. He pauses dramatically before adding, "if I wasn't able to get it for us myself."

Aziraphale straightens from his slump. "What do you have planned, you wiley thing."

Crowley chuckles darkly. "What Ligur doesn't realize is I've got a network of operatives I can call on without the use of runes or spellwork. They'll have this mess sorted before you can say bob's your uncle."

"No one is allowed in to help," Aziraphale points out, knowing he's just playing into the drama but unable to help himself. Crowley's cocksure confidence is infectious.

"These aren't people, angel," he says reassuringly, and then a whispering roil of dark temptation unfurls from the serpent and seeps into the stonework. Aziraphale feels it brush against the edges of his consciousness and shivers at the coaxing desire to come along and sidle up to the demon.

When he sees the first rat scramble out from a small chink in the wall and bound up to sit at attention before Crowley's expectant stare, he can't help the gently despairing, "Oh, good gods," that escapes him. It sounds intolerably fond in his own ears.

"Oi, chop chop, got a time-sensitive job needs doing," Crowley projects as more and more rats spill out from various points in the wall and gather into a honest-to-goodness seethe on the floor in front of them.

When he seems satisfied with the number gathered, Crowley uncoils so he can slither back and forth in front of the gathering like a general inspecting his troops. Furry, bewhiskered faces track him attentively, and Aziraphale finds himself unsettlingly charmed.

"Right, my good gentlerats, we've got a massive pile of grain and seed what needs sorting," Crowley instructs. "I want to see clean separation between piles, I want to see hustle."

A rat at the front of the seethe chatters brightly, and Crowley pauses to give him (her? them?) due consideration.

"Don't really have a preference on what order the piles should be in," he says in response. "Go nuts—by size, by color, texture, whatever you want—so long as you're all in agreement first."

Another rat poses a strident series of chirps.

"Of course," Crowley agrees magnanimously and tips his head toward Aziraphale. "This gentleman will be preparing a repast of fine bread and cheeses for when you're done."

The seethe, well, seethes in delighted agitation. Aziraphale fixes a bright smile on his face even as he cheerfully plans the slow murder of a certain presumptuous serpent. That's his fine bread and cheese, thank you. Not that he isn't glad to pay back the kind services apparently about to be rendered to him, but he would at least like the courtesy of being asked first.

"Ah, well, of course," he confirms. "Fresh from one of London's finest establishments. Thank you ever so much for your assistance, er, good gentlerats."

"All right, that should be good enough to be getting on with," Crowley drawls. "Hop to it."

The rats turn and swarm onto and up the towering piles and set to work. Aziraphale watches in bewildered fascination as a few rats hold back and offer sharp encouragement or instruction or something to the rest. Soon, there's a steady stream of rats approaching each of the leader rats to deposit a particular kind of seed or grain at their feet before looping back into the pile. Each rat leader, it seems, is a sponsor of a different sorted pile.

"How extraordinary," he breathes. "What a clever group. Wherever did you find them?"

"Oh, I didn't. Not this particular lot, anyway."

Aziraphale favors him with an exasperated stare for the less-than-illuminating response. When Crowley tilts his head back and notices, he shifts restlessly.

"Well, when I first crossed realms, I wasn't too keen on humans at first. Couldn't be sure they wouldn't murder first and ask questions later. So, I set out to find a few particularly sharp and ambitious rats and came to an arrangement: I'd find places with good food and a good haul, and then I'd do a bit of distraction work to give them time to get in and get out with our prizes.

"Didn't take long working directly with a fae power for some of them to, er, evolve, shall we say. They started recruiting on their own, then, with me helping find anchor members whenever we'd travel to a new town or city. Pretty soon, they were networking and starting apprenticeships."

Crowley gives a slithery shrug. "They're self-sustaining, now, and all over. I'm a generous patron, so they listen when I call."

Aziraphale has to take a moment to process all that. And then another full minute just for good measure.

"Crowley, did you found a rat mafia?"

He bobbles his head from side to side. "Eeeeeh, more like a guild, isn't it? But, ah, close enough."

"Oh, pardon me," Aziraphale mutters.

"Better get on that bread and cheese," Crowley suggests cheerfully. "They're about half done already."

Aziraphale gives him a devastating side eye but wordlessly stands to retrieve his pouch and produce the Bountiful Kerchief and his enchanted compact mirror. He sets the mirror propped open on its side at forty-five degrees and carefully sets the cheese between the reflective surfaces. With a cheerful pop, two identical pieces of cheese manifest at angles behind the original. Once he removes them, he repeats the process with the loaf of bread, and then begins alternating cheese and bread, periodically peering over his shoulder to eyeball the size of the seethe versus what he's conjured already.

Crowley slithers up to investigate after a time, and Aziraphale hastily snaps the mirror closed before he can nudge his foolish snout right into the line of fire.

"Careful, you old silly," he admonishes. "I can't say I rightly know how this might affect a living being."

"What the ever-loving fuck is that?" Crowley demands, tongue flicking wildly over the small mountain of cheeses and bread loaves Aziraphale has produced, presumably to check that they don't smell any different than the originals. "Are you telling me you can just mass produce whatever you want with that thing?"

"Within limits," Aziraphale says. "For examples, it is incredibly difficult to produce anything that the invoker doesn't personally know how to produce, which makes duplicating base materials—such as, oh, gold, for a completely arbitrary example—a trifle challenging." He pauses and admits, "It's also entirely powered by the user, and the more complex or laborious it is to produce the object, the more energy it takes."

Crowley pauses his circling of the pile to regard him shrewdly. "Bread's pretty simple," he observes, "but hard cheeses… a lot goes into that, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Aziraphale says simply.

Crowley once again eyes the generous stack of cheeses. "You are a bloody marvel, you know that, angel?" he says, admiration clear in the warmth of his tone.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes but can't help how his cheeks heat a bit at the compliment. It's not often that people simply admire his power without acting as though there's something mildly vulgar about it or immediately feeling entitled to a part of it.

"I know how to make cheese, but I don't know a thing about metal working, so don't get any bright ideas about me miracling you up duplicates of some expensive bauble with that thing," he says tartly.

"So you're saying it is possible," Crowley confirms, sounding overly serious. "Got it."

"My dear, you must know as well as I that nearly anything is possible with the right combination of energy, will, and intention," he chides and begins to separate the food into the same number of piles as the number of rat gangs sorting grain.

"I've got the imagination," Crowley wheedles, sidling up closer. "You've got the frankly ridiculous amount of energy. Think of the possibilities," he croons. "I bet I could help you turn twice the profit you do currently. Get your family sorted and out of your curls."

The words are like a cold bucket of water over the head. Oh, well there is the entitlement, he thinks. Just couched as a temptation. As though he could possibly owe Crowley any consideration beyond what he is immediately obliged to fulfill after all his lies.

The reminder of his family, and the impending homecoming he'll face, empty handed for all his foolish troubles, is likewise mortifying. He clenches his jaw against a roil of nausea just thinking about the letter he's been trying to draft in his head that he knows he'll have to send the moment they get back. If the Chameleon Wizard already knows about Crowley's deception and Aziraphale's folly, he has no doubt Hastur will make sure news gets back to Michael as quickly as possible, if only to gloat. Oh, honestly, he should have sent something first thing this morning, or better yet yesterday the moment they returned to the cottage. Better for Michael to hear it from him than an odious toad like Hastur. He can already imagine the row of disappointed faces, all lined up in the front hall for the express purpose of making sure he knows from the moment he steps in the door exactly how much he's let not just them down but everyone who relies on the Messenger Estate largesse.

"Oi, angel? Where did you go?" Crowley says, pulling him out of the anxious spiral of his thoughts. He finds himself clutching his hands together tightly enough for his fingernails to leave faintly pink crescents indented in the skin.

"I want no part in your wiles," he snaps and takes a shaky breath to steady himself.

"Oh, yessss," the serpent replies with an exaggerated hiss, "my wiles that offer autonomy and the chance to maybe relax once in a while, provided you can bear to pull the giant stick out your arse first." He's got a hood around his head, somehow, and he's flaring the violently red underside of it at Aziraphale in indignation.

Aziraphale is caught by just enough surprise at the new shapeshifting that he flounders on a response, and in the tense silence, one of the rats edges up to Crowley's left and chatters nervously.

The serpent tears his sharp, unblinking stare from Aziraphale's gaze, and they both turn to look at the room at large. Seven neat piles of sorted grain and seed greet them, organized by color in almost a perfect rainbow gradient except that yellow and green are swapped.

"Oh, well done, you lot. That is going to drive him absolute bonkers," Crowley praises warmly. He turns back to Aziraphale radiating smug satisfaction. "There you are, angel. One obnoxiously petty quest, sorted—literally!" He cackles and then slithers away to direct the rats to their feasts of bread and cheese.

Aziraphale looks over the grain with a dazed sort of numbness and then fumbles out his pocket watch. Only perhaps an hour and a half has passed since they entered the room. And while he's feeling a bit peaky after using the mirror so much in such a short timespan, he now has a full night's rest to look forward to.

He looks over where Crowley is busy hobnobbing with each of the rat leaders in turn, doling out compliments and asking after family members like a professional gladhander. Favored sponsor, indeed. Here is a different sort of power than Aziraphale wields, he thinks. A subtler sort, though no less effective and, in this case, far more than anything Aziraphale was equipped to produce.

It's intriguing, seductive even. He can admit to himself he sees the allure in Crowley's offer. But he can't count on it to mean what he would inevitably want it to. Even this, tonight, isn't anything more than a bit of showmanship: razzle dazzle him with a favor—an extremely self-serving one at that—to keep him on the hook to complete the quests and perhaps help with a bit of mischief after. He's under no illusions that Crowley has faith in his promise that he'll see this through without reward.

Aziraphale shakes himself out of the unusually cynical turn of his thoughts and straightens, clearing his throat conspicuously. When he sees at least a few furry heads turn his way, and Crowley's as well, he offers a bright smile to the room.

"Thank you, all, for your help. I am exceedingly grateful and quite literally could not have done it without you. I understand that you have a network of sorts. Please know that if you ever have need of assistance, you can contact me and I will do my best to support."

He'll need to ask Madame Tracy for a recommendation on whose shop he should drop by for a beast speech charm, but that can be quickly sorted in the morning. Befriending a rat guild feels Significant, and he wants to be prepared for when this inevitably comes full circle sometime in future.

Crowley bobs his head at him approvingly before making his way back over. The rats are beginning to scurry back to their mysterious cracks in the floor and walls, though the leaders do make a point to pass by him with a friendly sort of squeak on their way out. He returns the farewells with cheerful waves and a few "mind how you go"s.

"So, be honest with me," Crowley says after the last of the rats has gone and they're once again left alone, not an errant crumb of bread or bit of mess to betray the room was recently host to a rat seethe. "If I hadn't done anything, could you have just started singing mournfully about all the grain you needed sorted and the same sort of thing would have happened anyway?"

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. "Maybe if I had a tower window to lean from despondently, you awful thing."

"Just checking. So! What fine fare did you hold back for yourself this evening?" he asks. "Any eggs?"

Feeling a bit caught out, and then feeling annoyed at feeling caught out, Aziraphale settles back against the wall and begins pulling out his kit for when he doesn't have access to a fire. Wordlessly, he arranges a handkerchief with a few boiled eggs, some cured sausage, one loaf and cheese wedge from the earlier feast he reserved for himself, and some candied ginger. The eggs he nudges in Crowley's direction.

He pauses midway through adding a teaspoon's worth of tea pearls to a mug of magically boiled water when Crowley dips his head to the handkerchief and snaps up one of the eggs whole, the bulge passing quickly down his neck and flattening out supernaturally fast.

"Oh!" he says, startled, and then blushes at his own rudeness. "Apologies. I didn't mean to stare. It's just, I think that's the first time I've ever seen you eat where I could see you."

Crowley shifts and rearranges his coils. "Yeah, well. Didn't seem—" He swallows heavily. "—princely, I guess, to go round unhinging my jaw on a regular basis."

Aziraphale's mood sours again slightly at the reminder of the deception. "Understandable," he allows and lets the matter drop like a stone.

There isn't much conversation after that. Crowley doesn't offer to change to his true size and act like a makeshift bed again, which saves Aziraphale the mortification of having to turn him down. Instead, they retreat to opposite sides of the tower and settle in for the night, Crowley in his own coils and Aziraphale in a bedroll he produces from his backpack to pad the cold stone floor.

Crowley hisses him awake just before dawn so they can straighten up and prepare for an appropriately dramatic reveal when Ligur comes to fetch them.

"How do you want to play this," Crowley asks as Aziraphale ties his pack closed.

Aziraphale is a bit taken aback. "I thought you would want to gloat," he admits after a long moment.

Crowley shakes his head, which looks rather silly on a snake, to be honest. "This is your reputation on the line. I have some ideas, but it's your rivalry. I figure you know best what he'll find irritating but believable from you."

Well, that's… unexpected. And refreshing.

Aziraphale shakes the feeling off.

When Ligur swings the door open dramatically and sweeps in, wearing yet another dramatic cape and this time sporting an actual, live chameleon perched on his head, it's quite gratifying to see how quickly his expression morphs from cool composure to sour grapes.

"The grain has been sorted," Ligur says, which is a far cry from "you have completed the task" but at least isn't a clear accusation of cheating.

"We have sorted it," Aziraphale corrects subtly, though with probably the most generous definition of the term "we" he's ever used.

"How," Ligur demands, stalking further into the room and sneering at where Crowley is perched on Aziraphale's shoulders as though the wizard doesn't have a great bloody chameleon clutching at his dark curls.

They had decided on a show of unity, in case Ligur tries to get precious about whether Aziraphale performed the task directly or not. The wizard had made Crowley agree to the same terms and pointed out that the favor was ultimately for him, so they were prepared to argue to the rafters that Crowley providing the lion share of the solution still met the terms. If it came to that.

