Chapter Text
Here was the thing about Anthony Crowley’s life—things tended to go casually astray for him.
It wasn’t that he could complain. He grew up in a good home, all things considered. Though a single mother with too many children, his mother could provide amply for all of them. But, his mother was also an unreasonable sort. She was that level of unjust that made many people see her as reasonable from a distance. As long as her children were obedient, she could be marvelously kind.
But Crowley wasn’t built for obedience. And teenagers weren’t built for making good decisions. He found himself kicked out of his house. His mother—built even more stubborn than he was—had yet to speak to him again.
Crowley landed on his feet. He had a knack for it, he would discover. He was taken in by his uncle on his father’s side. One who had a good home and treated him well, but he also mixed with the wrong type of people. Still only in his early twenties and still prone to not the best decisions, Crowley hung around with the wrong people who weren’t good yet at being wrong. Crowley did most of his wising up in the few years he spent incarcerated.
When he got out, he got to work. He found he was good at sales, and soon, he was making ample commission, skillfully tempting people into purchases. He was doing fine for himself, mostly keeping his nose clean.
Then, his uncle died unexpectedly, and his uncle’s shady dealings became Crowley’s to untangle. It got dicey—his name in the press and even a picture or two that made him look like some kind of mafia man—but when it was all settled, he had a bit of money. He sold his uncle’s house and bought a nice place near enough to central London to get to work easily even in his uncle’s classic Bentley.
With the “trouble” era of his life firmly behind him, Crowley started over, metaphorically at least. He sold or gave away most of his possessions, bundled up the Bentley with everything else.
And there, a different kind of trouble started.
The week he moved in, he’d started right in on fixing up a few things. He was painting the siding a pleasing green when a mishap caused an outburst of rage. Crowley flung his arms out, in doing so splattering the paint relatively harmlessly on the plants but also on the man who had come up behind him.
There was a lot of sputtering about the paint-splattered suit having been kept in tip-top condition for many years. Crowley, flustered, first demanded to know what on Earth a strange, fussy man was doing on his lawn, and then tried to apologize.
The strange, fussy man with fluffy tufts of white-blond hair was trying to welcome him to the neighborhood. He’d brought a basket, which he dumped unceremoniously at Crowley’s feet as he stomped away, ignoring Crowley’s offer to pay for dry cleaning.
Crowley muttered to himself as he watched the man march across the street, up his porch and slam the door. A melodramatic arse, that’s what the man was, he decided.
A melodramatic arse who’d brought a basket of fine red wine, bright pears that looked to be from his own garden, a perfectly baked loaf of French bread, and pear jam Crowley just knew he’d jarred himself. Maybe melodramatic and fussy but also generous and kind. He was the only neighbor who’d bothered to welcome him.
Crowley’s yard had apple trees instead of pears. After a week of grumbling under his breath, pacing back and forth at his window as he watched the man come and go promptly every morning and evening, always with a smile and a friendly bit of conversation with neighbors he passed, Crowley decided he had to make an attempt to repair the relationship.
With apples from his trees, he baked a fresh apple pie from scratch—no readymade crust for him. Knowing the fussy man’s—whose name he’d learned was Aziraphale—schedule by heart at that point, Crowley left the pie in a covered dish on his porch and promptly took off for a five-day weekend with his best friend.
After he got back, in the rush of coming and going, he didn’t see Aziraphale for three more days. When he saw his neighbor across the street, he took a deep breath, put on a wide smile, and waved. “Did you get my gift?” he asked, coming to the edge of his lot.
To his surprise, the man scowled. “I most certainly did.”
Crowley’s smile fell, confusion setting in. Even if it had been the worst thing Aziraphale had tasted—and Crowley was certain it couldn’t be, as he was an excellent baker—the man was the sort who would be polite about it. The thought that counts, and all that. But the dirty look on his face was anything but polite. “Apples not your thing I take it.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You know … it’s not that I mind jokes.”
