Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rain made the front window a watercolour. It had begun as a petulant spit just after noon and matured, as the afternoon wore on, into a steady, sensible English drizzle, the kind that turned the glow of the streetlamps gauzy and rinsed the edges from passing umbrellas. The bell above the door had been quiet for hours. Somewhere in the back, the radiators ticked thoughtfully to themselves, like old men agreeing that yes, it was chilly and yes, it would likely remain so.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations played low from the stereo behind the counter, the music stitched into the air so finely that Aziraphale barely noticed it until the silence between tracks appeared and the shop briefly seemed to hold its breath. He preferred the instead-of-noise kind of music: not a show, just a texture, a reminder that the space was claimed and ordered and his.

His shop—his hermitage—was not large. Depth rather than width, he always said when he had to say anything about it at all: a narrow, crooked corridor of shelves running back from the window, which was dressed with a rotating arrangement of unusual spines and the occasional botanical print to catch the eye of pedestrians who liked to pretend they’d discovered the place by accident. From outside, the window promised a quaint curiosity. Inside, the truth of the thing asserted itself: high shelves bending toward one another like trees over a path, ladders, dim corners, bright islands of lamplight, and books stacked sideways atop books when the proper space for them had been used up by other, needier volumes.

It smelled of old paper and beeswax and something lavender-adjacent—the little potpourri sachets Madame Tracy from next door insisted on leaving in exchange for the occasional first edition of a romance she’d adored at nineteen and never seen since. He never used the sachets for their intended purpose (drawers, apparently), but he tucked them behind the till, and their soft perfume disguised the more stubborn aromas of leather bindings that had lived lifetimes in damp houses. The scent had become the shop’s own: a whisper when the door opened and the rain-wet air came in.

He had a book on the desk in front of him, of course. It was the kind of afternoon that grew around the task of restoration like ivy creeping over a wall: slow, patient, inevitable. The book—a nineteenth-century herbal with hand-tinted plates and a sullen history of mould in the gutter—lay on its bespoke cradle, opened to a page crowded with small, precise leaves. The greens had survived the decades bravely. The inked outlines were still crisp, the notes in a long-vanished hand neat and careful. Someone had once loved this book the way Aziraphale loved it now: with diligence. That thought pleased him.

He worked exactingly: humidification chamber, weight, then a bone folder coaxing the page’s reluctant curl flatter. He was good at coaxing. He’d learned how to approach old paper the way one approaches old cats: gentle, unhurried, generous with the time required for trust. The work asked for presence without performance. He could offer that. He shaped his day around tasks that rewarded patience and noticed shoddy intention; the shop had made him a better version of himself, or perhaps simply permitted the version that had been there all along.

Not that anyone in his family would put it that way. They’d label it a retreat and chalk it up to a character flaw that had been evident since childhood: “bookish,” that polite barb, and “shy,” which had never felt like the right word. He didn’t dislike people, exactly. He disliked the expectation to constantly meet them on their preferred terrain. He disliked the currency of small talk, the way gatherings demanded a certain brightness on cue, the side-eye when he declined. And he disliked—very much—the implication that refusing the usual dance meant he had nothing to give.

He had been like this as long as he remembered. Even as a boy: happiest in a corner with marginalia, sketching the venation of leaves he’d picked up in the park and pressed between the dictionary and a volume of poetry he wasn’t supposed to be touching. Family birthdays, the ones with too many candles and too many voices, had always left him tired in the marrow. He would sneak away to the hallway and read the spine of an encyclopaedia because reading the encyclopaedia itself would draw comment. “Azi’s wandered off again,” someone would laugh, half fond and half impatient. “He’ll turn into a book if we aren’t careful.”

As if that would be a tragedy.

He paused to turn the record over—he still preferred the ritual, fingertips steady on the black disk, the hush before the needle caught. Bach returned, polite as rain. The lamplight in the front window made the drizzle look almost festive. He ran a soft brush along the book’s fore edge and then sat back, listening to the way the shop held sound. When there were no customers (often), the ambient noises came forward to keep him company: a lorry down the street, the radiator’s intermittent throat-clearing, the sigh of old wood settling. When there were customers (occasionally—and increasingly the wrong sort, who wanted to take things home), he adjusted to the shop’s other voice: his, modulated and kindly; theirs, prickling with the distracted acquisitiveness of people who think the right purchase can grant them a personality.

He was not, properly speaking, a fan of customers. He allowed them, as one allows weather—inevitable, sometimes inconvenient, occasionally astonishing. It was not that he resented commerce; he recognized the necessity of it. But his happiest transactions were those that ended with the book remaining exactly where it had been, and their most satisfying regulars were the ones who came only to ask, reverent at the glass case, whether he would mind lifting the lid so they could look at the illuminated initials one more time.

He had a sign he kept tucked behind the till which he rarely set out, because even he knew it was too honest. YES, EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE. NO, NOT REALLY. He’d had it printed after an especially trying Saturday during which three different people demanded to purchase the same seventeenth-century botanical folio because it “matched their kitchen.” The folio stayed. Their kitchens persevered without it. The sign remained under the till, consulted like a talisman when the ruder sort arrived.

He traced a fingertip, feather-light, over a plate of Dryopteris filix-mas, the male fern, rendered in greens that came close to living. The artist had captured the way the frond unfurled like a thought coming into focus. He’d always loved ferns. They were humble and ancient and startlingly sophisticated, a soft green persistence that predated the brief, noisy experiment of human politeness. Sometimes he found that comforting.

A damp-edged wrapper bag from the bakery sat near the cash drawer—one last almond financier, wrapped up for later. He would forget it until closing and then remember it as he locked the door and debated whether the evening demanded a small glass of something. He had fallen into the sort of routine that others called ruts and that he called kindnesses to the self. Tea at ten and three. A particular circuit when he dusted, always left to right. The Thursday ritual of washing the front window himself—not for lack of a service, but for the satisfaction of making the glass disappear, of watching the world appear crisp through his own effort.

He was, he knew, an acquired taste. The last man he had loved—or tried to love, in the way that seemed to satisfy other people—had been kind enough to say so out loud. “You’re wonderful,” the man had told him, long after the effort had soured into politeness. “But you live inside your head and your shop. I want to do things.” The emphasis on do had made Aziraphale feel paper-thin. The end, when it came, had been a conversation spoken like a truce. No one cried. No one slammed a door. The man took his records and the plant that hated Aziraphale and, last Aziraphale heard, had moved west with a person who used the word banter without irony. Aziraphale had kept the quiet and found it—eventually—more companionable than he expected.

Two years since then. Perhaps a bit more. Time blurred when you measured it in catalogues, in the pace of restoration, in the turn of seasons across the front window: spring glare on spines, summer dust, autumn’s inclination to bring damp coats inside. Winter was always hardest, not for loneliness but for the uncooperative light. He did his best work when the day was grey, oddly enough—shadows spread evenly, the brightness tamed. He had adjusted to himself the way one adjusts to a beloved old building: yes, the window stuck in damp weather; yes, the stairs creaked; yes, the snug room in the back took heat badly. You made peace with the quirks and stopped apologizing for the architecture.

Forty had arrived without fanfare, thank goodness. A friend had wanted to throw him a party. He had declined politely but firmly and then bought a cake anyway, a modest thing with passionfruit curd that he ate in slender slices over several days, each slice a small rebellion against the notion that celebrations required witnesses. If there had been a toast, it would have been to the useful liberties of middle age: to leaving a gathering when he wished; to not explaining himself; to choosing stillness without apology.

The bell over the door stirred faintly—toying with him. Wind. He glanced up anyway, rehearsed smile ready, the one that said you are welcome here if you are careful with your voice and your hands. No one entered. The grain in the door had lifted in last year’s heatwave and the bell liked to practice its chime to remind him that everything in the place was almost alive.

He rose to stretch—the particular bookbinder’s unwinding of wrists and shoulders—and wandered a little through the aisles. It was his favourite part of an empty afternoon, the slow patrol, the minor corrections: a spine rotated a fraction, a book returned to the exact right leaning angle so its neighbour wouldn’t slide, a dust cloth passed millimetre-close to gilt lettering. He paused before the case of oddities: the brass callipers (perfect for measuring leaves), the pressed flowers, a moth under glass whose paper label had been inked by some unknown, precise hand. It soothed him to curate loveliness no one had asked him to curate. He made a world small enough to tend.

Near the window, a display of botanical prints caught the diffuse, silvery light. He had hung a particularly coquettish illustration of Dionaea muscipula at the centre simply because the engraving pleased him: the famous mouth of the Venus flytrap opened coyly, a Victorian warning about the hazards of hunger disguised as a plant. He’d been tempted to put a little card beside it reading DO NOT FEED STRANGERS, but he didn’t care for signage that read as jokes. People assumed you wanted them to laugh. He wanted them to look.

A couple paused outside, huddled under a single umbrella, considering the window with the kind of casual interest that could turn into entry if the rain worsened. Aziraphale held still, a wild thought rising—ridiculous, instinctive—that if he didn’t move, they wouldn’t come in. The umbrella tilted; a laugh; a hand on a wrist; they moved on. He exhaled, surprised at himself. He was not afraid of customers. He simply preferred potential over actuality. The idea of people—what they might say, what they might love—was more manageable when they were filtered by glass and rain into the general category of humanity.

He returned to the desk and the herbal, where the page he’d weighted lay flatter, more amenable. He pencilled a note about the mould’s extent in the margin of his notebook (which he kept immaculate, lettered headings, neat dates, a private discipline he valued as much as the state of his shelves) and considered whether to move on to lifting the surface dirt or to send a colleague an email about a binding question that had been nagging at him for a week. The colleague would reply tomorrow at the earliest; he would be made visible to another person for the shortest amount of time required; it would be fine.

He didn’t mind being seen. He minded the expectation to perform. He minded the way people, even well-meaning people, treated reserve as a puzzle to solve, an obstacle to remove. He minded the job interview tone that crept uninvited into first dates: So what do you do for fun? What are you looking for? As if he were a flat to be let, as if his square footage and number of windows were negotiable. He minded—above all—the assumption that the absence of noise implied an absence of desire.

His desires were particular and tenacious. A well-bound book whose spine didn’t crack on opening. The weight of calm in a room he’d arranged exactly so. The soft astonishment of seeing a plant he’d only known from prints. Care. He wanted to care about things and have the time and manners to do it properly. If that sounded small, he suspected the world had given up on measuring the right things.

On the far shelf, a tiny brass clock clicked into the top of the hour with the shy authority of a polite cough. Four. The light outside shifted toward evening’s opacity. He crossed to the window to switch on the small lamp he kept there; its warm circle transformed the rain into falling threads of light. Soho’s noises damped under the weather: fewer voices, more tires on wet road, a cab passing with the bassline of someone else’s evening throbbing like a distant heart.

He checked the little vase on the windowsill, where he’d tucked three stems of something green from the market that morning. They had no perfume and no name he’d noticed; their virtue was that they held themselves upright with faintly stubborn dignity. He topped up their water with an old tea tin and adjusted the angle of the vase a fraction of a degree because a fraction of a degree mattered to him and to the way he had decided to spend his life.

There was satisfaction, lately, in admitting that he had chosen this—a conscious choice rather than a collapse into habit. He had not been banished from the world; he had excused himself. He did not hate parties; he hated leaving them wrung out and cross. He did not dislike romance; he disliked the assumption that romance required an audience. He did not resent his family for failing to understand him; he resented their insistence that understanding him mattered less than correcting him. At forty, he had begun retiring certain explanations from service. I simply don’t care to had replaced I’m sorry more and more.

The phone on the counter lit with a quiet vibration—an automated email from the auction house about an upcoming lot, a bundle of botanical journals from the 1860s he’d been eyeing. He opened it, scanned the images, made a small noise of covetousness so private even he hardly heard it. The estimate was reasonable. The bindings were shabby, but the contents—oh, the contents looked delicious. He pictured them: cleaned, mended, tied with cloth ribbon in sets and set in the second bay on the left, three shelves up, where their greened titles would speak softly to anyone who needed to hear them.

He marked the date in his diary and set the phone aside. Another vibration: an article link from a fellow bookseller, no greeting, only this made me think of you and a URL. He clicked out of reflex and found himself skimming a piece about Kew Gardens’ Tree of Life project—a public-friendly write-up, all glossy photographs and tidy quotes about phylogenetic maps reaching for completeness. He read the paragraphs about sequencing, taxonomies revised, the elegant latticework of green life as it had been and as they were now discovering it truly was. The phrase people outreach snagged his eye—talks, workshops, big ideas condensed until they could be held in the hands of the public.

He had never been to one of Kew’s tours. He went to the gardens to walk the glasshouses in winter when the air warmed enough to fog his glasses, to stand silent in the presence of plants that had made it through time by choosing to persist. He smiled despite himself—then quickly arranged his face back to neutral, as if the shop might notice and judge.

The rain turned insistent, battering now rather than blessing. He stepped back from the window as two teenagers dashed past, shrieking laughter, flinging water from the arcs of their hoods. The shop took the sound and put it somewhere, like an aunt tucking a dropped mitten into a pocket for later. He stood at the front for a while, simply watching the weather be weather. There was a pleasure in standing on one’s side of a pane of glass and recognizing that there would be no heroic errand, no dashing out without an umbrella, no narrative at all beyond the one he’d chosen: stand, see, breathe, return to the book.

His book waited. He returned to it. Cleaned a margin. Wrote two more neat lines in his notebook. Lifted the plate with both hands and replaced it with the next. He thought about tea and decided yes. He brewed it in the back—Earl Grey, steady as a habit—and took the first sip standing in the narrow doorway to the stockroom, the steam pleasing his face. The back room smelled colder, of cardboard and glue and possibility. Boxes were stacked in patient towers, each marked with a code that meant something only to him. He had planned to open one tonight; perhaps he would. Or perhaps he would simply keep the promise of opening it and permit the promise to be enough.

The shop bell nudged the air again and then settled, false alarm. Evening gathered itself. Bach edged toward the variations he liked best. The rain began, grudgingly, to tire. He thought about the last two years—the clean diagnosis of a relationship’s failure and the surprisingly gentle recovery—and found in the thought less bleakness than he might have expected. He thought about the auction lot and felt the familiar tug of acquisitive joy. He thought, briefly, foreignly, about how the Tree of Life article had made something in him stir, not quite curiosity, not quite restlessness—more the simple recognition that there were people out there who loved their work with the intensity he understood. He respected that in any field. He liked people who liked things.

He would not, under any circumstances, go to a public event for the sake of going to one. He knew better than to mistake motion for meaning. Still, when he turned the page and found a plate of a fern drawn with such care that he felt his chest loosen, he did wonder, mildly, what it would be like to hear someone who knew the thing’s name speak about it not as a fact but as a love.

He shook himself. He drank his tea. He made a note to oil the front door latch before the weekend. He made another note to stop by Madame Tracy’s and ask after her geranium, which had been inexplicably thriving under her enthusiastic neglect and might benefit from some real advice. He adjusted the lamp by a fraction. He looked at the clock. He decided to keep the shop open another hour, because the rain would likely let up and he liked the feeling of being the pool of light on a dim street, available even if unvisited. It felt generous, to him, to be there.

The world continued, obligingly, at its measured pace. The shop continued with it, in its small, sufficient orbit. And Aziraphale—alone and not lonely, at peace and not complacent, forty and increasingly certain that certainty didn’t require defence—turned another page, wrote another line, and let the afternoon complete its comfortable collapse into evening.

The April light in Soho was still uncertain — thin one minute, golden the next, then flattened again under a sulking cloud. The rain had not decided whether it meant to leave for the day, so it hovered indecisively in the air, dampening the pavement but not enough to send people running for cover.

The bell over the door gave a chime — not sharp, but exploratory — and Aziraphale glanced up from the calfskin herbal on the counter. A man in his sixties had wandered in, coat lightly speckled with rain, his movements unhurried.

“Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said, voice pitched at polite welcome.

“Afternoon,” the man replied, scanning the nearest shelves. “Smells marvellous in here.”

“It’s the books,” Aziraphale said, setting aside his magnifying glass. “If they’ve been well cared for, they hold their perfume indefinitely.”

The man hummed, ambling deeper into the shop, occasionally pausing to tilt a spine toward the light or leaf briefly through a volume. They exchanged a few genial remarks about the rarity of bookshops like this, and when he left without buying anything, Aziraphale felt no disappointment. Some visits were meant to end that way.

He had just returned to the herbal when the bell on the record shop next door jangled, followed by footsteps crossing the short stretch of pavement between their doors. Maggie appeared — a cardboard box of LPs balanced against one hip, her hair damp from the mist.

“Mr. Fell,” she began, shifting her weight awkwardly, “can I—have a word?”

Aziraphale straightened, folding his hands over the counter. “Of course. Is something amiss?”

“It’s about the rent,” she said, glancing toward the open door as if the street might overhear. “January was dead, February not much better, and now March’s takings have gone straight into paying off stock orders. April’s meant to be better, but…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

“I see,” Aziraphale said, keeping his tone mild.

“I’m not saying I can’t pay,” she hurried on. “I will. Just not this week. Maybe not next. I didn’t want you to think I was dodging you, it’s just… well, this weather isn’t helping, and Record Store Day’s not until the end of the month, and—”

He raised a hand, gently cutting off the tumble of words. “Maggie, you’ve been a reliable tenant for—what is it now? Six years?”

“Seven in August,” she said.

“Precisely. A week or two won’t unmake that. We’ll consider it… deferred.”

Relief flooded her expression, though it was tinged with embarrassment. “You’re too good to me.”

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale said briskly, already angling the conversation toward an exit. “Better to have the shop thriving than the rent paid on the dot but no business to sustain it.”

“I promise I’ll—”

“No promises required,” he said, smiling in the way that discouraged further thanks. He had no appetite for drawn-out gratitude; it tangled things unnecessarily.

She hesitated, then shifted the box on her hip and gave a short nod. “Alright. I’ll let you get back to it.”

When she’d gone, the connecting door to Madame Tracy’s premises swung open with theatrical force.

“Mr. Fell!” Madame Tracy announced, bangles clinking. “Friday evening — séance. Very select. I’ve a businessman from Leeds and a woman who swears she was a chorus girl in the sixties.”

Aziraphale summoned his most diplomatic smile. “I’m afraid I’ll be busy Friday.”

“You work too much,” she said knowingly.

“And yet, I enjoy it,” he replied.

It took several rounds of polite refusal before she retreated, promising to “save him a seat next time.”

Peace lasted until the bell rang again and Newt Pulsifer stumbled in, clutching a box that seemed to be leaking something onto his coat sleeve.

“Mr. Fell,” he panted, “you wouldn’t happen to know how to fix a receipt printer, would you? Mine’s eaten all the paper and it’s making a noise like… like a goose.”

Aziraphale blinked. “I’m afraid my experience is confined to paper that predates your printer by a good century.”

“Right, yeah,” Newt said, shifting the box, “thought so. Just… thought I’d ask.”

He lingered another five minutes, describing in rambling detail how the printer’s troubles had begun with a spilled cup of tea, until Aziraphale eased him gently back toward the door with murmured sympathy.

When at last the shop was quiet again, Aziraphale poured himself a cup of tea, the steam curling pleasantly in the April air. Outside, the mist had thickened to a fine rain. Inside, Bach resumed from where the CD had paused, and the day returned to its preferred tempo: slow, deliberate, and firmly his.

The rain had taken a rare break, leaving the pavements outside faintly shining, as if Soho had been varnished. The shop was warm and still; Aziraphale had been happily occupied for the better part of an hour with a stack of pamphlets on Victorian kitchen gardens that had come in a job lot from an auction. They were in need of sorting, several of the stitched bindings mended, and one or two had small pencilled notes in the margins from some long-ago owner who clearly had Opinions on carrot spacing.

He was halfway through pencilling a catalogue note when the bell over the door rang — not the tentative tinkle of a browser, nor the sharp jangle of Madame Tracy on a mission, but a firm, decisive chime that seemed to arrive with its own swagger.

“Az!”

Gabriel stood in the doorway, tall and broad-shouldered, with a grin that seemed just slightly competitive with the April sunlight behind him. His coat was open despite the cool air, revealing a track jacket in a shade of electric blue that could probably be seen from orbit.

Aziraphale pasted on a smile, the one he kept for situations where retreat was impossible. “Gabriel. What a surprise.”

“Surprise? Nah,” Gabriel said, striding in like a man entering a room that had been waiting for him. “Just thought I’d check in on my favourite brother.”

“I’m your only brother,” Aziraphale reminded him, shutting the ledger with deliberate care.

“All the more reason to keep an eye on you,” Gabriel said, leaning on the counter as if he were in a sports bar. “Still hiding in here, I see.”

“I am running a business,” Aziraphale said, with the faint hope that Gabriel might recall this was the case and leave him to it.

Gabriel looked around at the quiet shelves, the single lamp glowing in the front window, the solitary customer-shaped absence in the shop. “Some business. Seen more life in a locker room at half-time.”

It was an old refrain, one Aziraphale had been hearing since they were children — though then it had been about how much time he spent indoors, reading.

You’ll get rickets, Gabriel would say, aged nine and fresh from football practice, finding Aziraphale in the back garden with a book on medieval herbals. Come play proper games.

Aziraphale had occasionally tried, but it never went well. He’d stand awkwardly in goal, terrified of the ball, or forget which direction he was meant to be running during rugby. The one time Gabriel had convinced him to climb a tree, he’d frozen halfway up and had to be talked down by their father.

By adolescence, Gabriel had given up trying to make Aziraphale join in, but the commentary had continued.

“Still reading those weird books?” he’d ask over breakfast, already dressed for rowing practice.

“Still spending all your time at the club?” Aziraphale would counter, buttering his toast.

Now, decades later, the script had barely changed.

“So,” Gabriel said, drumming his fingers on the counter, “when’s the last time you actually went out?”

“I go out,” Aziraphale said, as he always did, without bothering to specify that his definition of “out” was quite possibly not the one Gabriel had in mind.

“Hmm,” Gabriel said, drawing the syllable out in a way that suggested he didn’t believe a word of it. “Not counting trips to the grocer’s. Or whatever church fête you get roped into for the jam competition.”

Aziraphale resisted the urge to bristle. “I went to the market last week.”

Gabriel snorted. “That’s still shopping. I mean something social. People. Activity. Fresh air.”

“I get fresh air,” Aziraphale said, though even to himself it sounded defensive.

“Opening the window doesn’t count,” Gabriel said cheerfully. He glanced at the herbal on the counter, picked it up without asking, and flipped it open. “What is this, anyway?”

“Please put that down,” Aziraphale said sharply, plucking it from his hands. “It’s very delicate.”

Gabriel held up both palms in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. You and your precious pages.”

Aziraphale could feel the familiar tightening in his shoulders, the little prickle that came from too many years of this. He did not dislike his brother — not exactly. Gabriel was family, and family was… well, family. But Gabriel had a knack for turning up unannounced and rearranging the atmosphere of the shop simply by being in it, all bright energy and blunt edges.

“I’m perfectly content,” Aziraphale said, resettling the herbal.

“Content, sure. But you’re forty now—”

“Forty-one,” Aziraphale corrected.

“Even worse,” Gabriel said with a grin. “You’re in the prime of your life and you spend it in here, talking to dusty old books.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to protest but Gabriel barrelled on.

“You need to get out. Meet people. Do things. Come to the gym with me sometime, it’s good for the heart.”

“I get quite enough exercise fetching books from the upper shelves,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s not exercise,” Gabriel said. “That’s stretching.”

They had been having versions of this conversation since the mid-1980s. Aziraphale had learned there was no winning it — only surviving it until Gabriel’s attention moved elsewhere.

“What about a nice walk in the park?” Gabriel suggested. “Meet a few new faces. Or there’s that food festival next weekend—”

“I don’t care for crowds,” Aziraphale said firmly.

Gabriel sighed as if Aziraphale were a particularly stubborn student refusing to learn a basic rule. “Alright, fine. When’s the next time you’re going out? Properly. And I don’t mean the corner shop.”

Aziraphale hesitated, realising that to admit he had no such plans would only prolong the lecture. “I… haven’t decided.”

“Pick a date,” Gabriel said. “And something you actually enjoy, so you don’t chicken out. Just tell me when.”

Aziraphale busied himself aligning a stack of catalogues on the counter, avoiding his brother’s gaze.

“Well?” Gabriel prompted.

“I’ll… think about it,” Aziraphale said at last.

Gabriel’s grin widened, sensing some small victory. “Good. I’ll hold you to it.”

The shop felt different once Gabriel had gone.
It always did — as though his brother’s voice and energy clung to the air a while, a faint echo that took its time to dissipate. Aziraphale stood behind the counter with his hands resting lightly on the worn wood, listening to the door close and the diminishing sound of Gabriel’s purposeful stride down the pavement.

Silence reclaimed the room in cautious increments. First, the return of the muted street sounds — tyres hissing on damp tarmac, the faint shout of a market seller two streets away. Then, the quieter layers: the settling creak of the ceiling joists, the tick of the wall clock, the delicate scratch of rain beginning again against the front window.

Aziraphale exhaled.

It had been like that for as long as he could remember — Gabriel sweeping in, bright and loud and full of opinions about what Aziraphale ought to be doing with his time. As boys, the difference between them had been a simple matter of interests: Gabriel liked sport and noise and teams; Aziraphale liked books and quiet and doing things properly.
Somewhere along the way, though, that difference had hardened into an ongoing campaign. Gabriel seemed to have taken it upon himself to ensure his older brother didn’t sink too far into what he considered a rut.

Aziraphale had never understood why it mattered. Why was it so important to other people that he “got out” or “met people” or “tried new things”? Why did they imagine a walk in the park with strangers, or an evening at a crowded pub, was inherently superior to an evening spent with a stack of old journals and a pot of tea?

It was a kind of unquestioned convention — the assumption that more activity meant a better life, that social calendars were a measure of health. It had never made sense to him. If one were content, if one’s days suited one’s nature, why must they be altered to suit someone else’s?

He had tried, over the years, to explain this to Gabriel, but it never landed. Gabriel heard the words but seemed to translate them into I am lonely and don’t know it.
The implication always rankled. Aziraphale knew what loneliness was — he had felt it sharply enough after his last relationship ended — and he also knew he wasn’t feeling it now. The absence of a partner or a packed diary did not equal lack.

He reached for the herbal Gabriel had so carelessly handled earlier, checking the page edges for any sign of smudging. The paper was unblemished, but he still smoothed his fingertips over it, more for reassurance than necessity.
The work steadied him. It always did. Books had never asked him to be anything other than himself.

That, he thought, was another thing people seemed to misunderstand: the difference between solitude and lack of company. The first was chosen; the second was imposed. Solitude was a room one arranged to one’s own liking; lack was a locked door and the sound of a party on the other side.

He had never been able to convince Gabriel of the distinction.

And then there was his name.

Aziraphale Fell was a name with history — family history, certainly, but also a certain weight to it, a rhythm he had always liked. As a boy, he had delighted in the way it looked written out in his neatest hand, the elegant loop of the Z, the flourish of the final e. It was not a name you rushed through; it asked to be said properly, each syllable distinct.

Which, of course, meant Gabriel had never once said it properly in his life.

It had started innocently enough in childhood, the way siblings will shorten or twist each other’s names. But where their sister (long since moved abroad and thus blessedly out of the fray) had grown out of calling him “Azzy,” Gabriel had never stopped. Worse, he had evolved it into “Az” sometime in his teens, and that particular truncation had stuck like an ill-fitting nickname tends to — too short, too casual, devoid of the cadence he liked in his name.

He had tried objecting at first. “Please don’t call me that,” he would say, or “It’s Aziraphale.” But it never seemed to register. Gabriel would nod, grin, and then, the very next day, breezily greet him with “Az!” as though they had never had the conversation.

After a few years, Aziraphale had given up. Correcting him only prolonged the moment and invited the kind of ribbing that made his teeth clench. It was easier — or at least less exhausting — to let Gabriel get on with it and pretend not to mind. Still, each time the clipped syllable landed in his ears, he felt the faintest sting, like hearing a favourite piece of music played slightly out of tune.

He knew Gabriel didn’t mean it unkindly. It was simply the way his brother was — fast, familiar, always shaving the edges off things to make them fit his pace. But Aziraphale’s name was not something he wanted trimmed to fit someone else’s convenience. Names were meant to be complete.

He moved away from the counter and into the narrow aisle between two tall shelves, letting his fingertips graze the spines as he walked. The familiar order of the shop settled around him again, calming the irritation Gabriel’s visit had stirred.
Leather bindings, cloth boards, gilt lettering — each in its place, each exactly as it ought to be.

He could still picture Gabriel leaning on the counter, eyes scanning the room as if it were a waiting room he’d been forced into. The image was so at odds with Aziraphale’s own perception of the space that it almost amused him. To Gabriel, the shop was small, dim, and still. To Aziraphale, it was expansive, full of intricate pathways — not physical ones, though there were plenty of those between the shelves — but the pathways between ideas, between centuries, between the hands that had held these books before him and the ones that might hold them next.

Gabriel didn’t see that. He saw square footage and inventory. Aziraphale saw a living collection.

He returned to the counter and picked up his teacup, now cooled to lukewarm. The visit had disrupted the rhythm of the day; he could feel it, like a bookmark slipped into the wrong chapter. He considered making another pot but decided against it — he didn’t want to waste good tea on the lingering taste of an argument they hadn’t quite had.

Instead, he took out his small notebook, the one he used for jotting down tasks and appointments, and looked at the week ahead.
No meetings, no events, nothing that would qualify, in Gabriel’s terms, as “going out.” That was precisely how he liked it. Each day had its quiet shape: time for restoration work, for a bit of catalogue updating, for a walk to the grocer’s or the stationer’s if needed.

Why, he wondered, was that not enough for other people?

He thought of the way Gabriel’s voice had sharpened at the end of their conversation: When’s the next time you’re going out? Properly.
It wasn’t curiosity; it was a challenge. And Gabriel would remember. He always did.

Aziraphale closed the notebook without writing anything in it. He would not be pressured into inventing an outing simply to satisfy someone else’s definition of a life well-lived. If — if — something arose that genuinely interested him, he would go. But he would not do it for Gabriel’s sake.

The rain eased again, and a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight reached through the front window, striking the polished wood of the counter. Dust motes drifted in the beam, unhurried. Aziraphale watched them for a while, feeling the quiet settle back into his bones.

Still, as he reached again for the herbal, he caught himself wondering — just for a moment — whether there might be some sort of public lecture or exhibition coming up at the British Library, or a guided walk through a historic garden. Not for Gabriel. Certainly not to prove anything. Just… because it might be of interest.

He shook the thought away and bent over the page, letting the work pull him back into its careful, precise world. Outside, people hurried along the pavement, their voices and footsteps briefly distinct before fading into the background. Inside, the shop held steady, exactly as he liked it.

And if, somewhere at the back of his mind, a quiet voice noted that Gabriel would be back for an answer — well, he could deal with that later.

The week had gone on much as Aziraphale preferred: slow days in the shop, a few pleasant browsers, no real interruptions. April had shifted from sullen to mild, and the morning light through the front window was beginning to take on that watery gold that promised — without any real commitment — that spring might finally stick.

On Thursday afternoon, he sat at the counter with his laptop open. The ledger lay to one side, the herbal he’d been working on to the other, both waiting patiently for his attention. At the moment, though, he was deep in a quiet internet meander that had begun with a search for out-of-print botanical lithographs and somehow drifted, as these things sometimes did, into the events calendar for Kew Gardens.

The Tree of Life project had caught his eye again. He’d read about it before — an ambitious, sweeping endeavour to map and preserve the evolutionary story of plant life on Earth. The website promised new species identifications, genetic sequencing, the tracing of ancient lineages through modern flora. All very worthy and, frankly, rather thrilling in the abstract.

There was, he noted, a list of public programmes tied to the project: lectures, behind-the-scenes talks, workshops. He clicked idly through them, not expecting much, until one in particular made him pause.

Tree of Life: Guided Discovery Tour.
The description was brief: Join our experts for an interactive exploration of the Tree of Life exhibit. Learn about the incredible diversity of the plant kingdom and how scientists are mapping it. Activities included.

Activities. That was a slightly worrying word. But it was scheduled for Saturday morning, when the gardens were likely to be quieter, and the prospect of hearing from someone directly involved in the work was appealing. He imagined a small group — a few earnest enthusiasts in sensible jackets, perhaps a scattering of students, all listening intently while an expert gestured at a display. It would be, surely, a quiet, academic affair.

His cursor hovered over the “Book Now” button.

The telephone rang.

He startled slightly — the sound cut across the calm of the shop like a whistle through a recital. He glanced at the screen: Gabriel Fell.

Suppressing a sigh, he answered. “Hello, Gabriel.”

“Az!” came the cheerful boom. “So, did you decide when you’re going out next? Or are you still hiding in that cave of yours?”

“It is not a cave,” Aziraphale said, in the tone of someone who had said this before and knew he would say it again.

“Semantics. What’s the plan? Don’t tell me you’re still dithering. Come on, man, live a little.”

Aziraphale’s gaze flicked to the Kew Gardens tab still open on his laptop. The “Book Now” button seemed to gleam faintly, daring him.

In that moment, something in him — perhaps the same part that used to choose the most obscure quiz topics at school just to irritate his teammates — made the decision for him. He clicked.

“There,” he said into the receiver, a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “I have just secured a ticket for a social event this weekend.”

There was a beat of silence. “Wait, really? What kind of event?”

“At Kew Gardens,” Aziraphale said. “Part of the Tree of Life project. An expert-led exploration of the collection.”

Gabriel’s laugh was so loud it made Aziraphale hold the phone slightly away from his ear. “You’re unbelievable. That’s your idea of social? Plants?”

“They are quite interesting plants,” Aziraphale said, his tone sharpening. “It’s a significant scientific undertaking. And it will be in company.”

“How much company are we talking?” Gabriel asked, suspicion edging his voice.

“A group,” Aziraphale said vaguely. “I daresay there will be several people attending.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Gabriel said, but his voice had softened, perhaps mollified by the fact that Aziraphale had made any sort of plan. “Alright, well, good for you. Don’t forget to actually talk to someone while you’re there.”

“I am perfectly capable of conversation,” Aziraphale said primly.

“Sure, sure,” Gabriel replied. “Have fun with your... leafy friends. And Az? Send me a picture so I know you didn’t just spend the day in the café.”

Before Aziraphale could object to the insinuation, Gabriel had rung off.

Aziraphale set the receiver down and returned his attention to the laptop. The confirmation page had loaded while they were speaking: Your ticket for Tree of Life: Guided Discovery Tour is confirmed. The bright, blocky font was accompanied by an image of a child holding a magnifying glass over a sprig of something green.

He frowned at it. That was an odd choice for an academic event, but perhaps the marketing department had decided a youthful image would broaden the appeal. The listing hadn’t mentioned any age restrictions. It was, after all, a guided tour — surely not the sort of thing that would attract crowds of rowdy day-trippers.

He clicked the tab closed before any second thoughts could form.

Well. That was that. Gabriel could hardly accuse him now of never going anywhere. And if the outing had the added satisfaction of being an implicit rebuke to his brother’s endless nagging, so much the better.

He sat back in his chair, allowing himself a small, private smile. The truth was, the Tree of Life project was interesting. The idea of mapping the entirety of the plant kingdom — of connecting the living green world into a coherent, sprawling whole — appealed to his sense of order and history. Plants, after all, were patient archivists of time. Their stories stretched back further than most humans could comfortably imagine, written in growth rings and leaf shapes and genetic codes.

An expert talk on such a subject promised not just knowledge, but the pleasure of hearing it from someone who cared deeply enough to devote their life to the work. He liked people who liked things. It made them easier to listen to, easier to be around. Passion, when well expressed, could make even the driest topic unexpectedly luminous.

And if, by attending, he also gained a story to throw back at Gabriel the next time he started in on the “hermit” business — well, that was just efficiency.

He closed the laptop entirely and turned back to the herbal on the counter. The work steadied him, the careful cleaning and mending of paper that had outlived its first owners. The afternoon resumed its rhythm, Bach moving through its variations in the background, the rain picking up again outside.

Somewhere in the distance — on the edge of his awareness — the decision he had just made sat quietly, like a seed dropped into soil, waiting.

Chapter Text

Saturday morning arrived with a reluctant sort of light, as though April had needed coaxing to get out of bed. A pale sun inched its way through a quilt of thin cloud, gilding the rooftops but leaving the street still damp from the night’s rain.

Aziraphale was already awake.

He had been since half past six, not out of any eagerness for the day ahead, but because he had found his thoughts unwilling to let him drift back to sleep. They had been circling the same territory all week: what exactly would this Tree of Life “Guided Discovery Tour” entail, and — more importantly — what sort of people might be there?

The Kew Gardens website had been infuriatingly vague. It had used words like “interactive” and “activities” without elaboration, and while he imagined these terms could mean something as benign as “an opportunity to ask questions,” there was always the risk they might translate into “hands-on group exercises” or “energetic icebreakers.”

And then there was the matter of the attendees themselves. Would the group be made up mostly of seasoned botanical scholars — people who could, at a glance, identify a leaf down to its subspecies and rattle off its Latin name without hesitation? Or would it be the sort of general-interest public tour where he might be surrounded by people who had, until that morning, thought of “botany” as something you bought in a supermarket’s potted-plant section?

Either extreme had its perils. With the first, he might be found wanting — he had a respectable general knowledge, yes, but it was more historical than scientific, and he had no desire to be quizzed on photosynthesis ratios or pollination mechanisms. With the second, he might find himself cast, unfairly, as the resident “expert” simply because he knew the difference between monocots and dicots, and then expected to answer questions all morning.

He would, he decided, have to present himself in a way that conveyed both a certain scholarly seriousness and a polite approachability — enough to blend with either crowd without drawing undue attention.

This was, clearly, a bowtie day.

Bowties, in Aziraphale’s view, struck exactly the right note. They suggested refinement without pomposity, a willingness to make an effort, and a dash of individuality. They also stayed out of one’s tea, unlike their more unwieldy necktie cousins. He owned several, arranged neatly in a drawer in his bedroom above the shop, each one rolled just so.

After a leisurely breakfast — tea, toast, and a spoonful of marmalade, eaten while Bach trilled softly from the radio — he opened the drawer and surveyed his options.

A solid burgundy was a safe choice, but perhaps too sombre for the season. A cheerful floral might be more in keeping with a visit to the gardens, though he worried it could make him look as if he were attempting whimsy, which was not the effect he wanted. After some deliberation, he settled on a rich, dark green silk with a subtle woven pattern. It caught the light in a way that was understated yet undeniably handsome, and it would harmonise nicely with his cream waistcoat.

The rest of the outfit came together in similarly careful fashion: a crisp white shirt, the aforementioned waistcoat, and a light tan blazer that was both practical for walking and suitably dignified for a formal talk. His trousers were pressed, his shoes polished to a discreet gleam.

Standing before the small mirror in his sitting room, he adjusted the bowtie one final time, ensuring the knot was centred and the wings symmetrical. The reflection that looked back at him was — if he did say so himself — rather distinguished. Certainly not the sort of man to be mistaken for a casual stroller who had wandered into the tour by accident.

Still, as he gathered his things — umbrella, notebook, pen — a faint unease lingered. He wasn’t used to setting aside an entire morning for an outing like this. The thought of spending hours in the company of strangers carried a low-level hum of apprehension, not unlike the buzz of an electrical appliance in another room: ignorable most of the time, but impossible to forget entirely.

To quiet it, he reminded himself of the subject matter. Plants. The great branching tree of life that connected every leaf, stem, and root. Genetic histories stretching back hundreds of millions of years. Here, at least, he would be on steady ground. He might not know the finer points of DNA sequencing, but he could certainly hold his own in a discussion of the historical symbolism of the oak, or the role of kitchen gardens in eighteenth-century estate planning.

He locked up the shop, the familiar click of the key in the door giving him a small burst of reassurance. The street was still quiet, most of Soho only just beginning to stir, though the scent of coffee drifted from Maggie’s record shop — she often brewed a pot on weekends while setting up her display outside. She waved from her doorway as he passed.

“Off somewhere fancy, Mr. Fell?” she called.

“An engagement at Kew Gardens,” he replied, pausing to tip his hat. “Tree of Life project.”

“Sounds posh,” she said with a grin. “Have fun!”

“I shall endeavour to,” he said, and moved on before she could ask more.

The Underground was mercifully uncrowded, and he spent the journey in his own thoughts, occasionally glancing at the other passengers and wondering what they might be doing with their Saturday mornings. Several clutched guidebooks or folded maps; tourists, perhaps heading for the same direction. But none of them, he decided, had the look of “botany expert,” whatever that might be. He began to imagine the group: a handful of retired academics in tweed, perhaps a librarian or two, maybe a scattering of serious young students in sensible shoes.

All perfectly manageable.

By the time he reached Kew station and began the short walk toward the gardens, the day had brightened. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and new growth, and the trees along the street had just begun to leaf out, pale green against the sky.

He slowed his pace slightly, taking it in. This was the sort of outing he could almost imagine making a habit of — quiet, orderly, with the promise of learning something new. And unlike the bustling sports matches or festivals Gabriel favoured, there would be no shouting, no jostling for space, no threat of being roped into something physical.

At the gates, he joined a small knot of people waiting to enter. None of them looked particularly alarming — a woman in a quilted jacket consulting her ticket, a couple in their thirties chatting quietly, a man in a neatly pressed anorak tapping something into his phone. Aziraphale relaxed a fraction. This would be fine.

He reached into his blazer pocket to check his ticket confirmation, the crisp rectangle of paper a reassuring presence beneath his fingertips. It was all in order: Saturday, 10:00 a.m., Tree of Life Guided Discovery Tour.

And, he reminded himself as the line began to move, this was not about proving anything to Gabriel. It was about the project itself. About knowledge. About the quiet pleasure of spending a morning among plants and the people who loved them.

At least, that was what he thought.

Kew in April had the gentlest sort of light, as if the sun were practicing for summer rather than committing to it. The gates opened onto avenues just beginning to green, lawns sponged with last night’s rain, beds edged in the tidy optimism of new shoots. Aziraphale joined the small stream of visitors moving inward, his ticket folded precisely into his inner pocket, his umbrella neatly furled and tapped free of droplets before he stepped onto the path.

He did not consult his phone. He did not need to. He had booked, and therefore he was booked; it was a principle he lived by. Having decided a thing and set it in orderly motion, he trusted it to be as it said on the tin. The Tree of Life Guided Discovery Tour would be an expert-led perambulation through the exhibit, with a handful of likeminded souls asking sensible questions. The website had said as much—well, close enough—and he had no intention of cluttering his head with additional details that might only complicate matters. One had to keep one’s mind tidy.

A discreet sign to the right of the main path read Guided Tours — Meet Here, with an arrow directing him toward a stand of young trees with bark like cinnamon sticks. Beyond, a cluster of people were gathering around a bench. He felt his shoulders loosen a fraction. There they were: the local experts and the odd pensioner. He could pick them out even from a distance—the sensible weatherproofs, the shoes that said I walk with purpose, the expressions composed not of eagerness but of polite readiness.

As he approached, the group sharpened into individuals. A woman in a quilted jacket, perhaps late fifties, inspected the bark of a sapling with a small field magnifier dangling from her neck like a pendant. A couple in their thirties consulted a folding map. A man in a soft anorak cradled a camera with a lens that seemed too serious for casual use. A handful of others hovered, all radiating the respectable blandness of people about to receive information.

Yes. This would be fine.

“Hi!” said a woman with a clipboard, snapping his attention toward her. She had a bright scarf patterned with leaves and the brisk, capable energy of someone who could simultaneously herd cats and ring a cash register. A lanyard announced her as Bev — Education. “Welcome! Are you here for the Tree of Life Discovery? If so, just grab a leaf and we’ll get started in a tick.”

A leaf? He looked down. On the bench sat a shallow basket piled with clipboards shaped like stylised leaves—green plastic, cheerful, each with a stubby pencil attached by a length of elastic. He stared at them for half a second, then recovered himself with a small smile.

“Yes. Thank you,” he said, taking one as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was surprisingly light.

“Brilliant,” Bev said. “Love the bowtie, by the way.” She ticked something on her sheet. “And if you’re a grown-up joining us, gold star. We love extra hands.”

Grown-up. Extra hands. The phrasing rubbed oddly at the edges of his expectations, but perhaps she simply meant adult learners—those who, like him, had chosen curiosity as a pastime. He offered what he hoped was a look of friendly competence.

More people arrived, and with them… children. Several. In bright jackets and tiny wellies. A small boy toddled along dragging a stuffed giraffe, which made a whispering sound on the gravel. Two girls, identical except for their hairclips, practiced taking turns peering through a plastic magnifying glass with all the solemnity of ritual. A pair of teenagers—sullen, hooded, perhaps pressed into service by well-meaning parents—stood apart, arms folded in synchronous reluctance.

Aziraphale blinked. The children were, he told himself, simply… part of the public. Gardens were family places, after all. The tour would begin, the children would drift away toward the playground, and the serious business would commence.

He considered backing out. Quietly. With dignity.

“Alright, team!” Bev called, clapping her hands lightly. “Leaf clipboards at the ready! If you haven’t had a wee yet, now’s the time. We’re going to meet our scientist in the Tree of Life area, and he’s got a lot to show us.”

Our scientist. That sounded promising. See? Expert-led. He tightened his grip on the plastic leaf and fell into step, careful not to tread on a tiny pink boot performing an aimless zigzag.

They walked past beds labelled with neat plaques, beyond a signboard printed with a large branching diagram—coloured lines and nodes running outward like fireworks arrested mid-bloom. The Tree of Life, the header proclaimed in confident type. Beneath, a paragraph in a friendly tone explained how all living things were related, and how scientists were mapping those relationships through DNA and old-fashioned observation. Aziraphale’s heart did a small, steadying lift. He liked diagrams. He liked lineage. He liked when someone had gone to the trouble to explain the universe in tidy fonts.

“Look!” Bev pointed with maternal enthusiasm. “There he is. Everybody give a wave.”

The group rounded a curve, and there—leaning against a low rail, sunglasses pushed up into a tangle of auburn hair, boots muddy to the ankle—stood a man who looked like he’d been dropped in from a different programme altogether. He wore a lanyard and a battered, possibly black coat that had once been expensive, now repurposed onto something feral. The sleeves were shoved up, revealing forearms with faint green smudges that might have been chlorophyll or simply the accumulated residue of gardens. He radiated a kind of contained restlessness of someone who regularly forgot to eat and slept only when plants did.

He also held, Aziraphale noticed with a start, a sock puppet.

The puppet was brown, with googly eyes and a felt smile. It had, inexplicably, a small green paper crown perched atop it.

“Morning,” the man said, straightening. His voice carried easily, low and roughened, the kind of voice that made even the uncompelling sound interesting. “I’m Dr. Crowley. I work on the Tree of Life project here at Kew. This—” he lifted the puppet with a deft flick “—is Rooty. He’s here under duress.”

A ripple of giggles moved through the children. One of the teenagers allowed a corner of their mouth to consider lifting and then changed its mind.

Aziraphale, who had been prepared for slides and sober pointing, experienced the disorienting sensation of stepping from one genre into another. He glanced down at his bowtie, as if to verify that he had not, in fact, wandered onto the set of a children’s television programme.

Crowley regarded them all for a beat, eyes hidden behind the sunglasses perched like a headband. He seemed to be counting. Or perhaps assessing. When his gaze reached Aziraphale, it paused just a fraction. Something wry, almost conspiratorial, passed across his expression and was gone.

“Right,” Crowley said. “Tree of Life. Big one. Lots of branches. You’re on one of them. Plants are on a different one. We’re all related if you go back far enough, which is both comforting and alarming. Today, I’m going to show you some of the plant side of the family.” He bent the puppet as if it were nodding. “Rooty is going to help. He’s not qualified, but he’s got enthusiasm.”

The small boy with the giraffe shrieked “Rooty!” and jumped in place once. Crowley bowed the puppet solemnly in acknowledgement.

“First job,” Crowley continued, “is being leaves. Can everybody hold their hands out wide—like this—nice and flat? Brilliant.” He fanned his own long fingers. “Leaves catch light. They’re solar panels with ambition. They also do a hundred other things, but we’re going to start simple because the person who booked us this weather didn’t pay for the deluxe package.”

Bev laughed obligingly. Several parents snorted. The teenagers glanced at each other, conspirators against being charmed.

Aziraphale found that, despite himself, he was smiling. The patter was practiced, yes, but it wasn’t patronising. The jokes slid neatly alongside the facts. He recognised the rhythm of someone who cared about their subject enough to translate it without flattening it.

Crowley moved them along the path with deceptive ease, asking the children questions whose answers they could actually produce, letting them be brilliant in the way children are brilliant when adults remember to ask the right things. He threaded in sly asides for the older ears—about evolutionary time, about the stubbornness of a fern’s design, about a plant that had outlived empires simply by refusing to hurry.

They stopped at a bed of small, lacy green, and Crowley crouched, sock puppet dangling like an inattentive assistant. “Ferns,” he said. “Older than your favourite dinosaur. Older than your favourite grandparent.” He lifted a frond with two fingers, reverent. “They don’t do flowers. They do spores. Ferns are proof that if you get something right the first time, you don’t have to faff about with petals.”

Aziraphale leaned in despite himself, bowtie forgotten. The frond’s delicate architecture—the tiny repeated patterns—always did something to his chest, a little easing, like listening to well-tempered notes settle into place. The word spore pleased him in the mouth. He made a mental note to look again at the fern plates in the herbal when he returned to the shop.

“Question!” Crowley announced, straightening. “Who can tell me where a plant breathes?”

“Leaves!” chorused a clutch of children, with supreme confidence.

“Excellent,” Crowley said. “Stomata. Little mouths. They open and close. Plants gossip through them.” He glanced at the teenagers. “Don’t worry, they’re not sub tweeting you.”

He looked, again, at Aziraphale then—caught him, really, like a beam of attention—and tilted his head, amused. “You’re very tall for Year Four,” he observed.

The group laughed. Heat rose in Aziraphale’s face, a ridiculous, adolescent flush he hadn’t anticipated. “Yes, well,” he managed, “I’m… an adult.”

“Always helpful,” Crowley said gravely. “Adults are good for carrying things. Also for asking very difficult questions at the end that make me regret my career choices.”

Aziraphale’s mouth, entirely without permission, curved. “I shall endeavour to restrain myself.”

“Please don’t,” Crowley returned, unexpected softness under the joke. Then, with the ease of someone moving to the next card in his deck, he faced the group again. “Come on. Time to meet some plants that eat animals.”

They trooped on, a procession of bright jackets and earnest faces and one man in a bowtie trying to look as if he had meant to end up here all along. The glasshouse they entered was warm enough to steam his glasses briefly. Crowley paused to let the air do its work, using the moment to coax a reluctant toddler into handing over a fistful of gravel that had become suddenly, passionately precious.

“Carnivorous plants,” Crowley said, once the group coalesced. He gestured toward a display of Venus flytraps, their hinged mouths agape in the provocative way of an opera singer caught mid-note. “They live in places where the soil is rubbish—no nutrients. So they cheat. Ingenious, really. Imagine if you could eat a sandwich with your face.”

Aziraphale, who had a deep affection for the Victorian moral panic around carnivorous plants, felt the first true spark of delight. He lifted his clipboard—more prop than tool—and wrote, without thinking, ingenious cheaters.

Crowley demonstrated how the flytrap’s hairs, touched twice, triggered the snap, miming it with Rooty, who feigned alarm. The children shouted, then shushed themselves in an endearingly theatrical whisper. A parent asked whether the plants were dangerous. Crowley reassured them with the patience of someone who had given this exact reassurance weekly for years.

“Dangerous to flies,” he said. “Terrible menace to midges. Completely uninterested in fingers. Plants are picky eaters. They don’t have time for your nonsense.” He glanced sideways again, the way one checks if a joke has landed with the audience one most wants to catch. Aziraphale, traitorously charmed, nodded. It had.

They moved. They learned about pitcher plants—slippery edges, pools of digestive soup—and about sundews, glittering like beadwork, deceit sticky as a honeyed word. Crowley made even the maintenance interesting—how the glasshouse was kept, how the humidity mattered, how sometimes science was, in practice, wiping algae off labels and arguing with procurement about the cost of soil.

At a low table set under an awning, Bev announced “Activity Time!” with a cheer. Small biodegradable pots appeared, along with a bag of soil and a plastic tub of sunflower seeds. “Everyone gets to plant a seed,” she said, beaming. “You can take it home and watch it grow.”

Aziraphale hovered, mildly panicked. Activity had become literal. A child to his left dug enthusiastically, flinging a small arc of soil onto his shoe; a child to his right asked him, with grave urgency, “Do seeds know it’s morning?” He found himself answering the question—Somehow, in their own way—and the child nodded as if this satisfied some deep need.

While the children ran off toward a planting station, Crowley drifted through the small chaos, answering, adjusting, confiscating the soil scoop when it threatened to become a catapult. When he reached Aziraphale’s side, his smile tipped toward private.

“Bit older than our usual demographic,” he said, not unkindly.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Yes, well. I booked this as a… gesture.”

Crowley arched an eyebrow. “A gesture?”

“To prove to my brother that I do, in fact, leave the house.”

There was a beat. Then Crowley grinned, slow and crooked.

“Spite-booking a children’s botany tour. That’s a new one. Can’t say I hate it.”

Aziraphale glanced away, flustered. “It was meant to be adult-led. Educational.”

“I am educational,” Crowley said solemnly. “Especially about moss.” Looking at the seed Aziraphale was still holding, Crowley smiled. “You don’t have to plant one,” he said quietly. “You can pretend you did and I’ll back your story. Professional courtesy.”

“I’ve no objection to planting,” Aziraphale said, feeling, absurdly, the need to defend his competence. “I simply… didn’t expect to.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “That’s the gardens for you. Sneaks up on you with the hands-on bit.”

“I had assumed—” Aziraphale began, and then stopped himself. It would be foolish to confess he had pictured a ring of earnest pensioners squinting at a chart. “—that it would be more… lecture.”

“We do those too,” Crowley said. “Different days. Smaller crowds. More Latin. Fewer googly eyes.” He lifted Rooty to illustrate, the puppet’s felt grin as unapologetic as his own. “But I’m on this rota. Outreach. The kids are good. Keeps you honest.”

“Does it,” Aziraphale murmured, unable to keep the curiosity from his voice.

“Mm.” Crowley’s gaze flicked, quick and assessing, to the green silk at Aziraphale’s throat. “You dressed the part, though.”

Aziraphale’s free hand rose an inch toward his bowtie before he could stop it, as if to confirm its continued presence. “I thought it respectful to the occasion.”

“Respectful,” Crowley repeated, as if trying the word for fit. “That’s one way to be at Kew. Brave’s another.” He tapped the side of the biodegradable pot in front of Aziraphale. “Go on then. Prove to the children you can do basic horticulture.”

“Basic horticulture,” Aziraphale echoed, and found a smile in the phrase. He took a small scoop of soil, placed a seed as delicately as if it were a jewel, and covered it, his fingers sure despite the unfamiliarity of the context. If one could be precise about mending a page, one could be precise about tucking a seed into its bed.

“Look at that,” Crowley said in a tone pitched for Aziraphale alone. “Textbook.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said primly, and then betrayed himself by adding, “It’s only a sunflower.”

“Tell that to the sunflower,” Crowley said. “They think very highly of themselves.”

The activity wound down. Bev produced stickers. The teenagers accepted theirs with the dignified resignation of cats tolerating hats. Parents wiped small hands. Rooty waved farewell with a certain grim dignity peculiar to sock puppets.

“Questions?” Crowley called, when the chaos had ebbed enough to be navigable by words again. “We’ve got a few minutes before I have to return this illustrious colleague to the sock drawer.”

Aziraphale’s hand, to his surprise, went up of its own accord. He heard his voice as if from a foot to the left. “Do you—” he began, and then steadied. “Do you ever coordinate your outreach with the archival materials? With the history of how these plants were written about? I ask because—I own a bookshop. Antiquarian. I’ve a number of herbals and journals in which the language around plants is—well, it’s a resource, isn’t it? Not for the science as such, but for how we’ve taught ourselves to look.”

Bev’s pen paused mid-tick. A parent glanced over. Crowley’s attention, already keen, sharpened.

“Yes,” he said. No hesitation. “We try. Not enough. The way we talk about something—what we name it—changes how we care for it. The kids get that when you show them pictures of old plant monsters and then show them the actual plant. The gap’s interesting. Fright is easy. Care is harder.”

Aziraphale felt the small thrill that comes when someone answers the question you meant, not merely the one you asked. “Quite.”

“What’s your shop?” Crowley asked, casual but not careless.

“Fell’s Books,” Aziraphale said. “Soho.”

“Alright,” Crowley said, as if this were a coordinate he could plug into his internal map. “I’ll come by. You can show me your monsters.”

“They’re not monsters,” Aziraphale said, more quickly than he intended, then softened. “Well. Some of the captions are dramatic.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “Dramatic sells. Don’t tell the plants.” The corner of his mouth tipped in that nearly-private way again. “Any other questions?”

They trickled a few more—how long the flytraps lived, whether the glasshouse heated itself (it didn’t, unfortunately), how to keep a houseplant alive (with difficulty and humility). The teenagers, unexpectedly, asked about jobs. Crowley didn’t pretend there were more of them than there were, or that the path was easy. He said you had to like failure. He said you had to be stubborn as a seed in shade. He told a small story about a time a grant panel had called his language “overly vivid” and how he had taken it as a compliment.

Aziraphale, who had been told many times that his catalogue entries were “too lyrical,” felt the unlooked-for comfort of recognition. He wrote, without meaning to, overly vivid = compliment on the plastic leaf, and then blushed at himself for using the children’s clipboard for private notes.

“Alright,” Bev called, clapping gently. “That’s us. Thank you, Dr. Crowley. Big round of applause for Rooty!” The puppet bowed; the children obligingly adored it.

As the group began to disperse—small bodies tacking away like bright boats—Aziraphale found himself reluctant to leave at the same speed. It felt rude to simply… go, after such a morning, even if he had contributed nothing beyond a sunflower and a question.

Crowley was packing Rooty into a tote bag with a tenderness that suggested insulted puppets bore grudges if not handled correctly. He glanced up as Aziraphale lingered and loosed a smile that revealed, suddenly, how much of the earlier smirking had been performance.

“Survived?” he asked.

“On the whole,” Aziraphale said, dignified, then ruined it by adding, “I had not anticipated the clipboard being shaped like a leaf.”

“That’s the education department,” Crowley said. “They’ve got a die-cut budget.” He slung the tote over his shoulder. “You did fine.”

“I asked a question,” Aziraphale said, which sounded paltry once voiced. “I do have—” He checked himself. It would be insufferable to press, here, in the wake of children demanding stickers. “That is, if you ever require historical references—”

“I meant you did fine with the children,” Crowley said. “And the soil.”

“Oh.” A pause, and then, awkwardly sincere: “Thank you.”

Crowley pushed the sunglasses up with a thumb, revealing eyes the colour of old amber, unexpectedly serious. “If you want the Latin-and-no-googly-eyes version,” he said, “there’s a talk next month. Smaller crowd. Less chaos. I can send you the listing if you like.”

“I would,” Aziraphale said. He felt, absurdly, as if he had been offered a membership in a secret club. “Very much.”

“Leave your email with Bev,” Crowley said. “Or pop it on the sign-up. Or—” He shrugged, a gesture that tried to be casual and didn’t quite succeed. “I’ll remember. Fell’s Books.”

“You… may not,” Aziraphale said, unable to help himself. “Remember, I mean. One meets a lot of names in a day.”

“I’ll remember,” Crowley repeated, and for some reason Aziraphale believed him.

They stood for a second in that post-event pause where conversation has both finished and not yet ended. Somewhere, Rooty’s googly eyes peered from the tote like a gremlin who knew too much. Bev waved meaningfully from a distance, clipboard like a semaphore flag.

“I should—” Crowley began, half turning.

“Yes, of course,” Aziraphale said. “Thank you. For the morning.”

“You’re welcome,” Crowley said. “Nice bowtie.”

The remark, the way he said it—neither mockery nor bland compliment—sent a small, unexpected warmth under Aziraphale’s waistcoat. He nodded, nonsensically formal, and then, to save himself from saying something foolish, turned toward the path.

He walked back the way they had come, past the diagram with its bright branching lines, past the beds where tiny labels promised future splendour. The morning’s oddness—its puppets and plastic leaves and truly alarming number of very small children—settled around him like a jacket he hadn’t known would fit. It had not been at all what he expected, and yet it had contained, wedged between the silliness and stickers, exactly what he had come for: a sense of the work as lived by someone who loved it.

He realised, as he reached the gate, that his sunflower pot—his evidence of participation—was still tucked neatly beneath his arm, cradled as if it were a rare octavo. He had written FELL on the side in tiny letters. It looked, suddenly, less foolish.

On the train back, he did not read. He watched the tunnel lights slide by and thought about the word outreach, and about the ways one could be overly vivid on purpose, and about a man with chlorophyll on his forearms who made plants sound like conspirators rather than scenery. He considered, briefly, checking the Kew website after all to find the talk Crowley had mentioned—but no. He folded the impulse neatly and put it away. Things would come as they came. He was booked enough for one day.

Back at the shop, he arranged the little pot on the sill where the light fell most consistently at mid-morning. It looked simultaneously ridiculous and correct, like a child’s drawing taped into a museum. He wrote SUNFLOWER—APRIL on a card and tucked it beneath, because labelling soothed him.

Then he went behind the counter, opened the herbal to the fern plate, and began, with calm hands, to bring the past into focus, while the seed in its paper pot sat very quietly and decided whether to make a future.

The sunflower sat on the windowsill of Fell’s Books like an object lesson in optimism. Its small biodegradable pot was still precisely where Aziraphale had placed it on Saturday afternoon, the card beneath proclaiming SUNFLOWER—APRIL in his careful block capitals. The soil was dark from that morning’s measured watering, and though nothing had yet emerged, he could almost imagine the faint bulge of a sprout under the surface.

He had not, in fact, intended to care about the thing. It had been planted under mild duress, with the vague sense of needing to play along for the sake of public order. Yet now he found himself glancing at it each time he passed the window, adjusting the pot minutely to keep it in the most promising square of light. A part of him, a part he hadn’t quite named, was oddly invested in whether it lived.

The telephone rang.

He glanced at the clock—mid-morning—and felt the faint anticipatory bristle that often accompanied calls at inconvenient times. When he saw the name on the small display (Gabriel Fell), he experienced the additional bristle of fraternal inevitability.

He considered letting it go to the machine. But Gabriel was capable of ringing again, and again, until the act of ignoring became more trouble than simply answering. Aziraphale sighed, lifted the receiver, and did his best to arrange his voice into something neutral.

“Hello, Gabriel.”

“Az!” Gabriel’s voice was, as always, entirely too loud for the scale of the instrument. “So, how was your big social event?”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, carefully. “Yes. Quite… enlightening.”

“Yeah? Got any pictures?”

Here it was. The trap sprung, bait taken. Aziraphale’s mind raced—not in great leaps, but in the tiny, fussy steps of someone mentally rearranging the furniture before a guest arrives. He had, of course, forgotten to send any sort of photograph. The morning at Kew had been absorbing in ways he hadn’t anticipated, and the notion of producing visual proof for Gabriel had been… simply absent.

Now, of course, he realised that any photo he had taken would have been fatally incriminating. Children. Dozens of them. Clipboards shaped like leaves. A sock puppet named Rooty. Even if he could crop the frame to include only the plants, the sound of Gabriel’s glee at the full story was enough to make his spine tighten.

“I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that I didn’t think to take one.”

“What?” Gabriel laughed, a short bark. “You go to Kew Gardens for the first time in forever and you don’t get a single shot? What kind of amateur are you?”

“I was occupied,” Aziraphale said, which was true in the strictest possible sense.

“With what? Smelling the flowers? You’ve got to show me something, otherwise I’m going to think you spent the morning in the café eating scones.”

“There was no café involved,” Aziraphale said, perhaps more firmly than was wise.

“Alright, alright,” Gabriel said, clearly amused. “So what did you do, then? Walk me through it. This was some kind of special tour, yeah?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, feeling the way one feels when about to cross a patch of uncertain ice. “A guided discovery of the Tree of Life exhibit.”

“Sounds very… science-y,” Gabriel said. “Did you understand any of it?”

“I understood a great deal of it,” Aziraphale replied, more heatedly than intended. “It was quite accessible, actually.”

“Good for you, Az. Mixing with the science crowd.” Gabriel’s tone was the same one he used when congratulating a nephew on scoring a single point in a game he didn’t understand. “You meet anyone?”

Aziraphale’s hand twitched minutely toward the sunflower pot, then retreated. “There was a—Dr. Crowley,” he said, hearing his own voice go a shade too careful. “He works on the project. Led the session.”

“Oh yeah?” Gabriel pounced on the unfamiliar name like a cat on a string. “And?”

“And,” Aziraphale said, with great dignity, “he was quite knowledgeable. An engaging speaker.”

There was a pause, then Gabriel made a small noise that was pure older-brother mischief. “Engaging, huh? Was he, what, another one of these tweedy types you love so much?”

“He was not tweedy,” Aziraphale said, which he instantly regretted, because it opened the door to further inquiry.

Gabriel chuckled knowingly. “Well, glad to hear you at least talked to someone. You going to go again?”

“I might,” Aziraphale said, in the tone of one admitting to nothing at all. “There are, apparently, other talks. More… in-depth ones.”

“More plants?”

“More science,” Aziraphale corrected. “And history.”

“That’s my little brother,” Gabriel said, warmth cutting through the teasing for a brief second. “Alright, I’ll let you get back to… whatever it is you do all day. Just remember, next time you have to send me a photo. Otherwise, I’m telling everyone you made the whole thing up.”

Before Aziraphale could frame a retort that wouldn’t sound defensive, Gabriel had rung off.

He set the receiver back into its cradle and sat for a moment in the small bubble of silence that follows an exit. He was faintly warm under his waistcoat. The conversation could have gone much worse—Gabriel had not, mercifully, pressed for the sort of detail that would have revealed the age demographic of the group. That, at least, was safe. For now.

Still, the omission sat in his chest like a small, guilty stone. It was not that he was ashamed of having spent the morning in the company of children—most of them had been perfectly well-behaved, and the rest not actively dangerous—but he could already hear, in Gabriel’s voice, the infinite delight he would take in the scenario. “Mr. High-and-Mighty Antiquarian,” Gabriel would say, “playing plant games with eight-year-olds.” It would be endless.

Better, then, to omit. Not lie. Simply… leave out the parts that would cause unnecessary amusement.

He rose and crossed to the windowsill. The sunflower pot was no taller than his teacup, the soil smoothed over in its modest bed. In a week or two—if he kept the watering measured, if the light held—it would sprout. That was how Crowley had put it, wasn’t it? “Textbook.” The word had lingered longer than it ought, like the echo of a chord you couldn’t quite identify but wanted to hear again.

Crowley had also said something about another talk. Smaller crowd. Less chaos. More Latin. Fewer googly eyes. Aziraphale found the corners of his mouth wanting to lift at the phrase, and forced them down again.

It would not be unreasonable to attend such a thing, purely for the sake of the subject. The Tree of Life project was a serious endeavour; it deserved to be appreciated in a setting where one could ask proper questions without competing with sticker distribution. And if Dr. Crowley happened to be there again—well, that would simply be part of the continuity of the experience. Nothing more.

He hesitated a moment longer, then went behind the counter and drew the laptop toward him. His fingers hovered over the keys. He could look up the Kew calendar now, find the date, book it. But… no. He remembered the mild embarrassment of being wrong-footed by the “activities” description last time. Better, perhaps, to wait until the event was closer. To decide in the moment.

Besides, there was a certain appeal in leaving it to chance. If he happened to come across the listing, if the timing worked, then perhaps. He was not, after all, beholden to anyone’s expectations but his own.

He closed the laptop without opening the browser. The herbal waited, patient and still, on the counter. The sunflower sat in its pot, content to bide its time. And Aziraphale, though he would not have put it this way to anyone else, felt the faint, unfamiliar stirrings of curiosity toward the next time he might hear a voice say “Dangerous to flies” as if it were a punchline worth saving.

Chapter Text

The week that followed settled into the slow, deliberate rhythm Aziraphale liked best.
There were no surprise visits from Gabriel, no overlong conversations with Madame Tracy about “energetic disturbances,” and only one mildly exasperating interaction with Newt from the electronics shop down the road (the young man had brought in an ancient computing manual he insisted was “vintage” and worth “a mint,” but the pages had been chewed by something with a taste for pulp and dust jackets).

The shop itself had been a balm. Rain had come and gone in bursts, softening the air and lending the street a faint metallic scent. The front windows fogged gently in the mornings from the contrast between April’s cool and the steady warmth of the shop’s radiators. Aziraphale had passed long, content hours at his work table with the Bach cello suites for company, coaxing loose signatures back into spines and pressing them under weights until they were as true as they would ever be again.

And yet… though he did not consciously dwell on the previous Saturday, the small brown pot on his windowsill had been a persistent reminder.

He found himself glancing at it over the top of his spectacles while cataloguing, or while passing on his way to make tea. There was, at first, nothing to see. The soil remained smooth, inscrutable. Then, on the morning of the eighth day—sunlight lying pale and oblique across the sill—he saw it: a thin, curved green thread, bent like a question mark, breaking the surface.

He leaned in, absurdly careful, as though his gaze might frighten it back into hiding. The little cotyledons were still folded, the embryonic leaves no bigger than the head of a pin. The sight gave him an unexpectedly sharp jolt of satisfaction, something like the feeling of seeing a long-missing volume turn up in an auction lot.

“Well done, you,” he murmured, entirely alone.

The seed’s quiet victory, in turn, stirred the memory of Crowley’s voice: Textbook. The faintest smirk behind it, and something else as well—recognition, perhaps, or approval.

Without quite deciding to, Aziraphale crossed to the desk and drew the laptop toward him. He opened the browser and, after only a moment’s hesitation, typed Kew Gardens Tree of Life project events into the search bar.

The website loaded with its same tasteful greens and serif headers. He clicked through the “What’s On” section, scrolling past children’s Easter trails and seasonal plant sales until he found the Tree of Life listing. There were several talks and workshops, each accompanied by a brief description.

There it was: Tree of Life: A Closer Look — “An in-depth exploration of plant evolution, DNA research, and conservation in the modern world.” The date was the following Saturday.

The speaker was listed as Dr. Dr. Metatron.

Aziraphale stared at the name for a moment, trying to decide whether the double honorific was a typographical error or an affectation. Either way, it had the air of a man deeply impressed with himself. He could practically see the handshake: firm to the point of bone-grinding, eyes already looking past you to the next person of consequence.

A small sigh escaped him. He had been, if he were honest, hoping to see Crowley there—though of course the notion was faintly absurd. A scientist’s schedule was hardly arranged to cater to the whims of antiquarian booksellers. Crowley might be off in some glasshouse coaxing rare orchids into reluctant bloom, or elbow-deep in data that would eventually flower into a grant application. Still…

He read the description again. DNA research. Evolution. Conservation. It promised precisely the sort of material he could sink his mind into: no googly eyes, no leaf-shaped clipboards, no songs about photosynthesis. Serious content for a serious audience.

And there was, just possibly, the chance that Crowley would be present in some professional capacity—assisting, contributing, even simply in attendance. He might, Aziraphale thought, be inclined to introduce himself properly, to mention the herbals and their curious, sometimes extravagant illustrations.

It was not the worst way to spend a Saturday morning.

He clicked Book Now.

The form was straightforward, though the “Would you like to make a donation?” field lingered a moment longer than necessary before he declined it. He printed the confirmation and placed it on the desk blotter beneath the glass cover, where such things lived until they had been fulfilled.

The act of booking brought with it a peculiar lightness, as if he had moved one chess piece and opened new lines of play. It was nothing to do with Crowley, of course. This was about knowledge, and the pleasure of being in the company of others who valued it.

Still, when he passed the windowsill that afternoon and saw the seedling standing fractionally straighter than it had in the morning, he found himself saying—without irony—“You see? We are making progress.”

Saturday morning broke clear and brisk, the kind of April day that tricked people into leaving their coats at home only to punish them in the shade. Aziraphale was not so easily deceived. He locked the shop door at half past nine—hand-lettered sign reading Closed for the Day tucked neatly into the frame—and set off in his overcoat and scarf, confirmation ticket folded into the inner pocket.

The train was mercifully quiet, only a scattering of passengers rustling newspapers or staring at phones. Aziraphale kept his own counsel, watching the landscape change from brick terraces to the green-brown sprawl of suburban parks. The closer he drew to Kew, the more the air seemed to carry a faint loamy tang.

The lecture was scheduled to begin at ten-thirty in one of the gardens’ education halls. Aziraphale arrived with time to spare, which he used to orient himself on the grounds—strolling past tidy beds of tulips, nodding at a fountain, resisting the urge to linger too long by the Tree of Life diagram. When he reached the hall, people were already gathering outside: a mixture of retirees in practical jackets, students with overstuffed backpacks, and the occasional lone attendee who, like him, radiated the polite neutrality of someone unaccompanied but determined not to appear so.

Inside, rows of chairs faced a modest stage where a lectern stood beside a projection screen. A jug of water and two glasses occupied a small table. The front row was already half-claimed by those who liked to get as close as possible to the action; Aziraphale chose a seat near the middle, equidistant from the front and the door.

At precisely half past the hour, a man emerged from the side door. He was dressed in an immaculate charcoal suit and the sort of tie that suggested boardrooms more than botany. His hair—what remained of it—was clipped to uniform shortness. His face was pale, unlined in a way that made him seem carved rather than aged.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice clipped, transatlantic accent polished to neutrality. “I am Dr. Dr. Metatron.” The second Doctor was given a faint but definite weight, like a door closed firmly but not slammed.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

Metatron launched into the lecture with the precision of someone who had delivered it, or versions of it, many times before. His slides were dense with data: phylogenetic trees, bar charts, tables of divergence times and clades. The language was exacting, the conclusions cautious, the delivery relentless.

There was no doubt of the man’s knowledge. Aziraphale followed the argument well enough—his academic instincts were still sound, and botany had always appealed to his sense of order—but something in the presentation was… airless. The words fell in steady, almost metronomic succession, each precisely correct, none inviting further thought beyond their immediate scope.

By the forty-minute mark, he found himself missing the sideways remarks Crowley had laced through the children’s tour. Even the sock puppet, absurd as it had been, had brought with it a kind of generosity: a willingness to meet an audience where they stood rather than simply delivering information from a height.

Metatron concluded the first segment with a slide that read BREAK – 10 MINUTES in a font so impersonal it might have been warning them to evacuate. Polite applause rippled through the room.

When the break ended, a new figure took the stage: a woman in her late twenties, with a dark bob tucked behind one ear and a bright scarf knotted at her throat. She wore a simple black dress and sturdy boots, and she moved with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew her subject and her audience equally well.

“I’m Dr. Anathema Device,” she said, her American vowels warm against the cooler English voices in the hall. “I work on the flowering plants section of the Tree of Life project, and today I’m going to take you through some of the processes we’ve been using to untangle relationships between species you think you know—and some you probably don’t.”

Her first slide was a close-up of a magnolia bloom, the creamy petals luminous against a dark background. She talked about its ancient lineage, about how DNA sequencing had rewritten its place in the evolutionary tree, about the ways in which morphology and genetics sometimes agreed and sometimes cheerfully contradicted each other.

Aziraphale found himself leaning forward. Anathema’s explanations were clear without being condescending, and she punctuated the science with small asides—how one particular sequencing run had been ruined by a power cut, how fieldwork in South America had left her soaked through and bitten in more places than she cared to name. She moved between the big picture and the precise detail with a deftness that reminded him, unexpectedly, of a well-constructed index: each point cross-referenced, each connection made visible.

When she described the delicate process of preparing a sample for sequencing—washing, grinding, extracting, amplifying—her hands mimed the motions in the air. The work was as much craft as science, and she made it sound almost alchemical.

By the time she concluded, showing a simplified diagram of the flowering plant clade coloured in bright, intersecting lines, the audience was fully with her. The applause was warmer, less dutiful.

Metatron returned to the stage for a final pre-lunch segment—some high-level discussion of funding structures and international collaborations—but for Aziraphale, the vividness of Anathema’s talk lingered like the aftertaste of a well-chosen wine.

When the break came, chairs scraped and people began to filter toward the door, talking in small knots. Aziraphale was debating whether to join the queue for the small café kiosk in the lobby when a shadow fell across his table.

“You’re the book guy,” said a voice.

He looked up. Anathema Device stood there, hands in the pockets of her dress, regarding him with a directness that was almost physical.

“I—well—” Aziraphale began, flustered. “I do own a bookshop, yes.”

“Not just any bookshop,” she said, her eyes narrowing slightly in thought. “Soho, right? Fell’s Books.”

“That’s correct,” he said, feeling oddly as if he were being cross-examined.

She nodded once, satisfied. “You were in the kids’ Tree of Life tour last weekend.”

Aziraphale’s throat made a small, involuntary sound.

Anathema’s mouth curved, not unkindly. “Relax. I’m not going to tell on you.”

“I—yes, I suppose I was,” he said, willing his voice into its calmest register. “Purely by accident, I assure you. I had not realised—”

“That it was for children?” she supplied, her tone teasing but not cruel.

“Precisely,” he said, grateful for the lifeline.

“Crowley said there was a guy in a bowtie asking about herbals,” she said. “I put two and two together.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. He could feel the edges of his composure fray under the steady weight of her gaze.

“Relax,” she repeated. “He thought it was funny. In a good way.”

“Did he,” Aziraphale murmured, unsure what to do with that information.

Anathema tilted her head. “You know he’s on after lunch, right?”

The remark sent a brief, unexpected flare through him. “I wasn’t aware,” he said carefully.

“Yeah. He’s covering some of the plant morphology side. Should be fun.” She glanced toward the café queue. “You getting food?”

“I might,” he said, though the idea of making small talk over a sandwich was suddenly daunting.

She studied him for another beat, then grinned. “Don’t worry. I can see right through you, but I’m not going to bite.”

The words, meant kindly, made his pulse tick up regardless. Social interactions conducted at this level of frankness always set him slightly on edge, though years of polite shopkeeping had given him a serviceable mask. He summoned it now, smoothing his features into courteous interest.

“Very reassuring,” he said, inclining his head.

“Good. See you in there after lunch, book guy.” She moved off toward the café, leaving him with the peculiar sensation of having been both appraised and approved in a manner he didn’t quite understand.

The post-lunch lull was a treacherous time for any speaker. Aziraphale knew it from academic conferences past: bellies full, blood busy elsewhere, attention liable to drift. The air in the education hall had warmed slightly since the morning; the faint vegetal scent from the nearby glasshouses clung to coats hung on chair backs.

He returned to his seat with a small cup of tea and the remainder of a shortbread biscuit wrapped neatly in a napkin. As the audience resettled, he found himself glancing at the side door in a way that was definitely not anticipation, merely an efficient check on proceedings.

Metatron stepped up to the lectern briefly, introducing the next segment in the same clipped tone as before. “Dr. Anthony Crowley,” he said, “is a senior researcher on the Tree of Life project specialising in plant morphology and evolutionary adaptation. His work has contributed to recent developments in our understanding of morphological divergence among flowering plants. Dr. Crowley.”

The applause was polite, expectant. And then Crowley stepped out.

Gone was the open, almost conspiratorial smile of the children’s tour. Here, he was all long lines and precision: black trousers, charcoal shirt rolled neatly at the forearms, and a slim black tie that set off the restless, contained energy in his movements. His hair was pulled back, sunglasses absent, yellow-brown eyes sweeping the room in a glance that was quick but registering.

He didn’t bother with the lectern. Instead, he paced a short arc in front of it, clicker in hand, the first slide blooming behind him: a split-screen of two flowers, nearly identical to the untrained eye.

“Alright,” he began, voice low and deliberate, drawing the room in rather than projecting at it. “These two look pretty similar, yeah? Petal count, colour, general shape. If you were arranging them in a vase, you might put them together. But genetically, they’re not just distant cousins—they’re practically strangers. So what’s going on?”

He let the question hang for a beat, eyes flicking from one side of the room to the other.

Aziraphale found himself leaning forward, biscuit forgotten.

Crowley began to unpack the puzzle. The first few minutes were a brisk grounding in the principles of morphological convergence—different lineages arriving at similar solutions to environmental pressures. His slides were clean, uncluttered: high-resolution images, annotated diagrams, short bursts of text.

He spoke quickly but with a clarity that carried even through the more technical stretches, punctuating the detail with asides that kept the energy alive. “You’ll hear people say form follows function. Sure. But in plants, form also follows history, geography, climate, and a hundred million years of accidents. Sometimes it’s less like following a straight road and more like arriving at the same party by wildly different routes.”

The audience chuckled—not a ripple of amusement at a forced joke, but genuine engagement.

Aziraphale could see the scientist beneath the showmanship. Every gesture was economical, aimed at reinforcing the data rather than distracting from it. When Crowley brought up a phylogenetic tree, he didn’t just point; he walked the audience through the branches, step by step, showing how the morphological similarities hid genetic distance, and vice versa.

He moved into a case study: orchids. Aziraphale knew enough to recognise the complexity of the examples—how certain species had evolved elaborate shapes to attract very particular pollinators, how those shapes could mimic other flowers entirely. Crowley showed side-by-side shots of petals and sepals, highlighted the genetic markers, then juxtaposed them with bees, moths, and even one species of wasp lured in by deception.

“It’s adaptation as performance art,” Crowley said, eyes flashing briefly with something that might have been delight. “And every good performance has an audience it’s trying to seduce.”

That line earned another ripple of laughter, but he didn’t linger on it—he slid smoothly into the data on how those morphological traits evolved over time, the genetic changes underpinning them, and what that meant for the broader evolutionary tree.

Aziraphale realised, somewhere between the third and fourth slide of DNA sequence comparisons, that he was watching someone entirely at ease in their field—not merely repeating a script, but thinking in real time, adjusting emphasis as the audience responded. The spark that had been missing from Metatron’s immaculate delivery was here in abundance: not chaos, but controlled energy, the sense of a mind alive to the connections it was making.

By the time Crowley reached his conclusion—a call for integrating morphological and genetic data to get the fullest possible picture of plant evolution—Aziraphale felt oddly… buoyed. Not because he had absorbed every technical detail (though he had followed more than he expected), but because the talk had moved with such momentum that it left no space for the mind to drift.

Applause came without prompting, warmer than it had been all day. Crowley gave a small, almost self-effacing nod in acknowledgment, clicked off the projector, and stepped aside for Metatron to reclaim the stage.

The rest of the day’s schedule was outlined—another joint Q&A at the end, with all three speakers taking questions. Aziraphale noted it absently, his mind still half in the images Crowley had conjured: the mimicry of petals, the long sweep of evolutionary time, the elegance in adaptation.

When the hall began to empty for the mid-afternoon break, he stayed seated a moment longer, letting the crowd thin. Anathema Device passed by on her way to the lobby, catching his eye with a brief nod that was almost conspiratorial.

And then Crowley emerged from the side door, speaking in low tones with one of the event staff. He moved differently here than he had with the children—less bounce, more precision—but the undercurrent of quicksilver restlessness was still there. At one point he laughed, short and sharp, at something the staff member said.

Aziraphale looked away before he could be caught staring, focusing instead on folding his napkin around the remains of the biscuit.

It occurred to him—quite without warning—that he would like to ask Crowley a question during the Q&A. Something that would let him respond at length, perhaps even spark an exchange afterward. He wasn’t certain what the question would be yet; it would have to be specific enough to show he’d been paying attention, but not so niche as to come across as attempting to match expertise he didn’t possess.

He sipped the last of his tea and tried not to think about how much more invested he seemed in the conversation than in the answer itself.

The last presentation of the day—a brisk funding overview from Metatron—wound down with the same efficient finality as a shopkeeper snapping shut a till. He thanked the audience for their attention and gestured for the other two speakers to join him onstage.

Anathema reappeared first, still in her black dress and bright scarf, her expression alert. Crowley followed, long-legged and unhurried, taking the far end of the table. Three chairs, three glasses of water, three name placards.

Metatron sat in the centre, of course. He placed his hands in front of him, fingertips steepled, and addressed the audience in a voice that made “We’ll now take questions” sound like a formal edict.

Aziraphale shifted in his seat. He’d been turning over possible questions for most of the afternoon, dismissing and refining them in equal measure. He wanted something that would invite Crowley to speak at length—something that would give him a chance to see the man’s mind at work up close again—but without straying too far into territory that would bore the rest of the audience. And, crucially, it had to be a question Metatron wouldn’t seize upon for one of his polished but oxygen-depleting replies.

The first hand up belonged to a man in the front row who asked about the carbon footprint of the project’s fieldwork. Metatron took that one immediately, delivering a five-minute monologue on offset programmes and collaborative transport initiatives. The second question—a student asking about career pathways—went to Anathema, who gave a brisk but encouraging answer.

Aziraphale waited. Another question was lobbed at Crowley about orchid pollination strategies; Crowley fielded it with an almost feline grace, drawing diagrams in the air with long fingers. A woman in the back asked about data sharing between institutions; Metatron claimed it with obvious satisfaction.

And then, before his nerve could fail, Aziraphale raised his hand.

“Yes, you there—” Metatron’s gaze flicked to the middle rows. “—gentleman in the cream waistcoat.”

Aziraphale rose partway from his chair, voice steady. “For Dr. Crowley, if I may. In your presentation, you spoke of morphological convergence as a kind of… performance art, shaped by multiple pressures over millions of years. I wondered—how often does the opposite occur? That is, where closely related species evolve in such dramatically different forms that they appear, to the casual observer, entirely unrelated?”

He sat back down, pulse ticking faster than he’d like to admit.

Crowley leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, eyes narrowing in what looked like pleased recognition of the question. “Ah. Divergence in disguise. Nice.” He took a sip of water, considering. “It happens more than you’d think—especially when species adapt to radically different ecological niches. You can have two plants with a recent common ancestor where one’s gone the route of tiny, wind-pollinated flowers and the other’s producing massive, elaborate blooms to pull in a specific pollinator. Structurally? Worlds apart. Genetically? Practically siblings.”

Aziraphale nodded, but didn’t interrupt.

Crowley went on, warming to the subject. “The fun part’s when those differences mess with our assumptions. Early taxonomists—no DNA kits back then—had to rely on morphology alone. So you’d get these cases where plants that look like complete strangers were filed in separate families for decades, only for sequencing to shove them back together like a bad arranged marriage. Makes you think about how much we take appearances at face value.”

A low ripple of amusement from the audience; Aziraphale thought he saw the corner of Crowley’s mouth twitch.

Metatron cleared his throat, clearly preparing to pivot the topic, but Anathema spoke up first. “Good example’s the nettle and the hop,” she said. “Look completely different, but they’re both in the Cannabaceae family. Most people wouldn’t guess it.” She glanced at Crowley, who tipped his head in agreement.

“Exactly,” Crowley said. “Or take some parasitic plants—they’ll ditch all the obvious leaf structures, go straight for looking like fungal growths. You wouldn’t peg them as angiosperms at all, but genetically they’re right there in the middle of the flowering plant tree.”

Aziraphale let himself smile, small but genuine. This was exactly what he’d wanted: to watch Crowley build an answer in layers, to see the quick precision in his delivery when not corralling a pack of schoolchildren.

Metatron reclaimed the floor with the faintest edge of irritation, steering the next question toward Anathema. But the exchange had landed, and Aziraphale allowed himself the private satisfaction of having been the one to prompt it.

The Q&A continued in its measured fashion—climate resilience, public engagement, the occasional venture into the weeds of statistical modelling. Crowley answered two more, each with that lean economy of words that somehow made the information more vivid. Anathema was direct, pragmatic, her answers peppered with small personal notes. Metatron’s responses were polished enough to reflect light.

When the session wrapped, applause swelled through the hall. People began gathering their coats and bags, drifting toward the exits. Aziraphale rose slowly, watching as the three speakers stood, exchanged a few words among themselves, and began making their own way offstage.

Anathema was intercepted almost immediately by a knot of students. Metatron strode toward a suited man near the back, already extending a hand. Crowley, however, lingered near the edge of the platform, adjusting something in the case of his laptop.

Aziraphale hesitated, weighing the wisdom of approaching in a crowd like this. But the alternative was letting the moment slip entirely, and he knew from long experience that such missed chances had a way of replaying themselves in the mind for weeks.

He stepped forward, careful to approach from an angle that wouldn’t require calling attention over the general murmur. Crowley looked up as he came near, expression shifting from neutral concentration to faint recognition.

“Ah,” Crowley said, low enough not to carry beyond the two of them. “The herbal man.”

Aziraphale adjusted his cuffs. “Guilty as charged. Your talk was… most engaging.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched again, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “Not quite the same as the kids’ tour, is it?”

“Considerably more… technical,” Aziraphale allowed.

“Boring, you mean.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Aziraphale replied. “Though I admit, I do prefer the parts with stories.”

Crowley regarded him for a beat, then said, “Good question, by the way. About divergence. Most people go straight for the obvious ‘why do things look alike’ angle.”

“I’ve always thought the differences more telling than the similarities,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself with the candour.

That earned him a proper, if fleeting, smile. “Huh. Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”

Before Aziraphale could decide whether to be flattered or defensive, someone in a fleece jacket called Crowley’s name. He glanced over, nodded, then looked back at Aziraphale. “See you around, herbal man.”

And then he was gone, folding into the small crowd that had formed near the back of the hall.

Aziraphale stood a moment longer, absorbing the faint afterimage of the exchange. It was hardly a conversation—five sentences at most—but it had carried a charge, a sense of possibility. Enough to keep him thinking about it all the way to the train, the sunflower, and the quiet of the shop.

The morning after the Tree of Life event, Aziraphale stood at the counter of the bookshop with the laptop open, sorting through the photographs on his phone.

They weren’t particularly artistic—he had taken them between lectures, more for his own record than anything else—but a few were passable. There was the broad sweep of the hall, the projection screen glowing with one of Metatron’s phylogenetic trees, Anathema gesturing toward an orchid photograph mid-sentence, and, cropped discreetly from the side, Crowley in profile during his talk.

He hesitated over the last, then set it aside. Gabriel would seize on the inclusion of an unfamiliar man immediately, and Aziraphale had no desire to endure that particular line of questioning. Instead, he selected the general scene-setting shots and composed a short message.

Aziraphale: You see, dear brother, I do occasionally venture into the world. Fascinating lectures on the Tree of Life project yesterday at Kew. Attached photographic proof.

He attached the images, pressed send, and allowed himself the faint hope that this would be enough to pacify his brother for a time.

The reply arrived twelve minutes later.

Gabriel: That’s not real interaction, Az. Sitting in a hall listening to people talk about plants isn’t the same as actually talking to anyone. It’s like your uni days all over again—hiding in the library instead of joining the lads for a pint or a match. You can’t keep doing that forever.

Aziraphale read the message twice, then closed the laptop gently. He was not surprised—this was exactly the line Gabriel had taken for decades—but the sting of it had not dulled entirely with repetition.

The implication was always the same: that quiet enjoyment of knowledge was somehow deficient, a lesser thing compared to the sanctioned rituals of camaraderie. Gabriel had never understood how one could emerge from a long day of lectures or archival work feeling not depleted but restored, mind humming with new connections.

They had circled this argument since adolescence. Gabriel, the golden boy on the rugby pitch, surrounded by friends and noise; Aziraphale, content among books and manuscripts, sometimes going whole days without speaking to more than a librarian. At university, the pattern had only deepened: Gabriel visiting once, trying to drag him to the student bar, and leaving after an hour with a baffled shake of the head.

In the years since, nothing had altered except the framing. The rugby pitch had given way to charity cycling events, the pints to networking dinners, but the underlying philosophy remained: activity was only valid if it was conducted in the visible company of others.

Aziraphale had learned, eventually, to stop defending himself. There was no point. Gabriel would never grasp the satisfaction of tracing a footnote to its obscure source, or of following a lecture’s argument through to its elegant conclusion. That kind of enjoyment was, to Gabriel, incomprehensible.

So he did what he always did: he let the criticism slide, replying with a noncommittal We’ll see and nothing more. He would live with it. Until then—until the next inevitable prod—he could enjoy the thing for what it was.

The shop was still quiet when he finished shelving a new acquisition: a slim stack of 18th-century pamphlets on various horticultural improvements. He was returning the ladder to its place when the door bell jingled and a small cardboard box was carried in by the postman.

He signed for it, curiosity piqued—this was one of the lots from last month’s auction, delayed in delivery. The box, when opened, revealed a neat bundle of volumes wrapped in brown paper. He carried them to the worktable and began the slow pleasure of unwrapping.

The second book he unwrapped stopped him mid-motion.

It was a botanical first edition, late 19th century, its cloth cover embossed with an elaborate gilt design of a plant that—on closer inspection—had been rendered with entirely the wrong number of petals. The inaccuracy was compounded inside: the hand-coloured plates were beautifully executed but frequently misleading, pairing species from entirely different families as though they were close relations. The text, too, had a certain… optimism about the facts.