"Do you really expect me to tell you?" Aziraphale chides, going for cool superiority. "A magician never reveals all the intricacies of his craft, after all."

"Tricks," Ligur growls, and breathes in deep through his nose. "It smells like demon in here. And bread." His face twists up.

"Well, Crowley is a demon," he agrees dryly. "And you did tell us to take care of our own supper."

"What new bauble did you pick up, then," Ligur asks, low and coaxing. "I heard you gave up one of your cheats. Thought I had you this time."

"My dear fellow, were you setting me up to fail," Aziraphale replies mildly, reaching up to lay a stilling hand on Crowley's coils when he shifts in agitation. "That isn't very sporting of you. Come, now. We've met the terms of your challenge. Bestow the blessing, and we can leave you to your breakfast."

Ligur studies them for a long moment, eyes darting from each of them to the sorted grain—which, delightfully, does make his eye twitch when he sees the imperfect gradient—and back again. Finally, he narrows his eyes but produces a flask filled with a shimmering, rainbow-hued liquid with a flourish of his hand.

"One of these days, you're not going to have 'just the thing,' Haven's Angel, and you'll be exposed for the charlatan you are."

Aziraphale keeps his expression neutral through an extreme effort of will, and takes the proffered flask.

They've just stepped back out onto the moor, Ligur scowling at their backs, when Crowley pipes up for the first time.

"Hold on, sorry, just, I really have to know," he says, squirming around so he can look back at Ligur over Aziraphale's shoulder. "What exactly were you hoping to prove here, hmm? If you want to see him do 'proper' magic, whatever that means, why set him up with a bunch of bloody grain and tell him 'hey, you can't use magic'? Why not give him a magic puzzle to solve? Or have him perform some intricate ritual?"

"Crowley," Aziraphale hisses in horror.

When he glances back, Ligur is scowling outrageously and slams the door shut without touching it.

"Oh, you miserable serpent," Aziraphale laments and then starts shrugging pointedly to get him to get off. "Why did you have to go and ask questions? You'll put ideas in his head."

Crowley slithers to the ground and submits to getting back into the carry basket with supreme dignity that's moderately undercut by the amount of wordless scoffing he's doing.

"Oh shut up," Crowley settles on finally. "Even if he did get ideas, which I highly doubt, the traditionalist bastard, you're clever enough you could figure something out." He grumbles as he gets himself situated in the basket to his liking. "What's he got against enchanted objects anyway? Bloody efficient they are."

Aziraphale picks the basket up and begins the trek back to the woods so they can use the boots without Ligur being any the wiser. "I expect he finds it too egalitarian. Why, with a properly imbued object, anyone with even a scrap of will can use magic. It's not craftsmanship, you see."

"Pompous git."

Aziraphale hums in agreement. After a moment, he says, quietly, "Crowley…"

"Yeah, angel?"

"Thank you."

"Ugh, stop that. I'm bloody fae, you complete lunatic." He pops his head up out of the basket to demand, outraged, "Just how many fae do you go around thanking on a regular basis? Going to get yourself ensorcelled, you idiot."

Aziraphale lets Crowley's ire wash over him and tries not to feel too discomfited by it. That had been a gamble, but one he couldn't help making. Because he did feel thankful, and it was a foolish hero who didn't give thanks where they were due. And for all that he knows Crowley is a deceitful, lying demon, he can't quite help prodding for more evidence of goodness in him, like worrying at a sore tooth.

He can't rightly say whether finding more proof rather than less has made him feel better or worse about the whole of it.

²⁸ He'd only stopped growing a long, flowing beard to stroke imperiously when he imparted his wizardly wisdom on people a few years ago. Madame Tracy had it through her diplomatic relations with the wizard guild that it was because he'd finally got tired of accidentally setting it on fire during spellwork. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Crowley clearly isn't fully forgiven, but at least things don't feel quite as frosty when they return to the cottage as they had the previous two days. He tries to build on the momentum by suggesting they spend the rest of the day putting together a tactical plan for retrieving the last item of the list: wool from a wolf sheep. Aziraphale only hesitates for a moment before nodding and asking Anathema about the best space in the cottage for him to spread out a map.

He doesn't press his luck; he maintains a healthy physical distance, keeps the teasing light, and stays realms away from any mentions of family, heroic tradition, or anything else he's learned is an emotional kettle always on the cusp of shrieking to a boil.

He'll give Aziraphale a little more time to cool down before he broaches the topic of maintaining some sort of association post-quest. He wishes, though, he wasn't working against such a time crunch. Only one quest remains, and unfortunately it's turned out Aziraphale is familiar enough with the area surrounding a known grazing location to be able to use the boots. No long days on the road and snug campfires for him to unspool a more thorough and thoughtful temptation.

Worst comes to worst, he'll settle for getting a reliable way to contact the hero and shamelessly exploit their mutual connection in Anathema to let things settle and then approach again when hopefully a little time has sanded down the sharp edges.

One thing he does know, though, is that he's going to burn this stupid little basket with its stupidly soft lining just as soon as he has fingers to strike a match. He doesn't bother to hide his sulk when Aziraphale pointedly places it on the floor beneath his Ceiling Beam of Exile the following morning. The hero gives possibly the blandest stare Crowley's ever been on the receiving end of as he grumbles his way into it and broodily props his chin on the edge.

"This is undignified," he complains as Aziraphale lifts the basket up and makes his way out the door.

"Do you really want to have a contest about who's dignity has been most affronted these past few days?" Aziraphale asks with a biting iciness that makes Crowley flinch.

All right, fair enough.

It's not a promising start to the morning, to be honest, which means he really should have expected more bad to pile on.

Bad in this case comes in the form of a hunched figure crouched on the side of the path just outside of town, beggar's cup held out and head tipped low. Crowley eyes the "beggar's" appearance cynically, noting the too-clean tears in prominent locations and artful dabs of mud too precisely spaced to be random splatter. There's a smudge down the beggar's near-facing cheek that almost looks like it's been painted on with a brush.

"Angel," he warns.

"I see him," Aziraphale sighs, hand going to the pouch he keeps his nibbles in and fishing out a packet of something—probably candied nuts, based on a discreet tongue flick.

"No, I didn't mean—I think he's faking." He flicks his tongue less discreetly and feels a chill roll all the way down his spine, which is quite a lot of stamina for an ominous feeling. "Shit," he whispers fiercely, "that's a demon."

"Demons can't be beggars?" Aziraphale counters mildly, now digging into his coin purse.

"You idiot, it'sss probably a trap!" he hisses, literally and figuratively.

"Can't take that chance," Aziraphale mutters, almost to himself, before pasting on an obviously fake smile and changing the angle of his stride to make it clear he's approaching the demon beggar. "Hello," he says warmly. "Could I offer you a little something to hopefully ease your way?"

The demon looks up, brown eyes wide and brimming with (probably fake) tears.

"Fanks, guv'na, that's right decent of ya," he says with a truly atrocious attempt at a street accent and a prominently trembling lip.

"Oh, come off it, Legion," Crowley snaps, recognition sparking as soon as he hears the demon's voice. "Who do you think you're fooling?"

The demon scowls at Crowley. "Oi, you don't see me spoiling your cons," he says, dropping the accent entirely. "And I had him going, didn't I?" he says with a sniff, gesturing up to Aziraphale with his cup.

"Ah, well," Aziraphale says apologetically even as he's dropping a few coins into Legion's cup and handing over the bag of nuts, which the demon peeks into with a surprised hum of delight.

"What in literally every realm are you doing?" Crowley demands. "Oi, Legion, give that back."

"Hush, Crowley," Aziraphale says with a cross-sounding huff. "I can spare it, and it doesn't hurt anything."

Legion looks back and forth between them, eyes wide and cup and bag of nuts held tremulously in the air like he's not sure if he should listen to Crowley or Aziraphale. "Sorry," he says awkwardly. "I just need to deliver a message to Demon Crowley. Didn't mean to get in the middle of a domestic."

"It's not a domestic, it's a man with an incurable hero complex," Crowley retorts hotly and then briefly contemplates throwing himself on the ground a few times to see if that'll knock some sense back into him. So much for not poking the emotional bear.

"A man with a healthy respect for classic pitfalls, more like," Aziraphale sniffs and gently pushes Legion's nearer hand back toward the demon's chest. "You asked for assistance, and it is gladly given," he says, the words sounding rote. "What is your message?"

Legion tucks the coin away with a dubiously raised eyebrow, but immediately breaks into the bag of nuts and pops one in his mouth. "S'from His Majesty, King Lucifer," he says around a mouthful of candied walnut.

Crowley groans long and loud, too annoyed in the moment to be properly terrified. Of course, of course, this would come back round to bite him in the tail right when he was trying to make up ground with Aziraphale.

"Everything's fine," he snaps. "All going according to plan. If he really wants to visit, I can arrange for it, but he should know he'll be jeopardizing the extremely effective security the kid has going."

Legion's eyebrows both jump up at that. "He just wanted a status update, jeez. Don't eat the messenger."

Crowley can feel Aziraphale's stare boring through the top of his skull.

"Crowley," he asks in far too conversational a tone, "is this something I should know about?"

"Absolutely not."

"Are you in trouble?"

"Nope," he says with far more confidence than is deserved or really recommended when talking about a ruler of the Night Court.

Aziraphale is silent for a moment and then visibly decides to Take Him At His Word and Not Get Involved.

"Er," Legion breaks in after an extremely awkward moment, "is that all I should tell him? Everything's fine? You can arrange a visit if necessary, but it's not recommended for security reasons?"

"Eugh, tell him the kid got his gift. Liked it. Very excited," Crowley eventually concedes. "He's just barely coming into his magic, though. If he's smart, Lucifer will wait until the kid reaches majority to make his dramatic reveal. I can arrange for discreet magical tutors who can ease him into the idea so it won't come as such a shock. Obviously, I'm at the court's pleasure on this," he says snidely.

Privately, he's thinking it'll go down like a lead balloon if Lucifer were to show up now and try to wrench Adam away from his cozy setup. Whatever Crowley can do to head that off for a few more years and cushion the fallout will ultimately reduce the likelihood he gets caught in any of the blowback.

Aziraphale stiffens beside him, and Crowley silently wills the hero to keep silent. He can see a light at the end of the tunnel of this awful interaction, if he can just reach it before one or the other says something too revealing.

"All right, boss, I'll pass it along," Legion says cheerfully. "One of me will be by again eventually, I'm sure, for another progress report. Until then!" He gives Aziraphale a cheeky wink. "Thanks for the goods. They weren't joking about you being an angel, were they?"

"All right, yes, great, let's all be on our way now. Go… crawl back under whatever rock you lurked out of," Crowley says with a jerk of his chin that indicates "away." "And get a better method-acting coach. You're embarrassing yourself," he adds waspishly.

Legion looks down at his outfit with a frown. "I thought I did all right."

"Just… look, you need a roughed-up look?" he asks impatiently rhetorical. "Go roll around in some actual dirt. Snag your coat on a real nail, not a pair of scissors. For gods' sake, spend more than half a minute doing your research. You're going to get yourself killed."

"Aww, didn't know you cared, Crowley!" Legion says, sounding actually, genuinely affected. "But don't worry: Nine lives I've got, remember?" he says with a conspiratorial lean.

"I don't. Care, that is," he clarifies. "You're ridiculous. Get out of my sight."

Legion hops to his feet and saunters off, still crunching the candied walnuts obnoxiously loud.

Aziraphale watches him go with a thoughtful look on his face, but thankfully turns and begins walking back in the direction they'd been heading before the interruption.

"So…" he says after a long silence, "your, er, king has a changeling son in the human realm?"

At least he's waited until they're past most of the major foot traffic going too and from the town, and kept his volume and word choice moderately discreet.

"Yes," Crowley admits.

"... It's Adam isn't it," Aziraphale says quietly, profound sorrow weighing down his words.

"Yeah. But, look, I'm doing what I can to minimize the, er, damage. You don't have to worry about it."

The hero sighs like it's a competition for seeing who can sound most world weary without saying a word. Which, okay, Crowley may not have known him for very long, but this is obviously something Aziraphale will worry over, a lot. He's obviously fond of the family.

"Okay, that's, maybe, unrealistic," Crowley says. "But you don't have to worry… overmuch—let's put it that way. You've got someone else on your side, on Adam's side, who is very much invested in making sure this whole thing goes off with as little fuss as possible."

Aziraphale slants a look down at him. "That's not as reassuring as you seem to think."

"I'll keep the lying to a minimum, promise," he says, because, well, the hero isn't wrong to be suspicious of his methods. "No trying to drive a wedge between him and his family or friends, or demonic whammies. Just some tutors who will help make sure he doesn't accidentally blow anything up and can ease him into the idea that he's, maybe, not quite as human as he thought. Then, when he's old enough to be thinking about making his way into the world anyway, hey, secret prince! Just, gaining an extremely annoying extra set of relatives, not giving up the family he already has."

The hero hums dubiously, but his shoulders relax just a fraction. "We'll talk more about this later," he says ominously, "but I think we're far enough out now that we can use the boots. Brace yourself."

Crowley does.

.

.

.

"Psst, angel," Crowley hisses from close enough for his tongue to tickle Aziraphale's ear. He flinches away and turns to glare at the demon, widening his eyes and pressing his lips together meaningfully.

They're crouched low behind some bushes and tumbled boulders at the inner edge of a wide, craggy cliff. Ahead of them, grazing on tough grass and occasionally making half-hearted leaps at birds who alight a little too close, is a sizeable pack of wolf sheep. They've been waiting the better part of the morning for one of the brutish things to venture far enough from its brethren for them to subdue.

Their plan, for all they spent most of the previous day scheming, basically boils down to temporarily knocking out one of the vicious things, shearing off a sizeable clump of wool with a pair of scissors, and then running away before the rest of the pack has too much time to react. Aziraphale has an enchanted comb that can produce more of whatever can be carded through its teeth, which is how they plan to get an entire bloody skein of the stuff. So far, however, the sheep have been sticking close together, and none has ventured even moderately close to their hiding spot.