“Joke?” Crowley’s eyebrows arched. “You’re calling my baking a joke?”
“You know perfectly well it was vile.”
Genuinely offended—perhaps even hurt—Crowley stormed back into the house. He was baffled. Was he really still so offended about the jacket? It was possible to be over-fond of clothing. The man was ridiculous. That was all there was to it.
Another week went by before he, working in his front garden, happened to overhear the conversation of two other neighbors as they walked on by. They said that Mr. Fell was away for the second time that month, even though he’d just barely come back from his last long trip.
Reckoning up the dates, Crowley realized that he would have returned only the day before Crowley ran into him. Which meant the pie had been sitting on his porch for long enough to have spoiled. And could the man really have thought that Crowley left a rotting pie on his porch on purpose?
Then again, Crowley had thought for days now Aziraphale had been rude on purpose.
What a mess.
Fall came. Crowley loved the fall. The last few years, he’d thrown a Samhain festival in the old Gaelic style, complete with turnip carving.
The day before the party, as Crowley finished the outside decoration, he noted that Aziraphale’s lawn was quite leafy. He’d noticed the man had been quite busy, his face distracted. Crowley made up his mind that he would do his good deed. Aziraphale always looked like he’d been up for hours when Crowley happened to see him. He decided he would show he could be the early riser type too. The man would never believe it of him.
Why he decided to get it done the day after the party, he would never understand. Maybe he was more of a masochist than he knew. He wasn’t a morning person, and he’d stayed up far too late and drank far too much the night before. But he’d made a promise—if only in his own head—to get it done. In the morning. So that was what he did.
He was doing a fine job of it, he thought, when Aziraphale stepped outside to bellow at him. “What’s all this? You didn’t make enough racket last night, so you had to do it again today.”
Crowley shut off the leaf blower. “I think the words you were looking for are thank you.”
“Thank you?” He arched a single eyebrow. “For what? The headache had only dulled from last night when here you are again.”
“We weren’t so loud.”
“Oh, weren’t you?”
Thinking back again, Crowley still couldn’t see that they had been so loud, but he did remember the window was open. Still, it had hardly been a raucous party. But then, he’d never lived in such a quiet neighborhood.
As he came to the conclusion that perhaps he and his guests had been rowdier than he’d thought, he looked up in time to find Aziraphale’s front door slamming. Irritated all over again, Crowley finished the job of leaf blowing the insufferable man’s property.
And so it had gone. Crowley always seeming to step out of line. His Christmas lights shone in Aziraphale’s window. In January, Crowley happened to slip on a patch of ice. Aziraphale was close by and caught him before he fell.
Time seemed to warp. That was how Crowley remembered it later. Time stood still, no doubt in his shock; he was usually firm on his feet. That had to explain why his head felt all swoony with confusion. Their faces were so close, and Aziraphale’s arms so sure and strong around him. He felt oddly drunk for a handful of moments as they blinked at each other.
And then, there had been a crash. Aziraphale let him go and dove for a bag Crowley hadn’t noticed at all until that moment.
“Oh, my books,” Aziraphale had exclaimed. And then to Crowley, “You need to be more careful. Do you know how valuable these books are?”
That broke whatever spell had come over Crowley. He snapped his mouth shut and glared. “Right. I’ll be sure to crack my head open away from you and your books.”
For the whole of that first year, Crowley was sure to give Aziraphale a wide berth. Which was the one and only reason he was always so aware of the man’s comings and goings. He had to tell his other friends that several times. He wasn’t obsessed. He just didn’t need to run into Aziraphale. He didn’t think he could hold his tongue for another encounter.
As spring turned to summer and summer to autumn, he and his best friend, Nina, honed a business plan. They’d become fast friends a few years back, both of them recognizing that they were troublemakers but not that kind of troublemaker. They liked coffee shops and met most often in them, mostly because when they drank together, one of them was likely to end up in jail.