Aziraphale turned the pages, amused despite himself. To anyone else it might seem merely an old book with some charming errors, but he could already imagine Crowley’s expression on seeing it: the mix of professional affront and wicked appreciation for the absurd. Crowley would understand why the pairing of a foxglove with a lily, described as “cousins of remarkable similarity,” was so irresistibly wrong.

He set the volume aside, away from the general stock. Not for sale—not yet, at any rate.

Perhaps there would be a chance to give it to him. Perhaps they would cross paths again in a way that made such a gesture natural, even expected. It was hardly the sort of thing one sent through the post unannounced; it required presentation, context.

He ran a hand lightly over the gilt cover, feeling the faint ridges under his fingertips. Most people wouldn’t find it funny. Most people, if he were honest, wouldn’t even notice. But Crowley might. And the thought of sharing that particular joke—quiet, precise, entirely in their own corner of the world—was enough to make Aziraphale glance, just once, at the sunflower on the windowsill before returning to his work.

The days settled back into their familiar pattern, the sort of pattern Aziraphale had cultivated as carefully as any gardener might tend a prized bed of roses.
Morning tea. Unlock the shop. A slow sweep through the rooms to be sure nothing had shifted overnight, that the stacks were straight, the light falling as it ought.

May’s weather wavered between pale sun and soft, misting rain. On damp days, the air in the shop seemed to thicken, rich with the scent of paper and cloth bindings; on bright ones, the dust motes rose in lazy spirals, catching in the beams that slanted through the front windows.

In the front corner, on the deep sill above the low radiator, the sunflower was making its own quiet progress.

It had been a tentative, green curve at first, fragile-looking enough that Aziraphale had worried it might snap under its own ambition. But day by day, it had straightened, the stem thickening fractionally, the first pair of leaves spreading to drink in the light. The soil, once smooth and undisturbed, now bore the faint humps and valleys of roots feeling their way outward.

Aziraphale checked it every morning, as much a part of the opening routine as turning the sign to Open. One fingertip pressed lightly into the soil to gauge moisture, the small silver watering can fetched from its place on the back counter if needed. Crowley’s instructions—given with that half-amused, half-serious look—were taped discreetly to the inside of the cupboard door, next to the box of tea.

Don’t drown it. Water when top inch of soil feels dry. Turn pot a quarter each day so it doesn’t lean like a drunk. No feeding yet. It’s a baby.

Aziraphale had, in the spirit of careful obedience, set a daily reminder on his phone for eleven o’clock sharp: Sunflower – check soil. The sound was a polite chime, easily mistaken for a shop bell, but it kept him from forgetting.

To his mild surprise—and, if he were honest, his quiet pride—the plant was thriving. Plants, historically, had not fared well under his care. He had lost count of the number of peace lilies and ferns that had withered despite his best intentions. Even a potted basil on the kitchen windowsill had managed to expire in under a fortnight.

But this sunflower was different. Perhaps it was the explicitness of the instructions. Perhaps it was the sense of responsibility to the person who had given it. Or perhaps—though he would never say this aloud—it was because it had started under someone else’s hand, given a proper beginning before being entrusted to him.

Whatever the reason, the sight of its daily progress made him smile. Sometimes he would stand at the sill with his tea, simply looking at it for a minute or two, noting the tiny shifts: the angle of a leaf toward the light, the faint fuzz thickening along the stem.

The rest of the day unfolded around it in its usual rhythms.

There were customers—some regulars, some wanderers lured in by the window display. A student came in asking for any books on Victorian kitchen gardens, which led to a pleasant ten-minute hunt through the back shelves. An older woman browsed for nearly an hour before leaving with a slim volume on wildflowers of the British Isles.

Maggie popped in mid-morning, a little flushed from hurrying. She asked, apologetically, if she could have a few extra days on the rent. Aziraphale waved her off at once, assuring her there was no rush. She lingered for a moment by the counter, looking at the sunflower.

“Nice plant,” she said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied, with a touch of satisfaction. “It’s doing rather well.”

In the early afternoon, Madame Tracy appeared at the door, resplendent in a patterned shawl, to deliver another invitation to one of her “communication evenings.” Aziraphale, as always, accepted the flyer with polite gratitude and, as always, promised to “check his diary,” knowing full well he would not attend.

By four o’clock the street outside had quieted. The computer on the back desk sat open to a half-finished catalogue entry for a set of 19th-century gardening journals. Every so often, Aziraphale’s gaze drifted to the gilt-covered botanical first edition he had set aside for Crowley. It sat on the side table, spine outward, as though it were merely waiting for its rightful reader to arrive.

In quieter moments, he imagined the exchange: presenting it with a dry remark about “alternative taxonomies,” Crowley leafing through it with a look of horrified delight. It was the sort of joke that only worked if the recipient understood the premise fully. Most people, in Aziraphale’s experience, didn’t.

Evening came softly, with a wash of golden light across the shop floor. He watered the sunflower—not too much, as instructed—then drew the blinds and locked up. Upstairs, in the flat above the shop, the day ended as it so often did: a book in hand, the quiet hum of the street below, and the knowledge that something small but green was continuing its slow work in the dark.

Chapter Text

Anthony J. Crowley, PhD, was not a morning person.
He was, however, a scientist—specifically a plant morphologist specialising in evolutionary adaptation—and unfortunately, science didn’t always respect his preferred hours.

By nine o’clock sharp on a warm March Monday, he was already at Kew Gardens, standing in the shadow of the vast glass of the Temperate House, mug of coffee in hand, and mentally preparing himself for another week of too many meetings and not enough time in the field. The glasshouses glittered in the sun; beyond them, the herbaceous borders were just beginning their early-summer show.

This was, despite its institutional frustrations, his patch of Eden.

Crowley’s office sat in a low-slung brick building tucked behind the Palm House. It was less an office than a controlled chaos of research papers, specimen trays, seed packets, field notebooks, and a rather battered microscope he refused to replace because he “knew its moods.” Pinned to one wall were a series of plant morphology diagrams, overlaid with sticky notes bearing cryptic messages: “Check sequence again,” “Ask Anathema re: pollinator data,” “??? fossil record gap???”.

His desk held three mugs, all in active rotation; one with coffee, one with tepid water for rinsing plant debris from tweezers, and one that had once held tea but now harboured something that might have been the beginnings of a controlled mould experiment (it wasn’t).

On his computer, three different datasets sat open in overlapping tabs. One showed genetic sequences from an ongoing project comparing island and mainland orchid species; another was a spreadsheet of morphological measurements he’d been collecting for the Tree of Life project; and the third was an email chain in which Dr. Dr. Metatron had, over the course of sixteen messages, managed to turn a simple grant budget into a bureaucratic purgatory.

Metatron—known, to everyone but himself, as “Dr. Dr.” in mocking acknowledgment of his two doctorates and singular lack of charm—was the project’s lead administrator. A man of precise haircuts, precisely sharpened pencils, and precisely zero flexibility. Crowley respected his intelligence in the same way one respected the sharpness of a guillotine blade: impressive, but best kept well away from one’s neck.

Then there was Anathema Device, Crowley’s unofficial co-conspirator in surviving the Metatron Experience. Anathema was in her late twenties, American, fiercely bright, and entirely unwilling to let professional hierarchy get in the way of telling someone they were wrong. She had an encyclopaedic knowledge of flowering plant families, an eye for data inconsistencies, and a dry wit that had saved Crowley from more than one public evisceration during tense conferences.

The three of them made up the visible face of the Tree of Life project’s plant morphology arm: Metatron the administrator, Anathema the data tactician, and Crowley the field-and-lab hybrid who did most of the actual explaining to the public when needed.

The morning’s email from Metatron had been a terse “See me,” which never meant anything good. Crowley drained his coffee, shoved his sunglasses into his hair, and ambled down the corridor to the corner office.

Metatron was behind his desk, posture immaculate, a thin folder open in front of him. “Crowley. Sit.”

Crowley sat. “What’s up?”

“We’ve had our budget review.”

Crowley groaned. “And?”

Metatron’s expression did not change. “Funding for the external communications team has been reduced.”

“That’s the people who do the tours and school groups, yeah?”

“Yes.”

Crowley spread his hands. “So… hire fewer of them?”

“We’ve had to let them go.”

The words dropped like a stone into Crowley’s gut. “You mean entirely?”

Metatron nodded. “The public engagement remit still exists, of course, but it will now fall to existing staff. Rotationally.”

Crowley had the distinct feeling he was about to be volunteered for something deeply unpleasant. “Define ‘rotationally.’”

Metatron steepled his fingers. “Your name came up. Frequently.”

Crowley blinked. “I’m a senior research scientist, not a tour guide.”

“You are also,” Metatron said with the faintest edge of smugness, “the only member of the team whose public lectures consistently receive above-average engagement scores.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes. “That’s because I don’t talk like a textbook. And because Anathema throws in the good pollinator slides.”

“And because,” Metatron continued, ignoring the interruption, “you are capable of adjusting your explanations to suit the knowledge level of your audience. Which will be critical for your new assignment.”

Crowley leaned back in his chair, dread forming. “Which is?”

Metatron slid the folder across the desk. Inside was a printout headed Children’s Discovery Tours – Tree of Life Project.

“Oh, you’ve got to be joking.”

“Every Saturday morning,” Metatron said smoothly. “Ages six to twelve. Basic plant biology, biodiversity awareness, and interactive activities.”

Crowley flipped through the pages with increasing horror. Clip-art diagrams of leaves. Suggested “fun facts.” A cartoon bee with speech bubbles. “Metatron, I’m not—this is—look, I work with morphological divergence over evolutionary time. I don’t… do sock puppets.”

Anathema, perched in the spare chair in the corner, chose that moment to make her presence known with a snort of laughter. “I dunno, Crowley. You could make a mean sock puppet. Maybe an orchid that eats people.”

Crowley shot her a glare. “Not helping.”

Metatron ignored them both. “It’s settled. Your first group is in two weeks. You will prepare accordingly.”

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why me?”

“Because,” Metatron said, “if we leave this to someone without your ability to improvise, we risk alienating the next generation of botanical scientists.”

“And because,” Anathema added cheerfully, “you’re the only one we trust not to terrify the parents.”

Crowley looked between them, weighing his options, and found none. “Fine,” he said at last, with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man. “But I’m not wearing anything with a bee on it.”

Metatron closed the folder with the crisp satisfaction of a man who had won. “That will be all.”

Back in his office, Crowley collapsed into his chair, staring at the mess of his desk without seeing it. Kids. Every Saturday. For the foreseeable future.

He supposed it wasn’t the end of the world. He liked explaining things—liked seeing the moment when someone got it, when the connections fell into place. But children were unpredictable. Unfiltered. Loud.

Still… maybe he could make it interesting. If he had to do it, he’d do it his way.

He opened a new notebook, wrote Discovery Tour – Tree of Life at the top, and began sketching out ideas. Interactive elements. Simple but accurate explanations. And, yes, maybe a prop or two. If it was going to be chaos, it might as well be his brand of chaos.

He tapped the pen against the page, a grin starting to form despite himself. Sock puppets weren’t entirely off the table.

By the third Saturday of Discovery Tours, Crowley had settled into something like a rhythm.
Not a graceful one—more the uneven, swaying sort of rhythm you find in a dodgy washing machine—but at least he wasn’t flat on his face.

The first week had been pure chaos: twenty-three children, six parents trying to hand off snacks mid-sentence, and a five-year-old who insisted the Venus flytrap puppet be given a “proper lunch” of chocolate buttons.
The second week had been better; he’d learned to pace the walk between the Tree of Life terrace and the fern section so the younger ones didn’t burn through their sugar rush too early.

Now, on this mild April morning, the air was bright and sharp enough to wake him up, even without the two coffees he’d downed in the staffroom. New leaf growth shimmered under the early sun, and the gardens had that just-before-bloom feeling that always made him itch to be out in the field.

He was here, instead, with his “Discovery Tour Kit”:
– Laminated world map showing where their specimens came from.
– Tray of interesting seed pods.
– Jar of live sundew plant (always a hit).
– Flipbook of simplified morphology diagrams.
– Two sock puppets, tucked at the bottom like contraband: Rooty the sunflower and Fang the flytrap.

The day’s group clustered at the meeting point, a jumble of small hands and bright jackets. Fifteen kids today—mercifully fewer than that first week—and a scattering of parents. Bev, one of the volunteers, was doing the headcount.

Crowley began his opening patter, the one he could almost do in his sleep now: who he was, what the Tree of Life project was, why plants were cool if you actually paid attention. He got the expected mix of giggles, sidelong looks, and one intense stare from a boy who clearly planned to fact-check everything.

They set off, winding along the paths toward the terrace, pausing so the kids could touch the sticky sundew tentacles or guess which seeds came from which trees. Crowley was mid-explanation about the ginkgo—a living fossil, still here after 200 million years—when he noticed someone hovering just outside the group.

Not a parent. Definitely not a kid.

Cream waistcoat. Green tartan silk bowtie. Waistcoat pockets that probably held a watch and a penknife. And pinned below that bowtie—a leaf-shaped clip with Fell written on it in a tidy, old-fashioned serif. The sort of label you gave to something you treasured and expected others to treat with respect.

The man was standing politely, hands folded, as though waiting for permission to breathe the same air.

Crowley didn’t break stride, but his brain filed the image away for later. Something about him—prim, out of place, but curious—was far more interesting than the parents on their phones or the kids hanging off the railings.

When they reached the planting tables, Crowley handed out small biodegradable pots, a scoop of soil, and a sunflower seed to each child. Parents got them too, partly to keep them occupied. He worked his way down the line, checking that no one was about to compact the soil into concrete.

And there he was: Fell. Untouched pot, seed packet resting precisely in front of him.

Crowley stopped, leaning a little to glance at the clip. “Bit older than our usual demographic,” he said, not unkindly.

Fell cleared his throat. “Yes, well. I booked this as a… gesture.”

Crowley arched an eyebrow. “A gesture?”

“To prove to my brother that I do, in fact, leave the house.”

There was a beat. Then Crowley grinned, slow and crooked. “Spite-booking a children’s botany tour. That’s a new one. Can’t say I hate it.”

Fell glanced away, faint colour in his cheeks. “It was meant to be adult-led. Educational.”

“I am educational,” Crowley said solemnly. “Especially about moss.” He nodded toward the seed still in Fell’s palm. “You don’t have to plant one. You can pretend you did and I’ll back your story. Professional courtesy.”

“I’ve no objection to planting,” Fell said, sounding almost defensive. “I simply… didn’t expect to.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “That’s the gardens for you. Sneaks up on you with the hands-on bit.”

“I had assumed—” Fell began, then stopped, lips pressing together as if guarding a secret. “—that it would be more… lecture.”

“We do those too,” Crowley said. “Different days. Smaller crowds. More Latin. Fewer googly eyes.” He lifted Rooty the sunflower puppet, letting its felt grin do half the work. “But I’m on this rota. Outreach. The kids are good. Keeps you honest.”

“Does it,” Fell murmured, curiosity in his voice now.

“Mm.” Crowley let his gaze flick to the bowtie. “You dressed the part, though.”

Fell’s free hand rose just enough to brush the silk, then dropped. “I thought it respectful to the occasion.”

“Respectful,” Crowley echoed. “That’s one way to be at Kew. Brave’s another.” He tapped the side of the pot. “Go on then. Prove to the children you can do basic horticulture.”

“Basic horticulture,” Fell repeated, a small smile pulling at his mouth. He scooped the soil, placed the seed as delicately as if it were a jewel, and covered it with neat precision.

“Look at that,” Crowley said, pitched low so only he could hear. “Textbook.”

“Thank you,” Fell said primly, then added, “It’s only a sunflower.”

“Tell that to the sunflower,” Crowley replied. “They think very highly of themselves.”

Fell hesitated, then asked, “Do you ever coordinate your outreach with the archival materials? With the history of how these plants were written about? I own a bookshop—antiquarian. I’ve a number of herbals and journals in which the language around plants is… well, a resource. Not for the science as such, but for how we’ve taught ourselves to look.”

Bev’s pen paused mid-tick. A parent glanced over. Crowley’s attention sharpened.

“Yes,” he said immediately. “We try. Not enough. The way we talk about something—what we name it—changes how we care for it. The kids get that when you show them pictures of old plant monsters and then show them the actual plant. The gap’s interesting. Fright is easy. Care is harder.”

“Quite,” Fell said, with quiet satisfaction.

“What’s your shop?” Crowley asked, casual but not careless.

“Fell’s Books,” Fell replied. “Soho.”

“Alright,” Crowley said, slotting it into his mental map. “I’ll come by. You can show me your monsters.”

“They’re not monsters,” Fell said quickly, then softened. “Well. Some of the captions are dramatic.”

Crowley laughed under his breath and handed him the pencil to label his pot.

The rest of the group was already wandering off toward the terrace. Crowley did his usual wrap-up—quick Q&A, a round of thanks, a reminder to keep the pots somewhere sunny—and started packing the kit. He caught a glimpse of Fell drifting toward the main path, sunflower pot in hand, moving with the unhurried precision of someone who had nowhere to be but his own thoughts.

Back in the staff building, Anathema was waiting with two mugs of coffee. “So,” she said, “how was the third week?”

Crowley thought of the green silk bowtie, the leaf clip, the careful hands pressing a seed into soil. “Interesting,” he said, and left it at that.

Anathema did not let things slide.

When Crowley had breezed past her the other week with a muttered interesting and no further explanation, she’d given him that knowing squint that meant she was already filing it away. He’d hoped that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, she had the persistence of bindweed and the same habit of turning up where you least expected.

Two days later, she’d intercepted him in the propagation house with a tray of orchids.

“Interesting,” she repeated, drawing out the word. “Tall. Thin. Or something else?”

“Eh?”

“You said your last kids’ group was ‘interesting.’ That’s my line, and when I say it, it means something worth gossiping about.”

Crowley had shrugged, busying himself with misting the orchids. “Wasn’t a big deal.”

“Not a big deal,” she said, leaning a hip against the bench. “So… why is your voice half an octave higher right now?”

“It is not—”

“You’re doing it again.” She grinned, all teeth. “Who was it?”

Crowley adjusted his sunglasses, though they were entirely unnecessary inside. “Some bloke.”

“Some bloke.”

“Turned up in a bowtie. Bookshop owner.”

“Oh my god,” Anathema said, clasping her hands in mock-rapture. “Crowley, you have a type.”

He scowled. “I don’t have a—”

“You absolutely do. Awkward academic. Good posture. Eyes that probably light up over old paper. You know, your type.”

Crowley had given up then, muttering something about repotting schedules, but Anathema’s grin had only grown. She didn’t press further that day.

But ten days later, she had her opening.

Crowley had, of course, checked the participant list after that children’s tour.
A harmless bit of curiosity, he told himself. Entirely professional. He always glanced through the lists when he remembered—useful to know who came through his sessions, especially when they were… unusual.

And the cream-waistcoated stranger had been unusual.

Aziraphale Fell. The name had stuck with him as much as the bowtie and the way he’d held the sunflower seed like it was a signed first edition.

Now, ten days later, Crowley stepped quietly into the back of the conference hall after Metatron’s opening had already begun. Dr. Dr. Metatron—never without the double—was in full drone mode, laser pointer dancing over a slide of preservation protocols as if the text might wake up and thank him.

Crowley scanned the rows. And there, halfway up on the left: cream waistcoat, green silk bowtie, and—yes—the leaf-shaped clip, Fell, catching the overhead light. Already seated, notebook open in front of him, attention fixed forward with polite endurance.

Crowley allowed himself a small, private smirk before slipping into the empty chair next to Anathema at the back.

“You’re late,” she murmured.

“Metatron started early,” Crowley murmured back.

She followed his gaze down the row and spotted the bowtie instantly. Her lips curved in slow, feline recognition. “Well, well.”

He ignored that and pulled out his tablet, pretending to check notes.

Anathema was speaking before lunch, her segment slotted between Metatron’s marathon and the midday coffee stampede. Crowley’s turn was after lunch, which meant he’d have the dubious pleasure of setting up his slides in front of the room while everyone else was eating.

When Metatron finally wrapped up—mercifully without questions—Anathema took the stage. She was good. Clear, sharp, actually engaging. Crowley even caught Fell looking more animated than he had under Metatron’s reign, head tilting slightly as if filing her points away.

Applause. Chairs scraping. People stretching after sitting too long.

And then it was the lunch break, the room breaking into small, moving knots.

Crowley was already heading for the side of the stage, HDMI cable in one hand, when he caught the movement in his peripheral vision: Anathema sliding through the crowd toward the cream waistcoat.

She intercepted him near the coffee urn, all easy charm and animated gestures. Fell looked… contained, but attentive. The faintest pink touched his cheeks once or twice—Anathema’s doing, no doubt. She had a way of dropping questions like stones into still water, then watching the ripples.

Crowley wanted to hear what she was saying—wanted to know whether she’d mention the sock puppets, or worse—but his laptop was open now, the projector humming, the first slide of Phylogenetic Insights in the Sapindales glowing on the big screen.

The best he could do was glance over while testing the clicker. Fell stood with his notebook tucked against his chest like a shield, nodding occasionally, the green silk catching the light whenever he shifted.

Crowley adjusted a chart, more for something to do than from any real need. The lunch break ticked on, and the two of them stayed in easy conversation, Anathema clearly in her element.

By the time the call came for everyone to take their seats, Crowley had his presentation queued up and an entirely unwelcome awareness that he’d just watched someone else monopolise his most interesting audience member.

Alright, then.
Let’s see how he likes the lecture version.

Metatron’s timetable ran like a train schedule carved into stone: his session, applause rationed by social contract; a breath; then Anathema lighting the room back up with field stories and clean diagrams; lunch; and finally Crowley.

By the time Crowley took the stage, the coffee had settled and the murmuring had thinned. He didn’t bother with the lectern. He paced a tight arc in front of it, clicker in hand, the first slide—a split screen of two look-alike blooms—flaring to life behind him. He clocked the cream waistcoat halfway back on the left, green silk at the throat, notebook ready. The leaf clip was gone—no need for name tags today—but Crowley didn’t need it. Aziraphale Fell was written as neatly in his head as any binomial on his slides.

He kept it brisk. Convergence as sleight of hand. Divergence as scandal. Petals and sepals doing drag acts for bees. Genomes telling the truth long after morphology had conned everyone in the room. He could feel the audience go with him—those small shifts in posture, the held breath when an image snapped a point into place. He didn’t overplay the jokes. He let the data glitter on its own.

Crowley clicked through his final slide, letting the image—a branching phylogenetic tree with highlighted lineages—linger a moment before lowering the clicker.
“That’s the gist,” he said. “Plants have been playing this game longer than we’ve been around to notice. The trick is learning to read the rules before they change again.”

He stepped back, took a sip of water, and nodded toward the long table. “That’s me done.”

Metatron was on his feet almost before the last word left Crowley’s mouth. “Thank you, Dr. Crowley, for that… spirited presentation.” His tone made “spirited” sound like “unorthodox,” but the smattering of applause was warm enough. Metatron turned toward the audience with the air of a man reclaiming order. “We now have time for a few questions. Please state your name before speaking.”

A hand went up in the front row. A stat-heavy query about sample sizes—Crowley answered crisply, grateful for the clean numbers.
Another from mid-hall about fieldwork logistics, which he handled with a wry comment about waders and unexpected bogs.
A third—“What can non-scientists do to help?”—he cheerfully passed to Anathema, who delivered a concise, rallying list that earned her a small ripple of applause.

Then came a pause, a shift in the room’s temperature. From halfway back on the left, a hand lifted halfway, deliberate. Cream waistcoat, green silk bowtie. Crowley felt the corner of his mouth threaten a grin.

Aziraphale rose partway from his chair, voice steady. “For Dr. Crowley, if I may. In your presentation, you spoke of morphological convergence as a kind of… performance art, shaped by multiple pressures over millions of years. I wondered—how often does the opposite occur? That is, where closely related species evolve in such dramatically different forms that they appear, to the casual observer, entirely unrelated?”

He sat back down.

Crowley leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, eyes narrowing in what looked like pleased recognition of the question. “Ah. Divergence in disguise. Nice.” He took a sip of water, considering. “It happens more than you’d think—especially when species adapt to radically different ecological niches. You can have two plants with a recent common ancestor where one’s gone the route of tiny, wind-pollinated flowers and the other’s producing massive, elaborate blooms to pull in a specific pollinator. Structurally? Worlds apart. Genetically? Practically siblings.”

Aziraphale nodded, but didn’t interrupt.

Crowley went on, warming to the subject. “The fun part’s when those differences mess with our assumptions. Early taxonomists—no DNA kits back then—had to rely on morphology alone. So you’d get these cases where plants that look like complete strangers were filed in separate families for decades, only for sequencing to shove them back together like a bad arranged marriage. Makes you think about how much we take appearances at face value.”

A low ripple of amusement from the audience; Aziraphale thought he saw the corner of Crowley’s mouth twitch.

Metatron cleared his throat, clearly preparing to pivot the topic, but Anathema spoke up first. “Good example’s the nettle and the hop,” she said. “Look completely different, but they’re both in the Cannabaceae family. Most people wouldn’t guess it.” She glanced at Crowley, who tipped his head in agreement.

“Exactly,” Crowley said. “Or take some parasitic plants—they’ll ditch all the obvious leaf structures, go straight for looking like fungal growths. You wouldn’t peg them as angiosperms at all, but genetically they’re right there in the middle of the flowering plant tree.”

More questions—two quick, one fussy. Crowley handled them; Anathema shouldered one with a neat, surgical answer. Metatron wrapped the session with thanks that sounded like minutes approved in triplicate.

Chairs scraped. The hall exhaled. People began to move—some toward the exits, some toward the front, the familiar post-talk current of participants seeking signatures of attention.

Crowley shut down the projector, coiled his HDMI with the instinct of a man who did not trust borrowed cables, and only then let his gaze find Aziraphale again. He was waiting, not pushing forward, that practiced neutrality back in place as the row thinned.

Crowley stepped off the little rise, cutting across the aisle. Up close, the green silk was as annoyingly handsome as before.

“Ah,” Crowley said, low enough not to carry beyond the two of them. “The herbal man.”

Aziraphale adjusted his cuffs. “Guilty as charged. Your talk was… most engaging.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched again, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “Not quite the same as the kids’ tour, is it?”

“Considerably more… technical,” Aziraphale allowed.

“Boring, you mean.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Aziraphale replied. “Though I admit, I do prefer the parts with stories.”

Crowley regarded him for a beat, then said, “Good question, by the way. About divergence. Most people go straight for the obvious ‘why do things look alike’ angle.”

“I’ve always thought the differences more telling than the similarities,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself with the candour.

That earned him a proper, if fleeting, smile. “Huh. Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”

Before Aziraphale could decide whether to be flattered or defensive, someone in a fleece jacket called Crowley’s name. He glanced over, nodded, then looked back at Aziraphale. “See you around, herbal man.”

He moved away before he could say something he’d have to pretend he hadn’t meant. Aziraphale stood a moment longer, the hall a soft blur around him, before tucking his notebook under his arm and heading for the aisle, pulse finally settling to something like normal.

Outside, the light had shifted—clouds thinning, afternoon angling toward gold. Somewhere behind them, the projector fan wound down to silence, and in the echo Crowley felt, keenly, the tug of future conversations shaped like questions that wanted longer answers.

The conference room had mostly emptied by the time Crowley finished shutting down the projector and untangling the inevitable cable snarl that Metatron somehow managed to create every single session. A few stragglers lingered near the coffee urn, swapping cards. Anathema was leaning on the edge of the stage, clearly waiting for him.

“Well,” she said, drawing the word out, “that was quite a performance.”

Crowley glanced at her over his sunglasses. “The talk or the Q&A?”

“Oh, the talk was solid.” She waved that off. “It was the Q&A that really got interesting.”

Crowley busied himself coiling an HDMI cable. “Questions are part of the job.”

“Mmhmm.” She tilted her head, her grin sharp. “Especially when they come from certain well-dressed gentlemen with antique notebooks and an air of polite fascination.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” She straightened and began walking alongside him as he carried his kit toward the back door. “Because from where I was sitting, you answered that one question like you were giving a private tutorial.”

“I answer all my questions,” Crowley said, shoving the cable into its case.

“You lingered,” Anathema said. “You got that little crease at the corner of your mouth that means you’re enjoying yourself. And—” she jabbed a finger in his direction “—you didn’t check the clock once while he was talking.”

Crowley snorted. “You keep a dossier on my facial expressions now?”

“I’m observant,” she said primly. “And I’ve seen this before.”

“Seen what?”

“The way you light up when someone actually gets it. The science and the metaphor. And he does, doesn’t he?” Her eyes narrowed in triumph. “Oh, he does.”

Crowley muttered something about minding her own business, but she ignored it entirely.

“I mean, I knew from the kids’ tour,” she went on, falling into step with him in the hallway. “You had that same little spark then, even if you tried to bury it under the Rooty voice.”

“I do not—”

“You do. And today?” She grinned, sharp and pleased. “Today just confirmed it. You didn’t just clock him in the crowd. You zeroed in.”

They passed a catering trolley in the hall. Crowley set his laptop bag down for a moment, flipping the latch just to give his hands something to do.

“Even if that were true,” he said carefully, “you’re making it sound like a bloody soap opera.”

Anathema leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “You think it’s just professional curiosity? Please.”

Crowley closed the bag with a snap. “Maybe I just like answering questions that aren’t stupid.”

She smirked. “Sure. And maybe I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

They headed toward the staff exit, the hum of conversation from the main hall fading behind them.

“You could talk to him, you know,” Anathema said. “Outside of Q&A. Invite him for a tour. Show him the behind-the-scenes stuff.”

“Not my job to poach visitors,” Crowley said. “And anyway, he’s probably not interested.”

“Oh, he’s interested,” she said, sing-song. “I’ve got an eye for that, too. He doesn’t just sit through Metatron unless there’s something he wants.”

Crowley shoved the door open, the mild afternoon air spilling in. “You’ve been insufferable since the minute we met.”

“That’s why you like me,” she said cheerfully.

They stepped out into the courtyard. A few conference-goers were scattered on benches, sipping takeaway coffees. Crowley spotted the cream waistcoat across the way, leaving the gardens alone. The sight sent a strange little jolt through him—half curiosity, half something else.

Anathema followed his gaze and grinned. “See? Not over it.”

“Not—” he began, then stopped. There was no point. She’d already won.

She nudged him with her elbow. “One of these days, you’re going to thank me for noticing.”

“Unlikely,” he muttered.

“Highly likely,” she corrected. “Now come on. Let’s get a sandwich before the next round of talks. You can tell me more about your herbal man.”

Crowley groaned but let her steer him toward the café. He’d learned long ago that Anathema, once she had a scent, was impossible to divert. And maybe—just maybe—he didn’t entirely want to.

The day after the conference, Crowley woke to a rare patch of sunlight streaming through the narrow bedroom window, pooling gold on the floorboards. He lay there longer than usual, one arm flung over his eyes, running through the day ahead. Meetings. Lab work. A backlog of emails from donors who’d apparently decided the weekend was the ideal time to request project updates.

And—lurking somewhere between the thought of coffee and the thought of lunch—Aziraphale Fell.

Crowley rolled onto his side, groaning. It would be easy. Too easy. A short train ride, a walk into Soho, find the shop. Fell’s Books, he’d said. The name alone was enough to Google the address.

The mental image came without invitation: the shop as Crowley imagined it, all dark wood and dust motes, Aziraphale in that waistcoat behind a counter stacked with volumes older than either of them deserved to be. Maybe the leaf clip perched somewhere nearby, catching the afternoon light.

He could go in. Make some casual comment about rare herbals, segue into a conversation about plant taxonomy in Victorian literature. Maybe—if he was feeling particularly reckless—he’d bring along one of the botanical monstrosities from the archives just to see Aziraphale’s reaction.

The thought was appealing. Too appealing. Which was exactly why he shoved it aside.

No. Bad idea. Whatever spark there’d been in the Q&A, whatever amusement they’d traded in those few minutes after the talk—it didn’t necessarily translate into anything beyond that moment. And Crowley had been in this game long enough to know that following an impulse too soon could turn a perfectly interesting acquaintance into a stilted awkwardness neither party wanted.

So, instead of heading toward Soho, he went the opposite direction.

By ten o’clock, he was at Kew, the familiar sweep of the Palm House glass catching the pale light. The place smelled of wet earth and green life—comforting, grounding. This was safe territory.

First stop: the Palm House. It was quiet, a Monday lull, just the faint trickle of water in the irrigation channels. Crowley unlocked the side door and stepped inside, greeted by the steady, humid warmth.

He started with the cycads—three of them had been showing signs of nutrient stress. Kneeling beside the largest, he brushed back the soil, checked the root ball, made a note to adjust the feed mix. Next came the ferns, outside in the prehistoric section of the Tree of Life section fronds unfurling in their slow, prehistoric way. He clipped two brown tips, muttering under his breath about the last volunteer rotation’s tendency to overwater.

Emails buzzed on his phone. He ignored them for the moment.

By midday, he was elbow-deep in a tray of seedlings for the outreach program—tiny dicots just sprouting their first true leaves. It was fiddly work, transplanting them into their biodegradable pots without snapping the delicate stems. This, too, was safer than navigating whatever strange, tentative thread had formed between himself and Aziraphale Fell.

Around one, Anathema appeared in the doorway, coffee in hand, watching him with an expression halfway between amusement and curiosity.

“Keeping busy,” she said.

“Always,” he replied without looking up.

“You’ve been keeping very busy since the conference.”

Crowley gave her a flat look over the rims of his sunglasses. “Got work to do.”

“Mmhmm,” she said, clearly unconvinced. “Work that doesn’t involve a certain bookshop in Soho.”

He turned back to the seedlings. “Not my patch.”

“Doesn’t have to be your patch to visit,” she pointed out. “You do know how to be a customer.”

“I’m not in the market for rare books.”

“You’re in the market for something,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “But fine. I’ll leave you to your plants.”

She did—but only after giving him a look that promised she’d revisit the subject.

The afternoon was a blur of specimen logs and a tense call with Dr. Dr. Metatron about budget reallocations (“Outreach is essential, Crowley, but we must make hard choices…”). By the time Crowley hung up, his jaw ached from clenching. He stalked out to the research beds, trimming back overgrown sections with a little more force than necessary.

Evening crept in almost unnoticed. He made one last pass through the glasshouse, checking the timers on the misting system, ensuring the young cycads had the right shade cover. In the corner, the outreach seedlings sat in neat rows, their tiny leaves catching the last slanting light.

He paused, hand resting lightly on the edge of the tray.

Somewhere in Soho, he imagined, another plant was making its own quiet progress on a windowsill. And its caretaker—whether he knew it or not—had already made himself harder to ignore than Crowley liked to admit.

But the day was done, and Crowley left the glasshouse lights on a low evening cycle, locked the doors, and walked out into the cooling air without once checking the train timetable to central London.

Avoidance, for now, was the better part of… something. Not valour, exactly. But it would have to do.

Chapter Text

The morning came on slow, the light diffused through a pale London haze. Aziraphale lingered over his first cup of tea, the steam curling around the rim before disappearing into the air. Downstairs, the shop still lay in that suspended quiet it always had before he unlocked the door—the scent of paper and wood polish, the air faintly cool from the night.

On the front windowsill, the sunflower was thriving.

Its leaves had doubled in size since last week, a deeper green now, the stem thickening in its subtle, steady way. Aziraphale bent to inspect it, fingertips brushing the edge of a leaf in something close to admiration. Not a single sign of droop. Not one yellowed edge. He’d turned the pot a quarter turn yesterday and would do so again today. Eleven o’clock sharp, as the reminder on his phone insisted.

He checked the soil—dry on top, just as Crowley had said it ought to be before watering. He fetched the little silver can from the back, pouring just enough to darken the surface. Satisfying. Predictable. This was a rhythm he could work with.

He straightened, setting the can back on the counter, and his gaze lingered on the leaf edges, the way they caught the thin sunlight. The plant was doing well. And though he would not confess it to anyone, he felt a small, stubborn pride that it was still alive at all.

By ten, the first customer had come and gone—a young man looking for something “with pirates, but historical.” Aziraphale had found him a tattered but charming edition of A General History of the Pyrates, which seemed to satisfy.

The shop settled into its usual late-morning rhythm: the occasional creak of the floorboards upstairs from his own movement, the hum of traffic on the street beyond, the faint click of the computer keys as he typed up a new catalogue entry for a recently acquired volume of botanical illustrations. That last detail made him pause. The illustrations—hand-tinted lithographs of flowering plants—were exquisite. He caught himself wondering, entirely uninvited, what Crowley would think of them.

Crowley, with his long hands and easy precision when describing a plant’s form. Crowley, who’d spoken of divergence with the same energy one might reserve for a favourite novel’s plot twist. Crowley, whose amused smirk had stayed in the edges of Aziraphale’s thoughts far longer than he’d expected.

He shook his head, almost briskly, and returned to the catalogue entry. It wouldn’t do to dwell. They’d spoken twice—if one counted the children’s tour—and however pleasant those exchanges had been, there was no guarantee of another.

Maggie appeared just after noon, a cardboard box in her arms.

“Trade for the window,” she said, setting it gently on the counter. Inside were a half-dozen LPs in their sleeves, the sort of covers that made a certain breed of collector lean forward in interest. “Thought you could display them with those music books you’ve got in the front case. Cross-promotion.”

Aziraphale agreed amiably, though he suspected any customer seeking rare sheet music was unlikely to also buy a vinyl of Pet Sounds. Still, Maggie meant well, and her enthusiasm for her record shop was genuine.

She lingered, looking at the sunflower. “That’s coming along,” she said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Quite robust now.”

“It’s the first plant I’ve ever seen thrive here. You must have gotten very good instructions. You’ll have to show off your progress,” she teased, though without malice.

He ducked his head. “Perhaps,” he said noncommittally.

The afternoon passed with a kind of measured slowness Aziraphale had long ago learned to appreciate. A man browsed the poetry section for nearly an hour before purchasing nothing more than a battered Penguin paperback. Madame Tracy stopped by with another flyer for one of her séance evenings—“You’d be welcome, Mr. Fell, you know that, dear”—and left with a promise that he’d “check his diary.”

At three, the phone reminder chimed again: Sunflower – check soil. He did, though it was still moist from the morning watering. He turned the pot its quarter rotation, noting the way the leaves now oriented toward the shifting light. A small adjustment, a quiet, living intelligence at work. He wondered if Crowley had plants of his own at home, or whether his care was reserved for the collections at Kew.

That thought led—inevitably—to wondering if Crowley was at Kew now. Probably. It was, after all, his place of work. But that was an abstract fact, not an invitation. Aziraphale imagined himself arriving there unannounced, and the idea made his palms prickle. It would feel… presumptuous. No, best to wait until another public lecture or talk. If one came up.

He was not in the habit of pursuing people, not in the overt sense. The last time he’d made an effort had been… two years ago now, and it had ended in that quiet, mutual recognition that neither of them was willing to bend enough to meet in the middle. Since then, he had not missed the complications.

And yet.

By the time he drew the blinds at six, the sunflower was bathed in the last light of the day, its leaves casting soft shadows against the sill. He paused to look at it one last time before heading upstairs, thinking—not for the first time—that it had been a strange gift from a stranger. A stranger who might, if the right circumstances arose, become something more.

The kettle boiled. He poured the tea, settled into his chair with a book, and told himself that if another Kew Gardens event came up, he’d go. Not for Crowley, exactly. For the education. The atmosphere. The plants.

But he didn’t entirely believe himself.

Outside, the street hummed low with evening traffic. The shop sat quiet, its windows reflecting the warm light from within. On the sill, the sunflower waited, and Aziraphale wondered—just for a moment—if somewhere across the city, Crowley might be thinking of it too.

By Saturday the city had warmed into that particular brightness London sometimes wears like borrowed jewellery: not quite summer yet, but greedy for it. The pavements shone where a midday shower had rinsed them clean, and the late afternoon light found the shop windows and made a ceremony of ordinary things.

Aziraphale stood behind the counter, looking—absurdly, he knew—at the sunflower as though it might answer a question for him. It had put on another inch in the last two days, the stem thickening, the leaf-veins standing out with the conviction of a map. He’d turned it that morning. He’d watered it exactly as instructed. It was well. He was absurdly pleased.

He was also stalling.

On the table beside him lay a small canvas shoulder bag of the sort tourists buy in museum shops and respectable men continue to use for the next ten years. Inside, wrapped in brown paper and tied with kitchen string, was the botanical first edition with the egregiously wrong plates—the one that had made him laugh aloud when he first opened it, the one that, on second thought, had seemed less like a curiosity and more like a message that required a particular recipient.

He slipped a hand into the bag, checked the knot again (as if a book could wriggle free), and told himself—firmly—that it was a pleasant afternoon for a walk in a garden. He could close the shop an hour early without anyone’s life falling to pieces. He could enjoy a turn among the glasshouses and the fresh green of things. He could—if circumstances aligned in the quiet, unforced way he preferred—happen upon a certain scientist explaining something beautiful and ridiculous about leaves.

And if that didn’t happen, he had a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper and an apple—two props of a late lunch. If anyone asked about the bag, that was all it contained. It was a purely coincidental bag. It was a bag that meant nothing at all.

He flipped the hand-lettered sign on the door to Closed, slid the bolt, and went upstairs for his jacket, telling himself not to rehearse any conversation that had not yet occurred.

The train to Kew was full of weekend noise: children turned loose upon their parents, commuters drifting in the pleasant fog of thoughts unhooking from obligation. Aziraphale secured a corner seat and looked out the window as the city softened around the edges—the terraces giving way to the hint of bigger sky, the close-stitched streets unpicking into greener threads.

At Kew Gardens station the air smelled faintly of damp earth and warm metal. The walk to the gates took six minutes, seven if one allowed the body to match the tempo of the afternoon. He did. It was a pleasure he granted himself: to never hurry in a place that rewarded attention.

The gates admitted him with a soft beep and the indifferent kindness institutions reserve for members and frequent visitors. In fact, the little card in his wallet was barely a week old—purchased on a mild impulse after he’d found himself, for the second time in as many months, standing at the ticket queue and thinking how much more civilised it would be to simply walk in.

He’d told himself it was a practical decision: unlimited entry, a small discount at the café, the quiet pleasure of supporting the gardens’ work. He had not admitted, even to himself, that some part of him liked the idea of belonging—however anonymously—to a place that held so much of what he admired: order without rigidity, beauty without pretence, and the sort of patient, seasonal drama he could never quite cultivate in his own home.

Now, stepping through, he felt the first easing in his shoulders. Paths unrolled ahead like unworried sentences. Beds brimmed with tulips nearly spent and perennials beginning their careful coups. The great glass houses caught and multiplied the light so that each corner seemed to carry a little sun of its own.

He did not look for Crowley. He did not at any point crane his neck or change his route because a cluster of people might be a tour. He walked, sometimes pausing to read a label, sometimes not. He did not open the bag. He did not look at the book. He was—a man out for a quiet hour in a place that made sense to him.

The Tree of Life diagram stood where it always did, bright and confident, the branching paths traced in colours that even the late afternoon could not quite wash out. He lingered there, not reading so much as letting the shape of it settle him. A map of relation. A reminder that difference was not distance, that the world had chosen—again and again—to diversify in company.

Beyond, voices braided themselves into the garden’s ordinary sound: a child protesting and then forgetting to protest, a woman describing a plant to her companion as if it were a character in a novel, a gardener’s barrow squeaking in counterpoint to the birds. And—threaded under it all—a voice he recognised now not by sound alone but by the particular way it carried: low, precise, and edged with a wryness that made attention a pleasure rather than a duty.

He did not turn. He continued along the path as if he had meant to do so anyway, which—if one accepted a very generous definition of meant—he had. The voice grew clearer. The sentences arranged themselves into sense.

“—no, you’re not wrong,” the voice said. “They do look like little ladders. Except you shouldn’t climb them unless you’re a spore and extremely in the mood for trouble.”

Fern. The word arrived before the plant because the tone made it inevitable. He rounded a curve and saw, under the mottled shade of a young beech, a small cluster of people arranged in the loose crescent of a group that had assembled itself without being told where to stand. At their centre—hands moving in a geometrical patience, head tipped in the way of a man who thinks best when looking along the edge of something—stood Crowley.

He was in shirtsleeves rolled to the forearms, the tie today a narrow suggestion of formality rather than a promise. No sunglasses; the light was soft enough to allow his eyes the full range of their yellow-brown mischief. In one hand he held a frond delicately between two fingers, like a conductor about to cue a single note. The other hand drew shapes in the air that turned from joke to map and back to joke again.

Aziraphale did not step forward. He hung back, finding a place at the tail of the crescent where he could see without announcing himself. The bag strap lay across his chest in a manner calculated to appear thoughtless. The knot of the string inside seemed, nevertheless, to tug like a small insistent animal.

“These,” Crowley was saying, “are sori. S-O-R-I. Little clusters of sporangia. Think of them as packets: spores growing up in there waiting to make trouble. Ferns don’t do flowers. They don’t do seeds. They’ve got their own agenda and it’s been working for a few hundred million years, so who am I to argue.”

He flipped the frond to show the underside, and the murmured oh that went around the group was as satisfying to listen to as the click of a lock turning easily.

A child asked something about whether ferns had birthdays. Crowley, without missing a beat, supplied an answer that was both true and kind. A man attempted a question to show he already knew the answer; Crowley handed the answer back in a way that allowed the man to keep his dignity and the rest of the group to keep their interest. A woman asked if she could touch, and he placed the frond into her hand with the careful generosity of someone who remembered what it was not to know.

Aziraphale’s chest did that inconvenient loosening it had begun to do in Crowley’s vicinity. He considered backing away. He considered going to the café and letting this hour end the way it had begun, with a bag that could be a lunch bag and a book that, after all, did not require delivery to anyone.

“Next up,” Crowley said, tucking the frond back into itself with a tenderness that would have embarrassed a lesser man, “the part where we pretend these little green conspirators are not running the show. Come on.”

The group moved as one organism, a friendly shoal. Aziraphale moved with them without precisely admitting to himself that he was doing so. They paused by a stand of tree ferns—improbable trunks rising like something ancient that had agreed, temporarily, to be fashionable. Crowley braced a hand against the fibrous bark and spoke briefly about climate and patience, about how to keep a tropical vanity comfortable in an English spring. He made a joke about blankets; the group laughed; a woman took a picture of his hand on the trunk that would look, later, like a confessional in a magazine about beautiful lives.

Aziraphale found himself wishing—lightly, like an idle prayer—that Crowley would look up and see him. Immediately on the heels of this unworthy wish came the wish’s counter: that he would not. Either outcome would oblige him to be the sort of man who had a plan.

He did not have a plan. He had a book in a bag and an affection for situations that arranged themselves.

Crowley moved them again. The path narrowed and widened, offered and withdrew views as if the garden had decided to flirt. They arrived at a bed where delicate tassels of green made a low, lacy sea. Crowley crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet, and brushed the plant’s surface with the back of his fingers.

“Bracken,” he said. “Pteridium aquilinum. Widespread, old, absolutely not a salad. Some things get a reputation for being harmless because they look like a ballerina’s petticoat. They are not harmless. Respect is a tool. Use it.”

He looked up at the last word, a reflex or a point, and the line of his gaze arrowed, as such things will, toward the place where Aziraphale stood attempting to be a decorative bollard.

Recognition ran across Crowley’s face, unhidden and unhurried: the small spark of oh a mind makes when a hypothesis is confirmed in the wild. His mouth shaped into that almost-smile that lived in the corner like a tenant who paid rent irregularly but whom the landlord liked too much to evict.

Aziraphale’s own response—because bodies often betray gentlemen—was to smooth the lapel of his jacket as if formal wear could explain anything. He lifted his hand in a greeting sized to the moment: neither wave nor salute, but a flicker of acknowledgement like a page turned.

Crowley, still crouched, tipped his chin once in return, then looked back to the group. “Right,” he said, recovering the thread without fumbling it, “who wants to see a plant that eats? No, not you. Not you. I’m not a monster. Come on.”

They moved; Aziraphale moved; the book in the bag became heavier by degrees that had nothing to do with mass. The carnivorous plants lived in a small, well-behaved riot: pitchers with glossed lips, sundews sticky as sugared spoons, trap mouths hanging open like gossip. The children edged forward like small cats unsure if the entertainment would bite.

“Carnivory,” Crowley said, with the satisfaction of a man arriving at his favourite anecdote, “is what you do when the soil you’re stuck in has the nutritional value of a biscuit wrapper. Adapt or sulk. These adapted. This one’s a Venus flytrap—Dionaea muscipula—and yes, it counts.” He demonstrated with a dry grass stem; the trap closed obligingly with its faintly comic whisper.

There were questions. There were always questions. He answered them with the unshowy efficiency of a person who respects curiosity and refuses to starve it with mockery or show it off for points. He did not once look in Aziraphale’s direction, which—Aziraphale discovered—was somehow the exact kindness required.

The group began to thin, the hour coming to its natural end as people remembered trains and dinners and children’s tempers. Bev swept in like weather, collecting stray clipboards that had apparently materialised from the ether, dispensing gentle orders that sounded like favours.

Aziraphale stood his ground, which is to say he did not flee at speed. He found a bench at a discreet angle to the path and sat, opening the bag and removing the sandwich with enough theatre to convince any passing observer that he had, indeed, come to eat a late lunch in the vicinity of botany. He unwrapped it. He took a bite. It tasted of honest bread and the sort of ham that had not been asked to be clever. He chewed.

Crowley, now free of the group, spoke briefly with Bev, handed over a laminated something, and lifted his face to the air like a man checking the weather with his bones. He slung his bag over one shoulder and turned as if to go—and did not. The turn became an arc; the arc found its centre in the bench where Aziraphale had decided to be inevitable. Crowley walked toward it with the lazy finality of a comet on a chart.

When one knows one is about to be faced with a person one has been both avoiding and seeking, one’s hands often commit treason. Aziraphale’s did not, to their credit, attempt to tidy his hair or strangle him. They folded the sandwich back into its paper with a competence that, at any other time, would have been a source of private satisfaction. One of them—treacherously—rested on the bag as if to reassure the book that it had not been made a fool of.

Crowley stopped at conversational distance, that careful algebra of space a person learns when they spend half their life arranging themselves around strangers.

“Evening,” he said, though it was not quite evening and in his voice the word meant we were always going to end up here.

“Good afternoon,” Aziraphale replied, standing because one ought, because linings should not crease, because something in him wished to be the sort of man who rose to a moment when it arrived.

Crowley’s gaze flicked to the bag (traitorous bag), to the paper-wrapped not-lunch, to Aziraphale’s face. He did not ask. He did not rescue. He did what Aziraphale liked best: he behaved as if the world had no need of explanations except the ones that made more beauty possible.

“I was just in the neighbourhood,” Aziraphale said, with the sort of deadpan one uses when both parties understand that coincidence is an art.

“Brave neighbourhood,” Crowley said, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Full of leafy monsters.”

Aziraphale’s hand tightened on the strap. He felt the book’s corners through the canvas like a heartbeat—ridiculous, but true. He took a breath and prepared to begin the small, polite dance that might—if he kept his nerve and remembered to draw breath—end with paper changing hands.

“Do you—” he started, and stopped, because Crowley had turned slightly toward the fern bed, his attention caught by a volunteer about to water a thing that did not wish to be drowned.

“One second,” Crowley said over his shoulder, apology easy and necessary at once. “Rescuing a pre-Cambrian friend from a well-meaning murder.”

And just like that, Aziraphale was left with a bag full of possibility, a sandwich, and the sudden realisation that the story he had rehearsed on the train would not survive contact with the afternoon. He sat. He unwrapped the sandwich again, took a mechanical bite, and watched Crowley—patient, precise—explain to the volunteer the difference between sympathy and knowledge.

When Crowley turned back, the light had shifted into the first hint of gold. The fern behind him looked like it had been painted rather than grown. He returned to the bench and, for a moment that felt like the crest of a wave one cannot quite see, they looked at each other without useful words.

“Where were we,” Crowley said, softer than the joke required.

“I had,” Aziraphale said, finding that his mouth could, in fact, be trusted, “a small… contribution to make. If you had a moment for nonsense.”

Crowley’s eyes moved to the bag and back. Something bright flickered there, swift and unguarded. He leaned, one hand braced on the back of the bench, not yet reaching.

“I’ve got a moment,” he said, with the satisfied caution of a man who had decided on his next experiment.

Aziraphale slipped a hand into the bag. The string gave beneath his fingers like a decision that had finally found its own weight. He drew out the parcel and set it—gently, carefully—into Crowley’s waiting palm.

And then the volunteer called Crowley’s name again from three paces away—an emergency with a hose and an opinionated label—and the moment broke into a promise of a moment.

“Hold that thought,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale, who was very good at holding thoughts when they mattered, nodded once and did exactly that.

The group had begun to dissolve into pairs and singles, drifting back along the paths with the distracted air of people who had enjoyed themselves but were now beginning to think about train timetables and dinners. Bev was doing her usual end-of-tour sweep, reclaiming clipboards, ticking off headcounts, and gently herding stragglers toward the gate.

Crowley answered the last of the lingering questions—something about whether ferns could survive in bathrooms, to which the answer was a measured “Depends on your cleaning habits”—and then straightened, rolling his shoulders. When he turned back toward the bench, Aziraphale was still there, the small canvas bag on his lap, watching him with an expression that wasn’t quite expectant, but wasn’t casual either.

Crowley walked over, long strides unhurried, and stopped just short of conversational distance.

“Didn’t expect to see you here again,” he said.

“I—” Aziraphale began, and stopped, fingers tightening minutely on the strap of the bag. “I happened to be free this afternoon. It’s… rather a pleasant habit, isn’t it, these gardens?”

Crowley tipped his head, the faintest ghost of a smile playing at his mouth. “Not a bad one, as habits go.”

There was a pause. It wasn’t awkward—not quite—but it was the kind of pause that invited a choice: leave it at that, or step into something less easily left behind.

Crowley made the choice for them. “Got time for a cup of tea?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Here?”

“My office,” Crowley said. “Not much to look at, but it’s warm and the kettle works. Might even manage a biscuit if the staff haven’t raided the tin.”

“Oh. Well—yes. Yes, I think I could,” Aziraphale said, as if agreeing to tea were a minor logistical decision rather than a quiet shift in the air between them.

Crowley jerked his head toward a side path. “Come on, then. Before Bev finds me and makes me move compost bags for penance.”

They walked in companionable silence down a narrower path flanked by tall hedges. A discreet staff-only sign marked the turn into a quieter courtyard. The building they approached was a low, utilitarian structure of red brick softened by climbing roses and weather. Crowley swiped the reader by the door and held it open for Aziraphale.

The office smelled faintly of earth and green things, with a background note of tea leaves and printer ink. Shelves lined one wall, crammed with specimens in jars, labelled trays of seeds, and a few battered reference books that looked as though they had been rescued from a skip. A desk took up one corner, its surface half-buried under papers, a laptop, and an unusually tidy mug of pens.

“Tea’s over here,” Crowley said, nodding toward a worktop that boasted a kettle, a mismatched assortment of mugs, and a tin of biscuits with a faded picture of daffodils on the lid. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Milk, please. Just a drop,” Aziraphale said, taking in the room with discreet curiosity.

While the kettle boiled, Crowley chose two mugs—a dark green one with the Kew logo, and a white one bearing the legend Photosynthesize This. He tossed a packet of biscuits onto the desk. “Chocolate digestives. Best I can do without raiding the café.”

“They’ll be quite sufficient,” Aziraphale said, settling into the visitor’s chair. He set the bag carefully on his knees, fingertips brushing the top as though deciding something.

Crowley poured the tea, handed over a mug, and sat opposite him. For a moment they simply drank, the silence holding comfortably between them.

“So,” Crowley said at last, “what brings you here on a Friday afternoon? Don’t tell me it’s just the ferns.”

Aziraphale hesitated. “Perhaps I… wanted to see more of what you do here. Outside the public tours, I mean. One gains… a different perspective, speaking to someone who knows the work in detail.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Flattery before biscuits. Dangerous tactic.”

“It wasn’t meant as flattery,” Aziraphale said primly, then added, “Though I suppose it could be taken as such.”

Crowley’s grin was quick and crooked. “I’ll take it.”

They fell into an easy rhythm—Crowley talking about a seedbank project he’d been roped into, Aziraphale sharing an anecdote about a Victorian botanical illustration so wildly inaccurate it had led gardeners halfway across Europe to grow weeds for years under the impression they were cultivating an exotic rarity.

Crowley laughed at that, the kind of laugh that came from genuine delight rather than politeness. “You’ll have to show me that one sometime.”

“Perhaps,” Aziraphale said, and then, after a brief pause, reached down to open the bag. “In fact… I brought something you might appreciate.”

Crowley’s eyebrows lifted as Aziraphale drew out a slim, gilt-edged volume, the cover embossed with an elaborate, slightly overblown botanical motif.

“It’s a first edition,” Aziraphale said, placing it on the desk between them. “Nineteenth-century classification of flowering plants. Some of the taxonomies are… creative. I thought it might amuse you.”

Crowley leaned forward, long fingers brushing the cover with something like reverence before opening it. The first plate revealed a luridly coloured diagram of a plant family tree, several species clearly misplaced by modern understanding.

A slow, delighted grin spread across his face. “Oh, this is beautifully wrong.”

“I suspected you might think so,” Aziraphale said, a touch of satisfaction in his voice.

Crowley turned a few more pages, murmuring under his breath. “They’ve got orchids next to nettles… and this thing—this isn’t even in the right kingdom.” He looked up, eyes bright. “You’re giving me this?”

“It seemed wasted sitting in my storeroom,” Aziraphale said. “And I thought you might get more… professional enjoyment from it.”

Crowley closed the book gently, as though it were fragile. “I do. Already.” He met Aziraphale’s gaze. “Thank you.”

When the tea was nearly gone and the last biscuit had been halved between them, Crowley leaned back in his chair. “You know,” he said, “you could always arrange to visit on a quieter day. I could show you the glasshouse collections. Not the public bits—the research sections.”

“That sounds… intriguing,” Aziraphale admitted. “I’d like that.”

“Good,” Crowley said, with the air of a man making a note in a ledger only he could see.

Outside, the light had shifted toward the mellow gold of early evening. Aziraphale found himself reluctant to stand, though he did so when Crowley pushed back his chair. The book now rested on Crowley’s desk, already looking as if it belonged there.

“Thank you for the tea,” Aziraphale said.

“Anytime,” Crowley replied, and the word seemed to carry a meaning that stretched comfortably beyond the literal.

As they stepped back into the garden’s quieter paths, Aziraphale felt oddly lighter, as if leaving the book behind had made space for something else entirely.

The path from Crowley’s office curved back toward the main public thoroughfare, the air rich with the faint scent of damp soil and the soft rustle of leaves in the late afternoon breeze. They walked without hurry, the conversation lingering in occasional exchanges—brief remarks about the weather, a passing identification of a shrub that Aziraphale would have otherwise passed without a second glance.

As they reached the point where the side path joined the main one, Crowley slowed, one hand slipping into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Here,” he said, producing a sleek black phone. “Let me get your number. Easier than relying on chance meetings.”

Aziraphale blinked, momentarily thrown by the casualness of it. “Oh. Well—yes, I suppose that would make sense.”

Crowley smirked faintly. “Sense and convenience, Angel.” Then, catching himself, he corrected: “Mr. Fell.”

The use of his surname steadied Aziraphale, oddly enough. He pulled his own phone from his coat pocket, a model that was neither entirely antiquated nor at the cutting edge, and unlocked it with the air of a man handling a delicate but necessary tool.

As Crowley’s fingers moved over his own sleek device, Aziraphale hesitated, then said, almost as an afterthought, “It’s Aziraphale, by the way. If you’d prefer. Mr. Fell feels… rather formal.”

Crowley glanced up, a corner of his mouth curling. “Aziraphale,” he repeated, testing the syllables like they were a rare word he might decide to keep. “Alright. Aziraphale, then.”

The way he said it—carefully, without the lazy truncations most people attempted—made something warm settle just under Aziraphale’s ribs.

Crowley’s fingers danced over his screen. “Right. Your number?”

Aziraphale recited it, watching Crowley enter it with surprising precision. Almost immediately, his own phone buzzed in his hand with a new text:

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales)

He couldn’t help the small smile that escaped him. “Well, that’s… thorough.”

“Don’t want you confusing me with another botanist who hands out unsolicited plant facts,” Crowley said lightly.

They stood there for a moment, the crowd ebbing and flowing around them, and Aziraphale felt the curious sense that they had reached a point in the conversation where something should be decided—whether to let the day end here, or to fix it in place with another meeting.

Crowley tilted his head, studying him with that same quick, assessing gaze he’d noticed before. “You said earlier you’re not great with crowds.”

Aziraphale hesitated, then inclined his head. “It’s true. I find… too many people at once rather trying.”

“Makes sense,” Crowley said, as though this were not a flaw but a perfectly reasonable preference. “What about Tuesday mornings? Quieter here. Staff and researchers mostly. You could get the full tour without dodging prams and school groups.”

The offer was delivered without pressure, but Aziraphale felt the pull of it immediately—the image of Kew without the weekend bustle, the possibility of seeing what lay behind the scenes, and, not least, the idea of Crowley himself as guide.

“I could… close the shop for the day,” he said slowly, surprising himself with the decisiveness of it. “Next Tuesday, at ten?”

Crowley’s grin was sharp and bright. “Done. I’ll meet you at the staff entrance—less walking from the gate that way.”

Aziraphale nodded, committing the detail to memory. “Very well.”

They resumed walking, the main gate now visible ahead. Crowley lingered just long enough to make sure Aziraphale found his way toward the correct exit before peeling off toward the staff areas with a raised hand in farewell.

The tube was busy, as it always was on a Saturday afternoon—shoulder to shoulder on the platform, the shuffle of feet and the faint scent of warm fabric and too many perfumes mingling in the air. Normally, the press of people would have him retreating inward, counting the stops with quiet impatience.

But today felt… different.

He still disliked the crowd—there was no sudden fondness for being jostled—but it sat less heavily on him. He had something to look forward to, a fixed point on the horizon of his week that made the present moment less claustrophobic.

As the train swayed through the tunnels, Aziraphale found himself picturing the green sweep of the gardens, the glint of sunlight on glass, and the way Crowley’s eyes had lit when he’d turned the pages of the book. The thought carried him all the way to his stop, through the familiar streets, and up to the quiet of the bookshop.

He locked the door behind him, the silence wrapping around him like a well-worn coat, and for the first time in a long while, the week ahead felt not just orderly, but promising.

Sunday mornings in the bookshop had a rhythm of their own. The street outside was quieter, the weekday clatter replaced by the slow amble of dog walkers and the occasional early coffee run. The kettle was on, the blinds tilted just enough to let in the pale spring light, and Aziraphale had settled at his desk with a stack of 19th-century pamphlets on orchard management—dry as dust, but oddly soothing in their precision.

He was halfway through puzzling out a particularly florid description of apple pruning when his phone vibrated.

Gabriel.

He considered letting it ring out—briefly, longingly—but experience told him that would only lead to repeated calls, then a pointed text, then more calls until he caved.

He swiped to answer. “Gabriel.”

“Hey, little brother!” Gabriel’s voice was all forced cheer and underlying judgment, the vocal equivalent of a pat on the head. “Just checking in. Making sure you’re still… alive and kicking.”

“I’m well, thank you,” Aziraphale said.

“Good to hear. So—what’ve you been up to? Or have you been glued to that shop stool again all week?”

“I do move around, you know,” Aziraphale replied mildly. “In fact, I went out to Kew Gardens yesterday.”

There was a short silence before Gabriel said, “Kew Gardens. That’s… nice. Very sedentary, though, isn’t it? Bit of a stroll, maybe a tea afterwards. Doesn’t exactly get the heart rate up, does it?”

“It was an educational visit,” Aziraphale said, resisting the urge to bristle. “I attended a talk.”

“Mmm,” Gabriel said, drawing out the sound like he was humouring a child. “Well, at least you got out. Still, you should try something that actually works up a sweat now and then. You’ve got to look after yourself. Can’t live on scones and second-hand books forever.”

Aziraphale’s jaw tightened. “I am quite content with my lifestyle.”

“Content’s just another word for stuck,” Gabriel countered breezily. “You know what they say—variety’s the spice of life. Why not try a bit of five-a-side football? Or even just a jog. Wouldn’t hurt to trim down a bit—health reasons, of course.”

“I am perfectly healthy,” Aziraphale said, each syllable clipped.

“Sure, sure,” Gabriel said, in the tone of someone humouring a point they didn’t agree with. “But you’d have more energy if you got moving. And honestly, you’d feel better about yourself.”

Aziraphale stared at the far wall, imagining the comfort of hanging up. “I feel perfectly fine about myself as I am.”

“Well, alright,” Gabriel said, in the way that meant he didn’t believe it for a second. “Just… don’t get complacent, yeah? Life’s short. You don’t want to wake up one day and realise you’ve wasted the best years hiding in that shop.”

“I’m quite aware of the brevity of life, thank you,” Aziraphale said, the words tasting faintly of iron.

“Good, good. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your—what was it? Garden pamphlets? Riveting stuff. Talk soon.”

“Goodbye, Gabriel.”

The line went dead. Aziraphale set the phone down more firmly than necessary, staring for a long moment at the pamphlet on his desk without reading a word.

Conversations with Gabriel were always the same—an exhausting mix of unsolicited advice, thinly veiled criticism, and the relentless insistence that Aziraphale’s life needed improving. It left him with the odd sensation of having been scolded and dismissed in the same breath.

He took a sip of now-cooling tea and forced himself to turn back to the pamphlet, though the neat looping script seemed blurrier than it had a moment ago.

It was easier—far easier—to think about Kew. About the stillness of the glasshouses, the weight of the botanical first edition in Crowley’s hands, the warmth in his voice when he’d said, Anytime.

That thought sat in his chest like a small coal, glowing steadily, warming him against the lingering chill of his brother’s words.

The Tuesday began with the low buzz of his phone against the nightstand. Aziraphale, in the act of knotting his bowtie, glanced down, expecting perhaps a note from Maggie or some local event notice.

It was neither.

Gabriel.

The message was as breezy and barbed as only Gabriel could make it:

Gabriel: Morning, Azzy! Thought of you when this came through — discount for a “spring shape-up” package at the gym. Three PT sessions, body scan, the works. Will book it for you if you like!

Attached: a stock photo of a grinning man in Lycra, holding a dumbbell that looked like a prop from a gladiator film.

Aziraphale’s shoulders tightened at the nickname—Gabriel had never dropped it, despite Aziraphale’s many attempts to discourage it. The message’s subtext was as unsubtle as the neon in the photo: You’re not enough as you are. You should be changed, improved.

He set the phone face-down on the table. There would be no reply. Experience had taught him that protest—polite or otherwise—only invited a new round of “helpful” suggestions.

Still, the splinter of it lodged under his skin. The waistcoat he’d chosen—dove-grey with a fine check—suddenly felt too snug, though it wasn’t. The deep green silk bowtie, usually a small source of quiet satisfaction, felt less like a flourish and more like armour hastily donned.

The walk to the station usually soothed him, but today the narrow pavements and the smell of coffee drifting from every doorway seemed to prickle against his nerves. At the ticket barriers, he fumbled with his card, aware of the small impatient huff from someone behind him.

On the train, the press of bodies was nothing extraordinary for a weekday morning, but every shuffle, every jostle seemed to tug at the thread of unease already running through him. The rustle of newspapers was too sharp, the bass thump from someone’s headphones a persistent background thud in his ribs.

By the time the train pulled into Kew Gardens station, his breathing was fractionally faster than it ought to be. His palms were damp. He told himself it would pass.

Crowley was already waiting by the side gate. He wasn’t leaning in casual idleness—Aziraphale recognised the set of his shoulders as someone who had been there a few minutes already, waiting on purpose. The long fall of his coat caught the pale morning light, and his sunglasses reflected a grey sky.

“Ten on the dot,” Crowley said, glancing at his phone. “Punctual. I like it.”

“You did say ten,” Aziraphale replied, his voice steady but his fingers twitching once inside his coat pockets.

Crowley smirked faintly, then pushed a hand through his hair in a habitual gesture. “Full disclosure: I am not a morning person. Shifted my day round to make this work—normally I’d be knee-deep in the fern house about now. But hey, can’t let a guest wander the back sections unsupervised.”

Aziraphale blinked. “You… rearranged your work for me?”

Crowley shrugged, as if it were nothing. “Yeah. Figure if I say I’ll give someone a proper tour, I bloody well give it to them. And Tuesdays are quiet—good for showing off the good stuff without elbowing tourists out of the way.”

The words landed somewhere warm beneath Aziraphale’s ribs, but before he could shape a reply, Crowley tilted his head and regarded him more closely.

“You alright?” he asked, not as a throwaway politeness but like he was making a mental note. “You look—” a pause, as if searching for the least alarming phrasing “—twitchy.”

Aziraphale adjusted his cuffs, eyes briefly dropping. “I’m fine. Just… a bit distracted this morning.”

Crowley didn’t answer immediately. He tipped his head back slightly, taking in Aziraphale’s posture, the faint tension in his jaw, the way his hands weren’t quite still. “Mm,” he said at last, in a tone that suggested he’d filed it away for later consideration. “Well. Let’s see if the plants can’t sort you out. They usually do.”

He swiped his pass at the gate, holding it open. As soon as Aziraphale stepped inside, the air shifted. The world beyond the garden fence became a muted hum. The gravel paths crunched softly underfoot; somewhere, water was running in a shallow channel.

They walked toward the first glasshouse at a pace that was easy to match. Crowley pointed out a specimen here, a budding branch there, but left long spaces between his comments—spaces that felt deliberate, as if he were making room for the morning to settle around them.

By the time they reached the humid green of the fern house, the knot between Aziraphale’s shoulders had loosened fractionally. He stood looking up at a tall frond, its spirals unfurling with deliberate grace.

“Ancient lineage, that one,” Crowley said, coming to stand beside him. “Been doing its thing since before flowers even existed.”

“Comforting,” Aziraphale said quietly. “Something that simply… persists.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked, almost smiling. “Exactly.”

They made it as far as the service yard before Crowley glanced at the time and declared, with the gravity of a field commander, “Lunch.”

Aziraphale had not realised how much of the morning had slipped past them—greenhouse to greenhouse, back corridors that smelled faintly of damp cardboard and lemon cleaner, a quiet detour through the research seedbank where drawers slid open to reveal little paper envelopes stamped with species and dates like tidy promises. The gardens did something to time. Or perhaps Crowley did.

“Café?” Crowley asked, already grimacing as though bracing for prams and clatter. “Or there’s the staff canteen. Less noise. Better angles.”

“Less noise,” Aziraphale said at once, and Crowley’s mouth tipped as if he’d expected the answer and was pleased to have been right.

They cut through a short corridor to a low brick building that looked from the outside like a utility shed and from the inside like an unofficial club: a handful of tables, a noticeboard advertising flats to let and a peppering of indecipherable inside jokes, a bank of vending machines, a counter where a woman with formidable forearms was arranging triangles of sandwiches with the stern care of a curator.

“Two,” Crowley said, pointing at something that was mostly bread and a suggestion of ham. “And two of those,” nodding at little cardboard cups of soup. “And—yeah, the apple. Don’t tell anyone I’m complicit in fruit.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” the woman said, amused, and slipped an extra packet of crisps onto the tray with the air of a benevolent smuggler.

Crowley carried the tray toward a table by a window that looked onto a square of grass and a straggle of rosemary gone leggy with spring. He set the food down, pulled out a chair, and said, lightly, “Chef’s special: beige.”

Aziraphale smiled, automatic and grateful, and unwrapped his sandwich with care. The bread was soft, the ham unduly honest, the butter applied with a hand both liberal and unashamed. It should have been perfect.

His stomach, however, had other ideas. The morning’s ease—grown slowly in the damp air of the fern house, the measured stride along quiet paths—had thinned at the threshold of the canteen, frayed by echoes, by a slamming locker, by the sound of laughter from a table of technicians that his body misfiled as threat. And under the noise, that small iron splinter from the text on his nightstand: spring shape-up, the neon grin, Azzy.

He took a bite anyway and felt the bread turn heavy behind his sternum, as if swallowing required negotiation.

Across from him, Crowley watched—not staring, not hawk-eyed, simply present, elbows on the table, fingers curved around the soup cup as though it might skitter off if not gently contained. He took a mouthful of soup, made a small appreciative sound, and said nothing for a long moment.

“Alright?” he asked finally, mild as steam.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, too quickly.

Crowley’s brow made the faintest crease. He set the cup down with exaggerated care. “On a scale of one to ‘you’ve accidentally brought me to a rave,’ where are we?”

“A… four?” Aziraphale attempted. He adjusted the paper napkin beside his plate, folded the corner into useless geometry.

“Mm.” Crowley reached for a crisp packet, tore it open with his teeth like a raccoon with a degree, and nudged it into the no-man’s-land between them. “Want to tell me what the other six points are doing? Or you want me to keep talking about spores until they calm down.”

The invitation was so precisely calibrated—no pressure, no evasion—that it made something in Aziraphale unclench. He looked at the rectangle of sandwich in his hand, then set it down and smoothed his fingers on the napkin to have something to do with them.

“My brother texted me this morning,” he said, as if reporting a change in the weather. “An ‘offer,’ as he put it, for a discounted gym package. The implication being that I am… in need of intervention.”

Crowley’s mouth did not move, but his sunglasses—folded on the table—tilted a fraction, as if some interior component of him had leaned the other way. “The implication being your brother is a prat,” he said, almost affably.

“Mm.” Aziraphale huffed something that was not quite a laugh. “He’d say he’s concerned. That he wants me to be healthy.”

“Does he,” Crowley said, neutral as a measured pH. “And does he talk to other people he’s ‘concerned’ about like they’re a fixer-upper cottage.”

Aziraphale’s fingers were folding the napkin again before he stopped them. “He… doesn’t mean harm. He’s always been like this.”

“This is the bit where you tell me he calls you something you don’t like and then act like it’s funny.” Crowley’s tone didn’t ask; it simply made room for the answer to land without breaking.

Aziraphale stared at the table. “Azzy.”

There was a fractional beat. Then, mild as ever, “Right. Does he stop when you ask?”

“He doesn’t really… hear things like that.” The admission tasted of tin. “It’s not important.”

“Feels important,” Crowley said. He took another sip, didn’t look away. “Feels like the sort of thing that makes you fold napkins into origami weapons.”

Aziraphale let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d wedged under his ribs. “I’m sorry. This is—ridiculous. You rearranged your day for me and I’m being—”

“Human,” Crowley said, and something in his voice made the word sound like an accomplishment rather than an apology. “Also, if I rearranged my day and then told you you weren’t allowed to have feelings during it, that would be a terrible tour.”

Aziraphale’s smile arrived late but genuine. “True.”

Crowley shifted, sat back, regarded him for a moment with a look Aziraphale was already learning to file under thinking. “You want me to problem-solve,” he said. “Or listen and not fix.”

Aziraphale blinked. “Is that a… menu?”

“Pretty much,” Crowley said. “You can change your order mid-meal.”

That startled a laugh out of Aziraphale, small but bright. The tension under his shoulder blades loosened another notch. “Listening, for now,” he said. “Perhaps with the occasional incredulous really? if it suits.”

“Done,” Crowley said. “What’s the worst part? The text this morning? Or the fact he thinks he’s allowed to comment on your body like he’s doing a survey of architectural flaws.”

Aziraphale felt the flush arrive—annoying, automatic. “The nickname, perhaps, because—” he hesitated, then went on “—because it’s like he’s deciding my size for me. Making me smaller before he starts. And then the rest follows: you’d feel better if, you should try, don’t get stuck. It’s as if contentment is a kind of negligence.”

Crowley considered this, running a thumb along the paper seam of the crisp packet. “And you’ve told him to stop?”

“I’ve… tried. He is very certain of the righteousness of his perspective.” Aziraphale winced at his own diplomacy. “He believes he’s helping. And I—” He opened his hands, helpless. “I would rather not fight. It’s draining. Easier to say nothing.”

Crowley nodded, once, the tilt precise as a lab measurement. “Easier in the moment,” he said. “Costly later.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, low.

They let the silence stand. On the noticeboard, a flyer for a ‘Bring Your Own Cake’ birthday party sagged at one corner, defeated by gravity. A man in hi-vis walked through with a stack of trays, whistling a tune that failed to find itself.

Crowley broke the quiet by nudging the apple toward Aziraphale. “Not a test,” he said. “Just thinking you might prefer this to the sandwich. Low stakes. High crunch.”

Aziraphale surprised himself by wanting it. He picked it up, the cool weight fitting into his palm as if it had been designed to sit exactly there. He bit; the snap was cheerful and unembarrassed. It tasted like school fields and the first week of September.

Crowley watched his shoulders settle and softened almost imperceptibly. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “the plants do not give a toss about the shape of you. They care if you’re kind and if you don’t overwater them out of anxiety.” He tipped his head. “And, personally, I like the shape of you very much as it is.”

The words arrived with no fanfare, steady and unadorned, and Aziraphale had to look down to re-find the apple’s seam with his thumb. He did not trust his voice. He did not need to.

Crowley, perhaps sensing the sudden delicacy of the air between them, added lightly, “Look around. Botany is thousands of strategies for existing. There isn’t one optimal morphology. If there were, the place would be a field of clones and I’d be unemployed.”

“That would be a tragedy,” Aziraphale managed, grateful for the wryness.

“Indisputably,” Crowley said. “Anyway, some of the best things in here are sturdy as hell. Tree ferns. Old cycads. Your sunflower’s not training for a sprint; it’s planning a long con with gravity and light.”

Aziraphale brightened, properly this time. “It’s thriving. I—” he tried not to sound too pleased and failed “—it makes me quite happy.”

“Good,” Crowley said, and there it was again, that quiet satisfaction as if he’d been handed a result that confirmed a pet hypothesis. “You named it yet?”

Aziraphale looked appalled. “Name it?”

“You can call it Sunflower if you want to scandalise it,” Crowley said. “But my data show a sixty percent improvement in care adherence with ridiculous names.”

“Your data,” Aziraphale echoed, amused despite himself.

“Unofficial data,” Crowley conceded. “N equals ‘people I bully into admitting they named their basil Colin.’”

“Colin is an excellent basil name,” Aziraphale said primly, and took another bite of the apple.

They ate, then. Not hurriedly, not apologetically. The soup—pleasantly peppered—demonstrated itself to be exactly the sort of thing that soothed a stomach once a person had persuaded their nerves to allow it in. The sandwich, split into smaller pieces, became possible.

When they had reached the phase of lunch where the remains could be described as “debris,” Crowley wiped his fingers on a napkin and said, neutrally, “Question.”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to block him for the day?” Crowley tapped the table, not the phone. “Mute. Airplane mode. Stick the bloody thing in a drawer. This is a Tuesday you gave me, and I’d like to give it back to you without him in it.”

Aziraphale looked at his phone on the corner of the table as if it were a small, clawed animal pretending to be asleep. The suggestion—so simple it felt like a trick—made his chest ease and then, to his surprise, ache with relief. “I… might,” he said, almost shy.

“Good,” Crowley said, as if they had settled a polite bill. “If he complains, tell him Dr. Crowley prescribed controlled exposure to ferns and zero exposure to unsolicited fitness advice.”

“That seems very you,” Aziraphale murmured, already holding the phone. He opened the settings, moved through them with the care of a person refusing to betray a trembling hand, and slid the switch to Do Not Disturb. The screen obligingly dimmed. The silence that followed was of a different quality—chosen, not enforced.

“There,” he said. “Experimental protocol enacted.”

“Ethics approved,” Crowley said, deadpan, and his smile tipped fully into being. “I’m not going to pretend the gardens cure everything. But the parts they don’t—” he rotated his hand in the air, searching for the right vector “—they make a good companion while you deal with them.”

Aziraphale swallowed, the last of the tightness in his throat loosening. “Thank you,” he said, and meant the whole morning, the rearranged schedule, the careful noticing, the apple, the space.

“Anytime,” Crowley said, which in his mouth had begun to sound like a promise rather than a convenience.

They carried the tray back to the counter, endured the canteen’s clatter just long enough to escape into the square of rosemary and the soft, forgiving light. Outside, the air smelled faintly medicinal where someone had bruised a sprig underfoot. The sky was the sort of grey that cameras called uninteresting and gardeners called perfect.

“Ready to see the bit where we keep the things we’re not showing off yet?” Crowley asked, angling his body toward a staff-only gate. “It’s not glamorous. It’s racks and labels. But it’s where the gossip is.”

“I adore gossip,” Aziraphale said, and meant I would like to keep walking beside you while you tell me about the things you love.

“Excellent,” Crowley said. “We’ll start with the Sapindales. The soapberries. Very messy family. Drama for days.”

They fell into step. Aziraphale slipped his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket and forgot it there. The path ahead was narrow, straight for a while, then curving into what he could not yet see. The sort of path he had always preferred: chosen, deliberate, forgiving of a measured pace.

“By the way,” Crowley said as they reached the gate, as if recalling a fact he’d meant to include in a lecture, “for the record? You don’t owe anyone a different shape to be worth the day they spend with you.”

Aziraphale’s breath caught, not painfully, but like a key entering a well-made lock. He looked at the iron latch, at the scuff marks worn by a thousand hands, and then at Crowley, who had not made a performance of his own kindness and therefore had made it matter more.

“I shall endeavour to remember that,” he said.

“I’ll remind you,” Crowley replied, and pushed the gate open into the orderly wilderness beyond.

Chapter Text

The sunflower had reached the point where, when Aziraphale leaned in close, he could see the faint suggestion of a bud at its centre. A nudge of new geometry among the leaves. He didn’t know enough about sunflowers to be certain, but the idea pleased him. He took a picture—two, three, just to be sure the light was flattering—and sent the best one to Crowley with a short note:

Aziraphale: Progress report.

The reply came a few minutes later.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Looks smug. Like it knows you haven’t killed it yet.

Aziraphale smiled despite himself.

Aziraphale: I shall take that as a compliment on both our behalf.

And that was how it went, in small, bright exchanges over the next several days.

Sometimes Aziraphale sent a photograph of the sunflower’s steady progress—morning light across the leaves, the faint serrations at the edges caught in sharp focus. Sometimes it was something else entirely: a half-page from the botanical first edition he’d given Crowley, where an elaborate 18th-century engraving showed a plant with flowers so baroque they looked like court costumes.

Crowley, in turn, sent observations of his own. Once, a shot of the same book open on his desk, with a note underlined in the margin: “a singularly uncooperative specimen.”

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Feel like this was written about me.

Another time, a close-up of a seed pod he’d dissected that morning, the tiny architecture so intricate it could have been filigree.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Six months of work for this tiny diva.

It was never constant—days might pass between exchanges—but it was regular enough that Aziraphale began to expect the possibility of a message when he reached for his phone. And always—always—it was addressed to Aziraphale. Never a truncation, never a diminutive. The sight of his full name, unaltered, in the corner of the screen was a quiet balm.

He had not realised, until Crowley, how much he’d come to anticipate the opposite.

There were good days and there were bad ones.

On the good days, the shop felt like an extension of himself—quiet, orderly, full of familiar rhythms. A customer might linger over the travel section without comment, and he’d think nothing of it; a neighbour might wave through the window, and he’d wave back, unbothered. His skin felt the right size, his mind well-fitted to the moment.

On the bad days, every sound seemed too near. The clink of change on the counter was a dropped brick. The scrape of a chair on the upstairs floorboards became, irrationally, an intrusion. A customer’s perfectly innocent, “Do you have anything on shipbuilding?” might land in his chest like a demand.

It was not something he had ever put into words—not for himself, not for anyone else. The language he’d grown up with for this sort of feeling had been blunt and unhelpful: man up, get over it, stop being so sensitive. That last one had been Gabriel’s favourite, delivered with a kind of athletic joviality that brooked no reply.

So he had never sought an explanation. No one had suggested he might. The world, as far as he could tell, simply expected a person to endure these fluctuations without naming them. And so he had.

Until Crowley.

He hadn’t intended to tell him anything. Not outright. But something in the man’s manner—sharp but unhurried, lightly ironic but without cruelty—invited more honesty than he meant to give.

It wasn’t that Crowley asked the direct question. It was that he paid attention. He noticed when Aziraphale’s replies were short. When the photographs slowed. Once, he replied to a sunflower update not with his usual quip, but with:

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Quiet day? Or just not feeling sociable?

It startled Aziraphale enough that he set the phone down for several minutes before answering.

Aziraphale: A bit of both, I suppose.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Fair.

No pressure to elaborate. No quick suggestions for how to fix it. Just acknowledgment, as if that, in itself, was sufficient.

On Thursday evening, Aziraphale closed the shop earlier than usual. There was no particular reason—only that the low hum under his skin had become an insistent thrum, and he found himself unwilling to keep the door open to whoever might wander in next.

Upstairs, in the quiet of his flat, he brewed tea, set the cup down beside his chair, and scrolled idly through the photos on his phone. His thumb hovered over one of Crowley’s from the week before: the dissected seed pod, backlit in a way that made its veins glow.

Aziraphale: Do you ever find yourself unable to explain to people why you like a thing?

The reply came within minutes.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Constantly. Most people just want the headline. Not the footnotes.

Aziraphale hesitated, then sent:

Aziraphale: And what if the headline makes no sense without the footnotes?

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Then you find someone who likes reading footnotes.

The warmth that rose in his chest at that was almost disproportionate. But then, perhaps not.

Aziraphale liked the half hour before opening: the shop breathing in slowly, the pavement outside still deciding what kind of day it was going to be. He turned the sign to Open but left the door on its latch for ten indulgent minutes while he dusted the display table and checked the windowsill.

The sunflower had grown again. Brazen, really. The embryonic bud at the crown was no longer a rumour; it had presence—tight spirals packed with intent, a geometry knitting itself toward the inevitable. He angled the pot a quarter turn, touched the soil, reached for the watering can, and—because it had become part of the ritual—took a picture.

Aziraphale: Progress continues. It’s getting… confident.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): That’s the polite word for it. Imposing is another. Give it a name before it declares sovereignty.

Aziraphale: I feel names ought to be earned.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Oh, it earned one the moment it persuaded you to set a phone reminder for it.

Aziraphale huffed, smiling despite himself, and leaned on the counter to type with his thumbs, which always made him feel oddly adolescent.

Aziraphale: Suggestions welcome, then. Nothing botanical-Latin. It would go to its head.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Spoilsport. Fine. Options: 1) Helios, 2) Mrs. Bristow (don’t ask), 3) The Importunate Duke, 4) Little Inferno, 5) Brian.

Aziraphale: Brian?

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Keeps it humble. Also works shouted across a battlefield: “Brian! Stop leaning!”

Aziraphale: I am not shouting at my sunflower.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Give it time.

The bell over the door jangled. Aziraphale glanced up automatically—and stalled.

“Morning, Azzy!” Gabriel swept in on a gust of aftershave and cheerful judgment, gym bag slung over his shoulder as if it were part of a uniform. He was all bright grin and purposeful stride, the sort of man who made any room feel like a corridor through which he was passing to get to somewhere more important.

Aziraphale’s fingers tightened around the phone. “Good morning, Gabriel,” he said, and placed the device face-down on the blotter in a motion that was both unremarkable and, to him, a small act of privacy.

Gabriel looked around with his usual appraisal, as if the shop might have got up to something dubious while he wasn’t watching. “Busy?” he chirped, peering at the ledgers as if they might confess.

“It is ten minutes past opening,” Aziraphale said mildly. “I wouldn’t call that a representative sample.”

“Mm.” Gabriel crossed to the counter and rapped his knuckles on it twice—a habit from childhood that had always felt like claiming land. “Just thought I’d check in. See if you’d given any more thought to the gym package I texted you about.”

Aziraphale kept his breath even. “I have given it thought, yes.”

“And?” Gabriel smiled like a salesman certain of the close.

“And I’m not interested.”

The smile hiccupped. “It’s a good deal, Azzy.”

“Aziraphale,” he said, quietly but with enough spine to feel it up his back. “Please don’t call me Azzy.”

Gabriel blinked, theatrically. “Since when?”

“Since ever,” Aziraphale said. He kept his voice level. “I’ve told you before.”

There was a beat. Gabriel’s expression did something like a shrug without moving any muscles. Then he said, magnanimous, “Alright. Aziraphale. No need to take my head off.” He tapped the counter again, lighter this time. “It’s just—health, you know? You could do with getting the heart rate up. You’d have more energy. And honestly, you’d look—” he searched for the word that would sound least offensive coming out as offensive—“sharper.”

Aziraphale felt the old heat crawl up his neck—shame’s familiar path—but he stood his ground. “I am content with how I look.”

Gabriel laughed in that way he used when he wished to defang a statement without respecting it. “Course you are. But you’d be amazed what six weeks can do. Trim a bit, tone here and there—” One hand made a vague, shaping gesture at Aziraphale’s midsection, like a sculptor with an uncooperative block. “You’ve got good bones under there. You’d be handsome.”

“I am handsome,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself. It wasn’t bravado; it was stubborn, ordinary truth stated aloud for the first time in the correct tense.

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up, then settled into that patronising low plane that condescension favoured. “Confidence! I like it. Still—think about the long-term. Fitness. Stamina. And it’s not just the body, little brother. Mindset. You hole up in here, you atrophy.”

“I run a business,” Aziraphale said. “I restore books. I tend to my customers when they need tending to. I go for walks. I read. I have… people to see.” The last point escaped before he could lock it down.

Gabriel pounced. “People, plural?” He leaned in, delighted. “Aziraphale Fell, are you dating? Who is she?”

“No,” Aziraphale said. Then, because it felt too defensive, “Not precisely. But that’s not the point. The point is, I do meet people,” Aziraphale continued, fighting to keep his voice even. “I went to Kew Gardens last weekend, in fact.”

Gabriel’s brows rose, the performance of surprise almost theatrical. “Kew, hm? Botany now? Or was it just an excuse to wander around and avoid talking to anyone?”

“I attended a talk,” Aziraphale said. “It was quite engaging.”

Gabriel gave a low whistle. “Engaging. Right. Not exactly what I’d call mixing with the living. Sounds like you sat in the back and listened to someone drone on about Latin names.”

Aziraphale’s jaw tightened. “There were discussions. Questions. And I like Latin names,” he said. “And leaves.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.” His gaze snagged the sunflower again. He reached to pinch a leaf, as if testing for fakery. “At least this little project is practical. You can practise looking after something living. God knows you’ve murdered enough houseplants.”

Aziraphale moved the pot, gently but firmly, out of reach. “Brian’s doing very well.”

“With a name like Brian?” Gabriel snorted. “You can do better.”

Aziraphale’s mouth tilted despite himself. “We haven’t settled on Brian.”

“We?” The word landed with a thud. Gabriel’s smile changed—less brother, more man who believed he was seeing a truth the other refused to admit. “So there is a he.”

“A friend,” Aziraphale relented, the word feeling at once too small and exactly right.

Gabriel leaned on the counter, lowering his voice as if confiding. “Look, Azzy, I’m not saying you have to turn into some social butterfly overnight. But you’re… what? Forty now? You can’t keep going on like this. One day you’re going to wake up and realise you’ve built yourself a little cell out of books and teacups, and there’s no one in it but you.”

“I like my life,” Aziraphale said, more sharply than intended.

Gabriel’s smile thinned. “You like what’s safe. And that’s fine—for now. But it’s not living. People need people. Not just the same two neighbours and the occasional awkward customer. You need to branch out. Meet the right kind of crowd.” He straightened, giving a small, dismissive glance toward the windowsill. “And no, a potted plant doesn’t count.”

Aziraphale followed his gaze to the sunflower, feeling the urge to shield it from view. “That’s hardly the point.”

Gabriel’s attention returned to him, all brisk authority. “The point is, Azzy, I care. I’m trying to help you before you waste another decade stuck in this little rut. You’ve got so much potential—you could be doing talks, clubs, hosting events here. Instead you’re—” his eyes flicked over Aziraphale’s waistcoat and bowtie “—playing dress-up in an empty shop.”

Aziraphale’s hand tightened imperceptibly on the counter. “I am not in need of saving, Gabriel.”

His brother’s expression didn’t shift. “Everyone’s in need of a push, whether they admit it or not. You’ll thank me one day.” He checked his watch, already moving toward the door. “I’ll send you the link for that fitness package I mentioned. And maybe a few social clubs in your area. Do something with it, Azzy.”

The doorbell chimed as he left, brisk steps already fading down the pavement.

Aziraphale stood very still. It took a full ten seconds for his breath to remember how to be useful air again. He looked at the sunflower—the little bud hoarding sunlight for future audacity—and then at the phone. He should not. He should leave it. He should not need to… but need was more honest than should.

He turned the phone over.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): So what are we calling it. Brian?

His throat tightened with something not quite tears, not quite laughter. He typed, erased, typed again.

Aziraphale: Had a visitor just now. Interruptions breed decision. Brian it is. Also “The Importunate Duke.”

There was a longer pause than usual. He imagined Crowley in a glasshouse somewhere, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair, reading the text twice.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): You okay?