Not that they're so far away that they can afford to talk. Wolf sheep have keen ears and noses. Only a favorable wind, a healthy amount of discretion, and Aziraphale's enchanted boot soles are saving them from discovery and a subsequent bloody chase. And here is this damnable serpent about to get them killed with his fool mouth.

Crowley rolls his head in a distinctly exasperated manner and then swivels to jab his snout pointedly at something behind them. Aziraphale frowns and turns to follow his gaze. It's just the beginning of the forest that borders the cliff face. But there, something pale catches his eye, and he squints. In the bushes at the edge of the forest, something white and fluffy-looking flutters on a branch.

He whips his head back around to Crowley, letting his wide eyes and silent gasp do the talking for him. He can't help a small wriggle of delight. Oh, perhaps they won't risk certain death today after all!

Crowley ducks back down under the rim of the basket as Aziraphale carefully begins picking his way backward to the forest's edge, keeping a weather eye on the pack the whole time. Once they're in the relative cover of the trees, he allows himself a near silent, indulgent sigh of relief, and then sets the basket on the ground for Crowley to get out.

In unspoken agreement, they begin quietly examining nearby bushes for bits of wool. The piece Crowley saw at the edge of the forest is the biggest clump by far, but within another thirty minutes of excruciatingly slow, careful searching they amass a double-handful of fluff.

"Do you think this is enough for your comb thingy?" Crowley whispers, his upper body draped over a low-hanging branch so he can be of a height with Aziraphale.

"Oh, undoubtedly," Aziraphale says back just as quietly and carefully wraps the wool in a scrap of cloth—studiously ignoring the rust-colored stains maring the white here and there—so he can tuck it away in a pouch for safe keeping.

"Great, because if I have to spend one more minute deliberately sniffing wolf sheep funk, I might lose it," he grumbles, softly.

Aziraphale can't help a quiet giggle, heart still pounding with adrenaline as he casts nervous glances over his shoulder to reassure himself the sheep haven't ventured closer to their small patch of woods. They should be well hidden by the trees and underbrush, but he can't help but worry that at any moment the winds will change.

"Why do you need this anyway? I never asked."

"They're shape shifters," Crowley says with a sniff. "Specifically, shape shifters who aren't limited by any gimmicks like the phase of the moon, or being dry or wet, or wearing some piece of clothing in particular. Just, poof, sheep. Poof, wolf. Poof, a nightmarish monstrosity somewhere in between."

"Oh!" Aziraphale says with a blink. "Does that mean you'll be able to change back and forth?"

"Yep. S'not like I hate the way I am now," he says with a preening sort of arch of his neck so the filtered sunlight makes his scales gleam. "I'm just. Limited. Feel like I'm more than just this form. Got a human shape rattling around in here somewhere. Going to unlock it, that's all."

Aziraphale nods seriously.

"How about you?" Crowley says in such overly nonchalant tones that Aziraphale is immediately suspicious.

"What about me?" Aziraphale says archly, casting another glance toward the sheep, but they're still lazing about at the edge of the cliff.

"Ever feel like you're… more? Than what people say you are? Or just different?" he asks oh-so casually.

Aziraphale scowls. "Stop it."

"What?" he says, all wounded indignance as he dips his head lower off the branch so he's looking up at Aziraphale from slightly below. "S'just a question, angel."

"It is not. This is you still trying to convince me to break with my family and go galavanting off on treasure-making schemes with you."

"Dunno, sounds like a good time, to me," Crowley says, beginning to sound a bit annoyed.

"Well I think it sounds irresponsible. Selfish, even," he says, perhaps laying it on a bit thick to make up for the fact that he is, on a whole, just a little bit tempted.

Crowley rears back and scoffs. "Oh, sure, because burning yourself out over and over again so your siblings can add another wing to the mansion is such a noble pursuit."

"Stop it," Aziraphale says, anger flaring up sharp and sudden. "You can't compare your, your con artistry to managing the well-being of an entire valley."

"Oh, they manage things all right," Crowley agrees venomously. "You want to get on my case about rat mafias, but I've done some asking around. Your brothers run a nice racket up there in Haven."

Aziraphale's stomach plummets as he fights back a familiar wave of doubt and nausea. It's not like he hasn't heard the rumors. But asking Sandalphon for a look at the books is like asking a wall to please let you pass through. And Michael always makes everything sound so reasonable, with Gabriel right there with some sort of comment that manages to slip right under Aziraphale's skin like a splinter and make him feel silly for asking in the first place.

He fights to modulate his volume as he snaps back, "Why should I listen to one word out of your duplicitous snout, hm? That is my family—"

"Yeah, your family," Crowley insists. "Who either don't give enough of a ssshit about you to have a care about what the consssstant questing is doing to you, or they're doing it deliberately to keep you underpowered and eassssier to manage," he says, voice tripping over the sibilants. "They're keeping you on a leash, angel, like their own pet hero they send out to fetch home more gold and trophiesss. You forget, angel, I've seen how they treat you firsthand!"

"It doesn't matter!" Aziraphale cries, finally, throwing his hands up. "You've known me, what is it now, a few weeks? And suddenly you're an expert on my life, hm? Do you think Anathema hasn't already tried to tell me the same thing? Madame Tracy? Gods' sake, even Sergeant Shadwell has made insinuations."

Crowley arches up, the branch swaying and creaking with the sudden motion, his eyes shining with intensity. "If you know, then why—"

"I don't know anything!" Aziraphale insists. "They say they're doing what's best for the family. My family, Crowley!"

"Hang family—or at least yours. A family isn't always made of blood, anyway."

"It is for a seventh son!" Aziraphale says, feeling a hysterical sob inching up the back of his throat and stabbing behind his eyes. "I am quite literally who I am because of my family. Don't you see? I'm a hero, Crowley. Once upon a time, my father sent his sons out into the world to make their fortune. Do you honestly think I can afford to do anything less than what is good? What is selfless? Tell me, Crowley, in the lore, what happens to the son who doesn't give away his last crust of bread to the beggar woman, who doesn't willingly lay his head down on the altar because his family asks it of him?"

There are tears leaking fat and hideous out of his eyes now, and he's shaking with what is probably decades of repressed feeling. Crowley could be carved of obsidian he's gone so still.

"What happens to them, Crowley?" he insists, only mildly embarrassed to hear the note of pleading in his voice. "Do they have a happy ending? Or are their eyes plucked from their heads before they're driven mad and screaming over a cliff pursued by wolves?" he asks, flinging his hand out back toward the very literal danger lurking nearby. "It's an obligation, this power."

Crowley sways slightly in place. His voice is soft and a bit hesitant when he says, "They're just stories, angel. People trying to scare each other into being better people."

"And how can you be sure? Who's to say those stories aren't curses that gain will and power with every retelling?"

Crowley shakes his head slightly. "I don't. But, Aziraphale, you really want to keep living like this?" He doesn't spell it out, but he doesn't have to: always beholden to something, whether it's his family or tradition, scared to make his own choices, and feeling guilty anytime he does.

Before he can reply, Aziraphale hears a rumbling growl behind him, far too close for any comfort, and spins around to find several sheep, wooly lips pulled back over snarling fangs, stalking toward them in formation, attracted by the incredibly indiscreet volume of their argument.

"Oh, fuck," he says with resignation.

"No, nope, not happening," Crowley yelps from behind him, and Aziraphale stumbles back a step as the too-familiar weight of coils latch onto his shoulders.

"The boots," Aziraphale says shrilly as a reminder and reassurance to them both.

"They're behind us too, closing in," Crowley says, voice dropping in pitch. "Angel, I have a real shit idea. Can you boost me?"

"What?" he snaps, turning in place and trying to hold onto some sort of intention that isn't just a repeated litany of "shit" on loop or a massive fireball that he might not be able to control well enough to avoid hurting himself and Crowley in the process.

One of the wolves lunges forward, snapping experimentally and herding them toward its brethren when Aziraphale reflexively flinches back a step. Behind them, the undergrowth seethes with snarls and rustling branches.

"Aziraphale," Crowley hisses right in his ear. "I can get us out of here, but I'll need some of your power to do it. Trussst me, pleassse."

And though he shouldn't, he does, at least in this. Crowley has from the start always looked out for his physical safety, if nothing else. And however duplicitous, Aziraphale can't help the unshakeable conviction that the serpent wants good things for him, even if he's unscrupulous in how he achieves it. It's a step up from what his family asks of him, in any case, and enough to be getting on with at the moment.

He nods sharply and clamps his hands over the coils looped over his shoulders and around his upper arms. With a deep breath, he taps into the wellspring of his energy and imagines it bubbling up through his hands and pouring out of his fingertips.

"Shit!" Crowley yelps, coils spasming in surprise. "Yeah, all right, that's more than enough—brace yourself," he advises, voice pitchy.

There's a sudden weight dragging at Aziraphale's back, starting from just behind his shoulder blades, and a new awareness of limbs, like they've been asleep till now and are tingling sharply back to the forefront of his senses.

He stretches instinctively, trying to shake out the unpleasant sensation, and in the periphery of his vision he sees a set of enormous white wings extend. The sheep nearest the tips jump back in bewilderment. He stares at first one wing and then the other, flexing experimentally and then giving a deliberate, hard flap. The gust of wind is enough to rock him up onto the balls of his feet and send the sheep skittering, newly wary.

"Any time now, angel," Crowley says, voice falling somewhere between awed and smug.

"How in all the realms," Aziraphale starts and then sharply shakes his head. Now's not the time. Instead, he gives another few powerful flaps of his brand new appendages and makes a hopping leap forward, imagining with all he's worth that he has the power and lift of a bird of prey that can take off from the ground.

Huge buffets of air continue to harass the sheep, and they're already beginning to snarl and shuffle away in surly defeat by the time Aziraphale has managed to get even minimal altitude. Crowley lets out a whoop and squeezes his shoulders encouragingly.

"Keep going, come on, you've almost cleared the treetops," he enthuses. "Holy shit, I can't believe I—wait, yes, I can, I believe it," he corrects hastily. "I'm the best at magic. I've gone and miracled you a bloody great pair of angel wings, angel."

"And who supplied the fuel for your mad idea?" Aziraphale parries, breathless, feeling a bright, bubbly pressure rise further up in his throat with every wingbeat as he awkwardly ascends above the trees. He gets higher, and higher, until suddenly he's passing through a warm current of air that catches under his wings, and then he's rocketing upward.

He fights for control within the whirling thermal. They're buffeted further upward, the wind threatening to flip them, and his wings are sluggish to respond.

"Crowley, think bird-like thoughts, please," he pleads, hands still gripped tightly around the serpent.

"Right, 'course, yeah, feel the, er, wind in your feathers," Crowley croons, snuggling up close to Aziraphale's ear so his tongue tickles his temple with each nervous flick. "You know what to do—s'all instinct, isn't it? For an angel? 'Course you know how to fly, so get on with it."

And such is Crowley's sheer bloody belief, in himself, in Aziraphale, that suddenly Aziraphale can feel confidence coursing through him, and he tip-tilts his wings just so and properly catches the thermal, sending them in a smooth spiral upward. Soon, he's able to level off and hover them peacefully over the patchy green expanse of the forest. Fields and darker forest stretches in one direction and the white-capped blue of the ocean glitters in the other.

"You ridiculous creature," he giggles, eyes drinking in the dazzling vista. His breath is short in his chest in the best of ways. It's like he's full of sparkling wine, the bubbles all fizzing up through his chest and down out his toes and fingertips. "Oh, this is magnificent."

"S'pretty great," Crowley agrees gleefully, pressing the side of his head to Aziraphale's cheek. "You wonderful bastard."

"As much as I'm enjoying this, however, I think we'd best get back to safe ground. I don't know how long we can keep this up." He flexes his hands on Crowley's coils meaningfully, where he can still feel a steady flex and push of power, intention, and will flowing back and forth between them to keep up the manifestation.

"Right, right, take us down, angel," Crowley says hastily.

The serpent keeps up a soft stream of encouraging nonsense the whole spiraling glide down, until Aziraphale is able to touch down in the middle of a lonely field with only a few fumbling steps forward as he belatedly thinks to backwing to halt his forward momentum. As soon as he feels he has his legs under him, he lifts his hands to release the connection between their magics, and the wings de-manifest without so much as a by-your-leave. The sudden absence of weight sends him stumbling back, but this time he gives in to gravity and allows himself to collapse to sitting on the ground.

"Ohhhhh, that was possibly the most insane thing I've ever done," Crowley groans, oozing down from Aziraphale's shoulders to puddle limply in his lap. "That was bloody terrific."

Aziraphale tips his head back to let the mild breeze cool the sweat beading at his hairline and under his chin and lets himself bask for just a minute in the lingering rush of adrenaline. Fear and exhilaration inspires an incredulous laugh from bellowing lungs.

"I wholeheartedly agree, on both counts," he says, breathless.

"We should keep doing this," Crowley says abruptly, straightening up enough from his sprawl so that he can lift his head eye level and fix Aziraphale with an intense stare. "We're a good team. Seriously, angel, once I've got my body, we could go off together. See the world, be heroes. Well, you can be the hero. I can be the cool, cynical pragmatist who thinks about where our next meal is coming from. Think about it: you can be your own boss—stay in bed all day reading and drinking cocoa if you want, feed the ducks in the park, no one telling you what to do." He nods his head decisively. "And if you're that worried about your family, we can send them a care package whenever we're flush."

Aziraphale feels all those bubbly feelings slowly drain out of him. It's tempting, is the thing. Too tempting.

"What if I want to completely retire," he asks. "Hole up in a cottage by the sea and pick up knitting when I'm not reading."

Crowley rears back. "You… you want that? You wouldn't get, I dunno, bored?"

Aziraphale shrugs. It was more a provocation than a serious thought, but he finds himself warming to the idea now that it's out there. "No one can begrudge me how I'm using my power if I'm not using it for anything."