They’d cackled together, picking on the bits and pieces of each little coffee shop they enjoyed and which they didn’t care for. Before long, that talking had turned to what if. What if they could have a go at it? Own a shop. She knew so much about good coffee. He knew his way around pastries that went damn well with coffee.
Now, they had a solid plan, the supply connections, and the capital to start. All they needed was a space to make their own. It was November when they found exactly the right location. A street in Soho that had both charm and that eclectic nature that was just the little bit naughty. The kind of street where there was a gentleman’s club on one side right across from an old bookshop that would have looked at home in some kind of Bridgerton-era show. He half-expected it to be called “ye olde bookshop”. It was, instead, named A.Z. Fell and Co.
After inquiring, they found that the man who ran the bookshop owned every building on the block. His family always had, it seemed. He was a sweetheart of a man, according to the owner of an improbable record shop. The owner of the French restaurant—delighted by Crowley’s flawless French—advised them to bring an example of their pastries as Mr. Fell adored them. She said he only looked to be the prim and proper sort. He was reasonable enough. After all, he was the one who’d approved the gentleman’s club.
So, Crowley had whipped up his very best and even gone to the trouble of putting them in a basket with a tartan napkin. Bookish people liked those kinds of details, he thought.
They thought up a pitch and made an appointment. Basket in hand, Crowley strode into the bookshop, confident that everything was about to go his way.
And then, he saw him. Aziraphale. Speaking to a customer. Because he owned the shop. He owned the street. He owned the space Nina and Crowley wanted to rent. Of course, he did.
Aziraphale raised his head as the customer moved away, and their eyes met.
“Your name is Aziraphale Fell?” Crowley blurted.
The man tilted his chin up, tugging on his vest. “Do you have a problem with the name Fell?”
Crowley could have face-palmed. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. He opened his mouth to apologize only to find his tongue had other ideas. “You gotta admit. Aziraphale Fell is ah …”
Aziraphale cocked his head.
“Uh.” Crowley huffed out a breath as Nina elbowed him in the side.
“Stop. Talking,” she hissed. She squared her shoulders and looked at Aziraphale. “Well. It seems you already know my business partner.” She smiled in a way that was almost a grimace. “Might just quit while we’re behind then, hey?”
“Business partner?” Aziraphale’s eyes darted from Nina to Crowley and back. Realization dawned. “You’re the ones here about the shop.” He looked to Crowley again. “You.”
Crowley sighed. “Yeah. Me.” He closed his eyes tightly, huffed, and opened them again, determined. “I, ah. I know things with … I mean, it’s the wrong foot. Wrong feet, really. Right? But what we have here? It’s a good thing. If you … Well, here.” He thrust the basket at him. “These are for you.”
Aziraphale stared at the basket in his hands. He ran a finger along the napkin.
It was then Crowley realized that the tartan pattern of the napkin he’d chosen nearly matched the tartan of Aziraphale’s bowtie. That had been by design actually. When he’d heard the owner of the block ran the old bookshop, it was Aziraphale who’d come to mind. He seemed like the type to run a bookshop, and he’d based many of his choices on that thought.
Well. Spot on there, wasn’t it.
Aziraphale cleared his throat and put the basket to the side. “You’ll forgive me if I have no taste for your baking, Mr. Crowley.”
“No. Right. It’s not that I can blame you, but that … that … that was a big misunderstanding.” Hand propped on his hip, he ducked his head. He raised it and tried again. “You’ve made it clear what you think of me, and it’s not that I blame you, all right? It’s a lot of tangled mess, but the point is … the point is … Nina? She’s brilliant. Brains behind the whole thing. And it could be a good thing.”
Aziraphale looked skeptical.
“Maybe we can tell you about our plans,” Nina suggested.
Pressing his lips together, Aziraphale appeared to consider. He offered his hand and a gentle smile for Nina. “Nina, dear. It’s lovely to meet you. Truly. But, I’m afraid I do need to have a bit of a think before I consider this.”
It wasn’t an outright no. Crowley hung on to that.