The two words wore no decoration. They didn’t offer a solution or demand a confession. They just sat there, steady as a hand on a shoulder.

Aziraphale let himself answer honestly, if not fully.

Aziraphale: Shaky. Better now.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Do you want a footnote or a distraction.

He almost laughed. He could hear the cadence of it exactly, the way Crowley would tip his head on the or.

Aziraphale: Distraction first. Footnote later.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Distraction: the book you gave me tried to convince me this morning that nettles and lilies were second cousins. I nearly wrote HOW DARE in the margin with a fountain pen. Resisted. Just.

Aziraphale: Your restraint is admirable.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Footnote (optional): Whoever it was—if they made you feel small, they were wrong. And if they touched the sunflower I will revoke their plant privileges.

Aziraphale’s mouth curved. He glanced at the pot. The leaves were unruffled, his boundaries intact. He typed slowly, careful with the truth.

Aziraphale: Thank you. No revocation necessary. But I support the principle.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Principle stands. Also, I’m pro–Importunate Duke. It has gravitas. Brian can be a middle name.

Aziraphale: Thank you for your approval.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Exactly. Formal title for when it’s facing the sun. Brian for when it’s trying to lean into the biscuit tin.

He breathed out, something inside him uncoiling. The tourists paid for a slim volume of Baudelaire and left with thanks; he returned their politeness with genuine feeling. He wiped a non-existent smear from the counter, then picked up the pot and turned it the faintest fraction—unnecessary at this hour, purely ceremonial.

Aziraphale: Settled, then. The Importunate Duke (Brian).

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Long may he lord it over the sill. Send a picture when he ascends the throne.

Aziraphale: I will.

He slipped the phone back into his waistcoat pocket and stood a moment in the quiet he had rebuilt: the tick of the clock, the shuffle of a page as the shop resettled, the private little joy of having chosen a ridiculous, perfect name with a man who never shortened his own.

It had gone well—until it hadn’t. He had held his ground—until it shifted. He was, as ever, a mixture of pride and fatigue, relief and the old ache where a brother’s love rubbed a raw spot. But the day was not lost. The shop was still his. The sunflower had a title. And somewhere in Kew, a scientist was making mock-heroic noises in the margins of a beautifully wrong book.

Aziraphale straightened a spine in the front display, smoothed the ribbon on the bookmark basket, and unlocked the door for the day proper. When the bell rang again, it sounded less like intrusion and more like the note that begins a piece you already know you’re going to like.

Some days began wrong.

It wasn’t that anything catastrophic had happened; Aziraphale could have coped with that, at least in the tidy way one coped with events that clearly were something. No, this was subtler. The kind of wrong that seeped under the doorframe before you’d opened your eyes. A wrongness that whispered while you were still reaching for your dressing gown.

The shop felt off. The light slanted differently, though it was the same April sky. The air seemed heavy, clinging to his cuffs. The stack of auction catalogues he’d meant to sort last night sat on the counter like a silent rebuke. He made tea, but it came out weak; he drank it anyway.

By ten o’clock he was already counting the hours until closing.

The customers were fine—more than fine, really. A polite tourist from Canada bought a poetry collection without trying to haggle. A young man in a wool cap brought in a box of inherited books, apologising in case any were too far gone; they weren’t. But each exchange cost him something invisible, a slow trickle of energy that left him oddly hollow by the time the bell rang them out again.

The sunflower was doing well—brazen as ever, stretching taller every morning—but even that didn’t lift him much. He took a photograph out of habit and set the phone down without sending it. What was there to say? Still growing.

At lunch, he tried reading, but the words slid off the page without sticking. He closed the book, pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, and let the shop’s stillness lap around him. Normally it was a balm. Today it was more like listening to the slow tick of a clock in a room you couldn’t leave.

By mid-afternoon, he’d convinced himself there was no sense in forcing productivity. He closed early, drew the blinds, and went upstairs to his flat. Dinner was half a baguette with cheese, eaten standing at the counter. He thought about opening a bottle of wine, decided against it, and made another cup of tea instead.

It was only when he sat down in his armchair, tea cooling on the side table, that his hand strayed to his phone. Not for Gabriel—God forbid. Not for Maggie or Madame Tracy, whose well-meaning enthusiasm would be too much for the thin ice of his mood.

The contact list hovered in front of him, his thumb sliding almost absently. Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales). He stared at it for a long moment.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Advice? No. Distraction? Possibly. Just… a voice that didn’t make him feel as though he were failing some unspoken test. A voice that used his name in full.

Before he could overthink it, he tapped the call icon.

The ringback tone went twice before a voice answered, warm and stretched around the edges by something that might have been surprise.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): “Aziraphale?”

He cleared his throat. “Good evening. I hope I’m not—”

“You’re not,” Crowley interrupted, easy as if the thought hadn’t even occurred. “Hang on, just—” There was the muffled sound of something being set down, a rustle, then the return of his voice, nearer now. “Right. You alright?”

Aziraphale hesitated. “I’m… not entirely sure.”

There was a beat of silence that wasn’t empty at all. Then: “Bad day?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale admitted, and felt the faintest unwinding in his chest.

“Want to talk about it?” Crowley asked. Not insistent—an offer, nothing more.

“I’m not certain there’s much to talk about. Just one of those days where…” He gestured, forgetting the uselessness of the motion over a phone line. “Where one feels out of step with everything. Even with oneself.”

“Hnh.” Crowley made a considering sound. “Happens.”

They didn’t fill the space right away. Aziraphale could hear the faint hum of something electrical at Crowley’s end—perhaps a fridge, perhaps one of those plant light rigs he’d seen in photographs.

Finally Crowley said, “What’d you do today?”

Aziraphale recounted it in broad strokes: the shop, the polite customers, the sunflower’s progress. It sounded banal even to him, but Crowley didn’t mock.

“Still. All that’s… something,” he said. “Didn’t stay in bed all day, did you?”

“No,” Aziraphale allowed.

“That’s a win. Low bar, maybe, but I’ll take it. You eat?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, then added, “Cheese and bread.”

Crowley made a noise halfway between approval and a sigh. “Alright. That’s food. You could do better, but it’ll keep you alive.”

It was absurd, but Aziraphale felt marginally better for having his diet assessed and found, if not laudable, at least passable.

“What about you?” he asked, not entirely for the sake of manners.

Crowley launched into a description of his day: a greenhouse humidity control system that had been misbehaving, the absurd contortions required to fix it without damaging a tray of fragile seedlings, a near miss involving an irrigation hose and his right shoe.

Aziraphale found himself smiling—properly this time—before the story was over.

“You’re laughing,” Crowley accused, though his tone was pleased.

“Only a little,” Aziraphale said.

“Good. You should. Whole point of an irrigation disaster is so you can laugh at someone else’s damp sock.”

The conversation drifted, looping lazily from plants to books to an upcoming exhibit Crowley thought was worth seeing. At no point did Crowley ask him to justify the call. At no point did he make Aziraphale feel as though he had to be more entertaining than he was.

Eventually, there was a pause that felt like the natural end of something.

“Thanks,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself with the depth of it.

“Any time,” Crowley replied, and it sounded as though he meant it. “You want me to check in tomorrow?”

The offer hung there, warm. “I’d like that,” Aziraphale said.

They said goodnight. Aziraphale set the phone down, looked at the cooling tea, and for the first time all day felt the quiet settle without smothering.

The thing about expecting something, Aziraphale decided, was that it made the hours stretch oddly.

He hadn’t admitted—even to himself—that he was expecting it until mid-morning, when he caught himself glancing at his phone after shelving a fresh arrival of early 20th-century travel memoirs. The screen was dark, of course.

No missed calls. No texts.

It was perfectly reasonable. Yesterday’s phone call had been… unusual. A kindness, perhaps, but not something one ought to assume would become a habit. Crowley was a busy man—scientist, lecturer, rescuer of endangered seedlings. He had his own days to contend with.

Aziraphale returned to the counter and made a deliberate choice not to check the phone again. He would not become one of those people who stared at the device every few minutes, as though willing it to light up. He had books to sort, customers to serve, and a sunflower to tend.

The sunflower was thriving, imperious in its claim over the windowsill. Aziraphale angled the pot a quarter turn, checked the soil, and gave it the smallest drink. He considered taking a picture for Crowley, but thought better of it. If he sent one now, he’d be opening the door to disappointment if no reply came for hours.

By eleven, he had invented half a dozen plausible explanations for the silence. Crowley could be buried in meetings. Out in the field somewhere with patchy reception. Giving a talk. Knee-deep in pond mud rescuing a rare aquatic fern. Or perhaps—most likely—simply living his life without the compulsion to send midday missives.

The trouble was, having constructed these reasonable excuses, Aziraphale couldn’t quite convince himself they didn’t matter. Some small, traitorous part of him was disappointed.

It wasn’t that he needed a message. It was just… nice, the thought of it. Someone thinking of him enough to reach out.

He distracted himself with the tedious but necessary job of reorganising the local history shelf, which had developed a slight but noticeable lean in the C’s. The bell rang now and then: a man looking for a gift for his mother, a student after old maps, a pair of tourists who browsed politely and left with a slim book of London architectural sketches.

By half-past twelve, he’d resigned himself to a solitary lunch. He was just locking the till when the bell over the door chimed again.

“Alright, angel,” said a familiar voice, and there he was—tall, black-clad, hair loose from its usual neat tail, sunglasses perched above a grin. In his hands, a brown paper carrier bag that smelled unmistakably of curry.

Aziraphale’s surprise flickered into something warmer before he could school it. “Crowley,” he said, unable to stop the smile. “What—what brings you here?”

“Lunch,” Crowley said, entirely unfazed. He lifted the bag slightly. “Yours and mine. Don’t panic, I’ve got two forks.”

“I—” Aziraphale looked automatically toward the clock. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I am at work,” Crowley said, entirely unconvincing. “Very important field trip. Studying the… uh… feeding habits of booksellers in their natural habitat.” He nodded toward the back of the shop. “You got a table, or are we eating standing up like savages?”

Aziraphale made a small, helpless gesture toward the little table in the back corner. “There.”

Crowley was already moving, long strides carrying him past the poetry section with only a token glance at the spines. Aziraphale followed, noting the casual confidence of someone entirely at home in other people’s spaces.

They sat. Crowley unpacked the bag with brisk efficiency: two containers of curry, one of rice, a packet of poppadom, two forks, and—bless him—napkins.

“It smells marvellous,” Aziraphale said, accepting the fork.

“Good place round the corner from Kew,” Crowley said. “Figured you wouldn’t object to me taking an… extended lunch break.”

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale said, but his voice came out softer than intended.

For a while, they ate in companionable quiet, the kind that didn’t demand filling. The curry was rich and just hot enough to be interesting without threatening his tongue.

Crowley broke the silence first. “Thought I’d check in,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “After yesterday.”

Aziraphale ducked his head. “That’s very… considerate of you.”

Crowley shrugged, spearing a piece of chicken. “Figure it’s better to turn up with lunch than to text and hope you’ve got the energy to talk. Besides—” he smirked “—I like this shop. Smells better than the greenhouse.”

Aziraphale laughed before he could stop himself. “That’s a low bar, I imagine.”

“Depends on the day. Some days it’s roses and lemon balm. Others it’s damp compost and something you’re not entirely sure isn’t decomposing.”

Aziraphale shook his head, smiling, and took another bite.

It struck him then—this was not an obligation for Crowley. He had not texted because he had chosen to come. To bring food. To sit across from him at a small table in a quiet bookshop on an ordinary weekday.

And for the first time that day, the knot between Aziraphale’s shoulders loosened.

The curry had been an unexpected success in more ways than one.
It wasn’t only that it was delicious, though it was—the sort of rich, comforting food that left a lingering heat in the chest. It was the company. The way Crowley didn’t press when Aziraphale kept a comment to himself, didn’t fill every silence with noise. They talked, yes, but they also… didn’t, in a way that felt oddly companionable.

By the time the containers were empty, the poppadom reduced to pleasing crumbs, and the napkins wadded neatly to one side, Aziraphale found himself oddly reluctant to suggest Crowley be getting back to his real work.

Crowley solved the problem for him.

“So,” he said, leaning back in his chair, one long leg stretched out under the little table. “When do I get the tour?”

Aziraphale blinked. “The tour?”

“Of the shop,” Crowley clarified, gesturing with the curve of his fork before setting it down. “I’ve seen about six feet of it from the front door. Reckon I’ve earned the deluxe package.”

Aziraphale allowed himself a small, pleased hum. “I suppose I could be persuaded.”

Crowley grinned, and something about the expression—unguarded, sharp around the edges but not at him—made Aziraphale stand a little straighter as he rose.

“Come along, then,” he said, smoothing down his waistcoat.

They began at the front, Crowley trailing a hand along the nearest shelf as though sampling the air.

“Local history, travelogues,” Aziraphale said, gesturing to the neatly arranged spines. “This section here is London-specific—guides, memoirs, architectural histories.”

Crowley plucked out a thin volume with a gilt skyline on the cover, flipping it open with a casual thumb. “You’ve got maps in here older than I am.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said mildly, “and more accurate.”

That earned him a huff of laughter.

They meandered down the narrow aisle, Crowley’s long frame somehow managing not to dislodge a single book. Aziraphale showed him the poetry alcove, the shelf of obscure pamphlets on Victorian gardening, the case of rarities he kept under lock.

“This lot worth much?” Crowley asked, peering in at a row of finely bound first editions.

“In the right market, yes. But value isn’t only in money,” Aziraphale said. “Some of these are irreplaceable in other ways. Marginalia, bindings, provenance…” He trailed off, aware he might be slipping into lecture mode.

Crowley didn’t look bored. In fact, he seemed to be paying rather close attention. “You get attached to them?”

Aziraphale glanced at him. “Of course.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. Thought so.”

They paused by the windowsill, where the sunflower—The Importunate Duke (Brian)—stood in its small pot like a monarch reviewing its domain. Crowley leaned down, eyeing it as though greeting an old acquaintance.

“Looking very… confident,” he murmured.

Aziraphale allowed himself a small smile. “Indeed.”

Crowley straightened, glancing sidelong at him. “You’ve done well with it.”

The simple sincerity of it warmed him in a way he wasn’t entirely prepared for. “It helps to have good instructions,” he replied.

From there, Aziraphale led him to the back room—part work space, part overflow storage, the air faintly scented with old paper and tea leaves. Crowley wandered, peering at the stacks, the neat bundles of books awaiting repair.

“You fix them yourself?”

“When I can,” Aziraphale said. “It’s… satisfying work.”

“I’ll bet,” Crowley said, running a fingertip just above the surface of a marbled cover without touching. “Better than watching things fall apart.”

Something in his tone was lighter than the words, but Aziraphale felt the weight under it. He didn’t press.

By the time they returned to the front counter, the bell above the door had rung only twice, each time admitting a browser who seemed to sense the moment and drifted away without purchase.

Crowley leaned an elbow on the counter, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, and said, “Thanks for the tour… Aziraphale.”

It was the name, in full, that caught him off guard. So few people said it without hesitation, without that faint pause to make sure they’d got it right. From Crowley’s mouth, it sounded deliberate. Intentional.

“You’re welcome,” Aziraphale said, perhaps a touch more warmly than he’d meant to.

Crowley smirked—not mocking, just knowing. “Alright, I’d better get back before Metatron starts breathing down my neck about my timesheets.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be the cause of professional strife,” Aziraphale said, but he was already walking him to the door.

Crowley lingered on the threshold, glancing back once at the shelves as if committing them to memory. “See you around.”

And then he was gone, swallowed by the street’s slow rhythm, leaving behind the faint scent of curry and the peculiar, pleasant disruption of a day in which lunch had not been solitary after all.

Chapter Text

The shop felt different after Crowley left.

It wasn’t anything you could point to—a rearranged stack, a misplaced book—but something in the air had been shifted, tuned. As if a note had been struck and was still quietly resonating somewhere behind the shelves.

Aziraphale took his seat at the counter, folding the curry containers neatly for disposal later. He should have gone straight back to his ledger, or at least continued sorting the box of gardening journals that had arrived the day before. Instead, he sat with his hands folded, thinking about how the sunlight had fallen across Crowley’s hair in the front alcove, catching copper in the brown, making the shadows along his jaw seem sharper.

He thought about the way Crowley had said his name. Aziraphale. Not clipped, not hurried, not altered into something smaller or easier. Full, deliberate, as though it were a word worth saying whole.

The bell above the door rang three times that afternoon.

A young man came in looking for a present for his mother—Aziraphale steered him toward a clothbound Austen. A woman in a red scarf browsed the travel section for nearly half an hour before leaving with an atlas of Victorian railway lines. A delivery boy dropped off a parcel containing two volumes on medieval herbals that Aziraphale had nearly forgotten he’d ordered.

The sunflower—Brian, The Importunate Duke—stood regal on the sill, utterly untroubled by any of it.

He glanced at it more than once, half-thinking he might send Crowley another picture, but each time he put the phone back down. There was no immediate reason to. Crowley had his work; there was no next meeting planned at Kew, no reason for them to cross paths again unless one of them made the reason.

And Aziraphale… wasn’t sure if he was ready to do that.

The evening light slanted low across the shop floor, catching in the faint gilt dust along the edges of old pages. He closed up slowly, lingering over the blinds, checking the lock twice. The street outside was in that in-between state, where the shops had shut but the pubs hadn’t yet filled.

Upstairs in the flat, he made himself a pot of tea and tried to settle into his usual evening—book in hand, radio low in the background—but the quiet had a new texture. It wasn’t empty, exactly. More like something waiting.

He turned a page, reread the same paragraph three times, and found himself thinking about the back room again, how Crowley had stood over the marbled covers as if recognising some unspoken kinship between the careful mending of books and the careful mending of plants.

The next morning came with pale rain and the soft hum of tyres on wet pavement. Aziraphale took his tea downstairs and stood a moment by the sunflower before opening up.

“You,” he told it, “have no idea how good you have it. No one asking you for a six-week plan to make you more… whatever it is they think you should be.”

The plant was, as expected, unmoved by this speech.

He laughed at himself, shook his head, and turned the sign to Open.

The day unfolded in gentle, unremarkable ways. He mended the fraying headband of a 1920s detective novel. He answered an email from a collector in Bath, politely declining an offer to buy one of the botanical first editions he kept under glass. Madame Tracy stopped in to borrow a folding chair for her next séance. Maggie waved from the doorway on her way to open the record shop.

By late afternoon, the sky cleared enough for a soft golden light to fall through the front windows. He thought of how it would be in the glasshouses at Kew—how Crowley might be there now, stalking between rows of orchids or muttering at some rare fern as if it could hear him.

The image was so vivid it felt almost like remembering something that had actually happened.

That night, after a quiet supper, Aziraphale found himself scrolling back through his messages with Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales). There weren’t many, but each felt substantial in a way most exchanges didn’t.

He considered sending something—a photograph of the new marbling project, a note about the herbals that had arrived—but in the end he only typed Good evening and then erased it.

It was foolish to miss someone he’d only just begun to know. Foolish, and a little dangerous, if he started expecting more than the easy, unlikely companionship they’d stumbled into.

Still… the shop felt different. The air had been shifted, tuned.

And somewhere, he thought, Crowley was making the same small adjustments to his day to fit someone else into it—whether he knew it yet or not.

The rain arrived at two o’clock like a decision, turning the panes into a soft, moving veil and the pavement into a sheet of pewter. Aziraphale had already made a pot of Earl Grey and set a plate with two slices of Dundee cake on the counter—one slice for the afternoon and one, optimistically, for after closing. He liked the shop best when the weather drew itself close and the street sounds softened; the books seemed to breathe differently, as if every vellum edge and cloth board absorbed the hush.

He completed his rounds—replacing a mis-shelved Hardy, straightening the travelogues that regularly sprouted new opinions about alphabetical order, checking the barometer by the doorway just because it pleased him to do so—and ended, inevitably, at the windowsill. The sunflower—The Importunate Duke (Brian)—had added another whisper of height, its bud tight with intent. He turned the pot a quarter turn, pressed a forefinger into the top inch of soil to test moisture, and considered taking a photograph. He did not. He knew he was in danger of making a habit of sending them, and a habit, once made, began to expect itself.

He poured his tea, sat at the counter, and tried to concentrate on an incoming email—a collector in Bath wanting to haggle the price of a botanical oddity he had no intention of selling. The email was polite; the request, familiar. He stared at it, aware of the rain’s low murmur, the steady tick of the wall clock, the way the shop, on afternoons like this, felt like a chapel with permission to laugh.

It was, increasingly, the hour of day when the quiet didn’t quite hold. Not emptiness, precisely. Something more like a pause that had started asking to be filled. He set the email aside and took a bite of cake, then another, and then—because the thought had arrived fully formed and, for once, refused to be argued with—reached for his phone.

The contact sat there where it always did, cool in its exactness: Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales). The absurd parenthetical had begun as a joke and become, to his private delight, a comfort. The other man had many locales, and Aziraphale liked that this tiny catalogue of them lived at the top of his messages.

He told himself it was only sense. Crowley had brought him lunch—unannounced, undeserved, and perfectly timed. Crowley had also, on a Tuesday that could have gone otherwise, rearranged his day to usher Aziraphale through the back rooms of Kew with the sort of care that made explanation feel like a gift rather than a test. A gesture deserved to be met with a gesture. Reciprocity was the most old-fashioned good manner he knew.

He typed, erased, typed again. He forced his shoulders down from their creeping position beside his ears and began once more, as if addressing a note to a rare-book dealer whose sensibilities he admired and did not wish to offend.

Aziraphale: I was thinking—if your children’s tour is on Saturday, perhaps I might repay your kindness and meet you afterward? Lunch or dinner, if that suits. A listening ear, in case sock puppets and budgetary constraints require one.

He read it twice, shuddered at his own formality, pared nothing back, and sent it before he could lose nerve. The message left him with the peculiar sensation of having stepped cleanly off a ledge and discovered, to his mild alarm, that he was not falling.

He set the phone down beside the cake and did not look at it. He took the long route to the back worktable, checked the drying marbled sheets he’d made that morning (they looked rather well, he thought, a restrained storm of blues and smoke), then fetched the silver watering can to return it to its place exactly where it had been before he’d pulled it absent-mindedly an inch to the left.

The reply came in the precise amount of time it takes to confirm that a person is not staring at their phone and is, in fact, doing something else useful.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Ha. You offering a sympathetic ear or a sounding board for educational policy reform?

Aziraphale: I can attempt both. My qualifications for the latter are largely grumbling and common sense.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): That’s two more than Metatron. Lunch works. I finish the small humans at 12:30 if the gods of glitter and glue are kind.

Aziraphale: Then let us rely upon benevolent deities. I’ll find somewhere near Kew—quiet enough to hear ourselves without shouting.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Quiet is good. I will be a husk of a man. But a charming husk. Saturday then.

The word Saturday landed with a small, bright weight. Not a promise, not exactly. Something friendlier and more practical—like a pin on a map that turned the rest of the landscape into routes rather than guesses.

He looked up and found, with some surprise, that he was standing. He had not decided to stand; his body had staged a coup on the basis of logistics.

“Right,” he said aloud to the sunflower, because saying it to a plant was better than saying it to an empty room. “A booking, then.”

The first place that came to mind was the tearoom on the Green—excellent scones, a reliable Earl Grey—but it felt too much like inviting Crowley to inhabit Aziraphale’s native element rather than offering a genuine midway. The Italian on the corner had warmth and noise enough to blur the edges of any awkwardness, but noise enough was precisely not what he’d promised. The bistro in Richmond, though—the one he’d noticed months ago and filed away under someday—had tablecloths and a chalkboard, light that turned everything to late afternoon, and the sort of staff who never said, “Are you still working on that?” It was near enough to Kew to avoid an ordeal, far enough to feel like a step out of the day.

He took the slim notebook from the drawer—appointments, book-fairs, deliveries; nothing digital could make him feel as orderly—and wrote, in a hand that had been complimented by headmasters and mocked by university friends, Saturday—Bistro? 1 p.m. Crowley. He immediately crossed out the question mark and, with a decisive flourish, circled the time.

The phone was back in his hand, the bistro’s number found by memory and habit, before he could enlist his nerves to stop him. When a woman answered, warm-voiced and unhurried, he heard himself ask for a table for two at one o’clock, by a window if possible, and, if not, somewhere quiet. He surprised himself further by remembering to mention a potential presence of damp sock puppet glitter; the woman laughed and promised discretion, which was all one could ask of strangers.

He set the phone down and wrote bistro confirmed beside the circle, then—because it pleased him—underlined it once.

There were practicalities. He liked practicalities. Practicalities calmed the parts of him that would, if left unchecked, rehearse every line of conversation to its death. He pulled a little pad toward him and made a list:

• Train times to Kew (allow for delays)
• Distance from staff exit to the path (the quick route past the broadleaf beds)
• Contingency if it pours (umbrella, the good one with the curved handle)
• A table request already done (window if possible)
• Small gift? (no, do not be ridiculous / perhaps yes)
• Carrying bag for book if small gift is a book (you are incorrigible)

He examined the word gift for a long moment and let it stand. No first editions, certainly—one didn’t bring a treasure to lunch like a dowry—but perhaps something with a wink. There was a narrow pamphlet tucked into the back of his own collection, a 1912 gardening society tract on the “Moral Dimension of Moss,” so earnest it looped into comedy. It would fit into a coat pocket; it would not announce itself as a statement. He pulled the step-stool, found the grey box on the top shelf, slid the lid back, and there it was: twelve pages, hand-stapled, a cover typeface that had confused ambition with clarity.

He placed it to one side, weighed down by a brass paperweight in the shape of a hare. The hare looked conspiratorial. He approved.

With the essential decision made, the mind—perverse creature—lurched into the business of fretting about the unnecessary. Clothing, for instance. He told himself sternly that he would not become an adolescent about it. He had always dressed as he pleased, and he would continue to do so. Nevertheless, when he stood before the wardrobe that evening, his hand hovered a moment longer than usual between waistcoats. The dove-grey might be too pale for a day that promised rain; the navy suited him but seemed, suddenly, serious. He chose the cinnamon tweed with the faint windowpane—warm, companionable fabric that looked as if it had been happy in bookshops before and would be again—and set aside a white shirt with a collar he knew lay just so. The bowtie could be decided on Saturday morning according to the weather and the temperament of the day. (Green if there was sun. Wine if there wasn’t.)

He checked the umbrella by the door. He polished his shoes because polishing shoes pleased him. He fleetingly considered trying a new cologne and then, in a moment of rare wisdom, did nothing of the sort.

The next morning, the rain held, but the light took on that white, generous quality London sometimes offers as apology. Customers came and went: a woman buying a gift for her sister (“something with gardens but not about gardens”), a man who wanted an almanac on a year that had not, to Aziraphale’s knowledge, produced one. He wrapped two small purchases, wrote the receipts with his favourite fountain pen, and found, at unexpected intervals, his mind aligning itself around the shape of Saturday like iron filings orienting to a magnet.

At eleven, he paused in front of Brian and addressed him as one consults a monarch. “I trust you’ll behave yourself tomorrow. No dramatic leans.” The plant, steadfastly uninterested in anyone’s schedule, radiated chlorophyllal composure.

That evening, he allowed himself a practice walk from the Kew station in his head, the geometry of it satisfying: exit, turn left, the familiar shopfront he always noticed and never entered, over the narrow road, ring the staff bell, wait for Crowley’s long, purposeful stride. He rehearsed exactly nothing he would say—because that way lay madness—and contented himself with remembering the way Crowley had said his name in the shop. Aziraphale, without apology. He thought of that on purpose, the way one rehearses a soothing line before a speech. It wasn’t a speech. It felt like one.

Friday rolled in with a smudge of sun and the scent of coffee from the street. He wrote a short note to Maggie reminding her she could borrow the folding chair again; he placed Madame Tracy’s flyer on the corner where the tourists might see it and he might forget to attend. He cleaned his spectacles and discovered, as one always did, that the world was lovelier than expected when seen without smudges.

Only once did he reach for his phone without looking and open the messages by habit. It was not to check for any new note—there was no need; they had an appointment; one must not cling—but to confirm, as if it were possible that words changed on their own, that the time and fact of Saturday existed as more than an idea. The thread was exactly as it had been: wry, ordinary, lit here and there by a warmth that was not decoration. He added nothing to it. He replaced the phone.

There was a moment just before closing when the light fell in long pans across the floor and he stood in it, quite still, and let the possibility of being glad settle without embarrassment. It was not a feeling he’d been encouraged, by either family or habit, to indulge. But the shop—with its good manners and its discreet little heart—could hold it. He let it.

Saturday morning came smelling of damp stone and cut grass, as if the city had been freshly unwrapped. He woke early without deciding to, made tea, and ate toast with a concentration that would have impressed any breakfast table. He turned the sign at ten and spent two hours doing the sort of small, reducing labours that improved the world: a ribbon retied on a stack of pocket editions; a label rewritten for a first edition that did not wish to be called “very good” when, in all honesty, it was merely “good.” He told Brian to sit up straight. He told himself to do the same.

At half past eleven, he locked the door with an apologetic note in the window—Back by three; ring if urgent—and collected the umbrella, the pamphlet under its hare, and the address of the bistro written in his careful hand on a card as if he could not be trusted to remember it when, in truth, he could have walked there with his eyes closed.

The train ran on time. The carriage smelled of wet wool and newsprint, London at its most companionable. At Kew, he took the path he had practiced in his head and felt the odd pleasure of a plan meeting its moment. He arrived five minutes early by any clock he trusted, and five minutes early is, in his view, the only honest way to be on time.

He waited where the staff path bent into the public way, umbrella hooked over his arm, the pamphlet sitting like a small secret in his inside pocket. He did not rehearse greetings or apologies or jokes. He let the damp air touch his face and felt, with a steadiness that surprised him, ready.

When the side gate opened and the first wave of small voices spilled out—story-bright, tired, pleased—he saw him: taller than the milling parents, sleeves rolled, tie loosened a degree, a smear of negligible glitter at the hinge of one wrist as if he’d survived a close-range craft explosion. Crowley scanned the path, found Aziraphale as if locating a star he already knew, and lifted two fingers in a greeting that, for all its laziness, felt like the completion of a sentence.

“Lunch,” he said as he reached him, and in his mouth the word sounded like relief discovering it had a body to live in.

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied, and discovered that in his own mouth the word sounded like permission. He gestured toward the road. “I’ve made a booking. A quiet place, not far. If that suits.”

Crowley’s mouth did the small, lopsided thing that refused to be called a smile but kept returning with suspicious regularity. “Lead on, Aziraphale.”

He did, and the umbrella, unnecessary in that moment, swung lightly from his arm like punctuation to a sentence they had finally decided to write

The bistro was only a five-minute walk from the Kew Gardens staff gate, but in that short span the world shifted from stroller-thick paths and over-animated chatter to a calmer street lined with brick terraces and the sort of shops that dressed their windows like they had all the time in the world. The rain had held, leaving the air cool enough for comfort but warm enough to make a coat feel like a luxury rather than a necessity.

Aziraphale kept a courteous half-step ahead of Crowley, guiding without the appearance of shepherding, though it was difficult not to glance back once or twice. Crowley had that long, deliberate stride that made him look as if he were late for nothing and everything at once. His hair was a touch windswept from the walk, his sunglasses pushed up into it despite the cloudy sky, and there was, Aziraphale thought with satisfaction, just enough residual glitter at his wrist to suggest a morning of full contact with arts-and-crafts materials.

“You look…” Aziraphale began, and then abandoned any attempt at subtlety, “…festive.”

Crowley tilted his head without breaking stride. “If you mean ‘I’ve been in a room with twenty-five under-tens wielding glue sticks,’ then yes. Festive’s one word. Radioactive is another.”

“I did notice the glitter.”

Crowley glanced down at the faint gold smear. “Oh, this isn’t the half of it. I’ll be finding the stuff in my flat until Christmas.”

“That seems improbable,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s glitter for you. Not a craft supply—biological warfare.”

They reached the bistro, the painted door a deep green that suited the brass handle, and Aziraphale felt the small satisfaction of leading someone into a place for the first time. The host—a tall man in a waistcoat with the air of someone who could remember an order without writing it down—smiled in recognition when Aziraphale gave his name and led them to the window table he’d requested.

The room had the light he remembered: steady, late-afternoon even at midday, catching on glassware and making the cutlery gleam. The scent of baking bread drifted from somewhere toward the kitchen; the quiet, conversational murmur was precisely what he had hoped for.

Crowley slid into his chair with a sigh that was mostly theatrical. “Right. Where’s the drinks list? I need something that doesn’t come in a juice box.”

Aziraphale folded his napkin across his lap. “They have an excellent elderflower pressé. And a respectable wine list, should one be inclined toward the grape.”

Crowley gave him a long look over the top of the menu. “Are you inclined toward the grape?”

“Not in the middle of the day,” Aziraphale said primly. “But I wouldn’t judge anyone else for it.”

The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched. “Pressé then. We’ll keep it wholesome. Wouldn’t want to scandalise the geraniums.”

Once drinks were ordered, Aziraphale glanced at the menu, though he already knew he was likely to have the chicken pie. Crowley appeared to be scanning as though each item had personally offended him.

“What’s the damage?” Aziraphale asked, half-smiling.

“They’ve got a whole section labelled ‘Healthy Choices,’” Crowley said darkly. “That’s always code for ‘disappointing and small.’”

“You could, you know, order from the other sections.”

“I could. But then I feel judged by the salad police.”

“I assure you,” Aziraphale said, “no one here is likely to report you for ordering the steak.”

Crowley looked unconvinced but set the menu down. “Fine. Steak it is. Medium rare. Chips. And none of that cress nonsense on the side.”

Aziraphale ordered his pie with mash and vegetables and sat back, feeling the pleasant exhale that came when the business of choosing was done.

“So,” he said, “tell me about your morning.”

Crowley groaned in a way that was far too deliberate to be genuine suffering. “Do you want the short version or the version where I name names?”

“I should think naming names is half the fun.”

“Alright then. We started strong—half the group actually remembered to bring their activity sheets from last week. Which, in children’s-tour terms, is the equivalent of a standing ovation. Then—” he gestured with both hands, as if framing a scene for the stage—“three of them decided they were going to ‘help’ with the puppet show.”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitched. “This is the sock puppet initiative?”

“The very same. Supposed to be a charming little scene where Rooty the Sock Root explains photosynthesis. Only, before I can even get to ‘chlorophyll,’ one kid—little blonde menace named Oliver—decides Rooty needs a sidekick. Produces a frog puppet from his backpack like he’s smuggling contraband. Suddenly we’ve got a whole subplot about how the frog wants to be a sunflower, and I’m trying to explain leaf structures while playing amphibian therapist.”

Aziraphale bit back a laugh. “That does sound… improvisational.”

“Oh, it was. And then, because chaos breeds chaos, two others start arguing about whether sunflowers can eat frogs. Loudly. Right in the middle of the bit about energy transfer.”

“Surely someone stepped in?”

“Bev tried,” Crowley said, “but by that point, Rooty had been rebranded as ‘Lord Rootington the Third’ and was apparently hosting a cooking show. You just can’t come back from that.”

Aziraphale let himself laugh then—quietly but without restraint. “You paint a vivid picture.”

“That’s not painting,” Crowley said. “That’s still-life in real time.”

Their drinks arrived, the pressé fizzing pleasantly in tall glasses. Crowley took a long pull from his before leaning back in his chair with a sigh that was only half for show this time.

“Anyway,” he went on, “Metatron says this is ‘valuable public engagement.’” He made quotation marks in the air. “I say it’s occupational hazard via felt and pipe cleaners.”

“You do seem to survive it,” Aziraphale observed.

“That’s only because I pace myself. Like marathon training, but with more googly eyes.”

The food arrived then—steak for Crowley, the pie for Aziraphale, both plates steaming and fragrant. Crowley eyed his chips with a kind of possessive suspicion before picking one up and testing it.

“Alright,” he said after a moment. “They’ve passed the test.”

“I’m very glad.”

“And your pie?”

Aziraphale cut into the crust, releasing a fragrant puff. “Exactly as I remembered it.”

They ate for a few minutes in companionable quiet, broken only by the occasional remark about seasoning or portion size. The quiet was comfortable, not the sort that demanded to be filled.

Eventually Crowley said, “So what about you? Any great dramas in the world of rare books?”

“Only the usual,” Aziraphale said. “A gentleman in Bath attempting to purchase something I have no intention of parting with. And Maggie trying to persuade me to join her and her friends for something called a pub quiz.”

“Why’d you say no?”

“I haven’t,” Aziraphale said, though his tone implied that the decision was pending heavily toward it. “I simply… like my evenings quiet.”

Crowley tilted his head. “Fair. But you might win.”

“Not the point,” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley’s smile was brief but approving, as if they had silently agreed on something neither needed to spell out.

When their plates were cleared, Aziraphale insisted on dessert—lemon tart for him, espresso for Crowley—and they lingered, the conversation meandering from botanical oddities to truly dreadful book titles they had encountered. Crowley’s recounting of an especially bad mid-century gardening manual, which referred to weeds as “the enemy within,” had Aziraphale actually covering his mouth to stop a laugh escaping too loudly.

By the time they left, the clouds had thinned to a pale wash and the air smelled faintly of rain on stone. They walked back toward the Gardens together, their pace unhurried.

“Thanks for lunch,” Crowley said as they reached the staff gate.

“It was my pleasure,” Aziraphale said truthfully.

Crowley adjusted his sunglasses, though the sun hadn’t fully broken through. “Alright. Back to the felt mines. But that was… good.”

Aziraphale inclined his head. “I’m glad.”

Crowley gave him the crooked half-smile again before disappearing through the gate, leaving Aziraphale with the quiet satisfaction of having made something—small, deliberate, and entirely pleasant—happen.

The walk from the station to the bookshop was one of Aziraphale’s small, unadvertised pleasures—especially on a day when the light was good and the pavements dry. His lunch with Crowley lingered in his mind like the aftertaste of something well-spiced: a warmth that kept him upright without hurrying him.

The bell above the shop door gave its usual, soft jangle as he let himself in. The air inside was cooler than the street, steeped in that peculiar mixture of old paper, polished wood, and the faintest hint of whatever tea he had last brewed upstairs.

He shrugged off his coat, hung it on the stand, and stood for a moment looking at the room as though it were a painting he’d been away from long enough to see anew. The front display table was neat, the windowsill arrangement untroubled by the morning’s absence. The sunflower stood at its post, the little spiralled bud holding its counsel.

“Good afternoon,” he told it, and went to fill the kettle.

The work waiting for him was the sort he liked best—quietly absorbing, physically light but mentally precise. On the long table by the rear shelves sat a stack of books he had been meaning to assess: a few Victorian gardening journals, a first-edition children’s nature book with foxed pages but a fine binding, and, on the very top, a collection of essays by a 19th-century amateur naturalist whose enthusiasm far outstripped his accuracy.

He set the tea to steep, rolled up his sleeves, and began. The rhythm settled over him quickly: opening each book with the care of a surgeon’s first incision, noting condition, provenance, and the sort of minor eccentricities that could make a collector’s eyes light up. Every so often he jotted down a phrase from a preface or margin note—little turns of language that pleased him.

Hours passed without the need for a clock. When the sunlight shifted low enough to stripe the far wall, he found himself with a neat sheaf of completed condition reports and a pleasantly full teapot. It was the sort of afternoon that left him feeling, not exhilarated, but anchored.

When he finally sat down at the desk to open his email, there was more than the usual detritus of newsletters and invoices. One message was from a dealer in Edinburgh offering first refusal on a small private collection of cookery books—nothing rare in the strictly bibliographic sense, but some with charming hand-written recipes tucked inside. Another was from a customer who had been searching for a specific illustrated atlas of European butterflies; Aziraphale had just come across a copy last week. And then—he blinked at the subject line—an invitation to a Sunday auction in Chelsea.

It was from Hayworth & Leek, whose sales were always a mixture of the obvious and the obscure. The attached catalogue was in the brisk, no-nonsense style of a house that knew its buyers had already decided their price ceilings before arriving. He scrolled past the furniture, the ceramics, the militaria—until his eye caught a subheading: Botanical & Horticultural Works.

He read the list twice. There were half a dozen titles Crowley might be interested in—some purely scientific, others historical curiosities. One in particular, a late-18th-century herbal illustrated with hand-coloured plates, seemed tailor-made for the man’s tastes.

Aziraphale sat back, fingers poised over the keyboard. He was not, as a rule, impulsive. Invitations were considered, composed, sent with the equivalent of diplomatic cover letters. And yet…

He thought of Crowley’s laugh over the chips that afternoon. Of the easy way he’d leaned back in his chair, tilting his head at some absurdity. Of the fact that there was, at present, no next meeting in the diary—not for certain, not in ink.

He opened a new message. Typed three words. Deleted them. Tried again.

Aziraphale: There’s an auction next Sunday in Chelsea. Botanical section includes some rather good specimens. Would you care to accompany me?

He looked at it. Too formal? Too much like a business proposition? But perhaps that was safer. It left room for either acceptance or refusal without obligating more than either of them might want to give.

Still, before he could lose his nerve, he sent it.

The moment of dispatch left him both lighter and more alert, as if he had tipped forward on a bicycle and was waiting to see if he would keep his balance. He stood, went to turn the sunflower another quarter turn, and told himself that there was no reason at all to check the phone more than once before supper.

He lasted seven minutes.

The shop was officially closed. The blinds were down, the till counted, the ledger updated in his precise, looping hand. The sunflower had been rotated and watered, the kettle boiled for his upstairs tea. By all measurable accounts, the day was done.

But the phone on the counter, face down, might as well have been a live wire.

He had sent the message at twenty-three minutes past five. It was now—he flicked a glance at the clock above the door—twenty to seven. No reply.

There were, Aziraphale told himself, entirely reasonable explanations. Crowley might still be at work. He might be in the middle of some meeting, his phone silenced. He might have read the message and simply not had the opportunity to form a reply that matched whatever standards of precision or humour he applied to such things.

Or—Aziraphale’s throat tightened—he might have read it, thought it presumptuous, and set it aside to ignore entirely.

He poured the tea, took it to the armchair in the corner of the shop rather than retreating upstairs. He liked the way the shop felt at this hour: holding its breath, waiting for the last echo of daylight to withdraw from the glass.

He tried reading. The book was a pleasing enough diversion—a collection of essays on 18th-century London coffee houses—but every few pages he caught himself glancing toward the counter.

At seven-thirty, he gave up entirely and took the phone in hand. The screen remained stubbornly blank. No message preview. No vibration. Nothing.

It would be ridiculous to send a second message. Worse, it would be… needy. And he was not needy. He simply disliked ambiguity. That was all.

He set the phone down, then picked it up again almost immediately and opened the auction catalogue. He could, he reasoned, at least make notes on the botanical lots. That way, should Crowley decline—or fail to answer altogether—he could attend alone with a clear plan.

Lot 217: A System of Vegetables According to the Classes of Linnaeus (1774). Incomplete set, but still desirable.

Lot 224: Hortus Siccus—a pressed collection of dried plant specimens from an anonymous collector, likely early 19th century. Intriguing, though risky; the condition could be abysmal.

Lot 231: Flora Londinensis, folio, with hand-coloured plates. If the colours had been well-preserved, it could be exceptional.

He was halfway through making his third note when the phone chimed.

The sound seemed louder than it should have been in the quiet. He didn’t pounce—he refused to pounce—but he did reach for it with what he felt was admirable restraint.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Botanical auction? Sounds dangerous. I’m in.

Just two words at the end, but they landed with a solid, satisfying weight.

Aziraphale felt the edges of his shoulders loosen. He typed back before the moment could stale.

Aziraphale: Excellent. Sunday at eleven? Preview begins at twelve-thirty, but I thought we might fortify ourselves beforehand.

The reply came faster this time.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Fortification = food?

Aziraphale: Naturally.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): I’ll find somewhere decent near the auction house. Not letting you show up faint with hunger.

Aziraphale’s lips curved.

Aziraphale: I’ve survived plenty of auctions on nothing more than tea.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): And missed half the fun because you were too busy not fainting. Leave it to me.

He hesitated, thumb hovering. Then:

Aziraphale: Very well. I’m looking forward to it.

No immediate reply this time. That was fine. That was more than fine. The thing was settled, agreed upon, anchored to the calendar.

He set the phone aside—not face down this time—and returned to the armchair. The tea had gone lukewarm, but he drank it anyway. Outside, the last threads of light gave way to the dark reflection of his own shop windows.

Upstairs later, while tidying his desk, he caught himself humming. He stopped, aware of the ridiculousness of it, then smiled anyway.

It wasn’t simply the acceptance—it was the ease of it. The absence of hesitation in Crowley’s “I’m in.” No weighing of pros and cons, no hint of charity in the tone. As if the whole idea were self-evidently worth doing.

He thought of Gabriel’s voice, not a week past, talking about “branching out” as though it were a chore. And here, without effort or agenda, was something to look forward to that felt entirely his own.

Before bed, he set a reminder for Sunday morning. Not because he would forget, but because the small chime would be a pleasant thing to wake to.

Chapter Text

Some mornings began already tired. This one, for reasons Aziraphale couldn’t quite pin down, seemed to arrive with its own pre-packed weariness. He woke not to the chime of his alarm, but to the heavy awareness that he had been dreaming of trying to find something—what, he could not say—in a shop where every aisle was being rearranged faster than he could search.

He took a little longer than usual making tea, waiting for the fog to burn off. It didn’t. By the time he’d opened the shop, the world still felt muffled at the edges, as if someone had draped thick curtains across all the colours and sounds.

The first customer came in at five past ten. In theory, nothing unusual there; in practice, she was the kind of customer who entered with the unshakable conviction that she was owed a certain book and that Aziraphale was personally withholding it from her.

“I’m looking for a copy of A Wanderer in Venice, first edition, jacket intact,” she said, without preamble. “But it must be the 1909 Methuen printing, not the later rebind. The spine gilt should be crisp.”

Aziraphale smiled politely, even as his shoulders sank a millimetre. “I’m afraid I haven’t had a Methuen in some years. I do have a 1924 edition—”

“That’s not what I said,” she interrupted, tapping her nails on the counter in a rhythm that set his teeth on edge. “The 1924’s inferior. Type’s too small. Any dealer worth their salt would know the difference.”

He did know the difference. He knew it acutely, down to the minute variances in paper quality and binding thread. But the particular tone in her voice made him wary of engaging too much; the more precise he was, the more likely she’d decide he was being deliberately difficult.

They went through the ritual: her implying that a better-run shop would have such a book in stock, him offering to take her details in case one came in, her declining because she “preferred to check in person.” She left in a small storm of perfume and faint disdain, leaving the door swinging like an accusation.

The silence afterward was not restorative. It was the kind that echoed with the absence of all the things he hadn’t yet done.

The list was long: he ought to sort the stack of incoming catalogues, update the ledger for the three sales earlier in the week, finish mending the torn flyleaf on the copy of The Compleat Angler that had been sitting on the repair desk for days. None of it was urgent in the way Gabriel meant when he said the word. But it was urgent in the small, domestic way that gnawed at him when he thought too long about it.

Instead, he stood at the counter and turned the sunflower a quarter turn, staring at the unfurled leaves as if they might offer a sensible excuse for doing nothing else for the next half hour.

It’s just one of those days, he told himself. No harm in waiting for the mood to pass.

The mood did not pass. It simply settled in, rearranging his thoughts into a loop of unhelpful commentary: you should be cataloguing; you should be dusting the poetry section; you should be answering those emails. And then the quieter, heavier one: you should be better at this by now.

By noon, he’d managed to mislay his glasses twice, forget whether he’d locked the till, and half-fill the kettle without remembering to turn it on. When the second customer of the day asked if he had “something on the history of shipping, but not too dry,” he could feel his brain fumbling for the shelves like someone trying to recall a dream.

He found her something, eventually. Whether it was what she wanted, he could not tell from her polite smile.

The hours after lunch stretched like treacle. He tried starting the ledger updates, only to lose his place repeatedly. The torn flyleaf still lay in patient reproach on the repair desk.

Outside, the weather had settled into that flat, directionless grey that seemed to sap even the impulse to look out the window.

At three o’clock, Maggie popped her head in to ask if he could hold her mail while she was away for the weekend. He agreed, managing a smile, but the moment the door shut behind her the shop felt heavier for the absence of her bright chatter.

Somewhere around four, he caught himself staring at the auction catalogue still open on the desk from the night before. He traced the gilt-edged lot numbers with one finger, not reading the descriptions so much as letting them stand in for something orderly.

In his head, he began rewriting the day: a brisk morning of efficient ledger work; a productive afternoon of repairs; perhaps even a pleasant chat with a customer who left with a book they truly loved. All possible in theory. None of it real.

By the time the hour hand edged toward closing, he felt as if he’d been holding his breath all day. The idea of going upstairs to the flat, of facing the small domestic litany of dishes and dust and unanswered correspondence, was… more than he wanted to consider.

So he lingered downstairs instead, fussing with the display table, aligning books by the edge of their covers, turning a few to face out simply because it made the row look less severe.

The sunflower stood watch on its sill, oblivious to the day’s failures. He envied it that.

It was nearly seven when he finally locked up and climbed the stairs. He made tea again, though it tasted flat. He sat with it in the armchair by the window, watching the lights shift along the street as the shops closed one by one.

The phone lay on the table beside him. He picked it up twice, set it down twice.

And then, without letting himself think it through, he opened the messages and scrolled to the name that was not just a name.

Aziraphale: Sorry to bother you. Just… one of those days.

He stared at the words. They looked thin on the screen. Incomplete. But they were what he had.

He didn’t press send immediately. He let them sit there, as if testing whether they felt true enough to send.

Then—almost a relief—he sent them.

The room felt no lighter for it. But the act itself carried its own small defiance: a reminder that there was someone out there whose reply, when it came, would not make him feel smaller for having said it.

He watched the message go, the blue bubble sailing into the little ocean of silence he’d cultivated all day, and then placed the phone face down as if it were a delicate instrument that should not be handled for a few minutes after use. The room carried on being the room: the lamplight steady on the arm of the chair, the faint shine on the teapot’s lid, the street noise thinning to an occasional car that sighed past. He told himself that whether a reply came at once or later—or not at all—changed nothing about the next five minutes, during which he would sit, and breathe, and drink tea that was, regrettably, not as hot as tea ought to be. He lasted exactly four minutes and some seconds before turning the phone over again with the guilty care of a man checking on a sleeping cat.

The screen woke to his expression and, underneath it, the simple fact of an answer.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Never a bother. You at home?

He typed before self-consciousness could assemble a committee.

Aziraphale: Yes. Upstairs. It has been a trying sort of day.

There was a brief, moving ellipsis, like someone breathing in. Then:

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Call or type?

He looked at the two words and felt something inside him unclench at the generosity of the choice. Call would mean finding his voice, putting it on like a coat and hoping it fit. Type would mean he could allow for pauses without apology. He did not wish to choose out of fear, so he chose the one that felt fractionally more alive.

Aziraphale: Call, if you don’t mind.

The phone hummed as if happy to be useful, and he pressed accept and brought Crowley’s voice into the room. It arrived warm and a little rough around the edges, that usual amused dryness wrapped in something gentler.

“Evening, Aziraphale.”

“Good evening,” he said, and then, because the formality felt too stiff in the face of the kindness, added, “Thank you.”

“De nada,” Crowley said lightly. “Tell me the shape of the day. Not the headline—the shape.”

He looked at the lamplight, at the small shadow the teacup cast, at the faint damp on the window glass. “Square,” he said, surprising himself with the accuracy of it. “A box. Everything wanting to be put into it and nothing fitting.”

“Mm,” Crowley said, the sound one makes when a diagnosis has been confirmed by a description rather than a test. “People in the box with you, or just you and your thoughts crowding the corners?”

“One of each,” Aziraphale admitted. “A customer who was… exacting, and a day of tasks—small ones, but many—that would not line up and present themselves in order. I dislike feeling incompetent in my own domain.”

“Who doesn’t,” Crowley murmured. “Alright. First: the customer is gone. You survived. I will issue them a lifetime ban from Kew in my head, which is more satisfying than you’d think. Second: the tasks aren’t a queue; they’re a flock. They never line up. You have to shepherd.”

“I am not a natural shepherd,” he said, attempting wryness and almost managing it.

“Liar,” Crowley replied. “I’ve seen you shepherd books back to life. Same muscles, different bleating.” He let that sit a beat. “What have you done since you closed?”

“Made tea. Sat down to read. Failed to read. Sent you a message. Sat down again.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “Tea is a task. Messaging me is a task. I will award points.” He rustled, as if settling in. “Do you want to do one very small thing while I’m on the line, or do you want to sit and talk about frogs who want to be sunflowers?”

“The latter sounds charming,” Aziraphale said, and then, after a breath, “but I suspect the former is what I ought to do.”

“Look at you, choosing the virtuous option.” Crowley’s smile was audible. “Pick the smallest thing in the room that has a beginning and an end. Not the list. Not the whole bloody flock. One sheep.”

He looked around as if the room might whisper a suggestion. The desk held three envelopes he had intended to address and a fountain pen already filled; the top book on the repair table needed only a tissue guard cut and placed to keep an engraving from offsetting; the washing-up from supper consisted of a plate and a fork that would take less than a minute to rinse. The smallest thing, then. He set the phone on speaker and stood, the wooden floor cool under his stockinged feet, and took the plate to the sink.

Water ran; he washed; he dried; he set the plate upright in its place with a click that sounded like a sentence finding its period. Crowley said nothing, which turned out to be the most encouraging thing of all—someone content to let the silence expand to hold an action. He returned to the chair, unusual lightness in his shoulders for so minor an accomplishment.

“Well?” Crowley asked.

“Plate,” Aziraphale said. “And fork.”

“Heroic,” Crowley said, absolutely serious. “The gods of domesticity are appeased. One more?”

“Overreaching,” Aziraphale warned, but stood again, unable to resist the lure of another small finish. He crossed to the repair table, cut a neat rectangle from the stack of tissue, laid it with tender precision over the fine plate of a trout bending itself around a river stone, closed the book, and tied the cotton tape around it with that quiet, grave pleasure he could never quite explain to anyone who didn’t already understand. “There.”

“Two sheep,” Crowley said. “Soon you’ll have a jumper.”

“You’re insufferable,” Aziraphale said, with a warmth he did not bother to disguise. He sat again, and the chair took his weight differently this time, like a friend who’d been trying to tell him the obvious and was relieved to have been heard at last. “Tell me something ridiculous from your day.”

“Frog boy returned,” Crowley said promptly. “Brought a new puppet. This one a bat. Informed me bats are plants because they hang upside down like roots. Argued his case with passion. I was forced—forced—to admire his commitment to nonsense.”

Aziraphale laughed, the sound escaping before caution could rein it in. “Did Rooty the Sock Root accept the bat into the family?”

“Rooty is very inclusive,” Crowley said gravely. “But there’s going to be a stern pamphlet about bats in the next handout.”

“You writing it yourself?”

“With Anathema. She’ll make it educational. I’ll put in the jokes Metatron will delete.”

“You’ll put them back in at the last minute.”

“Naturally.” He could hear the smile. “What else is the footnote for?”

The talk slid into that easy pattern they had stumbled upon at lunch and then again in the shop: a topic raised and abandoned without the shame of abandonment, a digression allowed, a silence left to its own devices, the companionship of two different kinds of quiet learning to sit next to each other without treading on toes. Crowley described a fern that had decided the humidity controls were beneath it and was staging a private weather system; Aziraphale reported, with mock solemnity, that he had rejected a dealer’s offer to purchase his least favourite botanical oddity purely because he disliked the way the man said “scarce.” Crowley, delighted, demanded the phrasing of Aziraphale’s refusal; Aziraphale produced it, word-perfect, and was awarded, to his secret satisfaction, a low whistle of admiration.

“Do you want another sheep?” Crowley asked at last, almost idly, as if they were choosing between desserts.

He looked at the desk. The three envelopes waited, addresses hovering in his head ready to be written. He didn’t wish to—he never wished to begin a thing after he had, in his mind, ended the day—but the reluctance now felt more like habit than fact. He uncapped the pen, wrote the names and streets and postcodes with his ordinary carefulness, and as the ink dried, he held them up to read, not in doubt, but in the small ceremony of the finished. He could hear Crowley breathing, the most human and ordinary sound, and thought of the greenhouse air, wet and green, and the way, in among all that life, they had simply stood, sometimes, saying nothing.

“Done,” he said.

“Three,” Crowley said. “Voyage round the flock.”

“You do realise,” Aziraphale said, “that shepherds are not usually renowned for their phone support.”

“Shows how little you know about rural telecoms,” Crowley replied. “Anyway, I’m not a shepherd. I’m a bloke who likes hearing your voice go from pressed-flat to normal.”

He did not reply to that at once. It wasn’t that he couldn’t; it was that he wanted, very much, not to say something too large for the room. He let the gratitude move through his chest without a performance and settle into the spaces it was offered.

“Your voice is a comfort,” he said simply.

Crowley made a faint, pleased sound that might have been embarrassment disguising itself as acknowledgement. “Good. Keep it on speed-dial for when the box day turns up again. I can be deputised to kick one side of it in.”

They fell into a gentle idling—talk of Sunday’s auction, brief strategizing about lot numbers and the dubious joys of bidding against men who had decided that a book wanted them simply because they wanted it. Aziraphale told him about the tract he had set aside—the “Moral Dimension of Moss”—and Crowley demanded the title be read aloud twice because he refused to believe it was not satire. When assured it was indeed sincere, he declared he would frame a page if the typography did not offend him.

“Bring the bloody thing,” he said. “If we lose every lot to some hedge-fund orchid collector, I’ll at least go home with righteousness about moss.”

“I do rather look forward to your sermon,” Aziraphale said.

“You won’t. It will be unbearable.” A pause, softer: “You sound better.”

He hadn’t noticed until Crowley said it—the loosening of something between his ribs, the absence of that muffled curtain he’d carried all day. The tasks he had not done remained undone; the customer’s voice remained an irritant recorded somewhere unhelpful in his brain; and yet the room looked as if someone had cracked a window to let the air turn over.

“I am better,” he said, surprised to find it true enough to speak.

“Good. Now eat something that isn’t tea,” Crowley said, bossiness deployed like a blanket. “Toast. Cake. Not your tiny monk portions.”

“There is Dundee cake,” Aziraphale admitted.

“Course there is.” He could hear the smile again. “Have a slice for me. Big one. Tell me it’s big.”

“I refuse to perform my cake intake for you,” Aziraphale said, smiling himself, already rising, already cutting, already putting two generous pieces on a plate because what was the point of good manners if not to allow for seconds.

“Fine, keep your pastry secrets,” Crowley said. “I’ll conduct a full audit at lunch next week.”

“An audit presupposes there will be lunch next week,” Aziraphale said lightly, and then heard his own sentence and felt a small, distinct flicker at the base of his throat.

“We’re not going to stop having lunch,” Crowley said, matter-of-fact enough that the statement slid into the room and took a chair without anyone having to make introductions. “You and me are having lunch now. That’s a thing that happens in the world. Copy?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, and took the first bite of cake and properly tasted it. “Copy.”

“Good man.” A rustle that sounded like someone finally taking off their shoes. “Alright, angel—sorry, sorry, Aziraphale—go eat your cake while it’s still cake and not memory. I’ll let you off the line.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then, because there are some gratitudes that want to be named twice, “for the call.”

“Anytime,” Crowley replied, familiar word made softer by use. “Text me if the box tries to climb back on top of you.”

“I shall push back with the aid of your shepherding metaphor,” Aziraphale said. “Good night, Crowley.”

“Night, Aziraphale.”

The line clicked gentle and gone. The room remembered how to be itself around him without pressing. He ate cake. He washed the plate. He slid the three addressed envelopes into his satchel so he would remember to post them in the morning and set the repaired trout volume neatly atop the stack that would go down to the shop at opening. He wrote, in his small notebook, Sunday—11:00 Crowley—breakfast before auction, and underlined it once.

Before he turned the lamp off, he took up the phone again and typed a last message without editing it to death.

Aziraphale: Thank you for making room in the day.

It went, and for a moment he thought that was the end of it, tidy and sufficient. Then the screen answered with what felt like the sentence that had been missing from his internal language for rather a long time.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Any day with you in it has room.

He lay down in the not-quite-dark, the window making its soft, secret noises, and let the words set where they wanted to—somewhere just under his breastbone, where a person keeps the lines they’re going to need again. The tasks he hadn’t done belonged to tomorrow, and for once tomorrow looked like a place that would have a door he could open rather than a wall he had to climb. The room breathed. He did too. When sleep came, it came without the rearranging aisles; the shelves stayed put, the books held their ground, and he woke only once to turn the pillow and think, with a surprised and private happiness, of bats and moss and the ridiculous dignity of a shepherd who knew how to count to three.

The morning had that curious clarity London sometimes offered as apology after a grey week—the air rinsed clean, the light a pale wash rather than a glare. Aziraphale stepped from the tube into it with a small, private intake of breath, the sort one takes before entering a gallery: here is the day; do not knock anything over. He’d left Soho early, because one should leave early for things one cares about, and walked the quieter streets toward the little restaurant he and Crowley had agreed upon—closer to the auction than to Kew, a humane midpoint with linen on the tables and a window that faced a stretch of Chelsea brick warmed to honey by the hour.

He had decided on the cinnamon tweed and a white shirt whose collar behaved itself; the bowtie was a sober wine rather than a conversational green. It was not a question of fashion so much as a question of tone: approachable, but not flustered; serious about brunch in the way a person is serious about books—with affection and rules.

The hostess greeted him with the sort of unforced professionalism he adored in other people’s premises, and he found himself seated in the window, the table gently set, the water already poured. It was not yet eleven. He checked his watch—nothing so vulgar as a phone for this—and let the minute hand do the slow work of preparedness while he watched the street. A woman in a camel coat angled a pram around a puddle. A courier on a bicycle negotiated the narrow lane with a grace that felt almost botanical: bending without breaking.

“Aziraphale.”

He hadn’t heard the door so much as felt the air change. Crowley stood there with that half-contained kinetic energy of a person caught between a run and a saunter, hair pushed back from his face, sunglasses in his hand rather than on it, as if the day had won a small, necessary argument. He wore black, of course, but not a funeral black—something with a nap to it that made the jacket seem almost soft. The impression was of someone who had stepped out of a slightly faster timeline and agreed, as a favour, to keep pace.

“You’re early,” Aziraphale said, already standing; it felt right to stand.

“Accident,” Crowley replied, mouth tilting. “Traffic decided to behave. Don’t tell anyone. We’ll ruin it.” He glanced at the table. “Good choice.”

“It’s quiet,” Aziraphale said, as if he were defending a dissertation. “And close enough to the auction that we’ll not have to sprint.”

“Speak for yourself,” Crowley murmured, sliding into his chair with an ease that announced he had decided to approve of the venue. “I was promised intellectual foreplay and scrambled eggs.”

Aziraphale made a noise that aspired to a cough and failed. “We have eighty minutes,” he said, recovering himself. “Surely enough for both.”

A server materialised with menus and that blessed jug of water that meant refills were a right rather than a plea. They ordered coffee first—the true test—then paused at the menu like two men approaching a map whose legend was in a familiar dialect. Crowley closed his after barely looking.

“You’re not reading,” Aziraphale observed.

“I’ve already chosen,” Crowley said. “Full breakfast. No substitutions. If they put a tomato on the plate, I’ll respect the tomato.”

“I admire your moral clarity,” Aziraphale said. He eyed the list, gravitating as he always did toward variations on eggs and toast. “I think I’ll have the kedgeree.”

Crowley’s mouth went briefly, appreciatively crooked. “Classic. Nothing like a Victorian hangover cure for a Sunday without sin.”

“That’s an unkind assumption,” Aziraphale said, pleased. “I have sinned in far subtler ways.”

“Show-off.”

The coffees arrived—mercifully hot, the crema unbroken—and with them the first easy expansion of the hour. They didn’t pounce on topics. The conversation unfurled, as good cloth does, from the centre out.

“So,” Crowley said, cupping his mug in both hands like someone who knows the value of heat, “what are we hunting today?”

Aziraphale took a sip as if calibrating the day to the taste. “In an ideal world? The Flora Londinensis if the plates are bright. Failing that, the Linnaean set—though it’s incomplete, which will invite all sorts of men who like to finish things more than read them. The herbarium is tempting, but I don’t trust anonymous collectors whose paper has been stored in damp attics.”

“Mm,” Crowley said. “Attics are where ambition goes to mould.” He glanced at Aziraphale’s satchel by the chair and lifted a brow. “What did you bring me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re wearing your I’ve brought something I’m pretending not to have brought face.” Crowley set his cup down, tapped a finger delicately on the tabletop. “Fess up.”

Aziraphale had the decency to blush only internally. He extracted the slim pamphlet and placed it, face down, on the linen as one sets a calling card when one is not sure if one has arrived too early. “I thought, perhaps—merely as a curiosity—you might appreciate the typography. Or the… audacity.”

Crowley turned it over and barked a laugh so sudden two tables glanced over and then, seeing the source, pretended they hadn’t. “The Moral Dimension of Moss. Oh, you absolute menace.” He flicked through, delight mounting. “Look at this. ‘One cannot consider Polytrichum commune without pausing upon the subject of fortitude.’ God, I want to fight this man and also take him to tea.”

“I find it soothing,” Aziraphale admitted. “The way certainty used to be printed in twelve-point type and given to the world like a sermon. It’s very… confident on the subject of damp.”

“‘Let us turn our minds from licentious ferns,’” Crowley read, almost fond. “I won’t, obviously, but I respect the effort.” He closed the pamphlet but kept a finger marking his place, as if it might escape. “Thank you.”

“It is yours, if you’d like it,” Aziraphale said, pretending, very badly, that this had not been his plan all along.

“I would like it.” Crowley slid the tract into his inside pocket with the solemnity of a pact. “It’s going on my office wall. Metatron will hate it and be unable to articulate why. A treasure.”

The food arrived, saving Aziraphale from having to invent a response beyond the smile that insisted on happening. Crowley’s plate was a landscape—eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms in a dark little corner, a grilled tomato behaving itself at the edge. Aziraphale’s kedgeree steamed gently, the rice gold without shouting about it.

“You know,” Crowley said, arranging cutlery with a care that suggested an ongoing truce with the day, “I’m tempted to bid on the herbarium.”

Aziraphale paused. “Even with the risk?”

“With the risk,” Crowley said. “Because if it’s good, it’s not just pressed plants; it’s a person. You can read how they cut the stems, what they chose to keep, where the glue goes spare. It’s fieldwork with ghosts.”

“That is very beautifully put.”

“Is it?” Crowley speared a mushroom. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get poetic before noon.”

“I’m in favour of it,” Aziraphale said. “Poetry before noon. Keeps the auctioneers honest.”

Crowley made a face. “Auctioneers are a different phylum. Fast-talking Homo gavelensis. Eyes like hawks, memory for faces like tax collectors. One of them’s going to remember me from the time I bid on a set of glass slides with the unanimous disapproval of every man in a tie in the room.”

“You won them?” Aziraphale asked, pleased by the idea.

“Of course.” He buttered toast with violent efficiency. “Spent a week afterwards explaining to people how brightfield microscopy works, which is not how anyone wants to spend a week, but worth it.”

Aziraphale stirred his kedgeree and let the edges of his mouth soften. “Your willingness to explain things you love, to hostile audiences, is one of your better sins.”

“Careful,” Crowley said. “I’ll develop a reputation for being useful.”

“Perish the thought.”

They ate, and because eating well made conversation better, they allowed themselves tangents. They detoured through an island of bookplates—Aziraphale’s strict taxonomy of tasteful versus aspirational; Crowley’s sincere affection for the gaudy ones that shouted the owner’s name like a herald. They exchanged mild gossip about dealers (“he wraps everything like it’s going to sea,” “she would sell you your own hat and improve it”). They compared, with the seriousness of surgeons, their preferred auction strategies. Aziraphale was cautious: a budget set and obeyed, eyes on two or three lots rather than seventeen. Crowley was chaos by design: a list, yes, but also a willingness to pounce if the room blinked at the wrong moment.

“Impulse is underrated,” Crowley said, pouring himself more coffee. “Used sparingly, it’s rigor’s best friend.”

“Used excessively,” Aziraphale countered, “and you end up with a room full of brittle map rollers and a sense of shame.”

“You say that like it’s theoretical.”

“It is not theoretical,” Aziraphale said darkly. “There was a period in my twenties when I believed I was the man who would save the lost maps of the Empire. I bought an entire crate of rollers. The rollers survived longer than the maps.”

“I want to see them.”

“You will not.”

They let the small laughter sit between them, not chased away by haste. The room around them did that gentle restaurant thing of replenishing without intruding. The light moved up the far wall. A child across the room arranged peas on the rim of his plate like a Stonehenge of legumes and was, frankly, a genius.

“You look…” Crowley began, then stopped, as if the word needed permission.

“Yes?” Aziraphale prompted, pretending both innocence and bravery.

“Like you slept,” Crowley said. “Like you didn’t let the box sit on you all night.”

“Oh.” He could feel himself colouring, absurdly. “I did not. I had assistance in moving it.”

Crowley looked pleased in a way that made Aziraphale want to find more boxes for the sheer joy of pushing them over in front of him. “Good. Keep the helpline on speed-dial.”

“I don’t wish to abuse the privilege.”

“Don’t worry,” Crowley said. “I’ll tell you if you do.”

It was such a relief of an answer—no coyness, no performative protest—that Aziraphale found himself taking another forkful of kedgeree solely to have something to do with his mouth.

“Next week,” Crowley said, as if picking up a thread he’d knotted earlier, “I’m in the lab more than the glasshouses. If you wanted to see lasers used for something other than telling pensioners not to touch the ferns, I could… arrange a tour.”

“I would like that,” Aziraphale said, a touch too quickly. He corrected: “If it isn’t disruptive.”

“Chaos is built in,” Crowley said wryly. “Besides, ‘bringing a responsible adult to see the toys’ scans as community outreach.”

“I object to being called responsible.”

“You’re wearing a bowtie correctly,” Crowley said, as if that settled matters. “That’s at least three demerits in the irresponsible column.”

He reached for his coffee and caught, out of the corner of his eye, the small, unplanned thing: the way Crowley checked his watch without breaking a coil in the conversation, the way his knuckles looked against the porcelain, the small crescent at the edge of his mouth when he found the time agreed with whatever clock he kept behind his eyes. It arrived like a line of verse one hadn’t realised one remembered. And for a foolish, unguarded second, he thought: How lovely this is. How easy it would be to—

No. It was not that sort of story. He was not that sort of man, not anymore. Crowley was… Crowley. Bright and sharp and tethered to several things larger than any one person’s quiet domestic hopes. Their companionship had been given the way a path sometimes opens in a crowd—not promised, not owed, subject to closing as quickly as it had opened. One did not attempt to own the road.

He swallowed the thought like a seed that would not sprout and lifted the conversation one notch higher onto safe ground.

“You said Metatron would hate the pamphlet. Has he been particularly trying this week?”

“Always trying,” Crowley said. “Succeeding less often.” He leaned back, knife idle on the plate, and let the thin smile settle into something more thoughtful. “He’s in a funding phase. Desperate to be the man who landed a big grant with a name he can shout at donors. You know the type.”

“Intimately.”

“Wants more outreach metrics—more smiling children holding laminated leaves. I told him the children will smile at anything if you feed them sugar and tell them the Latin for stinging nettle is Urtica dioica in a dramatic voice.”

Aziraphale obliged with a dramatic voice. “Urtica dioica.”

Crowley blinked, then broke into a grin he tried and failed to suppress. “Alright, that’s going straight into the puppet show. You’ll get royalties in the form of chaos reports.”

“I accept.”

They finished what could, by any fair standard, be called an exemplary brunch. Aziraphale insisted on paying—properly, not with a theatrical reach and a retreat; Crowley pretended to object and then let him, which was exactly the sort of generosity Aziraphale recognised and appreciated. He left a little more than the recommended gratuity because the coffee had been right and the room had understood, on some level, that it was hosting a small, important peace.

“Time?” Crowley asked as they stood, reaching for his jacket.

“Twelve-twenty,” Aziraphale said, after the briefest consultation with the watch that had never failed him. “Shall we?”

They walked out into a light that had deepened from wash to colour. The pavement had dried in patches that made a geography of sun and shade. Crowley matched his pace to Aziraphale’s without doing that dreadful, obvious thing of slowing down like a pitying athlete; he simply… arrived at the same rhythm. They made a left at the corner where the florist had set out buckets of tulips immaculate as diagrams.

“Strategy,” Crowley said, as if they were burglars approaching a well-guarded house. “We do the preview with appropriate noises—hmms and ohs—then we stake out opposite sides of the room to triangulate bids.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said. “And when one of us begins to exceed sense?”

“The other coughs,” Crowley said. “Or says Urtica dioica very sternly.”

“I fear we will be expelled.”

“Worth it,” Crowley said. He glanced sideways. “You nervous?”

“About auctions?” Aziraphale considered. “No. I’m quite good at losing gracefully.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Crowley replied. “You’re very capable of winning obnoxiously. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

“Have you.”

“Oh yes.” He touched the inside pocket where the pamphlet now lived. “Today we win tastefully, then.”

They reached the corner where the street kinked toward the auction house—a square, dignified building that pretended to have no appetite for theatre while hosting a weekly opera. The crowd outside was the usual pre-sale mixture: men with their hands in their blazer pockets like they were harbouring opinions, women who knew exactly what they were about, the odd young collector vibrating at a frequency only other young collectors could hear.

“Ready?” Crowley asked, his voice dropping into that dry register that made jokes sound like facts and facts sound like conspiracies.

Aziraphale looked at the door, then at him, then down briefly at his own hands, which were steady. “Yes.”

“Good.” Crowley’s mouth tipped. “Let’s go look at some plants that forgot they’re paper now.”

They went in together, shoulder to shoulder, and the thought that tried to bloom again in Aziraphale’s chest was not the fragile, dangerous one about romance, but a sturdier, kinder bud: that two people could walk into a room designed to make them want and still know, precisely, what they had already chosen. He folded the feeling away with the same care he used for tissue over an engraving, there to be lifted when he had the quiet and the courage.

Eighty minutes had slipped by as if they had been only a handful. The clock inside the foyer said 12:28. The catalogue in Aziraphale’s hand felt less like a list of temptations and more like a programme for the next part of their day. Crowley, beside him, tapped the page once with the back of a finger, a silent signal: on we go.

“After you,” he said, and Aziraphale went, because he had decided to, and because he had somewhere good to be.

Chapter Text

The auction house smelt faintly of polish, paper, and the kind of wool that had been brushed but not yet worn. It was the scent of waiting rooms and rehearsal spaces—calm, if one ignored the current of acquisitive energy running just under the carpet.

Aziraphale stepped into the main room and felt his spine perform that subtle elongation it always did in the presence of expensive wood and the low rustle of money in conversation. His catalogue sat comfortably in his hand, his pencil tucked into the spiral as naturally as if it were a quill in a folio.

The auction room carried its usual, agreeable charge: polish and paper; the soft click of paddles being tested against palms; the low current of people who pretended they were only mildly interested in the objects they’d been thinking about for a week. Aziraphale slipped through the foyer with the absent formality of a regular at a club—hatless, catalogue already open to the botanical section, pencil tucked into the spiral the way a swordsman keeps a blade.

“Morning, Mr. Fell,” said the porter at the door—Harris, with the careful hands. Aziraphale inclined his head.

“Good morning, Harris. Henderson on the rostrum today?”

“’Fraid so,” Harris said, conspiratorial. “Fast as ever.”

“Then we’ll be brisk,” Aziraphale replied, pleased—Henderson’s speed kept the amateurs off-balance—and led Crowley into the preview.

He didn’t stand still; standing still suggested indecision. He walked the long tables in a practiced sequence: start at the endpapers to see if the book had been “improved,” sniff the glue, count plates with the left hand while the right hand made small ticks in the margin of the catalogue—his private sigils for watch, bid low, let them fight. Now and then he leaned close, glasses sliding down his nose by exactly one notch, and hummed in a register that meant acceptable foxing; paper likely stored well; ignore the dealer posturing near your elbow.

Crowley kept pace, a tall shadow with keen angles, sunglasses on in defiance of excellent lighting. When they reached the Flora Londinensis, Aziraphale tipped the corner of a plate, eyes narrowing with a craftsman’s suspicion.

“Good colour,” he murmured. “But the greens are a touch over-bright. Someone’s kept this in a room that wanted to be a conservatory and failed.”

Crowley’s mouth crooked. “Translation: lovely but vain. Piano-buyer bait.”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale said, already writing the sigil for admire; abstain.

The incomplete Linnaean set received a longer look. Aziraphale counted the gatherings by touch, lips moving faintly as he tallied the signatures, then wrote BLEED THEM beside the estimate. Crowley leaned in.

“‘Bleed them’?”

“Let the room run hot,” Aziraphale said calmly. “Then buy the complete copy when the same men discover they hate gaps.”

At the herbarium table he slowed, gentled. The plain boards pleased him: honest. He opened to a page and the breath went out of both of them.

“Achillea millefolium,” he said, and the date, and the place—Surrey Heath—as if he were greeting a parishioner by name. The hand on the label was confident without fuss; the pressed yarrow had dried to a disciplined brown, the pinholes small, the glue ungenerous and neat. He didn’t touch the plant; he let the eye do the work and the pencil mark YES.

Crowley was silent in the way only the truly engaged are silent. Aziraphale did not interrupt him. He turned two more pages—Silene, Rumex—and closed the binding with care.

The bell chimed for seats. Aziraphale led them to what he privately considered the best position: five rows back, aisle to his left, where he could read both the rostrum and the room. He placed the catalogue on his knee, paddle angled like a folded wing, and surveyed the usual cast: the man in brown lapels (overconfident, would spend early), the bun-haired loyalist (would overpay for provenance), the young collector vibrating at a frequency only other young collectors could hear (dangerous in twos, harmless alone).

“Rule one,” Crowley whispered, leaning without touching, “never stand still in a preview.”

“Rule one,” Aziraphale whispered back, eyes forward, “is know which rules you’re willing to break.”

Henderson rapped the gavel. The room came to its heel.

They warmed up on trifles. Aziraphale let his pencil do small, merciless work: mad, cheap show, lapels took it (of course). When the first meaningful botanical lot appeared he did what he always did—nothing. He watched the room decide what it wanted and how badly, the way a man watches weather cross a field: noting gusts, not surprised by rain.

The Flora arrived in a bouquet of numbers. As predicted, it flushed the piano buyers. Aziraphale kept his face arranged in polite interest and his paddle still. Crowley, beside him, breathed out through his nose in a private commentary; Aziraphale’s grin flickered and held.

“Would’ve looked nice above your mantel,” Crowley murmured.

“It would have faded,” Aziraphale murmured back. “And then I’d have to invite the buyer to my house to gloat at him for free.”

“Public service,” Crowley said.

The Linnaean set came up with a sensible estimate and the lunacy of men who cannot abide incompleteness. Aziraphale toyed with the paddle just enough to make the bun-haired loyalist nervous, then let the man from Bath outbid himself. Crowley made a suppressed choking noise that might have been a laugh. Henderson didn’t blink.

“Sinful,” Crowley breathed.

“Educational,” Aziraphale said, smiling outright now.

And then the herbarium.

The estimate was modest. Henderson opened low; a few paddles lifted with the hesitancy of people in unfamiliar territory. Aziraphale did not look at Crowley, but he felt the shift—the way Crowley’s attention gathered, the way his height condensed into readiness.

“Wait,” Aziraphale said softly, not as a command but as courtesy—sharing the read he would have given anyone sitting at his right hand.

Two more bids. The bun-haired loyalist lifted her paddle with that air of duty. Personal history, Aziraphale wrote, a fond warning to himself: do not try to change a person’s mind about their grandmother’s fern press.

“Now,” he said.

Crowley lifted his paddle like a man admitting a truth. Henderson nodded him in; the bun-haired loyalist returned; Crowley waited exactly the right number of beats to suggest both confidence and restraint. Another bidder—a young man with hope for a face—entered late. Aziraphale had seen this dance a hundred times: hope meets experience; experience buys hope a drink and takes the lot home.

When the gavel fell to Crowley’s number, the change in Aziraphale’s grin was small and unabashedly pleased. Crowley set the paddle down as if it were a well-trained creature that had performed to expectation.

“Congratulations,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Joint custody of the ghost fieldwork,” Crowley murmured back.

“Visitation rights every second Tuesday,” Aziraphale said, and they both looked straight ahead and pretended not to be delighted with themselves.

They sat through the remaining lots like men at a good opera whose favourite aria had already been sung: appreciative, untempted. Now and then Aziraphale bent his pencil to a future self—notes about dealers to avoid and one to cultivate; a tiny star beside a catalogue typo he would kindly point out to the office later. Crowley offered sotto voce natural history to accompany the social comedy: the mating habits of shill bidders; the camouflage strategies of men who think a paisley tie makes them invisible.

When it ended, Henderson closed his book with a nod at the room; it hummed, its appetite briefly sated. They rose with the practiced unruffledness of buyers who have nothing to prove.

“Collection,” Aziraphale said—habit wrapped in courtesy—and steered them into the modest queue. Staff greeted him by name; he greeted them back, the way one does in a parish one attends.

At the counter, the clerk set the herbarium down with both hands. Crowley opened to the yarrow again; Aziraphale stood at his shoulder, close enough to see the little changes in Crowley’s face—the way victory sat on him not like conquest but like relief, like recognition.

“You’ll box it?” Aziraphale asked, already knowing the answer.

“With honours,” Crowley said. “And footnotes.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, and the grin—still there, still lightly incredulous at being so happy in public—widened another fraction.

They moved off to sign, to shake a hand, to exchange a few quiet words with Henderson about the deplorable trend in over-cleaned bindings. As they crossed the foyer toward the door, Harris gave Aziraphale a quick, approving nod, a parish benediction.

Outside, the day obliged them with better light. Crowley tucked the receipt away, the herbarium under his arm with the secure awkwardness of a man who has carried precious things before. Aziraphale, catalogue folded and pencil stowed, felt that useful pleasure auctions gave him when they went right: not triumph, not relief—completion.

“Worth the trip?” Crowley asked, not quite casual.

“As anticipated,” Aziraphale said. “And very much improved by your company.”

Crowley’s mouth tilted. “Likewise, Mr. Fell.”

Aziraphale let himself grin openly now, no longer under Henderson’s gaze. “Coffee? Lemon drizzle? Then we can gloat tastefully.”

“Tastefully,” Crowley agreed, eyes bright behind the glass. “Lead on.”

And Aziraphale did, because he knew the route, and because it pleased him to be the person who knew the route when Crowley was beside him.

Aziraphale stepped into the foyer of the auction house like one might step into a favourite reading room: already knowing where the light would fall, how the hum of voices would bend around the corners, which faces might be familiar. He’d been coming here for years. The crowd, a mix of seasoned bidders and newcomers trying not to look it, carried on with the same comforting background noise: the subdued clink of china from the upstairs tea counter, catalogues rustling, the occasional polite cough.

Crowley moved through it with his own sort of grace, picking up his paddle and receipt as though it were an errand he ran twice a week. Aziraphale recognised the subtle tells—the way Crowley’s mouth tipped for a fraction of a second, the look in his eyes that meant a bid had been worth it—because he’d seen them in others, and, perhaps, in himself.

“Collection desk,” Crowley murmured. “Then gloating.”

“I should like to see the gloating executed with taste,” Aziraphale replied. That earned him one of those fleeting smiles that felt like being let in on something.

They queued only briefly. When Crowley’s turn came, the clerk slid the herbarium over with a quiet respect Aziraphale had seen given to rare folios and first editions countless times. He leaned in alongside Crowley, noting how quickly the man’s auction-day front gave way to genuine, focused attention.

The two bent over the first page like co-conspirators. Crowley traced the browned ink of the label. “Achillea again. Our Victorian had a type.”

Aziraphale smiled, entirely at ease in this setting. “You’ll catalogue it, of course.”

Crowley’s reply was absorbed, methodical. “Every scrap. Dates, places, glue stains… If there are bugs, they’ll get an eviction notice with due ceremony.”

Aziraphale knew the script from his own acquisitions, and the recognition settled into him like good tea. This was not his first auction, nor Crowley’s, but it might have been their first of many together. On an impulse, he added quietly, “If you’d like… I could restore it for you. The binding at least. No charge.”

Crowley looked at him. “Yeah, I think I would like that, thank you, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale had been half-expecting Crowley to vanish the moment the herbarium was safely in his possession, slinking back to his greenhouse or wherever he did his archival magic. But instead, after the papers were signed and the padded carrying case secured, Crowley glanced toward the café corner of the auction house and said, “We doing coffee here, or…?”

It was the kind of pause that offered room for an alternative. Aziraphale took it.

“There’s a new place on my street,” he said, smoothing down the lapel of his coat as if it might make the suggestion more respectable. “Rather bold name—‘Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death.’” He’d walked past it a half-dozen times in the past two weeks, meaning to try it, but the thought of walking into an unfamiliar café alone had felt… not daunting, exactly, but slightly more effort than he’d been able to muster on any given day. “They do… interesting blends, apparently.”

Crowley’s mouth tipped up in a fox’s grin. “And you’ve been holding out on me?”

“I’ve only just worked up the nerve to—well, I thought company might be best for the inaugural visit.”

“Alright, angel.” Crowley seemed not to notice Aziraphale’s tiny intake of breath at the slip. “Let’s risk death.”

The walk back to Soho was pleasant enough. The April air was still cool, and the traffic hum kept their pace companionable without demanding constant conversation. Crowley carried the herbarium as if it were a newborn, his long fingers curled protectively around the case handle.

“You do know it’ll survive a twenty-minute stroll,” Aziraphale remarked.

“Plants can tell when they’re valued, this is half tree,” Crowley said, deadpan. “And it’s had enough neglect in the last hundred years.”

When they reached Aziraphale’s street, the coffee shop stood out immediately—its black-painted façade, matte gold lettering, and chalkboard out front scrawled with the day’s “doom roast” in an aggressively cheerful hand. The inside was all warm wood and exposed brick, with a scattering of tables and the low hiss of steaming milk.

Behind the counter, a short, sharp-eyed woman with dark hair worked into dreads glanced up from the espresso machine. “Pick your poison,” she said by way of greeting. The nametag pinned to her denim apron read Nina.

Aziraphale moved toward the menu board. Crowley didn’t bother. “Six shots of espresso,” he said.

Nina raised an eyebrow. “That’s not on the board.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Crowley replied. “Just need a cup big enough to keep it from sloshing.”

“Six,” Nina repeated, as if testing whether he’d blink.

Crowley didn’t. “Six.”

A slow grin spread across her face. “Finally. A customer who speaks my language.” She reached for a tall ceramic mug without further comment.

Aziraphale, mildly horrified, ordered a cappuccino with a polite please. “You’ll burn a hole in yourself,” he told Crowley once they’d settled at a small table near the window.

“That’s the point,” Crowley said. He leaned back, legs stretched out far enough to almost trip a passing customer, eyes already scanning the place like a predator assessing new terrain. “This is good. Quiet enough, bit of atmosphere. I could get used to this.”

When Nina arrived with the drinks, she set the cappuccino down in front of Aziraphale with a courteous nod, then lowered Crowley’s mug to the table as if unveiling a relic. The liquid inside was so dark it seemed to absorb light.

“God help you,” she said.

“He hasn’t so far,” Crowley replied, lifting the mug in salute before taking a long swallow.

Aziraphale sipped his own drink, finding the foam perfectly dense and the coffee itself rich but not overpowering. “This is rather good,” he admitted. “Though I think I’ll stick to quantities that don’t endanger my heart.”

Crowley’s grin was pure satisfaction. “Your loss. This stuff—this is art.”

They lingered. Crowley, it turned out, had opinions about coffee cultivation that Aziraphale found both unexpectedly detailed and faintly alarming, veering from soil chemistry to fair-trade ethics to a story about an expedition to an Ethiopian coffee forest that ended, inevitably, with Crowley nearly getting arrested for “botanical smuggling.”

“Not smuggling,” Crowley corrected, when Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “Just… borrowing a cutting. For science.”

“Did you return it?”

“Eventually. After I cloned it.” He smirked into his cup.

Nina passed by to clear the table next to them, catching that last bit. “I’m not even gonna ask,” she muttered, but there was a glint in her eye that suggested approval.

By the time they stepped back onto the street, Crowley was already talking about when they’d come back. “Saturday, maybe. I could swing by after the kids’ tour.”

“You intend to make a habit of this?” Aziraphale asked, though he found he didn’t mind the thought.

“Assuming Nina keeps feeding me jet fuel, yeah. You could use it too. Give your blood a little gallop.”

“I’ll stick to my cappuccino, thank you.” But there was warmth in it—more than he meant to let show.

The first evening the herbarium stayed in his shop, Aziraphale stood at the back table long after the front door had been locked and the curtains drawn. The book was not opened yet—not properly—but set in its padded cradle like a guest who had been offered the best chair and politely declined the tea until they’d had a moment to breathe. He had written the intake notes already: title (none printed), presumed owner (H. Devonshire), period (late Victorian), primary contents (dried plant specimens, pressed and glued to laid paper, with handwritten labels in iron-gall ink). The leather on the spine had cracked where it flexed, but not catastrophically. The joints were still holding, albeit grudgingly. Whoever had owned it had been a careful user, but the years had the upper hand now.

He ran a fingertip, very lightly, along the turn-in at the headcap, reading the feel of the leather the way other people read the weather on their skin. Goat, by the grain. The raised bands were shallow, decorative rather than structural, and he made a mental note to match the new leather’s tone not to the faded surface but to the deeper shade at the folds. That would mean mixing two browns and a touch of black into the base dye—work best done in the quiet of an evening, so no one could walk in with a chatty request while his hands were mid-staining.

The pleasure of such thought was its own reward: here was a task both finite and infinite, bounded by the book’s needs and his own standards, yet open to the small refinements that turned competence into care. He fetched the camera and began the first series of photographs—spine, front board, back board, head and tail, fore-edge, the first and last gatherings. The click of the shutter was as precise and ceremonial as turning a key.

Once the photographs were backed up to both his computer and a portable drive, he settled in to write the more detailed condition report. The paper—rag content, mercifully—had cockled slightly under some of the thicker stems, but there was no foxing beyond the usual pale freckling. The labels, in a neat copperplate hand, had bled only minimally from the acidity of the ink. The specimens themselves… he paused over the yarrow, whose little white heads had kept their shape almost impertinently well.

On an impulse, he took a close-up and reached for his phone.

Aziraphale: She says goodnight.

The reply came while he was still putting the lens cap back on.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Looks smug. She’s never going to let the others forget she’s your favourite.

Aziraphale: I’m impartial.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Liar.

Aziraphale smiled to himself and tucked the phone into his waistcoat pocket before he could be tempted into carrying on the exchange. If he was going to get the spine linings lifted tonight, he would need both focus and a steady hand.

The work settled into a rhythm over the week. Each morning, after watering The Importunate Duke (Brian) and turning the sign to Open, he would check the herbarium in its place on the back table, as if to confirm that time had passed as gently as it should. During quiet spells in the shop, he pared thin strips of Japanese paper, toning them with watercolours to match the cream of the guard pages. In the evenings, he worked on the reback: lifting the leather carefully with a lifting knife, cleaning the spine with soft erasers and wheat-starch paste, setting new linings to give the text block its old dignity back. The scent of dampened leather and paste was strangely companionable, an intimacy shared with the air and the ticking clock.

Every so often, he’d take a picture to send to Crowley—not every step, which would feel too much like a report, but the moments where the work revealed something. The shadow of a pressed stem impressed into the opposite page like a ghost. The faint pencil notes hidden under one label, giving the common name alongside the Latin. A tiny seed pod that had slipped from its stem and been caught by the edge of the paper, as if unwilling to leave entirely.

Crowley’s responses varied from botanical enthusiasm to unhelpful irreverence.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): That seed’s been waiting 140 years for someone to notice it. Don’t let it down.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): “Common name: sneaky blighter.” Write it in the margin.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Tell me you’re keeping the ghost stem. That’s better than half the pressed rubbish in the Kew archives.

To which Aziraphale replied, with the firmness of a man not to be swayed in matters of professional ethics, that the ghost stem would be preserved exactly as it was.

By the fifth evening, the reback was finished, the new headbands stitched in place with linen thread, and the spine cloth re-laid under the original leather. He ran his fingertips down the hinge; the boards opened and closed with a slow, even resistance, the way they might have when H. Devonshire had first taken the book in hand. It was satisfying without being ostentatious, which was precisely the point.

That night, he photographed the restored spine under good light, the leather gleaming softly where it had been fed with dressing, the gold lines faint but still legible. The image sat on his phone for a long moment before he sent it.

Aziraphale: She’s herself again.

The reply was slower than usual, but when it came it was a single line that warmed the small space between his ribs and his waistcoat.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Knew she would be, with you.

Aziraphale set the phone down, reached out, and—just for a moment—rested his hand on the closed board of the herbarium, as one might rest a palm on a sleeping creature’s flank. Tomorrow he would begin making the box, and then she could go home. But for tonight, she was here, in his keeping, and the work was done well.