"First of all, they absolutely will—if you think people have opinions about how you spend your power now, you won't believe the outrage if you decide to just sit on it," Crowley says, deadpan. "S'how entitlement works, angel, and your family has it in spades. Second of all—"

"And you don't?" Aziraphale interrupts. At Crowley's bewildered silence, he clarifies, "Feel entitled to tell me how to use my magic. You've been awfully judgmental about how my family treats me for someone who's been using my powers for his own ends this whole time, and now is trying to convince me to keep doing so ever after."

Crowley winces, but says without a lot of conviction, "You volunteered. Twice."

"No, you tricked me into making a promise, which I kept, because it was the right thing to do. Here," he says, patting his pouch, "is the last piece to your spell. You can get your human corporation and be freed of this form you find so cursed. I've done my duty."

"Oh, come on," Crowley protests. "You can't tell me this was all about duty. Look, we get on, right? We're friends—"

"We're not friends—" Aziraphale protests.

"We are," Crowley scoffs. "We work well together, our magics complement one another, and I think you know that, on a whole, we've had a damned good time on this quest. It just—" he flounders. "It just makes sense. We make sense."

There's a disconnected feeling in his chest, like his guts have shifted just a bit to the left, and if he could just lean the right way maybe he could get them to right themselves. But he holds himself carefully still.

"Crowley, there is no 'we,' just a hero 'too soft for his own good' I think you said it was, and a demon."

"Angel, come on," he says, flat. "I am literally begging you right now—"

"You've never even apologized," Aziraphale says, cutting over him.

"Are you serious?" Crowley splutters. "Look, I'm sorry. See? This is me, apologizing. Anathema vouched for you from the start. I should have listened to her. That would have been the smarter play, I can see that now. Would have saved us both a lot of trouble." He flicks his tongue restlessly. "There, apology issued. Now, please, Aziraphale, angel, work with me here, would you do me a favor and accept so we can get on with the bloody happily ever after already?"

For a moment Aziraphale's so shocked that it feels like he's somehow managed to touch his heart to a charged bit of metal. But then the feeling abruptly dies out, leaving a merciful blanket of numbness in its wake. Safely muffled, he can see the humor in the situation, and he can't help the slightly hysterical giggle that escapes him.

"What? What!" Crowley demands. "I did what you wanted."

Yes, to the letter, in an overdone performance intended to manipulate as much as mock, and oh, that's a trick far too familiar to miss. And the irony is that, before all this, he might have been content to overlook it, because that's what he does, has done for years, to get by with even a shred of dignity. But Crowley's done too good of a job these past few weeks: dazzled Aziraphale nearly blind with a lovely fantasy and then by turns gently and ruthlessly poked and prodded at every excuse Aziraphale has tried to construct for why he can't have it.

Except, Crowley's no longer pretending to play the part of the prince. And he doesn't even seem to realize how far he's strayed, which is perhaps the most heartbreaking bit of all, because of how chillingly familiar Aziraphale finds it. The flimsy scaffolding holding up his battered heart creaks ominously but holds, the impending collapse muffled and suspended in the fog of disbelief.

"Oh my dear fellow," he says on a sigh, and wonders briefly at how empty his voice sounds. "For a moment there you sounded just like my brother."

Crowley sways back like Aziraphale physically hit him.

"Now, please do kindly get off of me," he says and snaps to conjure the basket to the ground before him. "You see, I'm not sure I ever wish to see you again, and so I'd quite like to wrap up affairs at the cottage as quickly as possible."

Crowley doesn't move for a long minute. Aziraphale rides it out, snug and serene in this mild fugue state even as he can feel the weight of devastation patiently waiting for permission to crush him.

"Right. Well," Crowley finally says, and then stiffly collapses himself into the open mouth of the basket. "Have a nice retirement."

Aziraphale holds himself together through all of the final steps: seven to get back to London, an excruciating number to get back to the cottage, then handing over the sheep's wool, retrieving his spare things from the room, thanking a stone-faced Anathema for her hospitality, gently fobbing off her insistence on returning all the purely financial ingredients, and finally making his way to Madame Tracy's to beg the use of her guestroom.

Even then, when he's settled in for the night, a cheese sandwich and cup of tea pressed upon him by a gently tutting witch, the numbness doesn't ease up. He sits on the edge of the bed and watches the steam rise from the teacup held loosely in his hand. When he finally moves again, it's gone stone cold.

Chapter Text

Opposable thumbs are everything Crowley ever dreamed. He tries his now very literal hands at all manner of fiddly pursuits both for the practice and for the visceral satisfaction of being able to. Some pursuits are more fruitful than others: He thinks he's getting the hang of cooking and the whole process of cultivating, harvesting, and drying herbs. His third attempt at a knitted scarf isn't looking half bad, either. Though, the less said about his attempts at small-time repair work, the better.

Legs, however, can fuck right off.

"You never had arms and hands and fingers before," Anathema reasons. "But you have a strong sense memory of how to get from place to place as a snake. And that is… very incompatible with the human spine and hips."

"Very insightful," he grates from where he's clutching at the doorjamb with both arms to stay upright while his legs noodle in opposite directions. "But, here's a shock, not at all helpful." He turns to the other occupant in the room. "Newt, any gems of wisdom you want to share?"

The guard winces a smile from his perch on the edge of the sofa. "I think you keep forgetting that your feet aren't a tail. They're meant to go in front of you every time."

"What."

Newt shrugs expressively. "Maybe focus on kicking them forward with every step."

"So your advice is, literally, to keep putting one foot in front of the other," he asks deadpan.

"Yes?"

To everyone's surprise, Newt's most of all, the advice works.

When Crowley feels like he's more or less got his walking upgraded to a controlled stumble, he ventures beyond the cottage and prowls London from top to bottom with a thoroughness previously unachievable and deeply satisfying.

He goes to the market and personally, directly buys sharp clothes and expensive wine and four different pairs of tinted glasses to match his moods. He takes a walk in the park and subtly menaces the ducks and no one looks twice at him, except for a few appreciative glances that are unsettling and flattering by turns. He supposes his corporation is attractive, not that Anathema will give him the satisfaction of an honest answer, but Newt's pink-cheeked assessment seems to support other evidence he's collecting. People are nice to you when you're an attractive human. Which isn't any sort of revelation: he's lived in this world for a long time, after all. But now he's experiencing it firsthand and it's as annoying as it is relieving.

Things are so much easier when you look human.

But when the shiney newness wears off, the fact that he isn't constantly having to scheme and plot how he'll get some poor sop or long-suffering acquaintance to run his errands for him or help him get his next meal means there's a lot more room in his brain for thoughts beyond coldly calculated survival. And that's very inconvenient because it seems like all his brain wants to do when he's trying to relax under the tree in Anathema's small garden is replay every conversation he ever had with one particular hero. And while he's never been a fan of hindsight, now he has gobs and gobs of time on his hands (real, actual hands!) to truly appreciate how much of a bitch it is.

The blank look in Aziraphale's eyes as he remarked—didn't even accuse—Crowley was acting like Aziraphale's arsehole brothers flashes through his mind's eye for about the bajillionth time since the hero quit London. Literally quit it, from what guild gossip has to say about the matter. Aziraphale hasn't been seen in the town or surrounding villages for over six months.

"Fuck," he groans emphatically and tugs his hands through his hair. It's a very satisfying feeling and one he usually takes a lot more pleasure in. This morning, however…

"Is that a business proposition?" a sweet-sounding voice asks from the back door of the cottage with just enough bite to it that he understands there is no correct answer.

He looks over to see Madame Tracy framed in the doorway. She drags her eyes over him with thinly veiled disapproval. Knowing better than to address her question, Crowley instead wobbles his way to standing and gives her as respectful a head bob as he can manage at this stage without accidentally pitching himself to the ground.

"Good morning," he says, because it always pays to be polite to witches, and especially witches who are deeply annoyed with you and could turn a township-sized guild on you with barely a word if she chose.

"Still loitering about, then," she says, unnecessarily and all the more deeply judgemental for it.

"Yep," he agrees, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers because he has both hands and trouser pockets to tuck them into.

She narrows her eyes at him and folds her arms over her chest. "What are your plans, Demon Crowley."

He shrugs. "Ever have a project that takes up so much of your time and focus for so long that you don't know what to do with yourself after?"

She quirks an eyebrow, but the purse of her lips seems to convey a "yes" so he goes on.

"Well, this project's taken about three centuries, so…" He shrugs again, and then bounces his shoulders a bit more just for the relative novelty of it.

"Figure it out," she advises, sounding mollified but not exactly pleased. "I've kept your secret as a favor to Anathema, because gods know she doesn't need the fallout if it got round that you're the reason our angel left us, but I don't like you, and I don't want you in my town. You're a liar and a moper, and it's bringing the aura of the whole place down. I'll give you another month to wallow, but then I expect you to move on."

He scowls at her. "Demons do not mope."

She flicks her eyes over him and turns away. "Oh, my mistake, then," she says, patronizing enough to sponsor an entire new guild.

That evening, sprawled in the armchair by the fire that he resolutely doesn't still think of as Aziraphale's, he announces to the crackling hearth fire, "I am not moping."

"Er," Newt says, halfway through shaking out a blanket for him and Anathema to share on the sofa. Crowley doesn't have to look over to imagine the gormless look on his face, so he doesn't.

Anathema is speakingly silent, only the occasional clack of her knitting needles confirming she's still in the bloody room.

"Did you want me to be supportive, or honest?" Newt asks after a stilted moment.

Crowley scowls and folds his arms tighter around his chest. Winter hasn't quite given up its grip, and all through he's been carefully avoiding thinking about how even more satisfying it would have been to bask in Aziraphale's radiant magic through the past months than it was during the height of summer.

Finally, Anathema sighs. "Tracy told me about her ultimatum to you. Why don't you just go find Aziraphale and say you're sorry? Try to make amends," she advises, perhaps a little too snippy to be completely supportive, but then, she's been giving the same advice off and on for the past two months, ever since he's started walking reliably.

To this point, his response to this, admittedly, reasonable advice has been to loudly change the subject or, when lacking inspiration, simply walk out of the room. The sudden expiration date on this strange, transitional phase in his life has him out of sorts, though.

"I tried saying sorry," he snaps. "He threw it right back in my face."

This pronouncement is met by silence that he would like to pretend is outraged on his behalf but is more likely just flatly surprised.

"Well…" Anathema says an uncomfortable amount of time later, "that doesn't sound very in character for Aziraphale. Are you sure you actually said the words 'I'm sorry'? Out loud, I mean."

Crowley hisses, which isn't as intimidating when you're not a giant snake but definitely more unsettling, so he'll call it a win. "Yes, Anathema. I said those exact words. Didn't matter. Said he'd done his duty and that he didn't want to see me again, so…" He turns to glare at her, knowing his snake eyes are even more unnerving in a human face.^[29]

Newt, because he has an ounce of sense, shifts uncomfortably on the sofa under their oh-so-cozy couple's blanket. Anathema, because she's a bloody terrifying witch in her own right, doesn't let up her perturbed frown.

"There has to be more to it than that," she says. "He was obviously still upset with you, but it seemed like things were starting to thaw out before you two left for that last quest. What are you leaving out, Crowley."

Although he initiated the staring contest, he's the first to look away. When he thinks about telling her what Aziraphale accused him of, his insides start getting ideas about escaping violently out his mouth.

"I can't help if I don't know the whole story," she insists, sounding equally tetchy and supportive. "And I want to help, for both of your sakes, believe it or not."

Apparently, the hero hadn't been at his best when he'd left the Madame's house all those months ago, Tracy had confided to Anathema, who had in turn grudgingly revealed to Crowley in one of her earlier bids to get him to go out and do something about it. The thing is, Crowley is fairly certain if he reveals more about what it was they'd fought about, and what Aziraphale had accused him of, she wouldn't be so keen on helping him. She'd warned him, after all, and he thought he'd been listening.

"I'm going to bed," he says, ignoring Anathema's disgusted sigh at his hamfisted evasion and retreating to the room that he'd once shared with Aziraphale.

The pewter bowl has long been returned to Anathema's cupboards, but the heated blanket had either been forgotten or abandoned, and Crowley shamelessly burrows under its warmth as he curls up on the bed. It's been long enough that the power Aziraphale imbued it with is all but spent. He can get it juiced up again—could even do it himself if he felt like using up his own meager reserves for such a trifling thing—but it won't have the same magical signature to it.

And it's that thought, more than any heckling from any number of witches or vague self-recriminations from his under-developed sense of guilt, that makes him think that, maybe, when his month is up he might attempt to track down the hero and try again, one more time.

It isn't like he's using his dignity for anything important these days anyway.

.

.

.

"Oi, hello, Mr. Demon Prince. Did you get married to Mr. Messenger, then?" asks a cheerful-sounding fae changeling.

Crowley closes his eyes behind the shield of his tinted glasses and lets his neck muscles go limp until his head thumps weakly on the back of the bench he's lounging on. Of course the little imp would spot him right off, and of course he would ask the sort of question that packs an unexpectedly harsh wallop to the ribs.

"What are you doing in London?" he counters.

"Visiting my older sister," says the actual, literal prince as he plops down on the other end of the bench, ice cream in hand and Dog at his heels. "She's apprenticed to a blacksmith in town," he supplies helpfully before turning to wave at someone at the edge of the park.

When Crowley looks up, he sees the Youngs still standing by the cart with magically iced treats. Sure enough, a young and extremely toned woman with Deirdre's eyes and Arthur's chin is standing with them. Deirdre waves back to Adam with a small frown, though whether she's worried for Adam's safety or Crowley's peace of mind is anyone's guess.

"So, did you?" Adam asks, "Only, Mr. Messenger seemed to really like you, and now you've got a human body, so I don't suppose anyone would mind now if you got married, even if you are still a demon." He cuts off this brutal assessment to pinch off a bit of ice cream with his fingers and offer it to his hellhound, who enthusiastically licks it off.

