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Aziraphale lifted the phone receiver without looking up from his book.
“I’m afraid we are quite definitely closed.”
“Oh it’s ok, I wasn’t wanting to buy a book, I wanted to speak to Mr. Fell.”
“Speaking.”
“Oh thank god I’ve found you. I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks. My name is Sada Faheem, I’m the representative of the management company for an apartment block in Mayfair. I was told by one of the other residents that they recognised you as someone who occasionally visits here. She said she was sure that Mr. Crowley sometimes got visits from a gentleman who runs a bookshop over in Soho.”
“Mr. Crowley?”
“Yes, you do know him, don’t you?”
Aziraphale hesitated. He was so used to answering ‘no, not at all, we’re not friends, we don’t even know each other,’ that actually admitting to knowing Crowley felt strange to him. But ever since Armageddon, things had changed. He allowed himself a little smile.
“Yes, I do, is everything quite alright?”
“Have, er… have you seen Mr. Crowley recently?”
“Of course not, you know, lockdown and all that - social distancing. It would be highly irresponsible of me to go meeting with other people under the circumstances wouldn’t it? Must keep people safe.”
“Oh, is he shielding? I only mention it because no one has seen him for… well, months. We were starting to get worried. There’s no answer when we knock on his door. Has he gone away? When did you last speak to him?”
“Shielding, um, probably yes, I suppose, that would be it. I have spoken to him on the phone, yes, a little while ago now…” Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure how he could explain to a human that his demonic friend had decided to take an extended nap of over a year and a half… and counting.
“He’s um… always been a little bit of a solitary sort of person, if I’m honest.”
“Well the thing is, we were wondering if you might have a spare key for his apartment, so we can check he’s ok? There's, er… plants creeping under the door you see.”
Aziraphale didn’t have a spare key, but that had never stopped either him nor Crowley from walking through any door they felt like. He supposed he should really do his duty and put the humans minds at rest.
“I think I do, I’ll pop over and take a look then.”
Sada met Aziraphale at the front door of the building, and followed him up in the lift to the penthouse, expressing concern for Crowley. When they arrived at the door, Aziraphale could see what she meant - long tendrils of thorny vines had forced their way underneath and around the door, and were snaking out across the hallway.
“Thank you, I’ll take it from here,” Aziraphale assured her. “He may be feeling a little defensive and I think he’d likely prefer to talk to me alone.”
Sada took the hint and left him to it. Aziraphale laid his hand on the door handle, and miracled it unlocked. Almost immediately, it locked itself again. Aziraphale glared at it.
“Listen here, you lump of timber, I am not in the mood to be trifled with today, and unless you’d like to start a new life as a pile of kindling and match wood, I suggest that you cooperate.”
The lock hastily undid itself again, and the door contrived to look embarrassed.
“Thank you,” He muttered, and opened it.
“Ah.”
Crowley’s plants had gone feral. They’d spread far more than any normal plant could be expected to, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure if it was as a result of their fear of Crowley waking up to find they hadn’t grown enough, or in some kind of frantic effort to escape while he wasn’t looking.
Either way, the combined vegetative effort had entirely blocked the hallway, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, in an impenetrable mass of greenery. He stepped forward and began to tug at the vines, then winced and pulled back as he was scratched by a thorn. A hasty re-evaluation made him wonder if perhaps it wasn’t something that the plants had done of their own volition, but rather, on the direction of Crowley - whether conscious or subconscious - in order to protect him from unwanted visitors during his slumber.
“I’m here to help,” he told the plants, hoping it would persuade them to relent a little, but the assembled foliage remained unmoved.
“Crowley!?” He called out loudly, but the sound was swallowed by the thick vegetation, and no reply returned.
“I see, that’s the way we are to play it, is it?” Aziraphale asked the plants grimly. “Well, I suppose if he will so insist on playing sleeping beauty, protected by his plants, then someone ought to play prince charming…”
Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and thought of his armour he’d worn as the white knight, summoning it to garb him from head to toe, to protect him from the thorns, which looked frankly, particularly demonic in nature. He wondered whether that was down to Crowley’s influence as well or if these plants were naturally thorned. He wasn’t much of a horticulturalist to be able to tell.
Next, he summoned his sword. Not a flaming one, just a regular broadsword, with which to cut back the plants like a machete.