The herbarium, boxed and tied with cream ribbon, sat on the corner of the counter all morning like an honoured guest waiting for a carriage. Aziraphale had finished the drop-spine box the night before, lining it with unbuffered paper so the specimen pages would be cushioned rather than crowded, and had stood for a good ten minutes admiring the fit. He had, for once, allowed himself a card on the inside of the lid—a note of the restoration work, dates, and his initials in a discreet hand—because a book like this deserved its own provenance extended forward.

Now it waited, square and assured, while Aziraphale alternated between serving customers and glancing at the clock.

He had not intended to deliver it in person. Originally, he’d thought to let Crowley collect it when convenient, or perhaps to drop it off at the main reception at Kew with a note. But the idea of handing it over anonymously had felt… wrong. You did not pass something back across a counter after such hours of care without seeing how it sat in its owner’s hands again.

At ten past eleven, before he could think himself out of it, he took his phone from his waistcoat pocket.

Aziraphale: Would this be a good day to return your herbarium? I could bring it by your office, if you’re there.

The response came with gratifying swiftness.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Today works. Come to the Herbarium Building 😉. Seems fitting. Ask for me at reception, they’ll point you in the right direction.

He closed the shop at half-past eleven, posting a small Back at 3 o’clock notice in the window. The box fit neatly into a cloth carrier bag padded with tissue, which let him hold it close without looking as though he were escorting crown jewels through the Underground.

The February sun was watery but kind on the walk from the station through the Gardens. He let himself enjoy the shift from the city’s grey to Kew’s curated green: the subtle change in the air, the neatness that still managed to look organic, the way the gravel paths carried him forward without the jostle of strangers. The Herbarium Building came into view sooner than expected, a tall Victorian in yellow brick, and he paused a moment to take it in before going up the steps.

Inside, the reception desk was manned by a young woman with a stack of accession forms and a look of cheerful efficiency. “Mr Fell?” she asked when he gave his name. “Dr Crowley’s expecting you—through the double doors, second corridor on your left, then third door on the right. He’s in one of the specimen rooms.”

The directions took him into a space where the air felt filtered, kept at a constant coolness. Cabinets rose in pale ranks on either side, and the scent—faint, dry, almost papery—was the olfactory equivalent of a pressed flower’s shadow. Crowley’s office door stood open, a narrow rectangle of light spilling onto the corridor floor.

He was bent over a desk when Aziraphale stepped in, a set of long, slim folders spread out in front of him, sunglasses pushed up into his hair. He looked up quickly, and the grin that broke over his face was—well. Worth the trip.

“Aziraphale,” he said, straightening. “You’ve brought her home.”

“I have,” Aziraphale said, and set the bag gently on the edge of the desk. “Though she’s dressed for travel.”

Crowley reached for the ribbon, then paused. “You do the honours?”

Aziraphale untied it, lifting the lid to reveal the book in its new bed. Crowley leaned in, hands braced on either side, and exhaled low through his teeth. “Bloody hell, angel—” He caught himself, glanced up. “Sorry. Aziraphale. This is—”

“Structural repairs to the spine and hinges,” Aziraphale said, quietly pleased. “New headbands, toning to match the original leather. The leaves are as they were, but I’ve stabilised the mounts. And the box should keep it out of trouble for the next century or so.”

Crowley slid a hand under the front board, opened it slowly, his long fingers careful around the yarrow. “She’s herself again,” he said, the words coming out much like Aziraphale’s own message a few nights ago.

“I thought you might like that,” Aziraphale murmured.

They went through several pages together, Crowley pointing out an unusual glue choice here, a particularly neat label there. Aziraphale found himself enjoying the act of watching Crowley handle the book even more than the showing of his own work—there was a certain grace in the way he turned the pages, unhurried but assured, as though the book and he had an understanding.

When they reached the end, Crowley closed the cover with a sort of reverence. “This is—perfect. More than perfect. You’ve probably added a decade to my career, just with this one save.”

“I should be glad if it gives you joy,” Aziraphale said, meaning it more deeply than perhaps the words suggested.

Crowley’s gaze flicked up to meet his, quick and bright. “It does. And it will. Thanks, Aziraphale.” The name, unshortened, felt deliberate.

“You’re very welcome,” Aziraphale said, and, after a small hesitation, added, “You’ll be careful with her.”

Crowley’s smile tilted. “Promise. And if I’m not, you’ll be the first to know.”

Aziraphale allowed himself a small laugh at that. “You may always bring her back for a check-up.”

“Dangerous offer,” Crowley said, but it sounded like he might take it seriously.

They lingered a little—long enough for Aziraphale to ask about the other folders on the desk, for Crowley to give a brief, wry account of his week, for the sound of the cabinets settling in the cool air to become part of the background. Eventually, though, Crowley glanced at the clock on the wall and grimaced. “They’ll expect me in the meeting room in about three minutes. Unfortunately.”

“I won’t keep you,” Aziraphale said. “Thank you for letting me bring it here.”

“Thank you for making it worth bringing,” Crowley replied, resting a hand briefly on the closed box before moving it to a safer perch behind his desk. “See you soon?”

The question was casual; the look that went with it less so. Aziraphale inclined his head. “I should like that.”

He stepped back into the corridor, the scent of dried plants following him like an afterthought, and walked out into the pale winter light with the distinct, quiet sense that the day had been spent rather well.

The air outside the Herbarium Building had that faintly medicinal coolness particular to places where order is preserved against time: a whisper of old paper, metal drawers, clean glass. Aziraphale descended the steps with the lightness of a man who has handed a thing back to its rightful keeper and been told he has done well. The ribbon he’d retied around the drop-spine box lay folded in his pocket, a souvenir of sorts; he rubbed the satin with his thumb as he crossed the gravel and took the path toward the gate, letting the Gardens conduct him past the measured beds and the polite signage that never raised its voice.

He replayed the scene in Crowley’s office the way one replays a passage of music after the orchestra has fallen silent—the tilt of Crowley’s head when he’d opened the lid, the way his long fingers had braced on the desk either side of the box as if steadying not the book but himself. She’s herself again, Crowley had said, the words quiet enough to be for the herbarium and also, perhaps, for the man who’d mended it. There had been no flourish to it, no theatre; Crowley’s gratitude, when it came, wore the same practical coat as his irritation, and Aziraphale found he liked that very much.

On the train he took a seat by the window and allowed London to reverse-scratch itself past the glass. He studied his reflection the way one studies a stranger in a painting: the bowtie behaving itself, the contented set to his mouth he didn’t try to school away. He thought of the way Crowley had said See you soon? like a statement asking permission to be a question; of the way the room had seemed to sharpen its edges when Crowley looked up and found him. He did not, he decided, need to reroute the world around any of this. But it was… good. It sat well.

Soho received him in its usual comic opera: a taxi laying on its horn like an aria, a courier weaving through a gap that did not exist until the moment he occupied it, a trio of tourists deciding simultaneously to stop dead in the middle of the pavement to consult a map. He threaded it with an ease born of practice and affection and turned into his street where the light fell at exactly the right angle to make his windows look like a painting of a bookshop rather than a bookshop itself. He paused to read the Back at 3 o’clock card taped inside the door—because he liked to be the kind of man who kept his word even to paper—and reached into his pocket for the keys.

“Mr Fell!”

The voice arrived like a summoning trumpet from two doors down. Madame Tracy, wearing a kimono that insisted on being red and a turban that insisted on being sequined, materialised in her doorway with her arms flung wide, as if embracing not only him but the very idea of him existing on a pavement within her remit. The beaded curtain behind her gave a shy clatter as she swept it aside and bore down upon him.

“Back from your botanical intrigues?” she demanded, eyes already kind and nosy in equal measure. “I’ve been waiting ages. Come along, don’t dally; I’ve done your cards.”

Aziraphale froze in the act of selecting the right key—an activity which, under the best of circumstances, demanded a certain amount of ceremony—and regarded her. “You’ve… done… my cards.”

“Yes,” she said, with the firmness of a person presenting a fait accompli to a man who will thank her later. “For you, dear. The spirits have been simply buzzing since last Sunday and then this morning they positively insisted. I said, ‘Wait for Mr Fell; one does not rifle a man’s destiny without his consent,’ but they were adamant. It’s practically a public service.”

He considered—briefly—refusing, on the grounds that destiny had not, in his experience, improved much by being examined. But Madame Tracy’s brand of benevolence was the kind that brooked no sensible argument, and, besides, the day had gone too well to spoil with pedantry. He followed her, the bell above his own door swallowing a small, incredulous laugh as it waved him on toward hers.

Inside, her rooms smelled faintly of incense and furniture polish and peppermint sweets. The front parlour had been arranged into what she would have called a salon and what he, privately, thought of as a theatrical set: a round table with a velvet cloth, a spray of peacock feathers in a vase that had committed to being antique even if it wasn’t, a shelf of books that alternated sincerely between spiritualism and sensible advice about budgeting. Madame Tracy indicated the chair opposite hers with a flourish and, because he was a polite man and because there was no use standing in the doorway like a scolded schoolboy, he set his cloth bag on a side table and took his seat.

“The usual spread?” he asked, as if they were discussing sandwiches. She had done this before and he hadn’t been able to refuse every time, so by now he had a general idea of the process.

“Don’t be obtuse,” she said, twinkling. “You’re having a day, darling. We need a proper look.”

The deck she used had edges worn soft by years of hands and an image on the back that suggested a crescent moon considering its options. She cut the cards with that theatrical gravity he suspected she practiced when no one was watching and dealt them down onto the velvet in a pattern that resolved itself into a cross with a tail. The Celtic Cross, then. He supposed if one was going to rifle a destiny, one might as well do it in a format beloved of enthusiasts and sceptics alike.

“This is you,” she said, turning the central card. The Hermit. She didn’t look at him; she looked at the card, which he appreciated. “Well, that’s not exactly a surprise. Don’t pull a face. It’s not loneliness—it’s… self-chosen solitude. A scholar with a lamp. Very you. Lantern up, feet on a decent path, careful where you put them.”

“I do try to be careful where I put my feet,” he said, and then, because the day had made him reckless, added, “Saves one trampling ferns.”

Madame Tracy flicked her eyes at him—suspicious, delighted. “Ah. Fern business. I’ll come back to that.” She laid the crossing card and turned it: Strength. Not the muscled figure of circus posters, but a woman in a garden closing a lion’s mouth with a hand that was firm and kind. “There. That’s your present difficulty and your present aid. Not force. Gentleness, properly applied. The sort of strength that keeps things from breaking, Mr Fell.”

He looked at the woman’s hand on the lion’s jaw and thought of linen thread, and wheat-starch paste, and saying no to Gabriel with a voice that did not rise. “Go on,” he said, softer than he intended.

She turned the card above—the Crown, what hovers over the matter like a thought one has not yet had the courage to think—and smiled. The Star. A woman pouring water between vessels under a sky studded with hope. “Well, thank goodness. You’re making wishes you wouldn’t have dared last year. You’ve given yourself permission to want something.”

Aziraphale adjusted his cuffs with immense concentration, which is what you do when a woman in sequins says a sensible thing too close to your soft spots. “And below?” he asked, because he might as well be thorough.

“The root,” she said, and turned it. The Hanged Man. A figure suspended upside down, not in distress but in contemplation, halo bright. “Seeing the world from a different angle. Not stuck. Chosen pause. Sacrifice that isn’t martyrdom. You’ve changed your mind about how something ought to be, and you’re letting yourself get used to the new view.”

He thought, with a sharp little jolt, of the moment in Crowley’s office when the question See you soon? had not made him flinch; of the week of photographs sent not as debt but as conversation. “And behind?” he asked, to move the thought away from words.

She turned the card at the left. The Devil—goat-legged, theatrical, chains that weren’t tight enough to hold. He made a small noise, and she shook her head at him, almost fond. “Not sin,” she said, as if correcting a student. “Habit. The old stories you tell yourself when you’re tired. The ones that say you can’t, or shouldn’t, or mustn’t. You know better, but they tidy themselves onto your shelves anyway.”

He smiled despite himself; it stung and soothed in equal measure. “And ahead?”

She turned the card to the right. The Two of Cups. Two people facing one another, each holding a cup, a caduceus rising between them like a quiet promise. She didn’t speak at once, which was another kindness he noted to add to her credit, and when she did it was as if she were setting a cup on a saucer without spilling anything. “Friendship,” she said. “A conversation that becomes a habit. Exchange that is equal and… glad. Doesn’t say where it goes. Just says, this is good and both of you know it.”

He looked at the little winged lion’s head above the caduceus and thought of a sock puppet he pretended to dislike. He did not say anything at all, and Madame Tracy, bless her, let him have the silence.

“Now,” she said briskly, tapping the tail of the cross. “This is what you tell yourself.” She turned the seventh card. The Eight of Swords: a figure blindfolded and bound, surrounded by swords that did not quite close the circle. “Darling heart,” she said, with dramatic pity and just enough mischief to keep him from bristling. “Nobody’s tied you but you. The way out is right there.”

“I’m aware,” he said, prim and ridiculous and trying not to be moved.

“What others see,” she went on, turning the next: Temperance. An angel pouring liquid from one cup to another with infinite patience. “A man who can mix things so they don’t explode. Who can keep different worlds in the same room. Who knows the measure and doesn’t spill.” She gave him a look over the top of the card. “They’re right.”

“Hopes and fears.” She turned the ninth. The Sun. A child on a horse riding out of a wall of sunflowers, flag in hand, everything golden and open and hardly bearable for the joy of it. Aziraphale made a very undignified sound in his throat and pretended it was the chair. Madame Tracy did not pounce. “You’re afraid,” she said, “that if you get happy, you’ll look foolish. And you’re hoping you’ll risk it anyway.”

He had no retort to that worth speaking aloud.

“And the outcome—” She turned the last card with a little flourish she couldn’t help. The Wheel of Fortune. A great wheel with creatures at its quarters, a sphinx perched on top, the letters of fate arranged round. “Change,” she said, with professional satisfaction. “Not catastrophe. Not lottery. The kind where you can feel the floor tilt a little under your feet because the room is becoming a different room. You don’t have to do anything except not jump off.”

He looked at the spread as a whole and was startled by the neatness of it: solitude not as punishment but as choice; strength that wasn’t clenched; hope that didn’t demand applause; habits recognised for what they were; exchange, equal and glad. He had sat through less articulated therapy sessions.

Madame Tracy reached across, not to touch him—she had more sense—but to tap The Hermit with one ringed finger. “You’ll always be this,” she said. “This is not an insult. But perhaps you’ll be a hermit with a front door that sticks less.”

He cleared his throat. “Your suggestions are extremely reasonable this time.”

“My suggestions are the only thing about me that is,” she said, beaming. “Now, tell me about the fern you didn’t trample.”

They had tea, because of course they did; Madame Tracy made it strong and sweet and entirely lacking in the episcopal fussiness he brought to his own kettle. He told her, with edits, about Kew; she listened, with relish; she asked one question about the man with the sunglasses and then, to her credit, asked no more when his answer was the kind that doesn’t invite rummaging. She wrapped two shortbread biscuits in a napkin and pressed them into his hand “for later, when the prophecy wears off,” and when he rose to go she gathered the cards and tucked them back into their worn box with all the reverence of a priest shutting a tabernacle.

On the pavement, the air felt different not because the world had changed but because someone had held up a mirror and he had looked. He crossed back to his own door, removed the Back at 3 card from the glass, turned the sign to Open, and stepped into the particular hush that always met him like a dog that refuses to make a fuss of its owner but cannot help wagging its tail.

He checked the sunflower, which had edged taller again and seemed to be practising its bow before the big performance. He took a photograph—pure habit, perfect excuse—and then didn’t send it, not immediately. He put the phone down and went to the back, where the cradle that had held the herbarium now sat empty with the clean melancholy of a chair after a guest has risen and gone. He smoothed the pad with his palm and, because the day had been long in the good way, allowed himself three seconds of standing very still and smiling at nothing anyone else could see.

When the bell over the door chimed and the first customer of the afternoon came in—a man in a coat that had once been expensive and was now admirable—Aziraphale looked up with his ordinary welcome and felt the room align itself around the shape of his life: books and tea and a front door that stuck a little less than it used to. The cards were only cards. The day was only a day. But somewhere in the Gardens was a man taking a book out of a box and turning pages with careful hands, and somewhere nearer was a woman in a red kimono who had told him the obvious in a way that made it feel like news.

He sold the man a slim volume of essays, wrapped it with brown paper and string because that was how he liked things to look when they left him, and, when the door chimed again, he picked up his phone and sent the sunflower anyway.

Aziraphale: The Duke rehearses.

The reply arrived so quickly it might have been waiting for permission.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Tell him opening night’s soon. Also tell his manager I saw a book today that remembered itself, and it was very handsome.

He slid the phone into his pocket and, because a hermit with a door is still allowed to keep certain items at the ready, took a red pen from the pot on the counter and set it point-up in case a sermon came due.

Chapter Text

Crowley remembered the exact moment the little shift happened. It wasn’t a grand declaration—no champagne cork of epiphany, no orchestral swell—it was Aziraphale leaning just slightly closer across a desk stacked with seed-catalogue reprints and foxed monographs, saying, with a formality that had been entirely unnecessary, “Aziraphale. My given name.”

It had been half-offered, half-challenged, as if Crowley might fumble it or waste it. He hadn’t. The name had settled into his head like a rare plant finding a perfect bit of soil—something that would take root whether he fussed over it or not. He’d taken his time replying, not because he needed to think, but because he wanted to land it right. “Crowley,” he’d said back, the way you place a card face-up on a table so the other person can see you’re not holding anything behind it. And then, in the same breath, the suggestion of a Tuesday morning tour—private, quiet, away from the gaggles of weekend visitors who inevitably knocked over cones and tried to feed chocolate buttons to the koi.

When Aziraphale agreed—almost too quickly—Crowley had felt that small jolt of satisfaction you get when a hunch proves itself.

That was weeks ago now. He’d kept the number exactly as Aziraphale had typed it into his phone—no nickname, no half-affectionate butchery of syllables. Aziraphale was what it said, and Aziraphale was what he used. The man had enough people in his life, Crowley suspected, who made him smaller by abbreviation. Crowley had no interest in joining their ranks.

At first, the texts had been purely botanical. Updates on a sunflower—The Importunate Duke (Brian), though the ‘Brian’ seemed to be used in emergencies only—were sent with the regularity of weather reports. Crowley had found himself, to his own faint alarm, looking forward to those little photos: a green stem gaining inches, a bud knitting itself tighter, leaves angling toward the sun as if they’d been coached. He sent back his own bits—outrage from the book Aziraphale had restored for him (“this author thinks nettles and lilies are second cousins, I nearly wrote HOW DARE in the margin”), photographs of some particularly belligerent ferns, and the occasional half-serious poll for naming the Titan arum in the tropical house (“Option 3: Stinky Pete is leading and I’m appalled”).

There were lulls, of course. Aziraphale would go a day or two without replying and Crowley would tell himself he wasn’t keeping track—then find himself vaguely irritated to discover he had been. And then there’d be a reply, or a photograph, or a line so dry it practically left rings in the paper, and the circuit would complete again.

It hadn’t all been typed banter. There’d been the afternoon Crowley had decided, entirely without warning, to turn up at the bookshop with takeaway curry, claiming an extended lunch break as if he were the sort of man who believed in lunch breaks at all. The look on Aziraphale’s face when he’d walked in—part surprise, part relief—had made him glad he’d ignored the dozen reasons not to bother. They’d eaten among the stacks, Crowley stretched out like a cat in the too-small chair opposite the counter, Aziraphale fussing over whether the chutney was too spicy.

And there’d been the auction. Crowley wasn’t exactly a stranger to such places, but going with Aziraphale had been… different. The man knew his way around a lot, kept his paddle in check until exactly the right moment, and managed to make whispered botanical in-jokes in the middle of bidding without getting them both thrown out. When the herbarium was his, Crowley had felt an odd flare of pride—as though Aziraphale’s approval of the win somehow confirmed it had been worth it.

Then the restoration offer—unexpected, but so in character that Crowley had agreed before he’d properly thought through what it meant. The herbarium had gone into Aziraphale’s care, and over the next fortnight Crowley received photographs of its progress: stitching realigned, pages cleaned, colours coaxed back to visibility without erasing their age. Each image arrived with a small commentary—precise, quietly pleased—and Crowley found himself checking for them like you check the weather before leaving the house.

When Aziraphale had come by to bring it to him, he’d been ready to make some throwaway comment about its condition, but the work had been… beautiful. Not overdone, not showy, just restored to what it had meant to be. He’d thanked Aziraphale as straightforwardly as he could—no point drowning a man in sentiment he’d only try to politely fend off—and when they’d stood there a moment longer than was strictly necessary, Crowley had let himself say, “See you soon?” The upward lilt at the end hadn’t been intentional, but he hadn’t regretted it either.

That had been this morning. Now, slouched in the battered chair in his office with the herbarium safely back in its place, Crowley let the day play itself back. The feel of the linen gloves as he’d turned a page. The way Aziraphale had said “Of course” when Crowley asked if he could drop it off in person, like it had never been in question. The faintly self-satisfied little crease at the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth when Crowley noticed some particularly fiddly repair.

He’d known plenty of people who demanded your time and attention by sheer volume, by making themselves impossible to ignore. Aziraphale was different. He took up space the way plants did—rooted, unhurried, not asking permission but not shoving anyone else out, either. It made Crowley want to check in, not out of obligation, but because he was curious what that space looked like on a Tuesday, or a Sunday afternoon, or when the shop was closed and the rest of the street was quiet.

The phone was on the desk beside him, screen black, but he could still see the last message.

Aziraphale Fell: The Duke rehearses.

Crowley had typed back without thinking—Tell him opening night’s soon. Also tell his manager I saw a book today that remembered itself, and it was very handsome—and then, because it felt too on the nose, he’d put the phone face-down and gone to make himself coffee. Strong, as usual, though lately it seemed to lack the bite of Nina’s six-shot specials from that ludicrously named café on Aziraphale’s street.

It was ridiculous, how quickly that place had become part of the routine. First visit had been on Aziraphale’s suggestion—Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death, delivered with the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he already knew Crowley would approve. Now, Crowley couldn’t walk past without stopping in for a hit strong enough to make him forget he was meant to be a functioning adult for the rest of the day. Nina never batted an eye at the order; she just pulled the shots with a kind of resigned admiration.

He leaned back, boots braced against the desk, eyes on the ceiling. He wasn’t about to start assigning meanings to all this. He liked the man’s company, the man liked his. They shared plants and books and coffee and the occasional merciless pun. That was enough.

Probably.

The phone lit up. Not Aziraphale this time—Metatron, with some tedious meeting request—but it was enough to make Crowley pick it up, check anyway, just in case. No new message from the bookshop. Fine. He didn’t need one.

He was already wondering, though, what the Duke’s next progress report would look like.

Crowley should have known she’d sniff it out.
Anathema had the unnerving ability to detect changes in a person’s internal weather, the way other people sensed incoming rain. And once she’d clocked a shift, she’d circle it like a hawk waiting for the right moment to dive.

He’d been sitting in the break room at Kew, leaning back in his chair and pretending to read the latest batch of volunteer reports—half of which were unreadable scrawls about hedge trimming—when she slid into the seat opposite him. No hello, no preamble. Just an assessing glance over the rim of her mug.

“You’ve been smiling at your phone,” she said, tone light but precise. “Not once. Not twice. Consistently.”

Crowley didn’t look up from the papers. “Ever consider you’re imagining things?”

“Sure,” she said, sipping her tea. “And maybe the Titan arum will start smelling like fresh-baked cookies. But I’m betting on the other thing.”

He shuffled the reports into a new stack, making a point of not rising to the bait. “I smile at my phone all the time.”

“Uh-huh. Usually it’s when you’ve found a typo in a press release you can forward to Metatron with the subject line FIX THIS.” She leaned forward, chin in her palm. “This isn’t that smile.”

Crowley flicked his gaze up for half a second. She’d already gone full observational mode—the look she got when identifying a plant specimen from twenty metres away in a windstorm.

Anathema grinned. “So. Who’s Aziraphale?”

The pen in Crowley’s hand stilled. He didn’t ask how she knew the name. That would’ve been as good as a confession. Instead, he tossed the pen onto the table. “You been going through my phone now?”

“Nope.” She stirred her tea, slow and deliberate. “You left it face-up on your desk last week when I came in to ask about the tree fern shipment. Lit up with a message from someone named Aziraphale. I only saw the name. Didn’t even read the text. Which, considering my curiosity levels, is frankly heroic.”

Crowley forced a shrug. “He’s a bookshop owner. Antiquarian stuff.”

Anathema’s eyebrows lifted just enough to say go on.

“I bought a book,” Crowley added, as if that explained anything. “He restored it for me. We talk about plants sometimes. That’s it.”

“That’s it,” she repeated, smiling like someone humouring a child insisting they didn’t eat the last biscuit when there were crumbs all over their shirt. “And how often do you ‘talk about plants sometimes’? Wait… it’s Book Guy isn’t it? The one from the lecture?”

Crowley got up, took his mug to the counter, and started rinsing it as if it needed urgent sterilisation. “I’m not answering that. And it depends. He sends me updates on this sunflower he’s growing. I send him pictures of whatever’s misbehaving in the glasshouses. Educational exchange.”

“Uh-huh. And you just… turn up at his shop with lunch sometimes?”

He shot her a look over his shoulder. “You been keeping a log?”

“No,” she said cheerfully. “But Bev saw you heading in there with takeaway and reported back.”

Crowley groaned. “You’re all bloody spies.”

“Botanists,” Anathema corrected. “We notice things.” She tilted her head. “So what’s he like?”

The worst thing was that Crowley could feel the answer ready to slip out—bookish, stubborn, funny in a way that didn’t beg for approval—and had to catch it before it got loose. “He’s… fine. Knows his stuff. Likes Latin names. Doesn’t murder plants.”

Anathema’s eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. “And he’s got you in his contacts under something ridiculous like ‘Crowley – Kew Gardens’?”

Crowley froze mid-motion. “…How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what I’d put you under if I wanted to make sure I never accidentally forgot who you were,” she said, looking far too pleased with herself. “So you’re on name-basis, lunch-basis, rare-book-basis…” She counted on her fingers. “And restoration-basis, since he worked on your herbarium.”

“It’s a professional relationship,” Crowley said, which even to his own ears sounded like the weakest lie in the arboretum.

Anathema just sipped her tea again, the picture of unconvinced ease. “Sure. You’re professionally texting him about the Duke’s leaf count at nine at night.”

Crowley opened his mouth, closed it again, and settled for leaning on the counter with a scowl. “You’ve got a real talent for being annoying, you know that?”

“Part of my charm,” she said. Then, more gently, “He’s good for you. I haven’t seen you this… not-grumpy in months.”

“I’m always grumpy,” Crowley muttered.

“Not like this.” She set her mug down with a quiet clink. “Look, I’m not saying anything needs to happen. But maybe don’t overthink it, yeah? Sometimes a person shows up in your life and makes it better, and you don’t have to ruin it by panicking about why.”

He gave her a flat look. “That your fortune-cookie wisdom for the day?”

She smiled. “Consider it my professional advice. Now, are you coming to the propagation shed or are you going to sit here pretending those volunteer reports matter?”

Crowley glanced at the stack on the table and made a face. “Propagation shed.”

They headed out together, Anathema humming to herself like a woman who’d just confirmed a theory. Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets, long strides carrying him toward the greenhouse doors, and told himself that she was wrong. Entirely wrong.

Probably.

But later, when his phone lit up with Aziraphale: The Duke has turned imperious today, he caught himself grinning before he even read the rest of the message. And Anathema, across the room labelling seedlings, didn’t have to say a word.

He didn’t plan it. That was the point, and he repeated it to himself with the steady conviction of a man rehearsing a truth into shape. Anathema had done her hawk-eyed hovering and her gentle, smug little speech in the break room—don’t overthink it; some people make your day better; stop panicking about why—and Crowley had rolled his eyes, told her she was insufferable, then stood up as if propelled by an external force and said something about needing air. Which was true. He needed air. He needed coffee. He needed something that tasted like decision without having to be one.

The path out of the Herbarium Building was muscle memory by now: stairs, corridor, the door that needed a firm hip, gravel underfoot, the slant of light across the beds. He did not cut toward the staff canteen; he told himself he didn’t fancy the thin taste of their espresso pretending to be adulthood. He didn’t turn into the Orangery for their careful, polite cappuccinos either. He went for the gate, for the train, for the quick line that spat him out into central London with the impatience he required.

All the way in, he kept up the conversation with himself. It was noonish; he could be anywhere. There were a dozen places in the city that could peel paint off his bones with a shot, and he’d tried most of them. But there was one place that understood him, and it happened to be on a certain street in Soho. Streets were allowed to contain multiple things: coffee and bookshops, coincidence and a man with a bowtie who used his given name like a key. He wasn’t going for the man. He was going for Nina’s machine and the way she treated caffeine like a sacrament with jokes.

He walked the last two blocks with the self-conscious care of someone performing casualness. The sign for Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death did its usual theatrical glitter in matte gold. The bell over the door chimed once. Air met him—steam and citrus and roasted sugars, with a faint undertone of whatever incense the adjoining shop preferred when it felt dramatic.

Nina clocked him before he finished crossing the room, which was one of the shop’s gifts: you never had to announce yourself. “Six?” she said, already reaching for the tall mug because whatever else he was, Crowley was not a man who varied the distance between himself and the abyss.

“Saint,” he said, leaning on the counter. “Maybe dangerous saint.”

“I’m a barista,” she said, tamping the first shot with professional disdain. “We do subtle martyrdom.” She flicked him a look. “You look like you’re pretending you didn’t sprint here.”

“I sauntered briskly,” he said, and watched the crema bloom, one after another, each pull stacking into the next until the mug looked like something a sensible person would call a mistake and he would call a starting point.

Nina slid the mug toward him with both hands like a casket and said, “Do not die on my premises; I’m not in the mood to do paperwork.”

“Not today,” he said, taking a mouthful so strong it felt briefly like the top of his head opened and let a weather front through. The world snapped into a cleaner focus; the low fuzz in his bones receded. “I’ll die somewhere less charming. Do me a favour, though.”

“I’m listening.”

“Cappuccino to go. Properly hot. No chocolate on top. No powdered nonsense. Good foam.”

Nina’s mouth tilted. “For the bowtie librarian?”

“He’s a bookseller,” Crowley said reflexively, and then caught his own tone and didn’t bother to fix it. “Yes. For him.”

She worked the milk with a concentration that made him feel briefly, absurdly, reassured about the state of humanity. “Tell him to come pay me for his drink sometime,” she said over the hiss of steam. “Or better yet, tell him to bring me a ghost book. I want to meet a ghost book.”

“You and him would get on,” Crowley said. “You both bully objects into being their best selves.”

“Therapy with foam,” she said, and handed over a cup that was, annoyingly, perfect: heat without scald, a dome of micro foam like velvet, the surface plain and unadorned as requested. “Go commit your coincidence.”

He left a tip that implied he was either grateful, guilty, or both, and stepped back into the street with the two cups—his hulking sin black as midnight and the more civilized white lid that felt, for reasons he did not examine, like carrying a small promise that needed both hands. He did not hurry. Hurrying would be an admission. He calibrated his stride to the rhythm of the pavement and only allowed himself to glance up at the bookshop’s windows twice before he reached the door.

The bell over Fell’s door was less a bell than a polite throat-clearing. It announced him in a tone that suggested it would report back if he misbehaved. The air inside was cool and familiar—polish and paper and the clean dust that only exists in rooms where dust is respected. The counter stood at its usual angle to the world; the front table was arranged in that way that made chaos look like it had been asked kindly to sit down and behave. Behind the counter, Aziraphale looked up too quickly for the meeting to be coincidence, which was another gift: he wanted it to be him, and it was.

“Hello,” Crowley said, and held up the white-lidded cup like proof he was not here to rob the place. “I was in the area.”

“Were you,” Aziraphale said, and the bow in his voice was not a question. His eyes dropped to the cup, the way one looks at a piece of good post one hadn’t ordered but hoped might arrive, and then up again with something that managed to be both grateful and composed. “Is that…?”

“Cappuccino,” Crowley said. “Properly hot. No nonsense.”

“You are a scholar and a gentleman,” Aziraphale said, taking it as if it might decide to run off if not held with both hands. He sipped, and the small sound he made—approval, relief, a tiny yes to the day—lodged itself in Crowley’s ribs and did something disreputable there. “And Nina is an artist.”

“She sends her regards,” Crowley said, leaning on the counter, trying not to look like a man presenting spoils. “Also a request for a ghost book.”

“She shall have one,” Aziraphale said. “Something with marginalia that looks like a haunting but is, in fact, a very earnest vicar.” He took another sip and closed his eyes briefly the way people do when they allow themselves to be pleased without apologising for it. “What a coincidence, you being in the area.”

“London’s small,” Crowley said, deadpan. “You can find a six-shot espresso anywhere if you know where to look.” In reality, Nina was the only barista reckless enough to serve him that much caffeine at once, but the exaggeration amused him.

“Anywhere?” Aziraphale arched an eyebrow. “And yet you appear in my street for it.”

They let the silliness settle like dust. Crowley glanced toward the back table by reflex and caught, with a quick stab of something he decided was not melancholy, the empty cradle where the herbarium had slept. The space had the honest vacancy of a work completed. He liked that. He liked that Aziraphale’s room remembered the work without needing to parade it.

“How’s the Duke?” he asked, defaulting to the reliable topic because reliable topics kept a person from tripping over their own shoelaces.

“Practising imperiousness,” Aziraphale said, eyes sliding to the windowsill where the sunflower had indeed added height and a certain self-importance. “He has grown another inch since yesterday. I intend to tell him that good manners are better than inches.”

“Good luck,” Crowley said. “Sunflowers are aristocrats. You can’t educate them; you can only manage the scandal.”

Aziraphale laughed lightly—the real thing, the kind that didn’t look around to see if laughter was allowed—and took another sip. “I was just about to post the afternoon letter,” he said, gesturing with his chin to a stack of envelopes on the counter. “But I suppose that can wait three minutes.”

“I’ll hold you to the three,” Crowley said, and then let himself look around as if the room had changed while he was away, which it never had and always had. The front table had rotated toward spring: nature writing with covers that pretended they weren’t advertising, a nineteenth-century pamphlet on the perils of damp boarding schools that looked like it wanted to confess more than it had space to print. The case by the door had acquired a new resident—something botanical, luridly illustrated, the sort of thing whose author would have tried to terrify children into loving plants.

Aziraphale followed his gaze with the intuition of a shopkeeper who knows which corners catch which eyes. “Ah,” he said, almost sheepish and entirely pleased. “That’s the one I told you about. The botanical first edition I rescued from a man who wanted to frame the plates and throw away the text.”

“Monster,” Crowley said automatically, already crossing to the case because he was doomed by his own taste. He bent to read the title and barked a laugh sharp enough to startle an invisible mouse. “‘Monsters of the Garden and Their Morals.’ That is a threat and an invitation.”

“It’s very dramatic,” Aziraphale confessed. “But the woodcuts have a certain… brio.”

Crowley opened the case because the universe had finally granted him that small power in this place. The book was thinner than its title deserved, bound in a green that pretended not to be failing, the woodcuts exactly the sort of nonsense he craved: plants with mouths where mouths ought not to be, vines behaving like serpents, a poor child depicted menaced by a pumpkin like a politician’s promise. He turned a page with two fingers, held the book at arm’s length, then close, then sideways, then laughed again.

“Buy it,” Aziraphale said, lightly, from the counter. There was a tone underneath—go on, this is for you—that Crowley pretended not to hear because hearing it would be more dangerous than he was prepared to be in a shop at noon.

“I should leave it for someone with worse judgement,” he said, and then: “Wrap it. I’ll take it.” There was no point pretending. He had already imagined where it would live, how he would show it to Anathema and make her groan, how he would prop it open on his desk to a woodcut so overexcited it would amuse him during meetings that tried to sand his edges down.

Aziraphale’s hands went to the brown paper and string with that small economy of motion that made even wrapping look like an ethics class. “Shall I put it on your account?”

“You have an account for me?”

“I’m a modern establishment,” Aziraphale said dryly, tying a knot that would make a sailor cry. “I have a pen and a notebook. You are currently in the section labelled ‘Men who buy books that shouldn’t be left alone with children.’”

“Accurate,” Crowley said. “Put Nina down for a coffee credit while you’re at it. She’s chosen to prolong my life and deserves payment.”

“I shall,” Aziraphale said, and slipped the neat parcel across the counter with a little push that always felt more intimate than it should, like being handed a secret rather than a thing.

The shop door opened behind Crowley and a draught of street came in with a woman and a little boy who stared at the sunflower as if it might talk. Aziraphale melted into his public voice without losing his private one, greeting them with the warm, distant courtesy that left most people feeling attended to and none feeling invited to confess. Crowley stepped aside, took another mouthful of his black lunacy, and watched the small transaction of a book being found its home—the ordinary miracle performed so often here that the room had learned to keep a respectful silence for it.

When the bell chimed again and the customers left with a slim volume about birds and a promise to return, Aziraphale glanced at the clock and at the envelopes, then at Crowley’s emptying mug. “Do you have to go back,” he asked, “or can you be waylaid into walking to the post with me?”

“I don’t have to go back to anything except a meeting I intend to disappoint,” Crowley said. “I’ll walk.”

They didn’t hurry. The envelopes went into the post box with the satisfying metal throat-click that made posting feel like a ritual rather than an errand. Crowley kept his stride half a measure longer than Aziraphale’s without pulling, learned long ago how to match pace without announcing the fact. The cappuccino was finished; the empty cup crushed small and binned; the six-shot a steady furnace he could bank the rest of the day against. They spoke nonsense about pavement etiquette and the best route for avoiding a particular street performer who insisted upon involving passersby in their act, and it was exactly the sort of talk that admits everything by admitting nothing at all.

On the corner, where the light changed with theatrical slowness, Crowley looked sidelong at him and said, “Anathema thinks I’m smiling at my phone too much.”

“She is a perceptive woman,” Aziraphale said, not taking the bait and somehow feeding him a better one.

“Don’t start,” Crowley warned. “You’ll get ideas about being responsible for it.”

“I have ideas,” Aziraphale said, almost prim, “about being responsible for very little that you choose to do.”

“Good,” Crowley said. He felt, briefly, like a plant being rotated an imperceptible fraction toward better light.

They turned back toward the shop, the street a familiar stave they could read without consulting the notes. At the door, Crowley shifted the parcel in his hands and, because he hadn’t planned to say anything else and leaving without saying anything else suddenly felt like wasting a day, said, “I was in the area. That was true. It will probably be true again.”

Aziraphale’s bowtie sat absolutely straight. “What a small city,” he said, and his smile was the sort that did not need to be large to be understood as acceptance.

Crowley stepped backward, two steps, the way he always did in this doorway as if testing whether the room would let him out. It did, but not without the tug he had come to expect. “Tell the Duke to behave,” he said. “Tell him opening night’s soon and the critics are merciless.”

“I shall give him your notes,” Aziraphale said. “Shall I tell him about Monsters of the Garden?”

“Tell him to take notes,” Crowley said, and caught his reflection ghosted in the glass next to Aziraphale’s: two men, two cups, the day holding still long enough to see both at once. “See you,” he added, and let the street take him before he had to decide which word should have come after.

He didn’t look back. That would have made it a plan. He walked toward the tube with the parcel tucked under his arm and the taste of very good coffee under his tongue and the specific, electrified calm that follows having done exactly what you told yourself you were not doing. In the reflection of a shop window, he saw the tilt of his own mouth and thought—annoyed, resigned, content—that Anathema would take one look and crow victory. He would deny it. He would deny it until it turned into something that didn’t require denial.

On the platform, he took out his phone and didn’t open the messages. He didn’t need to. He put the device back in his pocket, felt it like a warm coin, and stepped into the carriage when it came, long stride, shoulders loose, the city carrying him in the direction he insisted was random and which, today, corresponded exactly to where he wanted to be.

Crowley had been deep in the half-light of the Palm House, elbows on the bench beside a tray of seedlings, when the phone buzzed. Normally, he’d ignore it—nothing urgent came through midmorning except meeting reminders from Metatron or spam from companies convinced he needed a new energy supplier—but the contact name on the screen made him glance twice.

Aziraphale Fell: Bad day. Not much for talking. Hope you don’t mind a message instead.

Crowley frowned, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He didn’t get a lot of that from Aziraphale—half the time the man typed as though drafting a letter, complete sentences and the kind of punctuation that made people think twice before replying with “ok.” But the tone here was stripped down, pared to the bone. No ornaments. Which was exactly why Crowley wasn’t going to let it slide past without answering.

Crowley: Texting is still talking. What happened?

The reply took a few minutes, long enough for him to move the seedling tray into better light, check the moisture level, and lean against the bench in the green warmth.

Aziraphale Fell: Nothing in particular. One of those days. Everything feels… loud.

Crowley knew that one. He’d heard it before, in different words. Muriel had called it “all the dials being up too high” on days like that. They’d retreat to their room in those years when they still lived together, curl up in a chair with a blanket, reading the same page over and over without absorbing a single word. It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to realise it wasn’t about drama, or sulking, or needing to be coaxed out of it—it was about surviving the static until it faded.

He typed back.

Crowley: Loud how? Crowds? Work? Weather?

Aziraphale Fell: Yes.

Crowley’s mouth tilted. He could hear the bone-dry delivery in his head.

Crowley: Alright. Loud = everything. You want distraction or quiet company?

Aziraphale Fell: Distraction, please.

That at least was something Crowley could work with. He cast around for something absurd, something that would hold Aziraphale’s attention without asking anything of him.

Crowley: Right. Distraction: a group of schoolkids on the tour today tried to name all the carnivorous plants. Someone suggested “Bitey” and “Mouthy,” which I expected, but one girl wanted to name a sundew “Gerald.” Said it looked like a Gerald. No idea what that means.

Aziraphale Fell: Gerald. I can see that. Reliable, slightly sticky.

Crowley laughed out loud, earning a raised eyebrow from a passing colleague. He thumbed another message.

Crowley: You’ve got a type for plants?

Aziraphale Fell: I suppose I might. The Importunate Duke is hardly without personality.

Crowley: You’re going to start bringing him to lectures at this rate.

Aziraphale Fell: Don’t tempt me. He’d enjoy the Latin names.

The rhythm of the exchange settled into something easy. Crowley could feel the tension in Aziraphale’s first message loosening with each reply—short bursts of wryness replacing that flat, heavy tone. It was the same with Muriel; you couldn’t drag them out of the fog, but you could leave enough lights along the path that they’d find their own way back. The trick was to let them set the pace. No prodding. No “cheer up.”

He thought about that for a moment, leaning against the bench with the phone warm in his palm. Back when Muriel first told him about their anxiety—really told him, not the surface version—he’d been useless. Thought it was a matter of problem-solving, like replacing a dead plant: identify the cause, fix it, done. It had taken years, and a few harsh conversations, to understand that it wasn’t about “fixing” at all. It was about making space. Letting the other person know they could exist without performing.

He didn’t know exactly what Aziraphale’s “one of those days” looked like from the inside, but he had a fair guess at the outline. And if he was right, the best thing he could do was to keep being a steady point in the static.

Crowley: Right. Homework for you: pick a name for Gerald’s cousin, the Venus flytrap in glasshouse four.

Aziraphale Fell: I shall give it thought. It’s a great responsibility.

Crowley: Naturally. You name it, I’ll make the sign.

Aziraphale Fell: You wouldn’t.

Crowley: Try me.

He could picture Aziraphale in his shop, shoulders easing a little, mouth twitching over the phone. It was stupid, how much that image could lift his own mood.

By the time their conversation wound down, Aziraphale’s replies had lengthened, the dryness softening into something closer to his usual voice. Crowley pocketed the phone, checked the clock, and went back to the seedlings with the comfortable sense that he’d been useful—not in a loud, heroic way, but in the quiet kind that mattered more.

Muriel had once told him that on the bad days, the people who didn’t try to change you were the ones who helped the most. He’d remembered it ever since.

If Aziraphale ever needed the same thing, Crowley intended to be one of those people.

Crowley had meant to spend the morning in the Temperate House, cataloguing a batch of specimens that had been sitting in the cold room for two weeks, but instead he found himself pacing his office with his phone in hand. The seedlings he’d repotted yesterday sat in neat rows on the windowsill, dew still on their leaves from the early watering. He glanced at them, then at the clock, then back at his phone.

Muriel would be on shift this week, but they tended to get a long break around midmorning. He didn’t call them often—neither of them were the chatty-for-the-sake-of-it type—but when he did, it was never about nothing.

He thumbed through to their contact—Muriel (Do Not Delete)—and pressed call. The line rang twice before their voice came on, warm and alert.

“Crowley? You alright?”

“Yeah,” he said, dragging the word out like it weighed more than it should. “Figured I’d catch you on your tea break.”

There was a rustle on the other end, and the sound of footsteps. “On my way to it now. You’re in luck.”

He heard the door open wherever they were, the background noise shift to a quieter room. A chair creaked. “So. What’s up?”

Crowley leaned back against his desk, the wood cool through his shirt. “Met someone.”

A short pause, then the bright note in their voice sharpened with interest. “Met someone as in… met someone?”

“Not like that,” Crowley said quickly, then grimaced at his own defensiveness. “Well. Maybe a bit like that. Not exactly.”

Muriel laughed softly. “You’re always precise until you’re not. Start from the beginning.”

So he did. He told them about the Saturday kids’ tour, about the unexpected appearance of one Aziraphale Fell, bowtie and all, looking for a quiet, adult lecture and ending up with googly-eyed root puppets and sunflower seeds. About how Aziraphale had taken it in stride—more than in stride, really—treating the whole thing like an unexpected challenge rather than a mistake.

Muriel hummed at the right moments, letting him spool the story out in his own time. He moved on to the talk under the Tree of Life project, the questions Aziraphale had asked—questions that showed he’d actually been listening, that he’d seen more than the surface of the presentation. And then, in a quieter tone, Crowley told them about the text from yesterday.

“One of those days,” Muriel said immediately, no need for elaboration. “That was the phrase?”

“More or less. Said everything felt loud.”

He could hear them take a thoughtful sip of tea before they spoke again. “And you didn’t call him. You kept it to messages.”

“That’s what he wanted,” Crowley said. “Didn’t want to talk. Just… to say it, I guess. And to get a reply.”

“That’s good,” Muriel said simply. “It means he trusts you enough to let you see the bad days without dressing them up. That’s not nothing.”

Crowley glanced at the seedlings again, the way their small green faces turned to the light without fuss. “Yeah. He… he doesn’t make a fuss about it. Doesn’t want to—” He stopped. “I don’t know. Doesn’t want to be a burden, I think.”

“Mm,” Muriel said, their agreement a soft exhale. “You’ve got that tone. The one you had when you first started figuring out what helped with me. Only this time, you’ve skipped the bit where you try to fix it all in one go.”

Crowley gave a reluctant smile. “Learned my lesson.”

“I should hope so,” they said, but it was fond. “You were hopeless in the beginning. You’d show up with three-point action plans and tell me we’d have it sorted in a week.”

“And you’d tell me to sod off.”

“Exactly.” He could hear the smile in their voice. “But now you’re just… there. That’s the bit people remember.”

Crowley shifted his weight against the desk, tracing the grain of the wood with one fingertip. “It’s easy enough with him. Just feels… natural, I guess. Talking. Or not talking. Whichever it is that day.”

Muriel didn’t answer right away, and when they did, their tone was lighter, but edged with something keen. “You like him.”

Crowley made a noncommittal noise.

“Not just like-like,” Muriel went on, clearly enjoying themselves. “You sound invested. You’ve got that careful way of speaking, like if you say too much you’ll spook yourself.”

“Don’t analyse me,” Crowley said, but without heat.

Muriel laughed, low and pleased. “Too late. You’ve already told me enough.” They took another sip. “He’s different from most of your lot, isn’t he? Quieter.”

“Quieter’s not the right word,” Crowley said slowly. “He’s got plenty to say. Just… doesn’t waste words. When he talks, it’s because it matters.”

“That’s a good sign,” Muriel said. “Means you’ll actually listen to each other.” They hesitated, then added, “Do you want this to go somewhere?”

Crowley stared at the far wall, at the framed print of a fern leaf he’d hung there years ago and never moved. “Haven’t decided. Feels a bit out of my league.”

Muriel snorted. “That’s not for you to decide. It’s for him. And from what you’ve told me, he’s been saying yes—small yeses, but yeses all the same.”

Crowley thought about that. The questions at the lecture. The way Aziraphale had agreed to exchange numbers. The book restoration. The lunch. Yesterday’s message. Each one a choice.

“You’re reading too much into it,” he said, but he knew Muriel wasn’t.

“Maybe,” they said easily. “Or maybe I just know you. And I know you don’t talk about people like this unless they matter.”

He let the silence stretch, not quite ready to answer. On the other end, Muriel didn’t push.

Finally, he said, “Anyway. Just thought you’d want to hear about him.”

“I do,” Muriel said warmly. “And I want updates. Even if it’s just about the plant names you two are apparently trading like secrets.”

Crowley’s mouth tugged upward. “You’d like him.”

“I already do,” Muriel replied. “Now go on, get back to your plants. And don’t overthink it. If he’s worth your time, he’ll let you know.”

When the call ended, Crowley stood for a moment, phone still in his hand, the faint echo of their voice lingering. He set it down, crossed to the window, and adjusted the seedlings by an inch so they’d catch the sun more directly.

Some things grew better without forcing them. He’d learned that with Muriel. Maybe he’d learn it again.

Chapter Text

The afternoon had been quiet in the shop, the kind of quiet that made the ticking of the clock seem almost impertinent. Outside, Soho wore the sort of late-day light that made even the pavements look genteel, sun catching in the tops of café windows and turning the air to honey. Aziraphale had just finished adjusting the display of Edwardian travelogues — they insisted on slipping forward if the table was nudged — when the bell over the door gave a small, deliberate chime.

He glanced up, expecting a customer with a bag of paperbacks to trade in. Instead, Crowley stepped inside, all dark lines and long strides, sunglasses still on despite the golden spill of the day.

“Afternoon,” Crowley said, voice carrying that casual drawl that was never quite as casual as it pretended.

Aziraphale blinked, recovering more slowly than he would have liked. “Good afternoon. This is… unexpected.”

Crowley’s mouth tipped into something that might have been a smirk if it weren’t softened by the faintest curve of warmth. “London’s small. And I was in the neighbourhood.”

Aziraphale arched a brow. “Were you now?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, glancing around the shop as if confirming nothing had shifted since his last visit. “Thought I’d stop in, see how you were. And maybe—” He hesitated, just enough for Aziraphale to notice. “Maybe see if you fancied dinner. Tonight.”

The suggestion landed somewhere between surprise and relief in Aziraphale’s chest. “Dinner?” he echoed, his tone more measured than his pulse.

“Yeah.” Crowley leaned one elbow on the counter, tilting his head. “I’ve got a place in mind. Good food. Not too noisy.” He said it with a kind of careful emphasis, as if he’d thought about what Aziraphale might tolerate and what might send him retreating.

Aziraphale considered him for a moment, the invitation ringing in his mind. “That would be… very pleasant,” he said at last, and meant it.

Crowley’s grin, brief but genuine, was its own reward. “Great. I’ll swing back round when you close.”

They might have left it there — two adults agreeing to dinner like it was the most ordinary thing in the world — but Crowley didn’t leave. Instead, he straightened, wandered toward the shelves, and began running a long finger along the spines of the gardening section.

“Business been steady?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Steady enough,” Aziraphale replied, joining him among the shelves. “And you? Still wrangling the public into caring about your plant monsters?”

Crowley huffed a laugh. “Something like that. Been doing a lot of the outreach myself lately. Not my favourite part of the job, but… people seem to get something out of it.”

There was a pause, then Crowley said, with a casualness that didn’t quite disguise the care behind it, “You know, I’ve got a younger sibling. Muriel.”

Aziraphale tilted his head. “Ah. You’ve not mentioned them before.”

“Didn’t figure it’d come up,” Crowley said, shrugging. “They’re a few years younger. Live up north. Work as a constable.” He paused, then added, “Good at it, too. Smart. Steady. Bit… different, mind you. Neurodivergent, they’d tell you themselves. Had a rough patch when they were younger — anxiety, big time. But they’ve got it handled now. Therapy, all that.”

The last part was said without the faintest trace of stigma, as if he were naming an everyday tool one might keep in a well-stocked drawer.

Aziraphale nodded slowly. “They sound… admirable.”

“They are,” Crowley agreed. “We talk now and then. I was telling them about you, actually.”

That startled a laugh out of Aziraphale before he could help himself. “About me?”

Crowley’s mouth twisted into something almost sheepish. “Don’t look so surprised. Just… how you came to the kids’ tour. The sunflower. The book. Muriel’s good at… reading people. Thought they might have some insight.”

“And did they?”

“Yeah.” Crowley’s gaze flicked to his, the line of his mouth softening. “Said I should stop overthinking and spend more time with you. So. Here I am.”

Aziraphale felt his face warm — not with embarrassment, but with the unexpected weight of being chosen. “Well,” he said, in what he hoped was a suitably even tone, “Muriel has excellent judgement.”

Crowley chuckled, the sound low and pleased. “I’ll tell them you said so.”

They drifted back toward the counter, conversation looping easily through small updates — the weather’s effect on Kew’s glasshouses, a shipment of rare poetry volumes Aziraphale had been expecting, a mildly absurd news article about a prize-winning marrow. Crowley leaned against the end of the counter, sunglasses now hooked into his shirt collar, and for a moment it felt as though the whole shop were leaning toward that quiet, unhurried space between them.

When Crowley finally glanced at the clock, it was with a reluctant air. “Right. I’ll leave you to it for now. Back at closing?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll be ready.”

Crowley gave him one last look — that assessing, sidelong sort of glance that seemed to take in more than Aziraphale could quite identify — and then he was gone, the bell over the door marking his exit.

The shop felt different after, not emptier but… charged, somehow. Aziraphale smoothed the counter absently, the faintest smile tugging at his mouth. Dinner, then. And perhaps, over a good meal, he might learn more about the man who had decided to stop overthinking and simply walk through his door.

Aziraphale spent the rest of the afternoon in a curious state of anticipation. It was not like preparing for a formal event — no engraved invitation, no fixed seating plan — but he found himself moving through the motions as though there were. He told himself it was only polite to present himself well, yet there was a care to his choices that felt… indulgent.

By the time he locked the shop’s door, the evening sun was laying gold on the rooftops. He lingered in the flat above for a moment, the familiar scent of paper and wood polish wrapping around him, before turning to his wardrobe.

Not too formal, he told himself, fingers running along rows of waistcoats. But not careless, either. He pulled out a soft dove-grey jacket with a faint herringbone pattern, pairing it with a pale blue shirt. The bowtie came next — green silk, subtle enough to keep from shouting, yet with a sheen that caught the light. It was one of his favourites, and he fastened it with the practiced ease of long habit. A small leaf-shaped pin, the silver catching the lamplight, went at his lapel. He hesitated over that last touch, then left it in place.

He checked himself in the mirror — not searching for flaw so much as reassurance. His hair was cooperative, his shoes polished. There was, in his reflection, a man who might be going to meet a friend. Or… something more.

That was where the uncertainty began to gnaw. Dinner could be simply dinner. Crowley could mean nothing beyond a shared meal and conversation. Aziraphale did not know how to test the waters without risking the whole. His mind, ever helpful in such matters, began to supply possible missteps: a remark too warm, a glance held too long, a subject ventured that would make Crowley retreat behind those sunglasses of his.

He sat down in the armchair for a moment, hands folded, breathing carefully. This was ridiculous. They had shared countless conversations already — some light, some unexpectedly earnest — and yet the simple shift of meeting for a meal in the evening, without an agenda, felt like walking a rope between rooftops.

The sharp rap of knuckles on the shop’s downstairs door startled him from his thoughts. He checked his watch; Crowley was, of course, exactly on time.

When he opened the door, Crowley was leaning against the frame, sunglasses on despite the fading light, black shirt open at the throat. “You look…” He tilted his head, one corner of his mouth curling. “Presentable.”

“And you’ve come as yourself,” Aziraphale replied, pleased that his tone landed somewhere between teasing and warm.

They set off toward the restaurant Crowley had mentioned — a small place tucked away on a side street, its windows glowing with the promise of candlelight and low conversation. The air held the last traces of the day’s warmth, and the easy rhythm of their steps kept the silence between remarks comfortable.

Inside, the place was all dark wood and soft lamplight, the murmur of other diners folded into the clink of cutlery and the muted strains of music from a tucked-away speaker. They were seated in a corner booth, the sort of spot that felt tucked out of time.

Crowley ordered wine without hesitation, handing the menu over to Aziraphale with a raised brow. “Tell me what’s good.”

“It’s your choice of venue,” Aziraphale said, scanning the offerings. “But… perhaps the lamb? And they seem to have an admirable selection of seasonal vegetables.”

Crowley agreed easily, and the conversation flowed as the wine arrived — small talk about the week, a digression into the peculiarities of auction etiquette, a tangent on the subject of botanical illustration that had Crowley describing with exaggerated horror the artistic liberties of 18th-century engravers.

For a while, Aziraphale let himself simply enjoy it. The food arrived, fragrant and tender, the wine rich without being heavy. Crowley’s voice was low and dry, his hands restless in gesture when he became particularly invested in a point. Aziraphale found himself watching those hands — the long fingers, the deft turns of the wrist — before realising what he was doing and looking quickly back to his plate.

It was pleasant, dangerously so. That warm undercurrent kept tugging at him, the idea that this could be more than it appeared. But the moment he began to imagine what “more” might entail, his mind leapt ahead to every possible point of failure. If he hoped, he risked being wrong. If he was wrong…

He must have gone too quiet, because Crowley’s gaze sharpened. “Alright, angel?”

The endearment, casual as it was, caught him off guard. “Perfectly fine,” he said, though it sounded thin even to him.

Crowley tilted his head. “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The spiral. You get this look like you’re rehearsing twenty ways something could go wrong. What is it?”

Aziraphale blinked at him. It was disconcerting, being read so plainly, and yet there was no mockery in Crowley’s tone — only a kind of steady attention. “I was merely… thinking.”

“Uh-huh,” Crowley said, unconvinced. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice dropping. “Look, whatever’s going on in there—” he tapped the side of his head lightly “—you can shelve it for later. No judgement, but you’re here, with me, eating very decent lamb, and the wine’s good. That’s all you’ve got to worry about right now.”

It was absurd how quickly the words steadied him. He let out a slow breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “You make it sound simple.”

“It is simple,” Crowley said, and the corner of his mouth curved just enough to take the sting from it.

Aziraphale found himself smiling in return. “Very well. I shall do my best to remain in the moment.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

The rest of the meal passed in that renewed ease — more laughter, more small tangents that wound themselves into larger conversations. By the time they were lingering over coffee, Aziraphale was surprised at how light he felt, as though some invisible weight had been quietly set down between the wine and the dessert.

When they stepped back out into the night, the city’s glow seemed gentler, the air brisk but not biting. They walked together as far as the shop, and when Crowley paused at the door, there was a moment — brief, but enough for possibility to breathe — before he said, “Thanks for coming out.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” Aziraphale replied, meaning every word.

Crowley gave a faint, satisfied nod, and then he was gone into the dark, his long stride carrying him quickly out of sight.

Aziraphale lingered in the doorway a moment longer, the warmth of the evening still in him. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was room to hope.

The morning after their dinner, the shop looked the same and did not feel the same. Light fell in at the same angle; the clock ticked with its usual officiousness; the bell over the door cleared its throat as the post arrived. Yet something in the air had shifted by an imperceptible degree, as if the building had been turned half a degree toward the sun and everything had warmed by a temperature too small to register on a dial and impossible to miss all the same. Aziraphale set the kettle on and stood a moment with his hands braced on the counter, allowing the quiet to tell him what he already knew: it had been good. The evening had been easy where evenings so often were not, and whatever little panic had risen in him halfway through the main course had been seen, named, and sent to stand in the corridor without fuss. He had not slept badly.

The Importunate Duke (Brian) had grown again. This was not a surprise—sunflowers are nothing if not diligent—but the bud at the crown had taken on a new geometry of intent, a tighter spiral, the sort of promise that makes even a sensible man anticipate. Aziraphale angled the pot a fraction and tried not to read omens in plants; he had seen what happened in the nineteenth century when gentlemen did. He watered, checked the soil, placed the pot back on its blue-and-white saucer, and—because habit was a satisfaction as well as a safeguard—took a photograph.

He did not send it. Not yet. It seemed vulgar to begin a day with expectation. Instead he put the kettle off the boil, poured the water over tea leaves that had never wronged him, and let the morning open like a well-thumbed book: notes to write, invoices to file, the small pile of cloth for a reback to consider before the lunch appointment he had almost forgotten—Mr. Hargreaves and the misbound Dickens. Life, with its agreeable trivialities.

Only—as the day settled on its tracks—his thoughts kept slipping the harness and trotting quietly back to last night. The window table; the candlelight that had been flattering without pretending to be otherwise; the lamb, which had been as promised; the wine, which had left his head untroubled; Crowley’s voice, low and amused; the interruption in the middle where his mind had tried to take him by the elbow and usher him into a corridor of catastrophes, and Crowley had simply said, shelve it for later. No instruction to smile more, to be easy; just the permission to let now be now. It was nothing, and it was everything, and thinking of it made Aziraphale’s chest do that unfamiliar, not unpleasant ache that had nothing of indigestion in it.

Customers threaded the day in their usual, mercifully predictable way. A young woman in a coat too large for her bought a slim volume of Rilke, apologised for not having enough cash, and wrote her card details in a neat hand that suggested she had been taught to do things neatly whether she wished to or not. A man who smelt of new paint and determination argued gently and without rancour about the price of a first edition he did not need. The post brought an invitation to a small dealers’ fair in Bloomsbury on Saturday afternoon—the sort of event Aziraphale attended as much for the conversation as for the stock—and an email from a local church announcing a lunchtime organ recital on Thursday. Bach, mostly. The email was polite and unfussy, the kind sent out by people who assume you already love the thing and who will not take offence if you cannot attend.

He ate lunch at the counter like a man reading between paragraphs and, to his own surprise, found that the idea of the recital tugged at him. He had paused at those free midday things for years when the weather and his own mood permitted; it was a reminder that music did not always require evening clothes and hush. He could go on Thursday. He could go alone and be content. Or—he could ask.

The thought arrived like a visitor who has opened the garden gate without rattling the latch. He did not seize it. He let it loiter in the front garden while he finished his sandwich, while he fetched a roll of string from the back and tied up a small bundle of pamphlets Maggie had left on the joint table with a note asking if he would “please make them look respectable,” which he did because he liked her and because there are few joys like rendering an unruly sheaf into a stack that sits.

By three, he had stopped pretending the thought would leave of its own accord. He picked up his phone.

Aziraphale: The Duke continues his tyrannical ascent.

He attached the photograph he had taken that morning. It went at once, a small flag raised without ceremony. The reply came quickly enough to suggest the phone had been near.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): He’s rehearsing for a scandal. Keep him humble.

Then, a beat later.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): How’s the rest of you?

The rest of me. The phrasing did something kind.

Aziraphale: Steady. A civilized day. Thank you for last night. It was helpful.

He had paused at the last word, not because he didn’t know the word but because he did.

There was a longer pause. He pictured Crowley somewhere between glass and leaf, reading that, adjusting his mouth into one of those small almost-smiles he kept as a private resource.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Good. We can do more “helpful.”

Then, as if he had remembered something.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): If you need noise-cancelling for the wild world, Nina offered to weaponize decaf for you.

He laughed, which was a fine thing to do in an empty shop with no one to ask why. He drafted a reply about decaf being an affront to nature and did not send it. Instead his thumb hovered; the recital rang its little bell again. He typed, deleted, typed again.

Aziraphale: Do you like organ music? I mean—there’s a lunchtime recital at St Anne’s on Thursday. Bach, mostly. Quiet. Not a performance-performance. I sometimes go. You would be very welcome to join me, if the day allows.

He stared at the baldness of it. He had deleted that last sentence, rewrote it multiple times.

He put the phone down and stepped away as one steps away from a parcel that may or may not contain something that changes a day. He dusted the top shelf because there is nothing so effective a solvent for anticipation as honest dust, and he served Mr. Hargreaves, who arrived with his Dickens and a story about a chap in Holborn who had sold him a bill of goods and was now to be avoided at all costs, and he did not look at the phone until the world could not accuse him of hanging on it.

 Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Bach at lunchtime sounds like a bribe from a civilised god. Yes. Thursday works. Tell me what time I’m being made respectable.

Respectable. He smiled at the counter.

Aziraphale: One o’clock. I shall be in the back pew pretending not to be early.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): I’ll find you. Bring the Duke if he promises not to heckle.

He carried that yes through the rest of the afternoon like a coin in his pocket, not pressing on it, simply warmed by the knowledge of its weight. That evening he ironed the cuffs of a shirt because he would have done so anyway and not because of anything. On Wednesday he found that he was less irritable with the world than it deserved; he let a man tell him a great deal about the provenance of a book he did not buy and found himself genuinely interested all the same. Wednesday night he slept and dreamt nothing of consequence, which was a luxury.

Thursday arrived with a sky that had remembered how to be blue without showing off. He closed the shop at twenty to one with a sign that said Back by 2:15 and only hoped that Providence and the postman would read. St Anne’s had the sort of interior that made one feel watched only by the wood: clean lines, a brightness that did not scold, a sense of proportion that soothed. There were perhaps thirty people dotted through the pews—office workers with takeaway cups, two elderly women with expressions of polite determination, a man in running gear who looked faintly bewildered to find himself here and stayed anyway. The organist, a small figure with excellent posture, arranged music on the stand and did not fidget.

Aziraphale took a place near the back as promised. It was not a matter of shyness so much as acoustics; the sound gathered differently in the rear of the nave, and he liked to let it come to him like weather. He sat, smoothed his trousers, folded his hands, and did not look at the door every ten seconds. After the third not-looking, the door opened, and Crowley slid in beside him as if the entire world were a pew into which he had every right to settle. The sunglasses went into the shirt placket; the long body found an angle that achieved the neat trick of both not touching Aziraphale and acknowledging his presence absolutely.

“Made it,” he breathed, just above a whisper. “Ran from a meeting and lied about why, so this had better be transcendent.”

“It will be sufficient,” Aziraphale whispered back, and then the organ began and there was nothing to say.

Bach can do a great many things to a person if one lets him; on a Thursday at one he is perhaps at his best in the business of washing the inside of a skull. The first chorale prelude moved through the air with that sober joy particular to the man—no glitter, just the revelation that mathematics can be tender. It was not transcendent; it did not need to be. It was clean. It was thorough. It made a case for the possibility of order without cruelty. Aziraphale sat with his hands folded and let the sound find the corners of him that had gathered dust. Beside him, Crowley’s breathing evened into the sort of attention that is not performance. At a cadence that felt like a hand closing around the handle of a well-made drawer, he saw Crowley tilt his head and close his eyes, not to be seen but because it helped him listen.

Between pieces the small shufflings happened—someone coughed, someone took a sip; the organist turned a page with the minute ceremony of paper. The next movement began, and the light shifted an inch on the floor, and Aziraphale’s thoughts—which had been very good, for once, about staying where they were put—slid sideways into hope. It was not the violent kind that makes a person foolish; it was a mild, practical hope, like the hope that a well-glued hinge will not split under an honest weight. He thought of dinners that might happen without the need to call them anything. He thought of Sundays in which two people read in the same room and do not apologise for quiet. He thought of the Duke, preposterous and inevitable, and of Crowley saying he’d find him, and of being found.

At the end, the last chord hung up in the air, considered staying, and then departed like a polite guest. The organist stood, nodded, and was absorbed by the instrument. Crowley breathed out a word under his breath that was probably not meant for churches and then smiled because he knew it and did not apologise.

“Transcendent enough?” Aziraphale murmured.

“Fair,” Crowley said. “Very fair.” He looked at him then, properly, and there was that same attention he gave to plants and to books that required mending—the sort that is interested in the thing itself, not in what can be extracted. “Thank you.”

They walked out together with the little crowd, the world becoming the world again at the threshold: phones were consulted, bags adjusted, lives resumed. Outside, the air was bright and busy. Crowley squinted at it as if it were an insect he recognised and tolerated.

“Lunch?” he said—easily, like it had been part of the plan.

“I ought to open the shop,” Aziraphale said, the honesty of duty doing battle with the possibility of a continued hour. “But I could be prevailed upon to detour if the café is on my way.”

“It’s on your way.” Crowley looked undeservedly innocent. “Nina will have opinions if you keep depriving her of your patronage.”

They went. Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death obliged them with two seats and the sort of noise that sits flatteringly under conversation. Nina saluted Crowley’s order with an expression that implied complicity in a crime; she delivered Aziraphale’s cappuccino with the sort of gravitas reserved for medicine that will not cure you but will make you believe you might improve.

“Muriel approved of this,” Crowley said, when they had settled, as if picking up a thread he’d left in Aziraphale’s pocket. “Me sneaking out for Bach. They like it when I do normal human things.”

“You are not so very abnormal,” Aziraphale said, which made Crowley laugh and look—absurdly—pleased. He told a story then, a small one, about Muriel stopping a traffic argument by producing blister plasters from their pocket like a conjurer and the argument dissolving under the suspicion that the world might contain kindness by accident. He spoke about them the way one speaks about a person who has been difficult to understand and who has decided, by degrees, to teach you how to do it if you will only stop thinking you know better.

“And you?” Crowley said, not abruptly, not awkwardly—just drawing the line back to him without tugging it. “Do you feel like you’ve been restored to your usual tolerances since last week’s interference from the brother?”

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale said, taking a careful sip. “He has not called since. He will. He considers it his duty. But I feel—” he surprised himself “—less concerned about what he will make of my week than I did about last week’s. That is progress.”

Crowley’s smile was quick and fell on him like a small, deserved sunlight. “Progress counts.”

They did not make a meal of lunch; there was no time. They took it like medicine, like the recital: enough to sustain, not enough to induce sleep. At the door, he would have left it there—a good hour laid down in the ledger—but Crowley, who had been advised by his sibling not to overthink and seemed experimentally inclined to obey, glanced at the watch he did not wear and said, “Sunday there’s a tiny fair in Bloomsbury, isn’t there? I saw it in the members newsletter. You lot and your electronic pamphlets. I could tag along and carry things. If you wanted.”

Aziraphale’s yes felt both enormous and perfectly to scale. “I should like that.”

“Good.” Crowley took a step backward, as he always did—a habit Aziraphale had not yet decided was theatrical or self-protective; perhaps both. “Text me the time and the place. I’ll pretend I’m there accidentally.”

He returned to the shop with a cappuccino-shaped contentment and found, to his mild surprise, that the Back by 2:15 sign had been obeyed by the universe, which is not usual and ought to be rewarded. He turned the sign to Open, checked that the Duke had not attempted to emancipate himself, and went to the back to note, in small, neat letters, the date and the programme of the recital on a card he tucked into a book—because some days ought to be remembered in ways one can stumble upon later.

He sent the details for Sunday and, because he was feeling irresponsible in a way no one else would detect. He added another picture of Brian.

Aziraphale: The Duke will be offended if you do not compliment him when you arrive.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): I will make a formal address from the windowsill. Wear a bowtie so he recognises his manager.

He did not need to hope in the frantic way that had cramped him in other years. He did not interrogate the future like a hostile witness. He put the kettle on and straightened the top shelf and allowed Thursday to be Thursday, suffused from within by the fact that when he had asked a man to join him in the middle of the day to hear an instrument do what it does best, the man had come, and there had been neither crisis nor triumph—only music, and coffee, and a plan for Sunday that sat on the calendar like a neat dot of ink.

Towards closing, the door opened to a regular with a request so obscure it warmed him, and he found, when he answered, that he was kinder than he needed to be. He wrote himself a note—paper, never phone—about the Bloomsbury fair’s lot numbers to investigate, and another about picking up biscuits for Maggie because she had been trying not to say she was worried about a bill, and he could not forgive a world that made a good woman worry about little things when large kindnesses were so cheap to perform.

He turned the sign to Closed at six with that pleasant fatigue that feels like a balance reached rather than a debt incurred. Upstairs, he stood in the dark of his sitting room for a moment, letting the last of the city’s light make patterns on the ceiling. He thought of the pew, of the moment the chord had hung and decided to go, of the neatness with which the organist had nodded as if to say, you see, it can be done this way too, without spectacle.

Downstairs, the Duke stood in his pot like a small, ridiculous monument. “You and me,” Aziraphale told him, turning the pot a fraction, “we shall take this at our own pace.” The plant, showing remarkable discipline, did nothing at all, and in doing nothing, accomplished precisely what it should.

Sunday put a sheen on London that always made Aziraphale feel as if the city had been dusted and set out for company. The pavements were rinsed of their weekday hurry; the air held a promise that didn’t need to be specified. He had closed the shop with a neat card—At the Urban Nature & Heritage Fair, back by 4. Ring if dire—and taken the Tube with a canvas bag on his shoulder containing the sorts of things he brought to events by instinct: cloths for wrapping, a pencil case, a small bottle of hand cream, a roll of string, throat lozenges. He had offered to help when Crowley mentioned the fair, half-expecting a polite refusal; instead Crowley had said, “Yes, please,” with a frankness that warmed him for a day and a half thereafter.

Russell Square was already wide awake when he arrived. Marquees stood like white pages around the edges of the grass, their banners crisp in the mild breeze: local conservation groups, a museum with a travelling case of curiosities, a stall selling improbable honeys, a children’s table with a sign that read Bug Hotel Architects Wanted. The Kew banner found its corner as naturally as if the square had sprouted it: deep green with the logo in clean letters, two trestle tables laid out with careful disorder. A case held a row of herbarium sheets in clear sleeves; next to it sat a tray of magnifiers, a dissecting microscope with a eyepiece that would prompt a hundred “oohs,” and several pots of living examples—ferns, a shy mimosa, an obliging sundew—each labelled in a hand Aziraphale recognised as Crowley’s: neat, uncompromising, faintly amused. On the second table, a paper printed Match the Seed to Its Plant with bowls of acorns, conkers, sycamore samaras, and a little dish of absurdly tiny orchid seeds like dust made sentient. At the end, a small easel with a placard: Ask us about the Tree of Life.

Crowley, in a black shirt with a lanyard threaded round his throat like a concession to bureaucracy, was adjusting the microscope’s focus with the sort of concentration he gave to any machine he intended to coax into being reasonable. He glanced up as Aziraphale approached, and the quick change in his mouth—focused to glad—was precisely the sort of welcome Aziraphale found himself hoping for and then pretending not to have hoped for at all.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, straightening. “Excellent. You look like someone who brought string.”

“I always bring string,” Aziraphale said, setting his bag discreetly behind the table. “Where would you like me?”

Anathema appeared as if conjured by the question, a clipboard under one arm, her hair pinned up with brisk efficiency. “First rule,” she said, handing him a volunteer badge without preamble. “Don’t let anyone feed crisps to the sundew. Second rule: magnifiers go out, magnifiers come back. Third rule: if anyone asks if we can identify a mystery cutting from their aunt’s garden, smile and say, ‘We’ll have a go.’ Do not promise success. Welcome aboard.”

“Good morning to you too,” Aziraphale said, pinning the badge to his lapel. “I shall endeavour not to ruin our specimens with salt.”

Anathema’s grin flickered, swift and approving. “Knew you’d be useful.” She jerked her chin toward the display case. “You’re on herbarium duty with me. Crowley’s on crowd control and demonstrations, because the children like people who look like they might set something on fire.”

“True,” Crowley said, without shame, and gave the mimosa a fond look as though recruiting it as accomplice. “Doors open in five. Last chance to run.”

“I shall stay,” Aziraphale said, comfortable in the mild bustle of prelude. He took a quick inventory with his eye—pens, sign-up sheet for tours and newsletters, hand gel—and allowed himself a brief, private satisfaction at how well the Kew team understood their public: enough activity to touch, enough beauty to look at, enough words to reward the curious.

When the first wave came, it came like a tide, not a flood: families making a slow fulcrum around the tables, couples drawn by the clean glamour of the herbarium sheets, solitary enthusiasts who knew exactly what the microscope could show them. Aziraphale discovered, with a pleased flick of surprise, how naturally his particular talents translated. He had spent years guiding people through fragile objects; he knew how to stand to one side so the thing itself held centre stage; he knew how to say “carefully” in a tone that produced careful hands rather than stiff ones.

“May I?” a girl of about nine asked, magnifier poised over a chestnut leaf.

“You may,” Aziraphale said, and because he could not stop himself he added, “Try looking from farther away first, and then bring it closer. Sometimes one sees better with patience.”

She followed the instruction as if it were a game that delighted her. “Oh!” she said, the word the same shape in every language, and looked up to share it. He shared it back, of course.

At the other end of the table, Anathema narrated the herbarium sheets with that rapid, deft cadence that made people feel caught up and clever. “See the label?” she said to a man who had confessed he liked the handwriting. “That’s iron-gall ink. We’re careful with it, because it can eat the paper over time. This one’s behaved. Lovely balance, don’t you think?” She glanced at Aziraphale to pass the point like a ball.

“Exquisite,” he said, leaning in. “And the collector had a neat hand, which helps. Look at the way the stem has been placed so the eye travels up to the flower. They were not only collecting; they were composing.”

“Like a score,” Anathema said, amused, and the man nodded as if this made perfect sense.

Crowley took the role that suited him best: moving, beckoning, making little theatres of attention. He crouched to meet a child’s eye-line without making a meal of it, said “want to see a plant that moves when you touch it?” as if offering a secret handshake, flicked the mimosa with a knuckle so the leaves collapsed and the child did a small, speechless dance with delight. He coaxed a teenager who was pretending not to care into trying the microscope and watched the boy’s posture change when the stomata came into view, those tiny mouths from which plants do their ceaseless exchange. He spoke Latin the way some people speak dialect—lovingly, lightly, with the ability to make it sound like a living language rather than a password. Every so often his gaze would slide along the table to find Aziraphale, and Aziraphale would feel the neat click of something being checked and found in place.

By eleven, the sun had warmed the canvas of the marquee; a breeze moved the edges so the light wavered on the herbarium glazing like water. Aziraphale handed magnifiers out and received them back with a small word of thanks that made their return feel like contribution rather than confiscation. He caught a pair trying to pocket one—students, sheepish when intercepted—and retrieved it with such grave courtesy that they blushed and signed up for the newsletter out of what he suspected was a need to atone.

In a lull that lasted perhaps a minute and a half, Anathema leaned her hip against the table and appraised him with satisfaction. “Takes to it like a duck,” she said.

“I enjoy people when they are interested in a thing,” Aziraphale said. “It saves one from having to be interesting oneself.”

“That,” Anathema said, “is a thesis.” She straightened as a woman approached with a shoebox and the apologetic expression of someone about to complicate things. “Ah. Mystery cuttings. Mr Fell?”

The shoebox held three small plants wrapped in damp kitchen paper and hope. “My aunt died,” the woman said, in a rush that had been held very still for quite a while. “These were on her windowsill. No labels. I’m trying not to kill them.”

“We’ll have a look,” Aziraphale said, with his best restoration voice—the one for damaged spines and cracked marbled paper and people who brought you things because they believed you would be kind, not because they believed in miracles. He unwrapped the first parcel as if revealing a delicate bookplate. “Tradescantia,” he said, pleased by the memory surfacing on cue. “Spiderwort. It forgives almost anything. Light, a drink, and it will tell you what it prefers by how it leans.” The second was a jade plant; the third a leggy geranium with a scent that turned the air briefly into a late afternoon in some unassuming year. Anathema supplied watering schedules in bullet points; Crowley, drawn by the faint crisis the way certain birds are drawn to bright objects, added a joke about writing a will if anyone suggested misting the jade, which made the woman laugh in a way that had relief threaded through it. She left with notes on a paper Anathema had magicked from her clipboard, and Aziraphale experienced that small, absurd sense of having actually helped, the way one does when a stranger trusts you with something helpless and you do not fail it.

“Lunch,” Crowley said in his ear, not interrupting the next visitor so much as sliding his voice into the small seam between interactions. “There’s an empanada stall that won’t make you regret being alive. I’ll get them. You keep being a pillar of society.”

Aziraphale began to protest that he had brought sandwiches but found he didn’t mean it. “Spinach and cheese,” he said, almost prim, and Crowley grinned and vanished as if the fair had grown a trapdoor just for him.

The midday surge arrived right on cue: prams, dogs on leads, the curious army of people who can find a fair by scent. Aziraphale did not stop moving for twenty minutes; he could not have said later which faces he saw, only that he passed magnifiers and caught them again, that he heard himself explain the mimicry of orchid pollination three times with increasing animation, that he showed two different children how to make a spore print with a fern and sent them away with paper and excitement in equal measure. He thought of the shop with a kind of sideways affection: the privacy there; the hum here. It was good to flex a different muscle, to be part of a chorus rather than a solo.

Crowley returned as the press eased, thrusting a napkin-wrapped parcel into his hand that smelt like all the times he had been suddenly happy for no reason he could defend. “Anathema,” Crowley said, passing her a second one without taking his eyes off Aziraphale, “yours is the one that looks like it could fight you. Mine is the one with crimes in it.” He tore into his own and revealed beef and something redolent of cumin. “Eat. Hydrate. Pretend the public are migrating birds and it will all be fine.”

They stood at the back of the stall with their shoulders nearly touching, eating with the concentration of people who have chosen to take pleasure seriously. The fair moved on around them: announcements over a small speaker, a child crying briefly and then not, the subdued triumph of a collector in the next stall who had found a vanished railway poster. Anathema was squinting at her phone, a look that boded either mischief or a plan. “You two are very good,” she said, not looking up. “It’s irritating.” She said it with affection; she meant you work.

“We’re competent,” Crowley said.

“You’re a double act,” she said. “Crowley makes them laugh and you make them stay. If Metatron had sense, he’d pay both of you for today.” She tucked the phone away. “Alas.”

“Alas,” Crowley echoed, with such minimalist loathing that Aziraphale couldn’t help a small huff against his napkin.

The afternoon unfurled in smaller waves. A retired teacher who had brought his own magnifier produced it from an ancient case with a solemnity Aziraphale honoured by asking where he had got it (Leeds, 1972, a shop that smelt of paraffin and wonder). A teenager asked, in the voice of someone testing the temperature of an idea before deciding whether to step in, what one had to study to do this for a living. Crowley answered it seriously and without salesmanship, which is to say convincingly. A woman in running kit came back from her lap of the square and confessed she had been thinking about the stomata for fifteen minutes and wasn’t sure if that made her ridiculous or a scientist. “Why not both,” Anathema said, and the woman laughed and took a newsletter.

At three, the light shifted; the fair began that gentle subsiding that meant the day had decided to slope downward. Anathema began to gather the flyers; Crowley counted magnifiers with the economy of a man who had lost count once and resolved never to do it again; Aziraphale wiped the microscope stage with the same unhurried reverence he used on a bench in his shop when a book had just been mended and set to rest. The herbarium sheets went back into their case, one by one, each sleeve slid in as though returning a bird to its roost.

“Good crowd,” Anathema said, signing something with a flourish on her clipboard. “Minimal fools; maximum curiosity. That’s all I ask on a Sunday.”

“Your standards are high,” Crowley said.

“My standards are adequate,” she replied, grinning. “You two coming for a post-fair drink with the crew? We’re going to the pub with the terrible carpet and the magnificent crisps.”

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale without making the glance obvious to anyone else. It did not feel like pressure; it felt like a small, shared question. Aziraphale took stock of himself with the fair’s honesty: pleasantly tired, not overtaxed, cleanly satisfied. “One,” he said. “I must get back to the shop. But I could be prevailed upon.”

“Dangerous words,” Anathema said, delighted. “Come on then, before the pub runs out of chairs.”

They loaded the last of the equipment into the van Kew had borrowed for the day. Crowley coaxed the mimosa into a secure corner with a conspirator’s care; Aziraphale closed the latch on the herbarium case with a click that satisfied some ancestral part of his brain that believed in bolts against the night. The walk to the pub was a short procession of tired happy faces under a sky that had decided to stay fair. Inside, the carpet was indeed regrettable; the crisps were indeed magnificent. Anathema held court with practitioners from other stalls in a way that made Aziraphale think of a conductor folding new instruments into a familiar orchestra; Crowley leant against the end of the table in a posture that said present, not trapped; Aziraphale discovered that half a pint of something respectable could be precisely the right dose of celebration.

At the door, when leaving felt like the right kind of discipline, Crowley fell into step beside him as if that were the most natural conclusion to a day in which they had learned each other’s rhythms under strain and found them compatible. “You were good,” he said—not bluff, not magnanimous, simply stating a fact he believed.

“I enjoyed it,” Aziraphale said, adjusting the canvas strap on his shoulder. “There’s something agreeable about lending one’s attention to a thing that deserves it and having others match you for an hour.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, softly. “That.”

They paused at the square’s edge. The fair was nearly dismantled; the grass showed pale scars where the tents had stood, the sort of marks that would be gone by morning. It pleased Aziraphale to think of the square remembering that it had held an afternoon of curiosity and not being any worse for it.

“Thank you,” Crowley said, as if the day had been a gift he was not quite used to receiving. “For showing up.”

“You asked,” Aziraphale said, which was, he realised, a very great part of why he had come.

Crowley’s mouth tilted. “I’ll do it again.”

“Do,” Aziraphale said, and stood there a second longer so the word could be heard as invitation and not merely permission.

They parted at the road, each taking the direction that returned them to their separate domains. On the Tube, Aziraphale found his mind replaying the small efficiencies of the day—the way Crowley’s hand had moved the magnifier bowl an inch nearer when a child reached, the way Anathema had caught a question mid-flight and turned it into an answer without breaking stride, the way his own voice had settled into a register that neither scolded nor cajoled. He arrived at the shop with that particular fatigue that feels like a good book weighed in both hands: not exhaustion, but a fullness that asks for tea.

Inside, the air recognised him and adjusted. He put the canvas bag down, checked that The Importunate Duke (Brian) had not attempted a coup, wrote in his small ledger Sunday: fair. Useful. People kind. Mimosas do not require crisps, and allowed himself one absurd minute of standing still and smiling at nothing. Then he set the kettle on and sent a message without ceremony.

Aziraphale: Home. Thank you for trusting me with your crowd. The mimosa looked smug.

Then he turned toward the back table in case, by some mercy of the world, Monday consented to let him attach a new spine to a book that deserved it.

Chapter Text

The sign on the bookshop door looked almost tentative: Closed today (Tuesday). Open as usual tomorrow. The card stock was new; the ink hadn’t yet learnt the shop’s weather. Aziraphale stood on the pavement a moment after taping it up, feeling faintly conspiratorial. He had closed once before on a Tuesday—an experiment, not a policy—and the sky had not fallen. This would be the second time. He told himself he would not make a habit of it. He told himself he might.

The July heat lay across Soho like a warmed sheet, not oppressive yet, just the kind that slowed a city’s blink. Aziraphale locked the door, slid the key into his waistcoat pocket—a reassurance more than a necessity—and walked to the Tube with the peculiar mixture of guilt and relief that attends a day not given to commerce. He had texted Crowley on Sunday evening.

Aziraphale: If it suits, I could come again this Tuesday.

And the reply had come almost at once.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Suits. I’ll meet you by Victoria Gate at ten. Bring a hat; the lilies are showing off.

By ten he was at the gate, hat in hand, heat rising from the paths in breaths. The Gardens felt different in July—confident, a little loose around the edges, as if the plants had discovered the fun of excess. Crowley was already there, black shirt open at the throat, sunglasses in place. He lifted two fingers by way of greeting; the gesture landed warmer than it looked.

“Morning,” Crowley said. “You look like a man playing truant.”

“That implies a headmaster,” Aziraphale replied. “I prefer to believe I have no such person.”

“Good,” Crowley said, pleased. “Come on. I want to show you a ridiculous lily and a fern that thinks it’s a mathematician.”

They set off at an amble that was almost but not quite purposeful. This was only their second weekday circuit together, and Aziraphale felt the shy novelty of it in his shoulders. He was learning how the Gardens sounded on a Tuesday: the hush of sprinklers somewhere out of sight; the polite murmur of visitors who had come for the day rather than for the hour; the occasional clack of a pram over gravel. Crowley talked the way he worked—low, precise, unexpectedly funny—pointing out the flares of colour at the borders and the way the light turned the Temperate House into a lantern even in daylight.

The phone in Aziraphale’s waistcoat buzzed as they were cutting across a lawn toward a fringe of tall grasses. He glanced at the screen.

Gabriel.

He could have silenced it. He could have let it ring out into the heat and fade. He answered.

“Gabriel.”

“Aziraphale,” came the bright, managerial tone. “Where are you?”

“At Kew Gardens,” Aziraphale said, keeping his voice even. “I’m out for the morning.”

There was a pause that measured his answer and found it wanting. “Right. I’m at your shop. ‘Closed today’? Since when are Tuesdays for leisure?”

“It’s the second Tuesday I’ve closed this year,” Aziraphale said. “It is not leisure. It is a day I’ve set aside.”

“For what?” Gabriel asked, with the unfeigned incredulity of a man to whom set-aside time is an insult to industriousness.

“For myself,” Aziraphale said. “For research. For air.”

“Mm.” Gabriel’s mm managed to sound like nonsense. “I’ll come to you. We can talk this through on site. Which gate?”

“You will not,” Aziraphale said, startled by the steadiness in his own voice. “There is nothing to talk through. The shop is my responsibility. I’ve organised my time accordingly.”

“Don’t be touchy, Azzy,” Gabriel said, maddeningly bright. “I’m trying to help you run things properly. I’ll be at—oh, what is it—Victoria Gate in twenty minutes.”

“Gabriel—” Aziraphale began, but the line clicked dead.

He lowered the phone. The Gardens were still themselves: green, sane, distracted only by sunlight. His chest was not.

Crowley had slowed, not quite turning, giving him the grace of privacy without withdrawing the offer of company. “Trouble?”

“My brother,” Aziraphale said. “He’s arrived at the shop and found it closed. He intends to come here. To… supervise.” The last word tasted of brass.

Crowley took off his sunglasses and hooked them into his shirt. It wasn’t theatrics; it was attention. “How do you want to handle it?”

“I want him not to come,” Aziraphale said, and heard how simple and impossible that sounded. “I want him to stop deciding I am a child in need of oversight.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “Start there. Keep it pointed outward. Don’t turn it on yourself.” He angled them toward a bench half-shaded by a ginkgo and spoke low, practical. “He’ll try to make it about your competence. You make it about your boundaries. You don’t justify; you state. ‘Not today. Not here. If you want to discuss my business, call for an appointment.’ Then you don’t argue.”

Aziraphale breathed in. The air smelled faintly of warm resin and cut grass. “I’ve never said that to him.”

“Today’s an excellent day to begin,” Crowley said. “It’s your second Tuesday. Make it yours.”

They walked slowly toward Victoria Gate. Crowley narrated the route in a way that didn’t crowd—the gnarled plane tree, the bench that always seems to be occupied by someone asleep, the bed of daylilies vulgar and glorious. Aziraphale found himself listening with the odd relief of a man whose breath is being counted for him: in, out, look, this, that. He kept his phone in his hand because it felt like a talisman either way.

Gabriel arrived in a flawless dress shirt and sunglasses, all efficiency and unearned ownership of the path beneath him. He saw them from twenty yards and lifted his chin by way of greeting, the smile already set to correction.

“Aziraphale,” he said when he was close enough, and bestowed a nod on Crowley as one might on an usher. “Morning. Shall we talk sense?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself by not easing into apology. “We shall not.” He kept his hands still at his sides. “This is not a good time. Nor is it an appropriate place. If you wish to discuss anything to do with my shop, you may telephone and make an appointment to do so at my convenience.”

Gabriel’s smile became the sort of thing a salesman lowers into. “Come now. This defensiveness—”

“It is not defensiveness,” Aziraphale said, and somewhere under the words a long, quiet tremor settled into steadiness. “It is a boundary. I am not available to you today.”

He felt Crowley beside him, not intervening, present enough to change the shape of the air. Gabriel glanced at him and seemed to reassess the tableau: not a lone brother to be herded, but a man standing next to a stranger who would not move out of the way.

“I’m only trying to help,” Gabriel said lightly, then, with a little laugh meant to domesticate the moment, “Azzy—”

“Aziraphale,” he said, not raising his voice and not lowering it. “Do not call me Azzy. Do not come to the Gardens to tell me how to run my life. Do not treat me as if I were incompetent. I have closed my shop for the day; I will open it tomorrow; that is all the information you require.”

Silence is rare in July in a public garden, but a tiny patch of it opened around them then. Gabriel’s smile faltered—not with pain, but with the unfamiliarity of being told no without ornament.

Crowley spoke at last, very mildly. “Seems straightforward.”

Gabriel put his hands on his hips as if annexing his own patience. “Fine,” he said, with the grace of a man who intends to remember the insult. “Have it your way. But don’t complain to me when the bills pile up and you’ve frittered away your Tuesdays.”