"No," Crowley says shortly, turning his head back to regard the duck pond like he's been doing the better part of the morning.

"Why not?"

"S'complicated."

Crowley can practically feel the kid's stare boring into the side of his skull before Adam asks, "Is it because he was mad you were lying to him?"

"Nngh, yeah. More or less," he admits, remembering belatedly that this is Lucifer's kid and, probably, he should at least try to remain civil.

"Did you say you were sorry?"

He can't help the hot flash of anger or the growl that escapes him at that. "Why is everyone so bloody convinced I must not have apologized? Of course I apologized. Didn't help." He wishes he could coil up into a tight ball of offense and has to settle for crossing his heels together and folding his arms securely across his chest.

"Aziraphale will usually say he forgives you if you properly say you're sorry, even when it's plain as day he doesn't want to," Adam confides, and then leans forward far enough that he puts his face into Crowley's peripheral vision. "Did you properly say you're sorry?" he asks with a childishly condescending sort of air.

Crowley rolls his eyes, with enough of a head swivel that it should still be obvious even through the tinted glasses. "What does that mean."

"Well, did you really mean it, or were you just saying it because you thought you had to to get out of trouble?"

Crowley slowly turns to look at the curly headed moppet with the ice cream cone. His brain whirls frantically as he flushes hot then cold all over.

"Mum can always tell when I don't mean it," Adam continues on. "S'like mum magic or something. It always makes her even more cross when I do it, or just disappointed. Like, the kind of disappointed that usually makes me feel actually sorry after all, you know?"

Crowley feels like his brain might actually be melting out of his ears, now.

He is such an idiot.

Shit.

"Shit," he says vehemently.

Adam gives him a solemn, knowing look. "That's it, then. Give him a proper apology and I'll bet you can go right back to getting married." He cocks his head speculatively. "Could me and the Them come? We love a good party."

Crowley slumps down further in his seat. "I'm not sure it's that simple, kid," he mutters.

But, well, maybe if the eleven-year-old could spot the glaringly obvious problem when he couldn't after six months of improbably literal navel gazing…

"What goes into a proper apology, then," Crowley asks, glumly. "So I don't mess it up a second time."

Adam straightens up, giving the rest of his cone to Dog, who snaps it up in one bite and then settles back down happily on his master's feet. "Well," Adam pronounces, sounding officious as he dusts off his hands. "You have to look them dead in the eye, and you have to mean it, of course. And you have to explain what it is you did wrong, so they know you get it, and what it is you're going to change so it won't happen again." He leans in conspiratorially. "If it's my family or one of the Them, I usually also do something helpful or give them something I know they like. Because I want them to remember that I do know how to treat them nice, even when I've messed up."

All the gods above and below, he's just been reminded of basic human decency by a figurative toddler who isn't even properly human.

"Terrific," he says, in the face of all-consuming embarrassment. "I will do that. Just as soon as I find him."

"You don't know where he is?" Adam gasps, all blue-eyed cherubic concern.

Crowley shakes his head. "He cleared out after we fought. No one's seen him in… a long time."

"He has a friend who's a witch—Anathema," Adam offers excitedly. "She's a finder, I think. Have you met her? I'll bet if you ask nicely, she'd help."

"Thanks for the tip," he answers faintly.

"What do you think you'll do for a gift?" Adam asks, bouncing a little on the bench with excitement. "You're going to bring a gift, right?"

Crowley grimaces in the face of such unbridled enthusiasm. "Dunno… he really likes good food. Maybe visit that cheese shop he likes." He considers briefly and mutters to himself, "If I could get my hands on a diamond pear, that would be a trick."

"Oh, you mean one of these?" Adam asks excitedly, and turns over his hand to show a brightly gleaming green and yellow fruit resting innocuously in his palm.

"Uhhhhhhh, yeah, thanks," Crowley says, carefully plucking it from the kid's grasp because like hell is he going to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.

"Adam," Deirdre calls from across the park. When they look up, she's waving him back over.

"Oh, I have to leave," Adam says apologetically as he gets to his feet. "Good luck, Mr. Demon Prince."

"Crowley," Crowley corrects, nettled. "And, look, thanks. For the advice and the…" He gestures discreetly with the hand holding the fruit. "Seems like you have an idea of what you're capable of. I'll… send someone round who can give you some lessons, help you keep from setting anything on fire by accident."

"I can set fire to things on purpose?" Adam asks gleefully and then begins jogging backward toward his parents. "Thanks, Mr. Crowley Demon Prince!" He calls as he turns away, Dog sprinting at his heels.

Crowley watches him go, impossible pear in hand, and waits for a minute to make sure nothing else world-shattering is going to happen.

"Well… that was a thing."

.

.

.

He saunters, mostly with intent, back into the cottage for lunch and declares imperiously, "I'm going to find that ridiculous bastard, and he's going to listen to my new apology, and everything is going to work out."

Unfortunately, no one is in the front room to appreciate his newfound resolution, which he refuses to feel awkward about, but he hears a faint, "Um, that's the spirit!" from the direction of the kitchen.

As he enters the room, Anathema prompts, "A new apology?" with a little too much preemptive judgement, in his opinion. She and Newt are just starting to clear away their dishes from the table, because he is fairly late for lunch.

"Yes. It's come to my attention that my last apology may have been… lacking. Also, this time I'm going to come armed with gifts. Do the whole thing over proper." He tips his chin up in Anathema's direction. "Your grandmother just put out a new book of prophecies, didn't she? If he's been hiding away, he probably doesn't have a copy yet. I can get one for him."

Anathema's face screws up in that special blend of awe and consternation it only gets when her grandmother's been meddling, and she silently passes him to go back into the front room. When he turns, she's crossed to her work table and picked up a paper-wrapped rectangular parcel.

"This came while you were out," she says, sounding resigned as she hands it over.

There's a card affixed to the front with a sticking charm. When he prises it off and open, there's a short note: "Only when compass traversed will the scaled heart be well delivered."

Crowley groans and doesn't fight it when Anathema plucks the paper from his fingers.

"Ooh," she says with a wince. "This is practically plain speak for her. She must really want you to succeed."

"Can't you just do your dousing thing and tell me where he is?" he complains.

She slants him a neutral glance. "I could. But do you want to risk arriving too soon? Or without the right objects or blessings?"

Newt wanders in, still wiping his hands dry from washing up. "Is Crowley going on a quest?" he asks, sounding politely intrigued.

"No," Crowley snaps.

"Yes," Anathema counters and adds, "If he knows what's good for him, anyway."

"This is ridiculous. You have the power to just snap your fingers and tell me where to go," he argues.

Anathema flutters the paper in the air pointedly. "And one of the few true oracles in the five provinces has just told you that's not the right way to do it. Not if you want this to 'work out' like you want. Welcome to Aziraphale's world," she says with sweet venom. "Ridiculous traditions and superstitions and what ifs."

And gods damn it if she isn't right. His insides are churning with both indignation at his path being set for him in the most inconvenient way possible and the fear that if he doesn't do as fate is apparently directing that he'll screw everything up. There's no way to know for sure, and he knows deep down in his newly reconfigured guts that he likely only has one shot at this, given the givens. If this is what Aziraphale has been grappling with for a living for the past however long, no wonder the soft bastard is such an anxious wreck.

Some of what he's feeling must show on his newly mobile face, because Anathema's face softens out of its severe lines, and she places a comforting hand on his upper arm.

"Start West. Work your way around clockwise," she suggests softly.

For all he's grateful for the advice, he still feels a righteous surge of annoyance well up in his chest. "I knew you looked up where he is," he accuses.

Anathema rolls her eyes. "He's my friend, of course I did." She shrugs, then, a vulnerable pinch to her brow. "I had to send him all the profit I would have made from the contract. He refused before he left, but I couldn't let it stand. It wouldn't be right."

"Yeah, he has a habit of inspiring people to new moral heights," Crowley grumbles.

"Are you going to tell me what was lacking about your first apology, and how you're going to fix it?" she drawls, hand on his arm gripping a little more firmly like she's prepared to physically keep him from running off this time.

Crowley squirms, suddenly finding it difficult to maintain eye contact. "Look, let's just say I didn't come across as sincere as I meant to in the moment. I may have been panicking, a bit," he admits. "And that may have made for some unfortunate comparisons to... other people."

Anathema purses her lips in disapproval.

Crowley hunches his shoulders. "I'm going to do better?"

"Do you know what your problem is, Crowley?" she asks like she's invented the rhetorical question wholecloth. "Everything is an arrangement with you. Tit for tat. If you really want to do better, you can't go in expecting to bargain him into forgiving you," she says, tapping the parcel still clutched to his chest with her free hand. "You're going to have to put yourself at his mercy."

"He's got a lot of it," Newt pipes up, encouragingly. "Mercy, I mean."

Crowley can feel cold sweat prickling down his spine. Overrated, sweat glands, he's decided, because it's easier to think about than the prospect of voluntarily showing his emotional underbelly. He's done once already, that last lovely evening before everything went to shit, but he knows it isn't quite the same. He'd let Aziraphale do the confessing first, after all. It isn't as scary to bare your neck if someone else already has done.

"Yeah, so I've been told," he mutters, thinking about Adam's observation, which just adds a new layer of apprehension. Aziraphale forgives even when he doesn't seem to want to, which sounds a lot like a hero obligation. So even if he's granted mercy, it may be the terrible sort that burns rather than soothes.

And yet.

He's going to do it, he realizes.

If nothing else, the past six months have allowed him to fully wallow in just about every emotion possible in regards to his own existential existence now that he's achieved his dream. The gnawing ache of Aziraphale's absence and his own guilt in the part he played in that has been like a mortifying icing over the whole damn cake. He misses the bastard. The huge, soppy, massively inconvenient feelings he has for the hero have only entrenched themselves further during the separation.

"All right. I haven't gone questing without a hero before," he says, finally. He meets Anathema's gaze and swallows heavily. "Will you help me?"

She smiles, sweet and delighted. "Of course."

.

.

.

If he hadn't already been convinced against his better judgment that he's been thrust very much against his will into a sodding quest, literally running into Madame Tracy during a last, impetuous pass through the market on his way out of town cinches it. They regard each other over a stall of candied fruits. He feels a bit like a mouse with his tail in a trap because, technically, the month's grace she'd given him expired three days ago. But she takes in his sensible traveling leathers, pack, and belt pouches and merely rolls her eyes instead of hexing him on the spot, painted eyelashes fluttering like friendly spiders.

"Decided what you're about, I take it?" she says, taking pains to resettle her screamingly colorful shawl around her shoulders just so.

"Looks like," he agrees neutrally, not sure what if anything he should give away. There's a chance that even if he makes peace with Aziraphale, the hero won't return from wherever it is he's buggered off to. It wouldn't do to set false expectations just as he's about to get out of town relatively unscathed.

She looks about casually and then steps in closer. "You going to get our angel back?" she asks quietly as she makes a show of looking over the dried apple slices.

"Nngh," he says.

"Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist, you daft snake," she tsks. "I know you can't make me any promises. Just do your best, that's all I ask."

He fights the urge to shuffle his feet in agitation and settles for tucking his hands in his pockets. Then he remembers that his sensible travel leathers don't have sewn-in pockets and makes a brief stop with his thumbs hooked in his belt, almost putting a passerby's eye out with a stray elbow in the process, before giving the whole thing up with an awkward shrug.

For better or worse, the whole humiliating pantomime appears to soften the witch toward him because her face creases up in a sympathetic half smile.

"I suppose even with your best you'll still need all the help you can get," she says, and he can't help the reflexive scowl that pinches his face.

She grins impishly and then reaches into her market basket and pulls out a very nice looking bottle of wine to hand over. He takes it reflexively but doesn't recognize the vintner's mark.

"Suppose it's fate, me running into you like this," Tracy goes on. "That's his favorite. A merchant had a case he brought up from Gaul, and even though it's a pretty penny, it made me think of him, so I picked up a bottle."

Crowley chews on a few vowels, feeling his body flash hot and cold as he grips the bottle tight, before getting out a thready, "Thanks."

Madame Tracy grants him a more obviously sympathetic smile then, and even deigns to give his forearm a matronly pat.

"You take care on your journey, and be sure to give our love to dear Aziraphale when you see him," she says. "And if you can get him to listen, remind him he doesn't need to have some task or chore he can do for us as an excuse to come visit. We'd be happy with just him as he is. I don't think he remembers that, most days," she says, soft and wistful. "Or if he does, he can't bring himself to trust it."

The bottom of his stomach makes a bid for his shoes, and he has to breathe carefully through it, remembering with the obsessive clarity of minutely dissecting two-and-a-half weeks of conversation how often the way he'd pitched their continued association had made it seem like he was mostly interested in Aziraphale's power. If he weren't scared shitless by time travel magic, he might seriously consider giving it a go. As it stands, it seems like every conversation he has with someone just underscores how much ground he has to make up.

He's not sure what might come out of his mouth right now if he were to open it, so he settles for an emphatic nod. It seems to satisfy, because Madame Tracy gives him a last, cautiously hopeful smile and makes her way further into the market.

He stands frozen for a long moment before shouldering off his pack and carefully tucking the wine bottle in next to the paper-wrapped book and the padded, preservation-charmed box the pear is nestled in. Three gifts, three pieces of advice, one part-time snake demon feeling suddenly very outclassed by the endeavor ahead.

"Terrific," Crowley mutters to himself as he straightens and points himself toward the Western gate.

²⁹ Concessions made to the parts of the spell that allow him to continue to change shape include: snake eyes, still occasionally hissing when he forgets himself, and being able to do really weird things with his tongue. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

The first thing Aziraphale does when he leaves London is, of course, return to Haven. The reception is by turns blisteringly cold and numbingly humiliating.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," Michael says, stern gaze raking him over before he turns back to his paperwork. "Report to Uriel tomorrow morning. They've found some more manageable quests for you to redeem yourself with. I find I've lost my patience waiting for you to get your affairs sorted, Aziraphale. I'm also going to have Gabriel find you a match advantageous for the family."

