Archive of Our Own

It starts, as it will end, in a garden.

Anathema’s garden is very lush and biodiverse. After some time without having seen Anathema or her cottage, Crowley is pleasantly surprised by the plethora of plants and herbs and flowers she’s established into the Tadfield soil. Most of the plants are native, with some notable exceptions, and with the perfect weather of Tadfield, the garden truly has flourished and become an ecological wetdream, filled with birds and pollinators and the most interesting insects.

Crowley, whose appreciation for plants has only grown since Eden, is thoroughly impressed by Jasmine Cottage’s garden.

He waxes poetic to Anathema about it while they daydrink their socks off and get obnoxiously wine drunk in her sitting room. She preens with every compliment, waves a noncommittal dismissive hand and rolls her eyes and says “Oh, stop it” when she really means Go on, go on.

He slips into his Scottish accent without really meaning to. One glass too many and suddenly, Anathema’s staring at him wide-eyed and in awe, saying, “That explains the red hair!”

Crowley rolls his eyes at the conclusion the drunk witch has made. His hair is red because he’s evil and a demon from Hell and red is a very evil color with very evil associations, thank you very much. He thinks to voice that out loud, thinks to say, I’m not actually Scottish, occult beings older than Scotland can’t be from Scotland, but then he thinks of Aziraphale, who is definitely English despite being older than England, and just grunts. 

“Sure,” he says, and continues talking about her garden.

He makes the first video partly as a joke.

While stumbling out of Anathema’s cottage when the sun has well set and the afternoon has faded into the evening, he lingers for a moment, looking out into the garden with much appreciation. After a moment’s deliberation, he whips out his phone from his pocket and starts recording, and he tries to slip into his Scottish accent because he knows now that Anathema finds everything he says much more engaging when he says it with a Scottish drawl, but after drinking the noon away with her, he finds he is a little bit too drunk to remember how the accent goes.

So, like slipping into the wrong pair of shoes, he starts speaking in the cadence of a really weird, really ominous, vaguely agitated crimeboss instead.

He grunts out a greeting, like maybe, “Hhngk, hello. Plant video now, fuck you,” and then launches off on a strange, infodumpy rant.

“These little fuckers,” he points at a couple vibrantly colored flowers, standing relatively tall and stiff from the ground, “are Dactylorhiza orchids, or marsh orchids. Orchidaceae family, obviously. There’s a fuckin’ bunch of them in this garden because they’re, err, what’s the word… can’t remember… modern harlots…. Sluts! Plant sluts.” 

He starts on about plant hybridizing, pointing out a couple hybrids he can spot in the garden. “This one’s probably a cross between the northern marsh orchid and the common marsh orchid. You can tell because it looks, um, like that. Ooh, and this little bugger— this looks like it’s a new species entirely, cos they can do that. Poor fucking guy, whichever taxologist has to come up with names for these fuckers.”

He keeps talking for a while longer, playing up the accent and tipsily veering further and further away from English-warrior and closer and closer into New-York-Italian-Jersey-English-crimeboss territory, with a bit of a hiss on the S’s that can’t be helped. When he finally finishes up the video, his drawl has changed several different times, with each iteration more oddly menacing than the last.

When he gets home, he uploads the video on YouTube under the title “Garden My Friend Uses For Witchcraft” just so he can share it with Anathema. YouTube asks him to write a description, so he writes, “Dactylorhiza orchids prove the Lord thinks promiscuity is OK.”

He sends the link to Anathema through text, and after a while, she texts back, hahaha hilarious, and on the video itself, she comments, first.

After the fourth video, Crowley figures he ought to maybe change his YouTube username.

While the videos were meant to only be for his and Anathema’s entertainment, Anathema has taken to sending the videos to Newt, and Crowley’s demonic magnetism seems to have pulled him a small audience of roughly a couple thousand viewers per video, steadily growing day by day.