“I do not complain to you,” Aziraphale said. “I merely fail to conform.”

Crowley made a small sound that might, in any other context, have been a laugh. Gabriel, deciding that dignity required departure, adjusted his sunglasses with a flick learned from better men and turned back toward the gate.

“I’ll call next week,” he said over his shoulder.

“You may,” Aziraphale said, which was not permission so much as a refusal to promise he would answer.

When he was gone, the patch of silence closed and the Gardens resumed being themselves. A child squealed somewhere near the pagoda; a sprinkler ticked under a stand of trees. Aziraphale let out a breath he had not wanted to admit he was holding and pressed his fingertips lightly to his own wrist as if taking stock of himself.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” Crowley echoed, pleased in a way that did not gloat. “How’s the pulse?”

“Elevated.” Aziraphale considered. “Acceptably.”

“Good.” Crowley tipped his head toward the shade. “Come on. Let’s give your nervous system something reasonable to do.”

They left the path for a quieter one that curved along the back of the lake. Crowley did not congratulate him; he did not offer advice retroactively. He pointed out a coot bullying a moorhen and said, “every family’s got one,” in a tone dry enough to be restorative. He led the way into the Temperate House, and the cool air turned the day down two notches. Glass and iron framed a world of greens and improbable textures, the sort of interior that convinces a person there is order if only one looks long enough.

“Here,” Crowley said, stopping before a fern that rose like an equation, fronds unfurling in perfect, stubborn spirals. “Mathematician. Told you.”

Aziraphale leaned in. The tight scrolls at the tips looked like ideas that hadn’t yet decided to reveal themselves. “How very composed,” he said, and discovered that his voice, too, had composed itself.

They stood quietly. People eddied around them. Crowley slid his sunglasses up onto his head; without the barrier of the lenses, his attention sharpened from general to particular.

“You did well,” he said, not looking at Aziraphale when he said it, which made it easier to accept. “Not because you were angry—anger’s the easy part—but because you didn’t spend it on yourself. You spent it on the thing that deserved it.”

“I had assistance,” Aziraphale said, meaning both the fern and the man.

“Occasional usefulness,” Crowley allowed. “Now, come see a lily that thinks it’s Versailles.”

They crossed to a bed exploding with trumpets. The heat had pulled scent from them in sheets; the air tasted like a cream dessert might, if it read botanical Latin. Crowley bowed to one flower with ridiculous courtesy and then looked sideways at Aziraphale as if to say, there, you see, the world was not rearranged by a man with a bright shirt.

The rest of the morning arranged itself around recovery: the slow scholarship of walking, the petty satisfactions of pointing and being agreed with, a bench in half shade where they let themselves be two people not doing anything more impressive than water-drinking and not-talking. When words returned of their own accord, they were small, and therefore profound.

“I dislike being managed,” Aziraphale said, as if confessing a flaw.

“Then don’t permit it,” Crowley said, as if confessing a solution.

By noon they had circled back toward the gate. Crowley paused by the mimosa in a display bed and flicked it with a knuckle so it closed its leaflets in theatrical shock. “Look,” he said, approval in it. “Boundaries.”

Aziraphale laughed, a real thing. “I shall endeavour to collapse when touched,” he said, and Crowley huffed out an unguarded breath that might have been gladness.

They parted at the railings with the easy brevity of men who knew better than to gild a good hour. Aziraphale took the Tube back into town with his shoulders lower than when he had left. Outside his shop, the sign still held its square little ground. He unlocked the door and let himself in—not to work, not today, but to check that the Duke had not attempted to annex the windowsill. He had not. He was simply taller, which was, in July, the correct ambition.

Aziraphale took a photograph and sent it without commentary. The reply came three stops later, while the day was still deciding whether to be gentle with him.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Regal. Tell him his manager handled an invasive species and lived to tell the tale.

Aziraphale typed, then deleted, then typed again.

Aziraphale: Thank you. For the fern. And the arithmetic.

He put the phone away and stood for a moment behind his own counter in the cool of the closed shop, listening to its familiar hush. It felt different, not because the room had changed, but because he had drawn a line through it that someone else did not get to cross. It was only the second Tuesday. It was enough.

The invitation came in the middle of a grey Thursday morning, slipped between the usual stream of polite customer queries and the sort of spam that thought Aziraphale might want to refinance his non-existent mortgage.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Got something for you. Evening event at Kew next Friday. Lights, music, bit of spectacle. You in?

Aziraphale read it twice, the second time letting the image form in his mind: the Gardens at night, glasshouses lit from within, the air humming with something warmer than June. His first instinct, as ever, was to list reasons to decline. The shop. The Tube after dark. The question of what to wear. And yet—Crowley’s words had the sort of careless ease that meant the invitation was genuine, not an afterthought.

He typed, then deleted, then typed again.

Aziraphale: That sounds… intriguing. What time?

The reply was quick.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Gates at seven. I’ll meet you there.

Aziraphale: Very well. I shall look forward to it.

When he set the phone down, the shop felt a little less still.

The rest of the morning passed in comfortable order: cataloguing a recent acquisition of Victorian travelogues, brushing the worst of the dust from a stack of poetry chapbooks, resisting the urge to check the weather forecast for next Friday more than once.

The doorbell jangled just before noon, and Anathema Device stepped in, wind still in her hair from the street. She moved like someone who’d been brisk since birth, eyes sharp and mouth set to a wry curve.

“Dr. Device,” Aziraphale greeted warmly, though he suspected she was here for more than idle browsing. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Just Anathema, please. Passing through on the way to the market,” she said, running a fingertip along the spine of a cookbook from the 1920s. “Thought I’d see what you’ve got in.”

He watched her scan the shelves, noting the subtle lift of an eyebrow at one particularly dog-eared volume. She always seemed faintly amused by his stock—as though she respected his taste but also kept a mental tally of just how little turnover some titles had.

A mischievous impulse struck him, sudden as a sneeze. “You know,” he said lightly, “there’s someone I think you ought to meet. Madame Tracy. She runs a small business just next door.”

Anathema glanced up. “What kind of business?”

“Fortune-telling,” Aziraphale said, enjoying the way her eyebrows rose. “Tarot, palmistry, that sort of thing. She’s very good.”

Anathema snorted. “Is she, now?”

“I assure you, she’s quite accurate. She’s read for me on occasion.”

There was a look in Anathema’s eyes that told him she was already half on the hook—not because she believed in it, necessarily, but because she was never one to turn down an opportunity to gather data.

Five minutes later they were walking down the street together, Aziraphale making polite conversation while Anathema eyed the shopfronts with interest. Madame Tracy’s door was painted a cheerful red, a little bell above it jingling as he pushed it open.

“Mr. Fell!” Madame Tracy sang out from behind a small round table. She wore a flowing turquoise scarf today, her hair piled high in curls. “And who have we here?”

“A friend,” Aziraphale said. “Dr. Anathema Device.”

“Lovely to meet you, dear.” Madame Tracy’s smile could have powered a small lamp. “Would you like a reading? Special price for friends of friends.”

Anathema tilted her head, considering. “Why not?”

While Madame Tracy bustled about fetching her cards, Aziraphale stepped aside, content to watch the scene unfold. He’d half expected Anathema to cross her arms and make dry remarks throughout, but to his surprise she leaned in, genuinely curious as Madame Tracy spread the deck.

And then the bell above the door rang again, and in walked Newton Pulsifer, looking slightly windblown and faintly apologetic, as if unsure whether he was supposed to be there.

“Tracy? You left your handbag in a taxi, the driver left it with me when you were… with a client,” he said, holding it out.

Madame Tracy lit up. “Oh, Newton, you’re a dear.”

Anathema turned in her chair, eyes narrowing in the way of someone who’d just spotted an unfamiliar specimen. “And you are?”

“Newton Pulsifer,” he said, shifting the bag from one hand to the other. “I—uh—help out here sometimes. Bit of driving, bit of errands. And I have a computer shop a few doors down.”

Something in Anathema’s expression shifted—still appraising, but now with the faintest flicker of interest. “Computers, hmm? What sort of computers?”

“A—er—everything really,” Newton said. “Mostly repairs.”

Aziraphale, observing this with no small amount of satisfaction, realised that his original plan—to simply watch Anathema’s reaction to Madame Tracy—had unexpectedly gained a subplot.

By the time Madame Tracy finished the reading (Anathema: very keen and not at all dismissive), most of the conversation had drifted toward Newton—his job, his car, his entirely unremarkable but oddly charming anecdotes about getting lost in side streets. Anathema asked questions in that deceptively casual tone of hers, and Newton answered them with the earnestness of a man not used to being interrogated by someone who found him interesting.

When they finally left, Anathema’s expression was more thoughtful than amused. “She’s quite something, your Madame Tracy,” she said.

“She is,” Aziraphale agreed. “And Mr. Pulsifer?”

Anathema allowed herself the faintest smile. “We’ll see.”

They parted ways at the corner, and Aziraphale returned to the shop in high spirits. It wasn’t often he got to set the stage for two entirely different worlds to collide—and rarer still that it seemed to work out so neatly.

Later that evening, as he was closing up, his phone buzzed.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): You free Saturday afternoon? Could use a partner in crime for some prep before the light show.

Aziraphale typed his reply with more speed than dignity.

Aziraphale: Of course.

It was ridiculous, really, how something as simple as an evening event at Kew could become a small sun in his week, around which everything else began to orbit. He locked the shop, straightened the sign in the window, and headed home, already wondering what sort of coat would be suitable for a July evening among the glasshouses and lights.

Saturday came on with a sky so clean it looked deliberate. Aziraphale opened the shop for the morning trade, saw off two regulars with promises about a set of sermons that might contain a misplaced map, and at noon flipped the sign to Closed with the mild thrill of doing something out of pattern. He took the Tube to Kew with a canvas bag that contained string, a penknife, a packet of wet wipes, and the sort of optimism that masquerades as preparedness.

Crowley met him at the staff gate with a lanyard and a grin that he seemed determined to keep modest. The Gardens on a summer Saturday felt like a city deciding to be kind: families drifting, couples ambling, heat tucked under the trees where it belonged. Beyond the public paths, the event crew moved with quiet intent. Between the Temperate House and the lake, cables lay like polite snakes, plastic tubs held coils of fairy lights that would look like nothing until the moment they were asked to be more.

“You’re early,” Crowley said, passing him the lanyard.

“I am reliable,” Aziraphale said, and put it on like a temporary change of species.

They walked the perimeter of where the evening would happen. A small company had already rigged projectors on low plinths; technicians with headsets spoke in a language of numbers Aziraphale chose to interpret as a liturgy. Crowley’s job, unofficial but obvious, was to liaise, which in practice meant translating between the needs of the plants and the ambitions of the light designers. He did it with the patience of a man who had been both misunderstood and determined not to misunderstand in turn.

“We’re avoiding the beeches,” he told Aziraphale, tilting his head toward a stand of trees that looked like pillars of shadow in daylight. “They don’t love warmth on the bark after hours. Lilies can preen, though. And the grasses will forgive anything that makes them shimmer.”

“How can I help, Mr…” Aziraphale caught himself; they rarely traded surnames now unless teasing. “How can I help, Crowley?”

“Labels,” Crowley said, passing him a neat stack of laminated cards and a roll of low-tack tape. “We promised a breadcrumb trail for people who want names with their pretty lights. Latin and common both. Place them where they’ll be seen by people not looking.”

Aziraphale took this as the compliment it was and set about the work. He had spent enough years placing books where hands would find them without noticing they had been guided; the skill translated. He crouched by a clump of Deschampsia and tucked the small card at an angle that would catch light without insulting the plant; he slid a label near the outrageous lilies, which did not need introductions but enjoyed them. He liked the prelude—the sense of setting a table for an invisible guest list.

Anathema found them in the late afternoon, clipboard under her arm, hair coiled up with something decorative that looked like it could also be used to pick a lock. She surveyed the cables, the lanterns, the careful nonchalance of it all, and nodded once.

Looks like grown-ups have been involved, she said. “Fell—good to see you. Don’t let him lift anything heavy; he’ll pretend it doesn’t hurt his back and then complain tomorrow.”

“I don’t complain,” Crowley said, sounding faintly offended on behalf of all vertebrae.

“Not in words,” Anathema allowed. She flicked a look at Aziraphale that translated to: thank you for being here; it helps. Out loud she said, “Front of house briefing at six-thirty. You don’t have to stand anywhere official. Just… be visible, be kind, and redirect anyone who decides to bring their dog into a fountain.”

“Is that frequent?” Aziraphale asked.

“You’d be amazed,” Anathema said, and melted away toward a cluster of lighting techs.

They worked until the sun eased down the sky and the air shifted from brightness to a sort of forgiving gold. Crowley wiped his hands on a rag and declared them fit for human company. He looked pleased with the day the way certain men look pleased with a well-serviced engine: not boastful, but definitely proprietary.

“Let’s eat before it all starts,” he said, steering them toward a staff canteen that had elected to be generous with its food. They sat at a small metal table with two bowls of something that called itself stew and didn’t need defending. Aziraphale watched Crowley uncoil in increments, the way people do when their tasks are stacked neatly for the hours ahead. It struck him again, as it had several times in the last months, that competence could be as beautiful as charm. The thought was indecorous; he let it be.

“You alright for tonight?” Crowley asked, a glance rather than a probe. “It’ll be busy, but it’s not the heaving kind. People tend to get quiet when lights make them feel clever.”

“I have a sturdy hat and an exit plan,” Aziraphale said, and was rewarded with Crowley’s brief, involuntary laugh.

At six-thirty they joined a loose semicircle of staff and volunteers while Anathema, standing on an upturned crate like an amiable general, outlined timings and contingencies. “If anything trips a breaker, she said, pointing in three directions at once, we reset here, here, and here. If a projector sulks, call Sam. If someone cries because a light made them remember their childhood, hand them a tissue and let them cry; we’ve engineered that on purpose. Questions?”

Aziraphale loved her then in the way one loves a colleague one has elected not to spend every day with: fiercely and from a safe distance.

The sun slid low. The first visitors drifted in at seven with that particular step people take when they are not sure whether they are at an exhibition or a party. The Gardens wore evening like a suit tailored for it. On the lake, low globes of light began to wake; across the lawns, a path discreetly announced itself by glowing at the edges; the Temperate House, lit from within, turned into a lantern too polite to brag.

Crowley took Aziraphale along the first loop, not as a tour guide—those could be insufferable at events like this—but as a companion who knew where standing still would pay off. They paused under a canopy where slow shapes climbed the façade of the glasshouse: a bloom unfolding in time-lapse; a tendril seeking; water drawn up through a stem rendered into light like a secret diagram finally deciding to speak.

The crowd changed tenor as the sky darkened. Voices softened. Children ran less and pointed more. Somewhere, a string quartet’s recording lent the air a pulse that did not demand. Aziraphale found that his heart, usually so ready to rattle its cage in a press of people, was behaving. The space was curated; the paths were sure. He could be one small person in a large, good thing.

They reached a stand of grasses where a low breeze and a bank of hidden fans turned the seedheads into calligraphy. Light skimmed them and broke; the labels Aziraphale had placed earlier caught the glow and returned it to the eye. He allowed himself the quiet pride of a job done invisibly well.

“This bit’s yours,” Crowley said, tone that of a conspirator.

“Oh?” Aziraphale said, and was about to ask what he meant when an elderly couple paused to read Deschampsia with their heads tipped together and he felt, absurdly, like a magician who had lifted a scarf at the right second.

They moved on. At the lily pond, the ridiculous lilies had become incomparable, their white trumpets lit from inside as though each possessed a very modest lighthouse. Reflections doubled the effect; the dark water behaved with exemplary restraint. Crowley folded his arms and studied the scene like it was an exam question he had helped set.

“What does it feel like,” Aziraphale said, “to make a place do this?”

Crowley considered. “Like getting a plant to trust you. You don’t force it. You set the conditions. Then you wait for it to decide to play along.”

Aziraphale thought of the shop when it was working; of books that found the right hands because shelves had been arranged with a kind of hospitality. He nodded.

They walked the long way round to the Palm House. Outside, a projection mapped the curve of the glass with a slow, shifting geometry: fern spirals amplifying into galaxies, then dissolving into constellations, then folding back into the mathematics of a frond. Aziraphale stood and let it wash through him. He had the sense—rare and precious—of being precisely his size, no larger, no smaller, and of that being correct.

“You’re quiet,” Crowley said, voice low enough that it only had to travel three inches to get to its destination.

“I’m thinking about scale,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley huffed. “Dangerous habit.”

“It suits me, sometimes,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley’s mouth did that small, private thing it did when he was pleased and didn’t want to make a show of it.

They cut away from the main path toward a smaller installation that Crowley wanted to see before it gathered a knot of admirers. It was the simplest thing: a row of illuminated panels showing stomata opening and closing, magnified to the point where they looked like small, deliberate mouths at prayer. A boy of eight stood rapt, eyes wide, as his father read the caption. Aziraphale thought of that Tuesday in spring when Crowley had teased him into naming a flytrap and his own life had begun to feel less like a room with one window.

Round the bend, the crowd thinned. The lake opened into a quieter reach. The path here narrowed to a strip between laurels and water; lights sat low to the ground, leaving the upper air to the dark. Somewhere back toward the lawns, applause flared and died. Here, the sound was the breath of leaves.

Aziraphale’s phone buzzed. A reflex made him reach for it; a better instinct made him leave it where it was. Crowley noticed the movement and didn’t comment. They walked on until the path curved and delivered them to a bench nearly concealed by foliage. The bench looked like it had been waiting without impatience.

Crowley tipped his head toward it, a question without pressure. Aziraphale sat. The bench collected him as if it had been sized for the purpose. Crowley remained standing for a moment, hands in pockets, looking out at a scatter of lights on the far bank like embers from a tidy fire.

“I used to hate this sort of thing,” Crowley said, even as he sat down, far enough away to be respectful, near enough to be present. “All the spectacle. Felt like showy nonsense. Then I realised some people need the spectacle to give them permission to be quiet. After that I decided to cooperate.”

“You’re very good at cooperating, when you choose,” Aziraphale said. It came out warmer than he had expected. He let it stand.

Crowley glanced at him. “Only with the right manager.”

The word did a complicated thing inside Aziraphale’s chest, one-third amusement and two-thirds gratitude. He looked down at his hands, which were behaving, and then out at the lake, which was being lake-like with distinction. His nervous system, which often wrote unhelpful scripts for evenings, had produced nothing more dire than a brief rehearsal of how to say good night. He felt steady. He allowed himself, briefly, to want.

Crowley shifted, not closer, not away. The movement announced itself like a quiet decision. Aziraphale became aware of the air between them as a real place. The thought occurred to him—uninvited but not unwelcome—that light shows were designed for moments like this, when strangers became less so, when friends found a new footing, when a person had to decide whether to be brave.

He could not think of a single sentence that did not cheapen what he meant. He turned his head. Crowley, already turned, met him there.

“Alright?” Crowley asked. It was a word that in most mouths meant nothing; in his it contained a foyer’s worth of rooms: Do you want. May I. Tell me if not.

Aziraphale swallowed. He had been thinking about scale. He had been thinking about trust. “Yes,” he said, and found that the word came out level.

Crowley closed the distance without flourish. It was not a swoop, not a scene. It was a man, very carefully, putting his mouth against another man’s mouth in a place where the world was beautiful but not watching. The kiss was more question than claim, more greeting than answer. Aziraphale, who had known bad kisses and indifferent ones, felt the immediate recognition of a thing done in his language. He made a small sound that he would never in any other context permit himself to make; Crowley breathed in, as if catching it to keep.

They paused there, not so much breaking apart as easing a fraction, enough to look, to verify, to smile.

“Again?” Crowley asked, so quietly it was almost just breath.

“Please,” Aziraphale said, and that was the bravest thing he had done this year.

The second kiss was less careful only because the first had done its job. It landed with relief in it. It tasted of whatever had been in the staff stew to pretend to be thyme, of air that had run over lily water, of the particular, unexplainable chemistry between two people who have both decided to be here. Aziraphale let one hand find the bench, palm flat, ballast; he let the other settle in the air between them in case it was asked to move. Crowley did not push. The world, considerate for once, did not intrude.

When they parted, it was by an inch and by consent. Crowley rested his forehead very lightly against Aziraphale’s temple, as if to test whether this, too, was allowed. Aziraphale did not move away.

“I am going to think about this for days,” Aziraphale said, because honesty had its own gravity tonight.

“Good,” Crowley said, with satisfaction so clean it felt like a blessing. “Me too.”

They sat until the path began to gather people again, until the music at the far end of the lake shifted into something that sounded like a promise for the next half hour. They stood in the same motion, as if the bench had given them instructions. On the way back to the main walk, Crowley reached for Aziraphale’s hand and, finding it there, changed his mind and let his fingers brush the back of it instead. Aziraphale felt the touch for fifty paces.

They rejoined the stream near the lily pond. Lights were brighter now, or perhaps eyes were more willing. Someone behind them gasped at a projection that had found exactly the right leaf at exactly the right angle. Anathema emerged from shadow like good timing in person.

“There you are,” she said, not prying, not blind. “You look pleased with the public.”

“The public has behaved admirably,” Aziraphale said, which made Crowley’s mouth twitch in a way that suggested filing for later.

“Closing sweep in twenty,” Anathema said. “Try to look purposeful and not like you’re in a dream.”

“We can manage purposeful,” Crowley said.

They did the sweep. It was mostly a matter of encouraging dawdlers into believing home would be just as magical. By the gates, people spoke in low tones about favourite bits, and no one tried to take a lily as a souvenir. That counted as victory. Crowley nodded to three technicians in a way that indicated both gratitude and a refusal to gush; Anathema pressed clipboards into the right hands; Sam the projector wrangler yawned and looked pleased.

Outside the gate, the city took them back. Night had decided to be warm; the pavement had stored enough heat to be sympathetic. They stopped where the light from the ticket office ended and the street began. The logic of car parks and trains arranged itself around them like a schedule they could ignore for a minute.

“Thank you for coming,” Crowley said, which meant more than the sentence had space for.

“Thank you for inviting me,” Aziraphale said, which also meant more.

Crowley looked as if he might step in again; didn’t. “Train?” he asked.

“Taxi,” Aziraphale said, then, because the night seemed to reward clarity, “I want to keep this. The lights. The bench. The…” He gestured, imprecise, and Crowley took mercy on him and nodded.

“Kept,” Crowley said. “I’ll text when I’m home.”

“I’ll be awake,” Aziraphale said, and was surprised to find that it was true without being anxious.

They parted with the kind of care that implies a continuation. In the cab, Aziraphale watched the Gardens fall away, a dark shape with a seam of gold where the main path still glowed. He sat back and closed his eyes for three breaths and then opened them because he did not want to miss any of the city on this particular drive.

At home, he let himself into the quiet shop, turned on only the lamp behind the counter, and checked the windowsill. The Importunate Duke had angled himself imperceptibly toward the glass, as if practising devotion. Aziraphale turned the pot a fraction, purely ceremonial, and stood with his hand on the rim.

His phone buzzed.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Home. No lilies stolen. Light show deemed a success by the only critic who matters.

Aziraphale: I agree with your critic.

There was a pause, and then:

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Sleep well, Aziraphale.

He read his own name twice. It fit the night. He turned off the lamp and let the dark be kind. He would think about it for days, as promised, and he suspected that for once, his thoughts would not make the thing smaller.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale woke the next morning with the peculiar sensation that something had shifted, though the bedclothes were in their usual tangle and the weak London sun still seeped through the curtains in its ordinary grey drizzle. His first thought was that he had overslept; his second, that the evening at Kew had not been a dream; and his third—that message.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Sleep well, Aziraphale.

He had read it twice before bed and twice more in the middle of the night when he woke thirsty. And now, in the raw light of morning, he read it again, though the words weren’t in front of him. His name—his full name, not Azzy, never Azzy, thank God—had been typed out with deliberate care, tucked into a simple benediction.

It ought to have soothed him. Instead, his thoughts immediately began their endless shuffle: What does one do after being kissed? There was no protocol. None he had ever learned, at least.

He shuffled downstairs, still in his dressing gown, and set the kettle on. It clattered against the hob more loudly than usual, which set his teeth on edge. He lined up the teacup, saucer, and spoon with unnecessary precision while his mind spun circles. Was it expected that he send a morning message in return? Something equally simple, equally polite: Good morning, Crowley? Or was that overstepping? Too forward? Too formal?

He had never done this before. Never kissed anyone in earnest, never woken the next day and found himself on the cusp of something unnamed. His relationships, such as they were, had been carefully managed exchanges: his customers, the neighbours, the shopkeepers along Whickber Street. Predictable. Contained. He had never stood on the edge of intimacy with someone as mercurial and flame-bright as Crowley.

By the time the kettle shrieked he was pressing his palms flat against the counter, heart beating too quickly. He poured, stirred, and forced himself into the familiar rhythm of opening the shop: blinds lifted, lock turned, bell set to ring.

The first passerby was Mrs. Harris from the greengrocer’s, pausing with her basket of tomatoes. “Morning, Mr. Fell. You’ve got the nicest sunflower in your window this year.”

He blinked, dragged back from the loop of Crowley-thoughts. “Thank you, my dear. They are coming on rather well, aren’t they?”

She smiled, already moving on. Normal. Predictable. Safe. And yet beneath it his mind kept chewing the question: What now?

The Whickber Street rhythm carried him forward. Mr. Singh from the corner shop appeared not long after, dropping in to restock his magazine rack with a few poetry chapbooks Aziraphale had acquired last winter. “You’re pale today, Mr. Fell. You need a proper lunch. Not just biscuits.”

“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale murmured, embarrassed by the scrutiny. “I shall.” He signed the receipt with a hand that wanted to tremble.

All the while, the thought gnawed: Crowley probably had done this a hundred times. He had the look of a man who had kissed and been kissed in dark bars, in quiet corners, maybe even in botanical gardens with others before. A man with flings, surely. He wore the sort of lean confidence that seemed made for it. And Aziraphale—well, Aziraphale had never even thought himself capable of such a thing until now.

The contrast was intolerable. If Crowley thought this was a passing indulgence, a pleasant nothing, then Aziraphale would look a fool for investing it with weight. And yet—if it meant more, if it could mean more, then what if he ruined it by silence? Or by speaking too soon?

He retreated behind the till and opened the ledger, though the numbers swam. His brain caught on the same questions, over and over, like an old phonograph needle stuck in a groove. What were they now? Friends still? Something else? Should he assume last night was an accident? Or treat it as deliberate?

By late morning the anxiety was pulling his shoulders tight. He fumbled two transactions in a row, dropping change and miswrapping a slim novella for a tourist. The tourist was gracious about it; Aziraphale wanted to sink into the floor.

At half past eleven, the door jangled and Nina from the coffee shop leaned in. “Running low on beans again?” she asked.

“Oh—no, thank you. Not today.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re jittering like you’ve had six shots of espresso.”

He gave a weak smile. “Merely… preoccupied.”

“Don’t let the books bite,” she said, and was gone.

He wished she hadn’t noticed. He wished no one noticed. His entire strategy for surviving Whickber Street was to present as the benign eccentric—waistcoats, book dust, harmless chatter about Baudelaire. Not this. Not flushed cheeks and a mind racing on its own private track.

By the time lunch rolled around he had convinced himself that silence was safest. If Crowley meant the kiss as a fling, then Aziraphale would not embarrass himself by acting otherwise. If Crowley meant it as more, then surely he would reach out again in his own time. And Aziraphale—well, Aziraphale would wait.

He ate his sandwich standing behind the counter, the sunflower perched in its pot beside him, leaning impertinently toward the light. He looked at it as though it might provide guidance. “Well,” he murmured, “you don’t look as though you’re worried about protocol.” The plant swayed faintly in the draught from the door.

The afternoon stretched on in much the same vein: customers, small talk, the endless replay of last night’s kiss overlaid with the fear of misunderstanding. Each time the bell rang he half-hoped, half-dreaded it would be Crowley. Each time it wasn’t, his chest both eased and tightened.

By closing time he was exhausted from the inside out. He set the latch, drew the blinds, and leaned against the counter with his eyes closed. What were they now? What did one do? There was no rulebook for this. And he—left to his own devices—would catalogue and fret and fold himself into knots until something broke.

He sighed, set the sunflower carefully on the windowsill, and turned the shop lights low. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would know. Tomorrow, perhaps, Crowley would decide.

The first morning after that, Aziraphale expected nothing—at least, that was what he told himself. He spent ten minutes over his tea convincing his mind that it was better this way, that silence was dignified, that there was no need for foolish anticipation. Yet every time the bell over the door jangled, he found his eyes darting to the street, as though Crowley might slouch through on some invented errand.

He did not, of course.

The day passed in ordinary rhythms—ledgers balanced, shelves dusted, a delivery of three mismatched boxes of novels from a family clearing their attic. Aziraphale worked diligently, but beneath each task ran the taut thread of waiting. Surely there would be a message. Surely Crowley would say something.

That evening, when he closed the shop and retreated upstairs, the waiting had soured into fretfulness. Had he said too little, after the kiss? Too much? Had he looked ridiculous? Perhaps he had leaned in awkwardly, or held still when he ought to have responded differently. The idea made him flush hot and cold in turns.

He checked his phone three times before bed. Still nothing.

The second day was worse, because he could no longer claim he had not been hoping. Each absence rang louder than any presence. He managed a smile for Mrs. Harris at the greengrocer’s, though his thoughts were far from her cheerful report about the summer courgettes. He made polite conversation with Nina when she brought him a spare scone from her café, but afterward he sat staring at it for twenty minutes without appetite.

At half past three he fumbled a transaction so badly that the customer offered him reassurance. “Busy day, eh? Don’t worry, it’s only a bookmark,” the young man said, patting the counter before leaving.

When the bell stilled, Aziraphale slumped into the nearest chair, pulse jittering with the uncomfortable sense that his mask of composure was beginning to crack.

Still no message.

By evening he was in such a state that he nearly texted first—but each attempt died under his thumb. What would he even say? How are you? sounded desperate. The sunflower is growing seemed childish. Was last night a mistake? felt unbearable.

He set the phone aside and did not sleep well.

On the third day, Whickber Street itself intervened.

Aziraphale had stepped out to collect a parcel from the post office when he nearly collided with Newt Pulsifer coming round the corner, his arms full of what looked like electronic parts.

“Mr. Fell!” Newt said, cheeks pink. “Sorry—wasn’t looking.”

“Quite alright,” Aziraphale said automatically, steadying the younger man with a hand. “How are you?”

“Oh—good, good.” Newt shifted his box, looking as if he might drop it at any moment. “Actually, better than good. Anathema and I—er, we’re seeing each other now. Properly.” His grin, awkward but earnest, spread across his face.

Aziraphale blinked, taken aback. “Oh! How very… nice. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Newt ducked his head, clearly pleased. “She’s—well, she’s brilliant, obviously. And she seems to think I’m alright, so—yes.” He gave a shy shrug. “Anyway, don’t let me keep you.”

With another grin he shuffled off, leaving Aziraphale standing in the middle of the pavement with his parcel tucked under one arm.

He should have felt glad for them, and part of him did—Newt’s bashful joy was genuine, and Anathema was indeed brilliant. But beneath that came the pang of comparison, sharp and unkind: other people managed this sort of thing, apparently. Even Newt, whose talents seemed mostly to involve breaking computers by looking at them too hard, had found someone who wanted him. And here Aziraphale was, twisting himself into knots over one kiss and three days of silence.

By the time he returned to the shop, the air inside felt close, oppressive. He set the parcel down with unusual force, startling a dust mote into flight. His stomach churned with the sourness of envy, shame, and the endless, relentless wondering: What did I do wrong?

That night he lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Every word of their last evening together replayed with merciless clarity. He rehearsed possible explanations—Crowley had been busy, distracted, perhaps ill. Or—worse—Crowley had changed his mind, had decided Aziraphale was not worth the trouble after all.

Sleep came in snatches. When it did, it brought dreams of empty corridors and unanswered bells.

On the fourth day, he unravelled.

The morning was slow, the shop quiet, which left him too much time with his own thoughts. The smallest inconveniences pressed heavy: a dropped teacup, a stack of catalogues tumbling off the counter, a customer who argued about the price of a battered paperback. By noon he had given up on eating.

By three he could not focus on the page in front of him. His hands felt wrong, clumsy; his breathing came shallow. He closed the ledger, set his glasses down, and pressed the heel of his palms to his eyes until colours swam.

It was one of his bad days, and he knew it—when everything scraped too close, when the noise of his own thoughts made the world feel impossible.

The phone lay on the blotter beside him. He stared at it until the screen blurred. Then, with a motion that felt both reckless and necessary, he picked it up and typed.

Aziraphale: Would you mind—could we have a call? Only if you have a moment.

His thumb hovered. For half a second he considered deleting it. But no—the memory of Crowley’s voice, low and steady in his ear the last time he had been like this, tipped the scales. He hit send.

The message sat there, stark on the screen, a tiny leap of faith.

Aziraphale set the phone down again and clasped his hands together, waiting with his heart in his throat.

The message sat like a bright stain on Aziraphale’s phone screen. He’d sent it—an act of wildness, really, in his careful world—and now there was nothing to do but wait.

At first he tried to busy himself with the routine of the shop. He pulled a cloth over the glass counter, realigned the spines on the display table, fussed with the tilt of the sunflower on the windowsill. But every few seconds his gaze betrayed him, flicking back to the phone where it lay face-down on the blotter.

Nothing.

He turned it over again. Nothing.

Five minutes crawled past. Then ten. At fifteen, his stomach had tied itself into the sort of sailor’s knot that might never come undone.

What if he had overstepped?

The thought struck with familiar cruelty. The last time Crowley had called, it had been Crowley’s suggestion, Crowley’s timing. And yes, Aziraphale had been grateful, had found the sound of his voice steadying—but perhaps he had taken too much from that. Perhaps the offer had been meant as a one-time kindness, not an open door.

By the twenty-minute mark, the self-interrogation was relentless.

Should he have phrased it differently? Would you mind might sound too heavy, too urgent, too much. Only if you have a moment might sound manipulative, a guilt-trip. Would it have been better to say simply Hello? Or was that too curt, too vague?

By the twenty-five-minute mark, he was half-convinced he had ruined everything. Normal people—normal friends, if that was what they were—did not ask for reassurance like this. They carried their burdens quietly, tidied them away where no one else would be inconvenienced. He had been told as much often enough in his life.

And then the kiss intruded into the thought, sharp and unavoidable.

What were they, now?

The question circled, dangerous, and he forced it into a box in his mind, sitting on the lid. It was far too perilous to open.

What was the correct protocol after such an event? Was one meant to pretend nothing had happened, out of courtesy? Or was one obliged to bring it up, as one might settle an outstanding debt? The uncertainty gnawed at him, almost worse than silence itself.

He thought of Crowley’s reputation, or at least the one he had conjured from observation and assumption. A man like him—so self-possessed, so quick to smirk, so apparently unfazed by rules—surely had flings. Surely there had been moments before Aziraphale, stolen kisses in pubs or dim corners, shrugged off as entertainment. Why should this be different?

It was unbearable to imagine being thought of as a temporary diversion, but it was worse still to imagine Crowley expecting something Aziraphale could not give. The very thought of misreading expectations made his pulse spike.

Best, then, to say nothing. To keep everything neat, tidy, proper. If the kiss was meant to mean something, Crowley would say so. If it wasn’t, Aziraphale would spare himself the humiliation of assuming otherwise.

Yes. That was the safest course.

He sat with that conclusion like a man clutching driftwood in a storm.

At the thirty-minute mark, his phone rang.

The sound startled him so much that he nearly knocked over the sunflower. His hands scrambled across the blotter, fumbling the device upright. The screen glowed with the name that had become both comfort and torment.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales).

Aziraphale’s breath caught. He pressed accept.

“Hello?”

“Hey.” Crowley’s voice, warm and a little rough, spilled into his ear like the first sip of brandy after a long day. “Sorry. Got caught in something. Didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

“Oh, no, no,” Aziraphale said quickly, far too quickly. “No inconvenience at all.”

There was a pause, faintly amused. “You alright?”

Aziraphale tightened his grip on the phone. “I—yes. Well. One of those days, I suppose. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re not a bother.” Crowley’s tone left no room for argument. Then, softer: “Never.”

The word lodged under Aziraphale’s ribs, sharp and tender at once. He could almost have asked, then—almost have leaned into the gap Crowley had left, the invitation he might have meant. But the resolution he had made in the half hour of silence clamped shut over his tongue.

Instead he said, “You are very kind.”

Another pause. Then the faint rustle of Crowley shifting, perhaps walking as he spoke. “Kindness doesn’t enter into it. I like talking to you, that’s all.”

Aziraphale’s heart lurched. That’s all. Did that mean more, or did it mean nothing? He could not, would not risk interpreting it wrong.

“Well,” he said, deliberately bright, “then I am fortunate.”

Crowley chuckled low in his throat. “If you say so.”

They spoke for half an hour, the topics drifting—books Aziraphale had catalogued that day, a stubborn vine at Kew that had required retying, a passing mention of Muriel, which Aziraphale tucked away without pressing. Crowley’s voice did what it always did, loosening the knot in his chest thread by thread.

And every so often, Crowley said something that seemed to hover on the edge of another meaning. A remark about enjoying his company. A comment about how the world felt less bloody unbearable when someone understood plants and people. A silence that stretched as though waiting for Aziraphale to step into it.

But each time, Aziraphale steered carefully back to safe ground. Books. Plants. The sunflower.

When they finally said goodnight, Aziraphale set the phone down with trembling hands. Relief, warmth, and the ache of missed understanding jostled for space in his chest.

He had spoken to Crowley. He had not made a fool of himself. He had kept the kiss tucked away, unsaid, safe.

It was the right decision.

He told himself this again and again as he readied for bed. He told himself this as he straightened the quilt and dimmed the lamp. He told himself this until, at last, sleep came.

But the last thought to slip through the crack was the sound of Crowley’s voice saying, Never.

And Aziraphale dreamt of meanings he had not dared to claim.

Aziraphale’s phone buzzed on the blotter just as he was reshelving a collection of sermons from the 1830s. He nearly dropped the entire stack, then scolded himself for the disproportionate reaction. It was only a message. People received them all the time. He had received them before. It was not—should not—make his pulse stumble in his throat like a horse tripping on cobblestones.

He set the books down with too much care, smoothed the dust off his hands, and checked the screen.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Lunch sometime this week? There’s a place I know. Quiet enough.

Aziraphale stared at it as though it were written in cipher. Lunch. Not dinner. Lunch. He read it twice, three times.

It mattered. He was certain it mattered.

Dinner carried implications, expectations. One dressed differently for dinner. Dinner had wine lists and candles and low lighting. Dinner could be, and often was, a date.

Lunch, though—that was safe ground. Practical, midday, bracketed by errands and obligations. Lunch was not a date. Lunch was fortifying before one returned to one’s desk or counter or glasshouse. Lunch was… normal.

And therefore, his restraint—his decision to lock the kiss away and proceed as though nothing had changed—was socially correct. He had not embarrassed himself. He had not broken an unspoken rule.

His shoulders eased, just perceptibly.

Still, it was kind of Crowley to invite him. More than kind, if he was honest. That the man should think of him outside their occasional texts and chance visits—it felt like a thread, golden and improbable, tugging him out of his small circuit of shop, flat, auction hall.

He typed and erased three responses before settling on:

Aziraphale: That sounds very pleasant. I am free most days this week after one o’clock.

Crowley – Kew Gardens (and various other locales): Friday. Half past twelve? I’ll come collect you.

Aziraphale: Very well. I look forward to it.

He set the phone down, but of course he did not return immediately to the sermons. He fussed with the sunflower, shifted the blinds, straightened the bell pull. His brain was a river in flood: words and images colliding, swirling.

What should he wear? Lunch was not dinner, but one did not wish to appear slovenly. Something that showed care without trying too hard. He would need to shave the night before, to avoid that wretched patchy stubble. And shoes—polished, but not glossy.

What if the restaurant was louder than Crowley promised? What if the tables were close together, and he had to fight not to flinch at every scrape of a chair? He pictured himself stiff and tongue-tied while Crowley—effortless, long-limbed—glided through it, and shame prickled at his collar.

No, he told himself. Lunch was not dinner. This was manageable.

The intervening days passed in a strange mixture of anxiety and anticipation. His texts with Crowley continued much as before: a photo of the sunflower’s latest audacity, a complaint about a misleading footnote in a botanical volume, Crowley’s gleeful rant about an overambitious trellis design someone had attempted in one of the glasshouses. Normal, almost comfortingly so.

And yet. The word lunch hovered like a watermark behind every sentence.

When Friday came, Aziraphale woke too early and spent the morning cycling through outfits with a precision that would have looked like vanity to anyone else, but which was, in fact, strategy. He could not risk being either overdressed or underdressed. He could not risk making the wrong impression—whatever that might be.

In the end he chose a cream waistcoat with a subtle pattern, his favourite bowtie, and a jacket that was neither too formal nor too casual. The shoes had been buffed until they reflected the morning light like old mahogany. He looked, he thought, like a man going to lunch. That was the point.

When the knock came—half past twelve precisely, of course—he opened the door to find Crowley leaning against the frame, sunglasses glinting, all long lines and effortless poise.

And he looked—well. Very good.

Black shirt, rolled sleeves, sharp trousers that managed to look both careless and deliberate, boots that had probably cost a fortune but wore their scuffs with pride. His hair was slicked back but not rigid, as though it had been coaxed into order rather than forced.

Aziraphale’s throat went dry.

“Ready?” Crowley asked, casual as anything, and the corner of his mouth tipped in that way that always felt like a secret aimed solely at him.

“Yes,” Aziraphale managed. He locked the shop door with fingers that wanted to tremble and reminded himself, firmly: Lunch is not dinner. Lunch is not a date. This is manageable.

The restaurant was, as promised, quiet. Tucked down a side street, half-hidden by ivy, the sort of place one only found by intention. Inside, the air was warm with spices, but the tables were well-spaced, the hum of conversation muted.

Aziraphale exhaled slowly, shoulders easing a fraction.

Crowley guided him to a booth near the back, away from the main bustle, and Aziraphale sat with relief. He noticed, not for the first time, how attuned Crowley seemed to his comfort—choosing angles, spaces, words that gave him room to breathe without ever making a show of it.

They ordered—lamb curry for Crowley, a delicate fish dish for Aziraphale—and fell easily into conversation.

“Place’s been here forever,” Crowley said, folding his long frame into the booth with feline grace. “Ran on word of mouth for years. Best way, if you ask me. Filters out the riffraff.”

Aziraphale arched a brow. “And yet somehow you found your way in?”

Crowley’s grin flashed. “Charm. Obviously.”

They sparred lightly, comfortably. Aziraphale let himself bask in it, the rhythm of Crowley’s wit and the warmth of his voice smoothing out the edges of his unease.

Still, underneath, the questions stirred. What did this mean? Why had Crowley invited him here, to a restaurant, at midday, with the care one might take for—well. For something that was not quite nothing.

He kept them hidden. Lunch was not dinner. He could live within that safety.

And when the food arrived, and Crowley’s eyes lit up behind the sunglasses as though he were seeing sunlight for the first time, Aziraphale thought—Even if this is all it is, it is enough.

Aziraphale lingered over the last forkful of his fish, mind buzzing with equal parts spice and speculation. The meal had been very fine—better than fine, really, and Crowley seemed so pleased with his choice of restaurant that Aziraphale felt an odd swell of pride on his behalf. Pride wasn’t quite the right word. Gratitude, perhaps, or warmth. A desire to keep Crowley in this exact good humour, watching him relax into his long frame as though the booth had been designed to accommodate him and him alone.

Crowley was talking—something about a disastrous trellis repair at the gardens, involving both an overconfident volunteer and a ladder that should have retired decades ago. Aziraphale tried to keep pace, but he found himself distracted by the lines of Crowley’s mouth, the way his hand flicked when he mimed the volunteer tumbling, the way his sunglasses reflected the candle flame into tiny, persistent stars.

“—and you’d think anyone with half a brain would realise ivy is not structural support,” Crowley was saying, smirking. “Honestly, it’s like they want it to collapse on them.”

“Yes, well, people can be very silly,” Aziraphale offered, in the tone of one who has just realised he’s been caught not quite listening.

Crowley tilted his head, considering him. That smile again, the one Aziraphale always thought looked like it had been meant for someone else but had, by some miracle, landed on him. “S’pose that’s true. Present company excluded, naturally.”

Aziraphale blinked, trying to parse the intonation. Present company excluded. That was a compliment, wasn’t it? Or was it sarcasm? No, Crowley’s lips quirked differently when he was being sarcastic. This was… softer. Perhaps it meant something. Perhaps it didn’t.

He gave a polite little laugh, just in case.

Crowley leaned forward over the table. “So, how’s Brian these days?”

“The sunflower?” Aziraphale adjusted his napkin, grateful for a safer subject. “Quite flourishing. The bud is nearly ready to open, I think. I’ve been turning the pot to make sure it doesn’t lean too heavily in one direction.”

“Always knew you’d spoil it,” Crowley teased. “Bit jealous, actually.”

“Jealous?” Aziraphale frowned. “It’s only a plant, my dear fellow.”

Crowley’s smile sharpened, then softened again, as though something had just slipped through his grasp. “Yeah. Just a plant.”

They lapsed into silence while the waiter cleared their plates. Aziraphale was acutely aware of the warmth in the booth, the faint clink of cutlery at other tables, the soft hum of the restaurant that seemed, oddly, to leave a pocket of quiet just for them. He wondered if Crowley had chosen it for that reason—for his comfort. The thought was almost dizzying.

When the waiter asked about dessert, Aziraphale waved it off, but Crowley ordered coffee, leaning back with the lazy sprawl of someone very much at home.

“Don’t suppose you’ll try something sweet,” Crowley said, tapping a finger against the menu. “They’ve got cake here worth writing sonnets about.”

Aziraphale hesitated. He did like cake. He nearly said yes, but then he thought of the way Gabriel had looked at his waistcoat not long ago, of his brother’s comments about trimming down, about sharper appearances. The words curled around him like nettles. “No, thank you,” he said instead, polite, controlled.

Crowley gave him a look—sharp, unreadable behind the glasses—but said nothing.

The coffee arrived. Crowley added no sugar, no cream, drank it as though bitterness were a challenge he intended to win. Aziraphale folded his hands and wondered, not for the first time, what exactly he was meant to do now.

Because something had shifted between them, hadn’t it? The kiss at the gardens—brief but unmistakable. It hadn’t been an accident. He replayed it in quiet, careful moments: the angle of Crowley’s head, the warmth of his mouth, the way it had not felt like anything he had ever known.

But what did one do with such a thing?

He had no map for this. Other people, he knew, seemed to navigate relationships with instincts he simply did not possess. They flirted, they tested waters, they advanced or retreated with invisible signals that everyone else appeared to read fluently. Aziraphale, by contrast, felt as though he were stumbling through a text in a language he half-recognised but had never been taught.

And what if Crowley were… casual about such things? He seemed like the sort. Dark glasses, long stride, late nights. Someone who had flings. Someone to whom a kiss might mean very little. Aziraphale’s chest tightened at the thought. He could not imagine being casual about anything so intimate. But perhaps Crowley could.

Perhaps this was nothing.

Crowley’s voice cut across his thoughts. “So. You enjoyed this?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Oh—very much. The fish was excellent.”

“I meant the company.”

Heat climbed his neck. Was that—was that a joke? A test? He swallowed. “Yes. Of course. Delightful company.”

Crowley leaned in, propping his chin on one hand. “Delightful, huh. High praise.”

Something about the drawl, the half-smile, made Aziraphale’s stomach twist in knots. He nodded, mute.

Crowley chuckled softly, as though amused by a private joke. “You’re bloody impossible, you know that?”

“I—pardon?”

But Crowley didn’t elaborate. Instead he drained his coffee in two long swallows and set the cup down with decisive finality. “Come on. Walk?”

They left the restaurant into a soft July sun, the light bright but not oppressive. Crowley fell into stride beside him, long legs slowing just enough to match Aziraphale’s. It should have been comfortable. It should have been easy. But Aziraphale’s brain hummed with static.

What did it mean? What did Crowley want?

Crowley was saying something about a recent shipment of orchids, but Aziraphale only half-heard him, too tangled in his own thoughts. Was this… courting? Or merely companionship? How could one tell? He had never known how to tell.

They paused by the bookshop, the familiar façade grounding Aziraphale just enough. He fumbled for something—anything—that would clarify without risking humiliation.

But before he could speak, Crowley did.

“I missed you.”

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading wide. Aziraphale stared, certain he’d misheard. “I—pardon?”

Crowley’s jaw tightened. He shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again, restless. “I said I missed you. Between the kiss and this lunch, I… missed you. And I don’t want it to just be the odd text or once-a-month auction or bloody chance encounters. I want—” He stopped, drew a breath. “I want more. I want dates, Aziraphale. I want to spend time with you. Properly.”

Aziraphale froze. His mind tripped over the words, skittering between terror and elation. Dates. Crowley had said dates. Out loud, unambiguous.

He had spent days convincing himself that lunch was not dinner, that dinner was not a date, that nothing had been implied. And now Crowley had bulldozed through all of it with one declaration.

Crowley ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been flirting my bloody head off for weeks and you’ve just been—smiling at me, like it’s polite conversation about bloody Latin names.”

“I thought…” Aziraphale’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. “I thought perhaps you weren’t… serious.”

“Serious?” Crowley huffed a laugh, sharp and incredulous. “I’ve been dead serious. You think I drag myself out at dawn for just anyone? You think I’d let anyone else near my herbarium?”

Aziraphale blinked. He wanted desperately to retreat into certainty, into old patterns of denial and safe interpretations. But the intensity in Crowley’s voice, the raw honesty of it, left no room for retreat.

“I—” He swallowed. “I’ve never been very good at… this sort of thing.”

Crowley’s expression softened, the frustration giving way to something gentler. “Yeah. I guessed. Doesn’t change what I want.”

Aziraphale’s heart hammered. “And what you want is… dates.”

“What I want,” Crowley said, low and steady, “is you. However much time you’ll give me.”

The air between them thickened, charged. Aziraphale gripped the strap of his satchel as though it might anchor him. He wanted to say yes, to say he wanted that too, but the words tangled on his tongue, heavy with years of self-doubt and rules he never quite understood.

Chapter Text

Crowley had been replaying the kiss for days. Not in a measured, romantic way, either—he was obsessive about it, looping it in his mind until it burned like an afterimage on his retinas. The tilt of Aziraphale’s head, the way his lips pressed back just enough, the wide-eyed look after, as though neither of them had quite believed it would happen.

It had been va-voom, full stop. And Crowley hadn’t had a va-voom moment in… well, ever, if he was honest.

The problem was what came next. With anyone else, he’d have pushed. Taken the kiss as the opening move, accelerated until they were either tangled in his sheets or bolting for the door. With Aziraphale, he knew better. The man wasn’t built for sprinting. He was a creature of pauses, of deliberate steps. Crowley could respect that. He’d bloody well have to.

So he waited. Three days. Then four. By the fifth he was gnawing the inside of his cheek and shuffling papers around Kew until Anathema threatened to revoke his office privileges. She called him twitchy. He didn’t deny it.

Which was why he rang Muriel.

They picked up with their usual cautious cheer. “Crowley?”

“Yeah. You busy?”

“No, just on break. What’s up?”

He’d meant to ask about their week, about work, about the latest small-town crime statistics they were always rattling off. Instead, what came out was: “I kissed him.”

There was a pause—then a bright, unfiltered, “Finally.”

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not—don’t make it a thing.”

“It is a thing.” Muriel’s voice was amused, but gentle. “Do you like him?”

Crowley groaned. “Yes.” Then, grudgingly: “A lot.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“He hasn’t said anything since.”

“Maybe he’s thinking.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Crowley muttered. “Thinking leads to conclusions, and conclusions lead to regrets.”

Muriel hummed. “Or thinking leads to needing time.”

He stopped pacing, suddenly aware of how close that struck. “Time.”

“Yes.” They paused. “Tell me more about him?”

And he did. The bookshop, the waistcoats, the dry humour. The way Aziraphale’s eyes lit when he was talking about first editions. The sunflower on his windowsill, ridiculous and adored. The habit of folding in on himself when things got overwhelming.

“I told you.. he gets… twitchy,” Crowley admitted, lowering his voice. “Crowds, phone calls, people barging in. Like he wants to vanish into the floorboards.”

There was silence at the other end, then Muriel said softly, “That sounds familiar.”

Of course it did.

The memory came unbidden: Muriel at twelve, under the kitchen table with their hands over their ears because three people talking at once was too much. Muriel refusing to go to birthday parties because balloons popping felt like gunfire. Muriel at fifteen, in tears after a teacher called them “lazy” for not presenting in front of the class.

And Crowley—seventeen, sullen and lanky, crouched beside them with a packet of crisps and no idea how to make it better. He hadn’t known what autism was then, not really. He’d just known his sibling was drowning in noise the rest of the world pretended didn’t exist.

Even now, Muriel hadn’t outgrown it. They still had their quirks: the way they lined their pens up in colour order, the way they needed instructions written down twice, the way they flapped their hands when excited and didn’t care who saw. Therapy hadn’t erased any of that—it had just given them breathing room. Tools to manage panic before it spiralled. A vocabulary to explain themselves to people who actually listened.

Crowley loved them fiercely for it. He wouldn’t change a thing.

And he recognised that same raw edge in Aziraphale—the way he flinched from Gabriel’s barbs, the way he sometimes looked at his own phone like it was a live grenade, the way relief softened his whole face when things finally quieted down.

“You think he’s like me,” Muriel said, not accusing, just observant.

“Maybe,” Crowley admitted. “Not the same. But… close enough I can see it.”

“Then you know what to do.”

“Do I?” he snapped, more at himself than them.

“Yes. Be patient. Don’t rush him. Let him feel safe.”

Crowley closed his eyes. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. “I’ve been patient all bloody week.”

“And you’ll keep being patient, if it matters.”

He hated how right they were.

After they hung up, Crowley sat in the dark of his flat and thought about how much Muriel had fought to make peace with the world, and how the world had never really bent in return. And then he thought of Aziraphale, clutching his satchel strap like it was armour, and realised—if he had to be the one to bend, he’d do it.

Crowley was halfway through a report on soil composition when his phone buzzed. He’d been glaring at the numbers long enough that the vibration startled him into spilling tea across the corner of the page. He hissed, mopped it up with his sleeve, and checked the screen.

Aziraphale: Would you mind—could we have a call? Only if you have a moment.

He read it twice. The phrasing was typical—polite to the point of apology, as if asking for five minutes of Crowley’s time was an imposition on the level of requesting a kidney.

Crowley’s first instinct was to call immediately. He wanted to hear his voice, to catch whatever waver had driven him to reach out. But he was ankle-deep in mud, literally—field survey, clipboard in one hand, pen jammed in his teeth. If he called now, all Aziraphale would hear was him swearing at a thistle.

So he waited. Thirty minutes. Thirty slow, guilty minutes while he wrapped up what he was doing, signed off the notes, and escaped to the relative privacy of the car park. Then he hit dial.

The line clicked. A hesitant, “Hello?”

“Hey.” Crowley’s own voice came out rough, low, edged with something he didn’t dare name. “Sorry. Got caught in something. Didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

“Oh, no, no,” Aziraphale rushed. Far too quick, like he’d rehearsed it. “No inconvenience at all.”

Crowley leaned against the car, closed his eyes. The poor bastard probably had been rehearsing, pacing the shop with that phone clutched like a cursed relic.

“You alright?” he asked, softening his tone.

A pause, then Aziraphale’s voice, tight around the edges. “I—yes. Well. One of those days, I suppose. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re not a bother.” Crowley said it firmly, like a law of physics. Then, quieter, because it was true: “Never.”

Silence stretched, charged. Crowley could picture him standing in the shop, hand white-knuckled on the receiver, lips pursed as though the next words were too big to fit through. But then—nothing. Just the sound of him breathing, carefully controlled.

Instead, Aziraphale said, “You are very kind.”

Crowley huffed a laugh. “Kindness doesn’t enter into it. I like talking to you, that’s all.”

The words slipped out before he could weigh them, but he didn’t regret them. He meant it. Aziraphale was… different. A voice that steadied something in him, like finding the right frequency after static.

“That’s all,” Aziraphale repeated, almost too softly to catch. Then, brighter, too bright: “Well, then I am fortunate.”

Crowley smiled despite himself. “If you say so.”

He heard the faint creak of floorboards—Aziraphale pacing, maybe. The clink of china as he set something down. The silence between them was the sort he didn’t mind, but he wanted to keep him talking, keep that thread taut.

“So,” Crowley said, deliberately casual, “what kind of day is it? Bad customers? Or the plumbing again?”

“Ah. Customers, mostly.” A sigh. “One of those gentlemen who believes a bookshop is a forum for his opinions, none of them requested. He wanted to know why I didn’t stock more modern titles, and when I explained that was not the focus of my business, he launched into a tirade about how the past ought to stay in the past. History is ‘boring,’ apparently. I cannot abide such philistinism.”

Crowley chuckled. “Should’ve told him modern titles are just future history waiting to happen.”

“That is exactly what I should have said,” Aziraphale agreed, sounding almost delighted. “Instead, I offered him a pamphlet on Victorian flower symbolism, and he had the audacity to sneer.”

“His loss,” Crowley said. “Bet he couldn’t tell a daisy from a dahlia.”

“Precisely!” Aziraphale warmed to the subject. “And then he suggested I clear the shelves for coffee tables. Imagine! As though I would ever—”

Crowley let him go on, happy to play the audience. Every time Aziraphale’s voice caught with indignation, Crowley fed him little prompts: “No!” “He didn’t.” “Bastard.” It was easy, soothing, watching him unwind word by word.

After a while, Aziraphale slowed, sighed. “I do apologise. I’m monopolising the conversation.”

“You’re not.” Crowley’s voice dipped. “I like hearing you.”

The silence that followed was thick, and Crowley felt the line shift dangerously close to where he wanted it—close to admitting, to saying too much. He pulled back. “Besides, I had my share of idiots today. Student group nearly trampled a bed of rare irises. I told them if they couldn’t tell the difference between a path and a planting, they didn’t deserve oxygen.”

That earned a soft laugh, genuine. “You didn’t.”

“Did.”

“Oh dear.”

“They’ll survive. The irises nearly didn’t.”

The conversation meandered from there—plants, books, the weather. Always, whenever it edged near feeling, Aziraphale brightened the tone, deflected. Crowley let him, though every time it stung. Still, half an hour slipped by before either realised.

At last Aziraphale said, “I should let you go. You’ve been very patient.”

Crowley smiled at the word. Patient. He could live with that. “Yeah. But call me anytime. You know that, right?”

A pause. Then, softly: “Yes. Thank you.”

When they hung up, Crowley sat in the quiet car park, staring at the dark screen of his phone. He wanted to drive straight to Soho, shove the door of the bookshop open, and drag the truth out of him—what he wanted, what he feared. But he stayed put. Pushing would only send him retreating further.

So instead he texted later, once the itch of silence grew unbearable.

Crowley: Lunch sometime this week? There’s a place I know. Quiet enough.

It took three minutes, during which he questioned every word. Then:

Aziraphale: That sounds very pleasant. I am free most days this week after one o’clock.

Crowley grinned at the screen, relief easing the knot in his chest.

Crowley: Friday. Half past twelve? I’ll come collect you.

Aziraphale: Very well. I look forward to it.

Crowley set the phone down, leaned back, and let the tension drain from his shoulders. Friday wasn’t far. He could wait.

For Aziraphale, he’d wait as long as it took.

Crowley had faced down bureaucrats, storms, and invasive species that wanted to devour entire garden beds before breakfast, but none of it compared to the bloody nightmare of choosing a shirt.

The wardrobe situation wasn’t dire—he had his usual arsenal of black, sharp, and intimidating—but this wasn’t work. This wasn’t showing up at Kew to glare at donors until they signed a cheque. This was lunch with Aziraphale. Which wasn’t a date, technically. Except maybe it was. Except he very much wanted it to be.

He tugged one shirt off the hanger, grimaced at the collar. Too stiff. Another—too creased. A third—well, he’d worn that to the last fundraising dinner and half the trustees had spilled wine on him. Bad luck. Finally, he settled on black, sleeves rolled, the sort of compromise between careless and deliberate that took him twenty minutes to achieve.

Boots polished just enough to gleam without looking new. Hair coaxed—not forced—into something resembling order. Sunglasses cleaned with a cloth he pretended not to keep just for the purpose.

Ridiculous. He hadn’t spent this much effort since university, and that had been to impress professors into ignoring his attendance record. He caught himself scowling at the mirror, muttering, “It’s just lunch.”

But his pulse had other ideas.

By the time he strode through Soho, the façade was in place: long lines, effortless poise, the slouch that made people get out of his way without thinking. He rehearsed casual greetings in his head—Alright?, Ready?, You hungry?—discarding each as too eager, too flat, too bloody obvious.

When the knock came—half past twelve precisely, of course—he leaned against the shop doorframe, sunglasses glinting, every inch the devil-may-care bastard he pretended to be.

And then Aziraphale opened the door.

Crowley’s throat went dry. Waistcoat, neatly buttoned. Hair combed within an inch of its life. A little flush at the collar like he’d been rushing, though Crowley knew better; that was nerves.

“Ready?” Crowley asked, casual as anything, tipping his mouth in that secret way.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, voice steadier than the way his hands fumbled with the lock. He muttered something under his breath—Crowley caught “Lunch is not dinner”—but decided not to pry.

They walked in silence, close but not quite touching, until Crowley ushered him into the restaurant tucked down the ivy-wrapped lane. Inside, warm spice-laden air curled around them, quiet and steady. Crowley had chosen it for precisely that reason: no crowds, no prying eyes, just enough background hum to be private without being suspicious.

He guided Aziraphale to the booth in the back, satisfied when he saw the faint lines of tension ease from his shoulders. He noticed these things—how loud spaces made him shrink, how sharp noises rattled him. Muriel had been the same, when they were kids: classrooms too bright, playgrounds too chaotic. Crowley had learned to carve little safe havens then, and he was doing it now.

They ordered—lamb curry for him, fish for Aziraphale. Crowley folded his long frame into the seat, trying not to look too bloody obvious about watching him relax.

“Place’s been here forever,” he said. “Word of mouth only. Best way—filters out the riffraff.”

Aziraphale arched a brow. “And yet somehow you found your way in?”

Crowley flashed teeth. “Charm. Obviously.”

The rhythm set itself quickly—banter, back-and-forth. Aziraphale’s laugh smoothed something jagged in him, like sandpaper over raw wood.

And still, under it all, Crowley’s thoughts circled. What did Aziraphale make of this? Did he understand? Did he want to? He seemed brighter than last week, less haunted. But every time the conversation skimmed near feeling, he darted away like a spooked bird.

When the food arrived, Crowley nearly groaned aloud. Perfect lamb, spices exactly right. He devoured it, glasses slipping down his nose, and felt Aziraphale’s gaze on him. Not judging—watching. Crowley tried not to think too hard about what he looked like under that scrutiny.

He told the trellis story to fill the space, waving his hands, miming the poor bastard’s tumble. Aziraphale laughed distractedly, not fully tuned in, eyes fixed on his mouth. Crowley felt the air spark between them, ridiculous, like teenagers.

“—and ivy’s not structural support, never has been,” Crowley finished.

“Yes, well, people can be very silly,” Aziraphale said, vague.

Crowley tilted his head, amused. He’d caught him not listening. “S’pose that’s true. Present company excluded, naturally.”

Aziraphale blinked, unsure, and Crowley nearly cursed himself. Too much? Too little? He let it drop, smirking.

“Brian’s still alive, then?” he asked.

“The sunflower?” Aziraphale perked up immediately. “Quite flourishing. The bud is nearly ready to open. I’ve been turning the pot so it doesn’t lean.”

“Always knew you’d spoil it,” Crowley teased, then instantly regretted the edge in his tone when Aziraphale frowned. He softened. “Bit jealous, actually.”

“Jealous? It’s only a plant.”

“Yeah. Just a plant.”

He let it hang. He didn’t mean the bloody sunflower.

When the waiter asked about dessert, Aziraphale shook his head. Crowley ordered coffee, dark and scalding, but couldn’t stop watching as Aziraphale glanced at the menu, hesitated, and declined. Not appetite—he’d seen the flicker of self-consciousness, the memory of Gabriel’s digs. Crowley clenched his jaw, swallowed the instinct to snarl. Not here. Not now.

The coffee grounded him. Aziraphale sat across, hands folded, looking like he wanted to ask something and couldn’t find the words.

Crowley leaned forward. “So. You enjoyed this?”

“Oh—very much. The fish was excellent.”

“I meant the company.”

Heat flared in his cheeks, visible even under the restaurant’s low light. He stammered agreement. Crowley chuckled softly, exasperated and fond in equal measure.

“You’re bloody impossible, you know that?” he muttered.

“I—pardon?”

He shook his head, drained the coffee, and shoved the moment forward. “Come on. Walk?”

The afternoon sun lit Soho in soft gold. Crowley adjusted his stride to match Aziraphale’s, patient. He talked orchids, partly to distract himself, partly to watch how Aziraphale’s brow furrowed with interest. And the whole time, his chest burned with words unsaid.

At the bookshop door, Aziraphale fumbled for something, anything. Crowley snapped first.

“I missed you.”

The words landed with a weight he hadn’t anticipated. Aziraphale blinked, wide-eyed, uncertain. “I—pardon?”

Crowley shoved his hands in his pockets, pulled them out again, restless. “I said I missed you. Between the kiss and this lunch, I… missed you. And I don’t want it to just be the odd text or once-a-month auction. I want—” His throat tightened. He forced it out. “I want more. I want dates. Proper dates.”

Aziraphale froze, stunned. Crowley pressed on, before he could retreat.

“You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been flirting my head off for weeks and you’ve just been—smiling at me, like we’re discussing bloody Latin.”

“I thought…” Aziraphale’s voice wavered. “I thought perhaps you weren’t… serious.”

“Serious?” Crowley barked a laugh, sharp. “I’ve been dead serious. You think I’d drag myself out at dawn for just anyone? You think I’d let anyone else near my herbarium?”

He saw the realisation flicker across Aziraphale’s face, the tug-of-war between disbelief and hope.

“I’ve never been very good at… this sort of thing,” Aziraphale admitted, voice almost breaking.

“Yeah.” Crowley softened, leaning in. “I guessed. Doesn’t change what I want.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “And what you want is… dates.”

“What I want,” Crowley said, low and steady, “is you. However much time you’ll give me.”

Crowley had not meant to say it like that.
He’d told himself he’d keep it light—another joke about sunflowers, maybe, or a sly invitation that could be brushed off if it went sideways. But there he was, standing outside the bloody bookshop with Aziraphale blinking at him like someone had dropped an algebra equation in his teacup, and the words were already out: I want dates. I want you.

Aziraphale’s mouth opened, shut. His hands tightened on the strap of his satchel as if he expected it to offer instructions. Crowley had seen that look before, though not from him—Muriel had worn it often as a kid. Faced with an unexpected question in school, or a change in plan that hadn’t been prepared for, they’d freeze exactly like that: throat working, body tense, eyes darting like they were searching for the right answer written somewhere on the wall.

So Crowley waited. He shoved his hands in his pockets, pulled them out again, ran one through his hair—too restless to stand still but determined, this time, not to fill the silence for him.

Finally, Aziraphale managed, “I thought… perhaps you weren’t serious.”

Crowley barked a laugh, sharp around the edges. Not at him, exactly—more at the absurdity of the idea. “Serious? You think I drag myself out of bed at dawn for just anyone? You think I’d let anyone else near my herbarium?”

Aziraphale blinked rapidly, lips parted as though he were still catching up. His whole posture screamed retreat, but he didn’t step back. He stayed rooted to the spot, looking bewildered and cornered and—God help him—adorable.

Crowley took a breath, reined himself in. “Look,” he said more quietly. “I’m not here to spook you. I just—needed to say it. That’s all.”

He waited for the rejection. He could practically hear it being written in the air: I value your friendship, Crowley. Or worse, the polite brush-off Aziraphale could deploy with surgical precision when dealing with over-eager customers.

Instead Aziraphale adjusted his satchel strap again and said, voice faint but steady, “I’ve never been very good at… this sort of thing.”

Crowley’s chest loosened by a fraction. Not no. Not go away. Just—uncertain. Which he could work with. He softened, let some of the sharpness bleed out of him. “Yeah. I guessed. Doesn’t change what I want.”

That was when Aziraphale’s eyes really widened. His breath hitched, visible even in the summer air. His knuckles whitened around the satchel strap. Crowley knew that look too—Muriel had worn it the first time they tried ordering food on their own, overwhelmed by the choice and the unspoken rules everyone else seemed to know. Back then, Crowley had wanted to smash the system that made his sibling feel so cornered. Now, standing before Aziraphale, the same protective urge roared through him: don’t let him feel like he’s failing some test.

“And what you want is… dates,” Aziraphale managed at last.

Crowley held his gaze, kept his voice steady. “I meant it. I just want you. However much time and space you’re willing to give me.”

Silence again, thick as treacle. Aziraphale looked away first, down at his shoes, then back up at Crowley with an expression that was maddeningly hard to parse. Not refusal. Not acceptance either. Just… storm-tossed.

Crowley wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake sense into him—or better, pull him in and kiss the uncertainty right out. But he knew better. Aziraphale wasn’t built for sudden pushes. He was built for quiet corners, for time, for care.

So Crowley exhaled through his nose, deliberately casual. “Come on,” he said, jerking his head down the pavement. “Walk with me a bit.”

The streets of Soho were their usual mess: tourists drifting like lost sheep, neon signs buzzing half-heartedly, a busker murdering “Wonderwall” on the corner. Crowley matched his stride to Aziraphale’s shorter one, resisting the urge to stride ahead.

They didn’t talk much at first. Crowley let the silence stretch, hoping Aziraphale would fill it. He didn’t. He just walked, gaze fixed on the cobblestones, expression knotted tight.

Crowley ground his teeth. He’s overthinking it. Course he is. Muriel used to do the same, back when they were kids. Crowley could still picture them on the back steps of their childhood house, rocking back and forth with their hands knotted in their jumper, whispering, What if I said the wrong thing? What if they hate me now? It had broken something in him then, seeing his sibling twist themselves into knots over rules nobody had ever bothered to explain.

And now here was Aziraphale, doing the exact same thing.

Crowley cleared his throat. “You know… you don’t have to answer me right away.”

Aziraphale glanced at him, startled.

Crowley shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. “Just saying. I’m not gonna—disappear if you need a bit of time. Alright?”

The tension in Aziraphale’s shoulders eased a fraction. “That is… considerate of you.”

“Not considerate. Just true.”

They circled back toward the bookshop eventually. Aziraphale slowed outside the door, fiddling with his keys. Crowley half-expected him to bolt inside with a muttered good day.

Instead, Aziraphale lingered. His gaze darted to Crowley’s mouth, then away again so fast Crowley wondered if he’d imagined it. His hands twitched on the satchel strap. He looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, calculating wind speed, depth, and probability of survival before daring the leap.

Crowley’s pulse thudded. Don’t push. Just… offer.

So he leaned in, slowly enough that Aziraphale could stop him at any moment, and brushed the barest ghost of a kiss against his lips.

Aziraphale froze. Not pulling away—but not responding either. Crowley held still, every nerve in his body screaming with the need to know what this meant. Then, just as he was about to retreat, Aziraphale exhaled shakily and leaned the tiniest bit forward, enough that Crowley felt it, enough to know it wasn’t an accident.

It lasted seconds. Less. But when they parted, Aziraphale’s face was flushed, eyes wide, lips parted like he’d just spoken a truth too large to fit in words.

Crowley swallowed hard. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”

Aziraphale blinked rapidly, then nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

Crowley walked away with his heart in his throat, sunglasses hiding eyes that felt far too exposed.

Tomorrow.

He could work with that.

Crowley arrived at Kew early and pretended it was because the data loggers needed checking. The Palm House was still pulling itself awake, panes sweating, air heavy with that green, living weight that settled on the back of your tongue. He walked the grating with a clipboard he didn’t need—valves fine, misters fine, temperatures fine—and tried not to think about the way Aziraphale had gripped his satchel strap last night as if it could translate a declaration into a language he understood. He had said what he meant. He had meant every word. And now he had to wait, which he was historically terrible at.

By half nine he’d run out of things to pretend to adjust and was back at the staff door wiping perfectly clean shears on a perfectly clean rag. Anathema came in with an armful of folders and a coffee that could have stripped paint.

“You’re vibrating,” she said, setting everything down and peering at him over the rim of her cup. “Did the funding spreadsheet bite you or did something interesting happen in your actual life.”

He held out the shears. “Look at this edge.”

“Sharp, menacing, complicated. Like you when you’re hiding something.” She took a sip. “How’d the lunch go.”

“It was lunch,” he said. “We ate food.”

“And?”

“And afterward I told him I wanted dates,” Crowley said, because there was only so much deflection even he could manage.

Anathema stilled, then grinned like a fox. “You confessing anything plainly? Must be love.”

He shot her a look. “I didn’t propose marriage. I said I wanted time.”

“And he?”

Crowley watched the light slant through glass, burnish the iron, turn the air to syrup. “He froze. Not no. Not yes. Just—processing. We walked. I didn’t push.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He looked like Muriel when the teacher asked for volunteers and no one explained what volunteering meant.”

Anathema’s face softened at the mention of Muriel. “So you did the decent thing and didn’t try to decode him out loud.”

“Gold star for me,” he said, acid gentle. “I’d like a medal for not being a complete idiot.”

“You want him to feel safe,” Anathema said. “That’s the medal.”

“It would be easier if he’d tell me what the rules are,” Crowley muttered.

“And it would be easier for him if you handed him a rulebook,” she shot back. “But neither of you gets easy. You get each other.”

He made a helpless, sardonic gesture with the shears. “He might not want me.”

“He came to lunch,” she said. “He let you say the word dates to his face without sprinting into a hedge. If you need me to read you the tea leaves any clearer, bring a teacup.”

Crowley’s phone buzzed against the clipboard. He glanced down and nearly dropped everything.

Aziraphale: Would you terribly mind if I stopped by Kew this afternoon?

He read it again. The phrasing was careful, as always, like a man trying to step lightly over ground he didn’t trust yet.

Anathema leaned in, blatantly nosy. “Well?”

“He wants to come by,” Crowley said, aiming for mild and missing by a mile.

“Of course he does.” She shooed him with the folders. “Go make the Palm House look like it wasn’t arranged by a raccoon.”

“It already looks perfect,” he said, already moving.

“It’s never perfect enough for you when someone you fancy is visiting,” she called after him, smug and unbearable and correct.

He texted back with fingers that had no business being clumsy.

Crowley: Course. Always welcome. When were you thinking?

The reply took long enough to make him consider oxygen as a hobby.

Aziraphale: After lunch, if it’s not inconvenient.

Crowley: Not inconvenient. I’ll be in the glasshouses. Text me when you arrive.

He stood there a moment with the phone in his palm, then looked up at the forest of iron and glass he’d made his home and started fussing in earnest. He tidied the tool bench until the spanners lay in a military line. He shifted a watering can half an inch to the left because the arc of the handle offended him. He rewound a coil of hose, saw the coil was already perfect, and rewound it again. When the humidity rose and his fringe began to curl, he muttered, dunked his hands in a bucket, and smoothed his hair back. It sprang forward again two minutes later. He scowled at it and left it alone.

The volunteers trickled in and out, cheery in that oblivious way of people who’d never had to narrate plant-monogamy to five-year-olds. One of them, Bev, nearly walked into him with a tray of seedlings. “Oh! Sorry, Dr. Crowley. You’re standing very still in a very busy place.”

“I’ll try to move in a more visible fashion,” he said dryly.

By noon he had achieved the maximum possible tidiness for a living space and was therefore forced to admit he was waiting. He couldn’t even pretend otherwise when Anathema reappeared, bumping the staff door with her hip.

“Two o’clock,” she announced.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do now,” she said, flourishing her phone. “A little bird saw your little bird on the CCTV coming through the gates last time he visited. The little bird is you, by the way.”

He gave up arguing. “If you see him before I do, don’t—”

“—be myself? Tragic.” She softened. “I’ll keep my mouth shut unless it needs opening.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t blow this by trying to be clever,” she added, already halfway out the door. “He doesn’t need clever. He needs steady.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She knew.

At twelve forty-three, while he was pretending to adjust a misting head that didn’t need adjusting, his phone buzzed again.

Aziraphale: I’m here. Shall I meet you in the glasshouses?

Crowley: Stay put. I’ll come get you.

He left the tools where they were, strode out under the high iron arch, and cut across the lawns at a pace that made tourists scuttle. The July sun pushed hard through the clouds, gilding the Temperate House, bright-on-bright, and he narrowed his eyes against the glare until he saw him.

Aziraphale stood just off the path, hat at a careful angle, waistcoat immaculate, hands folded on the head of his umbrella though there wasn’t a threat of rain. He had that particular way of holding his body when he was somewhere public and unclaimed, as if trying to shrink without appearing to shrink.

“Afternoon,” Crowley called, easing his stride.

Aziraphale looked up and brightened—small, quick, and terribly earnest. “Crowley.”

It settled something in Crowley every time, hearing his name in that voice. He stopped just short of reaching for him. “Fancy a long, damp walk through an artificial jungle?”

“That sounds exactly the ticket,” Aziraphale said, and there was gratitude in it he probably didn’t know he was showing.

Inside the Palm House, the air wrapped around them with that immediate, confident heat. Condensation pearled on every surface. The great palms arched like cathedral ribs. Crowley did the little courtesy he’d learned mattered: he took the inside of the narrow stair when they climbed so Aziraphale could keep his hand to the rail without being jostled.

He kept the talk light. A rotten slat he’d replaced last week. A donor’s misguided plan to put fairy lights around a cycads bed. A thrips situation headed off at the pass. Aziraphale listened with rapt attention, nodding in all the right places, asking questions with that precise, schoolmaster’s curiosity that always made Crowley want to perform unwise feats of competence.

“Do people really suggest lights?” Aziraphale asked, genuinely appalled.

“Constantly,” Crowley said. “If it stands still, someone wants to decorate it. Plants are not Christmas trees. Plants are busy.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale said, fierce in the way only he could be. “I should like to show those people a photograph of a rainforest and ask them where they propose to put the fairy lights.”

“God, marry me,” Crowley said under his breath, then coughed it into a laugh. Aziraphale glanced over, puzzled, and Crowley let it pass without rescue.

On the upper walkway, he slowed, letting Aziraphale set the pace. The man had a rhythm to his gaze—catalogue, compare, return—a way of looking that felt like respect. Every so often he’d set his gloved fingertips to the iron rail as if to ground himself. Crowley noticed; he always noticed. He fought the urge to put a hand at the small of his back, to become another point of contact. Not yet. Not until the rules were clear.

They came down again in that damp hush that eats sound. The carnivorous plants were well-behaved today; the flytraps held their green mouths open, haloed with tiny hairs, and the pitcher plants stood like elegant tricksters, sugared lips slick with deceit.

“They really eat insects?” Aziraphale asked, leaning nearer with an expression bordering on fond.

“Relentless as taxmen,” Crowley said. “Just don’t poke them. Closing’s work. Triggers the mechanism. It’s like making them do a push-up for your entertainment.”

Aziraphale snatched his hand back, mortified. “I would never.”

“I know,” Crowley said, smiling. “You’re much too well-brought-up to torment a plant.”

That got him a small huff of amusement, tension loosening around the corners of Aziraphale’s mouth. He held onto that tiny victory longer than he should have.

They drifted out into the Temperate House where the light was kinder, the heat less insistent. On a bench under a splay of leaves that always made Crowley think of the backs of benevolent hands, Aziraphale paused.

“Sit a moment?” he asked, like a man testing a key in a lock.

Crowley sat with him and stretched his legs until his boots made a neat line with the shadow of the bench.

“Thank you for letting me invite myself,” Aziraphale said after a minute. His voice was careful, polished, like old silver. “It is… restful here.”

Crowley kept his eyes on the path ahead. “Always room for you, here.”

He felt more than saw Aziraphale’s shoulders drop a notch. The silence that followed wasn’t the brittle kind; it was the kind that filled with plant-sounds—the tiny immaculate clicks of misters, the soft creep of air.

He wanted to ask. He very nearly did. About last night. About the word dates spoken bare-faced on a Soho pavement. But he could feel the edge of the question like a cliff, and he had no interest in seeing Aziraphale leap to escape it. He talked instead about the temperamental fern that insisted on behaving like a prima donna, all drama and delicate fronds.

“Perhaps it merely wishes to be admired,” Aziraphale said, mouth tilting.

“It is admired,” Crowley said, dead serious. “I tell it daily how beautiful it is. It remains a menace.”

They stood again when the air shifted cooler through the vents. Crowley led him along a side path with fewer people, not making a show of it, angling without commentary so that Aziraphale never had to thread a crowd. He pointed out a spray of blossom he knew would appeal, white as linen with a ridiculous scent like sugared lemons. Aziraphale bent to it, eyes bright. Crowley watched the line of his throat and made a study of minding his hands.

Anathema appeared as they came out into the main aisle, carrying a clipboard like a weapon. She took in the picture—Aziraphale a touch pinked from the heat but standing easy, Crowley feigning nonchalance with academic precision—and dialled her voice down to Sunday-friendly.

“Mr. Fell,” she said, all professional brightness, offering a hand. “Good to see you again.”

Aziraphale took it with that courtly little bow he sometimes forgot was anachronistic. “Doctor Device. Your talk last month was excellent.”

Anathema glowed, then shot Crowley the quickest, wickedest flick of a look. He pulled a face at her that said if you say one word I will feed you to the Nepenthes. She returned to her clipboard at once, model of discretion.

“We’ve just replaced the interpretive panel in the south transect,” she said. “If you fancy fewer typos in your educational experience.”

“I never fancy typos,” Aziraphale said primly.

“I know,” Anathema said, with a kindness that almost hid the tease. She slid past them and was gone, leaving behind the faintest scent of cardamom and vindication.

“Friendly lot,” Aziraphale said.

“Some of us,” Crowley said. “Some of us are feral.”

“I should like to meet the feral ones,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley laughed, surprised by it.

They did another circuit, slower now, as if they both knew the visit had found its shape and neither wanted to jostle it. At the exit, where the heat broke and ordinary July came back, Aziraphale stopped. He held his hat brim the way a man holds a thought he’s finally chosen.

“This was… very pleasant,” he said, and looked at Crowley as though there was more to say and he was flattening it to something survivable. “I shall not keep you from your work.”

“You never do,” Crowley said, and meant it.

Aziraphale glanced past him at the bright spill of lawn and the walking families and the world that didn’t know or care that a bookman and a plant man were trying to invent a protocol for something that didn’t come with one. He looked back, and for a breath his gaze dropped to Crowley’s mouth and back up again so fast that if Crowley hadn’t been watching for exactly that, he would have missed it.

He didn’t move. He didn’t reach. He let the moment register like weather. Aziraphale gave a small, decisive nod that belonged to neither of them and all at once and lifted his hand in a formal little wave that made Crowley want to commit some undignified act of affection right there by the exit gates.

“Soon?” Aziraphale said.

“Soon,” Crowley answered.

He watched him walk away, long enough to see the set of his shoulders change once he passed through the gate and the press of humanity swallowed him. He stayed where he was until the hat disappeared into ordinary London.

When he turned back, Anathema was leaning against the wall with her clipboard, already there like she’d unfolded out of the brick.

“Well?” she asked.

Crowley brushed past her into the shade. “He came.”

“Yes.”

“He looked like a man who’d rehearsed five different speeches and left them all at home.”

“Yes.”

“He said it was restful,” Crowley added, because he wanted, irrationally, to catalogue what had happened.

Anathema’s mouth softened. “Then you did your job.”

He leaned his head against the cool stone and shut his eyes for a second. The day felt both heavier and lighter. “I wanted to ask about last night. About—” He let the sentence die.

“You didn’t,” she said, approving.

“I didn’t,” he echoed, baffled at himself and unreasonably proud.

She tapped the clipboard against his arm. “He’s trying. You can see it.”

“I can,” he said.

“And you,” she said, “are doing very well at not being unbearable.”

“High praise.”

“Don’t get used to it,” she said. “What’s the next move?”

“Next move,” he repeated, tasting it. He could feel his instincts—push, dazzle, distract—line up and then stand down. “He’ll choose, if I’ve got any sense. He needs to feel like he can. I’ll keep the ground steady under him.”

“Good,” she said, and then, because she couldn’t help herself, “also buy a comb that works in humidity.”

He flipped her a pair of V-signs and she laughed, big and honest, and went to terrorise someone who deserved it.

Work took him for the rest of the afternoon—the sort that filled hands and left the head alone. He re-labelled a set of trays with his neat, hard script. He picked aphids off a sacrificial nasturtium with the same mean patience he applied to budget meetings. He started three emails and finished none of them.

As the light turned toward evening, his phone buzzed once more. He looked at it and let his mouth tilt.

Aziraphale: Home. Thank you for today.

He typed, deleted, typed again.

Crowley: Any time. Sleep well, Aziraphale.

He tucked the phone away and stood for a long minute in the door of the Palm House, breathing the warm green tenderness of his kingdom. The day had not ended with declarations; it had not ended in disaster. It had ended in a visit, a bench, a shared quiet, and a word that meant more than it said.

Soon.

He could live with that. He could, if he had to, live on it. But God willing, he wouldn’t have to for long. He had patience measured in seasons when it came to plants. He could learn it for a man who watched a Venus flytrap like it might tell him its secrets and chose a wave over a flight when he might have run.

On the way out, he passed Anathema’s office again. The light was off. Someone had left a Post-it on his own door: Stop re-rewinding the hoses. We see you. —A

He huffed a laugh, pocketed the note, and stepped into the evening.

He would not sprint. He would not shove. He would show up, offer steady, and let Aziraphale find the words in his own time. And when the man did—because Crowley believed now, more than he had any right to, that he would—Crowley would be exactly where he’d promised to be.

Waiting, and ready.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale had always believed in the civilising power of stationery. A clean sheet, a good pen, a line ruled straight across the top—these were the small rails he could lay down over unruly ground. He sat behind the counter after closing, the shop lit to evening, the bell latched, the street a muted run of footsteps and buses, and wrote his headings as though they were compass points: Opening line. Purpose. Boundaries. Plans. The words looked very calm on paper. He did not.

The phone lay face-down to his right, as if to stop it peering at his notes. He turned it over once, twice, as though he might find instruction printed on the back. The contact read merely Crowley, so stark it seemed a dare. He tapped edit, stared at the field, and typed before he could overthink it.

Crowley (Boyfriend?)

He sat back, a little horrified, a little buoyed. The question mark was a life ring: not a lie, not a boast—just an honest mapping of where things stood. He told himself he could always change it later. He told himself many things.

The paper filled with possibilities in tidy turquoise loops. “I very much enjoyed our lunch.” “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” “I should like to clarify where we stand.” Each sounded to his ear either too formal or too begging. He wrote counters beneath them, Crowley’s imagined responses, and under those, replies that might keep him from panicking. It looked like the branching diagram of a hedge trimmed to perfection. His chest, however, felt like someone had dropped a bird inside it and shut the lid.

He glanced toward the windowsill. The Importunate Duke (Brian) held court, leaves arranged like a magistrate’s hands. “Well?” Aziraphale asked him softly. “Do we dare?” The plant offered no counsel, which was a sort of permission.

He picked up the phone, hovered over the call button, and pressed before he could think better of it. The ringing was immediately intolerable. On the third pulse: “Aziraphale?”

“Oh—ah—hello,” he said, and heard how all his rehearsed openings fell off the shelf in his voice.

“Hey.” A door closed somewhere at Crowley’s end; the sound made a clean-edged shelter in Aziraphale’s ear. “Was just putting something away. You alright?”

“Yes,” he said, and then, because it was truer: “Mostly. I hoped we might talk.”

“Good,” Crowley said, and breathed out as if unclenching. “So let’s do that.”

Aziraphale tightened his grip and loosened it again. He found, to his faint surprise, that the sentences he had written were not entirely useless. They lived in his mouth, albeit shyly. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Yesterday. And about dates. I should like—if we can—to proceed. Carefully. With a little… plan.”

There was a soft sound that might have been a laugh, but not the sharp one Crowley deployed in defence. “Carefully suits me. Plan’s my favourite four-letter word when plants are involved. When it’s people—well. I can learn.”

“I’m sorry to have dashed in more or less unannounced,” Aziraphale said. “It felt safer than letting my thoughts run their laps alone.”

“You were very welcome,” Crowley said simply. “You always are.”

“You were kind to make room,” Aziraphale went on, because he had promised himself he would acknowledge it. “The way you chose the quieter path, the way you stood on the inside of the stair so I might have the rail. I notice those things.”

A pause; he could hear the small lift in Crowley’s breathing that meant the words had landed. “Good,” Crowley said, softer. “I wanted you to notice.”

“I also saw Anathema,” Aziraphale said, recalling the quick spark of a smile and the merciful absence of teasing. “She was very… professional.”

“That was her being on her best behaviour,” Crowley said wryly. “You’re blessed. She’s fond of you, but she’ll deny it under oath.”

“I’m fond of her,” Aziraphale admitted. “More so when she refrains from calling me out on my typos.”

“She refrained because she likes you,” Crowley said. “Trust me.”

Aziraphale smiled down at his paper, at the bullet points arrayed like soldiers. He crossed out “apologise for imposing” and wrote, more boldly, “thank him for today.” Then, because he had promised himself he would not skate forever on pleasantries, he cleared the next small hurdle.

“Crowley,” he said. “About the… dates.”

“Mm?”

“I would like to try,” Aziraphale said, letting the words be plain. “I’d like to see you with intention. It will help me if we have terms. Not to constrain you. To steady me. I can be very brave if I know where the edges are.”

“I thought you might say that,” Crowley said, with a warmth that held no triumph. “Tell me your edges.”

Aziraphale had written them down, and for once the script did not feel false. “Quiet places to begin. Fewer surprises. If there’s going to be a crowd, some warning. If I ask for a pause, we pause without embarrassment. And… if we can, I should like to be the one who says when for… other matters.”

There was a silence that was not empty. He heard it enter Crowley’s body, settle his shoulders; he pictured the small nod he had learned to spot, the one that meant agreement had set like resin. “All of that’s fine by me,” Crowley said. “More than fine. I like quiet places. Warning’s easy. Pause as often as you want. And you say when. Always.”

Relief loosened something at the base of Aziraphale’s skull. He let his head tip back for a moment, eyes closed, listening to the fan hum. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for being decent,” Crowley said. “But you’re welcome.”

“I should also like,” Aziraphale added, emboldened by the fact that he had not been laughed at, “to ask you to tell me when I am missing… overtures. As it were. I do not always catch them. It is not disinterest. It is—” He groped for the right shape. “It is that the road signs are not always visible to me at speed.”

“I know,” Crowley said. “I’m learning your map. If I need to, I’ll switch to billboards.” He paused, then allowed himself a small groan. “For what it’s worth, I did have a tiny sulk after lunch when you called me ‘delightful company.’ Felt like I’d been patted on the head and sent home with a gold star.”

Aziraphale winced at the memory, heat rising in his face. “Oh dear. I meant—well, I meant I liked being with you. I was trying not to—” He flapped a hand at the desk, then remembered hands were not helpful over the telephone. “It’s difficult, finding the correct register.”

“I know,” Crowley said again, but this time it sounded like a promise rather than a fact. “We’ll find it. Out loud. If that helps, you can assume I’m flirting unless I explicitly say I’m not.”

A laugh escaped him, startled and unguarded. “That seems a dangerous baseline.”

“Better than the opposite,” Crowley said. “Besides, it makes my life easier. I hate doing subtle.”

“Very well,” Aziraphale said. “I shall endeavour to read you as… unsubtle.”

“Excellent. I’ll lean into it. Consider this unsubtle: I want to see you,” Crowley said, and the line warmed with it.

“I want to see you too,” Aziraphale said, quietly, because it was time to let that truth be said without a dissertation.

They let that sit between them for a little while, companionable. Aziraphale, who had taught himself to survive silence by filling it, discovered he did not mind this one. It was the silence of two people who had said a thing and were not rushing to erase it.

“Plans,” Crowley said at last, coaxing them forward. “You said you like a plan.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, grateful for the invitation. “If you don’t object, I should like to choose the first two engagements. It will help me be brave.”

“Choose,” Crowley said. “I’ll turn up.”

“The small museum in Bloomsbury—on Thursday,” Aziraphale said, and marvelled at the calm that arrived as soon as the sentence had a calendar in it. “They do a late opening. The one with the cabinets of minerals, and the staircase that groans like an old sailor. It is rarely busy. They play music at a sensible volume. We could meet there at half past five and leave whenever we wish.”

“I know it,” Crowley said. “I’ll be at the door at twenty past, in case you want to see me first.”

Aziraphale smiled into the receiver—both at the thoughtfulness and at the accuracy with which Crowley now arranged himself in the world to be seen rather than discovered. “Thank you. And perhaps on Sunday evening—a walk by the river. Dusk, when the heat has gone out of the stones. If it’s too much, there are several bookshops we can take refuge in.”