Aziraphale receives the news and the dismissal from within the same detached fog that's been hanging over him since London. And he might have remained stuck in that numbed acquiescence if it weren't for Gabriel making it a point that evening to seek him out in his study to rub his nose in the whole thing once again.

"Buddy, come on," his older brother says with a pained, bewildered sort of smile. "I keep telling them that you must have the family's best interests at heart, but you're making it really difficult to sell, pulling stunts like this. Getting duped by some third-rate dark fae?" He gives Aziraphale his version of a companionable smack on the arm, which usually manages to slosh whatever drink Aziraphale is holding all over him. This evening is no exception. Except this time, the burning splash of cocoa over his hands jostles something loose.

"Do you know, Gabriel," he says, "I cannot recall a time when you gave me that particular form of encouragement when I wasn't already holding a hot beverage? It's quite curious."

Gabriel scoffs. "Aziraphale, don't be ridiculous."

"Do you know what else is curious?" he goes on, flicking each of his hands in turn to banish the liquid and the faint scalding.

His brother sighs, long and tired. "Aziraphale, can we make this quick? I have to go find someone who might be willing to overlook your weird quirks, since you botched your second go at marrying royalty."

"I've only turned down one offer of royal marriage," Aziraphale corrects mildly. "If you'll recall, Crowley was never a prince. And that is what I find curious, Gabriel," he says doggedly, raising his voice when Gabriel opens his mouth to interrupt. "It was your and Uriel's erroneous information that sent me on this fool's errand in the first place. And the whole family met Crowley not a fortnight ago, and not one of you guessed he wasn't exactly as he presented himself to be. And yet, I am made to shoulder the entire burden of blame for losing the family's chance at 'securing a fortune.'"

"Well, you're the one who's supposed to be the 'professional,'" Gabriel tries, layering sarcasm thick and biting over the title.

"Yes, I am," Aziraphale says with enough firmness that Gabriel snaps his mouth shut, looking wrong footed. "I have been professionally questing for nearly six decades, Gabriel, and in that time I've brought home at least a baker's dozen fortunes. Tell me, just how badly are the rest of you mismanaging my hard-earned profits that the family can't make do, hmm?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes, but there's a suspicious twitch to his jaw. "How about you leave the family estate management to your big brothers, sunshine? You're clearly not cut out for it."

"Fine," Aziraphale says, "I will."

Once again, Gabriel appears surprised by the unexpected concession, mouth hanging open for a moment before he grins a little manically. "Well, good. Get some rest, yeah? You're looking a little rough," he says, heading for the door. At the threshold he pauses and frowns, like he's waiting for Aziraphale to leap into a more familiar response, before shaking his head and retreating fully.

"You want me to leave management of the estate to the rest of the family," Aziraphale says softly to the quiet room, putting as much careful conviction behind it as he can manage. "So be it."

He takes everything in his study: every last book, scroll, statue, souvenir, and kindly bestowed gift, stuffing it all down into one of his emptier bags with the stern recommendation that it should find enough room for it all. Most of his clothes are already in his bags, but he retrieves some of his finer outfits from his room as well as a few handmade linens he's received from staff and friends over the long years.

On his way out, because it irks him to see them displayed so ostentatiously, he retrieves every bauble and artifact he was personally responsible for retrieving from the display shelves and cabinets lining the hallways. If the family is doing well enough to use them as trophies instead of capital, then they won't be worse off if he recoups them to establish his own little nest egg, will they?

He does whisk off a note for Mrs. Reid to find, requesting that she pass along his sincere thanks to the staff for their years of support and his regrets that he will no longer be able to support their fashion habits. He encloses the names and mailing addresses of a few shops as a salve.

When he steps out the front door to his family's estate for what is likely the last time, he expects to feel something: anxiety, regret, anger, sorrow. Instead, he feels a calm sort of emptiness that is notable only in that it doesn't have the same numb quality to it that he'd been feeling before. Instead, he feels scoured clean, ready for something else to fill in the newly decluttered corners of his mind and heart.

.

.

.

It's nearly a year later that he steps out of his cottage door, locking up to head down to the market to pick up lunch, and notices a tall, gangly fellow standing at the crossroads that lead further into town. His long, ginger braid catches on his shoulder as he looks up and down the main road, his brow furrowing over tinted glasses in consternation. The poor thing must be lost, Aziraphale concludes.

"Halloo," he calls and gives a little wave when the man whips his head around to look at him, eyebrows climbing high on his forehead in surprise. "If you're looking for help, I would be delighted to see what I can do to assist," he offers cheerfully.

The man's mouth works silently as he stares at Aziraphale before he firms his jaw and straightens up out of the slouch he'd been affecting. Wordlessly, he nods his head and starts in Aziraphale's direction.

Aziraphale fights to keep his friendly smile from slipping into something more amused as he observes the stranger's approach. The man saunters over like a dark pact with gravity is the only thing keeping him from collapsing like a marionette with its strings cut. And the poor dear has obviously had a hard time of it lately, judging by the number of inexpertly patched tears and half-treated stains on his gear.

"You look like you've been traveling," Aziraphale says in a tone that he hopes comes over more kind than condescending. "Do you need directions? Or a recommendation for somewhere to stop in for the night? The village proper is just up the road there," he says with a gesture back toward the crossroads. "I was just headed there myself, if you'd like a guide."

The man wobbles to a stop in front of him, swaying in place as he stares at Aziraphale with something like perturbed awe on his face. Oh dear, Aziraphale thinks. Maybe he was coming on a bit strong? Only, he's been thinking in the past couple of weeks that perhaps he might like to do a little something more than read and drink and sleep and wander the beach. It's been a lovely sabbatical, and he isn't sure he's quite ready to jump back into proper questing, but maybe helping out here and there around the village, just to get out of the house, would be agreeable.

"Er," Aziraphale tries, feeling his smile finally give up the ghost, "just an offer. Please don't feel any sort of obligation. You were just looking a little lost, that's all."

This close, Aziraphale can almost see the man's eyes through the tinted lenses of his glasses. There's something odd about them, Aziraphale thinks, but can't see enough detail to say for sure what it is.

"Lost is one way to put it," the man says, sounding a little faint and his face screwing up in a pained sort of grimace.

Aziraphale frowns. The voice tugs at his memory, like hearing a familiar bit of music played out of tempo or on an unexpected instrument.

"I say..." he gets out before the man pulls the glasses off of his face and reveals a very familiar pair of snake eyes. "Oh!" Aziraphale exclaims.

"So, first of all, don't take this the wrong way, but you really should consider putting some sort of dampener on your aura," Crowley says in a half-apologetic, half-irritated tone of voice. "You're blasting enough magical heat I'm surprised a whole province full of power eaters aren't camped out on your doorstep. Good gods, angel, are you so bored already you're hoping trouble will just invite itself over?"

Whatever soppy, conflicted emotions had been welling up in his chest upon seeing Crowley again after so long are unceremoniously crushed under about a boulder's worth of irritation. "Well, here you are," Aziraphale says tartly, and can't help a tiny pinch of vindication when Crowley winces.

"Fair enough," Crowley says and then throws up his hands with a frustrated growl. "Argh, no, that's not what I'm here for."

Aziraphale folds his hands primly over his belly and lifts up his chin. "And just what are you here for?"

"A request," Crowley says promptly and then hems and haws a bit. "Or, well, an exchange if you want to get technical about it."

Aziraphale glowers at him. "Did you really track me down after all this time so you can ask me to help you with more schemes?"

"No!" Crowley yelps, eyes rounding wide as he holds his hands up in a placating gesture. "Scheme free, this is—promise."

Aziraphale doesn't let up his scowl, which Crowley must take as silent permission to continue, because after a moment he slings his pack over his shoulder and digs into it to produce a heavily charmed box.

"This is for you," he says. "Er, all I ask is that you let me, uh, talk at you for a bit. To apologize. Properly. This time." He clamps his mouth shut with a blush creeping up his cheeks and holds the box out in his upturned palm.

Aziraphale stares at it dubiously. "You already apologized."

"Yeah, did a shite job of it. Hoping you'll let me have a do over."

"In exchange for a heavily enchanted mystery box."

Crowley growls in frustration, knees giving out dramatically for a moment before he catches himself and straightens again. "You'll like what's inside," he insists. "S'meant to be a gift."

"If it were a gift, it would be freely given," Aziraphale points out.

Crowley goes still at that, face paling. "That's... true." He nods, slowly at first and then more rapidly. "Freely given, then," he says. "No obligations. You can take it and I'll just… head back into town, find an inn." He stretches the hand holding the box out just a little closer.

Aziraphale looks at it, then back at Crowley. The demon is staring at him with a grim sort of resolve, lips flattened into a line and eyebrows slightly knitted. His human face is so openly expressive, it's a little disconcerting. Aziraphale wants the opportunity to study it, to see what secrets it might reveal that previously he could only intuit from a flick of a tail or tongue. And, well, wasn't he just hoping for a return of a little spice in his life?

Not giving himself time to second-guess his sudden resolve, Aziraphale plucks the box from Crowley's hand and turns back to re-enter his cottage. When he turns at the threshold, Crowley is still standing where Aziraphale left him, still and silent, but a look of such naked longing on his face that Aziraphale can't help feel he's making the right gamble.

"The inn with the blue roof," Aziraphale advises. "Tell Tyler I sent you and he shouldn't be too much of a boor. You may call on me tomorrow morning to say your piece, if you so wish."

Crowley's eyes are widening, mouth dropping open comically, when Aziraphale shuts the door and resolutely locks it.

Today, he will eat what's left in the larder, get drunk enough to just barely avoid a hangover, and gird himself against whatever may be coming.

Tomorrow… well, he'll worry about tomorrow when he wakes up in the morning.

.

.

.

Crowley stares at himself in the tiny mirror over the wash basin in his inn room and tries not to panic over the state of his hair. Hair is yet another detail about having a human body that he has found he has strong opinions about but doesn't yet feel fully equipped to deal with. Like shoes, or fingernails, or tastebuds. He's avoided the issue while traveling by sticking to braids and plaits of varying complexity. But Aziraphale has seen him in a braid already, when he was overall not looking his best, at that. His goal today is to make the complete opposite impression of whatever was going on yesterday.

Yesterday, he almost blew it before he'd even properly realized he'd reached the end of his journey.

"Not everything is an arrangement, Crowley," he sing-songs mockingly to his reflection in his best impression of Anathema as he settles for fluffing his hair a bit more and putting in a few decorative plaits for texture.

In the past few months he's deliberately avoided overthinking how he would approach Aziraphale beyond two simple edicts: (1) give the gifts, (2) make a proper apology. For all he likes to plan and scheme, he'd been worried he would overthink things. Besides, some of his best cons have succeeded when he was full-on pulling things out of his arse.

Past Crowley, he's decided, is an arsehole.

Not only did he end up seeing Aziraphale for the first time in almost a year looking like something the cat dragged in, but he'd managed to insult Aziraphale in his first breath and then almost attached a bunch of strings to both his gifts and apology. All in an encounter that had lasted, maybe, five minutes total.

"Do better," he hisses at the Crowley in the mirror.

Finally feeling about as satisfied as he thinks he'll get with his overall appearance, he scoops up the book and stalks out the door.

It's a fifteen-minute walk from the center of the sleepy seaside village down a well-maintained road to get back to the crossroads^[30] he met Aziraphale at yesterday. If he keeps going south, he'll reach the seashore, but to the east is a meandering dirt track that is periodically dotted with twee little cottages. Aziraphale's is second from the main road, with a thatched roof and hand-carved shutters painted a cheerful periwinkle. Just to the left of the front door is a bench, and there sits Aziraphale reading a book and holding a mug of something faintly steaming.

Crowley slows his approach to fully take the image in and even out his breathing.

Retirement looks damn good on Aziraphale. He's traded sensible leather and broadcloth for soft fabrics in blues and creams and beiges. He's got an unforgivably tartan bow tie at his throat, but also a delightful little paunch on his belly and roll to his chin. Crowley is blindsided by the fierce desire to change shape and perform a full-body twine to get a proper feel for all the new ways Aziraphale's allowed himself to be comfortable.

"Er, hi," Crowley says as he gets closer and realizes Aziraphale is too absorbed in his book to look up without a prompt.

Aziraphale looks up owlishly and then fumbles his book down to consult the gold-chained fob watch hanging off his waistcoat.

"Oh! Where has the morning gone," he mutters to himself before looking back up and favoring Crowley with a stiff-looking smile. "Hello again, Crowley. I very much appreciated the pear. It's been quite some time since I've had the opportunity to savor such a delicacy."

Crowley isn't sure if the lack of a direct thank you is meant to set the tone of the conversation or just Aziraphale demonstrating he took Crowley's advice about thanking a fae to heart. Honestly, could be both, the bastard.

Crowley nods before blurting out, "Adam made it. Told him they were your favorite, and he just…" He flourishes his hand in demonstration before feeling awkward about it and folding his arms across his chest.

"Oh! How… disconcerting," Aziraphale says faintly. "He's coming into his power, then?"

"Yep. I'm, er, keeping up with him. Letters. He's not impressed with the magical tutor I sent his way. Thinks he's 'dead dull.'"

That lures a small smile to Aziraphale's face. "Perhaps I will start a correspondence with him as well."

"Warlock too," Crowley says, much too loudly, and modulates his tone to tack on, "You know, if you're going to be getting out your stationary," with a shrug.

Aziraphale stares at him, confusion writ plain on his face that slowly begins to morph into suspicion.

"I had to take back the chalice, didn't I?" Crowley says defensively, shifting his weight to take the strain off his hips, which are still complaining about that last frantic push to arrive in South Downs. "He asked after you. The whole of Haven is being squirrely about your disappearance, and he's worried."

Aziraphale's face immediately falls into more contrite lines. "I did worry about cutting ties so completely, but I thought it best to lie low for a while, lest someone get foolish ideas about trying to come fetch me."