“Are you sure you want to do it this way?” He asked, giving the plants one last chance. But they were made of sterner stuff than the door, and bristled their thorns menacingly at him.
“Very well…” Aziraphale began the laborious task of hacking his way through the mass of greenery, as thorns scraped across his armour in vain. Branches fel left and right, and he was sure some of the tendrils were grabbing at him, trying to hold him back as he battled his way inexorably forwards.
He was sweating by the time he had battled his way to Crowley’s bedroom door, but at least he only had a few minor injuries from thorns around the gaps in his armour at the joints. He paused to take stock.
Sunlight filtered through many leaves illuminated Crowley’s sleeping features with a soft green glow. His hair had grown out into long copper ringlets, shining on the pillow around his face like a crown or halo. He might have looked like some pre-Raphaelite beauty if it wasn’t for the fact his mouth was open and he was snoring loudly, making a sound like a leaf blower.
Aziraphale sighed, and removed his helmet, sitting down on the bed next to the sleeping demon.
“Crowley?”
“hurrrrRONKhuuurRONKhurrr RONK. ”
Aziraphale shook his shoulder gently.
“Crowley dear?”
“hurrrrRONKhuuurRONK.”
Aziraphale prodded him a little more firmly. Crowley shifted his head slightly, smacked his lips, and carried on snoring like a somnolent pig.
Aziraphale grabbed both shoulders and shook him vigorously.
“CROWLEY!” He yelled in his face.
Crowley wobbled back and forth, then fell back on the pillow with a grunt, which morphed back into a snore again immediately.
“Oh for heaven’s sake…” Aziraphale considered the circumstances. He, a literal knight in shining armour, had just hacked his way past a forest of thorns to wake a literal sleeping beauty. He supposed there was only one thing left to try, if Crowley had somehow decided to grant himself a fairytale-like deep sleep to wait out the pandemic…
Feeling slightly self conscious, but also rather pleased at the opportunity, Aziraphale leaned over, and kissed him.
“hurrrrRONKhuuWZTPHSSSSSSSSSSSZZZZIRAPHALE???”
Crowley didn’t awake like an elegant fairytale princess, but jolted awake like someone who had just had several thousand volts applied directly to somewhere unmentionable. Aziraphale hastily backpedalled in alarm.
“Nooooooo! no no no no.... come back!” Crowley reached out and grabbed at Aziraphale’s arm, yanking him back into closer proximity again. “Wassssn’t awake enough to appreciate it. Can you try again?”
“Waking you was rather the point of the exercise,” Aziraphale explained.
“Oh.”
Crowley’s disappointed face however, melted Aziraphale’s resolve.
“However, that doesn’t mean we can’t try again anyway.”
Crowley smiled and Aziraphale moved in closer again. The kiss was much better the second time around, although Crowley insisted that they keep on practising until they’d got it right, which apparently was going to take some time. After a while he asked if he should fetch a tin opener, or if Aziraphale would prefer to miracle his armour away and make himself more comfortable.
They lay side by side in Crowley’s bed. Aziraphale’s armour had long since disappeared, along with everything else he’d been wearing, and Crowley’s pyjamas, for that matter.
“I seem to have failed somewhat in my mission,” Aziraphale commented, stroking the hair on Crowley’s chest gently.
“Mmm?”
“I came around to get you out of bed, only instead I appear to have joined you in it.”
“You still woke me up though.”
“Very thoroughly.”
“What prompted you to come round in the first place?”
“Well, your neighbours had become a little concerned, and your plants appear to have taken over your apartment entirely, and were making a bid for freedom with aims to colonise the hallway and possibly annex your neighbour’s place next.”
“Leafy little bastards.”
“You can say that again. That’s why I had to resort to the armour.”
“Ah. And here was me thinking you were just being weirdly romantic about it.”
“I’m afraid not. But I do think that perhaps regaining control of your home might require more than just a pair of secateurs. A chainsaw might be more appropriate.”
“That sounds fun, ” Crowley grinned.
“Fun enough to stay awake for?”
“Aziraphale, you’re fun enough to stay awake for.”
“I didn’t appear to be before you decided to go for a year and a half long nap.”
“That was before you kissed me.”
“If I’d known that was all it would take, I’d have offered it ages ago.”
“And if I’d known that, I’d have taken you up on it ages ago,” Crowley replied, then got down to the serious business of kissing Aziraphale all over again.