“There’s nothing I want more than to be ambushed by enthusiasm and flee into a shop with you,” Crowley said, the grin audible.

“Good,” Aziraphale said. “Then we have a plan.”

“And in between,” Crowley said, gentling the pace as if he were leading them down steps, “we can talk. Like this. And if you’d like… we can have a code. For when you can’t do talking but want to say you’re there.”

“A code,” Aziraphale repeated, unexpectedly delighted by the practicality. “What sort of—?”

“You send me a book emoji,” Crowley said without shame. “I’ll send you a fern.”

“A book,” Aziraphale said, amused even as he wrote it down. “And a fern. And if I am… not up to speaking, I shall say ‘bookshop bell.’”

“I’ll say ‘greenhouse hush’ if I need to do the same,” Crowley said. “No guilt attached. Just a tap on the glass.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Yes, that will help.”

He could feel the knots inside him easing, not dissolving entirely—that would be too much to expect—but loosening to something he could live with. The plans turned into lines he could place his feet along. The codes gave him a handhold. And somewhere beneath all that, the fact of wanting neither of them had flinched from naming now sat like a warm stone.

“And—Crowley?” Aziraphale said, because there was one more thing he wished to set straight, small in itself, but large in what it represented. “You call me Aziraphale. You always have. Please… keep doing so.”

“As you wish,” Crowley said promptly. “No Azzy.” Aziraphale could hear the teasing smile.

“Please. No.”

“Never,” Crowley said, with such uncomplicated certainty that Aziraphale had to put a hand over his eyes for a second and breathe.

They drifted, as they so often did, to safer ground for a while, as if to rest the muscles they had used. Aziraphale told him about a consignment of books he had opened that afternoon, a ridiculous box of mismatched paperbacks that had somehow harboured, between romance novels with alarming covers, a first edition of a small press essay on mosses. “It has the worst typography I’ve ever seen,” he said, affectionate. “But the footnotes are a hymn.”

Crowley told him about a peacock that had made an enemy of a wedding photographer, and how Anathema had intervened with the smooth deadliness of a barrister. “She has a way of convincing people they’ve had their own idea,” he said. “I’m almost afraid of it.”

“A useful friend,” Aziraphale said. “She was very restrained with me yesterday.”

“She likes you,” Crowley said again, as if this were a settled matter. “She told me not to blow it by trying to be clever.”

“Sound advice,” Aziraphale murmured, unable to resist.

“Cheek,” Crowley said, with pleased offence. “I’ll have you know I’ve behaved very well.”

“You have,” Aziraphale said. “You’ve been… steady.” The word sat right. “It matters.”

“Good,” Crowley said, and the husk in it made Aziraphale’s hand tighten on the phone.

Something in him wanted to run at the feeling while he was brave—wanted to say I changed your name to Crowley (Boyfriend?), to tell the ridiculous truth of how much that small edit had moved the balance of the world. He did not. He was allowed to keep some of his private theatres. But he did tell him the thing that could be said without making the night tip.

“You can assume,” Aziraphale said, “that when I am quiet, it is not because I am uninterested. It is because I am… aligning. And if I am aligning for too long, you may nudge.”

“Consider yourself nudged if I haven’t heard from you in two days,” Crowley said, mock-solemn. “And I expect at least one picture of the Importunate Duke every week.”

“It will go straight to his head,” Aziraphale said. “But very well.”

“Speaking of,” Crowley added, “how is His Grace?”

“Pretending indifference,” Aziraphale said, smiling toward the windowsill. “He approves of your horticultural governance.”

“High praise from a tyrant,” Crowley said, and the two of them laughed—not because the joke was excellent, but because it was theirs.

The call stretched to half an hour and then longer. Twice they approached the tender territory of the kiss by the lake and twice stepped lightly aside, not with fear but with a kind of mutual respect, as if acknowledging a painting was there in the next gallery and promising to come back with better light. It no longer felt like evasion. It felt like the first draft of a grammar.

At last the clock on the back wall clicked another minute onward. The shop’s night noises reasserted themselves—the soft thrum of the little fridge, the fan’s mild complaint. Aziraphale’s notes lay before him, transformed from a hedge into a path. He drew a line under them, pleased with the symmetry.

“I should let you sleep,” he said. “I have kept you quite long enough.”

“I don’t sleep,” Crowley said. “I merely lie horizontal and bully the dark into behaving. But if you insist—”

“Tomorrow is a work day,” Aziraphale said, prim in the way he knew Crowley liked, because it let Crowley make fun of him in a way that never hurt.

“Yes, sir,” Crowley said, and there was a smile in it he could hear and hold.

“Thursday, then,” Aziraphale said, the certainty of it a balm. “The museum. Half past five. And Sunday—if the weather behaves—the river. Dusk.”

“I’ll be there,” Crowley said. Then, after the smallest pause: “Goodnight, Aziraphale.”

“Goodnight, Crowley,” he said, and ended the call before his courage could leak out through his fingertips.

He sat very still for a moment. The shop settled around him. He looked down at the contact name on the screen. The question mark still stood. He left it where it was, not because he doubted but because he had decided it would be honest to let punctuation keep their pace.

He tidied his notes into the ledger, because that is what one does with important things. He turned the sign to Closed for the night and climbed the stairs with the peculiar lightness of a man who has built a small bridge and found it holds. In bed, he sent a picture of the Importunate Duke in the lamplight, leaves arranged like a fan. The reply came almost at once:

Crowley (Boyfriend?): His Grace looks smug. Rightly. Sleep well.

“Boyfriend?” Aziraphale whispered into the dark, because the room would keep his secrets. “Perhaps.”

He let the thought be both question and answer and slept as if for once the narratives he wrote before bed did not turn at midnight and devour him. He dreamed not of protocols, but of walking down a museum corridor in the company of a man who stood where he could be seen, and of a river path with bookshop doors like safe harbours all the way along.

Aziraphale awoke Thursday with the peculiar sense that the air itself had arranged itself into ceremony. There was no rational reason for it. The morning was much like any other: the soft drone of traffic along the street, the faint smell of bread from the bakery at the corner, the familiar click of the kettle when he set it to boil. Yet everything seemed sharpened, touched with anticipation. He was going to see Crowley today—see him deliberately, by plan, at a set time and place. The words date and not-date had fought each other all week in his head, but there was little doubt left. It was a date. Crowley had used the word himself.

Which meant, Aziraphale reminded himself sternly, that there were expectations. Not terrible ones, necessarily, but expectations nonetheless. He had promised himself communication. He had promised he would be honest. He had also promised, silently, to take pride in the fact that this was not a coincidence, not a chance meeting, not a lunch disguised as something casual. It was a plan between the two of them, and he would walk into it with intention.

He spent the first hour of the day dressing Brian the sunflower in a slightly larger pot. Brian had grown with alarming enthusiasm, turning his leaves with single-minded zeal toward the light. “A little decorum,” Aziraphale chided gently, though he was secretly proud. He adjusted the soil, smoothed the rim of the pot, and turned him half an inch to the right. Then, before he could quite stop himself, he snapped a picture and sent it.

Aziraphale: He insisted on new lodgings.

The reply came minutes later:

Crowley (Boyfriend?): Still looks too smug. Plant knows he’s spoiled.

The simple back-and-forth warmed him, grounding him against the undertow of nerves. Crowley did not seem nervous. Crowley never seemed nervous, though Aziraphale suspected that beneath the polished exterior there must be a coil of tension, tightly managed. Perhaps he would ask one day, when they were ready.

The day crawled forward, the clock on the wall wagging its pendulum like an admonishment. Aziraphale attempted to catalogue a new box of second-hand theology books, but his mind scattered after three entries. He put them aside, brewed tea, and stared at his wardrobe. He did not own evening wear particularly suited to seduction, but then seduction was not what he meant to attempt. Still, he wished to look as though he had not simply wandered in from the shop.

After three changes—beige waistcoat, too much like an interview; navy, a touch too solemn; pale green, charming but perhaps whimsical—he settled on dove-grey. It lent him a certain softness without making him look funereal. He tied his cravat twice before it would sit properly. When at last he studied himself in the mirror, he murmured, “Respectable. Presentable. Approachable.”

He could almost believe it.

The hours until five o’clock lengthened in the way they always did when he anticipated something. At half past four he closed the shop early, flipping the sign with a hand that trembled despite his best efforts. He tucked his notes—literal notes, written in turquoise ink—into his pocket. Phrases to remember, questions to ask. “I enjoy your company” written three different ways. He told himself it was not a script, only reassurance.

He walked toward Bloomsbury with the air of a man rehearsing a speech to Parliament. The evening light was kind, not too harsh, shadows long but gentle. His shoes clicked softly on the pavement. By the time he reached the museum, his pulse had found a rhythm that matched the clock tower’s slow tolls.

And there he was. Crowley leaned against the railing near the entrance, black-clad and unhurried, sunglasses catching the late light. He looked as though he belonged to the dusk itself. Aziraphale felt a jolt—like recognition and discovery at once. Crowley straightened at once when he saw him, slipping his hands into his pockets with an air of studied casualness that fooled no one.

“Evening,” Crowley said.

“Good evening,” Aziraphale replied, and was pleased that his voice did not crack.

Crowley tilted his head. “Shall we?”

They entered together. The museum was, as Aziraphale had predicted, blissfully quiet. Only a few scattered visitors wandered the aisles. The air smelled faintly of polish and dust, a perfume Aziraphale found profoundly reassuring. Here, words lived in labels, in long careful captions, in small plaques set at a height that demanded respect.

Crowley prowled the mineral hall with an alertness that was equal parts amusement and interest. “These things are mad,” he said, peering at a quartz cluster the size of a melon. “Grew for millennia in the dark, just sitting around, waiting for some bloke with a pickaxe to drag them up for display.”

“They are remarkable,” Aziraphale said softly. “Like books, in their way. Records of time, waiting for the right eye to see them.”

Crowley gave him a sidelong smile. “Trust you to compare a rock to a book.”

“Rocks have stories too,” Aziraphale said. “You just need the patience to read them.”

They moved slowly, side by side. Aziraphale found himself less nervous than expected. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the cabinets, or perhaps it was the way Crowley kept pace with him, never rushing, always giving him the chance to linger.

At one display—a meteorite, blackened and scarred—Crowley stopped, his expression oddly intent. “Imagine that. Flew across space for billions of years, ends up in a glass box in Bloomsbury.”

Aziraphale studied his profile, the sharp lines softened by the museum light. “Do you identify with it?”

Crowley’s lips quirked. “Bit. Thrown out of orbit, wrong place, wrong time. Still hanging around.”

Aziraphale hesitated, then said quietly, “I am very glad you are here, Crowley.”

For a moment he thought he had overstepped, but Crowley turned to him, smile slow and genuine. “Me too.”

They walked on. Conversation wove easily between them: commentary on the absurdity of certain Victorian labels, Crowley’s mock outrage at a badly mounted geode, Aziraphale’s delight in a small, overlooked case of fossils. Each time Aziraphale grew too quiet, Crowley offered something light, a thread to draw him back. Each time Crowley grew too sardonic, Aziraphale countered with warmth.

They left the museum as the last of the evening light drained away. Outside, the air was cool, touched with the scent of summer leaves. Aziraphale felt steadier than he had in days. The edges he had asked for had held. He had spoken without stumbling too badly. He had enjoyed himself.

They paused at the railings. Crowley shifted his weight, then said, “Fancy a walk before we call it a night?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself with his own certainty.

They strolled down the quiet street, unhurried. Conversation had dwindled into silences that felt companionable rather than strained. Aziraphale was aware, keenly aware, of the nearness of Crowley’s hand as they walked. He did not take it, but he thought about it, which was its own kind of daring.

When at last they reached the bookshop, the sky was indigo, the first stars peeking out. Aziraphale turned to him, the words he had rehearsed fluttering like nervous birds.

“I… enjoyed this very much,” he said.

Crowley’s smile was all curve and warmth. “Me too.”

There was a pause. A long one. Aziraphale felt the air tighten, as if it too were holding its breath. Then Crowley tipped his head. “So. Next time?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, without hesitation. “Yes, please.”

When he entered the shop, locking the door behind him, he reached immediately for his phone. The contact glowed on the screen: Crowley (Boyfriend?). He sat at his desk, heart still quick, and deleted the question mark.

Crowley (Boyfriend).

This time he did not second-guess himself.

Sunday dawned warm and golden, the kind of day one might write into a guidebook—sunlight scattering cheerfully across rooftops, the air buzzing faintly with promise. It should have been the perfect day for their planned outing. A river walk, Aziraphale had suggested earlier in the week. A lazy afternoon by the water, perhaps even a ferry ride if the mood struck. Crowley had agreed readily, delight shining through his eyes. Aziraphale had light up at the thought of it: to walk with Crowley in the open, to share the day like any ordinary pair of companions—or more than companions, if he dared let himself think it.

But when the morning came, everything in him recoiled. He woke heavy, as though his body had conspired against him, every limb a weight to drag. The thought of leaving the flat above the shop was unbearable, the thought of crowds pressing at his shoulders, of noise bouncing too loudly, too quickly. Even the curtains seemed oppressive, the sunlight too bright.

He tried, at first, to push through. He brewed tea, sat at the table, stared at the steam rising in curls. He told himself it was only nerves, only anticipation, that if he dressed and forced his way into the street it might ease. But the very idea of navigating the Tube, of brushing past strangers, of waiting at the river pier with all those eyes and voices—it left his skin crawling. He set the teacup down with shaking hands.

By half past ten he knew he could not go. The guilt was instant, coiling in his chest. He should have been better prepared, should have known how to prevent such a day. He should not have said yes in the first place if he could not follow through. He rehearsed an apology in his head, tried it three different ways, all of them sounding inadequate.

At last he picked up his phone. His fingers hovered too long over the screen before he managed to type:

Aziraphale: My apologies. Today is not—well. I am afraid I am not up to our outing.

The reply came quickly, mercifully without hesitation:

Crowley (Boyfriend): You alright?

Aziraphale stared at the words, throat tightening. No, he thought. No, I am not alright. But admitting that was another thing entirely. He typed, erased, typed again.

Aziraphale: Nothing to worry about. One of those days.

There was a pause, and then:

Crowley (Boyfriend): Stay put.

He blinked. Stay put? Before he could compose a reply, another text arrived.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I’ll come by.

His instinct was to protest—he didn’t want to be seen like this, not when his waistcoat hung askew and his thoughts looped endlessly like a skipping record. Not when he had failed at something so simple as going outside. But even as he fumbled for words, another message blinked through.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Don’t argue. I’ll bring lunch.

And that, apparently, was that.

Crowley arrived forty minutes later, arms full of bags that smelled of curry and fresh bread. Aziraphale, too flustered to stop him, found himself ushered back to the kitchen while Crowley set the table with a precision that was almost domestic. He pulled out containers, arranged plates, poured water.

“Eat first,” Crowley said simply, sliding a plate toward him.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to apologise, to explain, but the look Crowley gave him was steady and unyielding, the kind of look that silenced arguments without ever being sharp. He picked up his fork instead. The first bite—soft rice, fragrant sauce—settled something inside him he hadn’t realised was clenched.

They ate mostly in silence. Crowley spoke only to offer him naan, to nudge a dish closer. It was not the silence of disapproval but something companionable, as though Crowley understood that words were too heavy today.

When the plates were empty, Crowley stood, rolled up his sleeves, and began to gather the washing.

“Oh, you needn’t—” Aziraphale began, half-rising.

Crowley flicked him a look over his shoulder. “Sit.”

So he sat. He watched as Crowley moved about his kitchen with efficient ease, rinsing plates, setting them on the rack, wiping down the counter. It should have been invasive, someone else in his space, rearranging the rhythms of his day. Instead, it was… quieting. As though the static in his mind had found a place to settle.

After the dishes, Crowley eyed the pile of laundry in the basket by the stairs. He didn’t comment, only picked it up and carried it toward the washer.

“Really, Crowley—”

“Not listening,” Crowley said mildly, setting the machine to whir.

Aziraphale pressed his lips together. His protests were half-hearted at best; in truth, the sight of Crowley tending to all the little neglected things eased something he hadn’t known needed easing. Each completed task seemed to open a fraction more space in his chest, space he could breathe into again.

They moved through the afternoon like that. Crowley straightening the stack of catalogues on his desk. Aziraphale, emboldened, dusting a shelf alongside him. Crowley mending a hinge on the back door that had squeaked for months. Aziraphale following behind with a cloth, polishing the brass until it gleamed.

Not much was said. It didn’t need to be.

At one point, Crowley glanced at him, eyebrow raised. “Better?”

Aziraphale hesitated. The truth was dangerous, too raw. But the quiet was safe enough to hold it. “Yes,” he said softly. “Much.”

Crowley’s mouth curved—barely a smile, but something near it. “Good.”

Evening settled slowly. They sat together on the sofa, no lights but the soft spill from the lamp. Aziraphale had fetched a book almost out of habit, but found himself reading only a few lines at a time. He was more aware of the warmth of Crowley beside him, long frame sprawled in his usual elegant sprawl, one hand draped over the armrest, perfectly at ease.

He did not itch. He did not feel pressed or judged or cornered. He felt… accompanied.

When Crowley finally rose to leave, hours later, Aziraphale walked him to the door. He wanted to say something—thank you, or you make it easier, or even please stay longer. But the words lodged, as they always did.

Crowley only touched the brim of his sunglasses in a half-salute, even though the sky outside had long since gone dark. “Call me if it gets bad again.”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened. “You are very kind,” he managed.

“Not kindness,” Crowley said, with that same unarguable steadiness. “Just us.”

And then he was gone, striding into the night as though he belonged to it.

Aziraphale lingered in the doorway, the evening air brushing against his face. His flat was cleaner, quieter, lighter. But more than that—he himself was lighter. He had not needed to perform or explain or apologise. Crowley had simply been there, and it had been enough.

When he went upstairs to bed, he set his phone on the table and, without thinking, opened the contact list. Crowley (Boyfriend).

The word did not feel foreign. It felt like the truth. This could actually be good.

Aziraphale liked the hour before opening best: the bookshop breathing in slowly, the light angling across the spines like a benediction, the alley sounds still deciding what sort of day they meant to be. After yesterday—Crowley at his sink with sleeves rolled, Crowley mending a hinge, Crowley’s companionable quiet filling the edges of the room that usually buzzed—he felt steadier than he had in weeks. He moved through his morning rituals with care, polishing the bell’s small brass dome, turning the Importunate Duke (Brian) a fractional degree toward the light, straightening the bowl of matchbox-sized calling cards on the counter as if neatness could defend against whatever the day wished to bring.

He brewed tea and took a picture of Brian’s regal leaf-splay, sent it to Crowley (Boyfriend) with the caption: His Grace extends his dominion. The reply came while the kettle still muttered—He looks insufferable. Kiss a leaf for me—and Aziraphale smiled into his cup at the ridiculousness of it, at the audacity of having a message labelled “Boyfriend” glow on his screen and feeling, for once, that the word sat where it ought.

He turned the sign to OPEN at ten precisely and left the door on the latch for ten indulgent minutes. It was a good morning, he told himself; he would do the invoices without fuss; he would answer emails; he would catalogue the set of pamphlets on the temperance movement that had been sulking in the back room. He had a plan. Plans made the ground level under his feet.

The bell jangled. The particular jangle that somehow found his spine and pressed.

“Morning, Azzy!”

Gabriel filled the doorway the way he filled every room: as if the space had been waiting for him, as if walls existed to frame him properly. He wore a pale summer suit that might have fit someone more generous of spirit. His smile was bright in the way of a blade.

Aziraphale’s fingers tightened around his pencil. “Good morning, Gabriel.” He set the pencil down, carefully. “It’s Aziraphale.”

“Of course it is,” Gabriel said, breezing over it as if he had agreed. “How are we?” He let “we” linger as though Aziraphale were a committee failing to meet its targets. “Did you see I rang yesterday? Several times.”

“I saw,” Aziraphale said. “I was not in a position to answer.”

“Not in a position?” Gabriel stepped inside without waiting to be invited and performed the same condescending survey he always did, as if the shelves might confess. “Doing what, Azzy? Reading?”

“Aziraphale,” he said again, not sharp, but with a spine in it. “And working.”

“Mmm.” Gabriel gravitated to the front table, tapped the corner with his knuckles in the old staking-claim rhythm he’d had since boyhood. “You do know work involves people, don’t you? Exchanges. Movement. Not just… sitting.”

Aziraphale set both hands on the counter to stop them from clenching. “I am in business, Gabriel. People come. They buy. I repair bindings. I go to auctions. I’m quite sure I move.”

“Not enough,” Gabriel said, smiling as if he were being playful. “You’re looking pale, Azzy. Soft. You should come to the gym with me. Couple of proper sessions with a trainer and we’d get you sorted. There’s a men’s group on Tuesdays. Accountability buddies. Very macho.” He grinned as though the word were a sweet on his tongue. “You’ve never had much… stamina.”

Aziraphale felt the old heat creep up his neck, the shame-path laid down years ago by the same voice. He kept his tone level. “I do not need a trainer. I walk. I lift boxes of books.” He gestured to a crate by the desk that would bruise a less experienced shin. “I am forty, Gabriel. I choose my day.”

“Forty,” Gabriel agreed, plucking at a dust mote that didn’t exist. “All the more reason to look after yourself. Don’t want to be a burden when you’re older.” His eye flicked to Aziraphale’s waistcoat as if assessing the moral failure of a second helping of pudding. “You’d have more energy if you got out more. Met a nice girl.” He said girl like a category that came with a discount.

Aziraphale merely breathed. He could feel the day rattling on its rails toward the inevitable old lecture, the one he had heard since his cheeks were pimply and his shoes were always too tight. Gabriel had never learned the difference between care and control; he only knew the sensation of pushing.

“I go out,” Aziraphale said. He picked up his pencil again to have something to hold that wasn’t the edge of the counter. “I went out the other day.”

Gabriel looked at him as one might look at a child insisting the moon belonged in his pocket. “To the grocers doesn’t count.”

“To Kew,” Aziraphale said, and saw the flicker of impatience in Gabriel’s eyes at the mention of plants and Latin and everything that smelt of quiet. “I spent the afternoon there.”

Gabriel hmmed as though allowing him his little hobby. “Yes, your botany phase. I keep meaning to ask: what’s that about? You didn’t even like science at school. It’s very… niche, Azzy. You know there are clubs, right? People. Parties. You can’t keep hiding in here.”

“Do not call me Azzy,” Aziraphale said, a fraction sharper.

“Since when?” Gabriel asked, eyebrows performing theatrical astonishment.

“Since always,” Aziraphale said. “I have said so before.”

Gabriel’s smile thinned, then re-brightened, magnanimous. “Alright, alright. Don’t get wound up. We’re just talking.” He leaned his elbows on the counter, invading the small space Aziraphale kept for himself behind the till. “Now. What are we doing about this hermit routine? I’ve sent you three excellent gym offers and a list of civic groups. Choirs, debating societies, a pub quiz. Exposure therapy, Az—Aziraphale.” He gave himself a point for catching it. “You can’t let your… moods run your life.”

“Moods,” Aziraphale repeated, because repeating was safer than replying.

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “These bad days you claim. Everybody has bad days; not everyone lets them steer. You’ve always been very—” he searched for a word that would sound benevolent and found one that did not “—sensitive. It’s time to toughen up, hm? Don’t be cross; I’m saying this because I care.” He smiled as if he were Saint Gabriel on a stained-glass window, beatified by his own goodness. “You’ve never been the independent sort. There’s no shame in that. But you can’t rely on… whoever it is you think is going to rescue you.”

Aziraphale felt something cold lodging under his ribs. He had spent so long building a life that fit him that he sometimes forgot how precarious it looked to someone determined to misunderstand. The shop was not a hideout; it was a house he had made for his mind. Kew was not a phase; it was a place where he breathed differently. And yesterday had not been weakness; it had been care.

“I am managing very well,” he said. “I like my life.”

“Do you?” Gabriel asked, as if he were a guidance counsellor pushing a form across a desk. “Really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re shrinking. You used to at least make an effort. Now it’s—what—books, tea, that old cardigan. You don’t even try to meet people, do you? When was the last time you—” He lifted his hands and made a shape in the air so vague and rude it hardly qualified as a sentence “—went out-out?”

Aziraphale thought of the museum, the way Crowley had stood so he would see him first, the easy fall of their talk. Of the kitchen yesterday, Crowley running the tap, the mundane holiness of a plate drying on a rack because someone kind had put it there. The contrast made the shop’s light flicker in his eyes.

“I meet people,” he said, and heard the thinness of it. “I have… people.”

Gabriel pounced. “People, plural? Names, then. And not the woman at the bakery.”

“Nina,” Aziraphale said, because Nina was in fact the woman at the café but also a person who called him Mr. Fell with a rankling sort of affection, who knew his order and his dislike of crowds and his need for an extra napkin on sandwich days. “And—” He thought of Maggie across the way, of Newt descending into solvable confusion each time a printer cable misbehaved. He thought of Madame Tracy, who could be formidable if coaxed, and of Anathema, who could see through a person with a kindness that made it feel like a gift. “And others.”

Gabriel’s mouth curled. “People who sell you things are not friends, Azzy. And even if they were—” he swept a hand around, disdainful “—that’s hardly a social life. You’re forty. Don’t you want—” The sneer returned, now with a homophobic edge lacquered over paternal concern “—a proper family? A wife? A bit of normal?”

Aziraphale could feel himself tipping toward the familiar precipice—placate, appease, shrink and smooth until the argument slid off the surface of him and went somewhere else to be loud. He could do it. He had done it a thousand times. He could coo that he would consider joining a choir. He could accept a link to another of Gabriel’s bulletproof sharing-economy social clubs. He could nod; he could smile; he could tuck himself away again; he could let the anger sit and sour.

Instead, something in him—something that had begun to stand up straighter in the last weeks—stepped to the fore. He saw Crowley’s hands on his plates. He heard Just us. The words were out before he even recognised the tone of his own voice.

“I am not hiding,” he said, and where he expected to hear a tremor, there was a steel thread. “I spent yesterday with my boyfriend.”

The word sat between them like a coin on a small table, bright and undeniable.

Gabriel blinked, then laughed, high and incredulous. “Your—” He drew the syllables out like taffy “—boyfriend.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, before his better judgement could tackle him to the ground and sit on his chest. “My boyfriend. We were together all afternoon.”

Gabriel’s smile sharpened into something nastier. “Oh, Azzy. Come now. Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t—” He lifted an eyebrow, as if the very idea offended natural law. “You wouldn’t know where to begin. Girls weren’t interested when you were at school, I get that but I doubt men are queueing round the block now. Be serious.”

“I am being serious,” Aziraphale said. His hands were very steady on the counter. “His name is Crowley.”

“Of course it is,” Gabriel said, rolling his eyes as if he’d caught Aziraphale out in a how to invent a boyfriend cliché. “Let me guess. He’s edgy. Wears black. Motorcycle. Midlife crisis in sunglasses.”

“He is a scientist,” Aziraphale said, suddenly furious in a way that made his words very clean. “He has a PhD. He works at Kew. You met him.”

“The gardener,” Gabriel translated, making gardener sound like shelf-stacker. “Amazing. Well, introduce us properly, then.” He leaned in, elbow back on the counter, enjoying himself now that the game had turned. “Family dinner. Sunday. Bring him. Let’s officially meet this… Crowley.”

“No,” Aziraphale started, because it was one thing to say the truth and quite another to drag the person attached to it into the arena with the lions.

“Ah,” Gabriel said, pouncing on the syllable with the gleeful cruelty of a schoolboy who’d stolen a hat. “I thought not.”

Aziraphale’s mouth was ahead of him now. Everything in him that tired and smoothed and bent remembered the brightness of a text that said Boyfriend without the question mark; remembered a pair of hands tightening a hinge without being asked; remembered a quiet afternoon reclaimed from ruin by someone who preferred to fix things rather than talk about fixing them. He lifted his chin.

“Okay,” he said. “Sunday. We’ll be there.”

“We,” Gabriel repeated, delighted. “Excellent.” He rapped the counter twice again, the old land-claim. “Six o’clock. Don’t be late. And Azzy—” He smiled with his whole face while making it an insult “—do try to make yourself presentable.”

“Aziraphale,” he corrected, and the correction felt like the act of picking up a dropped sword. “And I am always presentable.”

Gabriel’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “If you say so.” He straightened his cuffs, placed a card on the counter with the dinner address he assumed Aziraphale had forgotten, and turned on his polished heel. At the door he paused, glanced back with a look that said he had engineered something clever and expected applause for it. “Don’t disappoint, brother.”

The bell chimed. The door settled shut. The shop exhaled.

Aziraphale did not. He was very still for a long moment, as if any movement might rattle the fragile structure he had just erected and bring the ceiling down. Then he became aware of his own breath again—the shallow, unsatisfactory kind that came in sips. He reached for the tea he had forgotten to drink and discovered the cup was empty. He had brewed for two at some point and not poured a second.

He went through the motions—kettle, cup, the measured violence of a spoon against a tin—because motion was something he could control. His hands were not quite steady. He perched on the tall stool behind the counter and took a sip he didn’t taste.

The phrase my boyfriend echoed, sweet and frightening. He had said it to the one person in the world most determined not to believe him. He had said We’ll be there to the person in the world least qualified to deserve the gift of Crowley’s company.

He rubbed his temples, for once not caring if the gesture looked melodramatic. It was astonishing how quickly victory curdled into dread. The part of him that had stood tall at the counter now wanted to crawl into the narrow space beneath it and hide behind the box of bookmarks.

He would have to tell Crowley. He couldn’t not tell Crowley. He could not simply arrive with him at a table where Gabriel would be waiting like a magistrate. He had to ask. He had to give Crowley the option to refuse. He had to shield him, if shield was what was needed.

The door opened again. The bell gave a gentler complaint. Nina stuck her head round, the triangle of her fringe performing its usual sullen curtain. “You look like you’ve been told the cake’s off,” she said, then clocked the stillness in his shoulders and widened her eyes a fraction, which for Nina was a full display of concern. “You okay, Mr. Fell?”

He nearly said yes on reflex. Instead, something of yesterday’s steadiness held. “My brother popped by,” he said, attempting a smile and failing. “It was not a… restorative visit.”

“Ah,” Nina said, in the tone of someone who has immediately identified a problem and the shape of it. “Do you want coffee or plausible deniability?”

“Coffee, please,” Aziraphale said. “And if you have a spare plausible deniability for Sunday evening, I shall take it too.”

“I’ll see what’s in the back,” Nina said, dry. “Back in five.”

He watched her go and envied her clean, practical competence. She would come back with something black and fortifying, and he would drink it, and it would help for six minutes, and then he would still have to tell Crowley.

He pulled the ledger toward him as if numbers could provide sanctuary, opened to a blank page, and began to write in his tidy turquoise hand as if making a list could summon courage.

Sunday – Family dinner (Gabriel).
— Explain to Crowley in advance.
— He is free to say no.
— If yes: suggest time limits. (Arrive on time. Leave on time.)
— Establish signals. (Tap the table twice = “step outside.”)
— No surprises. (Tell him who will be there. Where. What will be served.)
— Protect Crowley from Gabriel’s… Gabrielness.
— Do not let Gabriel say Azzy. (He will. Correct him. Continue correcting.)
— Wear the dove-grey. (Reliable.)
— Breathe.

He sat back. The neatness mocked him. Words were not events; lists were not shields. But sometimes they were bridges. He could walk a bridge.

Nina returned with a takeout cup that smelt like determination. She set it down with a thunk and looked at him, not unkind. “If you want to change the locks, I know a guy.”

“Tempting,” Aziraphale said, and meant it.

“Text the boyfriend,” she said, like a person discussing a sensible purchase. “Tell him what’s up. Short sentences, nouns and verbs. He’ll either say yes or no. Both are allowed.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Thank you.”

She flicked him a salute and disappeared again. The coffee tasted like a decision he hadn’t yet made.

He took out his phone. The contact list opened on Crowley (Boyfriend) like an accusation and a blessing. He could feel his heart begin the ridiculous gallop of a man about to ask a favour he wasn’t sure he had the right to ask. He considered calling, then saw the shape of his words—ragged, breathy, not ready—and chose text.

He typed, deleted, typed again:

Aziraphale: Are you free Sunday evening?

He stared at the five words until they became shapes instead of meaning. He added, because it felt like cheating to pretend it was casual:

Aziraphale: My brother has demanded a family dinner. He has… challenged me to bring you. I ought to have told him to—well. I didn’t. I said yes. You are under no obligation.

He read it twice, three times. It sounded like him and not like him at once. It didn’t say what he feared: that Gabriel would be unkind, that the room might feel like a trial, that Aziraphale would want to interpose his own body between Crowley and anything sharp. It didn’t say what he hoped: that Crowley might look at him across a table and let him borrow courage. It didn’t say boyfriend again, though the word shone from the top of the screen like a small, improbable star.

He typed more, panicked by the possibility of too little:

Aziraphale: We can set rules. Time limits. Signals. We can leave at any point. If you say no, I shall say I was mistaken about the date. Or ill. Or—anything. Truly.

He hovered, thumb poised over SEND, and felt the familiar swell of doubt rise: that he was asking too much, that he was clinging, that he was about to ruin something by touching it with both hands.

The bell rang. A couple wandered in, peered at the poetry shelf, spoke in the low voices of people who think books will shatter if addressed at full volume. He put the phone face down on the blotter, helped them find what they needed, rang them up with a smile he managed to make real. When they had gone, when the door had joggled and settled again, he picked the phone up and read the unsent message a fourth time.

He had promised himself communication. He had promised the man in his kitchen yesterday that he would say when. Now he had to say what and why as well.

He breathed in, out, in again. He thought of Crowley’s text from the morning. Kiss a leaf for me. It had been ridiculous, affectionate, utterly certain of its reception. He could not be certain of this. But he could be honest.

He added one last line, because it was a thing he could give without conditions:

Aziraphale: I want you there. But I want you comfortable more.

The cursor blinked. The room hummed its ordinary hum. He pressed SEND.

For several seconds he felt like a man who has stepped off a kerb he hadn’t noticed, heart stuttering, gravity deciding whether to catch him. The three grey dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. He imagined Crowley somewhere green and glassy, between palms and vents, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, frowning at the screen in concentration.

The dots vanished. Nothing. He did not curse the gods of reception. He put the phone face down again, because he had done what he could do for the moment and because looking felt like begging.

He returned to the list. He wrote buy a decent bottle of wine if appropriate (ask Crowley what he prefers). He added sit near an exit. He added ask if there are any topics to avoid. He scratched that last out; Crowley tell him, if he wanted to. Aziraphale did not need to draft both sides of the conversation.

He looked up. Brian stood in his pot, emphatic and absurd, a green embodiment of going on. Aziraphale raised his cup to him in dry salute. “We have done a thing,” he informed the plant. “Now we must wait to see if the world agrees to it.”

The front glass reflected his face as the afternoon turned toward evening. He looked like himself. A little more tired, perhaps, but not defeated. A man who had said boyfriend to a brother who refused to say his name correctly and survived the telling. A man who had invited the person he loved into the worst room in his life and given him all the exits. A man who had promised to be brave, one planned inch at a time.

His phone buzzed. He picked it up with both hands.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I’m free. We’ll do it your way. Time limit. Our rules. I’ll be there early and pick you up, so we arrive together. And Aziraphale—

Crowley (Boyfriend): Proud of you.

Aziraphale closed his eyes. The tightness under his ribs loosened as if someone had found the correct valve and turned it. He typed back:

Aziraphale: Thank you. Thursday was wonderful. Yesterday was—saving. Today is… difficult. You are very good.

The dots blinked; the reply came:

Crowley (Boyfriend): You too. Tell me what colour to wear so we match and give your brother a headache.

Aziraphale laughed, quietly, because the customers could still hear, and the sound didn’t feel like something fragile he had to protect from drafts.

“Dove-grey,” he wrote. “Reliable.”

He set the phone down and let the shop settle around him, as it always did. He picked up the temperance pamphlets and made three catalogue entries in a hand that didn’t shake. Outside, Whickber Street sorted itself into evening. Inside, a man who had been called Azzy all his life and had learned to carry the sting like a thorn decided that on Sunday, when it happened, he would correct the name each time and let the repetition be its own psalm.

He turned the Importunate Duke one more ceremonial degree. He straightened the corner of the blotter. He poured fresh tea and, because it had been a very long day already and because kindness was allowed to begin at home, he took a biscuit from the tin and ate it without remembering Gabriel’s commentary at all.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale woke to the pale, obliging light of a London morning and the sense—new, startling, radiant—that a large and terrifying thing had already been decided in his favour.

His phone on the bedside table waited like a sealed letter he could open again and again. He reached for it before the kettle; he always did, lately. The messages were exactly as he remembered, and yet they steadied him afresh, like a hand pressed between his shoulder blades.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I’m free. We’ll do it your way. Time limit. Our rules. I’ll be there early so you see me first. And Aziraphale—

Crowley (Boyfriend): Proud of you.

Crowley (Boyfriend): What colour do I wear so we match and give your brother a headache?

He had replied, last night, wrists trembling with the aftershock of courage:

Aziraphale: Dove-grey. Reliable.

Reliable. The word sat well with him. It said: I am not flashy, but I hold. He had slept with an unfamiliar ease, unspooling slowly into the dark with the knowledge that he would not face that table alone.

And yet the storm was still there when he rose—the storm that belonged to rooms where people judged one another with small knives disguised as questions and where a man’s name could be made into a shackle by someone who refused to say it correctly. The storm did not vanish because the right man had said the right thing. It only shifted shape: no longer will he come? but how do we do this well? How do I keep us safe?

He went down to the shop and let the morning rituals do their kind work. The bell got its rub with the soft cloth. The counter took the polish like a promise. He turned the Importunate Duke (Brian) a ceremonial degree toward the window and, because it had become part of the liturgy, took a picture of the jaunty leaves to send later. He ran his finger over the little engraved plate on his desk that said Fell’s Books and told himself—quietly, firmly—that he could do difficult things without coming undone.

He put on the kettle. While it stuttered toward the boil, he drew a clean sheet of paper from the ledger and wrote, in turquoise ink at the top:

Sunday: Dinner Protocol (A & C)

It soothed him, the way a good spine on a book soothed him—something to hold the contents in place.

Under the heading he made columns.

Edges / Rules (non-negotiable):
– Arrive together (or Crowley arrives first so Aziraphale sees him at door).
– Seat by an exit if possible (Aziraphale’s left side free).
– Time limit: 90 minutes, no “just one more course” traps.
– Signal to pause/leave: tap-tap on table (Aziraphale), double-tap on arm (Crowley).
– “Bookshop bell” / “greenhouse hush” if speech is hard.
– No name shortening. Correction each time: “Aziraphale.” Calm voice, no apology.
– No debates about health, body, “stamina.” Boundary phrase: “That’s not a conversation I’m having.”
– Exit script pre-agreed. No guilt. No debrief at door.

His hand loosened as the list grew. The kettle clicked off; he poured, let the tea steep. He added a second column.

Prepare for Gabriel (anticipated tactics / responses):
– “Azzy.” → “Aziraphale.” Repeat without rising.
– “You don’t live independently.” → “I run my business and my home.”
– “You need to toughen up / gym / men’s group.” → “My health is mine.”
– “A gardener? That’s not serious.” → “Dr Crowley’s research contributes to the Tree of Life project.”
– “You’re hiding.” → “I choose quiet. That’s not hiding.”

He practised the sentences under his breath, paying attention to cadence and where the breath ran out. He underlined calm twice. He disliked the way his voice could go reedy when he was angry; he disliked even more how years of smoothing himself for Gabriel’s sake had taught his body to deploy a smile where a boundary belonged.

He wrote a third column—smaller, and here he allowed himself the tenderness of it.

Support Crowley (defence is not apology):
– If they belittle Kew → “It is a national treasure; Crowley is part of what keeps it alive.”
– If they try to “boys and their plants” → “His work shapes education and access—ask your children what they learned at Kew.”
– If they question “real science” → “Morphology, phylogeny, outreach: you are speaking to a doctor.”
– If they are rude outright → “Stop. That’s uncalled for.” (stand, leave if necessary)

He sat back and drank his tea. It tasted like a plan.

On another sheet he wrote Clothes and felt foolish at once—yet he knew how much the right fabric and the right tie could make a room survivable. He sketched alternatives in small, neat boxes: the dove-grey waistcoat (reliable), the linen tie (cool), the worsted blazer (too hot?), the polished shoes that did not pinch. He wrote No new shoes in capitals; he was not a masochist. He wrote handkerchief—small lavender scent in the margin, because scent could anchor him when the room went too loud. He wrote earplugs (pocket) and underlined it twice—the discreet kind, the colour of his skin; no one need know.

He flinched at a phantom voice in his head—Gabriel’s, smug and certain: Do try to make yourself presentable, Azzy. He put the pen down and, very deliberately, said, out loud, in his best shop voice: “Aziraphale.”

The name sat in the air like a well-placed book on a shelf. Not heavy. Right.

He practised it three more times, not because he feared he would forget it—what an absurdity—but because he needed to teach his body the movement of interruption: the breath, the tone that was not apologetic, the stillness that said this is not up for debate. When he was done, the room felt rearranged by a fraction, as if the light had turned a page.

He unlocked the door at ten. Customers came in their ordinary trickle—the tourist asking for “something English but not Dickens,” the student looking for a battered copy of The Waste Land, the woman who used her tote as armour and then melted when he put a poetry pamphlet in her hand. He found himself gentler than usual, even with the man who wanted to haggle for a first edition as if it were a pot of jam at a jumble sale. He was practising staying steady in a room with people in it. He was practising the thing he had promised Crowley: that he would say when, and also say why.

Between sales he returned to his lists. He added routes: call a cab (don’t brave the Tube after), set pickup two streets away to avoid the theatre at the door, bring cash so there is no faffing at the end that allows anyone to catch them in the hall. He added seating: request end of table if possible; if not, negotiate the corner. He added food: eat lunch beforehand so low blood sugar doesn’t make me clumsy with words; bring mints (peppermint steadies the breathing). He added wine: bring a good one in case the house offering is terrible; text Crowley for a suggestion (anything but a bottle that announces itself like a car salesman).

At half-eleven, because the lists had done their preliminary work and his brain still hummed like a badly tuned radio, he sent the picture of Brian.

Aziraphale: His Grace prepares for his public.

The reply arrived with gratifying alacrity.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Arrogant little lord. He’ll overshadow the whole table if you bring him.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Dove-grey confirmed. I can do a tie. You want me in a tie?

Aziraphale imagined it—Crowley in a tie, the clever hands making a knot look like an inevitability, the line of his throat. He put his cup down carefully.

Aziraphale: A tie would be… very handsome. Please don’t suffer on my account.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I don’t suffer. I inflict.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Send me your “protocols” later. I’ll memorise the hand signals like I’m defusing a bomb.

He hesitated, then photographed the Dinner Protocol half done, the turquoise ink precise and earnest against the cream. The act of sending it felt like handing over something a little naked. He did it anyway.

For a few minutes there was nothing. He sorted two paperbacks into their rightful places and answered a question about shipping to Devon. Then:

Crowley (Boyfriend): This is good.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Add: I take the first volley. If he tries me, I’m happy to be a wall so you don’t have to spend down your reserves too early.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Add: 90 minutes means 90. I’ll set a timer.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Add: If he says “Azzy,” I will simply go “Who?” until he learns.

Aziraphale made a scandalised noise that made the tourist at the poetry shelf look up and grin.

Aziraphale: Please do not torment him on my account.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Who said I’d be tormenting him on your account? Might be for me.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Kidding. Mostly. Point is: I’ve got you.

He exhaled, something in his diaphragm finally obeying the rules of being human.

He turned the sign to Back in 5 and took his tea upstairs for a ritual he had invented on bad days and found equally necessary on good ones. He put the cup on the dresser. He stood before the mirror and practised the sentences as if he were rehearsing for a stage he did not wish to tread but must cross regardless.

“Please do not call me that. My name is Aziraphale.”

“That’s not a conversation I’m having.”

“We can leave now.”

“Crowley, would you like some air?”

He pictured the hallway at Gabriel’s—polished, over lit, smelling of something that called itself citrus but meant intimidation. He pictured the table: glossy, long, laid like a battlefield where the knives were placed in lines as if to remind one of their purpose. He pictured the chair he would want, and then the chair he would get, and then what to do if they were not the same.

He told the man in the mirror—paler than he wished, perhaps, but composed—that leaving was not failure. He told him he could make a door out of a sentence.

Back downstairs, the bell jangled with the particular lilt that meant Nina had decided the day needed her. She did not come far inside—Nina disliked books staring at her like witnesses—but she leaned on the jamb with the weary panache of someone who has already triumphed over two coffee machine tantrums and one customer who thought temperature was a matter of strong opinion.

“You alive?” she asked.

“For the moment,” he said gravely.

She squinted. “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where your eyes are five minutes ahead of your body.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

“Breathe in for four, out for six. And eat something that has an actual crunch to it,” she said, as if diagnosing a clogged pipe. “Crunch tells your brain you exist. Science.”

“I bow to your expertise,” he said.

“Don’t bow. Sit.” She glanced at the lists on the counter, took them in with one sweep, and did not comment, which was the greater kindness. “Shout if you want a sandwich delivered before the Battle of Dinner Ridge.”

He smiled, genuine this time. “Thank you.”

After she left, he added crisps? to the margin and snorted at himself. The storm, for once, laughed back instead of howling.

The day moved the way days do when you have a thing looming at the edge of it: lopsided, full of small pockets of calm stitched with sudden surges. He catalogued three new acquisitions and only had to redo the entries twice because his hand wanted to write boyfriend instead of binding. He walked to the door twice in an hour to check the latch, though he had not heard the bell. He took two photos of Brian and only sent one. He drafted—and deleted—an email to Gabriel that read simply: You will not speak to us like that.

At four, he set another page on the blotter and wrote Sunday Script (shared) at the top. He was very aware he did not need to script Crowley; Crowley was capacious, improvisational, at home in rooms Aziraphale found treacherous. But Crowley had asked for protocols, and the small, clear thing inside Aziraphale that loved lines and limits blossomed at being asked. He wrote sentences he could say cleanly, and left space for Crowley to fill with his more agile wit.

Openers:
– “Thank you for the invitation.” (no apology for lateness because there will be none)
– “This is Crowley.” (name placed like a card on the table; let no one rename him)
– “We’ll only stay an hour and a half; we have an early morning tomorrow.” (unassailable)

Deflections (polite):
– “We’re not discussing fitness plans tonight.”
– “We’re here to eat dinner and be civil. Let’s do that.”
– “If you’d like to know about Kew, you can come visit.”

Exits:
– “We’ll take our leave now. Goodnight.”
– “Crowley?” (hand on his sleeve; the door is the door is the door)

He copied the page for Crowley and put the duplicate in an envelope with a flourish that made him laugh at himself. Imagine, sending your beau a script for surviving one’s brother. Imagine, too, that the beau in question would read it, carry it, and not mock the boy in a man who needed words in his pocket to remember how to breathe.

The afternoon softened toward evening; the shop thickened with the good, tired quiet of a day well tended. He dusted the display table with the cloth that once belonged to the kindness of another life and set a new little stack of pamphlets (eco-poetry, cream paper, thread-stitched spines) where they could be found by those who needed them. He wrote Aziraphale & Crowley—Sunday in the small appointments notebook he kept not for necessity but for pleasure and shut it with the satisfaction of a librarian who has put one more piece where it belongs.

Before closing, he sent the shared script.

Aziraphale: Our “shared lines,” if you don’t mind my forwardness. (You may ignore them entirely and I will still be grateful you are coming.)

Crowley (Boyfriend): I don’t ignore anchors. I collect them.

Crowley (Boyfriend): This is excellent. I’m going to print it out and pretend it’s a museum label and read it with great reverence.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Re: wine—bring the good Rioja on the top shelf. The one that makes your eyes go soft.

Aziraphale: I have no idea what you mean.

Crowley (Boyfriend): You do.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Tomorrow I’ll swing by and we’ll walk the route and count exits. Not joking.

Aziraphale’s breath did something traitorous and affectionate. He typed and erased three possible replies—You are very good, You needn’t fuss over me, Yes, please—and settled on the only one that said all three.

Aziraphale: Thank you.

He turned the sign to Closed at last, did the lights in their sequence, listened to the shop settle like a cat turning once in a basket and finding the exact right curve. Upstairs he laid the dove-grey waistcoat over the chair and the linen tie beside it. He put the earplugs in the little pocket of the blazer so he would not forget them and tested the scent on the handkerchief: the faintest lavender, a memory of summer smoothed into cotton.

He stood at the window with a cup of tea he had no intention of finishing and watched Whickber Street do its handsome evening. People passed, ordinary as weather; a bus sighed; someone laughed the particular laugh of someone who has been surprised by kindness. He said his own name again, once, not to justify it to anyone but to remind the walls that he would carry it with the same stubbornness with which he had arranged his life.

He set the cup down. He picked up the phone again. He did not mean to. He only wanted to look at the messages once more before sleep.

Crowley (Boyfriend): We’ve got this. You’ve got me.

He turned off the lamp and let the dark be kind. The storm had not gone; he did not expect it to. But it had a map now, and a companion who carried spare copies of that map in a black shirt with sleeves rolled, who would stand where Aziraphale could see him first, and who delighted in the idea of a dove-grey tie if it meant making a certain man at a certain table lose his appetite for cruelty.

He closed his eyes and practised, once, the small movements of the agreed-upon signal: tap-tap. Not a plea. A pact.

Tomorrow would be the day of small anchors—Nina’s coffee, Maggie’s music, perhaps even a word with Madame Tracy said with a smile instead of a flinch. The end of the week would be the doorbell and the hall and Gabriel’s narrow corridor of expectations.

For now, he let the word that once frightened him settle on the pillow like a benediction.

Boyfriend.

He did not add a question mark. He did not need to.

By Wednesday the rain had filed itself away into a memory and the street below his windows was bright, not boastfully, but with the sort of light that lays a soft hand on your sleeve and reminds you that the day can be borne. Aziraphale rose early, not because he had slept badly—he had not—but because the shop and the lists and the small rites of readiness wanted doing, and he found that when he did them at a humane pace his mind grew less likely to sprint ahead and leave him panting.

He boiled the kettle and laid out his breakfast and checked the little card on the mantelpiece where he had, in neat turquoise script, copied the bones of Sunday’s plan. He didn’t need the card; he knew the words by shape now. Even so, the sight of them grounded him: time limit, signal, no debates about bodies, seat by an exit, correct the name each time without heat. It was not a battle standard—though Gabriel always managed to make family feel like campaign terrain—it was simply a map he and Crowley had agreed upon, the way competent travellers agree where to meet if they are separated.

Downstairs, the shop greeted him with its ordinary bravery. He polished the bell’s small dome, turned Brian the sunflower a ceremonial degree toward the light, and opened the ledger. He was halfway through reconciling a particularly obstinate expense line when his phone made the sound it had started making for Crowley alone—a small, contented purr he would never admit he had set on purpose.

The screen showed an image first: a spray of tiny white flowers on a green stem, each petal star-sharp, each anthers’ dust a whisper of yellow. The second picture was a close-up, the kind Crowley took when he wanted to make a point about scale—the world’s astonishing abundance in what the inattentive would call small.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Hawthorn being showy in the temperate house. Absolutely no modesty.

Aziraphale smiled. He took a picture in reply, entirely unscientific: the sunflower’s profile, pretentious as a heraldic crest against the window, and his own hand in the corner, steadying the pot.

Aziraphale: His Grace insists on being admired. Hawthorn may submit its petition.

A beat, then—

Crowley (Boyfriend): Consider it petitioned.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Logistics: I’ll drive us on Sunday. Door-to-door. Spare you the Tube and me the urge to throw commuters in the river.

Aziraphale’s thumb paused. Driving was not part of his routine. The Tube, for all its miseries, had predictable delays, predictable exits, predictable stations whose names sat in his body like touchstones. Being ferried by another person, with their timing and control and choices—that unhooked him from his stills. He placed the phone down, picked up his pen, set it down again, picked up the phone.

Aziraphale: You needn’t put yourself out on my account.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I’m not. I’m putting us out of Gabriel’s reach faster at the end.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Also I would prefer to be the one in charge of how we leave, if we want to leave. Easier in a car than playing human sardines.

It was said so simply that Aziraphale felt the knot in him loosen by a small, precise degree. Not a grand romance gesture, then. A practical one, made of exits and control reclaimed. He breathed, canted his head to test the corners of the thought, and wrote:

Aziraphale: If it is truly no trouble.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Already done in my head. I’ll collect you at yours.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Wear the dove-grey. I’m matching the tie to it. It’ll terrify him.

Aziraphale laughed aloud, a scandal in the quiet of the morning. The bell gave a small offended tremor at the unexpected noise, then forgave him. He returned to his ledger with the lightness that comes when a decision slots into place with a click you can feel in your ribs.

The Wednesday crowd was gentle. A tourist couple wanted “something English but not Dickens,” a desire Aziraphale met with quiet glee by pressing into their hands a battered but dignified Trollope and a slim anthology of Larkin that did not advertise its melancholy too greedily. A student came in with hair like a broom and asked for anything that made Milton less awful; Aziraphale, who would have bled for Milton at university and had bled since in more interesting ways, gave him a patient path through the mess. He noticed, as the hours turned, that the day kept giving him back his sentences. Some days he had to hunt them, coax them out from under the furniture of his mind. Today they came when called.

Maggie drifted in around noon with a sleeve of records tucked against her hip and the two-minute air of a person who knows exactly what she wants and will pretend to take longer so she can talk. “Telemann worked,” she reported, as if they were co-conspirators who had pulled off a heist. “Madame Tracy cried at exactly the right moment and not before. I claim victory.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I hope no one fainted.”

“Oh, one always does,” Maggie said cheerfully. “But it was a tasteful swoon, and we were prepared with a cushion and a biscuit.” She eyed the window, where the sunflower lorded it over Whickber Street. “How’s His Grace?”

“Regal,” Aziraphale said. “And a terrible influence. I am told by a certain scientist that I spoil him.”

“Good,” Maggie said. “Spoil your plant, spoil your people. I came to steal your opinion on a jazz pressing and ended up delivering life philosophy, so I’ll go before I start charging.”

He was grateful, not for the advice, which he didn’t need, but for the way she dispensed it—lightly, without making him feel like a project.

In the afternoon, a woman with a briefcase haggled over a first edition with the weary arrogance of someone who never heard no. Aziraphale did not bend. He felt, as he quoted his absolute best price and then quietly held the line, that he was rehearsing for Sunday in a safer key: set the boundary; do not justify; do not fill the silence; let the other person discover they cannot move you.

By the time he turned the sign to CLOSED and did the lights it had been a day with more breath in it than most. He carried that breath upstairs, where he laid the dove-grey waistcoat over the chair, not because he thought it might change shape in the night, but because the sight of it reminded him he had chosen how he wanted to be seen.

Thursday had its own ceremony. He liked the way the street changed temperature on Thursdays. People were already thinking about end-of-week dinners and what they might cook if they were the kind who cooked and what they might order if they were the kind who had surrendered to the inevitability of cardboard containers. He closed the shop at five, as he always did on Thursdays, took his reusable bags from the peg, and set out for the little grocer three streets over where the apples weren’t waxed into submission and the woman at the till called him “sir” as if it were a gentle joke between them.

He chose carefully: a firm pear to slice over yoghurt, a wedge of Gruyère that would melt obediently if asked but had the good manners to stand on its own, a loaf from the bakery that he would swear smelled like late spring and responsible choices. The small market had basil in pots that breathed like green laundry; he carried one back with his shopping as if he had been entrusted with a tender secret.

Whickber Street welcomed him back with the low-grade drama it performed every evening. Newt was outside his little shop, locking the door with a concentration so intense one might think the lock was a puzzle only the pure of heart could solve. He looked up when Aziraphale passed and attempted a wave without dropping the canvas tote on his shoulder; it was barely successful, and Aziraphale felt compelled to transfer his grocery bag to his other hand so he could be ready to catch anything else that attempted escape.

“Mr. Fell!” Newt brightened, relief already chasing away the worry at having been seen in a small act of clumsiness. “Evening! Nice basil.”

“Isn’t it?” Aziraphale said, and lifted it for admiration. “I intend to keep this one alive. We shall see what the universe says.”

“The universe says overwater and then under,” a voice announced, dry and amused. Anathema appeared at the corner with a scarf that looked like it had a doctorate in colour theory and a grin that said she had arrived to pick up trouble and perhaps a boyfriend. “Hi, Newt.”

Newt promptly knocked his elbow against his shop sign, said “Ow” at a volume that suggested he had merely been startled, and then did a small, proud kind of straighten. “Hi,” he said, soft in a way that did not make Aziraphale uncomfortable to witness. Some private satisfaction warmed him; there is a pleasure in seeing the beginnings of something not ruin itself.

“Off anywhere nice?” he asked, because the moment seemed to want the question.

“Cinema,” Anathema said, as if that were a brave act and also the most natural thing. She turned her bright gaze on him. “You look well, Mr. Fell. How’s Sunday planning?”

He did not startle at the question. He had learned, where Anathema was concerned, that she saw through small veils and could be trusted with the truth behind them. “Under control,” he said, with the careful calm that meant mostly under control, if I tend to it. He adjusted the bag on his wrist. “Crowley is driving us.”

Anathema’s mouth curved. “Of course he is.”

Newt, eager to contribute, added, “He’s a good driver, I saw him last week when I picked Anathema up. I mean, he looks like he drives badly, but he doesn’t. That sounded rude. I meant—he looks fast. He’s not. I mean—”

“You meant he felt safe,” Aziraphale supplied, amused in spite of the day’s edges.

Newt nodded, grateful. “That.”

Anathema, who collected observations with the secretive joy of a natural historian, gave him one of those looks that said she was both delighted and resigned to seeing something she had predicted come true. “If you need a last-minute extraction, text me,” she said briskly. “I’m not as good as Crowley at terrorising a room with a glance, but I have talents. Also, Newt can pretend your shop is on fire.”

“I can?” Newt said, somewhere between alarmed and flattered.

“You can,” Anathema said, threading her arm through his. “We’ll be late if we don’t go now.”

“Have a marvellous evening,” Aziraphale said, and meant it. He headed for his own door with basil, bread, and the comforting knowledge that the world, however absurd, had arranged itself into a pattern of people who would notice if he didn’t come home.

Back upstairs he put the groceries away with the precise pleasure of a man whose drawers close properly because the things inside have been taught to live adjacent without arguing. He washed the basil’s pot in a big bowl and snipped two leaves to bruise between his fingers, because scent is a language his body speaks even when his mind refuses to commit to a meaning.

His phone, on the counter like a tame bird, lit at the touch. A photo from Crowley—nothing dramatic; the sort of everyday image that nonetheless stilled him: sunlight limning the rib of a palm leaf, a small bright insect caught in the act of not being afraid. There were days when he felt that Crowley sent him proof that the world had not been entirely designed to conquer the quiet.

Crowley (Boyfriend): The temperate house is showing off. It heard about your waistcoat.

Aziraphale: It is polite of it to make an effort.

Crowley (Boyfriend): I like it when you say things like that. Makes me want to—

Crowley (Boyfriend): Never mind. Meeting.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Drive plan still good?

He read the not-quite sentence twice, then set it down gently and replied to the one Crowley had managed to finish.

Aziraphale: Yes. Thank you. I shall be ready.

He added, because he could, and because the basalt of fear under all this had thinned without vanishing:

Aziraphale: Your tie will be very handsome.

The three dots appeared, vanished, returned. Aziraphale thought of how people become less terrifying when you imagine them in ordinary acts—waiters putting salt in a dish just so, morticians choosing a tie for a stranger. The dots yielded to:

Crowley (Boyfriend): I only wear it to make you look.

Crowley (Boyfriend): It’s working already.

He put the phone down. He cut a slice of bread and ate it standing at the counter, hoping to anchor himself to the kitchen’s square cleanliness. He thought of Sunday not as an abyss but as a room with a door he and Crowley would make wider just by standing in it together.

Friday morning was business-like and kind, the way he wishes more mornings would be. He worked on a difficult repair, the sort where the paper threatens to dissolve under the solvent unless you persuade it that the solvent is, in fact, mercy. The slow, exact work itched the very part of his mind that often only itched itself in the wrong direction. He hummed. He did not notice he was humming until a customer smiled at him in a way that said you’re allowed to be content in front of me; I won’t make you pay for it.

There was a brief interlude where Nina swung by with an order slip for Madame Tracy and a world-weary comment about tourists who believed coffee was a human right rather than a beverage. “You alright for Sunday?” she asked, as if inquiring whether he had enough milk. He said yes, and she nodded once, satisfied, and left him to it. He admired that about her; she did not poke at wounds to feel helpful. She sent salves and then minded her own.

After lunch, he went to the wine shop and stood before the shelves until he found the Rioja with the tiny horse on the label, which he now could see was of course a tiny bull, but the horse had become a private joke and he decided, monarchically, that he would hold the image still regardless. He bought two bottles as Crowley had told him to and let them weigh his bag in a way that felt like a counterweight to the dread in his sternum.

Back in the shop, he wrapped the bottles politely in brown paper and twine as if they were going to school for the first time. He addressed them in his mind: You are here to be a distraction and a balm. Do not attempt to be the point.

On Friday evening, after the last customer had gone, he did a strange thing. He put on the dove-grey waistcoat he meant to wear Sunday, and he stood in front of the mirror downstairs rather than the mirror upstairs. He had discovered that his upstairs face is too forgiving of him. The downstairs mirror, the one that reflects him at the front desk, had opinions. It said: this is the man people see when they interrupt him; this is the man they try to move when they move a book; this is the man who will be looked at and measured and found wanting if the room is made for that. He buttoned the waistcoat slowly. He told the man in the mirror that he did not have to please anyone who did not deserve it. He practised the angle at which he would hold his shoulders when he said Aziraphale to a brother who would hear it and try to pretend it had no sharper edge than Azzy. And then, because he liked it, he smiled at himself. Not approval. Recognition.

Later, when he sat down at his desk to finish the day’s figures, his phone buzzed again. A photo this time of something decidedly unromantic but, for Crowley, weirdly affectionate: a boot sole streaked with potting grit, the corner of a lab bench, a corner of his black shirt sleeve. The caption was:

Crowley (Boyfriend): Wore the tie while repotting something spiky so it’d know it had been introduced to civilisation.

Crowley (Boyfriend): You’re going to be fine.

He thanked him. He didn’t try to explain to the phone that the message did two things at once: strengthened his spine and, in strengthening it, made it tremble. There was nothing to be done for that except keeping going and not hiding the tremble from the one person who would not weaponize it.

Saturday was a day of half-readiness and half-avoidance, which in him often came to the same thing. He cleaned what did not strictly need cleaning; he adjusted the hand-lettered signs that did not strictly need adjusting; he reorganised the poetry corner such that the poems about salt ended up together because even when he wasn’t looking at the dinner squarely he was arranging the world to be hospitable to the idea of the sea he was going to have to cross.

Newt came blundering in at ten, triumphant and breathless, to present him with a small gift: a pack of earplugs in a discreet tone. “I don’t know if you—if they help?” he babbled. “Anathema used some at a rock concert we went to when it’s all a bit much and I thought—well, they were on sale and I thought—if you didn’t need them you could throw them away.”

“I won’t throw them away,” Aziraphale said, and had to swallow. “Thank you, Newton. That is—extremely thoughtful.”

Newt went pink in a way that would have been easy to mock but made Aziraphale oddly proud. “I’ll, um, go before I say something clumsy and ruin it,” he announced, and fled.

Madame Tracy breezed through around noon with a tin of biscuits that smelled like the good parts of Christmas and the confidence of a woman who had done her face for stage and for the corner shop and did both with equal energy. “Just in case Sunday’s cooking is a tragedy,” she said with a wink. “Never go to a war without provisions.”

“I’m trying to think of it less as a war,” Aziraphale said, touched enough to be honest.

“A conversation, then,” she said, without missing a beat. “Which can be worse. Use your signals, say your name, and if he persists I shall visit him with a pamphlet about boundaries and a very loud bell.”

“Please don’t,” he said, and laughed when she said “We’ll see.”

A few minutes later, the bell gave its bright announcement and there he was in the flesh, as if the text thread had gotten tired of glowing and decided to walk in off the street. Crowley did not come far into the shop; he knows the shop’s moods the way he knows when certain orchids are about to sulk. He took his sunglasses off, which is for him the equivalent of bowing to the queen, and propped hip to counter.

“Had to be on this side of town,” he said, which was a lie so gently told that Aziraphale accepted it as the courtesy it was. “Thought I’d…” He gestured toward nothing, then toward everything—the shelves, the man, the air between them.

Aziraphale’s pulse did something foolish and loyal. “Hello,” he said, and could hear in his own voice a softness he could not wrap in irony. “You look—”

“Do I?” Crowley asked, and it might have been a jest, but the way he tilted his head said he would pocket the rest of the sentence and keep it for leaner hours.

“Like Saturday is agreeing with you,” Aziraphale said, which was the truth and therefore enough.

They did not touch. They rarely did in the shop; it was a sort of superstition between them that they kept the book-scented air from remembering too much in case it missed them when they were gone. But their conversation moved with the ease of people who know the shape of the other’s footsteps in a corridor. Crowley admired a recent window display, scoffed theatrically at a ridiculous blurb on a modern printing, murmured without being asked, “I’ll be outside at ten to six Sunday. Don’t let him pull you into a corridor alone. If he tries, say you’ve got to get the parking sorted.” He added, wicked, “I can always go move the car as an act of mercy to your blood pressure.”

Aziraphale smiled. “I like the part where you have a car,” he said. “The rest is garnish.”

Crowley looked at him, pleased and something gentler than pleased. “Alright then.”

He didn’t stay long; he rarely did when he popped in on a Saturday, not because he had somewhere better to be but because he respected the quiet bargains the shop kept with its owner. But when he left he left him steadier. Aziraphale turned the Importunate Duke a precise degree and imagined for a brief silly moment that the plant tilted in something like approval.

The afternoon unfurled in peaceful errands. He wrote three invoices without nitpicking them to death. He boxed up two orders with tissue like the inside of a polite envelope. He ate a pear in the back room and thought about the words he would use Sunday: not many, but carefully chosen for stability rather than shine. He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he didn’t have words and then remembered the code and felt the familiar prickle of relief. Tap-tap. A sentence that took no breath.

He closed early—just fifteen minutes; no one would mind—and locked the door with the mindfulness that always astonished him with its effectiveness. One task done at the pace of breath. Another. He brought the wine down from the shelf where he’d hidden it from himself and put it by the door. He took the earplugs Newt had brought and tucked them into the small inner pocket of his jacket. He laid the dove-grey waistcoat and decided, after a solemn debate with his reflection, that the linen tie would be better than the silk because it didn’t try to make a statement that would distract him from his own sentences.

When evening came, he returned upstairs and made a very plain supper. He put the basil pot on the windowsill and read three pages of a book he had meant to read for years and discovered, to his quiet pleasure, that it was as good as the people he didn’t trust had said it was. He set his phone down on the table and did not pick it up for twenty minutes, which for him constituted bravery, and then picked it up and was rewarded for the bravery with a photograph of a tie—dove-grey, elegant and only a little threatening—spread across a black shirt like a road laid carefully toward something.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Proof of life (and tie).

Crowley (Boyfriend): Tell your brother his days of misnaming people are numbered.

Aziraphale: I shall not tell him anything of the sort. I shall simply say my name and allow him to flounder.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Devious. I like it.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Sleep. Tomorrow I’ll be outside at ten to. We go in, do the ninety, and leave on time with our souls untrampled.

Aziraphale: I am very fond of untrampled souls.

Crowley (Boyfriend): Me too. Yours, particularly.

He set the phone down and let the room ring with the words the way rooms do when a sentence arrives that you know you will remember later, when you need a better memory than the one your body supplies. He brushed his teeth, set out his clothes with the fussiness he had long ago decided to stop apologising for, and did what he had begun doing every night since Crowley had said We’ve got this. You’ve got me. He said his name into the night, not to anyone in particular, and listened as it lodged, unassailable, in the quiet.

He slept not like a man marching to an execution but like a man who had the next day’s shoes by the door and a friend with a car, who would stand where he could see him first, and who would love him enough to get him out early if the room proved as small as it liked to pretend.

Sunday dawned with the weight of inevitability.

Aziraphale had known this day was coming all week; he had polished it and prepared for it and stacked the little routines like sandbags against a flood. Still, when the clock hands crept toward ten to twelve, when he smoothed the dove-grey waistcoat over his shirt and fixed the linen tie in the mirror’s reproachful gaze, his stomach swooped in a way that felt perilously like boarding a ship without knowing the weather.

He checked the wine bottles. He checked the earplugs. He checked the card in his inner pocket with the signals. He checked, absurdly, that Brian the sunflower was angled correctly toward the window. Then he sat in the armchair with his satchel on his lap and tried to breathe like a man who had rehearsed.

The rumble reached him before the bell. A low, confident purr of an engine that did not sound like anything so ordinary as a hired car. Aziraphale frowned, stood, went to the shop window.

And stopped.

Black, gleaming, crouched on Whickber Street like a predator who had agreed, for the moment, to be domesticated: a Bentley. An unmistakable classic, with lines like scripture and a presence that dared anyone to park badly near it. Its chrome caught the weak sunlight like a sly grin.

The driver’s side window rolled down and Crowley leaned out, one arm slung casual over the door, sunglasses glinting. “Your carriage awaits.”

Aziraphale could not help the sound that escaped him—a small, reverent exhale. “Good heavens.”

Crowley smirked. “Told you I’d drive. Didn’t tell you how in style.”

He collected his satchel and the wine, locked the door carefully, and descended the shop steps as though approaching a cathedral. The Bentley was immaculate, but not in a museum way; it lived. It gleamed like something cared for, not displayed. He traced a hand along the curve of the bonnet, reverent. “She’s beautiful.”

“She?” Crowley tilted his head, amused. “Never thought about it, actually. Just the Bentley. But yeah. She’s something.”

When Aziraphale settled into the passenger seat, the leather breathed its age around him, warm and supple. The engine’s vibration purred through his shoes like a promise. He glanced sideways. Crowley’s hands, long-fingered and sure, rested on the wheel as though the car were an extension of him, not a tool.

Crowley flicked the indicator, pulled into the road with a grace that belied the growl of the machine. “So,” he said, casual as if they were discussing weather, “before we plunge into the lion’s den. Thought we might talk strategy. Or—” His mouth quirked. “Exit strategy.”

“Mm, yes,” Aziraphale agreed tightly. His fingers flexed against his satchel strap. “I—I did rather think that might be wise.”

“I figured.” Crowley adjusted his sunglasses. “So. Ground rules. We do the ninety minutes. If it gets unbearable, you tap my wrist twice—code for ‘We’re done.’ I’ll make something up. Car trouble, urgent call from the gardens, doesn’t matter. I’ll get us out.”

Aziraphale nodded, relief mingling with apprehension. “Yes. That—that seems quite reasonable.”

“And,” Crowley added, his tone shifting toward deliberate levity, “if he starts in on your waistcoats, I’ll spill wine down his shirt. Purely accidental.”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale tried for sternness, but the smile threatened. “You will do no such thing.”

“Fine, fine,” Crowley said. “I’ll just glare at him until his soup curdles.”

That earned a soft laugh, which startled Aziraphale with its own existence. It was easier, with Crowley, to breathe when laughter slipped through.

For a few minutes they drove in silence, Whickber Street’s corners giving way to broader roads, then to the outskirts of town. The Bentley ate distance smoothly, a panther on the hunt. Aziraphale watched the landscape shift, tried not to count the minutes to arrival.

Crowley cleared his throat. “Been meaning to ask. When this… circus is over. Thought maybe you’d like to meet Muriel properly. My sibling.”

Aziraphale blinked. He turned his head. Crowley kept his eyes on the road, but his jaw had tightened, a rare sign of nerves.

“They’d like you,” Crowley said, brisk to cover it. “They’re—well. They’re a bit like you, in some ways. Different kind of different, but… you’d get it. I think you’d get each other.”

Something in Aziraphale’s chest loosened, surprising him with its tenderness. That Crowley wanted to share someone so close, someone he clearly guarded fiercely—it meant more than a casual suggestion. It was an offering.

“I would be honoured,” Aziraphale said softly. And meant it.

Crowley glanced at him, quick, and then back at the road. But his mouth softened at the corners. “Good. They’ll like that.”

The hum of the engine filled the car, steady as a heartbeat. Aziraphale folded his hands in his lap and allowed himself, for just a moment, to believe that this was manageable. That whatever waited at Fell House, it was not the whole world. That he had someone at his side who would not let him drown quietly.

“Crowley?”

“Mm?”

“You—you’re sure you don’t mind?”

Crowley huffed a laugh, but there was no mockery in it. “Angel, if you think I’m letting you face that smug bastard alone, you’ve really not been paying attention. I’ll be there. Whatever happens. No matter what.”

The words landed with a weight Aziraphale both craved and feared. He wanted to tuck them away like a relic, proof against the moments he would later doubt.

The Bentley turned onto the long drive that led up through well-kept hedges and a lawn too symmetrical to be honest. Aziraphale’s breath stuttered. He smoothed his waistcoat again, an old tic.

The house rose ahead, broad and stately, windows reflecting the pale sky. The steps up to the door gleamed white. They might as well have been an altar.

Crowley pulled the Bentley to a stop, the engine’s rumble subsiding like a beast leashed. He turned to him, one eyebrow raised above the shades. “Ready?”

No, Aziraphale thought. Not in the least. But Crowley was here, and the plan was made, and the wine was in its bag like a talisman.

He drew a breath, opened the door, and together they mounted the steps to Fell House.

The door of Fell House opened before Aziraphale could ring the bell. Gabriel stood framed in the archway like a smug portrait, sleeves rolled precisely to the elbow, smile sharp as glass.

“Azzy,” he said, stretching the diminutive until it grated. His eyes flicked to Crowley with a gleam that managed to be both evaluative and dismissive in the same breath. “So. You actually brought him.”

Aziraphale squared his shoulders. “Aziraphale, Gabriel. This is Crowley.”

Crowley inclined his head, not offering a hand. “Evening.”

Gabriel’s grin widened, predatory. “Well, come in. Mother and Father are eager to see you.”

Eager. That was one word for it. Aziraphale tightened his grip on his satchel and followed Crowley into the wide, echoing hall with its stiff portraits of ancestors glaring down from the panelled walls. Crowley’s boots clicked against the marble floor, a note of defiance Aziraphale couldn’t quite tell if he meant.

Mrs. Fell was already stationed in the drawing room, posture ramrod straight, pearls gleaming against a navy blouse. Mr. Fell sat in his usual armchair, glasses perched low, expression permanently on the cusp of disapproval. Their eyes tracked Aziraphale as though he were a student late to class.

“Azariah,” Mrs. Fell said, pronouncing the syllables with cool precision, as if to erase every trace of the affectionate nickname Gabriel wielded like a weapon. “Punctual, at least.”

Mr. Fell gave a noncommittal grunt. “Missed the church again last week. Thought I wouldn’t notice.”

Aziraphale bowed his head slightly. “Good evening, Mother, Father.”

“And this,” Mrs. Fell said, gaze sliding to Crowley, “is the friend?”

Crowley gave her a thin smile. “The boyfriend.”

The word landed in the room like a stone breaking still water. Gabriel smirked, triumphant, as if he had engineered the admission. Mr. Fell cleared his throat pointedly. Mrs. Fell’s mouth pinched.

Aziraphale, cheeks hot, forced brightness into his voice. “Yes. Crowley has been very kind to me.”

Crowley shot him a glance, something both protective and frustrated flickering behind the dark lenses.

They moved to the dining room, the long table set with cut glass and silverware that glinted under the chandelier. Aziraphale knew the choreography by heart: Mother at the head, Father opposite, Gabriel at her right hand, leaving Aziraphale the seat at Father’s left—the lesser position, always. Crowley slid into the chair beside him, long legs stretched, careless elegance a rebuke to the rigid formality around them.

The soup course arrived in silence. Gabriel was the first to break it. “So, Azzy. Still running that dusty little shop?”

Aziraphale kept his eyes on his spoon. “Yes. The shop is doing quite well, thank you. It’s Azira—”

“Doing well?” Gabriel cut him off his laugh was rich with disbelief. “Really? Doesn’t look like it. Books stacked every which way, curtains drawn half the time—doesn’t exactly scream prosperity, does it?”

Crowley’s jaw flexed. He opened his mouth, but Aziraphale caught his sleeve under the table, subtle. Don’t. He had rehearsed for Gabriel. He was ready.

“My customers appreciate a certain atmosphere,” Aziraphale said evenly. “It is not to everyone’s taste, but it does suit them. And me.”

Gabriel snorted. “Atmosphere. You mean gloom.”

Mrs. Fell dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “It would do you no harm to present yourself more cheerfully. Your brother never fails to appear tidy, energetic, productive.”

“I do tidy quite often,” Aziraphale murmured.

Mr. Fell gave another grunt. “Not often enough.”

Crowley’s foot tapped a restless beat under the table. Aziraphale felt it through the floorboards.

The main course arrived—roast lamb, potatoes, carrots arranged in precise lines. Aziraphale served himself carefully, small portions. He could feel Gabriel’s eyes tracking even that.

“So,” Gabriel said, cutting into his lamb with precision. “Tell me, Crowley. What’s it like, having to put up with Azzy’s little quirks? The fussiness. The stubbornness. Always thought no one would.”

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale said sharply, but his voice wavered.

Crowley’s fork stilled against the plate. He turned his head, slow, deliberate. “Funny thing about quirks,” he said, voice lazy but edged. “Sometimes they’re the best part of a person. Makes them worth knowing. Worth being with. I enjoy Aziraphale’s.”

Aziraphale’s chest constricted. His parents gave identical sniffs of disapproval. Gabriel only smirked more broadly, as though he had proven a point by eliciting the defence.

Dinner went on. The rhythm was as Aziraphale had always known it: Mother’s clipped remarks about posture, Father’s muttered corrections about the wine service, Gabriel’s constant stream of backhanded jabs. Aziraphale absorbed it with practiced composure. This was the current, and he had learned long ago how not to drown.

What unsettled him was Crowley. Not his words—though when he spoke, there was steel under the drawl—but the way he looked at them. At Mrs. Fell’s sharpness, at Mr. Fell’s weary disapproval, at Gabriel’s mocking barbs. His unhappiness was palpable, pressing against Aziraphale’s skin.

But why? Parents were like this. Weren’t they?

He caught Crowley’s eye once, by chance. There was heat there, yes, but something else too: a kind of sorrow. As though he were watching a crime being committed in plain sight.

Aziraphale looked away.

The conversation turned to politics, to neighbours, to the usual parade of topics that had nothing to do with him. He let it wash over him, quiet, heart beating steady but low. Crowley shifted beside him, restless, clearly unhappy.

But this was the way of things. And Aziraphale, who had always told himself he was lucky to be tolerated at all, did not understand why Crowley couldn’t see that.

Chapter Text

Crowley had polished the Bentley before they left. Not because Aziraphale would care—he suspected the angel would have been equally impressed if he’d turned up in a battered hatchback—but because he cared. The car was armour, a statement. He wanted the Fell family to see sleek lines and deep gleam and know, without words, that he was not a man to be dismissed.

Aziraphale, bless him, had blinked at the Bentley as though he’d stepped into a painting. “She’s beautiful,” he’d said, awe-struck, and Crowley had nearly preened. For all his nerves, that one remark had steadied him.

The ride to Fell House was quiet, but not empty. They’d set their exit strategies like soldiers preparing for battle—Crowley joking, Aziraphale fretting, both of them circling the same point: I’ll be there. No matter what. Crowley had meant it.

What he hadn’t expected was the sheer weight of the place. Fell House wasn’t just bricks and mortar; it was centuries of expectation pressed into wallpaper and wood polish.

The inside of the Fell house smelled like a mausoleum. Beeswax polish, boiled cabbage, the faint sting of vinegar in the air—it clung to the walls, seeped into the curtains, settled like dust in the corners of the mind. Crowley hated it on instinct. It wasn’t just unpleasant; it was oppressive. The kind of smell that warned: you’re being judged the moment you cross the threshold.

Gabriel was at the door, all perfect teeth and smug posture. He clapped Aziraphale on the shoulder hard enough to rock him. “Azzy,” he crowed.

Crowley’s stomach twisted. That name again, delivered with the smug satisfaction of a schoolboy knowing exactly which bruise to poke. Aziraphale flinched—so slight most people wouldn’t notice, but Crowley saw it like a flare in the dark.

“Aziraphale, Gabriel. This is Crowley.” Aziraphale said evenly. His voice was calm, but his shoulders had already started their defensive hunch. Crowley still felt pride and greeted Aziraphale’s brother.

Mrs. Uriel Fell appeared next, pearl necklace gleaming under the chandelier. “Azariah. You’re late.”

Crowley checked his watch. They weren’t. Not even close. He felt the words rise to his tongue, sharp and ready, but Aziraphale beat him to it.

“We arrived at the appointed time, Mother,” he said, tone careful, precise.

Crowley glanced sideways at him. The tiny emphasis on appointed was deliberate; Aziraphale’s way of nudging back without making a scene. Still, Crowley’s hands itched.

Mr. Fell — Sandalphon… a name he clearly wore as a prove of pedigree — came last, shuffling from the dining room with his newspaper tucked under one arm. He adjusted his glasses and frowned at Crowley. He started rambling about missed church services — as if that was important right now. “Shoes off, if you please. We’ve just had the parquet redone. And you are?”

“Crowley,” he said smoothly, tugging his shades down just enough to make eye contact. “The boyfriend.” He just went all in even if his pulse raced audibly in his ears when he said it out loud.

Mrs. Fell’s eyebrows flicked up. Mr. Fell grunted. Gabriel smirked.

“Companion,” Gabriel said quietly, voice dripping with false affability. “Azzy’s brought a companion.”

Crowley’s jaw clenched. He wanted to sling an arm around Aziraphale then and there, plant a kiss on his temple, announce it so loudly no one could pretend otherwise. But Aziraphale stood very still, polite as ever, and Crowley forced himself to swallow the impulse.

Ten minutes in, and he already wanted to get Aziraphale out of this house.

The dining room was worse. White tablecloth starched to military precision, cutlery lined like soldiers, candles casting long shadows across the stiff-backed chairs. Crowley slid into the seat beside Aziraphale, resisting the urge to nudge his knee in reassurance. He wanted contact—skin, warmth, something to ground Aziraphale—but not if it risked making things harder for him.

Soup arrived first: thin broth, watery, over-salted. Mrs. Fell ladled it out herself, portioning Aziraphale’s bowl noticeably smaller.

“How is the bookshop?” she asked, tone flat, as though she were inquiring after the health of a sickly pet.

“Steady,” Aziraphale said. “Quite steady business, these days.”

Gabriel snorted. “Steady? Really, Azzy. That little cave of yours has been running on fumes for decades. Thriving would be the word to aim for.”

Aziraphale’s spoon stilled, just for a second. Then he said, carefully, “It satisfies me.”

Crowley leaned back in his chair, letting his voice drip lazy disdain. “Funny thing about satisfaction. Not everyone needs flashy careers and corner offices to prove they’re living.”

Mrs. Fell’s eyes flicked to him, sharp. “And what is it you do, Mr. Crowley?”

“Kew Gardens,” he said. “Botany. Conservation. Restoration. Keeping things alive.”

A brief flicker of surprise crossed her face, but she smoothed it into polite neutrality. Mr. Fell snorted into his soup. “Horticulture. Hmph. A hobby masquerading as work.”

Crowley bared his teeth in a smile. “Depends on your perspective. Plants don’t talk back, which makes them infinitely better company.”

Under the table, Aziraphale’s knee brushed his—whether by accident or subtle plea, Crowley couldn’t tell. Either way, he shut up. For now.

The first course dragged. Gabriel held court, pontificating about his latest business venture—consulting, or perhaps exploitation, depending on the spin. Mr. Fell listened intently, nodding with each smug sentence. Mrs. Fell made approving noises. Aziraphale tried, once or twice, to contribute—thoughtful, measured interjections—but Gabriel swatted them aside like gnats. Crowley kept sipping at his wine to stop himself from snarling.

Then came the main course. Roast lamb, carved too thin, accompanied by vegetables boiled into submission. Crowley chewed dutifully. Aziraphale ate little, shoulders tucked, nodding when addressed.

“So,” Gabriel said, swirling his glass of wine. “Still single, Azzy?”

Crowley froze. The scrape of his knife against the plate was loud in the silence that followed.

“As a matter of fact, no,” Aziraphale said. Calm. Almost too calm.

The table paused. Mrs. Fell blinked once. Mr. Fell frowned. Gabriel smirked wider. “Oh? And who’s the unlucky victim?”

Crowley set his knife down deliberately. “That would be me.” His tone was silk, smooth as smoke, but inside he was a wildfire.

Mrs. Fell’s lips curved in a tight smile. “How… unexpected — I thought you were joking.”

Mr. Fell grunted. “Mm.”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, grin wolfish. “Really, Azzy? Him? Must be a phase.”

Crowley’s hand curled into a fist under the table. He wanted to slam it down, tell Gabriel exactly what kind of phase it was—lifelong, permanent, non-negotiable. But Aziraphale sat still, polite as a statue, so Crowley held the line.

Instead, he said lazily, “Mhm… phases. Sometimes they last forever.”

Silence. Then the clink of cutlery resumed, brittle and sharp.

The clock ticked loud in the background. Crowley counted the minutes, each one grinding slower than the last. He noticed everything: Mrs. Fell’s little sigh when Aziraphale reached for bread, Mr. Fell’s pointed questions about income, Gabriel’s constant needling. Each comment dug into Aziraphale like a pin, and Aziraphale absorbed it, shoulders curling tighter, smile fixed.

Forty-five minutes. That was all it had been. Crowley wanted to burn the house down. He wanted to scoop Aziraphale up, bundle him into the Bentley, and never look back.

But Aziraphale gave him the smallest glance, a flicker of blue eyes across the tablecloth, and Crowley stayed put. Not yet. Not unless Aziraphale asked.

Mrs. Fell rang the little bell for dessert. Crowley’s napkin crumpled in his fist.

Forty-five minutes down. Forty-five to go. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it.

Gabriel chose this moment trying to pounce. “So,” he said, cutting into his lamb with precision. “Tell me, Crowley. What’s it like, having to put up with Azzy’s little quirks? The fussiness. The stubbornness. Always thought no one would.”

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale had looked up sharply, clearly affronted on Crowley’s behalf. Sweet angel.

Crowley had to hold back. But he could do a bit of weeding. With precision he halted his fork turning his head carefully, looking Gabriel directly into the eye. “Funny thing about quirks,” he said, voice lazy but edged. “Sometimes they’re the best part of a person. Makes them worth knowing. Worth being with.”

Crowley had dealt with invasive weeds before. Brambles that wrapped themselves tight round the roots of healthier things, choking the life from them. Ivy that looked decorative until you realised it was prising the mortar apart, stone by stone. The Fell family were that kind of growth. From where he sat, all starch and candlelight, he could see it plain as the cutlery glinting in the dim.

Gabriel’s little jab about quirks still hummed between them. Crowley had parried, neat and sharp, but Aziraphale hadn’t pushed. He’d bristled only in defence of Crowley, not himself.

And wasn’t that the pattern.

Mrs. Fell dabbed at her lips with her napkin, watching Crowley as though he were some exotic fungus Aziraphale had foolishly brought into the house. “So, Mr. Crowley you’re at Kew. That must be… charming.”

Charming. The word dripped condescension.

Crowley swirled his wine, let the pause stretch until even Gabriel leaned forward, waiting. Then he smiled, slow and reptilian. “Charming’s one word. Saving endangered species, restoring ecosystems, bringing back near-lost cultivars. Some might call it important.”

Mr. Fell sniffed. “Important? Hm. Most of the world manages without fussing over plants. Always thought Aziraphale inherited that tendency. Fiddling with books, you fiddling with flowers. Two peas in a rather eccentric pod.”

Aziraphale’s fork scraped softly against his plate. Crowley felt the sound like a flare.

He leaned back, folding one long leg over the other. “Did you know… fiddling… Someone’s got to care enough to do it, otherwise everything worth preserving gets lost.” His voice was cool, deceptively casual. “Books. Plants. People.”

That landed. He saw the faint stiffening in Mrs. Fell’s spine, the quick downturn of Gabriel’s smile. But no one answered. Aziraphale kept his gaze down on the lamb, as though willing it to shield him.

Crowley wanted to kick the table. Instead, he set down his glass.

“Azzy never did know when to stop fussing,” Gabriel said, clearly unwilling to let silence reign. “Remember when you collected those dreadful little trinkets, Azzy? Lined them all up on your shelf. Drove Mother mad.”

Aziraphale’s ears went pink. Crowley’s fingers twitched against the napkin.

“How interesting,” Crowley drawled, “I quite like that about him. Details. Order. Makes him bloody brilliant at what he does.”

This time Aziraphale looked at him, startled, eyes wide in the candlelight. A flicker of gratitude, but also something else. Something like doubt, as though he couldn’t quite believe Crowley meant it.

Of course he bloody meant it. Crowley clenched his jaw.

Mrs. Fell’s sigh sliced the air. “Azira—Azzy. You’ve always been too sensitive. No one meant anything by it.”

Crowley wanted to spit. That tone. The minimising, the smoothing over. It was the same thing Muriel used to get when they were younger—don’t make a fuss, don’t take it so seriously, you’re imagining it. He’d watched Muriel curl up under those words, taught to swallow their instincts until they shook themselves apart.

And here was Aziraphale, enduring the same thing. Years older, but still bracing against every sideways swipe, as though this was simply how families were.

Crowley’s rage sat hot and steady in his chest. He could burn this whole bloody house down with it, if Aziraphale would only give the word.

Instead he tried to clear space. Create openings.

“So, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, pitching his voice with lazy encouragement. “That restoration you’ve been doing—tell them about it. The herbarium.”

Aziraphale blinked. “Oh. Well. It’s a minor project—”

“Minor,” Crowley cut in. “You spent weeks on it. Pages cleaned, labels preserved, binding redone. Thing looks better than when it was bloody made.”

There was a flicker of pride in Aziraphale’s face, quickly smothered under caution. “Yes, well. It was rather satisfying work.”

Mr. Fell waved a hand. “Another dusty book. Hardly worth the fuss.”

Aziraphale closed his mouth. Crowley wanted to slam a fist into the table.

“Interesting fact about dust,” Crowley said instead, silky and sharp. “Doesn’t mean the thing under it isn’t priceless.”

He shot Aziraphale a look. Go on. Take it. Push. But Aziraphale only gave the smallest of nods, as though grateful for the shield but unwilling to step from behind it.

Crowley bit back a curse.

Gabriel leaned in again. “So, Crowley. Since you seem so keen on defending every one of Azzy’s little… habits. Tell me. Doesn’t it drive you mad? The pedantry. The stubbornness. The way he’ll harp on a subject until you want to—”

“Gabriel.” Aziraphale’s voice was sharp this time, cutting across his brother’s words. He sat straighter, eyes narrowing. “That is quite enough.”

Crowley nearly smiled. There it was. That flicker of spine. And for him, no less—defending Crowley, not himself. It warmed and gutted him all at once.

But then Mrs. Fell tutted. “Azira—Azzy. Really. You mustn’t snap. Gabriel’s only teasing.”

Teasing. The word landed like ash. Crowley pressed his palm flat to the table to keep from lashing out.

He glanced sideways at Aziraphale, who was staring fixedly at his plate again. Didn’t he see? Didn’t he see that his parents were no better? That their smooth dismissals were just as corrosive as Gabriel’s barbs? Crowley wanted to shake him, to shout they’re the same, angel, they’re the bloody same.

But Aziraphale sat quiet, a picture of composure. Only the fine tremor of his fingers betrayed him, the smallest tap against the stem of his glass.

Crowley leaned back, sunglasses catching the candlelight. “Funny thing about teasing,” he said softly. “Some people mistake cruelty for humour. Easy mistake to make, I s’pose. If you’ve got no sense of humour to start with.”

Gabriel froze mid-bite. Mrs. Fell’s lips thinned. Mr. Fell gave a disapproving grunt.

And Aziraphale—Aziraphale looked at him, eyes wide again. That same flicker of gratitude, mixed with fear. As if Crowley were playing with fire too close to his skin.

Crowley forced himself to lean back, casual again. Let the silence fester.

It was all he could do: clear the weeds, hold the line, and hope Aziraphale would see—would learn to take the space himself.

But God, every second in that house made him want to burn.

Crowley had endured hostile board meetings, ministers with their claws out, even billionaire donors who thought waving a cheque gave them the right to lecture him on how plants “should” grow. But this—this polished little table with its silver candlesticks and pressed linen—was in a category all its own.