He eyes Crowley speculatively, and Crowley shrugs.

"I'm just here to apologize," he insists.

"And how did you find me?" Aziraphale prods.

Crowley flaps a hand in the air. "Bit of prophecy, bit of Anathema hinting, bit of sheer bloodymindedness," he says glibly before hunching in on himself a little. "And, uh, once I got to Gaul I remembered what you said about a cottage by the sea. Heard South Downs was great for a quiet cottage..." He trails off and then scowls. "'Course, once I got to the village, I could feel someone giving off enough magical presence to guide a whole bloody fleet of ships safely to port and followed it out this way. Then you called out to me, so… there's that."

Aziraphale eyes him for another tense moment before relaxing back into the bench more completely and nodding to himself. Crowley fights to keep from sagging in relief.

"I see," Aziraphale says briskly and gestures toward Crowley with his mug in a "well, get on with it" sort of way. "I believe you had something to say."

"Right," Crowley says, shifting closer so he can face Aziraphale square on, but not so close that he feels like he's looming. He looks at the empty space on the bench on Aziraphale's left side wistfully before straightening up and clearing his throat.

"When we met, I did a lot of lying to you," Crowley begins. "Honestly, I still think I had good reasons for it, in the very beginning—if you knew just how long and how hard I've been working for this—wait, no, getting off track." He blows out an explosive sigh and tips his head up a moment before looking back down to meet Aziraphale's gaze.

"Anyway, Anathema told me—and you showed me—I should have put more faith in you. I didn't, because I put my own fears above everything.

"And then, there were a lot of times after that I could have—should have!—told you the truth, and I didn't. Because I was a coward. And I let you tell me things you may not have told me, and you probably let me get away with things you probably wouldn't have, if you'd known who I really was. And that was... that was really shit of me. You didn't deserve that. And I'm sorry.

"And I'm sorry for being such a manipulative bastard there at the end, when I was trying to get you to agree to keep… keep being… I don't know—to just stay together, I guess. You were right when you called me out. I was falling back on centuries of bad—or, I suppose, highly effective in my line of work—habits to make sure I got the outcome I wanted. It wasn't fair. I was being a right arsehole, and honestly it took me a while to get my head on straight about it, so… that's why it's taken me so long. To come try to do this right, I mean. Sorry about that too."

He peeters out and focuses on how weird hands feel dangling at the ends of arms to avoid overthinking the studiously neutral expression on Aziraphale's face.

"Is that all?" Aziraphale finally asks, voice blank.

"Er, is that all, what?" he asks, finally giving in to the burning desire to cross his arms over his chest again, hunching into it a bit.

"All you have to be sorry for."

Crowley stares and then furiously reviews the list of transgressions he's been refining in his brain for the past several months to cover in his proper apology: Lying, check. Letting the hero be emotionally vulnerable under dubious pretenses, check. Being manipulative about getting him to stay, check. Taking too damn long to get his head out his arse, check.

"Uhhhhh," he comes up with usefully. "It was a pretty long list, so I might have missed a few things," he concedes carefully. "What did I forget?"

Aziraphale blushes even as he scowls at him. "Pretending that you… making me think that you might… Well," he huffs and looks away. "I suppose it isn't fair of me to expect an apology for that in particular. It likely falls under a subcategory of one of the others," he says dismissively, going so far as to wave a perfectly manicured hand in the air as if to brush the topic away like a pesky fly.

"Angel, you've lost me," Crowley admits. "What did you think I might do, or, er, not do." He can't think of one promise or declaration he made that he hadn't been fully prepared to back up at the time. That was one of the few things he'd been slightly less arsehole-ish about: Apart from being a prince and cursed, he'd tried to avoid outright falsehoods.

"You said…" Aziraphale says, still not looking at him. "You pretended…" he grits out, hands clenching tightly around his mug.

"Pretended what?" Crowley asks, as softly as he knows how.

"That you might want to marry me," he bursts out. "That you were like me and that you liked me." He blinks rapidly, and Crowley realizes with blooming horror that Aziraphale is on the verge of tears. "It's probably the most ridiculous bit of it to get hung up on. Of course it was all part of the bigger lie, obviously."

"You think I wouldn't marry you?" Crowley asks incredulously. It had honestly not crossed his mind that Aziraphale might think that he'd lied about wanting to have something more with him. In retrospect, it's a pretty obvious conclusion for him to have come to, at least right on the heels of the reveal. But after…?

Aziraphale glances up, brows pinching in confusion. Crowley yanks off his glasses, belatedly kicking himself for having done that whole dog and pony show with them on, and fixes the hero with a stern look. "You idiot, just what part of 'we could go off together' and 'we make sense' did you mistake for something platonic? I'm absolutely gone on you! You think I'd have spent the past few months trekking this whole gods-cursed continent looking for you if I didn't care? A lot? Like, epics and odes and all sorts of soppy drivel amounts of a lot?"

He lowers his arms from where they'd started flailing above his head entirely of their own volition and snaps his mouth shut. Probably, he should not have delivered what is likely his one shot at a romantic declaration in such a strident tone.

"I'm not apologizing for that," Crowley settles for saying, hating himself a little for how petulant it sounds. "I'm not expecting anything, mind. I came to apologize because you deserve a proper apology, but the rest…" he shrugs expansively. "Just… so you know. So the record's clear."

Aziraphale stares at him with a gobsmacked expression that slowly melts into something more cautious. "The record being… that you care about me, soppily. And would like to marry me, if I were inclined."

Crowley doesn't manage syllables, because hearing it said back to him in Aziraphale's plummy voice is a new and excruciating level of embarrassment, but he gets his head to hinge up and down on his neck a few times in affirmation.

"Well…" Aziraphale says like a protest and a declaration all at once, and then just looks at Crowley a little helplessly. It's a feeling Crowley can get behind wholeheartedly. He's pretty sure he's got the same sort of plaintive "what now?" expression plastered on his mug.

"Got you another gift. If you want," he croaks out when he feels like the silence might literally drive him mad.

Aziraphale's eyes widen in what looks like ecstatic relief at the topic change. "Oh?" he queries shrilly. "What sort of gift is it this time?"

"A book!" he cries, brandishing it from the hand that has, somehow, kept a grip on it this whole time. "Agnes Nutter! She published a new one just after you left. Was going to pick one up when I decided I was going to come find you, but, uh, she had already sent a copy ahead. You know how she is."

Aziraphale leans forward to pluck the paper-wrapped parcel from his hand. Crowley tries not to take how obviously Aziraphale takes care not to let their fingers touch like a bludgeon to the chest.

"Oh," Aziraphale breathes out in a completely different tone, this one more along the lines of breathless anticipation, when he tears the paper open. There's another note tucked between the wrapping and the cover, which he hesitates over a moment before tucking it into his waistcoat pocket with a furtive glance in Crowley's direction. "How thoughtful. Of you both," he says neutrally.

This, Crowley thinks with grim fatalism, is not going well.

"There's a third gift," he admits. "Was too… keyed up this morning and forgot it."

Aziraphale cuts pale eyes toward him as he continues to stroke reverent fingers over the cover of the book. "Were you now," he says mildly. "I suppose that means you'll have to come by for a third visit."

Crowley squints a bit as he tries to parse the tone. Is he pleased? Irritated? By the thought of a third visit? Belatedly, he realizes it might seem like he's lying to manufacture another run in, and he winces.

"You don't have to suppose anything," he says plainly. "I really did just forget. You don't even have to accept it, if you're not interested. And even if you are, I can drop it by on the porch. Wouldn't have to see me at all. It's whatever you want, angel."

Something in that jumble appears to be the right answer, because Aziraphale's shoulders visibly relax, and he peers up at Crowley more openly.

"You've given me a lot to think about," he says finally. "I would like some time to do so before I see you again."

But he does want to see him again, Crowley surmises, which is enough to drag what he absolutely knows is a dopey looking smile over his face. He tries to wrestle it under control and goes so far as to tuck his hands casually in his pockets, shifting his weight further onto one leg to try and project cool nonchalance. "Whatever you need," he agrees, fighting to keep from sounding too eager.

"What if I said I needed… a week?" Aziraphale tests, eyes bouncing over Crowley's face.

"Sure."

"A month?"

"Terrific."

"Six months?"

Crowley grins outright. "Aziraphale, I will happily fuck off to parts unknown and wait until you see fit to send me a bloody carrier pigeon if that's what you want. Even if it's just to say 'actually, never mind.'" The smile slips off his face. "I hurt you. You didn't have to listen to me, but you did, and I'm grateful. I figure, with all I did, you should get to decide whether anything happens next." He spreads his elbows open in a gentle shrug.

Aziraphale regards him a few moments longer, fingers fiddling with the edges of the book before he nods once, decisively.

"I think a good night's sleep should be long enough," he says quietly. "Bring your gift tomorrow morning, and we'll see what the day brings."

Crowley nods hard enough something twinges in his neck. "Absolutely. I'll, uh, see you tomorrow, then."

"Tomorrow," Aziraphale agrees, and stands to go back into his house.

Crowley walks backward for as long as he thinks he can get away with before the very real risk of tripping over his own feet and giving himself a concussion has him whirling around. Aziraphale lingers in the doorway, expression inscrutable, watching him openly until Crowley's forced to turn away.

³⁰ A literal sodding crossroads. He'd had a ten-minute breakdown in his room last night over that tidbit alone. What is his life anymore. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

Aziraphale sits at his desk, Agnes's book in front of him, and worries at the edges of the note she'd enclosed for him with anxious flexes of his fingers. He's put off reading it until now, when night is deeply entrenched and the oil level in his lamps is reaching the point where he either needs to gently encourage it to renew itself or let the flame gutter.

"Buck up, you old fool," he mutters to himself and breaks the seal with a fingernail.

"My old friend," it begins in Agnes's precise script, "please enjoy my newest publication of nice and accurate prophecies. Whether it comes as a comfort or a curse, be it known there is nothing of your future in these pages. Take all care, yours faithfully, Agnes."

He leans back in his chair and lets the note drop from his hand onto the desktop.

Well, that's about as unambiguous a missive as he's ever received from the old witch. He supposes it's a little exciting. But it also does not give him an immediate answer for what he should do about a certain, charmingly penitent and recently bipedal serpent.

Part of him still smarts awfully at the deceit and manipulation. But a much larger part is jittery with nervous possibility. It's the same feeling he had from the moment he decided to leave his family home.

He tries to look at the situation logically: he's long since categorized and catalogued everything he knows and thinks he knows about the demon fae, and on balance can't say that he exhibited more bad traits than good in the short time they spent together. Anathema even put in a few good words on his behalf in some of her earlier letters before she took his refusal to address the subject of Crowley as the hint it was. Truly, the worst of his behavior was the deception and the hideous mockery of an apology right at the end. Both of these transgressions Crowley has addressed head on, admitting his bad behavior and expressing regret. And every boundary Aziraphale has thought to put up in the past two days, Crowley has respected.

Perhaps, he could forgive Crowley and it would not be an offense against his own well-being, Airaphale thinks tentatively.^[31]

He supposes time and actions will bear out. It just depends on whether he is willing to take the risk.

Again, he considers the variables.

He thinks of the transparent chagrin and longing and cautious delight painted large over Crowley's newly mobile face. The thoughtfulness of the gifts. The thoroughness of the apology. And the soft devastation he'd felt at Crowley remembering the details of the retirement plan he'd invented in the midst of their last fight.

Once more, he thinks this is a gamble he wants to make, for all it makes him flush hot and cold.

Decided—at least to hold the course he set when he sent Crowley away that morning—he pushes back from his desk and putters around the room, adjusting knick-knacks and ferrying books from one end table to another. There isn't all that much space, and eventually he feels enough like a wind-up toy bumbling against nearby obstacles over and over that he frogmarches himself to bed.

The next morning, he is just finishing breakfast when three sharp raps at the door nearly cause him to aspirate the last dregs of his tea. Spluttering and coughing, he tries to frantically dust the crumbs from his shirt and dab his watering eyes with a handkerchief at the same time and nearly puts his eye out for his troubles. He forces himself to still, takes a few deep breaths, and calls out, "Be there in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

Another handful of calming breaths and he's able to neatly smooth down his waistcoat and walk to the door.

It's Crowley on the front stoop, of course. He's giving the patch of sea holly and sea campion growing under the front window the evil eye when Aziraphale opens the door, but quickly snaps to attention.

"Hey, hi, morning," he says, the words blurring together.

His obvious nerves are reassuring, endearing, and a little grating all at once. Aziraphale thinks sorting out where they stand with one another will be worth it just to see Crowley's spine unkink a bit.

"Good morning," Aziraphale returns, aiming for a friendly smile. He hesitates for a moment but steps back and holds the door wide in silent invitation.

Crowley eyes the threshold with something like bewildered surprise before slinking across. He removes his tinted glasses instantly, and his snake-slitted eyes dart over the main room of the cottage as Aziraphale closes the door behind him.

"I recognize that chair," Crowley says, bemused. "Is this—did you bring the entire contents of your study with you?" he asks with obvious delight.

"I did," Aziraphale admits, watching from the door as Crowley wanders a brief circuit around the sofa and chairs arranged in a conversational in the center of the room, his attention on the fireplace and mantel, copious bookshelves, and the desk settled by the front window.

He cuts a fine figure in a well-tailored gray linen shirt with a wine-dark red silk waistcoat over top and trousers so slim and black Aziraphale almost mistakes them for particularly opaque hose. His hair is completely loose today, falling in scarlet waves just past his shoulders, almost the exact same shade as his belly scales when they catch the light.

"Good," Crowley says. From across the room, he glances back with a smirk and follows up with, "You know, I paid Haven Estate a visit several weeks ago, looking for you."

"I can't imagine that went over well," Aziraphale says mildly. "Or did you not reveal your identity?"