It was a consequence of being a creature of the occult, Crowley supposed. His influence is inflated thanks to his demonic status, or something. It was really useful back in the old days, whenever having a cult following dedicated to him proved convenient for the job, but now it just makes social media terribly inconvenient. He gets famous too quickly, without ever intending to. It’s a little awful.

He can see it happening with this half-assed YouTube botany channel now. The engagement and likes are already coming in. It takes only a few comments addressing Crowley using his YouTube handle “Anthony J.,” for Crowley to decide to change it to something that didn’t contain the name he used for daily living with humans. After some deliberation, he lands on Sin Pays But Botany Doesn’t.

On trips to different places, he records commentary on native flora, pulls over on the sides of roads when something green or flowering catches his eye, and fawns over them if they’re interesting enough to be worth talking about. For Anathema’s entertainment, he peppers in a couple sneaky anecdotes in his botanical rants. 

Like, on a day trip to Bath, Wales, “These weeds are edible. Do not confuse that for medicinal. And do not confuse medicinal with cure-all. Very different things. Take a bite of this if you’re peckish, though expect it to taste just about how you think weeds taste, maybe worse. But if you got a great big gushing wound on the side of your body? Buddy, don’t fucking shove the grass into the hole.” 

Like, in Butte City, California, “This is Hibiscus lasiocarpus, it’s endangered and this is one of the few places it can be found. They like water. Used to be, they were all over the river Delta around here, but they’re endangered now cos of competition with invasive plants, namely Rubus armeniacus, or Himalayan blackberries. Himalayan blackberries are native to Iran and Armenia, but they’re pretty much everywhere now, coz you human fuckers don’t know when to quit bringing your fucking snacks overseas. Causing ecological disasters, you pieces of shit. I fucking told that guy, I did, leave the berries on the damned ship, they got seeds and those tend to sprout, but noo. And now Hibiscus lasiocarpus is fucking endangered and that guy’s burning in Hell.” 

Like, somewhere North of Rotarua, New Zealand, “This is a fungus, it’s endemic to New Zealand, it’s called Psilocybe weraroa. Before anybody fucking asks, yes, it’s got psychoactive properties. You can tell cos it’s blue, that’s called Psilocin polymerization, it usually indicates it’s a psychoactive species. Careful if you take them, though. Be aware that, err… there’s a chance you’ll be momentarily paralyzed. So I’ve heard. And when you’re paralyzed, it’ll strike the fear of God into you, if you weren’t already scared before. You’ll regain your motor skills, don’t worry, but it’ll be the scariest fucking experience of your damned eternal life. Err, so I’ve heard. Just… careful what mushrooms you forage and careful the amount you eat.” 

Anathema and Newt text him their impressions on the upload after they’ve watched and they comment on every video, but their comments become harder and harder to find in the sea of other viewer’s comments.

Most comments are thirsting over Crowley’s hands and voice, seeing as he never shows his face, always shows whatever plant he’s hunched over and inspecting. It’s only sometimes strange and only sometimes flattering.

Sometimes, Crowley would rather his comments be about the plants he’s filming, not the hands pointing at them. Is it too much to ask for less “anytime this guy starts petting a plant i seethe with jealousy and get rabies and need to be muzzled” and more “wow! that Psilocybe weraroa sure is neat”?

But alas, he didn’t ever attract the educated type. Erudites and intellectuals were often more Aziraphale’s audience. Crowley attracted fucking freaks. Freaks who commented “forget face reveal, we need a PENIS REVEAL!” and “this guy’s obvious organized crime org affiliation aside, i need those hands off that damn Psilocybe weraroa and around my neck.” 

Anyway. It’s kind of funny. Anathema and Newt sure find it funny. And more than funny, it’s fun.

He likes ranting about plants. He never gets to do that, outside of this YouTube thing. So it becomes a new, exciting hobby. Rather than going places and filming whatever plants and fungi he spots on the side of the road, he starts finding himself organizing trips to different places for the sole purpose of seeking out and filming plants and fungi. 