It wasn’t only Gabriel’s smirks or the Fell parents’ careful, measured disdain. It was the quiet way Aziraphale shrank. Crowley hadn’t thought him capable of shrinking, not really—he was solid, stubborn, took up space whether he meant to or not. In the bookshop he was immovable, a fixture of the street. Here, though… here he folded himself into the narrowest version of who he was, every word filtered before it left his mouth.

It made Crowley’s blood boil.

Conversation dripped along like candle wax. Mrs. Fell inquired about Crowley’s plans—as though gardening were a passing hobby. Mr. Fell made a point of noting the latest Fell family acquaintance, some lawyer’s son who had “done very well for himself, not by fiddling with hobbies but by applying himself.” Gabriel, of course, circled like a shark, waiting for blood in the water.

And Aziraphale responded with all the mildness of someone who had learned—long ago—that resistance only prolonged the pain.

Crowley itched to overturn the table.

Instead, he prodded gently. Little openings. “Angel—Aziraphale, tell them about the shop’s new acquisitions. The signed Blake?”

Aziraphale brightened—visibly, if briefly. “Yes, a very fine edition, near pristine. One hardly ever sees—”

“Books,” Gabriel cut in, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been prattling about books since you were five. Still haven’t grown out of it.”

The light in Aziraphale’s face dimmed.

Crowley slammed his fork down with a controlled clatter. “You know I’ve heard about prattling,” he said, venom sugar coated. “Sometimes it’s called expertise.”

Mrs. Fell tutted softly. “Crowley, really. No need for such defensiveness. Azzy knows we only tease.”

Crowley wanted to laugh—wanted to bare his teeth. Tease. That word again. Every barbed word wiped clean with a smile, as if intent erased impact. It was the same poison Muriel had endured, the kind that sank in slowly, year after year. He remembered being a teenager, watching Muriel stumble through family dinners of their own, overwhelmed by noise and jibes, every tic or pause called out until they had sat mute, staring at their plate. Crowley had hated his parents for it then. He hated the Fells for it now.

“Ah yes, your teasing,” he said, voice like the flick of a knife. “Right. You’re a bloody riot.”

There was a sharp cough from Mr. Fell. Gabriel smirked. Aziraphale shifted in his seat, clearly caught between gratitude and dread.

Crowley eased back, forcing his shoulders into a lazy slouch, sunglasses catching the light. Couldn’t push too far. Not yet. Aziraphale wasn’t ready.

The meal wore on.

Gabriel launched into stories from his office—“real work,” as he put it. Mrs. Fell lamented Aziraphale’s “indoor life,” remarking on his pallor as though he were a child who refused to play in the sun. Mr. Fell pressed on about “settling down properly,” implying the bookshop was little more than a diversion.

Crowley counted each slight like tally marks on his arm.

Aziraphale parried here and there—when Gabriel mocked Crowley directly, Aziraphale’s hackles rose. “Really, Gabriel, you might show some respect.” But when the target shifted back to him, Aziraphale bore it. He bent. Smoothed. Tried to make it easier for them.

Didn’t he see they were the same? That Gabriel was only their mouthpiece? Crowley wanted to shake him. Wanted to grab his hand under the table and squeeze until Aziraphale looked at him and saw.

But Aziraphale only folded his napkin. Adjusted his fork. Smiled that tight, polite smile.

Forty minutes in, Crowley had gone still as stone, his rage coiled and patient. One spark, and he’d go off.

Mr. Fell pushed his plate away with finality. “Well. That was adequate.”

Crowley’s lips twitched. Adequate. Aziraphale had cooked for him before, laboured over recipes, delighted in detail. And here his father dismissed a restaurant meal—perfectly good lamb—as adequate.

Crowley wanted to spit in his wine.

The waiter swept in then, efficient and polite. “Will you be staying for dessert?”

Gabriel smirked. “Of course. Azzy always did have a sweet tooth.”

Something twisted in Crowley’s chest. He thought of the cake Aziraphale had refused at their lunch, the way he’d hesitated and withdrawn as though someone else’s words had closed the door for him.

Mrs. Fell smiled thinly. “Well, perhaps just coffee for me. Gabriel, Uriel?”

Orders murmured. Crowley added, “Espresso.”

Aziraphale hesitated. His parents’ eyes on him. Crowley watched the moment stretch—the want on his face, then the flicker of restraint, the retreat.

“No dessert for me, thank you.”

Crowley’s hand curled into a fist under the table.

The waiter departed. Conversation resumed, a low drone. Crowley could barely hear it over the roar in his head. He wanted to snatch Aziraphale up, march him out into the night air, remind him that sweetness wasn’t a sin, that wanting things wasn’t weakness.

But Aziraphale sat still, the very image of composure.

Crowley stared down the Fells across the flickering candlelight and thought: one more word. One more bloody word and I’ll—

And then the plates for dessert arrived.

The clink of porcelain was obscenely loud. Plates set down one by one, a custard tart gleaming golden on Gabriel’s plate, a neat square of chocolate gateau for Mrs. Fell, an unadorned espresso cup in front of Crowley.

And nothing for Aziraphale.

Crowley had watched him fold inward as he refused. No dessert, no indulgence. He’d seen the want flicker across his face, the retreat after. He knew exactly whose voices Aziraphale had heard in his head, because he was hearing them too, aloud across the damned table.

The conversation turned toward Gabriel’s work again. He loved nothing more than the sound of his own voice: managerial triumphs, underlings put in their place, some new policy he claimed to have invented. Crowley only half-listened. He was watching Aziraphale, who smiled, nodded, made the expected noises while cradling a cup of coffee like it might anchor him.

Every time his brother interrupted him. Every time his parents skimmed over him as though he’d said nothing. Every time Aziraphale swallowed his pride rather than protest.

Crowley’s patience frayed.

Gabriel leaned back, fork in hand, gesturing expansively with his custard tart. “Of course, not everyone has the stamina for real work. Take Azzy, for instance. Spends half his life reading fairy stories and the other half hiding in that dusty little shop.” He smirked at Crowley. “Can’t imagine that’s much of a turn-on, eh?”

Crowley’s grip on his cup turned white-knuckled. He set it down deliberately. “Funny thing,” he said, voice silk with steel beneath, “turns out some people prefer depth to flash.”

Gabriel raised a brow. “Depth? Please. He hides behind those books. Always has. Never did know how to face the real world.”

Aziraphale flinched. Small, but Crowley saw it.

Mrs. Fell dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Gabriel does have a point, Aziraphale. We only want the best for you. You’ve always been rather… delicate. Fragile.”

Crowley’s jaw ached with the force of holding back. He wanted to shout. Wanted to sweep the bloody table clear and tell them exactly what their “concern” had done to their son. Instead he forced his lips into a sharp smile. “Fragile’s not the word I’d use.”

Mr. Fell chuckled, as though indulging a child. “Well, you’re besotted. Can hardly expect objectivity.”

Besotted. Crowley’s chest burned. They said it like an affliction, something he’d caught that would wear off. As if Aziraphale wasn’t worth clear-eyed devotion.

Across from him, Aziraphale sat straighter. “I am perfectly capable of living my own life,” he said, cool but clipped. “The shop has been mine for years. I pay my bills. I manage.”

Crowley’s heart swelled at the steel in his voice. But Mrs. Fell only sighed.

“Of course you manage, dear. No one’s suggesting otherwise. But really, wouldn’t you be happier with some help? Someone to oversee things, to keep you… settled?”

There it was again. Settled. Managed. Contained.

Crowley leaned forward. “He doesn’t need to be managed. He’s not a bloody child.”

Mr. Fell’s eyes narrowed. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, low and unwavering. “I am.”

The table went quiet. Even Gabriel blinked, fork hovering over his tart.

For a moment Crowley thought maybe, just maybe, he’d bought Aziraphale space. That they’d back off, see that he wasn’t alone in this room. But then Gabriel smirked again, oily as ever.

“So what’s the plan then, Crowley? Stick around until you get bored? Because Azzy doesn’t… change. He’s always been like this. Stubborn, fussy, fragile. You’ll tire of it.”

Aziraphale’s hand twitched on his napkin. Crowley caught it in his periphery—the tiny tremor of someone bracing for agreement.

That was it. That was the match.

Crowley pushed back his chair just enough to lean his elbows on the table, glasses flashing in the candlelight. His voice dropped to something dangerous, deliberate.

“You’ve got a hell of a way of talking about your brother. And your son.”

Mr. Fell stiffened. Mrs. Fell’s lips pursed. Gabriel looked faintly delighted, like a cat with a mouse.

Crowley pressed on. “You sit here, picking him apart, treating him like he’s some bloody inconvenience. Fragile, delicate, can’t cope without you. And he sits here, polite as anything, because that’s what you’ve trained him to do.”

Aziraphale went very still beside him.

Crowley took a breath. “Well. Newsflash. He’s not fragile. He’s strong. Stronger than any of you give him credit for. And if you think for one second I’m going to sit here and let you whittle him down, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Gabriel snorted. “And what, you’ll rescue him? Sweep him off his feet? Marry him and ride into the sunset?”

Crowley’s grin was sharp, dangerous. “Yeah. That’s the idea.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Even the clink of cutlery from neighbouring tables seemed to fade.

Mrs. Fell blinked rapidly. “I beg your pardon?”

Crowley leaned back, casual on the surface but his blood singing. “You heard me. You’re looking at your son’s future husband. Might take us time, sure. But that’s where we’re heading. And I’ll tell you this for free: I’ll treat him with more respect than you’ve managed his entire life.”

Aziraphale made a faint, startled sound beside him. Not quite protest, not quite agreement—something in between, caught in his throat. Crowley didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. Not yet.

Gabriel’s fork hit his plate with a clatter. Mr. Fell’s jaw worked, words stalling. Mrs. Fell pressed a hand to her chest like she’d been scandalised in a Victorian parlour.

Crowley only smiled, wide and wolfish. “So go ahead. Call him fragile. Call him fussy. Say whatever you like. Just remember you’re saying it to the man I’m going to marry.”

And then the waiter set down dessert. The scent of chocolate and pastry drifted up, absurdly normal against the crackling silence.

Crowley reached for his espresso, lifted it in a toast, and took a slow, deliberate sip.

For a moment after the words left his mouth, Crowley thought he might’ve actually stopped time.

The whole dining room went muffled, like he’d dropped them all underwater. Forks hovered mid-air. Glasses froze half-raised. Aziraphale beside him made the faintest, strangled noise—as though he’d swallowed the wrong way or perhaps had been hit square in the chest.

Crowley didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. Not yet. If he saw panic in those pale eyes he might crack wide open himself. Better to keep his gaze trained on Gabriel across the table, the one who’d pushed and pushed until the rubber band snapped.

Gabriel recovered first. He laughed. Loud, false, a single note of disbelief. “You?” he said, brandishing his fork like a weapon. “Marry Azzy? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Crowley arched a brow over the rim of his glasses. “Not half as ridiculous as you thinking you can keep talking about him like he’s broken. What I said stands.”

Aziraphale shifted beside him. Crowley caught the motion in his periphery—hands fussing with his napkin, the twitch of his jaw. Stunned, yes. But not running. Not yet.

Mrs. Fell cleared her throat, brittle as snapped bone china. “Really, young man, that sort of language at the dinner table is highly inappropriate. Marriage is not a joke.”

“Wasn’t joking.” Crowley’s voice was a flat line of iron.

Mr. Fell gave a short, derisive chuckle. “Do you even know what you’re saying? Our son is… well, Aziraphale isn’t the sort to thrive in domestic arrangements. We’ve always said—”

“You’ve always said,” Crowley cut in, sharp enough to slice porcelain. “And maybe that’s the problem.”

The air at the table thickened again, the same way it had before the storm broke. Only this time Crowley didn’t try to rein it in. He wanted them rattled. Wanted them off-balance. Because maybe, just maybe, Aziraphale would see—would feel—that he wasn’t as alone as they’d trained him to believe.

Gabriel leaned forward, eyes glinting. “And what if Azzy doesn’t want that, eh? You barging in, declaring yourself? Always did have trouble saying no, didn’t you, brother?”

Crowley’s pulse hammered. That—he couldn’t let stand. He turned his head just enough, finally looking at Aziraphale. The angel—no, the man, his man—was flushed, lips pressed tight, eyes darting between them. Caught between defence and disbelief.

“Say the word,” Crowley murmured, low enough for Aziraphale alone. “I’ll walk it back. All of it.”

For a heartbeat Aziraphale only blinked at him. Then, softly, almost inaudibly, “You needn’t.”

It was enough. Crowley squared his shoulders, turned back to Gabriel with a smile that was all teeth. “There you have it.”

Gabriel’s fork clattered onto his plate. “This is absurd. Utterly absurd. He can’t possibly know what he wants.”

Something in Aziraphale snapped. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, steady and clipped. “I know precisely what I want, Gabriel. And for once, it is not your opinion.”

Crowley nearly laughed with relief. Nearly. Instead he pressed a hand flat to the table, grounding himself against the urge to grab Aziraphale then and there and kiss him breathless in front of the lot of them.

Mrs. Fell sputtered. “Aziraphale—!”

But Crowley cut her off, lazy drawl hiding the coiled spring in his chest. “Might want to get used to it. He’s not your little project anymore. He’s mine.”

That did it. Mr. Fell’s face went a dangerous shade of puce. Gabriel muttered something venomous about delusions. Mrs. Fell dabbed at her eyes as though already mourning. The whole bloody performance of outrage and denial, all choreographed for maximum guilt.

And through it all Aziraphale sat taller, breathing carefully, knuckles pale around his napkin but not folding. Not yielding.

Crowley angled himself closer, shoulder brushing Aziraphale’s, a point of contact like a lifeline. He let his hand rest against the booth seat just behind him, close enough that Aziraphale could lean back into it if he chose.

The desserts sat untouched, cooling in their sauce. The coffee Crowley had ordered was stone cold. None of it mattered. What mattered was the way Aziraphale’s chin lifted a fraction higher each time Gabriel opened his smug mouth.

He’d wanted to tear them all to pieces, but this—this was better. Helping Aziraphale hold the line. Watching him step, however shakily, into his own defence.

And when Gabriel finally, with the air of a man slamming down a gavel, declared, “You’ll regret this, Azzy,” Crowley couldn’t resist.

He laughed. Long, low, dangerous. “Not half as much as you’ll regret underestimating him.”

The silence that followed was different this time. Not stunned—defeated.

Crowley leaned back, arm stretched along the booth behind Aziraphale, and smiled like a man who’d already won.

Crowley could feel the way the candle flame guttered without a draft, in the microscopic unclench of Aziraphale’s jaw beside him. He’d bought them half a breath. Good. He needed it for what came next.

Gabriel broke first, of course. He always did, because men who mistake momentum for strength can’t stand a pause.

“You’ll regret this, Azzy,” he said again, swagger returning like a bad smell. “You always do when you act out. You make a scene, then you come to your senses. That’s the pattern. You don’t change.”

There it was—the script, recited like liturgy. Crowley felt the old heat rise, that specific, surgical rage reserved for people who dress cruelty as common sense. He let it sit in his chest, hot and steady, and turned his head just enough to look at Aziraphale.

“Do you?” he asked, soft enough that only Aziraphale could hear. “Regret this?”

Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to him. In them: the whole damned evening, and all the years behind it. The fight to keep his voice level. The dignity held like a glass filled to the brim. The little lift of his chin each time Gabriel swung for him. He swallowed, once.

“No,” he said. Not loud. True. Turning to Gabriel he straightend. "It's Aziraphale."

Crowley felt something in his spine align. He set his elbow along the top of the booth behind Aziraphale’s shoulders—close enough to be a shelter, not a trap—and shifted his gaze to the far side of the table. Crowley decided that these people did not deserve their son. They did not deserve anything they clearly couldn’t value. The Fells were not even close to being aware how wonderful their son was… well that wasn’t true, they clearly thought the world of one of them… but the wrong one. Uriel Fell’s pearls caught the candlelight; Sandalphon’s mouth had set into its preferred line of disappointed authority; Gabriel lounged with his custard like a judge awaiting a confession.

“Right,” Crowley said, and smiled without warmth. “Then here’s mine.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He let each word land with the weight of a spade going into earth.

“You’re looking at your son’s future son-in-law,” he told Uriel and Sandalphon, and then, turning the blade with a flick, “your brother’s future brother-in-law,” he added for Gabriel. “Might take time. Might take stubbornness. We’ve both got plenty. But that’s where this is going.”

Uriel’s knife clinked against her plate. “How dare—”

“Save it,” Crowley said, almost bored. “You’ve been daring all night.”

Sandalphon bristled. “Young man, you are in our presence. You will conduct yourself—”

“As if you’ve conducted yourselves well?” Crowley’s grin sharpened. “Fascinating theory.”

Gabriel laughed, loud and false. “Marry Azzy? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Don’t call him that,” Crowley said, pleasantly, the way one might remark on the weather. And then, before any of them could find the next angle of attack, he turned to Aziraphale.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t make a spectacle of it. He simply leaned in, the shortest distance, and kissed him.

Not a claim staked with teeth. Not a dare. A clear, unambiguous fact placed on the table alongside the cut glass and the cooling desserts: this is mine, and I am his, and you can speak around it if you like, but you will not pretend you don’t see it.

Aziraphale startled—that little catch of breath that always undid Crowley—and then, as if his body remembered ahead of his mind, he leaned a fraction closer and kissed back. The barest pressure. Enough to be answer rather than apology.

When Crowley sat back, the room had that underwater hush again. Aziraphale’s colour was high. His hands—damn him—were steady.

Uriel found her voice first. She did not raise it; she didn’t need to. She poured scorn like tea. “You will not behave like that at table.”

“We already have,” Crowley said, smiling. “Turned out fine.”

Sandalphon adjusted his glasses; he had the air of a magistrate preparing a sermon. “As we’ve said… Aziraphale has never been suited to… domesticity. He’s easily swayed. Impressionable. He needs firm guidance.”

“From people who don’t know him,” Crowley said, “and never did.”

Gabriel snapped, “What do you know of him?” and Crowley thought, more than you allowed yourselves to find out, but he didn’t say it. He’d said enough, and there are blows that land better when you save them.

Beside him, Aziraphale’s breath went out in a quiet, controlled line. He set his coffee cup down and folded his napkin very neatly beside it.

“I am going to leave now,” he said. “With my boyfriend. You may send your objections to the shop by post; we shall file them accordingly.”

Gabriel half-rose, spluttering something about family, loyalty, respect. Sandalphon began a sentence with “In this house—” Uriel said “Aziraphale,” in the tone that had kept him small since childhood.

“Don’t,” Crowley said, very gently, and the three of them jostled to a startled stop, not because the word itself had force, but because he had the look of a man who could turn the table over and walk them through the wreckage smiling.

Aziraphale stood. Crowley didn’t touch him.

He let Aziraphale step out first. Let him make the shape of leaving. Then he stood, stretched like a cat, and gave the family the kind of smile people remember in nightmares.

“Do try the chocolate,” he said to Uriel, nodding at her untouched gateau. “It’ll sweeten your disposition, if anything can. Sandalphon, coffee’s over extracted; you’d like a darker roast. Gabriel—custard suits you. Soft and self-satisfied.”

“Get. Out,” Gabriel said, half-choked.

“Already doing so.” Crowley reached into his inside pocket, drew out a pen, and wrote a number on the back of a napkin. He slid it across the linen to Uriel. “Muriel. They/them. North. If any of you find a scrap of your better selves and decide to learn how not to break people you claim to love, ring them. They can recommend a therapist. They’ll even go easy on you because they’re kinder than I am.”

Uriel stared at the ink as if it were a curse. Sandalphon looked like a man deciding whether to throw a glass. Gabriel looked as if he’d swallow the napkin just to spite him.

“Enjoy dessert,” Crowley said, and turned his back on them.

He didn’t expect the small, fierce thrill that ran through him at doing so—at presenting his unprotected spine to their knives and knowing none of them would actually throw. It wasn’t bravado; it was proof. Their power evaporated the moment he refused to pretend it was weather.

The corridor out of the private dining room felt longer than it had going in. Carpet that tried to trip, walls that listened. He kept his stride loose. He kept his hands empty. He kept his tone—when he finally spoke to Aziraphale again at the doorway—exactly as careful as he had kept himself from flipping the table.

“You alright?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked tonight. It felt like the only question that mattered.

Aziraphale’s mouth opened. For an instant nothing came. Then: “Yes,” he said. He seemed to taste the word, test it for brittleness. “No. Not entirely. But more so than I ought to be.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “Terrible.”

The door gave way onto a slice of night that smelled like rain held off by good manners. Grass damp with evening mist, the old manor’s windows spilling soft, amber light across the grounds, and the weathered brass nameplate on the door stretching their reflections into wavering shapes. Crowley didn’t reach for Aziraphale’s hand. He let proximity do the work: shoulder, coat sleeve, the shared exhale of people who had not drowned.

“They will never forgive you,” Aziraphale said, looking not at him but at the street beyond the glass, as if reading a future there.

“I’m not applying,” Crowley said. “I’ve got the only reference I need.” He tipped his chin toward Aziraphale, a question folded into the gesture. Do I?

Aziraphale, to his everlasting credit, saw it. “You do,” he said. Faint, but firm. Then, with that disconcerting honesty of his: “But you ought to know—I haven’t ever… No one’s ever… spoken for me like that. It is rather like being handed a coat you didn’t know would fit, and then discovering that it does, and being frightened by how much you like the warmth.”

Crowley’s laugh came out wrecked and fond. “Aziraphale,” he said, once, allowed once, in a voice he kept for sacraments. “You get as many coats as you like.”

Aziraphale huffed, and the huff was almost a laugh, and it felt like sunlight under a door.

Outside properly now, the night took them. The building’s windows threw them back at themselves: a man in dove-grey, chin lifted by degrees; another in black, sunglasses finally tucked away, eyes hot enough to melt the lacquer off polite streets. Traffic hummed a muted accompaniment. Someone laughed two streets over. The world, audaciously, went on.

“Cake,” Aziraphale said, with the deliberation of a general choosing terrain. “You promised cake.”

“I did,” Crowley said. “And I keep my promises.” He angled his body so Aziraphale could choose: towards the car or a walk. Aziraphale glanced at the Bentley on the access road, at Crowley. He decided this meant comfort; tonight had used him up and the leather would hold him together.

Crowley opened the passenger door. Aziraphale settled with the care of a man sitting down after battle and discovering the wounds he’d ignored in the fighting. Crowley closed the door, let the physicality of it—the slam, the click—ground the wildness in his chest.

Behind the wheel, he didn’t start the engine yet. He watched Aziraphale in the dashboard’s soft spill: the way he rolled his shoulders and then stilled them, the way he touched his mouth as if to check the kiss hadn’t been a hallucination conjured by stress, the way his eyes went distant and then back, like a tide testing the shore.

“Tell me what you need,” Crowley said, and the anger in him—the clean, righteous sort, the kind that makes a man want to tear down temples—bent like a reed to make room for gentleness.

Aziraphale blinked. Once. Twice. “I need,” he said, and looked surprised to hear himself answer, “not to be argued with for one hour.”

“Done,” Crowley said. “Consider me a very tall piece of furniture that carries you to cake.”

That earned the ghost of a smile. “And I need you to know that I do not disagree with you.”

“About the coat? Or the marriage? Or the fact that your family’s… difficult.”

“All of it,” Aziraphale said, and the effort it cost him to say the word family like a neutral noun, not a gravitational force, pressed into Crowley’s ribs like a hand. “I am not ready for… the ceremony you implied. But I did not dislike hearing it. It is hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to,” Crowley said. “Not tonight.”

A beat. “Thank you.”

He started the engine, let the Bentley purr like a tiger stretched from paw to paw, and pulled away. They drove without music. When they got back to the city London did its late-evening shuffle around them: cabs, buses, the occasional idiot who thought a horn could move the air faster than wheels. Crowley didn’t look at Aziraphale often; when he did, he saw the colour come down from his cheeks and settle in, not blush now but blood, the ordinary miracle of a man coming back into himself.

At a red light, Aziraphale said, abruptly, “I should like to meet Muriel. Properly. When it’s… less like a test.” He sounded wary and hopeful at once, which for him was courage.

Crowley let his lips tilt. “They’ll adore you,” he said. “They’ll try not to, because they’re fair, but they’ll fail. Prepare to be fussed over about your waistcoats by someone with zero fashion sense and infinite opinions.”

“Fussed over by someone who will not weaponize the fussing,” Aziraphale murmured. “I can bear that.”

The light went green. Crowley drove. Cake, then. Or—if the cake shops had closed their blinds against the world already—something sweet smuggled out of a late café by virtue of charm and a scientist’s stubbornness.

He circled the block once, let Aziraphale see familiar streets reassert their proportions. When he pulled up outside a small patisserie that kept indecent hours and better standards, Aziraphale made a small, exquisite sound at the sight of lemon tarts in the window. It wasn’t greed; it was relief disguised as appetite.

“Stay,” Crowley said. “I’ll raid.”

“I can—”

“You can,” Crowley agreed. “And tonight you don’t have to.”

He was quick. Two lemon tarts, one slice of chocolate cake crowned with a curl of impossibly thin peel, an unnecessary but morally correct slab of almond frangipane, a paper bag that smelled like butter and a good decision. When he slid back into the car, he pretended not to notice the way Aziraphale’s shoulders had eased another notch.

They ate with the windows cracked and the city’s late air seeping in. Aziraphale took the first bite with diffidence, then with something like gratitude. He closed his eyes. “Oh,” he said, reverent. “Yes. That is… quite restorative.”

“Medicine,” Crowley said, mouth full. “Doctor’s orders.”

They didn’t talk much. When they did, it was in the language of people who have fought something together and are careful not to start another battle by accident. Aziraphale said, once, “I am still a little frightened,” and Crowley answered, “Me too,” and neither of them apologised for it. Aziraphale said, “I kept thinking you would be angry with me for not… saying more,” and Crowley said, “I’m furious at them. Not at you,” and watched a line go out of Aziraphale’s brow like a wrinkle smoothed from paper.

When the boxes were empty and the spoons licked ethical, Crowley set the trash in the footwell and leaned back, head against the rest. He let his eyes close for a moment. He felt, more than saw, Aziraphale do the same.

“You know,” Crowley said, a minute later, voice gone hoarse with something that wasn’t exhaustion, “I meant it.”

Aziraphale turned his head. “Which part?”

“All of it.” He opened his eyes. The city put points of light into Aziraphale’s pupils like stars dropped in a bowl. “I said it to get under their skin. But I said it because it’s true.”

Aziraphale’s breath hitched. Then he nodded, once. “I know.”

“Good,” Crowley said lightly, because if he didn’t lace the moment with humour it would crack under the weight of sincerity. “Hate repeating myself.”

Aziraphale smiled. The small, real one. He reached, finally, and set his hand over Crowley’s where it lay on the gearshift. Not possessive. Not even declarative. Just contact, warm and ordinary and astonishing.

“Take me home,” he said. “If you would.”

“Always,” Crowley said.

He drove. He didn’t put the radio on. He didn’t need to. The night had softened, or perhaps they had. When he pulled up on Whickber Street and cut the engine, the quiet between them was the good kind.

On the pavement, Aziraphale stood in the open door for a moment, as if testing gravity. He turned. Crowley watched his throat work, the indecision there—then resolve, clean and simple. Aziraphale stepped in, cupped Crowley’s jaw with both hands, and kissed him again.

No audience, no defiance, no lesson in it for anyone. Just the taste of lemon and chocolate and a decision made.

When they parted, Aziraphale’s eyes were bright. “Thank you,” he said.

“For cake?” Crowley said, because he was a coward right up until he wasn’t.

“For the whole evening,” Aziraphale said. “For the coat.”

Crowley swallowed around the lump that sentence lodged behind his ribs. “Keep it,” he said. “Looks better on you, anyway.”

Aziraphale laughed—a real one, with breath and release—and stepped back. “Good night, Crowley.”

“Night,” Crowley said, and waited until the door of the shop had closed and the upstairs light came on and the shadow moved across it, and only then did he let his head fall back against the seat and the exhale escape.

He’d wanted to tear them all to pieces. Instead he’d got him out, fed him sweetness, and brought him home. A better night’s work than fire.

Tomorrow would bring texts—Gabriel’s fury, Uriel’s ice, Sandalphon’s lectures, the whole bloody chorus. He’d be ready. He would be there for Aziraphale. He knew it in his bones.

He started the Bentley, let the engine purr like a satisfied animal, and pulled away into the kind of night that felt, for once, more promise than threat.

Chapter Text

The morning after felt like a storm that had changed its mind halfway through.

Not the clean, operatic sort of storm he secretly liked—the kind that arrived with thunder and lighting and a sense of occasion, shook the windows, drenched the street in five brilliant minutes and then cleared off, leaving sharp-edged sunlight and air that tasted scrubbed. No, this was the other kind. The slow, stubborn downpour that decided the city was a project. The kind that seeped into plaster and under floorboards, that didn’t so much end as thin out until one realised the damp had settled into one’s bones.

Aziraphale sat at his desk in the bookshop and tried, for the third time, to make a column of numbers line up.

The ledger lay open in front of him like a witness. Neat lines of ink, ruled columns, dates marching in an orderly fashion—everything he usually liked. Usually, he found comfort there. Numbers behaved, if one treated them correctly. They might not always say what one wanted, but they did not lie, they did not shift the terms of the argument halfway through, they did not tell you you were oversensitive when you pointed out that something hurt.

Today, the numbers would not hold still.

He blinked and refocused, pen poised. Income, outgoings, a little note about the new Blake he’d managed at auction—well under what he’d expected, actually, thanks to an inattentive rival bidder and a sympathetic auctioneer. That should have been satisfying. It had been, yesterday afternoon. Before.

He dragged his mind back. The ink on the page seemed to smear as he looked at it, though his hand hadn’t moved. The neat “£” in the margin blurred into a curl that reminded him unhelpfully of Gabriel’s grin.

His chest tightened. Oh. He’d gone back there again, hadn’t he.

Breathe, he told himself. In for four, hold for four, out for six. Crowley had said at some point that it had helped Muriel, and they had gotten to know it as box breathing. Crowley had added “oxygen, angel, it’s fashionable, trust me.” He placed the nib of his pen very carefully on the blotter and counted.

One-two-three-four.
Hold.
One-two-three-four.
Out. One-two-three-four-five-six.

It helped, a little. It anchored him enough that the room came back into focus: the leaning stacks of unsorted stock by the door; the tick of the clock over the fireplace; the faint, comforting smell of paper and dust and the ghost of yesterday’s tea. The street beyond the windows hummed distant and low. The shop was closed for the morning—he’d decided that last night, in the car, in a voice that felt too loud in his own ears and yet somehow not loud at all. Crowley had nodded without argument. Of course, angel. You don’t owe them an open sign tomorrow.

His brain, which did not appreciate quiet, used the absence of customers as empty air to fill with replay.

He tried again to read the column of figures.

£18.50, a sale to the young woman from Tuesday. £42.00, the little batch of paperbacks that had finally gone. £—the dinner.

His mind inserted it like a misfiled entry, a bolded line that had no business in the ledger. Dinner with the Fells. His hand tightened on the pen.

You’re doing it again, he told himself, mildly exasperated. He had lived forty years with this brain; he knew its habits. Obsessive loops. Intrusive replays. An admirable attention to detail when applied to seventeenth-century sermons, and a nightmare when turned inward.

He could, if he wished, re-walk last night beat for beat. That was the trouble. His mind stored social humiliation with the fidelity some people reserved for favourite songs.

He saw the Bentley first; that had been a bright moment. The way Crowley had polished it until it gleamed, the extravagantly unnecessary shine that had made Aziraphale’s chest do a complicated little twist of fondness and anxiety. All that effort. For my family.

For me.

“She’s beautiful,” he had said, because she was, and because it was the honest thought that came to mind, and because he’d learnt over the last year that Crowley could tell when he was holding something in and that it cost them both.

The way Crowley had lit up at that—oh, that he liked remembering. That was safe. The little pleased preen, the straightening of his shoulders. As though Aziraphale had passed some test by appreciating polish and steel.

The ride to Fell House had been quiet, but it had been their kind of quiet. The comfortable hum of the engine, the low growl of the road, Crowley’s hand occasionally tapping an absent rhythm on his thigh. Their conversation had come in little fragments, statistically unlikely half-jokes that were, between them, vows. Exit plans. Code phrases. We can leave at any time. You do not have to stay to be polite. If you squeeze my wrist twice, we’re gone. I’ll be there. No matter what.

He believed that. That was the miracle, really. That he believed it.

He’d believed it all the way up the path. And then Gabriel had opened the door and said, “Azzy,” in that horrible delighted way, and the belief had been knocked sideways by the weight of forty years.

Aziraphale shut the ledger.

Not aggressively. He couldn’t do aggression even to inanimate objects without feeling guilty. But with quiet finality, the way one closed a book that had refused to stay in the correct chapter.

He took his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose lightly, then put them back on. The shop swam back into clarity. Unfortunately, so did last night.

It wasn’t any one thing. That would have been easier. One could brace against a single blow. It was the accumulation. Mother’s “you’re late” when they weren’t; Father’s “shoes off, if you please” addressed to Crowley like a delivery boy; Gabriel’s endless commentary—all of it wearing on him like water on stone.

He could still feel the moment when Crowley had called himself the boyfriend. Said it out loud, at the threshold, under his father’s frown and his mother’s pearls and Gabriel’s smirk. Aziraphale had felt the word like a hand on his back and a hand on his throat at once. Relief and terror.

Boyfriend. Said in front of them. Said like a fact.

His heart had done an extraordinary thing in that moment, a sort of sideways leap. It did a small echo of it now, even in the safety of his own shop. His fingers twitched; he curled them under on the desk to stop the impulse to flap them.

Too obvious. Someone might see.

He glanced around automatically and then remembered: he was alone. The shop had that morning sort of hush it got before he turned the sign, a held-breath feeling. No Fell parents. No Gabriel. No one to tut and say really, Aziraphale. Sit still.

He lifted his hands and shook them out, small and quick, under the desk where he couldn’t see them but he could feel the relief in his fingers. His nerves settled by a degree. Right. Better.

He wished, briefly, that he could move his whole self that way. Shake last night out of his joints, flutter it away from the corners of his mind. But the human brain, he’d found, was mostly a very stubborn filing cabinet. Once something was in, it didn’t like to come out.

His gaze drifted up, away from the ledger, to the familiar geography of his desk: the neat stacks of correspondence, the inkwell, the brass paperweight in the shape of a tiny cherub. The routines of his morning. The familiar objects were supposed to ground him.

Today, they were little islands in a sea of what if.

What if Crowley regretted it?
What if he’d only said all that—future husband, future son-in-law—to get under Gabriel’s skin?
What if Aziraphale’s quiet acquiescence, his lack of dramatic declaration, had looked like hesitation? Like shame?

His stomach clenched. He pressed a hand against it through his waistcoat and told himself sternly this was catastrophising, which was all very well as diagnoses went and did absolutely nothing to make it stop.

He had never, in his life, been good at these things. At any of it. His brain did not appear to have come with the same social manual other people had received. They’d all been handed scripts, somewhere along the way—how to glance and glide and shrug, how to tease without drawing blood, how to ignore the small cuts when they came. Aziraphale had been missed on distribution day. All he’d got was a series of rules: don’t make a fuss. Don’t be rude. Don’t be strange. Don’t talk too much about books. Don’t.

It made last night—that kiss, those words—feel like someone had not only thrown away the script, but set fire to the stage.

He had not kissed Crowley back at once. That was what his brain circled now, like a crow with something shiny. He remembered the warmth of Crowley’s mouth, the shock of it in that room—the clink of cutlery stilling, the weight of his parents’ stare, Gabriel’s outrage, all of it like static—and his own body freezing. Not because he hadn’t wanted it. He had wanted it so badly he could feel the wanting now, hours later, like an ache in his sternum.

But a lifetime of don’t had slammed into him like a wall.

It had taken a beat, maybe two. Long enough, in his mind, to count as failure. Long enough that he could now replay it on loop: the half-second where he didn’t move, didn’t respond, didn’t prove.

And then he had moved, because of course he had, because Crowley was there and real and warm and had just declared himself his future husband in front of his family and what else could one possibly do but lean in. He’d kissed him back, a small press of lips that had felt like choosing.

But the part his mind kept queuing up, like a cruel little cinema, was the pause. The delay. The proof, his old, internalised jury whispered, that you are slow, that you are wrong, that you never react properly, that Crowley will notice one day and decide you are too much trouble to love.

“Stop it,” he told himself, out loud.

His voice sounded thin in the quiet shop. The clock ticked on, unimpressed.

He reached for his tea, discovered he did not in fact have tea, and closed his hand on empty air. Oh. Right. He hadn’t made any yet. That was unusual. Ordinary mornings, the kettle went on almost before he brushed his teeth. Routine first, cognition second. It was one of the ways he made this whole life work. Today he’d come down, looked at the kettle, and decided the ledger was more urgent.

Which it wasn’t. The shop would not collapse if he did the accounts tomorrow instead of today. But his threat-detection system had been set to high for so long it couldn’t tell the difference anymore between overdue invoices and mortal peril.

Make the tea, he told himself. Small things first.

He stood up too fast; his vision went sparkly for a second. He put a hand on the desk until the world steadied, then made his way to the little back room like an old man. The shop creaked around him, familiar and companionable. His steps echoed on the wooden floor.

The kettle sat on its trivet, patient and faintly accusatory. He filled it and set it on to boil, the comfortable click-whirr of it filling the quiet. There. Task. Action. Something he knew how to do.

As he waited, his mind—unhelpful, persistent thing that it was—put on another scene for his consideration.

“You’ll regret this, Azzy.”

Gabriel’s voice, smug and sharp. Always with the certainty. As if he were reading from a script that had never once been wrong.

Except—except—last night, for the first time in years, Aziraphale had heard the words and not automatically believed them. He’d flinched, yes, the way one flinched from a long-practised blow, but under the reflex had been something else. Something like: perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I already don’t.

And then Crowley’s voice, that reckless drawl edged with steel: “Not half as much as you’ll regret underestimating him.”

He hadn’t known what to do with that. With being defended. Not in principle, not in the abstract, but personally, specifically, by name. You. Him. This man.

It had felt like someone stepping physically between him and the blow. Like the opposite of the thing his family always did to him—pushing him forward to take the hit in the name of keeping peace. He’d wanted to say thank you and stop and careful and don’t and more, all at once. His mouth had done nothing of the sort; it had sat there, decorously closed, while his brain melted.

The kettle clicked off. He startled.

God, he was jumpy today. The anxiety had settled into his muscles; every small noise translated as alert. He poured water into the teapot with great care, watching the leaves swirl, the steam rise. The smell curled up to meet him, familiar and steady: Earl Grey, the good kind, the one he treated as medicine, not luxury.

He set the lid on the pot and covered it with its knitted cosy—lemon-yellow, courtesy of Maggie next door, who’d pressed it into his hands with a bossy, “Your teapot’s freezing. This is unacceptable.” Then he stood for a moment, fingers resting on the rounded top, and let himself enjoy the small weight of doing something right.

Breathe. Count. Catalogue.

He was safe. The shop door was locked. The windows were clean—he’d done them yesterday morning, before… well. Before. The stock was in mild disarray, but only the usual sort. No fires, literal or metaphorical. The worst thing in his immediate vicinity was the possibility of slightly oversteeped tea.

He picked up the pot, brought it back through to the front room, and set it on the little trivet by his desk. The ledger glared at him. He ignored it in favour of cups.

There was, perhaps, a slight excess of cups for one man in one small bookshop. People tended to give him them. They seemed to have decided, collectively, that he was the sort of person who ought to have shelves of charmingly mismatched china. He didn’t mind. It meant he could arrange them in ways that pleased him: by handle shape, or by height, or by colour gradient when he was particularly in need of soothing.

He chose his favourite without looking: white porcelain, a thin gold rim, a tiny chip on the saucer that made it imperfect and therefore liveable. Today, the familiarity of its weight in his hand was almost as calming as the tea.

He poured, blew on the surface, and took a careful sip.

The heat landed in his mouth, on his tongue, all the way down his throat to his chest. Grounding. His shoulders dropped by a millimetre. He put the cup down and realised his hands were shaking.

He watched the faint shimmer of tea, disturbed by the tremor. For a moment, the urge to berate himself rose sharp and automatic. Honestly, get a hold. It wasn’t that bad. Other people had worse. You didn’t even—

He closed his eyes. When he used that voice on himself, Crowley always objected. You wouldn’t talk to anyone else like that. Why must you be cruel to yourself?

It was still astoundingly difficult to extend the same courtesy inward.

He opened his eyes; the shake in his hands had not, unfortunately, vanished through sheer self-awareness. He curled his fingers into fists in his lap, let them tremble there where the movement wasn’t directly attached to something breakable.

If Crowley walked in now, he thought, he would put the kettle on again anyway. He always did. As though tea made by Aziraphale alone was… insufficient. No, that wasn’t fair. As though the act of making it together was the important thing.

The thought made his chest ache.

He missed him.

It had been—what, twelve hours? Perhaps fourteen. They’d left Fell House in a shambles, Gabriel in a huff, his mother tight-lipped, his father puce. There had been cake (good cake, really, once his stomach had unclenched enough to taste it), and the quiet car ride, and that last kiss on the pavement outside the shop, soft and deliberate and no audience at all. He had gone to bed with the taste of sugar and Crowley and terror and relief mingled on his tongue.

He had not slept. Not really. He’d dozed, perhaps, in fits. Each time he slipped under, his brain dragged him back with some new highlight: his father saying fragile, his mother sighing too sensitive, Gabriel’s constant commentary, Crowley saying future husband. His heart galloped. His thoughts scattered like startled birds. He’d watched the numbers on his alarm clock change. Four-seventeen. Four thirty-two. Five-oh-three.

Now it was—he checked the clock—a little after half past nine. The day ahead of him stood like an unwritten page. He had intended to fill it with useful tasks: accounts, a bit of sorting, perhaps a diary entry about last night — that it had occurred and how.

Instead he was sitting at his desk, drinking tea and thinking about how one single delayed kiss could become, in his mind, proof that he was fundamentally defective.

“Stop that,” he told himself again, more firmly.

He groped mentally for something Crowley had said, in the car, when he’d tried to explain. I did not dislike hearing it. It is hard to explain. Crowley had said, “You don’t have to. Not tonight.”

Well. It was morning now. The whole thing stood like a question mark in his mind.

He could, if he were braver, call him. Or text. Or—what did people do these days? Send an emoji. That thought made him grimace. He’d only got as far as mastering full stops in messages; leaping straight to hieroglyphics seemed ambitious.

He imagined it. Crowley’s phone buzzing on some bench at Kew. Crowley glancing down and seeing a message from him: Thank you for last night. I’m sorry I didn’t immediately—

No. No, that was absurd. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Had he? His brain, unhelpfully, produced a list of everything he could have done better: spoken up more, defended himself rather than only Crowley, announced, while he was at it, that he did indeed plan to marry the man, perhaps with a flourish and a toast.

The thought of actually doing any of that made him feel faint.

Crowley hadn’t said he was disappointed. He’d been terribly gentle, in fact. Offered him cake and quiet and the promise of the option not to talk. But Crowley was not immune to frustration. Aziraphale had seen it, sharp and hot when turned on the Fells last night.

What if some of that had been for him? For his silence. For his lack of, well. Heroics.

He took another sip of tea, more for something to do than for the taste. The familiar bergamot sat on his tongue. He swallowed carefully, stared at the opposite wall, and listened to his pulse thud in his ears.

His phone—cheap, outdated, bought under duress after Gabriel had said, “You can’t not have one, Azzy, what if we could not reach you?”—sat face down beside the ledger. He flipped it over and pressed the little button.

No messages. No missed calls.

Of course not. It was barely half ten. Crowley had a job. A proper one, according to everyone at that dinner table except Aziraphale. He would be busy coaxing some rare fern into compliance, or arguing passionately with Anathema Device about the ethical implications of moving a shrub half a metre.

He would call later, Aziraphale thought. Or come by. Or both. That was their pattern. There was no reason to assume otherwise. Zero evidence. Plenty of evidence to the contrary. One slightly delayed kiss did not—

The bell above the door jangled.

He jumped so hard the tea in his cup sloshed onto the saucer.

For a split second, his mind supplied Fell House. Gabriel. Mother. The bell here did not sound like the one at the restaurant, but his anxiety did not particularly care about such details.

He dragged in a breath, forced his shoulders not to curl, and turned towards the door.

“Sorry, we’re—” he began, reaching automatically for the polite closed speech, the one he’d practised so he wouldn’t stumble over it when surprised.

The rest of the words evaporated.

Crowley stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame as though he’d just leaned in from another world. Sunglasses on despite the grey light outside, coat collar turned up, hair doing that artfully careless thing Aziraphale had privately decided must take at least ten minutes in front of a mirror. In his other hand, balanced with casual care, a paper bag.

Aziraphale’s first thought, sincerely and absurdly, was: oh.

His second was relief so sharp it felt almost like pain. Something in his chest loosened; something behind his eyes prickled.

Crowley pushed the door closed with a hip, the bell giving one last polite chime. He lifted the bag a fraction.

“Brought breakfast,” he said, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Well. Lunch, technically.”

Aziraphale blinked at him. His brain, unhelpfully, offered three different responses at once: you didn’t have to, and I’m so glad you’re here, and do you regret—

“It’s only half past nine,” he said instead. He winced at himself internally. Of all the things.

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Your point being?”

Aziraphale laughed. It came out smaller than he meant it to, but it was real. The sound seemed to settle something in the air.

“I suppose,” he said, “that is an argument in favour of breakfast.”

“Exactly.” Crowley shut the door properly, turned the sign to CLOSED, and strode in like he owned the place. He didn’t—legally, at least—but Aziraphale’s anxious nerve endings unknotted a little more with each step he took into the room. Presence. Real. Here.

The storm in his head did not vanish. But it shifted, subtly, from something beating down on him to something he might possibly, with assistance, weather.

Crowley moved through the shop as if he belonged in it.

Not in the way Gabriel moved through rooms—occupying them, claiming their air by sheer volume—but with a kind of loose, unhurried certainty that said: I know where I am. I have been here before. I am not inspecting; I am arriving.

The difference was… startling.

Aziraphale’s shoulders, which had crept upward somewhere around the word breakfast, began, incrementally, to come down again.

Crowley crossed to the counter, set the paper bag on it with care, and tipped his head towards the teapot. “Right,” he said. “What disaster have you done to that, then?”

Aziraphale looked faintly wounded. “I have made tea.”

“Mm,” Crowley said. “So: understeeped because you panicked and poured too early, or oversteeped because you were thinking too hard about something else.”

“I do not panic,” Aziraphale objected, and then caught sight of the faint ring of darker brew around the inside of his cup. Ah. Yes. Oversteeped, then. He sighed. “The latter.”

Crowley’s mouth flickered. He did not say I told you so. He did not make a face. He simply shed his coat, draping it over the back of a chair in a gesture so familiar it tugged at Aziraphale’s heart, and rolled up his sleeves.

“Right,” he said again, softer. “Scooch.”

“Scooch?”

“Technical term,” Crowley informed him. He approached the desk, one hand hovering near Aziraphale’s shoulder as if checking for skittishness. Aziraphale obligingly pushed his chair back from the desk a few inches to give him room.

Crowley’s fingers brushed his sleeve, the barest touch. Not an anchor, not quite. An offer.

Aziraphale felt his throat tighten. He hadn’t realised, until that moment, how starved he’d been for gentle touch that wasn’t followed by correction.

“It’s perfectly drinkable,” he said, because his mind insisted on defending his tea-making skills even now. “You don’t need to—”

Crowley leaned over, sniffed the teapot, and made a thoughtful sound. “Drinkable, sure. I’m aiming for ‘not mildly punitive.’” He straightened, scooped up the pot in one long-fingered hand, and nodded towards the back room. “C’mon. We’ll make some that doesn’t hold grudges.”

“I already—”

“Angel.”

That one word, in that tone—the one Crowley reserved for when Aziraphale’s protest had more to do with reflex than preference—landed like a warm stone in his chest. Heavy, grounding.

He shut his mouth. Then, because he was trying, he added, “Thank you.”

Crowley’s grin flashed, quick and pleased, and vanished again into his usual smirk. “There. Look at us. Communication before ten a.m. Anathema would be insufferably proud.”

“She is insufferably proud as it is,” Aziraphale said, following him into the back room. The familiar narrow space, with its overburdened bookshelf and little table under the window, seemed to rearrange itself minutely around Crowley’s presence. He filled rooms in a way that didn’t steal space, only… stretched it.

“True,” Crowley conceded. He flicked on the kettle with a practiced gesture, emptied the over-brewed pot into the sink, and rinsed it in a swirl of hot water. “She did say, last time I whinged about some Board member, that it was nice to see me ‘using my words’ instead of sulking in the fern house.”

Aziraphale huffed despite himself. “I cannot imagine you sulking in the fern house.”

“That’s because you’ve only known me post-Muriel,” Crowley said. “Pre-Muriel Crowley was all limbs and rage and silence. Horrible creature.” He set the pot upside-down to drain for a moment, then righted it and reached for the tea caddy. “You’d have hated him.”

“I very much doubt that,” Aziraphale said, before his internal censor could catch up. The words hung in the air between them, embarrassingly sincere.

Crowley stilled for a fraction of a second. Then he went on measuring tea with the same unhurried precision, as if nothing exceptional had been said, his voice very offhand. “Yeah. Well. You got the deluxe edition. Comes with coping mechanisms installed as standard.”

Aziraphale watched his hands. Crowley was always careful with his hands, he’d noticed. Even when he pretended to be careless. The spoon moved through the tea leaves with the kind of economy Aziraphale himself used on fragile paper. No wasted movement. No banging about.

“You’re deflecting,” Aziraphale said mildly.

“Absolutely,” Crowley agreed. “Tea first.”

It was becoming a refrain, that phrase. Tea first. It had crept into their lives slowly, until it felt like an axiom. They’d even written it down last night, on the card now tucked into the inside pocket of Aziraphale’s waistcoat: TEA BEFORE HARD TALKS.

It had seemed almost comical as they wrote it. Rule number one, scribbled in Crowley’s messy capitals. Now, standing in the doorway watching Crowley put it into practice, Aziraphale felt something in his chest unknot.

Tea first. We do not dive straight into the deep end while your hands still shake.

The kettle began to murmur. Crowley did not, as Uriel liked to do, walk away and trust his memory. He stood right there, hand on the handle, watching the steam.

His brain, Aziraphale thought, took in hundreds of things at once. He’d seen it. The way Crowley noticed the slightest droop of a leaf, the faintest discolouration of a petal. The way he remembered the name of every volunteer at Kew, from the retirees to the stroppy teenagers with artfully torn jeans.

He also, Aziraphale knew, noticed every twitch Aziraphale made.

That used to terrify him. Being seen so closely. Now… now, on mornings like this, when his edges felt frayed and his thoughts wouldn’t hold still, it felt like a relief. Someone else’s brain running lookout.

“It really is drinkable,” he said again, out of habit more than conviction.

“I know.” Crowley didn’t turn. “We’re making better. You are allowed better on the morning after your family behave like the villains in a BBC drama.”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitched. “Villains is perhaps a touch strong.”

Crowley glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow climbing over the rim of his glasses. “You say that now. If I’d filmed last night and played it back to you with the sound off, you’d recognise them as antagonists and you know it.”

He thought of his father’s frown, his mother’s tight mouth, Gabriel’s endless smirk. The way the waiter had glanced between them all, wary. He thought of Crowley’s voice, saying he’s not fragile, he’s stronger than you give him credit for.

“All right,” he said. “Perhaps mildly villainous.”

“Mildly,” Crowley echoed, the word laden with affectionate scorn. The kettle clicked. He poured water over the leaves, steam curling up like punctuation. “There we go. Step one.”

“Of?” Aziraphale asked, leaning on the doorframe. His body wanted to fuss—straighten a towel, re-order the spice jars on the shelf by the cooker, do something with his hands. He let them rest against the wood instead. One thing at a time.

“Of operation ‘you don’t have to hold the entire night in your chest alone’,” Crowley said. “Working title.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale swallowed. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“Eventually,” Crowley said, setting the pot aside to steep. “Right now, we’re standing in a small room watching water sit on leaves. Very meditative. Ten out of ten, would recommend.”

He leaned back against the counter, arms folded, and looked at Aziraphale properly for the first time.

Aziraphale, who had been avoiding Crowley’s eyes since he came in—skimming over sunglasses, focusing on hands, on coat, on everything else—found himself caught.

Crowley’s gaze was… careful. That was the only word for it. Not tiptoeing, not pitying, just—taking stock. The way he did with a plant he thought might be salvageable.

“How’s the breathing?” he asked.

Aziraphale blinked. “What?”

Crowley tilted his head slightly. “You doing that shallow thing.”

“I am not—” Aziraphale began, and then stopped, as it occurred to him that his lungs did in fact feel a bit tight. He took an experimental breath in, noting the catch. Ah. Drat. “I… may have been forgetting to breathe properly, yes.”

“Reckoned.” Crowley pushed off the counter and stepped toward him, slow. He reached up, paused with his hand hovering in the air. “Can I?”

Aziraphale nodded, throat too thick for words.

Crowley set his palm, broad and warm, flat against the centre of Aziraphale’s chest, over his waistcoat buttons. Not pressing, not patting. Just there. An external reminder of the internal apparatus.

“In,” Crowley said softly. “Four counts. With me.”

It was ridiculous that this helped as much as it did. He knew how to breathe. He’d been doing it, mostly unaided, for decades. But with Crowley’s hand a gentle weight against his ribs, with Crowley counting quietly—not quite out loud, lips shaping the numbers—his lungs remembered they had more capacity than his anxiety had allotted them.

He pulled air in. One-two-three-four. Held it. One-two-three-four. Let it out slowly, feeling Crowley’s hand rise and fall with his chest. Again. Again.

The roaring in his ears subsided, a little. The edges of the room sharpened again.

“Better,” Crowley said, after a minute, and took his hand away.

Aziraphale wanted to say no, wait, keep it there. He did not. Small mercies. One doesn’t cling in kitchens before ten in the morning when one is attempting to be a fully grown adult.

“Thank you,” he said instead. The phrase felt worn, lately, from overuse, but he couldn’t seem to stop needing it.

Crowley shrugged, a little lopsidedly. “Occupational hazard. You date me, you get Muriel’s entire anxiety first aid kit chucked at you by proxy.”

“I am not dating Muriel,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“Lucky for you,” Crowley said. “They’d have you on a sleep schedule inside of a fortnight. No late-night cataloguing. Proper meals. Daily check-ins. Horrific.”

“It sounds rather nice, actually,” Aziraphale said, surprising himself.

Crowley’s mouth softened. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

He moved back to the counter and poured out the tea. The colour was gentler this time, a rich amber instead of the heavy brown of oversteeped leaves. He handed a cup to Aziraphale, fingers brushing his again—another small, deliberate touch. Another reminder. Here.

Aziraphale took the cup carefully, focusing on the warmth against his palms. He inhaled. The steam curled up, scented with bergamot and something else he’d never been able to name, but which his brain categorised firmly as safe.

He took a sip. The taste slid over his tongue, sharp and clean and right.

“Better,” he echoed.

“See?” Crowley leaned his hip against the little table, his own cup cradled in both hands. He never put sugar in his tea—another small difference Aziraphale cherished—but he did sometimes squeeze the cup a bit too tight, the tension showing up in his knuckles. Today, his grip was loose. “Not everything is on fire.”

“Are you certain?” Aziraphale asked, before he could stop himself.

Crowley’s eyes flicked to his. “Which bit feels like it might be?”

That was the danger of Crowley: he asked questions like that and sounded as though he genuinely wanted the answer. Not to argue, not to fix, but to… know.

Aziraphale stared into his tea. The liquid trembled faintly with his hands. “I… don’t know. All of it. Last night. Today. The future. It all feels rather…”

He cast about for a word that didn’t sound melodramatic. Overwhelming, his brain supplied. Unsafe. Shaky. Like walking on a floorboards you’re not quite sure won’t give way.

“Large,” he settled on. “Unwieldy.”

Crowley made a thoughtful humming noise. “Alright,” he said. “Then we make it small.”

“How?”

“Dunno,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale nearly choked on his tea. “I’ll tell you when I’ve finished making up the rest of the plan.”

“You—you don’t have a plan?” Aziraphale asked, aghast.

“Of course I’ve got a plan,” Crowley said. “I’ve always got a plan. That was a joke. You’re allowed jokes even on mornings like this, you know.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said faintly. It was going to be one of those days where his parsing of tone lagged hopelessly behind the conversational flow. “Yes. Right.”

Crowley’s expression twitched, half amusement, half something gentler. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try this. You don’t have to think about the whole of last night right now. Or the future. Or your family, if you don’t want to. All you have to do, for the next… ten minutes, is drink that tea. Maybe eat something, if your stomach can manage. Then we pick the next ten minutes. Deal?”

It sounded absurdly simple. Childish, almost. As if he were being coaxed into his shoes for school.

It also sounded… doable.

“I couldn’t ask you to—”

“You’re not asking,” Crowley said. “I’m offering. I get very little in life out of herding plants around a greenhouse if I can’t also apply the principles elsewhere.”

Aziraphale frowned. “You’re comparing me to a fern.”

“Obviously not,” Crowley said. “You’re much needier.”

He spluttered. “I am not—I am—”

Crowley’s grin broke through, bright and wicked. “There he is,” he said quietly. “Knew you were under there somewhere.”

The spark of indignation chased away, for a moment, the fog. Aziraphale found himself straightening, bristling in the exactly the way Crowley seemed to find reassuring.

“I will have you know,” he said, “that I am extremely low-maintenance. I have entirely reasonable needs. Routine. Quiet. Proper tea. Adequate reading material. The occasional cake. That is hardly—”

“Occasional,” Crowley muttered into his cup, but he didn’t look displeased.

Aziraphale clamped his lips around the rest of the sentence. His brain, irrepressible, immediately supplied a list of ways in which he was indeed high-maintenance: his sensory quirks, his need to re-check plans obsessively, his inability to let go of a thought once it had lodged. The way he forgot to eat on days when his focus latched onto a project. The way he needed Crowley to stand in doorways and talk him through breathing.

“I am aware,” he said, more subdued, “that I am not… always easy.”

Crowley lowered his cup. “Who told you that?”

He didn’t say my family. He didn’t have to. The answer hung between them, obvious and unwelcome.

“It’s not entirely untrue,” he said instead. “I know I can be… difficult. My brain doesn’t…” He flapped a hand near his temple, the old, familiar shame curling under his ribs. “It doesn’t always… work the way other people’s do.”

Crowley watched him, head tilted. “Works fine,” he said. “Just not like theirs.”

“They seem to manage quite well,” Aziraphale said. Immediately, he regretted it. That had come out bitter, which he hated. Ungrateful. Childish.

Crowley’s mouth thinned. “Do they?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said automatically. “Gabriel has his business, and Mother runs half the charities in the county, and Father…” He trailed off. Father… existed. Frowned. Read the paper. Made pronouncements.

“And you,” Crowley said, “keep an entire shop from collapsing into chaos, know the exact place of every book on every shelf, can quote half of them from memory, and remember which old dear hates the smell of lavender so you don’t put the scented bookmarks on the counter when she’s due in. That seems like managing to me.”

“That’s just…” Aziraphale groped for a proper term. “That’s just getting on. Doing what one does.”

“Mhm,” Crowley said dryly. “What you do is run a small universe out of a building whose wiring I’m ninety per cent sure predates sliced bread. Credit where it’s due.”

The unexpectedness of it—the way Crowley reframed a thing he took for granted as something impressive—made Aziraphale’s throat close up.

His family never did that. They saw everything he did as the baseline: the minimum effort one was allowed to expend and still claim to be functioning. Anything less was failure; anything more was invisible.

He swallowed. The tea sat warm in his belly. “You… are very kind,” he said.

Crowley wrinkled his nose. “I’m honest,” he said. “If you were a mess, I’d tell you. At length. With diagrams. Possibly a PowerPoint.”

Aziraphale choked on a laugh. “You do not know how to make a PowerPoint.”

“I’d ask Anathema,” Crowley said. “She’d be delighted. She loves calling me an idiot in bullet points.”

“That I can believe,” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley’s eyes softened. “Anyway,” he said, more quietly. “I’m not here to argue you out of feeling like rubbish. You’re allowed to feel like rubbish. Last night was… a lot. I’m just here to remind you that your feelings about it are not an objective review of your worth.”

“That,” Aziraphale said slowly, “is a very complicated sentence for before ten in the morning.”

“Yeah, well,” Crowley said. “So are you.”

He pushed away from the table, cradling his cup in one hand, and nodded towards the doorway back to the shop. “Come on. If we stay in here too long, Anathema will sense weakness across the city and come personally to bully you into eating a scone.”

“I thought you said you brought breakfast,” Aziraphale said, following him.

“I did,” Crowley said. “Scones.” He shot a look over his shoulder. “You’ll like these ones. Proper butter. None of that margarine nonsense.”

Something in Aziraphale’s stomach fluttered. Hunger, perhaps. Or nerves. It was sometimes difficult to tell which was which; both lived in the same general vicinity and often arrived as a team.

“I’m not sure I’m hungry,” he said automatically.

“Of course you’re not,” Crowley said. “You’re anxious. Your stomach thinks the lion’s still in the room. You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to. But we’re going to unpack them and let your nose decide.”

Back in the front room, the light had shifted imperceptibly. Late-morning grey filtering through the windows, picking out dust motes in the air. The bookshop creaked softly as the building settled, an old, familiar sound Aziraphale normally found soothing. Today, his nerves translated every creak as footstep footsteps for a split second before his brain caught up.

Crowley set his tea down on the counter, opened the paper bag, and began to unpack its contents with a kind of ceremonial reverence.

Warmth hit Aziraphale first, followed by the smell: butter, flour, sugar, and something bright and citrusy underneath. The scones were still slightly warm, wrapped in brown paper. There were two small sandwiches as well, wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied, absurdly, with string.

“You’ve gone entirely overboard,” Aziraphale said, voice wobbling somewhere between reproach and awe.

“Absolutely,” Crowley agreed. “I went to that place on the corner of Seven Dials.”

“The one with the terrifyingly efficient woman at the till?” Aziraphale asked.

“That’s the one,” Crowley said. “She gave me a look when I ordered extra clotted cream, but I stood firm.”

“You are very brave,” Aziraphale said solemnly.

“Obviously,” Crowley said. “Also she likes me now because I helped her choose a plant last month that wouldn’t die in her east-facing flat. Anyway.” He produced a little plastic tub. “Jam.”

Aziraphale eyed the spread. His stomach did a cautious somersault. The thought of eating made him vaguely queasy; the smell of the scones made another part of him perk up.

“I don’t know if I can…” He trailed off, not wanting to sound ungrateful. He was always torn, in moments like this, between politeness and the odd reluctance his body had around food when he was wound too tight. It wasn’t that he didn’t like eating. He loved eating. Under the right circumstances. Familiar food, in familiar places, when he wasn’t being watched.

The thought of trying to chew and swallow with his nerves jangling made his throat feel tight again.

Crowley, annoyingly, seemed to read all of that just from the way he looked at the plate.

“You don’t have to,” he said, and his tone changed. The teasing dialled down; the steadiness came to the fore. “I’m going to eat one. You are invited to join me. That’s the whole requirement.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “You’re not going to say I’ll feel better if I eat?”

“I mean,” Crowley said, “you probably will, eventually, but your body doesn’t trust that message right now, so insisting on it would be pointless. Right now you’ll just feel like you’re failing at sandwich consumption, which is a stupid thing to fail at, so let’s not make it a test. You can just… see.”

Utterly infuriating, Aziraphale thought, that someone could put into words what he himself had never managed to articulate without sounding, he feared, ridiculous.

“Muriel,” he said.

“Muriel,” Crowley confirmed. “They once explained to me, at length, why telling someone ‘you’ll feel better if you eat’ is like telling someone drowning to just think positive thoughts about breathing. We’re not doing that.”

“That is an alarming metaphor,” Aziraphale said.

“Effective, though,” Crowley said. He tore a scone in half, steam sighing out of it, and slathered one half with cream and jam. “Look, see. I am demonstrating.”

He took a bite. Aziraphale watched him chew, swallow, lick a smear of jam from his thumb. It was indecently compelling, which was unfair of the universe. He was trying to be anxious.

“You can sit down, you know,” Crowley said around the last bite. “Hovering like a librarian about to confiscate my food is optional.”

“I am not hovering,” Aziraphale said, but he did pull his stool a little closer to the counter and sit. His knees brushed the wood. His hands folded themselves around his tea cup automatically.

Crowley finished his scone, dusted his fingers together, and reached for a sandwich. “Tuna,” he said. “And that posh cucumber and cream cheese nonsense you like.”

“You remembered,” Aziraphale said, startled.

“Of course I remembered,” Crowley said. “You’re the only person I know who can give a five-minute speech on the proper ratio of cucumber to bread.”

“It is important,” Aziraphale said, stung.

“I know,” Crowley said, and his voice had gone soft again, that edge of fondness tucked into his sarcasm. “Here.”

He unwrapped the cucumber sandwich and held it out. Not pushing it into Aziraphale’s hand. Just—offering.

Aziraphale hesitated. His brain provided a quick, irrelevant image of last night’s dessert plates: everyone else’s full, his empty, the way his mother had sighed, the way Gabriel had smirked about his “sweet tooth,” the way he’d said no to pudding as if it were a moral failing to want it.

He reached out and took the sandwich.

Crowley didn’t smile triumphantly. He simply nodded, as if Aziraphale had answered a question on a form correctly, and went about unwrapping his own.

“Small bites,” he said mildly. “We can do taxonomy of bread, if it helps.”

“Do not tease me about taxonomy,” Aziraphale said, but the corners of his mouth twitched. He took a small bite.

His stomach, after a suspicious moment, accepted it.

The bread was soft. The cream cheese cooled his mouth; the cucumber had that satisfying, delicate crunch that his brain filed under edible, yes, more. He chewed slowly, concentrating on texture, on flavour, on the fact that nothing terrible happened when he swallowed.

He took another bite.

Crowley pretended not to watch. That was one of the things Aziraphale appreciated most. Glaring attention always made his skin itch, made his throat lock up mid-swallow. Crowley had learnt, somehow, the art of the side-look: enough attention that Aziraphale felt seen, not so much that he felt spotlighted.

They ate like that for a few minutes. Chewing, sipping tea, listening to the building’s quiet breathing. The food sat in Aziraphale’s stomach like a tentative peace treaty.

He was halfway through his sandwich when he realised his hands had stopped shaking.

“Oh,” he said, around a mouthful.

Crowley arched a brow.

“It is helping,” Aziraphale said, swallowing carefully. “Apparently.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Turns out your body likes not running on fumes.” He took another sip of tea, then set his cup down and looked, pointedly, at the ledger on the desk. “You trying to do accounts earlier?”

Aziraphale grimaced. “I thought it would be… productive.”

“How’d that go?”

“Badly,” he admitted. “The numbers refused to line up.”

“Rude of them,” Crowley said. “Well. They can wait. Today’s agenda is ‘not collapsing.’”

“That isn’t very specific,” Aziraphale said, because specificity was one of the only ways he knew to feel safe.

Crowley nodded, as if he’d expected that. “Right. Sub-agenda. Ten-minute chunks. We’ve done breathing and tea and food. Next on the list: physical environment.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your shop’s a mess,” Crowley said, in exactly the same tone he might use for your lapel is crooked. “Not in the usual cosy way. In the ‘there’s a box sitting in the middle of the floor because you got interrupted halfway through and every time you see it your brain adds it to the doom pile’ way.”

Aziraphale bristled. “It is not—”

He stopped. Turned his head. Saw, as if for the first time, the box of new arrivals sitting askew near the travel section, the stack of unsorted pamphlets on the side table, the chair left out of place by the window. None of it was chaos. It was far from it. But it was… off. And yes, each time his gaze had snagged on those things this morning, his mind had filed them under later, must, failing.

He sighed. “Perhaps a little.”

Crowley’s smile was small and satisfied. “Thought so. So. After we finish here, you’re going to sit and tell me what’s in that box, and I am going to put the things where you tell me to. Then we’re going to make the stacks neat. Not because mess is a sin,” he added, before Aziraphale could protest. “Because we’re taking things your brain has filed as threats and reclassifying them as ‘dealt with.’”

“You are very bossy,” Aziraphale said.

“Yup,” Crowley said cheerfully. “You like that about me.”

“I do not—”

“You doooooo,” Crowley drawled. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have let me have a go at your family last night.”

Aziraphale’s mouth went dry. The room tilted, just a fraction, as the memory surged up: Crowley’s voice, low and dangerous, saying I’ll treat him with more respect than you’ve managed his entire life. His own name, used like a benediction instead of a scold.

He must have gone white, because Crowley’s expression shifted instantly.

“Hey,” he said, voice softening. “Come back. Not there. Here. With the sandwiches.”

“I am here,” Aziraphale said automatically, even as his heart picked up again.

“Sure you are,” Crowley said. “And also you’re in that dining room, and your brother’s being a prick, and your father’s sniffing, and your mother’s sighing, and you’re watching instead of tasting your food. Come back to this one.”

He couldn’t explain how Crowley knew that. That his mind had gone half-opaque, overwritten by the Fell house’s light. He suspected Muriel again.

“I don’t know how,” he admitted, small.

Crowley considered him for a moment. Then he straightened, grabbed the bag, and plucked something from the bottom. “Alright,” he said. “Emergency distraction technique. Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes,” Crowley repeated. “Please,” he added, as if remembering that this was not, in fact, a military operation.

Aziraphale eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not going to—”

“Angel,” Crowley said. “If I was going to snog you senseless on a morning like this, I’d at least give you warning so you could brace your neck.”

The mental image that conjured did nothing whatsoever to steady Aziraphale. He shut his eyes, more to hide the blush than because he was obeying.

“Right,” Crowley said. “Hand out.”

He extended his hand, palm up. Something cool and slightly sticky was placed in it.

“Don’t peek,” Crowley said. “Tell me what it is.”

He frowned. It was… crumbly, somewhat moist, smelled of cinnamon and sugar.

“A scone?” he guessed.

“Incorrect,” Crowley said smugly. “Half a cinnamon knot.”

“I do beg your pardon?”

“Knot,” Crowley repeated. “The woman at the café corrected me when I called it a bun. Apparently that’s a hate crime. Right. Now. You’re going to take a bite and tell me three things about it.”

“This is a very strange form of therapy,” Aziraphale said faintly.

“Yup,” Crowley said. “Humour me.”

He sighed, brought the pastry to his mouth, and took a cautious bite.

His mouth flooded with sugar and spice and yeast, the texture soft and dense, the icing slightly tacky on his lips. It was… good. Very good.

“Sweet,” he said, around a crumb. “Cinnamon, obviously. Slightly… citrusy? And the dough is… you’ve got icing on your face,” he finished helplessly, as he opened his eyes to find Crowley smirking at him with a smear of glaze on his upper lip, having clearly taken the other half for himself.

“That’s four,” Crowley said. “You cheated. Well done.”

The room was back. The shop. The counter. Crowley, leaning against it, looking impossibly pleased with himself. The dining room at Fell House receded, not vanished, but pushed to a greater distance.

“See?” Crowley said. “Mouth is in this morning. Therefore at least part of you is.”

Aziraphale swallowed, licked sugar from the corner of his mouth, and felt something in his chest loosen another notch. “You,” he said, “are ridiculous.”

“You’re welcome,” Crowley said.

They finished the cinnamon knot between them. The sweetness sang in Aziraphale’s veins. It was a different kind of rush from last night’s adrenaline, but no less potent.

Eventually, Crowley dusted his hands together and straightened. “Alright,” he said. “Ten-minute chunk over. Next task: you, on the stool, telling me what’s in that box. Me, playing the world’s tallest library assistant.”

“You’re hardly the world’s tallest,” Aziraphale said automatically. “I’m sure there are basketball players—”

“Do not bring sport into this,” Crowley said. “Come on. While your brain is still full of pastry instead of Fell House.”

Aziraphale slid off the stool and, before he could overthink it, reached out.

Crowley looked down at their hands. Aziraphale hesitated, then wrapped his fingers, briefly, around Crowley’s wrist—just above the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For… making it small.”

Crowley’s face did a very complicated thing in a very short time: surprise, something like relief, something that might have been shyness, of all unlikely things. Then he covered it with a smirk.

“Any time,” he said. “It’s either that or we let you try to tackle the concept of ‘entire life’ before elevenses, and frankly, even I have limits.”

Aziraphale let go. The warmth of Crowley’s skin lingered in his palm.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us… classify some books.”

“Now you’re speaking my language,” Crowley murmured.

The storm, outside and in, had not entirely passed. It probably wouldn’t, not today. But as Aziraphale watched Crowley stride over to the box by the travel section and crouch beside it like a man about to examine a rare specimen, as he felt the tea warm in his belly and the sugar in his blood, he thought: perhaps he did not have to stand in it alone.

Chapter Text

The box of new arrivals had been sitting there for three days, squatting in the middle of the travel section like a reproach.

Aziraphale had stepped around it, repeatedly. He’d intended, each time, to deal with it “in a moment.” The moment had never quite arrived. Every time he’d turned towards it, some other task had loomed larger, or his brain had simply… skittered away. The knowledge of its existence had sat at the back of his mind, heavy and low, another entry in the mental ledger of things unfinished. It had acquired, by degrees, a significance entirely disproportionate to its actual contents.

Now Crowley crouched beside it, long legs folding with improbable grace, one hand braced on the floorboards, the other already reaching for the tape.

“Right,” he said. “What poor bastards are trapped in here.”

“They are not trapped,” Aziraphale said on reflex, then paused. Actually, that wasn’t entirely inaccurate. “Well. Perhaps somewhat delayed in their journey.”

“See?” Crowley said, flicking him a quick grin. “We’re freeing them. Liberation of literature. Very noble.”

He tore the packing tape with his fingers, which was ridiculous. Aziraphale had a perfectly good letter opener on the counter, and scissors besides, but Crowley went at it with bare hands and stubbornness. The tape gave way with a loud rip. Aziraphale winced at the sound, then relaxed when the world, obligingly, failed to end.

The flaps of the box sprang open. Inside, books lay in slightly chaotic strata, their spines facing all sorts of directions—publishers, he thought uncharitably, had no respect for order when packing. Titles in various fonts and colours jostled for attention: slim poetry chapbooks, fat thrillers, cloth-bound biographies, battered travel guides that would need more love than they’d be worth in sales.

Crowley reached in and picked up the topmost book with the exaggerated care of a man handling unstable chemicals. It was, Aziraphale saw, an early-twentieth-century guide to the Lake District, with a charmingly outdated map folded into the back cover.

He perked up despite himself. “Oh,” he said. “That one has hand-drawn contour lines.”

“Of course it does,” Crowley said. He turned it over, inspected it. “Where does it live?”

“Travel,” Aziraphale said, automatically. Then, as Crowley raised an eyebrow, “Third shelf from the bottom, left-hand side. Between ‘Scotland’ and ‘Walking Routes.’ If you see an offensively modern glossy about Ibiza nightlife, put it two books to the right.”

Crowley’s lips twitched. “You know exactly where that Ibiza book is, don’t you.”

“I… might,” Aziraphale admitted. “It was foisted on me by a rep with very aggressive hair gel.”

“Tragic,” Crowley said sympathetically. He stood, the Lake District guide in hand. “Right. Third shelf. Left-hand side. No fraternising with Ibiza.”

He crossed to the travel section. Aziraphale watched him slip the book into its ordained place, sliding it between its neighbours with a little wiggle to make sure it sat level. Crowley wasn’t sloppy. He might pretend to chaos, but his hands placed the book exactly in line with the others, spines flush.

“One liberated,” Crowley announced. “Next?”

Aziraphale found, to his faint surprise, that his brain liked this.

He’d done versions of it before, of course. It was what his days often consisted of: sorting, categorising, making sense of incoming chaos. But doing it with someone else—someone who moved the physical objects while he supplied the system—shifted something subtly important.

It took his brain’s love of classification and freed it from the bodily logistics. He could just… think the structure. Crowley could be the limbs.

It occurred to him, belatedly, that this was the sort of thing other people called teamwork.

“Next,” he said, moving closer. He peered into the box. “Oh. Careful with that one.”

“This one?” Crowley plucked out a book with two fingers and held it gingerly. It was half the size of his hand, bound in faded blue cloth, the gold lettering on the spine worn nearly away. “Looks like if I breathe on it, it’ll turn to dust.”

“It won’t,” Aziraphale said. “It’s sturdier than it looks. But the dust jacket is… well.” He reached out impulsively, gently cupping the book as Crowley held it. Their fingers brushed at the edge of the cover.

“Old,” Crowley supplied.

Aziraphale nodded. “Late nineteenth century. Essays. Someone tucked it into a lot of gardening manuals, thinking it wasn’t worth much.” He couldn’t quite keep the satisfaction from his voice. “They were mistaken.”

Crowley’s mouth did that little sideways curl it reserved for “you sneaky bastard” admiration. “You scavenger,” he said, not unkindly. “Where does it go?”

Aziraphale hesitated. It was the sort of book that bridged categories—part nature writing, part philosophy, a bit of theology for luck. Ideally, he’d give it its own special shelf, labelled “Things Aziraphale Thinks Are Important That No One Else Notices.” Sadly, space constraints prevented such indulgence.

“Essays,” he decided. “Third bay, second shelf. Between Montaigne and Woolf.”

“High company,” Crowley said.

“Well, it deserves it,” Aziraphale said. He realised, a moment later, that this sounded absurdly defensive, as though he thought the book might overhear.

Crowley, blessedly, did not mock him. He took the little volume in both hands, as if he’d been entrusted with something precious, and went to shelve it.

As he turned away, the angle of his neck caught the light, exposing the line of his jaw. For a moment, the image overlapped with one from last night—Crowley, in the Fell dining room, tilting his head exactly like that before delivering some perfectly judged blow. You’re looking at your son’s future husband.

Heat flared under Aziraphale’s collar. He took a very hasty mouthful of tea to cover it.

It was ridiculous, he told himself. He was a grown man. He should not be reacting like a teenager caught reading romance paperbacks. Crowley had only said it to provoke his family. Stir the hornet’s nest. Get under their skin.

Except that when Crowley had leaned in the car afterwards, voice soft and unsteady, and said I meant it, all of it, it had not sounded like theatre.

“Angel?”

He realised, with a start, that he’d been staring at the box without seeing it. Crowley was back at his side, one hand hovering over the next layer of books, head tilted.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said quickly. “I was thinking.”

“Dangerous habit,” Crowley said. “What about?”

“The essays,” Aziraphale lied, and then winced inwardly. He was not built for casual deception. His cheeks heated, giving him away.

Crowley’s gaze dipped to his mouth, then back up. “Right,” he said, very levelly. “Essays.”

They let that sit for a moment. The air in the shop felt denser, somehow, as if all the oxygen had decided to congregate near the ceiling and leave them to make do with what remained.

Crowley broke the tension with a theatrical sigh. “You know, I’ve just realised a flaw in my plan.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said weakly. “Has the classification schema failed?”

“Perish the thought,” Crowley said. “No, I’ve created a situation where I am your subordinate.” He gestured at the box. “You’re literally telling me where to put things.”

Aziraphale blinked. “That was the idea, yes.”

“I’m your shelf-monkey,” Crowley went on, aggrieved in a way that was so patently artificial Aziraphale nearly smiled. “Your lackey. Your… your book butler.”

The phrase conjured an image so absurd—Crowley in a tailcoat, carrying a silver salver with carefully arranged paperbacks—that a laugh burst out of Aziraphale before he could stop it.

It startled him. It startled Crowley, too; his complaint cut off mid-word, replaced by a look of pleased surprise.

“There he is,” Crowley said again, softer. “Better.”

“I am not sure I like the implication that I have been ‘missing,’” Aziraphale said, trying for hauteur and missing by some distance.

“You’ve been… under water,” Crowley said, words chosen with care. “Which is entirely fair, seeing as your family tried to drown you in expectations last night. I’m just… glad to see you surface, is all.”

The simplicity of that—no demand that he be cheerful, no criticism of his earlier state, just an observation and a tiny bit of joy—landed more tenderly than any grand gesture could have.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said again, hopelessly. He felt he ought to vary his gratitude, perhaps with synonyms, but his brain was too busy recalibrating.

“Stop thanking me,” Crowley said, though he sounded anything but displeased. “I’ll get a swollen head. Worse than usual.”

“That seems unlikely,” Aziraphale murmured, and had the satisfaction of watching Crowley’s ears go faintly pink above the line of his sunglasses.

They fell into a rhythm.

Crowley reached into the box, extracting whatever his hand met; Aziraphale identified, classified, directed. A late edition of Pride and Prejudice (fiction, classics, Austen row, second from the right). A slim volume of war poems (poetry, twentieth century, between Sassoon and Owen). A glossy cookbook featuring improbable salads (cookery, sadly, though Aziraphale muttered under his breath about sending it to the “aspirational nonsense” section in the back).

Occasionally, Crowley paused to read a particularly absurd blurb out loud in an outrageous voice, prompting huffs of laughter from Aziraphale. Occasionally, Aziraphale launched into a mini-lecture on some obscure author, entirely forgetting, for the length of a paragraph, that he was meant to be miserable.

He realised it halfway through an enthusiastic description of a mid-century travel writer whose prose style he admired.

“And then,” he was saying, “there’s this section where he attempts to describe the sound of the wind in the olive groves, and it should be utterly pretentious, but it isn’t, it’s—oh.”

He snapped his mouth shut. Crowley was watching him with an expression that made heat beat behind his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m rambling. You don’t need to know all that.”

“That’s a lie,” Crowley said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re lying,” Crowley repeated calmly. “I do need to know. Well, maybe not need.” He tipped his head. “But I like knowing. You telling me why you like a thing is half the fun of the thing.”

“That seems an inefficient way of enjoying literature,” Aziraphale said faintly.

“Maybe I’m not trying to enjoy literature,” Crowley said. “Maybe I’m trying to enjoy you.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Aziraphale actually swayed, just a little.

Crowley, who had apparently decided that this was the sort of morning where one said devastatingly earnest things as if they were casual, immediately backed off a fraction. “In the ‘listening to you talk about books’ sense,” he added, too quickly. “Not… I mean, also the other sense, obviously, but right now I meant—”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and the name came out half-strangled.

Crowley pressed his lips together. “Shutting up now,” he muttered. He turned to the box again with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb.

Aziraphale stood very still. He could feel the shape of his own body in space with unusual clarity—the way his toes spread in his shoes, the pressure of his belt against his middle, the slight tension between his shoulder blades. He often only experienced himself as a vague outline, a collection of vaguely distressing sensations. Right now, he felt… present. Slightly too present. As if someone had turned the contrast up on existence.

He watched Crowley pull out another book: a cheap, luridly covered paperback with a half-naked man and an implausible horse on the front.

“Oh dear,” he said weakly. “That one should go…” He hunted for a euphemism. “In the… romance section.”

“We have a romance section?” Crowley said, scandalised. “Where? Why have you never shown me this?”

“It’s not all like that,” Aziraphale protested. “Some of it is very tasteful. Longing glances over teacups and the like.”

“Well, that’s fine then,” Crowley said. “Longing glances we approve of.”

He stood, flicking through the pages with obvious curiosity. “Do people actually buy these, or do they hide them in other books and hope for the best?”

“They buy them,” Aziraphale said. “Quite a few, actually. I try not to… well, everyone needs their own form of escape.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Could have used one of these last night.”

Aziraphale’s stomach dropped. The phrase last night still had that effect, like the sensation of stepping off a kerb you hadn’t realised was there.

“Was it…” He cleared his throat. His hands twisted around one another in front of him. He forced them apart. “Was it… very awful for you?”

He hadn’t meant to ask. It had slipped out, desperate and small, from some part of him that had been gnawing on the question since he’d watched Crowley walk into Fell House like a man stepping into a furnace.

Crowley stopped flipping through the paperback. He looked up slowly, over the rims of his sunglasses. For a moment, he didn’t answer.

The familiar anxiety surged—there, you see, he hated it, he hated them, he hated you for making him endure it—and then Crowley took off his sunglasses.

He didn’t do that often, indoors. Not even in the shop, where Aziraphale had a fondness for watching the light catch in the black lenses. Now his eyes, sharp and golden and, at the moment, disconcertingly gentle, fixed on Aziraphale.

“Yes,” he said plainly. “It was awful.”

Aziraphale flinched. “I’m so—”

“But,” Crowley continued, overriding the apology, “it was less awful than watching you go through it alone would have been. So, on balance, worth it.”

He said it as if it were a matter of arithmetic. Cost-benefit analysis. Miserable family dinner versus leaving Aziraphale unsupported. Outcome clear.

“I never should have…” Aziraphale swallowed. “I dragged you into that. Without fully—without properly warning you. And then I just sat there and—and—”

“And existed in your family’s emotional blast radius,” Crowley said. “While they behaved like a pack of hyenas who swallowed a textbook on respectability and misread it. Yeah. That sucked. None of that was your fault.”

“They were my family,” Aziraphale said. “They are my family.”

“And?” Crowley demanded, as if that were the least relevant thing he could have said.

“I should have… said more,” Aziraphale blurted. “At the table. I should have… defended you more. Defended myself, for that matter. I only ever—only when they pushed you too far, I we—” His words tangled. The memories jostled. Snapshots: his father’s voice, his mother’s sigh, Gabriel’s oh so familiar sneer. “I sat there and let you stand up for me and I didn’t do the same—”

“That is utter bollocks,” Crowley said calmly.

Aziraphale blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You did stand up,” Crowley said. “You did it in your way.”

“My way is apparently… inadequate,” Aziraphale said bitterly. “I stay quiet, and I try to be polite, and I hope it will end quickly. That is not… defiance.”

“Angel,” Crowley said. He put the paperback down and stepped closer, closing the distance between them to a comfortable arm’s length. “Your father has been talking over you since you were old enough to read. Your mother has been sighing you into silence for decades. Gabriel treats every sentence you say as an opening for a punchline at your expense. And last night you still said ‘I am not single’ and ‘it satisfies me’ and ‘really, Gabriel, you might show some respect’ right to their faces. That is not nothing.”

Aziraphale’s throat closed. “I should have said more.”

“You said enough,” Crowley insisted. “You said as much as you could in a room where you’ve been trained your whole life not to say anything. You think I didn’t see that?”

He reached up, hand hovering near Aziraphale’s shoulder, then settled for gesturing vaguely in his direction. “I saw every time you opened your mouth and closed it again. Every time you flinched and then decided not to. You were bailing in a sinking boat with a thimble, and you still bailed. I just came in with a bucket and a petrol can.”

“That is a very alarming metaphor,” Aziraphale said weakly.

“Good,” Crowley said. “Maybe it’ll stick.”

Aziraphale’s voice dropped. “You didn’t… mind? That I let you—”

“Talk?” Crowley said. “Oh, I minded a lot that they were making me. I did not mind that you didn’t jump in front of the bullets. You’re allowed to let me draw fire.”

“It didn’t seem… fair,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley considered that. “No,” he said eventually. “But nothing about that house is fair. And I’m better armoured than you are. Different upbringing.”

The understatement of the decade. Aziraphale knew some of Crowley’s history. Enough to know that his parents had been their own brand of appalling. But he also knew that Crowley had had Muriel. Had learnt, at some point, to recognise patterns and walk away. Aziraphale was still somewhere between recognition and the door.

“My family will…” He hesitated, then forced the words out. “They will blame you.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “They should.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “That is—”

“They already think you’re fragile,” Crowley said, and there was that word again, the one that had sat in Aziraphale’s chest since his father had dropped it at the table like a verdict. “They already think you can’t make decisions. If they start blaming me, then you get to be the one who was led astray instead of the one who disobeyed. That’s safer for you.”

“I don’t want you to be their scapegoat,” Aziraphale blurted.

Crowley smiled, small and sharp. “I do,” he said. “I can take it. The emails. The texts. The glares. They’ll bounce. When they hit you, they stick.”

Aziraphale wanted to argue. He also wanted, very much, to lie down on the floor and not move. Both impulses crashed into each other and left him feeling oddly hollow.

“Besides,” Crowley went on, more lightly, “if they’re busy being outraged at me, maybe they’ll stop calling you fragile long enough to realise you walked out of that house with me because you wanted to, not because I dragged you.”

“I did,” Aziraphale said quietly. “Want to.”

“I know,” Crowley said. “Could feel you shaking next to me, but you still walked.”

Silence settled between them, not heavy, but dense. Aziraphale stared at a spot on Crowley’s shirt just above the third button, focusing on the way the fabric folded.

The plus side of working alongside someone, he was discovering, was that when the emotional conversation trod too close to the edge, the practical tasks were right there, ready to catch them.

“Hand me something,” Crowley said suddenly, decisively, sticking his hand out towards the box without looking away from Aziraphale. “Quick, before we both start crying and Anathema senses it on the wind.”

Aziraphale’s laugh came out half-choked. He reached into the box blindly and retrieved the first book his fingers encountered.

“Here,” he said, thrusting it into Crowley’s hand.

Crowley looked down. “Oh, excellent,” he said. “We’ve entered the pun section.”

It was, in fact, an anthology of humorous essays about gardening, with a title so egregious Aziraphale refused to read it aloud. (It involved the phrase “thyme of your life.”)

“Humour,” Aziraphale said, grateful for the topic change. “On gardening. How novel.”

“Hey now,” Crowley protested. “I’ve heard you make at least three botanical puns in the past week.”

“I have standards,” Aziraphale said. “This does not meet them.”

“Says the man who laughed at ‘book butler’,” Crowley muttered. He flipped the book open, scanned a paragraph, and snorted. “Alright, yeah, this is dire. Where do we hide it so it only does minimal damage to the public?”

“Humour,” Aziraphale said. “End section. Between the mildly acceptable collections and the Dad joke compilations we keep purely out of economic necessity.”

Crowley obeyed, ambling off to misfile the book in a place where it might find the rare reader who would appreciate it and spare everyone else.

As he slotted it onto the shelf, Aziraphale watched him and thought, There. That’s what last night did too. Put things where they belonged.

His family’s opinions. Their hands on his shoulders. Their voices in his head. For years, he’d stored them in the wrong sections, let them take up far more space than they warranted: Reference, perhaps. Or Theology. Immutable. Binding.

Crowley, in the space of one disastrous dinner, had rearranged them. Not thrown them out—that would take time—but shifted them to a shelf marked “Biased sources, consult with caution.”

The knowledge of that sat beside his guilt and his shame, jostling for position.

“You were…” he began, and then faltered, unsure how to finish.

Crowley glanced back. “Terrifyingly sexy?” he suggested. “Profoundly inappropriate? A walking HR complaint?”

Aziraphale made a small noise somewhere between a snort and a sob. “Magnificent,” he said, before he could chicken out.

Crowley froze.

And then, slowly, a smile spread over his face. Not the sharp, performative one he wore at the Fell table, not the smirk he deployed when teasing. Something softer. Open in a way Aziraphale had only seen a few times—usually when Crowley was standing in front of a particularly resilient plant or Muriel made a rare joke.

“Yeah?” he said, sounding almost shy.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I… I thought so. Even when I was—” He gestured vaguely, encompassing panic, fear, shame, all of it. “All of that. Underneath, I kept thinking… magnificent.”

Crowley looked down, scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor, then, in a remarkable feat of composure, managed to roll his shoulders and pull his usual lazy drawl back on.

“Well,” he said, “I do aim to impress.”

“You succeeded,” Aziraphale said gravely.

“Don’t say that where they can hear you,” Crowley muttered. “Their heads’ll explode.”

“Whose?”

“Your lot,” Crowley said. “They’re not built to understand anyone thinking you choosing yourself is magnificent. It’ll short out their wiring.”

“I didn’t—” Aziraphale began, then stopped. “Did I?”

“Choose yourself?” Crowley said. “Every time you didn’t let them define you last night, yeah. Every time you didn’t apologise for existing. Every time you didn’t say sorry when they made you uncomfortable. That counts.”

“I left,” Aziraphale said, slow wonder seeping into his voice. “I walked out. With you. But not… because you told me to.”

“Exactly,” Crowley said. “I gave you the option. You took it. You could have stayed. You didn’t.”

It seemed impossibly simple, laid out like that. In his head, it had been a tangled knot of obligation and dread and relief. The notion that something as small as standing up and walking to the door counted as choosing himself… he wasn’t sure he knew how to hold that.

“Feels odd, doesn’t it,” Crowley said, as if reading his mind. “Thinking of yourself as someone who makes decisions instead of someone everything happens to.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I’m not… very good at it.”

“You’ll get practice,” Crowley said. “I’ve got a whole lifetime of terrible choices we can correct together.”

“That is not reassuring,” Aziraphale said.

“Sure it is,” Crowley said. “It means I’ve done the ‘be a disaster’ bit. You can skip ahead to ‘construct sensible boundaries.’”

Aziraphale smiled, unexpectedly. “We did write some, last night,” he said, thinking of the card in his waistcoat. “Our rules.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, and something like pride flickered across his face. “We did. Tea before hard talks. No commentary on bodies. You may leave any room.”