Crowley's eyebrows shoot up. "Are you joking? Didn't want to risk one of them cursing me out of spite. No, I pretended I was some down-on-his-luck bloke looking for Haven's Angel to help rescue some relative or another from unspecified peril." He picks up and fiddles with a small bronze statue of an eagle before seeming to think better of it and fumbling it back onto the mantle with a furtive glance Aziraphale's way.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes and gestures to the sofa. "Sit, you incorrigible menace."

Once Crowley takes the sofa and turns down his offer of refreshment, Aziraphale settles into his favorite chair and favors Crowley with a reproving look. "What mischief did you cause for my siblings?"

Crowley shrugs, a little lopsided, like he's not quite mastered the movement yet, and bares his teeth in a wide grin. His eyeteeth are just pointy enough for an uneasy double-take. "Didn't have to make any when they've already done such a fine job of it themselves. The housekeeper told me you weren't home, but I insisted on seeing one of the brothers. She seemed a little too pleased to make me their problem, to be honest."

"Did she look well?" Aziraphale couldn't help cutting in, still feeling a twinge of guilt for leaving the staff in a lurch.

Crowley's grin softened, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Yeah, angel. Looking as fashionable as one can in a uniform, even."

"Oh good," Aziraphale sighs. "It's been bothering me."

"Your siblings, however..." he says leadingly, sprawling back against the sofa when he sees Aziraphale home in on his words. "She brought me to see Gabriel. Sandalphon and Uriel both were in his office. They were all looking a little peaky even before I said anything. Then they tried to insist you were just on some hush-hush quest. I told them it was all over Brittany and Hellian that you hadn't been seen in an age, and rumor was they had driven you off."

Aziraphale blinked. "Is that true?" Anathema had mentioned in her letters that he was missed, and that there were some wild rumors about why he disappeared and to where, but she hadn't mentioned specifics.

Crowley shrugged. "Isn't it?" he said glibly, once again grinning like the cat who got the cream when Aziraphale favored him with an exasperated sigh. "Anyway, they did not like that. Uriel wanted details, Sandalphon looked like he might haul off and sock me, and I'm pretty sure Gabriel started sweating. They were a mess, angel. Whatever you said or did when you left, well done."

"I… may have repossessed a few items that I brought home from my journeys and that they were leaving to collect dust."

Crowley cackled at that, his head tipping back and exposing the long line of his neck in a way Aziraphale found unduly arresting.

"They didn't hurt you?" Aziraphale asked when Crowley calmed down. It didn't seem likely or he thought the retelling wouldn't be quite so gleeful, but it was a niggling worry.

"Nah, when I saw they were good and riled, I declared I was convinced they had abused your good nature and was going to expose them, then scarpered before they could do anything about it."

He was outright lounging now, legs sprawled and one arm curled over the back of the sofa. Aziraphale liked the way he looked, comfortable and smug on his sofa with the soft morning sun burnishing the yellow of his eyes and catching shimmering highlights in his hair. It was strange how quickly Aziraphale was becoming used to this new shape. The eyes and the subtle dark presence Crowley exuded helped bridge the cognitive gap, but it was still surprising how easy he felt in his presence.

"How are you enjoying it," Aziraphale blurted out. "Your human corporation, I mean." He frowned to himself. "I suppose congratulations are in order? I would think so, though I'm afraid they don't cover the protocol for acquiring a new body in etiquette primers. In any case, congratulations. I hope it is everything you hoped for." He nods decisively and then immediately feels self conscious when he clocks Crowley's stricken expression.

Oh, he's gone and put his foot in it. They had to come around to this eventually, he knows, but he hadn't meant to go about it quite so awkwardly.

Crowley swallows visibly and then sits up, limbs retracting as his spine straightens like someone's tugged him up by the strings. "Yeah, it's… it's good. Still not sure how I feel about legs, but otherwise… I can go to market myself. I've been selling herbs and tonics, for something to do and the extra scratch, the whole time I've been looking for you. Haven't pulled a con in… well, isn't much call now, except to make mischief." He trails off and then leans forward intently. "Should I say thank you? Or would it be…?"

Aziraphale smiles faintly. "You can, if you wish to. I am happy for you, you know. It wasn't that I didn't have sympathy, once you explained it."

Crowley nods fiercely, hair rustling like scales over the sharply tailored shoulders of his outfit. "I have more choices, now—options. I feel… more like my whole self, these days. Thank you, Aziraphale Messenger," he says solemnly.

"Oh," Aziraphale gasps, not entirely surprised to feel tears spring to his eyes as he bites back the reflexive urge to fob off the thanks. He knows what it means for a fae, and for Crowley in particular with all their thorny history, to make such a declaration. "You are quite welcome," he says, blinking back from the precipice of emotion.

"The wine!" Crowley yelps and dives forward to rummage in the satchel he'd set carefully on the floor when he sat down. "Madame Tracy said it's your favorite. Sends her love, by the way." He wrestles the bottle out of the bag and braces a hand on the coffee table separating them to lean across preciously and hand it over.

Aziraphale takes it and can't help a pleased exclamation when he sees the vintner's seal. "Oh, lovely. Shall we open it up? Oh, listen to me, it's far too early. And really, this is best appreciated over a meal." He blinks up at Crowley. "How has your palate changed, by the by? A fan of fine food now?"

Crowley pulls a face. "Eh. S'better now I have proper taste buds, but…" He waggles a hand from side-to-side but then suddenly snaps and points at him for effect. "Alcohol, however, is bloody brilliant."

Aziraphale pouts and looks down at the bottle in his hands thoughtfully. "You know, I can't help noticing a trend with all these gifts."

Crowley arches a questioning eyebrow, relaxing back into a slouch now that they've strayed away from touchier subjects.

He pets over Tracy's wine bottle and glances to the desk where Agnes's book rests. "They're all themselves gifted to you, are they not?" he asks. At Crowley's tentative nod, he bites back a smile. "Boons granted by helpers to aid you in achieving your goals?"

"I… suppose," Crowley says slowly and grimaces.

"Crowley," Aziraphale accuses delightedly, "was this a quest? Did you go on a hero's journey?"

Crowley groans and collapses back onto the sofa. "Don't rub it in. You realize that makes you the questee, yeah? Can't imagine that happens often."

That does give Aziraphale pause, and it's his turn to grimace. "I don't fancy myself a lonely damsel, no."

"Argh, now you have me second-guessing whether they properly count as gifts. I had the idea for two of them, at least, but all three were just, ngk, given to me to give to you. If anything, they're gifts from your friends, and I'm a glorified courier." He scowls and jumps to his feet. "Got to sort that out. S'part of a proper apology, a good gift."

"Is it?" Aziraphale asks faintly, feeling his eyes widen as Crowley circles the table and gracefully trips down to one knee by his chair like a drunken foal.

"Yeah, according to the heir to the Night Court, so..." Crowley grunts as he steadies himself and then gestures to the signet ring on Aziraphale's right pinky. "May I? I won't damage it."

Feeling a little lightheaded, Aziraphale nods and lifts his hand from where it had been resting on the arm of the chair.

Crowley takes it gently in both of his, fingers soft and shockingly warm against Aziraphale's palm. He doesn't glance up as he pinches the ring, still on Aziraphale's pinky, between his thumb and middle finger.

"Got an idea—give me just a little boost?" he asks, yellow eyes flicking up momentarily before returning to their joined hands. Aziraphale stares down at the crown of his head and sternly reminds himself to breathe evenly as he catches the faint scent of whatever Crowley used to wash his hair last—something herbal, maybe rosemary. He lets just the barest trickle of power flow up to meet every tingling point of contact between their hands.

Crowley furrows his brow in concentration, and Aziraphale feels something sinuous and shadowy encircle his pinky and sink into the gold of the ring.

"Ha!" Crowley barks in triumph and grins sharply up at Aziraphale. "Little self-sustaining glamour for you, angel. Wear the ring and no one will be able to tell what a gods-blessed magical inferno you are. Should keep people from sniffing you out by reputation so you can keep your peace and quiet here."

Overwhelming fondness that carries the sharp ache of blossoming love surges up in his chest, and he gasps out a shuddering breath. It's probably the kindest gift anyone has ever given him. And if he was looking for additional proof that Crowley is taking the new life he's carved out for himself seriously, well…

Crowley's grin falters at the sound, eyebrows tipping up in soft concern. "All right, angel?"

Too overcome to manage words, Aziraphale brings up his free hand and traces careful fingers over the sharp jut of one of Crowley's new cheekbones, following the curve back to touch the vulnerable dip where his jaw hinges and then forward again along his jaw. The angles of his face seem to bear echoes of his former form, which Aziraphale finds deeply compelling. And while it's not the silky slide of scales, the softness of Crowley's skin has its own magnetizing pull.

Crowley sits, frozen and wide-eyed through it, though his own fingers grip compulsively where they still hold Aziraphale's other hand. "Good gift?" he hazards, voice thready.

Aziraphale nods, rubbing the tips of his fingers back up along Crowley's cheek and finally cradling the side of the familiar-foreign face in his palm. Crowley lets out a shaky breath and tentatively leans into it, eyes fluttering shut. His head is warm and heavy in Aziraphale's hand, and he savors the weight as he thumbs over the thin skin just beneath Crowley's eyes, relishing the soft tickle of eyelashes against the pad of his thumb.

"I forgive you," Aziraphale finally whispers, feeling tears prick more acutely at his eyes as a rush of relief surges through him. "Oh, I've missed you terribly, you awful serpent," he chokes out as he leans forward so he can rest their foreheads together.

"Aziraphale," Crowley sighs back, sounding none-too-steady himself as his breath puffs intimately against Aziraphale's face. "Can I…" he starts to beg. "I would really like to go back to being able to wrap myself around you whenever the mood strikes. That all right? Too fast?"

"Come here, come here," Aziraphale says desperately, tugging him up and closer by the arms.

Crowley scrambles up and gets a knee on either side of Aziraphale's hips to settle in on his thighs, snaking long arms around Aziraphale's neck and pressing the sides of their heads together. Aziraphale hauls Crowley in with bracing hands on his lower back and the nape of his neck. Collectively, they manage the available space in the chair, which under normal circumstances wouldn't be wide enough to accomodate two full-grown adults so readily.

It's not quite the same as the constrictor grip Crowley's able to manage in his serpent shape, but now Aziraphale can feel the frantic pounding of Crowley's heart where their chests are compressed together, so he can't bring himself to mind.

For several emotionally fraught minutes, all they do is cling, one or the other of them occasionally pressing more urgently into the other. When enough time has passed that Aziraphale finds himself relaxing into merely a tender embrace, his heartbeat slowing to something not quite so anxious, Crowley stirs and leans back just enough that they can meet each other's eyes again.

"Missed you too, angel," he admits, blush riding high on his cheeks.

Aziraphale beams at him. "I'm so glad you came to find me, my dear. I'm not sure I would have said the same if you'd shown up a few months ago, but I've had a lot of time to rest and to think and reflect, and it's done me a world of good. As a matter of fact, I was just thinking before you showed up that I wouldn't mind a little excitement in my life again."

To his surprise, Crowley scowls. "That witch," he fumes.

Aziraphale blinks. "Agnes?" he guesses.

Crowley shifts his arms enough that he can drop his head down onto Aziraphale's shoulder.

"I had just decided I was going to come find you when the package with the book showed up. Came with a little prophecy for me. Said I shouldn't just have Anathema find you for me. Insisted I go the long way round."

"Oh, dear. How long ago was that?"

"Over three months!" Crowley wails into the fabric of his shirt, so it comes out a little muffled. "Questing is awful."

Aziraphale gives him a consoling pat on the back, then considers and goes for broke and starts running his fingers soothingly through Crowley's long hair instead. "Well, if it's any consolation, I was still quite vexed with you three months ago. You were liable to have been turned right out of the village if you had shown up, even with all those lovely gifts."

"Yeah, I got that," Crowley insists grumpily, though his tone is undercut by the way he's turned his face in and is lightly nuzzling the flat of his nose against Aziraphale's throat. "S'why I'm annoyed. She's always right. Katharina slapped me when I came round looking for you," he adds plaintively. "Twice. 'One for each of your corporations,'" he says, doing a fair impression of the princess.^[32]

"Oh, you poor darling," Aziraphale coos, secretly a little pleased to know his friend had defended his honor but also genuinely sorry for Crowley's face. Though he's never been on the receiving end, he's seen enough to know Katharina packs a wallop. "Well, it's all worked out, in the end," he says, not bothering to hold back a touch of patronizing smugness as he cradles Crowley's body to him.

"Oh yeah? Gonna let me marry you?" Crowley mumbles, not sounding particularly fussed about the answer as he gracefully submits to being coddled.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Aziraphale says mildly. "I will let you take me out for brunch, however. And maybe we can go for a picnic on the beach later. Oh, and let's pick up something to go with the wine for dinner." He perks up with the thought of what the butcher might have available. If he cooks something rare enough, perhaps it will suit Crowley's old-new tastes.

Crowley leans back to give him a rather foolish-looking smile. "What else are you gonna let me do?"

That does give Aziraphale pause. "That depends, I suppose, on whether you've picked up any new urges with this form?"

Crowley tips his chin up and gives him a saucy wink. "Not a one. Haven't ever had lips before, though. Might like to try giving kissing a go, if you like."

Aziraphale wriggles happily. "Oh, that is lovely to hear. And kissing can be quite nice." To demonstrate, he surges forward to press a gentle, lingering kiss to Crowley's lips, leaving the demon looking adorably flustered.

"I expect we can work the details out in time—we do have rather a lot of it, between the two of us," he says as Crowley touches his fingers to his own lips, looking equally bewildered and pleased. "Now, what would you say to some crepes?"

³¹ These forays into better recognizing and respecting his own limits are fresh paths he is attempting to establish, and he is not always confident he hasn't begun to stray back into a ditch. ^{[return to text]}

³² She also took one look at his hair and sneered, "derivative," but there's no way he's ever revealing that to Aziraphale if he can avoid it. ^{[return to text]}