“I liked that one,” Aziraphale said.

“I know,” Crowley said.

They fell back into the rhythm of sorting. The box emptied faster than Aziraphale would have believed, books sprouting from it like ideas and winging off to their appropriate nests. Each properly placed volume felt, absurdly, like a small act of resistance against the Fellian insistence that his passions were childish.

You prattle about books, Gabriel had said.

You’ve been prattling about books since you were five.

In the shop, with Crowley’s steady back moving along the shelves, the phrase shifted. Not prattling. Speaking. Teaching. Enthusing. Informing.

If Gabriel walked in now, Aziraphale thought suddenly, watching Crowley nudge a book into place with his thumb, would he still be able to curl Aziraphale small with a word?

His heart did an anxious hop at the thought of Gabriel walking through the door. The reaction was automatic. His palms dampened. His vision narrowed for a second. His brain, obligingly, supplied the sound of that entitled knock.

But alongside the fear, a new picture floated up: Crowley’s arm stretched along the back of the booth at the restaurant, a silent, present line of support. Crowley’s voice saying careful, this counter is older than you. Crowley’s “Get out” in the shop, later, when Gabriel overstepped.

He wasn’t alone anymore, in the geography of his own life. That changed the calculus.

“Hey,” Crowley said, breaking into his thoughts again. “We’ve hit the bottom.”

“Of what?” Aziraphale asked, jolted.

“The box.” Crowley held it up, tipping it towards him to display its empty, cardboard depths. “One item left.”

He plucked out a final volume: a hardback with no dust jacket, cover plain and scuffed. He turned it over. “No title,” he said. “Suspicious.”

Aziraphale reached for it, intrigued. He opened it to the title page and made a pleased sound. “Oh. It’s a prayer book. Nineteenth century. Look—the family inscriptions.”

The flyleaf was covered in careful handwriting, every generation adding a name and date. The ink shifted from brown to grey to blue as the years progressed; the script modernised and then, eventually, stopped. Aziraphale’s fingers traced the last date, mid-twentieth century.

“Someone let this go,” he murmured, more to the book than to Crowley. “Oh, you poor thing.”

“You’re cooing at it,” Crowley observed. “You know that, right.”

“It’s lived in a family for a century,” Aziraphale said. “And then it ended up in a job lot at an auction. It must be quite bewildered.”

Crowley’s face softened in that way that told Aziraphale he’d hit some particular nerve. “You know it’s ink and paper,” he said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “And?”

“And you’re projecting,” Crowley said gently. “Again. And it’s very sweet. Again.”

Aziraphale huffed. “I do not project onto—” He stopped. Thought of himself in the dining room, feeling like an object passed down, evaluated, eventually deemed inadequate. “Fine,” he said. “Occasionally.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “We’re keeping that one, then?”

“If it were up to me, I’d keep them all,” Aziraphale said. “But yes. It’ll go in the… special section.”

“Under ‘Books With Emotional Damage’?” Crowley suggested.

“Under ‘Devotional Texts,’” Aziraphale said primly. “Near the back.”

“Of course,” Crowley said. “Can’t have the prayer book giving people ideas near the front door.”

“Exactly,” Aziraphale said.

He carried the book himself this time, handling it with the sort of care he normally reserved for very old things and very new feelings. The act of giving it a place—an official, named place—felt oddly like a promise to himself as well.

You, too, belong. You, too, deserve a spot on a shelf that suits you.

When he returned to the counter, the box was flattened, folded under Crowley’s foot. The other man was frowning at his hands.

“What’s wrong?” Aziraphale asked, immediate alarm flaring. “Did you cut yourself? Did you—”

“Relax,” Crowley said. He held up his fingers, displaying a light dusting of cardboard fuzz and old glue. “I’m a bit grubby, is all.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. The tension drained out of him in a rush, leaving him slightly dizzy. “Right.”

“You alright?” Crowley’s eyes sharpened. He straightened, abandoning the box entirely.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I just… for a moment, I thought you’d been hurt.”

“Nah,” Crowley said. “I’m fine. Hard to kill.” He flexed his fingers. “Your shop fought bravely, but it has not claimed me yet.”

Aziraphale’s body, treacherously, chose that moment to remind him that he’d been standing for a while. His knees wobbled. He reached for the counter.

Crowley was there instantly, one hand at his elbow, the other hovering near his waist, not quite touching. “Sit,” he said. “That’s an order.”

“I’m quite capable of—”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, quietly.

The tone—the exact balance of concern and command, his name said properly—unclipped something inside him. He sat.

The stool under him was solid and familiar. His body let out a long, quiet complaint as he settled his weight. His brain, oddly, seemed to quieten in response to the physical concession.

Crowley, satisfied, leaned his hip against the counter. He crossed his arms and regarded Aziraphale with a look that was not unlike the one he gave his plants when deciding whether they needed repotting.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, self-conscious.

“You’re doing very well,” Crowley said.

It was such an unprompted statement that Aziraphale’s first instinct was to reject it out of hand. “I am sitting,” he said. “That is hardly—”

“You’re sitting,” Crowley agreed. “You’re breathing. You’ve eaten food that did not come out of a panic packet of biscuits. You’ve sorted an entire box of books you’ve been avoiding since Tuesday. You haven’t once apologised for existing in the last hour. That’s a lot.”

“I apologised for my tea,” Aziraphale said.

“Tea doesn’t count,” Crowley said. “Tea is sacred. Apologising to tea is an act of devotion, not self-loathing.”

Aziraphale snorted. “You are making that up.”

“Absolutely,” Crowley said. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

He reached for his cup, found it empty, and made a face. “We’ll need another pot soon.”

“That’s a great deal of tea for one morning,” Aziraphale said.

“It’s emotional first aid,” Crowley said. “We’re still within the recommended dosage.”

“You are not a doctor,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“I am a doctor,” Crowley retorted. “Of philosophy. Of plants. Of something. Kew trusts me with their entire Temperate House. You can trust me with your hydration.”

“I don’t think doctor works that way,” Aziraphale said, but he didn’t object when Crowley gathered up the cups.

As Crowley disappeared into the back room again, Aziraphale sat, hands resting lightly on his knees, and took stock.

His heart still raced, but less. The jagged edges of last night’s memories had been… not smoothed, exactly, but interleaved with new images: Crowley’s hands placing books. Crowley’s mouth smeared with icing. Crowley telling him, calmly, that he’d been magnificent.

He felt… tired. Deeply, bone-weary tired. But underneath, there was a thin, surprising thread of something else.

Not joy. Not yet. Something quieter.

Relief, his mind supplied, cautiously. Or maybe: maybe.

Maybe he wasn’t a coward.

Maybe he’d done enough.

Maybe he wasn’t, in fact, too much trouble to love.

He stared at the opposite wall, where the “Local Interest” shelf sagged slightly in the middle. He should fix that. Later. One thing at a time.

The hiss of the kettle reached him from the back. The shop creaked. Outside, a van rumbling past made the glass vibrate faintly in the windows. For the first time since he woke up, the sound didn’t make his shoulders jump.

“Hey,” Crowley called from the back room. “Question.”

“Yes?” Aziraphale replied.

“What’s the punishment for torching the entire poetry section?” Crowley asked. “Asking for a friend.”

Aziraphale’s splutter echoed off the shelves. “Absolutely not!”

“Come on,” Crowley said, emerging with the new pot. “Some of those slim volumes have been plotting against you for years. I can tell.”

“You are not setting fire to my poets,” Aziraphale said hotly. “Besides, you like some of them.”

“I like some of them,” Crowley conceded, pouring. “The rest can go in the ‘aspirational nonsense’ section with the salads.”

“Philistine,” Aziraphale muttered, but there was no heat in it.

Crowley slid the fresh cup towards him. “See?” he said. “You still care deeply about categorisation. That’s a sign of life.”

“It’s a sign of someone with a system,” Aziraphale said. “Systems are… stabilising.”

“Exactly,” Crowley said. “And you’ve got one here. In this shop. Your rules. Not theirs.”

Aziraphale wrapped his hands around the new cup. The heat seeped into his skin.

“Our rules,” he corrected quietly.

Crowley’s eyes met his. For a moment, something fierce and fragile flickered there.

“Yeah,” he said. “Ours.”

By noon the shop had settled into that particular kind of quiet that Aziraphale loved best.

Not empty—emptiness made his brain start throwing echoing thoughts at the walls—but gently occupied. A couple of browsers had drifted in and out over the morning: a young man who smelt of printer toner and cheap aftershave, earnestly searching for something “classic, but not boring” for his mother; an older woman who spent half an hour in History and left with three novels from General Fiction instead. Familiar patterns. Predictable scripts. He knew what to say in those interactions. Good morning, may I help, of course, yes, that’s a favourite of mine. He could do that almost on autopilot.

Between customers, he had… functioned.

Tea had been drunk. Scones had been nibbled at and then, to his faint surprise, actually finished. The box of new arrivals, which had been glowering at him for days, lay flat and vanquished in the back room. Shelves had been adjusted, spines straightened, piles of catalogues sorted into need to answer and can be ignored forever. His nervous system was still humming too high, like an overtuned violin, but it no longer felt as though every breath might shatter him.

Crowley, having been bullied into a second sandwich on the grounds that “being the tall one doesn’t make you exempt from nutrition,” had eventually slouched into the large armchair by the front window.

From that position, he’d achieved a state of lounging that seemed to involve every joint melting at once. One long leg was hooked over the chair arm; the other was stretched out, heel tapping occasionally in time to some internal rhythm. His phone sat in his hand, screen casting blue light on his face. Every so often his thumb moved. Every so often he snorted softly at something on the display. When customers came in, he tucked the phone away without fuss and became benign background ornamentation, all dark angles and lazy smirks. When they left, the phone reappeared.

To the untrained eye, he was doing nothing in particular.

To Aziraphale, who had learned his outlines, he was doing several things at once.

He was being there. A steady presence in the corner of Aziraphale’s awareness—like a piece of furniture that had always been there, but also like a guard posted at a door. He wasn’t looming. He wasn’t hovering. He was just… available. A point on the map Aziraphale’s anxious mind could ping every few minutes to confirm yes, still here, still all right.

He was also, Aziraphale suspected, keeping half an eye on him.

Whenever Aziraphale’s focus sharpened too much—his shoulders creeping up, his breath shortening as a thought looped too tight—Crowley would appear at his elbow with a question about a book, or an outrageous suggestion about setting half the poetry section alight, or a comment about Anathema’s latest email. Little jolts, enough to knock him out of the spiral.

It was… nice.

He was not used to the word nice applying to days that followed nights like the previous one. After big social events—family dinners, academic conferences, even small parties—he usually needed at least twenty-four hours of utter solitude to ricochet around inside his own skull until all the unresolved conversation snippets had worn themselves out. The idea of another person in his space, just… existing alongside him? That had once seemed impossible.

Now, each time his gaze snagged on Crowley’s sprawled form, something inside him found a handhold.

Around noon, the morning’s small tide of custom receded. The street quietened. Somewhere down the road, Maggie was arguing with her delivery driver in brisk, affectionate tones. Nina’s coffee machine hissed and grumbled. A bus sighed at the stop on the corner.

Inside the shop, time stretched pleasantly.

Aziraphale stood behind the counter, carefully sorting through a stack of invoices. He was feeling almost—almost—competent. The jagged shards of last night’s dinner were still there in his head, but they’d been padded by the soft cushioning of normalcy: Crowley’s commentary, familiar tasks, the anchoring weight of his own books.

He had just reached out to straighten a pile of bookmarks that didn’t actually need straightening when the bell over the door rang.

The sound itself was ordinary. He’d chosen the bell years ago, after much careful testing in a hardware shop, precisely because it was gentle rather than clanging—three light notes instead of a single harsh jangle. It had chimed a dozen times already that day without incident.

This chime was different.

It wasn’t the bell, of course. It was his body. His muscles, his lungs, his skin. They reacted before his conscious mind had even clocked the noise. Every nerve went taut. His hand froze on the bookmarks. His breath caught halfway in.

Danger, something deep in his hindbrain announced. Pattern recognised.

It took less than a second for the sound to resolve itself into a specific cadence. The door opening a fraction too wide, the bell hitting at a slightly sharper angle. Confidence in the way the motion moved air.

He knew who it was before he looked up.

Gabriel Fell, framed in the doorway.

For a moment, the two images—the cool light of his bookshop, the warm, hostile glow of Fell House’s dining room—overlapped in his mind. Gabriel at the head of the table, fork in hand, smirk in place. Gabriel now, in daylight, bringing weather in behind him.

He smelt the aftershave before he registered the details of his face. A sharp, expensive scent that always made Aziraphale’s sinuses itch. He had, once, made the mistake of mentioning that it gave him a headache. Gabriel had bought a larger bottle.

He came in without waiting to be invited, of course. Handsome as ever, in that sleek, polished way that made him look photographed even in real life. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect posture. He wore his suit like armour, shoulders squared, tie knotted just so. The kind of man who believed the world was better when he was at the centre of it.

“Morning, Azzy,” he said, already striding towards the counter.

The nickname struck like a slap. It always did. Every syllable of it packed with history: you are younger, you are lesser, you are ours to name.

Aziraphale’s thumb dug into the edge of the wooden counter until the urge to flinch subsided. His brain did what it usually did in such moments: scrambled desperately for the script that would keep the peace. Smile, deflect, laugh weakly, smooth. He felt the words starting to form: good morning, Gabriel, how lovely—

He remembered, in the next heartbeat, the card in his waistcoat pocket.

Their rules. Written in Crowley’s messy block letters and his own neat script. Tea before hard talks. No commentary on bodies. You may leave any room. Use my name.

His name.

His real name.

He took a breath. Felt it stick. Forced it down into his chest, let it expand there. He tapped one finger, once, against the pocket where the card rested, as if knocking on a door.

When he spoke, his voice was softer than Gabriel’s, but steady. “Good morning, Gabriel,” he said. “It’s Aziraphale.”

Gabriel’s eyes flicked up, quick and dismissive, to Crowley’s corner. It was only then that Aziraphale remembered Crowley was here. His spine straightened a fraction at the realisation, like a plant turning towards light.

“You,” Gabriel said, with that horrible, cheerful contempt. “Of course.”

Crowley, who had rearranged himself in the chair with almost imperceptible speed, set his phone down. He didn’t stand. He didn’t loom. He just turned his head, slow and deliberate.

“Gabriel,” he said mildly.

Small shift: the duster—he’d insisted on dusting shelves earlier, the menace—was now resting against the chair. His body angled so he was in Aziraphale’s peripheral vision, but not between him and the door. Not blocking an exit. Not blocking Gabriel, either. Just… there.

It was like feeling a beam run through the room from shoulder height. A line he could lean on if he chose.

Gabriel planted his hands on the counter and leaned, the better to loom. His fingers were perfectly manicured. Aziraphale’s gaze caught on the flash of his wedding ring—small, neat, worn with the casual assumption of unquestioned belonging.

“Well then,” Gabriel said, smiling a smile with too many teeth. “Shall we try that again?”

Aziraphale’s brain, entirely unhelpfully, supplied a list of possible referents. Try what again? The dinner? The entire relationship? His life?

He swallowed. “I don’t know what you—”

“Last night,” Gabriel said, in the tone of a man recapping a mildly amusing anecdote. “The little… spectacle. Mother’s still at it this morning. Smelling salts, the works. I thought I’d pop round, clear the air a bit, before she works herself into a complete fit.”

The air in the shop went denser. It was the same air, technically, he’d been breathing all day, but it now felt… colonised. Gabriel brought Fell House with him, in his voice, his smell, his expectations.

Aziraphale’s fingers twitched on the countertop.

He could, he knew, fall into the old pattern. Apologise. Soften. Laugh it off. Let Gabriel narrate the evening as an overreaction, a phase, a tantrum. Let him reassert the Fell version of reality.

His heart thundered.

Say what you came to say, Crowley’s silent presence suggested, just by existing within reach. I’ll be here while you do it.

He inhaled slowly. Felt the edges of his panic brush against the memory of Crowley’s hand on his chest that morning, counting breaths. In for four. Hold for four. Out.

“The air,” he said, and it astonished him that his voice obeyed, “is quite clear.”

Gabriel blinked, theatrically. “Is it, now.” He laughed once, as if indulging a child’s fancy. “Tea?” he added, with a look around the shop that suggested he wasn’t offering.

Aziraphale’s mouth came up with a script before his brain could intervene. “I can put the kettle on,” he heard himself say.

Crowley’s heel tapped once on the floor. Not a warning. A punctuation mark.

He thought of their rules. Tea before hard talks. That did not mean tea for Gabriel.

“No,” he said after a moment.

The word came out startlingly small. He said it again, more carefully. “No. I won’t.”

Gabriel’s smile sharpened. “Since when do you refuse anyone tea, Azzy?”

“Since never,” Aziraphale said, with a flicker of dry humour he hadn’t expected to find. “But that wasn’t what you asked.”

Crowley made a faint sound—half-amused, half-proud. It slotted into Aziraphale’s spine like a supporting beam. He straightened.

“You said you wanted to… clear the air,” he went on. “It is clear. You made your position quite plain last night. So did I.”

Gabriel regarded him with the pleasant, measured look of a man about to lay out a case file. “You’re being dramatic,” he said. “Last night was… you acting out, as you sometimes do. Everyone gets carried away in the heat of the moment. You overreacted, Crowley played his little part—it happens.”

Crowley’s shoulders rolled the tiniest fraction, like a cat contemplating whether to unsheathe its claws.

“Our mother is distressed,” Gabriel continued, as though giving a quarterly report. “Father is… disappointed, obviously. But they’re reasonable people. You apologise, we smooth it over, we move on. That’s what families do.”

Aziraphale’s hands, resting on the counter, had started to ache. He lifted them, deliberately, set them down again flat, fingers splayed. Visible. Not clenched. Not hidden.

“I am not going to apologise,” he said.

He half expected the ceiling to fall in.

It didn’t. The clock ticked on, audibly. Somewhere upstairs, the old pipes creaked.

Gabriel laughed. “Of course you are, Azzy. You always do. You make a scene, and then you come to your senses. That’s the pattern. It’s fine. No one’s angry. Well.” His smile widened. “Mother’s angry. But she’ll forgive you. She always does. She knows you don’t mean these little… Fits.”

The word slid over Aziraphale’s skin like oil. For a moment, the room narrowed to the bright circle of Gabriel’s face and the echo of long-ago phrases: You’re being hysterical. You’re overreacting. Don’t make such a fuss.

His heart tried to sprint away. His hands wanted to fly to his hair, his face, somewhere to discharge the buzzing in his nerves. He stilled them with an effort.

You will use my name, he thought.

The phrase didn’t feel like his. Not yet. It felt like something he’d borrowed from a braver person. Still, he reached for it.

He looked at his brother directly. “You will use my name,” he said. “If you wish to speak to me in my own shop. It is Aziraphale.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows climbed. “Since when are you this prickly, Azzy?”

“Since always,” Aziraphale said, and surprised himself with how flat his voice came out. “I am only enforcing it now.”

Crowley was very still behind him. He could feel the attention at his back like a steady hand.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gabriel said. “We’ve always called you Azzy. It’s affectionate.”

“It is diminutive,” Aziraphale said. “You don’t shorten your own name.”

“That’s different,” Gabriel said.

“How?” Aziraphale asked.

Gabriel opened his mouth, shut it, then shook his head, dismissing the question as irrelevant. “You’re deflecting,” he said. “We’re not here to debate semantics. We’re here to address your behaviour. This phase you’ve got yourself into.”

There. The word he’d been braced for.

Phase. The same one Gabriel had used at the table. The one their parents had deployed over the years for anything that made them uncomfortable: his obsession with medieval marginalia, his dislike of loud parties, his wanting to live above a bookshop instead of in a semi-detached house with a perfectly ordinary kitchen.

He thought, suddenly, of Muriel.

Of their matter-of-fact, “Phases are for the moon. People are… less tidy.”

“This is not a phase,” Aziraphale said. His voice wobbled only slightly. “And it is not a tantrum, either.”

Gabriel’s smile thinned. “Then what would you call storming away from dinner like a child denied dessert?”

“I would call it leaving a situation that had become untenable,” Aziraphale said. “I told you, repeatedly, that I did not wish to be spoken to the way you were speaking to me. You continued. So I left. That is… the adult option.”

The word adult felt strange in his mouth. He’d rarely been granted it in conversation with his family. He was always something else: the gentle one, the sensitive one, the delicate one. Never simply a man.

Gabriel scoffed. “You embarrassed us.”

“You invited me,” Aziraphale said. “To our former home. Knowing who I am. Knowing who Crowley is to me. If the risk of my being myself embarrasses you, perhaps you should not make a spectacle of inviting us.”

“That’s not how this works, Azzy,” Gabriel said, shaking his head. “Family comes first. Always has. You don’t… choose some man you’ve known five minutes over the people who raised you.”

Five minutes. Aziraphale’s mind, ever unhelpful, offered a montage: Kew’s fern room. The first awkward coffee. Tuesday afternoons in the Gardens. Thursdays at the grocer’s. Quiet nights at the shop. Hours and hours and hours layered like pages. He swallowed.

“I am not choosing him over you,” he said, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Crowley tense. “I am choosing myself. And I am choosing to be around people who treat me with respect. Crowley does. You do not.”

That landed. He saw it in the tiny flare of something in Gabriel’s eyes—indignation, perhaps, at the notion that respect was something he might be failing at, rather than something he doled out.

Gabriel spread his hands, as if appealing to an invisible jury. “We’ve always looked out for you,” he said. “Mother and Father, too. You’re… you. You’re not built for… all this.” He gestured vaguely at the world. “We’ve kept you safe. And now you’re letting him”—his chin jerked in Crowley’s direction—“fill your head with nonsense.”

Crowley shifted again, almost imperceptibly. Aziraphale could feel the effort it cost him not to interject.

“Crowley is not responsible for my decisions,” Aziraphale said. “I am.”

“You don’t mean that,” Gabriel said, instantly.

“I do,” Aziraphale said. “I meant it when I told you last night that the bookshop satisfies me. I meant it when I said I was not single. I mean it now.”

Gabriel frowned, clearly thrown off his prepared script. “You’re too sensitive,” he said, after a moment. “You always have been. You’re taking a few jokes—”

“Cruelty,” Aziraphale said, and this was easier than he’d expected, perhaps because Muriel had given him the word for it. “Dressed as humour.”

Gabriel’s smile froze. “We tease because we love you.”

“If that is your idea of love,” Aziraphale said quietly, “it is not one I wish to participate in.”

He hadn’t planned to say that. The sentence appeared fully formed, as if he had been rewriting it in his head for years and only now found the version that fit.

Behind him, there was the softest intake of breath. Crowley.

“You can’t cut us off,” Gabriel said, anger finally creeping into his voice. “You’re overreacting. You’ll calm down, you’ll think about it, you’ll come round. You always do.”

“I am not cutting anyone off,” Aziraphale said. “I am setting terms.”

“Same thing,” Gabriel snapped.

“It is not,” Aziraphale said. “You are welcome here if you use my name. If you refrain from insults. If you do not comment on my body, or my work, or the person I love.”

The last clause slipped out. He hadn’t planned to say that either. His mouth had gone ahead while his brain was still debating whether love was the right word. It hung in the air, shimmering, irrevocable.

He did not take it back.

Gabriel stared at him as if he’d just announced an intention to move to Mars. “Love,” he repeated. “You don’t even know what that is, Azzy.”

“I do,” Aziraphale said, and for the first time in this entire exchange, he turned his head, just enough to let his gaze brush past Crowley.

He didn’t look at him properly. If he did, he feared, he’d crumble. But he saw the outline: long limbs, black-clad, still as a coiled spring. He could feel, in the new stillness of the room, the way Crowley had reacted to that word.

“I know what love is,” he went on, turning back to Gabriel. “And if I did not, your example would not recommend it.”

That did it.

Gabriel’s face shifted, something brittle cracking beneath the polish. He slammed his palm down on the counter with a sharp crack.

The sound shot through Aziraphale like an electric current. His whole body flinched; his heart lurched into a gallop. The solid wood beneath his hands reverberated.

“Careful,” Aziraphale said, before he could think better of it. His voice came out oddly calm, hovering somewhere above the panic. “That counter is older than you.”

Gabriel looked as if he’d been slapped. “I’m trying to help you,” he snapped. “You’re forty and playing at running a little bookshop. This—” He flung a hand at the shelves, at the dust motes in the air, at Crowley, at the sunflower in the window. “This isn’t a life.”

It was an old wound, that one. He’d heard versions of it since he’d first mentioned wanting his own shop. That it was a hobby, a diversion, a way to keep himself occupied until he came to his senses and did something proper.

He felt the old shame stir, like a sleeping animal prodded awake. His throat tightened. His chest hurt.

He thought of the box they’d just emptied. Of the careful labels on the shelves. Of customers whose names he knew and whose reading tastes he could predict. Of the old man last month who had cried, quietly, when Aziraphale returned his repaired family Bible and said, “You’ve kept it alive.”

“It is my life,” Aziraphale said. “You are not obliged to admire it. You are obliged, if you wish to be in my presence, not to sneer at it.”

“And if I don’t?” Gabriel challenged. “What then, Azzy? You’ll throw me out?”

The old fear rose, automatic. The script where he never followed through on a threat. Where he backed down, laughed, smoothed over.

He looked at the door.

He looked at Crowley, who hadn’t moved closer, hadn’t spoken, whose whole body nevertheless radiated a question: Do you want me to?

The thing in his chest—that new, thin thread of maybe—tightened into something like resolve.

“Yes,” he said. “If you cannot meet the simplest conditions for basic decency, you are not welcome.”

Silence fell. Not stunned. Weighted.

For the first time in his life, Gabriel seemed to take a step back, metaphorically if not physically. His eyes narrowed.

“This is his doing,” he said, jerking his chin at Crowley.

“It is mine,” Aziraphale said, again. Saying it the third time felt like turning a key. “Whether Crowley is here or not, these would be my terms. He has only… helped me find the words.”

Gabriel opened his mouth. Closed it. His jaw worked.

“You will regret this,” he said finally, but there was less conviction in it than there had been at the restaurant.

Aziraphale almost smiled. The absurdity of it struck him—the repetition, the script. “That is what you said last night,” he observed. “If you wish, I can write it down on a card for you and you can save your voice next time.”

Colour rose in Gabriel’s cheeks. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

“Possibly,” Aziraphale said. “But not this one.”

He meant it.

He waited for the familiar wash of guilt to follow such defiance. It didn’t arrive. Or rather, it arrived heavily laden and found no purchase.

Gabriel straightened. His smile snapped back into place, brittle as glass. “Mother will be in touch,” he said. “Don’t ignore her.”

The order in it—it was never a request—landed differently now. For once, the small, cowed part of Aziraphale that usually scrambled to obey did not immediately leap.

“We are finished for today,” he said. “Goodbye, Gabriel.”

He did not say I love you. He did not say give Mother my regards. He did not say I’m sorry.

Gabriel’s gaze slid past him once more, last throw of the dice, to Crowley.

“This won’t last,” he said. “You’ll tire of cleaning up his messes.”

Crowley, who had held his tongue through the entire exchange with an effort Aziraphale could practically feel in the air, smiled slowly. “I like cleaning,” he said. “And he’s not a mess.”

“Get out,” Aziraphale said.

The words came out low and very clear. There was nothing mild in them.

Gabriel opened his mouth, then shut it with a click of teeth. He turned on his heel and walked to the door without waiting for a civil dismissal. The bell chimed as he left, less sure of itself than it had been on his way in.

The door shut. The sound was ordinary. Nothing shattered. The world did not tilt off its axis.

The shop seemed to remember, all at once, how to be a room instead of a courtroom.

The light shifted. The dust motes resumed their slow dance. The clock ticked. Somewhere in the back, a floorboard creaked companionably as the building settled.

Aziraphale realised his hands hurt.

He looked down. He’d been pressing his palms into the counter hard enough to leave faint red marks. He loosened his fingers. His knees trembled.

“Don’t,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale turned, just enough to see him coming round from the armchair. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t apologise,” Crowley said. He came to stand beside him, close but not touching, setting his hip against the counter in a mirror of Gabriel’s earlier posture. The effect couldn’t have been more different. Where Gabriel had loomed, Crowley… leant. Occupied space without demanding anything.

“I wasn’t going to,” Aziraphale said, and was startled to find it was true.

Crowley’s eyes flicked over his face. “You are shaking,” he observed.

“I am aware,” Aziraphale said. Now that the immediate peril—the perceived peril, his brain corrected valiantly—had passed, the delayed tremors were catching up. His heart pounded. His legs felt like someone else’s. The inside of his elbows ached.

“Right,” Crowley said, brisk. “Kettle.”

“You just made tea,” Aziraphale said faintly.

“This one’s not for hydration,” Crowley said. “This one’s for ceremony. Stay there.”

He moved to the back room with that particular purposeful stride Aziraphale had learnt to trust. The clink of cups, the rush of water, the click of the kettle switch. Domestic noises, ordinary and miraculous.

Left alone for thirty seconds, Aziraphale discovered that his body had decided to shut down non-essential functions. His hearing dimmed at the edges, as if someone had turned the volume down on the world. His fingers tingled. He sat down, abruptly, on the stool behind the counter before his legs gave out entirely.

He stared at the floorboards. The knot in the wood in front of the counter looked like an eye. He focused on it. In. Out. In. Out.

Stop, said the old familiar voice in his head. Now you’ve done it. Now you’ve ruined everything. He’ll be furious. They’ll never—

“What do you need?” Crowley asked, quietly.

Aziraphale jerked. He hadn’t heard him come back. A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, placed carefully on the counter within his reach.

“I—” he began, and realised he didn’t know.

His brain supplied its usual unhelpful checklist: reassure them, smooth, mend, repair. Make yourself small enough that nobody can blame you.

But the shop was still standing. Gabriel had left. Crowley was here. There was nothing, in this moment, to mend.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly.

Crowley nodded, as if this were a perfectly acceptable answer. “Okay,” he said. “We can work with that.”

He set his own cup down, then leaned both elbows on the counter, putting his face roughly at Aziraphale’s level. His sunglasses were off, pushed up into his hair. His eyes were bright.

“You,” he said, enunciating each word as if delivering a scientific result, “were magnificent.”

Aziraphale made a sound that was meant to be a laugh and came out closer to a weak wheeze. “I felt like a man reciting a speech through a closed door.”

“That’s what courage feels like,” Crowley said. “All the best speeches are delivered through closed doors.”

“That seems… impractical,” Aziraphale said.

“You do realise,” Crowley said, ignoring that, “that you did that. I didn’t.”

“You were here,” Aziraphale said. “I could feel—”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “I was here. That’s all. You set the terms. You held them. You told your brother he wasn’t allowed to treat you like a misbehaving child in your own shop. That’s all you.”

His tone was so insistent, so utterly unwilling to let Aziraphale hand him the credit, that something in Aziraphale’s chest fluttered.

“I almost offered him tea,” he said, because his mind, awash in adrenaline, had decided to fixate on that particular failing.

“And then you didn’t,” Crowley pointed out. “Growth.”

“He hit the counter,” Aziraphale said.

“I saw,” Crowley said. “You defended the counter. Also growth.”

“It is a good counter,” Aziraphale muttered.

“It is,” Crowley agreed gravely. “Better than him.”

“Don’t be unkind,” Aziraphale said automatically, then blinked. “No. Actually. It is.”

Crowley’s grin flashed, quick and sharp. “See? Progress already.”

Aziraphale stared at his tea. The steam had begun to thin, but it still curled up in faint, reassuring ribbons. He wrapped his fingers around the cup. They didn’t feel entirely like his.

“I think,” he said, slowly, “you might have known he would come.”

Crowley didn’t deny it. He shrugged one shoulder. “Men like that don’t leave well enough alone,” he said. “I thought he might. Gave it a sixty percent chance.”

“Sixty?”

“Plus or minus ten,” Crowley said. “Depending on how much Mother dramatized.”

Aziraphale huffed. It wasn’t quite a laugh. Close enough. “And you let me—”

“Decide?” Crowley supplied. “Yeah.”

“You could have…” Aziraphale gestured vaguely towards the door. “Intercepted.”

“I could have,” Crowley agreed. “Would’ve loved to. Trust me. The fantasy of opening the door, seeing his smug face and just—” He made a small flicking motion with his fingers, as if discarding something unpleasant. “Very tempting.”

“So why didn’t you?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley’s gaze softened. “Because it’s your door,” he said. “And your brother. And your rules. I can back you. I can tell you I’ll be right here while you do it. I can step in if he gets… any closer than he did. But I can’t set your boundaries for you. That’s not how it works.”

Aziraphale took that in. It was both entirely reasonable and deeply unfair. He would have liked to outsource the entire business of boundary-setting to someone braver and less easily rattled.

But then… he would not be sitting here now, heart racing, hands shaking—and yet, under it all, feeling something like pride.

“Muriel would be… impressed,” he ventured.

Crowley snorted. “Muriel will probably knit you a medal,” he said. “Then send me seventeen texts reminding me that ‘supporting your partner in setting boundaries is sexy, Anthony, don’t mess it up.’”

“I’m quite sure Muriel doesn’t say sexy,” Aziraphale objected weakly.

“They do when they’re quoting Anathema,” Crowley said.

“That,” Aziraphale said, “is a terrifying collaboration.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said fondly. “It’s great.”

He let the quiet settle again. Not pressing. Not prodding. Just… present.

After a minute, Aziraphale’s hands stopped trembling enough that he trusted them not to spill his tea. He took a cautious sip. The heat anchored him. The world, abused as it had been by his autonomic nervous system, began to reassert normal geometry.

“I said,” he began, and then stopped, embarrassed.

“You said many things,” Crowley said. “Most of them excellent. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“I said…” Aziraphale’s cheeks heated. “I said… ‘the person I love.’”

Crowley’s breath caught, audibly.

“You did,” he said, very quietly.

“I didn’t mean to,” Aziraphale rushed on. “Not—that is, I meant it, I just didn’t mean to say it like that, right then, and I wasn’t—”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said.

He shut up.

Crowley reached out, slowly, and laid his hand over Aziraphale’s on the counter. Just that. No squeeze. No theatrics. Warm, solid weight.

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, without hesitation.

His anxiety, for once, didn’t immediately send up a contradictory chorus. There it was, under all the noise, a clear, bright little signal. He loved Crowley. Had for some time. The word had just been waiting for a moment to slip free.

“Then,” Crowley said, and his smile was the kind that made Aziraphale’s sternum ache, “good. I liked hearing it.”

“You didn’t… look at me,” Aziraphale blurted. “When I said it.”

“If I’d looked at you,” Crowley said, “I’d have kissed you. And I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing us make a scene.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Right.”

He squeezed Crowley’s hand, once, before letting go. “We are… quite good at scenes.”

“We’re very dramatic people,” Crowley agreed. “Trauma will do that.”

Aziraphale’s laugh, this time, was real. Small. But real.

His body still felt shaky. His brain was still cataloguing the conversation for later replay. But there, cutting across the old tracks, were new marks: I said no. I set terms. I told him to leave. He left.

“You may leave any room,” he murmured, half to himself.

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Even when your brother’s in it.”

Aziraphale let out a slow breath. The air went all the way down. Stayed.

He picked up his tea again. His hand was steady.

Outside, the street carried on. Inside, the shop held them. The sunflower in the window angled its face towards the grey sky as if there were plenty of light to be had.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, Aziraphale thought: perhaps the next time Gabriel knocked, he would not open the door. And that thought… did not send him spiralling.

Instead, he turned his attention back to his own space, his own rules, and the man beside him who had watched him enforce them and not tried, even once, to take the task out of his hands.

The shop always felt different after a storm.

Not physically, of course—the dust motes still drifted lazily through the sunlight, the smell of paper and old glue still lived in the floorboards, the overhead light still flickered once every seventeen minutes because he had never managed to persuade an electrician to understand the wiring. But something in the air changed after a confrontation of that magnitude. It was as if the walls themselves had absorbed the vibration and were now humming faintly with the effort of settling down.

Aziraphale felt the same way.

Like a bell that had been struck hard.

Still ringing.

Still vibrating.

Still trying to return to stillness.

Crowley hadn’t left his side since Gabriel stormed out. Not in a smothering way—never that. Crowley existed nearby the way a lighthouse existed near a rocky coast: not stopping ships from sailing, merely shining enough light that you didn’t crash into anything while your hands still shook.

He was pretending, at present, to be browsing the Classics section.

Pretending because he’d been staring at the same battered copy of Great Expectations for approximately fourteen minutes.

Aziraphale sat behind the counter, tea cup in his hands, steam rising faintly. He’d drunk perhaps half of it; he couldn’t quite remember lowering the cup. His nerves were still shuddering lightly, like a carriage that had gone over cobblestones too quickly.

His thoughts—when they cohered enough to be thoughts at all—moved strangely. They either raced too fast to catch or drifted too slow to grasp.

He was aware, dimly, that this was the kind of neurological crash. He felt like all the adrenaline left and his brain went ‘oh’ and dropped him on the floor emotionally. He was sure though, it was not weakness; just a system reboot.

But Crowley was here.

That alone made the world feel less like a tilting room and more like a recognisable map.

He sipped his tea. His hands trembled only slightly.

Crowley glanced over the top of Great Expectations.

“You breathing?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said.

Another glance. “On purpose?”

“…mostly.”

Crowley returned the book to the shelf and crossed the short distance between them, leaning his hip against the counter—far enough away to give Aziraphale space, close enough that Aziraphale’s body recognised safety just from the proximity.

“That was intense,” Crowley said, very mildly, as if talking about an unexpectedly dramatic weather forecast.

“Was it?” Aziraphale said faintly.

Crowley snorted. “Angel, the man tried to emotionally colonise your shop like it was a hostile takeover.”

“He does that,” Aziraphale admitted.

“He won’t,” Crowley corrected, “if you make today the new rule.”

Aziraphale blinked. His brain tried to latch onto the concept of new rule. Rules were safe. Rules were frameworks. His thoughts sifted through the card in his pocket like a prayer bead.

You may leave any room.

You will use my name.

No commentary on bodies.

Tea before hard talks.

“And what rule is this one?” Aziraphale asked quietly.

Crowley tilted his head, eyes soft behind his sunglasses.

“That he doesn’t get to walk into your world and rewrite it because he’s louder.”

Aziraphale’s stomach did something complicated. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Oh.”

Aziraphale toyed with the handle of his mug. The last of the steam curled up and faded. His heart finally began to slow its pace, though each beat still felt… large. Heavy. Important.

His voice came out small: “I don’t know what I’m meant to do now.”

Crowley didn’t scoff. Didn’t soothe. Didn’t offer a five-step plan as some people would.

He simply said, “Anything you bloody like.”

Aziraphale’s breath hitched.

He hadn’t realised how much he’d been waiting for someone—anyone—to give him permission to pick the next step intentionally, not reactively.

“Do you…” He swallowed. “Do you think I was cruel?”

Crowley blinked. “Cruel?”

“I told him to leave,” Aziraphale whispered. “I said terribly sharp things. I didn’t even offer him tea.”

“You set boundaries,” Crowley said. “That’s not cruelty. That’s self-respect.”

“People like me aren’t supposed to be sharp,” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley’s expression softened. “People like you get to exist however you exist. And you were sharp and kind. You didn’t lose your temper. You didn’t insult him. You didn’t even mention half the things he deserved to hear.”

Aziraphale huffed. “You make me sound like some sort of stoic hero.”

“You are,” Crowley said, utterly sincere.

Aziraphale’s throat closed.

He set the cup down because his hand was shaking again.

Crowley reached out—slowly, visibly—and placed a single fingertip on the back of Aziraphale’s hand. Not a grab. Not a hold. A point of contact Aziraphale could accept or withdraw from with no awkwardness.

Aziraphale didn’t pull away.

Crowley’s touch strengthened slightly, his hand covering Aziraphale’s.

“You don’t have to decide anything today,” Crowley murmured. “Not about him. Not about them. Not about anything heavy.”

Aziraphale nodded, swallowing hard.

“Today,” Crowley said, “is about coming back into your body.”

Aziraphale blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Crowley said, “that you’ve been in emergency mode since last night. Your nerves are fried. Your brain’s exhausted. Your body’s confused. So today, you do things that tell your system: it’s over. You’re safe. You survived.”

Aziraphale considered that.

It felt… possible.

“What sorts of things?” he asked carefully.

Crowley smiled. “Small ones. Soft ones. Familiar ones.”

Aziraphale tried to think of what those might be.

“Cataloguing?” he suggested.

“Sure,” Crowley said. “If the brain wants. But also—eating something warm. Sitting somewhere comfortable. Letting yourself be quiet without punishing yourself for it.”

Aziraphale exhaled shakily. “That sounds like… being a person.”

“You are a person,” Crowley pointed out.

Aziraphale made an incredulous noise.

Crowley squeezed his hand.

“Fine,” Crowley said. “You’re my person. Does that make it easier?”

Aziraphale’s eyes stung alarmingly.

He blinked. Hard.

“Possibly.”

They sat in that quiet comfort for a few moments.

Then—because the universe has a sense of humour—the bell above the door chimed again.

Aziraphale’s entire body snapped to attention.

Not again.

Not—please, not again.

He inhaled sharply, bracing for the precise scent of Gabriel’s aftershave—

—but instead, a different voice burst in:

“GOOD AFTERNOON AZIRAPHA—oh dear oh no oh I’ll fix my volume settings—sorry!”

Aziraphale sagged in overwhelming relief.

“Muriel,” Crowley whispered.

Muriel (they/them), wrapped in a rather impressive knitted scarf and a coat that might once have been beige but now read more as optimistic mushroom colour, hurried inside like a gust of apologetic wind.

Behind them, juggling a stack of folders, was Dr. Anathema Device.

The cavalry, apparently, had arrived.

Muriel zeroed in on Aziraphale instantly.

“Oh dear,” they said, eyes widening. “Oh dear. You look—no, wait, don’t tell me, I mustn’t say things about appearances anymore—Crowley told me—right—okay—hello!”

Aziraphale let out an unsteady laugh. “Hello, Muriel.”

Anathema tucked her folders under one arm and raised an eyebrow at Crowley. “I had a sense our presence was needed.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “The cards or some obscure prophecy?”

“Yes,” Anathema said. “Both in this case.”

Muriel flapped their hands. “I was heading this direction and I thought—oh crumbs—oh no—look at you, brother—you’re alive!”

Aziraphale blinked. “That would have been a dramatic outcome otherwise.”

Muriel beamed. “But you are both alive, yes? I judged correctly?”

“I am,” Aziraphale confirmed. “Mostly.”

“That’s good enough,” Anathema said, crossing to him and giving him a brief, expert scan, as if checking for fractures. “Crowley said you handled the family dinner?”

Crowley snorted lightly. “He didn’t just handle it. He chaired the bloody meeting.”

Aziraphale flushed.

Muriel, however, lit up. “You set a boundary?”

“I… several, actually.”

Muriel made a noise so triumphant it sounded like a kettle about to boil. “YES! YES, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE’D HOPED—OH I’M SO PROUD—OH WAIT I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OVERWHELMING—HANG ON—”

They began fanning themselves with their scarf.

Anathema caught it mid-flutter. “Breathe, Muriel.”

“I AM BREATHING,” Muriel said. “WITH EXTRA ENTHUSIASM.”

Aziraphale felt something warm move in his chest—something not unlike gratitude, or possibly tenderness, or possibly the sudden realisation that he had, somewhere along the way, acquired a rather peculiar little support team.

Anathema set her folders down on a nearby table and leaned against a shelf.

“Do you want,” she said, “the affirming speech, the practical plan, or the sarcastic roast of your brother? I have all three prepared.”

Aziraphale blinked. “You prepared—?”

Crowley groaned. “She’s been waiting for an excuse to roast him for weeks.” He looked away shyly. “Might‘ve complained regularly”, he confessed sullenly.

Anathema smiled angelically. “I am a scientist. I observe patterns. And Gabriel is a remarkably consistent pattern of being a prick.”

Muriel gasped. “Anathema! Language!”

Anathema shrugged. “Accurate language is part of the scientific process.”

Aziraphale covered his mouth to hide a laugh. “I… don’t know what I need,” he admitted.

Muriel, who had by now managed to coil their scarf around themselves in a nervous knot, stepped forward with surprising firmness.

“That’s fine. We’ll help you figure out what shape your brain is.”

“My… shape?” Aziraphale echoed.

Muriel nodded vigorously. “Everyone has a shape after a Difficult Thing. Sometimes jelly-shape. Sometimes twig-shape. Sometimes angry hedgehog-shape. We just need to know.”

Crowley murmured to Aziraphale: “You’re hearing the wisdom of the ages here.”

Aziraphale huffed, but it came out fond. He considered the idea and could find merit in it. Some days did feel like shapes.

Muriel peered at him. “What shape are you?”

“I don’t—” Aziraphale paused. Felt into his own body. Noticed the tremor in his hands, the tightness in his chest, the odd buoyancy beneath the exhaustion. “I think I’m… a bit like unset custard.”

Crowley choked on air.

Muriel clapped their hands in delight. “OH THAT’S AN EXCELLENT SHAPE. VERY ACCURATE. VERY DESCRIPTIVE.”

Anathema nodded approvingly. “Good imagery. Now we can build a plan.”

Aziraphale blinked. “A plan for what?”

“Stabilising the custard,” Anathema said matter-of-factly.

Crowley made a sound suspiciously like a laugh being strangled.

Aziraphale sighed. “Oh heavens.”

Muriel perched on the edge of a chair. “We’ll keep you company while your brain recalibrates. Safety in numbers. That sort of thing.”

“That’s not necessary,” Aziraphale began automatically.

Three pairs of eyes looked at him.

Crowley’s: gentle but unyielding.

Muriel’s: earnest with concern.

Anathema’s: dry and knowing.

Aziraphale wilted. “It might be… appreciated.”

“Excellent,” Muriel declared. “We’ll all sit in a circle!”

“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley patted Muriel’s arm. “Maybe not a circle. Maybe just… existing in proximity.”

“Yes! Proximity!” Muriel agreed. “Side-by-side friendship!”

Anathema sighed but pulled up a chair by the Classics section. “Fine. Side-by-side it is.”

Aziraphale looked between them.

His strange little support squad.

Muriel, fidgeting earnestly with the tassels of their scarf, radiating determination like a lantern.

Anathema, already opening one of her folders and pretending not to read notes titled THINGS I WILL SAY TO GABRIEL IF GIVEN EVEN ONE MINUTE UNSUPERVISED.

Crowley, leaning against the counter, watching Aziraphale with a softness so fierce it made Aziraphale’s breath catch.

A family—a real family, he thought suddenly—had gathered.

Without being asked.

Without demanding anything.

Without trying to shape him into something easier.

Just… arriving. Staying. Being.

The panic in his chest softened.

The tightness in his throat eased.

The tea cup stopped trembling in his hand.

Crowley nudged his elbow. “Told you you weren’t alone.”

Aziraphale swallowed. Hard.

“I know,” he whispered.

Muriel began humming something bright and off-key.

Anathema pulled out a notebook. “Right. Custard Protocol, Step One: grounding.”

Crowley groaned. “Oh no. Don’t give them a protocol. They’ll laminate it.”

“I will,” Muriel confirmed.

Aziraphale laughed.

Not a shy laugh. Not a startled one.

A real one.

And that—Crowley’s eyes said without saying—was the whole point.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale’s laughter didn’t vanish the moment it arrived.

That alone felt noteworthy.

Usually, laughter—real laughter, not the polite exhalation he could perform on command—was a spark that went out as soon as it was seen. A brief flare, then immediate self-consciousness, then the familiar sweep of his mind trying to explain why it had happened and whether it had been appropriate.

This one lingered.

It echoed off the shelves in a soft, warm way and left a faint buoyancy behind it, as if the air had shifted a fraction closer to breathable.

Crowley looked at him like he’d done something miraculous.

Muriel looked at him like he’d done something historically significant.

Anathema, who had been pretending to read the back cover of something in Classics, made a small satisfied sound and closed her notebook with a snap that suggested fine, that’s that sorted.

“Right,” she said briskly. “I’m going to do the revolutionary thing and leave you two alone before I start taking notes on your emotional responses like a Victorian doctor. Muriel, you coming?”

Muriel blinked, visibly torn between their desire to be Helpful and their fear of being Overwhelming. Their hands fluttered once, then they caught themselves and clasped them behind their back with intense self-control.

“I can— I can stay in proximity,” they offered. “But like… unobtrusive proximity. Like a… like a potted plant.”

Crowley snorted. “You’d be the loudest potted plant on earth.”

Muriel’s face brightened. “Yes! But I can try to be a fern.”

“Muriel,” Anathema said, tone dry but not unkind, “you don’t need to earn your place in the room by pretending to photosynthesise.”

Muriel looked crestfallen for half a second, then nodded solemnly as if receiving a sacred instruction. “Okay. No earning. Just… existing.”

“Exactly,” Anathema said. She picked up her folders again, tucking them under her arm with the ease of someone who could carry an unreasonable amount of paper without looking encumbered. “I’ll be at Nina’s for ten minutes. Coffee. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened automatically—you don’t have to—thank you—sorry——and then he stopped.

He felt the reflex rise like a wave and watched it hesitate, confused, like it had hit a newly installed barrier.

He could almost hear Crowley’s earlier voice: Don’t apologise.

So instead he said, carefully, “Thank you. For coming.”

Anathema’s expression softened in a way that made her look briefly younger. “Anytime,” she said. Then, as if to prevent the moment becoming too tender, she added, “And if Gabriel returns, I’ll hit him with a chair. Metaphorically. Possibly literally.”

“Anathema!” Muriel gasped, scandalised out of habit.

Anathema raised an eyebrow. “I said possibly.”

Muriel looked at Aziraphale. “Would you like a fern,” they asked earnestly, “as a deterrent?”

“I… think we’re all right,” Aziraphale said, voice still a little shaky.

Muriel nodded very seriously, as if accepting an assignment. “Okay. I will be a fern off-site.” They turned to Crowley. “Brother, if he starts being too polite again, you must apply additional tea.”

Crowley made a face. “You think I won’t?”

Muriel beamed, delighted, and then—miraculously—actually moved toward the door, scarf trailing behind them like a banner. At the threshold they paused, turned back, and said with sudden, fierce sincerity, “You were very brave.”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened.

Before he could find an appropriate response, Muriel slipped out, the bell chiming in its gentle three-note way.

The shop settled in their wake.

Anathema lingered a second longer, gaze flicking between Aziraphale and Crowley as if confirming that the structure would hold once she was no longer physically present to prop it up.

“Don’t play martyr,” she told Crowley, because of course she did.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “I never—”

“Yes, you do,” Anathema said flatly. “And don’t let him think he has to perform ‘being fine’ for you.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched, then he sobered. “I won’t.”

Anathema’s eyes shifted to Aziraphale. “And you,” she said, tone gentler now, “don’t let yourself believe that needing support means you’ve failed.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “I—”

She held up a hand, forestalling whatever apology or deflection he was about to offer. “No speech required,” she said. “Just… file it away. Consider it a hypothesis.”

Then she was gone too, door closing softly behind her.

The bell’s last note faded.

Silence returned, but it was a different sort of silence now—not the brittle pause after danger, but the hush of a room that had witnessed something and decided, collectively, not to make a fuss about it.

Aziraphale realised he was still holding his tea.

The cup was warm against his hands. The liquid inside had cooled slightly. He hadn’t drunk any since Muriel and Anathema arrived.

His fingers trembled faintly around the handle.

Crowley leaned against the counter, near enough that Aziraphale could see the movement of his chest when he breathed. He didn’t speak for a moment. He didn’t rush in with reassurance or jokes or plans.

He waited.

Aziraphale tried to do the same.

His body, however, had other ideas.

Now that Gabriel was gone, now that the shop was no longer full of the sharp scent of expensive aftershave and old menace, the adrenaline that had kept Aziraphale upright began to drain away, leaving something heavy and shaky behind. His muscles ached as if he’d run miles. His scalp prickled. His jaw hurt from clenching.

He set the teacup down very carefully, because he suddenly didn’t trust his hands not to drop it.

Crowley’s gaze tracked the movement. His face remained composed, but there was a tension around his mouth that Aziraphale had learnt to read: holding steady so you don’t have to.

“Okay,” Crowley said at last, voice quiet. “How’s the custard?”

Aziraphale huffed a laugh that sounded more like a broken exhale. “Still unset.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Thought so.”

Aziraphale stared at the counter. The wood grain ran in familiar lines. There was a small nick near the edge where a customer had once dropped a heavy hardback and apologised profusely for half an hour. Aziraphale had told him it was fine, that the counter had survived worse, and meant it.

He thought of Gabriel’s palm striking the wood. The way his body had flinched like it expected impact next.

The memory made his stomach lurch.

Crowley shifted slightly—no sudden movements, just a subtle redistribution of weight. “Do you want to sit?” he asked.

Aziraphale blinked. “I… am sitting.”

Crowley’s mouth tilted. “Properly,” he clarified. “Not perched like you’re about to bolt.”

Aziraphale looked down and realised he was indeed perched on the stool behind the counter, spine rigid, feet braced as if for flight. His thighs were tense enough to ache.

He tried to let them soften.

It was not as simple as deciding to soften. His body treated the instruction like a foreign language.

“I don’t know how,” he admitted, voice low.

Crowley’s expression changed—softened, sharpened, both at once. Something protective flickered there, then settled.

“Right,” he said, practical. “Feet.”

Aziraphale frowned, confused. “Feet?”

“Feet on the floor,” Crowley said. “Both. Flat, if you can. Not tiptoes. Not braced like you’re about to sprint.”

Aziraphale looked down again. His heels were slightly raised. He lowered them carefully until the soles of his shoes met the floorboards fully.

The contact felt oddly significant, like placing a book back on a shelf and feeling it click into the right space.

Crowley nodded, as if he’d just witnessed a small but important victory. “Good. Now shoulders.”

Aziraphale’s shoulders were up around his ears. He hadn’t noticed.

He tried to drop them. They moved perhaps a millimetre and then bounced back up, as if elastic.

Crowley watched him struggle and didn’t comment. He simply said, “Try rolling them. Like this.”

He rolled his own shoulders slowly, deliberately, exaggerated enough that Aziraphale could mimic it. It looked faintly ridiculous on a man who was built like a threat, but Crowley did not care about looking ridiculous if it made something easier for Aziraphale.

Aziraphale tried. His shoulders creaked. The muscles protested. But on the second roll something loosened fractionally, and a small shiver ran through his arms like a sigh escaping.

“There,” Crowley said softly. “That.”

Aziraphale’s breath hitched. He hadn’t realised he’d been holding it again.

Crowley’s voice gentled further. “In,” he said. “And out.”

Aziraphale obeyed, because following instructions was easier than navigating his own internal landscape at the moment. He inhaled, slow. Held. Exhaled.

The shop remained the shop.

No one burst in.

Nothing shattered.

The world did not demand he perform anything else.

Aziraphale blinked hard. His eyes stung suddenly, without warning.

Crowley noticed, of course. He always noticed.

“You did good,” he said again, quietly, as if saying it often enough might lodge it somewhere permanent.

Aziraphale’s mouth wobbled. “I told him to leave,” he said, as if he needed to state the fact out loud to believe it.

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “You did.”

“And he… left.”

“Mm-hm.”

Aziraphale stared ahead. The “Local Interest” shelf sagged, as it always did. The sunflower stood in the window like an absurd, cheerful sentinel. Somewhere upstairs the pipes clicked faintly. The street outside made its normal noises—footsteps, distant traffic, Maggie’s laugh carrying from her shop.

All ordinary.

All unchanged.

Except Aziraphale felt as if he’d moved one of the load-bearing walls inside his own life and discovered the building still stood.

“I thought—” he began, then stopped.

Crowley waited.

“I thought,” Aziraphale said, voice thick, “that if I did that, I would… immediately feel guilty.”

Crowley’s eyebrows lifted. “And?”

Aziraphale swallowed. “I do. A bit. But it’s… not the only thing.”

“Good,” Crowley said, as if that were the correct answer on a test.

Aziraphale’s throat tightened again. He pressed his fingertips to the rim of his teacup, grounding himself in the cool ceramic.

“I can’t tell if I’m going to cry,” he admitted.

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “That’s allowed.”

“I know it’s allowed,” Aziraphale said, irritated by his own fragility. “I just— I don’t like not knowing which way my body is going to go.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, and there was a roughness in the word, an understanding that didn’t come from theory. “Uncertainty’s a bastard.”

Aziraphale let out a shaky breath. The urge to apologise rose again—sorry for being like this, sorry for taking up space, sorry for needing you——and he swallowed it down.

Crowley’s gaze slid over his face, reading tension the way he read plant leaves for signs of stress.

“Do you want me to touch you?” he asked simply.

The directness of it made Aziraphale’s brain stutter. Not in a bad way—more like someone had turned off the background noise long enough for him to hear a single clear note.

Touch. Yes or no.

No guessing. No obligation. No silent test.

Aziraphale considered his body. His skin felt too tight. His nerves felt oversensitised, as if the world was turned up too loud.

But Crowley’s hand had been on his earlier, warm on his knuckles, and it had helped. Crowley’s touch rarely startled him; Crowley always seemed to broadcast his intention before he moved, like giving Aziraphale’s system time to prepare.

“I think,” Aziraphale said slowly, “hand is all right.”

Crowley nodded. “Hand,” he echoed, and reached out slowly, deliberately, letting Aziraphale see the motion. His hand came to rest on the counter, palm up, an offering rather than an imposition.

Aziraphale looked at it for half a second, then placed his own hand into it.

Crowley’s fingers closed gently around his. Not tight. Not possessive. Just… there.

Aziraphale’s shoulders dropped another fraction. His breath went a little deeper.

His eyes stung more fiercely now, tears gathering without falling.

Crowley didn’t say don’t cry. He didn’t say it’s okay. He didn’t do that thing people sometimes did where they rushed to fix the feeling so they wouldn’t have to witness it.

He just held Aziraphale’s hand and existed beside him.

Aziraphale stared at their joined hands as if it was the most astonishing thing in the world: that he could be held without being restrained; that he could be supported without being managed.

After a minute, he said, very quietly, “He called me Azzy.”

Crowley’s grip tightened by the smallest increment. “Yeah.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” Aziraphale whispered. “It’s just—”

“It matters,” Crowley said, voice gentle but firm. “It’s not ‘just.’ It’s a lever he uses.”

Aziraphale’s throat closed. “I told him not to,” he said. “I told him— I said—”

“You did,” Crowley confirmed. “You said your name.”

Aziraphale’s eyes blurred. A tear slipped free and ran down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away immediately, because moving felt like too much.

Crowley’s thumb brushed lightly over the back of his hand—one small stroke, a question as much as a comfort.

Aziraphale didn’t pull away.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” he admitted.

Crowley’s mouth softened. “Yeah, you did.”

Aziraphale blinked at him through the blur. “I did not.”

“You did,” Crowley insisted, quiet certainty. “You didn’t know you knew, maybe. But you knew. It was there.”

Aziraphale let out a shaky laugh that turned into something dangerously close to a sob. He covered his mouth with his free hand, mortified.

Crowley leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Angel. Don’t. No shame. Not here.”

The words landed with surprising force.

Not here.

A boundary. A rule. A new category.

Aziraphale’s chest shook once, twice. A few tears fell. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the wave receded, leaving him trembling but oddly lighter.

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand and stared at Crowley as if he’d never seen him before.

“You’re very good at this,” Aziraphale said hoarsely.

Crowley frowned. “At what?”

“At… being here,” Aziraphale said. “In a way that doesn’t—” He gestured vaguely, because he didn’t have the words. “You don’t crowd me.”

Crowley’s expression shifted, something like relief passing over his face. “Good,” he said. “Because I’m trying really hard not to.”

“I can tell,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley huffed a humourless laugh. “Yeah, well. I’ve had practice,” he said lightly, but there was a shadow under the joke.

Aziraphale’s mind snagged on it. Practice. At not crowding. At being careful. At making himself useful without becoming overwhelming.

He thought of Crowley’s childhood, the fragments he knew. The way Crowley could vanish into the edges of a room like smoke when things got too loud. The way he watched doors and exits without seeming to.

Aziraphale’s guilt tried to rise again—I dragged him into my family, I made him do this, I hurt him——but Crowley’s hand holding his anchored him.

Not yours to carry alone, the pressure seemed to say.

Aziraphale swallowed.

“Do you want tea?” he asked abruptly, because tea was something he understood.

Crowley’s mouth twitched. “We’ve had,” he said, “enough tea to flood a small county.”

“Do you want different tea?” Aziraphale persisted, because choosing tea was a decision and decisions were now, apparently, something he was practicing.

Crowley stared at him for a moment, then his expression softened into something almost fond. “Angel,” he said, “do you want different tea?”

Aziraphale paused.

He checked in with his body the way Crowley had taught him: feet, breath, shoulders. Then the internal landscape.

Warm. Predictable. Something with a flavour he associated with safety.

“Yes,” he said, surprising himself. “Yes, I think I would like—” He hesitated, then committed. “Earl Grey. Properly made. With the little strainer. Not a bag.”

Crowley’s grin flashed, quick and genuine. “Right,” he said. “Ceremonial tea. I can do ceremonial.”

He started to move, then stopped. “Do you want me to go make it, or do you want to make it? No wrong answer.”

Aziraphale blinked. The choice felt oddly intimate.

Making tea was one of his rituals. One of his stabilising systems. But right now, his arms still trembled faintly, and the idea of boiling water felt vaguely perilous.

“I… would like you to,” he said, and felt something in his chest unclench at the admission.

Crowley nodded. No judgment. No teasing.

“Alright,” he said. “Stay there. Keep breathing on purpose.”

“I’m quite certain I can breathe without supervision,” Aziraphale muttered.

Crowley paused, hand on the kettle switch. “Can you?” he asked, deadpan.

Aziraphale scowled. “Yes.”

“Prove it.”

Aziraphale inhaled dramatically through his nose and exhaled with equal drama.

Crowley made a satisfied noise. “Excellent,” he said. “Medical marvel.”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitched despite himself.

Crowley disappeared into the back room.

The familiar sounds followed: cupboard doors, the clink of a teapot, the soft rush of water. Domestic noises that made the world feel like it had edges again.

Aziraphale sat on the stool, hand still faintly buzzing from where Crowley had held it. Without that contact, the air felt slightly colder.

He realised, with some surprise, that he missed it immediately.

His brain, ever eager to catalogue, offered the observation in a neat label: Attachment response.

He did not like how clinical that sounded. He also didn’t dislike the fact itself.

He turned his head and looked around his shop.

His shelves. His categories. His systems.

The flattened cardboard box from earlier still lay in the back room, he knew. The new arrivals were shelved. The prayer book sat in Devotional Texts near the back.

He thought, briefly, of how he’d spoken to Gabriel: These are my terms.

He’d said it. He’d meant it. And the world had not punished him immediately for it.

The guilt would come later; he knew that. It always did, trailing behind like an old creditor. But it would arrive in a different environment now—one where Crowley existed, where Muriel existed, where Anathema existed. Where “no” was a word he’d already used and survived.

A small tremor ran through him at the thought.

Therapy, Anathema had said, in so many words—a hypothesis.

Aziraphale had never liked the idea of therapy.

Not because he thought it was shameful. He didn’t, not really. He’d recommended it to customers sometimes, in his own careful way, when they came in looking for grief books or divorce memoirs or “something that will help me be less… me.”

But imagining himself in a room with a stranger whose job it was to look at him—properly look, past his polite scripts and his curated tidiness—made his skin prickle.

He wasn’t sure he could bear someone observing him with that kind of focused attention.

He wasn’t sure he could bear someone trying to change him.

Yet Crowley had just spent the last hour looking at him with focused attention and it hadn’t felt like being dismantled. It had felt like being held.

Maybe, Aziraphale thought cautiously, he’d been imagining the wrong kind of looking.

Crowley emerged with the teapot.

He carried it as if it contained something precious and volatile. Which, in fairness, it did.

“Right,” he announced, setting it down. “Earl Grey. Loose leaf. Strainer. Ceremony. I even warmed the pot first like you do.”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened again. “You noticed that?”

Crowley glanced at him over the rim of the pot. “Angel,” he said, as if it were obvious, “I notice everything you do.”

Aziraphale flushed, startled by the intimacy of the statement.

Crowley, mercifully, did not linger on it. He poured the tea with careful precision, as if following a ritual text. He set the cup down in front of Aziraphale and then, instead of resuming his previous lean against the counter, he hesitated.

“Okay,” he said. “Now that you’ve got tea… what next?”

Aziraphale blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

Crowley gestured vaguely around the shop, as if indicating the whole world. “Now. After. The bit where your brother tries to ruin your day and you don’t let him. What do you want to do?”

The question made Aziraphale’s mind go blank.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have things to do. He had invoices. Shelves. The sagging Local Interest section. The flickering light. He could always find a task, an obligation, a motion to perform.

But what did he want to do?

He stared at the tea, steam curling up in delicate threads. He inhaled the scent—bergamot, warmth—and felt his nervous system respond with faint recognition.

“I don’t know,” he admitted again.

Crowley nodded, as if that were acceptable data. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s make it smaller.”

Aziraphale looked up.

Crowley’s voice gentled. “Do you want to stay in the shop, or do you want to go upstairs?”

Aziraphale’s chest tightened. Upstairs meant his flat. Quiet. His bed. Familiar cushions. Less public.

But the shop was his anchor too—his systems, his shelves. Leaving it right now felt oddly like abandoning a battlefield, even though the battle was over.

“I…” He hesitated. “Stay. For now. I think.”

Crowley nodded again. “Okay. Do you want the door locked or open?”

Aziraphale considered. The bell chiming again made his stomach flip. But locking the door felt dramatic, like admitting he’d been shaken. Like making it real.

Crowley watched him think, patient.

Aziraphale swallowed. “Half,” he said weakly.

Crowley’s mouth twitched. “Half?”

Aziraphale gestured vaguely. “Like… open, but… protected.”

Crowley’s eyes softened. “Right,” he said. “We can do ‘open but protected.’”

He crossed to the front door and flipped the sign from OPEN to BACK IN FIVE MINUTES.

Aziraphale blinked. The simplicity of it was almost insulting.

Crowley returned and leaned on the counter again. “There,” he said. “Open later. Protected now. Five minutes. We can renew it if you need.”

Aziraphale stared at him, something warm in his chest that might have been gratitude or might have been the faint beginnings of trust settling into muscle.

“You’re… very good at making room,” he said softly.

Crowley’s jaw tightened. “Had to learn,” he said, and then, as if rejecting the weight of that confession, he added briskly, “Drink your tea.”

Aziraphale obeyed. The warmth slid down his throat, easing something tight inside him.

Crowley watched him for a moment, then asked, quieter, “Can I ask you something?”

Aziraphale’s stomach fluttered. “Yes.”

Crowley’s fingers tapped once against the countertop, a small sign of his own nervous energy. “When you said—” He paused. Cleared his throat. “When you said ‘the person I love.’”

Aziraphale’s face went hot immediately. “Oh.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked, but his eyes were serious. “Yeah. That.”

Aziraphale stared at his tea as if it might provide an instruction manual.

He had said it.

He had meant it.

But saying it again—here, in the quiet aftermath, without Gabriel as a target—felt like stepping onto a different kind of ledge. More exposed. More real.

Crowley waited. No pressure. No pushing. Just… present.

Aziraphale set the cup down carefully. His hands were steadier now.

He looked at Crowley.

Properly looked.

Crowley’s sunglasses were still pushed up into his hair, making him look oddly vulnerable. His eyes were bright and tired. There was a faint tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there earlier, as if he’d been holding himself in check for a long time and was only now allowing himself to feel it.

Aziraphale swallowed.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “That is… you.”

Crowley’s breath caught, a sharp, involuntary sound.

Aziraphale’s chest tightened in response, as if their bodies were still learning to synchronise.

“I… know,” Aziraphale went on, voice trembling slightly, “that I said it in the middle of… all that. And I didn’t ask if it was all right to—” He frowned. The concept of asking permission to say you loved someone seemed absurd and yet, in his life, permission had always been a central currency. “But I do. Love you. And I wanted you to know.”

Crowley stared at him for a moment like he’d forgotten how to speak.

Then he exhaled, long and shaky, and said, very softly, “Thank you.”

Aziraphale blinked. That was not what he’d expected.

“You’re… welcome,” he said uncertainly.

Crowley’s mouth twisted. “No,” he said. “I mean—” He ran a hand through his hair, dislodging his sunglasses slightly. “You have no idea what it does to me, hearing you say it like that. Like it’s… yours. Not a weapon. Not a defiance thing. Just… true.”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened. “It is true.”

Crowley swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I gathered.”

They sat in that truth for a beat, the shop humming quietly around them.

Aziraphale realised something, then, with a small jolt: he had expected—somewhere deep down—punishment for saying it.

A reprimand. A correction. A joke to deflect. Something to make it less serious.

Instead, Crowley was simply… receiving it. Holding it carefully, like the prayer book Aziraphale had shelved earlier, like something that belonged somewhere safe.

Aziraphale’s eyes stung again.

Crowley noticed, of course, and his voice gentled. “Hey,” he said. “Still with me?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley hesitated. “Can I—” He stopped, recalibrated. “Do you want— would it help if I hugged you, or would it make you want to crawl out of your skin?”

Aziraphale laughed wetly. “You do have a way with romance.”

Crowley snorted. “Doctor of Botany,” he said. “Not Doctor of Smooth.”

Aziraphale’s laugh came easier this time. “I don’t think anyone should ever be Doctor of Smooth.”

“True,” Crowley conceded. “Dangerous field.”

Aziraphale considered the hug question seriously. His body was still jittery, but Crowley’s hand earlier had helped. A hug was bigger. More sensory input. More pressure.

But also—he thought of being held after a storm. Of having the edges of himself contained, so he didn’t feel like he might spill out of his own skin.

“I think,” Aziraphale said slowly, “I would like… a brief hug.”

Crowley’s expression softened immediately, something bright and tender passing over his face.

“Brief,” he echoed, and stepped closer—not rushing, not grabbing. He opened his arms like a question.

Aziraphale leaned into him.

Crowley wrapped him up, careful and firm, not crushing, one hand settling between Aziraphale’s shoulder blades with steady pressure. Aziraphale’s face pressed against Crowley’s chest; he could smell him—soap, something green and clean that always reminded Aziraphale vaguely of crushed leaves.

It was grounding.

It was also, abruptly, too much in the best possible way. Aziraphale’s breath hitched, and his body shook with a small, involuntary sob that he hadn’t given permission to exist.

Crowley didn’t tighten. He didn’t flinch. He simply held.

Aziraphale clutched Crowley’s shirt, fingers twisting in the fabric like he needed something to anchor him. He felt foolish. He felt needy. He felt—

Safe.

After several seconds—brief, as requested—Crowley loosened his arms but didn’t step back immediately. He waited for Aziraphale to pull away first.

Aziraphale did, reluctantly, blinking hard.

Crowley looked at him, eyebrows lifted in a gentle question: okay?

Aziraphale nodded. “Yes,” he said, voice hoarse. “Yes. Thank you.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “You’re going to thank me into a coma.”

“It’s a habit,” Aziraphale muttered miserably.

Crowley’s eyes softened. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

The way he said it—without judgment, without teasing—made Aziraphale’s chest ache.

Crowley stepped back just far enough to give space. He didn’t retreat across the room; he stayed close, a steady point.

“Alright,” Crowley said, practical again, because practical was how he kept tender things from becoming too raw. “We’ve got five minutes on the sign. Do you want to keep it, or flip back to open?”

Aziraphale considered. His stomach still fluttered at the idea of customers. But he also knew—he could feel it—that staying in “paused” mode forever would let his brain build the moment into something monstrous.

He could try. Carefully. One step.

“Another five,” he said.

Crowley nodded without comment. “Another five.”

He didn’t move to flip the sign yet. Instead he leaned his hip against the counter again and said, as if casually, “So. Therapy.”

Aziraphale’s whole body stiffened.

Crowley held up a hand instantly. “Not— not now,” he said quickly. “Not doing a big talk. Just… mentioning it.”

Aziraphale exhaled shakily. “Right.”

Crowley’s gaze held his. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “And you don’t have to decide anything today. But you said earlier you didn’t like not knowing what your body would do. And—” He hesitated, then pushed on, voice gentler. “There are people who can help with that. Properly. Not me doing it by instinct and dumb luck.”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened. The defensive reflex rose immediately: I’m fine, I can manage, I don’t need—

But he remembered Anathema’s words: needing support doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

He remembered Crowley’s earlier statement, too: I can’t be the only place you put it.

Aziraphale swallowed.

“I’m afraid,” he admitted.

Crowley’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Of therapy?”

Aziraphale gave a small, humourless laugh. “Of being… examined.”

Crowley’s face softened. “Yeah,” he said. “Makes sense.”

Aziraphale blinked at him, startled. He’d expected persuasion. Reassurance. A counterargument.

Instead, Crowley simply accepted the fear as real.

“It’s just,” Aziraphale said, words tumbling out now that the gate was open, “I’ve spent my entire life being told what I am. Fragile. Sensitive. Difficult. Too much. Not enough. And the idea of sitting in a room with someone whose job it is to—” He gestured helplessly. “To look at me and make conclusions—”

Crowley nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said again. “So you’d need someone who doesn’t treat you like a puzzle to solve.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “Is that… an option?”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Angel, it bloody well should be,” he said. Then, softer, “A good one won’t be trying to ‘fix’ you. They’ll help you build tools. Help you understand why your brain does what it does, and how to make it less painful. Like—” He searched for a metaphor, as he always did. “Like tending a plant you didn’t choose the soil for.”

Aziraphale’s breath caught. The metaphor landed neatly, because Crowley chose metaphors the way Aziraphale chose shelves: carefully, with a sense of where they belonged.

“You wouldn’t shame a plant for growing,” Crowley continued, voice low. “You’d look at what it’s had to survive.”

Aziraphale’s eyes stung again, sharper this time. “You make it sound… possible.”

“It is possible,” Crowley said firmly. “And it can happen off to the side. Quietly. No grand announcements. Just… you getting some extra support that isn’t me. Because I love you,” he added, as if forcing the words through his own teeth, “and I want this to be sustainable.”

Aziraphale stared at him, heart doing something complicated.

He hadn’t realised how much he needed to hear the word love back in this context—not as flirtation, not as banter, but as a reason to plan for the future.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley’s gaze steadied. “You don’t have to be able to do it forever,” he said. “You just have to be able to do it once. One appointment. One conversation. And if it’s awful, you don’t go back. You may leave any room, remember?”

Aziraphale’s throat tightened around a laugh and a sob at once. “You’ve weaponised my own rule.”

“Damn right,” Crowley said, faintly smug.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. It went all the way down this time.

“Not now,” he said, echoing Crowley’s earlier boundary. “But… soon. I can consider it.”

Crowley’s expression softened into something like relief. “That’s all I’m asking,” he said.

Aziraphale’s fingers curled around his teacup again. The warmth steadied him.

Outside, the street continued to exist without consulting his family. Maggie’s door bell rang faintly. A car passed. Someone laughed. Normal life, indifferent and ongoing.

Aziraphale looked around his shop again—the shelves, the spines, the small systems he’d built that made the world make sense.

Then he looked at Crowley, still leaning there as if he belonged behind this counter as much as Aziraphale did.

Perhaps, Aziraphale thought, that was the point of it.

Not winning against Gabriel. Not making his parents understand. Not proving anything.

Just: building a life where he could breathe.

“Another five,” Crowley reminded, nodding toward the sign, like giving Aziraphale a choice again.

Aziraphale considered his heartbeat, still too fast but no longer sprinting. He considered the steadiness in his hands. He considered that he’d cried, briefly, and survived. That he’d said love, and it had been held gently instead of used against him.

“Yes,” he said. “Another five.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Good,” he said, and went to the door to flip the sign again—BACK IN FIVE MINUTES—as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Aziraphale watched him do it and felt, under the exhaustion, under the lingering tremor, a thin thread of something new.

Not certainty.

Not confidence.

But a small, stubborn maybe that refused to be shelved under “aspirational nonsense.”

He took another sip of tea, let it warm him, and waited for the next five minutes to pass—protected, not hidden—while his shop hummed quietly around him, holding its shape.

Chapter Text

The sunflower in the window was not the same plant, of course. Brian had lived a handsome life and bowed out with appropriate drama in late autumn. This was Brian II, taller, more disciplined, a touch less vain. He had the same habit of turning his handsome face toward the light as if the sun were an old friend calling across the street. Aziraphale turned the pot a measured quarter this morning, not because it needed it but because ritual pleased him. The bowtie he’d chosen—pale green with a fine herringbone if one stood quite close—sat neat beneath his collar.

It had been a year. Not everything was tidy. Life rarely obeyed the lists one made for it. Gabriel had not come around; he sent the occasional brittle text that read like a court summons and went unanswered as often as not. Uriel wrote twice—once stiff with disappointment, once softer, asking whether Aziraphale might like a recipe for lemon drizzle cake she used to make when he was small. He’d tried it and found to his surprise that the memory of the taste did not hurt. Metatron remained a weather system he no longer stood outside to watch.

He and Crowley had learned each other the long way around: Tuesdays in the Gardens and Thursdays at the grocer, Saturdays sometimes lost to auctions or outreach or simply to the luxury of staying in and doing very little on purpose. They had rules they’d made themselves and followed with the fidelity of men who had come late to the relief of good rules: tea before hard talks; no commentary on bodies, ever; you may leave any room and we will find you without making it into a chase; call if the world gets loud. Muriel had adopted Aziraphale with shy efficiency and a blunt kindness that still undid him when he was tired. Anathema and Newt were a stubborn, excellent miracle. Maggie’s shop thrived; Nina scolded the espresso machine and Crowley in equal measure.

Contentment, Aziraphale had discovered, was not the absence of friction. It was the knowledge that when sparks flew, one had water and a companion who understood how to use it.

The bell rang at two; Crowley did not need to knock, but he always did. Aziraphale opened the door to find him exactly as he always wished to: black shirt, sleeves rolled, hair coaxed into order rather than forced, sunglasses pushed back into his hair because he had promised not to hide in them when they were alone. He smelled faintly of clean heat and the gardens after a day of doing honest things with his hands.

“Hi,” Crowley said, and the corner of his mouth tipped in that unrepentant way that always felt like a secret handed over for safekeeping.

“Hello, my dear,” Aziraphale returned. He stood aside. “Brian II is behaving.”

“Because he respects your authority,” Crowley said gravely, and stepped in to kiss him, a hello that tasted of mint and the last of the day’s sun.

They had a reservation, technically, but it was more an understanding with a maître d’ who never wrote their names down and always had a corner ready. The restaurant lived down a narrow lane and smelled of cumin and cardamom and good stock. They were led to the same booth, because it suited them: away from the thrum, deep enough into the room that the world blurred to a comfortable hum.

They ordered almost by reflex—lamb for Crowley, fish for Aziraphale, side of aubergine they’d share, and the cake they’d both pretend they hadn’t decided on yet. The waiter smiled and left them to their old, domestic jokes.

“How’s the Temperate House?” Aziraphale asked, and watched the line of tension he hadn’t known he was seeing slip out of Crowley’s shoulders. Work talk first; other talk later. Their rules.

“Behaving. Mostly.” Crowley leaned back, stretched his long legs under the table. “Funding came through for the fern revision. Barely. Anathema’s thrilled, which means we’re all in danger. She’s already got a plan involving volunteers, clipboards, and scaring the Board with Latin.”

“That will be very effective,” Aziraphale said, with feeling.

“Mmm. She’s terrifying in the good way.” He paused, then added, casual with care, “Your mother sent me an email.”

Aziraphale put his water down carefully. “Oh.”

“Wanted to thank me for ‘keeping an eye’ on you.” Crowley’s mouth quirked. “I told her I wasn’t a zookeeper. That you keep an eye on me at least as much as I ever do on you. She wrote back ‘hmm’ and a lemon drizzle emoji. Which I thought was progress.”

“It is,” Aziraphale said, and found that it was. “She asked whether you take sugar in your tea. It felt like being allowed to be fifteen without asking permission.”

Crowley reached across the table and brushed his thumb once across Aziraphale’s knuckles. “She’s getting there. At her pace.”

“We made our own, so we can be generous with other people’s,” Aziraphale said, the words lighter than they would have been a year ago.

Their food arrived; they ate with the quiet pleasure of people who had waited long enough to be hungry and not so long they forgot what they wanted. They traded bites as they always did. Crowley spoke about a teenager he’d persuaded to come back to the gardens as a volunteer after they’d nearly dropped out of school; Aziraphale told him about an elderly gentleman who had brought in a battered family Bible and cried when Aziraphale returned it mended, not made new, the past still visible as a line where two pieces met.

“Muriel sent biscuits,” Aziraphale added. “Cinnamon knots, actually, though they corrected me. ‘Knots are not biscuits,’ they said, and I was informed.”

“Good,” Crowley said, fond as sunlight. “We must never conflate categories in this house.”

They laughed. It was the generous, effortless kind that emerges when the bones of a year have set well.

Later, cake arrived—two forks, one plate, no argument. Aziraphale watched Crowley watch him take the first bite: a ritual he had not noticed becoming one until Crowley confessed he liked the look on his face when he was pleased. They ate slowly. Time did not need to be bullied into giving them enough. The waiter left them alone, which is the rarest gift a restaurant can bestow.

“Walk?” Crowley asked, once they had paid, leaning to say the word into the space just above Aziraphale’s ear. It was a question in two layers: walk, and can we go to the place I am thinking of.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, because whatever the place was, if Crowley had chosen it he had chosen it for him.

The Bentley purred them across the city, first in the direction of Kew and then—because Crowley was incapable of going anywhere without making a day of it—into the long, meandering afternoon.

They arrived while the gardens were still awake.

The light was soft and obliging, filtered through high cloud so that nothing demanded too much of the eye. Kew at that hour held itself like a well-run library: voices low, paths generous, corners offered without being hidden. There were people—always people—but the gardens made room for them all, and for the quiet between them.

Aziraphale felt his shoulders ease as they passed through the gates. Crowley walked at his pace without remark, hands loose in his pockets, body angled just enough that no one brushed too close. When Aziraphale paused to read a plaque, Crowley paused too, leaning in as if Latin names were gossip worth hearing. When Aziraphale drifted to the side of the path to let a family pass, Crowley drifted with him, an unspoken agreement enacted a thousand times over.

“Decent temperature,” Crowley observed, glancing skyward. “Not trying to boil you.”

“I appreciate that,” Aziraphale said. “I prefer my boiling to be consensual.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Duly noted.”

They were nearing the Temperate House when the sound reached them: bright, unfiltered, joyously unselfconscious.

A scream, then another—high voices stacked in excitement rather than distress.

Aziraphale flinched before he could stop himself. His grip tightened reflexively on his cup. The world sharpened at the edges.

Crowley noticed immediately. He did not touch him. He simply slowed, aligned, and said quietly, “You alright?”

Aziraphale breathed. Once. Twice. The noise resolved itself into laughter, into children.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “I think so.”

They rounded the bend and found the source: a school group in bright vests clustering around a woman holding what appeared to be a sock puppet shaped like a tree.

Crowley stopped dead.

“Oh, no,” he said faintly.

The woman looked up and beamed. “Anthony! Perfect! We’re short a pair of hands. You can do the roots.”

Crowley stared at her as if betrayed by fate itself. The puppet was pressed into his hands with ruthless efficiency.

“We’re planting today,” the woman continued, already turning back to the children. “And we’re explaining how plants talk to each other.”

Crowley’s eyes slid helplessly to Aziraphale.

A year ago, Aziraphale might have wanted the ground to open and swallow him whole. Now, he found himself smiling—small, astonished, fond.

“Oh,” he said softly. “That’s how it started.”

Crowley leaned in. “This is not my fault.”

Aziraphale’s smile deepened. “Isn’t it?”

The children surged closer, a tide of motion and sound. Aziraphale felt the press of it at the edges of his awareness. He took a half-step back instinctively.

Crowley mirrored him at once. “Do you want to step out?” he asked, voice low. “Palm House is quieter.”

Aziraphale considered. The rule presented itself clearly: you may leave any room. And then, beneath it, another truth.

“I think,” he said carefully, “I’d like to stay. From the edge.”

Crowley nodded, immediate and unquestioning. “Edge,” he agreed.

The puppet was raised.

“HELLO, SMALL HUMANS,” it boomed, in a voice Crowley had perfected against his will. “I AM A ROOTY.”

The children shrieked with laughter.

Aziraphale covered his mouth, shoulders shaking. The sound that escaped him was unguarded, real.

Crowley warmed to the task despite himself, explaining tropisms and chemical signals and fungal networks with a flair that made science feel like a story worth leaning toward. The children listened with wide-eyed seriousness, dirt smudged on their cheeks, faith absolute.

Seed pots were handed out. Soil pressed into small hands.

“What are they planting?” Aziraphale asked quietly.

“Marigolds,” Crowley murmured. “Cheap. Sturdy. Dramatic.”

Aziraphale gave him a look. “I beg your pardon.”

Crowley’s mouth tipped. “Sturdy,” he repeated. “Flourishes under consistent care.”

A child nearby stared at Aziraphale’s bowtie. “Are you a teacher?” he asked.

Aziraphale felt the old reflex stir—and then settle.

“I run a bookshop,” he said simply.

“Do you have dinosaur books?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Several excellent ones.”

The child nodded gravely and returned to his seed pot, apparently satisfied.

Crowley glanced at him, something warm and startled in his eyes. “See?” he murmured. “Normal outdoor things.”

“This is not normal,” Aziraphale said, but without heat.

The tour eventually moved on, bright vests disappearing down the path like a comet tail of chaos. The gardens exhaled.

Crowley dropped the puppet into a crate with theatrical disdain. “I need to disinfect my dignity.”

“You did very well,” Aziraphale said.

“So did you,” Crowley replied. “Stayed. Chose how. Didn’t force it.”

Aziraphale breathed in damp air and leaf-scent and felt his chest translate it into steadiness.

They left the open space for some privacy when the light began to thin, when the children were herded back onto buses and the gardens shifted toward afternoon.

The sky was in that agreeable state just before dark where everything goes silver at the edges. Crowley had the kind of access that came with years and good behaviour: a gate opened because the man at the gate had on more than one occasion taught his nephew what a living fern looked like, and also because Crowley looked like the sort of person who would obey rules even when he broke them. They walked, not far, through the soft breath of summer. The Palm House had shut its eyes for the night; the Temperate House had dimmed to a glow that made the palms into shadows and the steelwork into a lace of dark lines.

In the fern room the air was cooler. It smelled of soil and rain held in the ribs of leaves. Lamps along the path cast a gentle light that didn’t scold the plants for being nocturnal about their business. Fronds curved over the railings like the hands of old friends. Aziraphale stood very still and let his chest translate air into steadiness.

“First time we met like this,” Crowley said quietly, not because they were being watched but because the place asked for respect, “I was cross about having to do the kids’ tours.”

“You were very good at it,” Aziraphale said.

“I was,” Crowley allowed, smug and shy in equal measure. “Then this man in a bowtie planted a sunflower in the wrong demographic and asked a question about divergence and I thought—damn. There you are.”

Aziraphale smiled into the dim. “I did plant that sunflower very well.”

“You did,” Crowley said. “And then you made rules. And then you broke some. And then we made better ones.” He stopped walking. “Stay here a second.”

Aziraphale watched him step a pace away, into the shadow of a tree fern he’d once been introduced to by name. Crowley reached into his pocket; Aziraphale felt, absurdly, a shock of worry that he might produce a kneel and a diamond and a speech he’d learned from the sort of films where people shouted more than they listened.

Crowley did not kneel. He did not flourish a jeweller’s box. He came back with a thin herbarium folder—old paper, clean edges, string tied with a neat bow.

“I asked Anathema to help,” he said, as if he were offering proof he’d done his homework. “No theft. This is mine to give you.”

Aziraphale took the folder with both hands because it was a holy thing to him to handle paper properly. On the label, in Crowley’s unrepentant hand: Family: Ours. Genus: Stubborn. Species: Fell & Crowley. Collector: Yes.

He swallowed. “You are an impossible man.”

“Correct,” Crowley said. “Open it.”

Inside lay a pressed fern—the sort that had survived comets and bad winters—with a small metal ring threaded through the ribbon that tied the stem to the paper. The ring was silver, narrow, engraved on the inside so faintly he had to tilt it toward the light.

Our pace.

He closed his eyes because sometimes one must put the feeling somewhere private for a moment before it is safe to look at it. When he opened them, Crowley was watching him as one watches a fire—ready to step in if it leapt, ready to bask if it warmed, ready to move back if it asked for air.

“I kept trying to learn how this is supposed to go,” Crowley said, words steady as heartbeat. “Who asks whom. Which knee. What sort of ring. Whether you ask a father who does not deserve the privilege and a mother who is learning how. In the end I remembered the first rule we wrote. We don’t do supposed to. We do what works. So.”

He took a careful breath, like a man about to attempt something delicate.

“Will you marry me, Aziraphale Fell. Not because it is time or tidy, not because it will make anyone else happy, but because this is the coat we keep putting on and it fits, and if it needs letting out we will do it ourselves.”

Aziraphale thought, briskly and as he had trained himself to think, through the old rules like a librarian scanning a shelf: the kneel, the ring, the permission, the dates, the announcements, the public show. Then he thought of the rules they had made and kept: tea first; speak plainly; you may leave; our pace. He thought of Muriel’s biscuits in a paper bag and the way Crowley had learned the exact hour he preferred to go to the market and never made a game of startling him. He thought of Brian II turning toward the light because that is what sunflowers do.

It did not matter how other people did it. It mattered that this man had offered him a thing with a fern and a joke and a promise inside it, in a place where he could breathe.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “On our pace. In our way.”

Crowley’s inhale was quiet and deep and shook at the end. He lifted his hand as if to take Aziraphale’s, then checked himself. “May I?”

“You may,” Aziraphale said, and held out his left hand like a person who had finally learned how to ask and answer simple, necessary things.

Crowley slid the ring over his finger. It sat where it should, not heavy, not loud, not a brand, a thing one could forget and then be pleased to remember. Aziraphale’s throat had gone unreliable, but the rest of him held.

“I was going to try to say something especially clever,” Crowley confessed, ridiculous and perfect, “but it all turned into plant metaphors and I decided to spare you.”

“I am fond of your plant metaphors,” Aziraphale said. “Even when they are terrible.”

“Oh, good,” Crowley said, as if Aziraphale had rescued him from a ledge. “I’ll unleash the terrible ones at the reception.”

“We are not having a reception with clipboards,” Aziraphale said, and laughed, all the way through, because the word we sat easily and the future did not bristle.

They stood a while in the cool, with the fern fronds sheltering their ridiculous good fortune. Crowley rested his forehead lightly against Aziraphale’s and counted a breath aloud to help both of them remember to do it. When they were steady again, they started back through the glasshouse, past plants older than the idea of people, past labels that had been rewritten when the science improved, past walkways Crowley had once paced in misery and now moved through like a man who had selected a path on purpose.

Outside, the night had decided itself properly. Stars showed off where London allowed them to. In the car, Crowley drove like a person who had found the right speed and was in no hurry to prove anything more.

Aziraphale looked at the ring when the lights were red and ignored it when they were green. He imagined the phone calls he would not make. He imagined the conversations he would have. He imagined Muriel’s exclamation, Anathema’s sharp delighted cackle, Newt’s reverent “blimey,” Maggie’s hands to her mouth and Nina’s dry “finally.” 

At the shop, he stood a moment in the doorway with the ring catching a slice of lamplight. Brian II faced the street, already angling for tomorrow. Aziraphale turned the pot the ritual quarter turn and felt the quiet rightness of doing a small thing properly.

“You’re thinking about the rules,” Crowley said behind him, not a tease; an observation offered without charge.

“I was,” Aziraphale said. “And then I stopped.”

Crowley’s hand found the back of his neck and did nothing more than rest there, warm. “Good.”

“We make our own,” Aziraphale said. “We write them down if we must. We edit as needed. Our pace.”

“Our pace,” Crowley echoed. “And cake.”

“Cake first,” Aziraphale said, because some priorities are holy, and they laughed together like men who’d had enough practice to know that joy requires rehearsal too.

They locked the door. They made tea. Later, he called Muriel and put the phone on speaker, and they shouted so loudly Aziraphale had to hold the device at a distance, and Crowley pretended to complain about his ears while grinning like a fool. Later still, Aziraphale stood at the window with the ring cool against his skin and watched the street he knew rearrange itself to include a future that had been growing all along like a fern uncurling—slow, certain, durable.

It would not all be easy. Contentment is not a guarantee; it is a practice. But he knew where the cups lived and which hand to reach for and how to turn the sunflower so that it faced the light, and this year that felt like enough to build on. He lifted his hand and, for the pleasure of it, admired the neat line of silver one more time, then went back to the table where Crowley had set down two slices of lemon drizzle with a flourish and a promise to improve the plant metaphors only slightly for the vows.

“Our own rules,” Aziraphale said again, because saying a true thing twice never hurt it.

“Always,” Crowley said, and meant it.