His audience grows larger. He takes up hiking. He entertains the internet by infodumping, and the internet entertains him in turn with comments thirsting over his hands and assuming he’s some sort of crime lord from his voice. 

He uploads the next video on YouTube. It’s about some fir trees, because he woke up this morning yearning to hike someplace high, and fir trees are quite good at growing high places. He sends it to Anathema, and sends back a smiling cat emoji and, Lol ur famous.

Crowley sends back a shrugging emoji. Star quality, he replies.

She sends back a picture of her garden, the subject of his very first video. Don't forget, I made you.

It was bound to come up with Aziraphale at some point. 

Since the channel's blown up and Crowley's started taking it on as a passion project rather than just a thing he did sometimes for shits and giggles, he's been taking more time away from hanging out with Aziraphale. Before the channel, he was usually free for last-minute lunches and unplanned excursions around the city. But now, Crowley's schedule is not so free.

He's out of London often, because there's not much wild vegetation in the city that interests Crowley very much. And he's out of the United Kingdom a lot, too, because all the interesting plants, really, are somewhere else. It's just... the United Kingdom is very green. And Crowley is a fan of green, don't get him wrong, but one can only see so much of the color before he grows to yearn for the vibrant reds and oranges and yellows of plants in dry and arid or otherwise difficult regions, the spikes and spokes and seed pods and enduring nature of plants that have adapted to fend for themselves. 

He declines a couple lunches in favor of hikes in the desert regions of North America to geek out about the different species of cacti he finds. Skips some invitations to drink in the back room of Aziraphale's bookshops to go hunting for night-blooming flowers in South America. Politely turns down offers to try out newly opened restaurants to go to Africa and admire the trees which only grow there. 

He still spends a good amount of his time with the angel, sure, but it's significantly less than what was usual when Crowley was unemployed and homeless and hobby-less. So, the angel notices. So, it comes up. 

They've just finished up dinner at the Ritz.

Aziraphale's invited him back to the shop for a nightcap, but Crowley is eager to just go back home to the Bentley and get back to editing his latest recording — not that he edits much, all he really cares to do is spell out the scientific names on-screen as he says them, in case his viewers want to Google along — so he can go out and drive the Bentley to the next plant destination. 

Aziraphale gets this strange, dejected look in his eyes when Crowley says, "Sorry, angel. Got plans. Maybe tomorrow night?"

Aziraphale looks like he is trying not to frown. Crowley feels guilty, but it's not like he's stomping on Aziraphale's heart and rejecting his friendship by saying no to a nightcap, so he only feels a little guilty. And besides, he's been really enjoying making these stupid videos. 

"Maybe," says Aziraphale. And then, after a small pause that Crowley takes to politely gesture for the bill, Aziraphale asks, "Where do you go?" 

He seems to be trying very hard not to seem too interested. He's not looking at Crowley's face for too long, instead forcing his gaze down to his fingers as he fiddles with his nails and tries to look very casual indeed. 

"Oh, y'know me," the demon drawls evasively. "Spreading my wiles."

"But you don't have to do that anymore." The angel whines it out in a way that would be annoying and irritating if it were anyone else. But because it's Aziraphale, Crowley just finds it terribly adorable. 

"Something, something, old habits," he shrugs. The waiter deposits the bill on their table. Crowley reaches for it and signs the receipt, writing down a sizable tip. He leaves his card inside the bill and closes it, making another gesture to call the waiter over to take the thing. 

Aziraphale frowns.

"I don't see why this has to take up so much of your time," he insists. "You didn't even work this hard when you were employed."

Crowley shrugs again. "Well. Some things are much more rewarding when you do them for yourself, don't you think?"

Aziraphale's frown deepens in that way it always does when he is unconvinced by Crowley's argument but cannot find a single flaw in it.

After a moment, the angel asks, "Are you hiding something from me?" 

The waiter returns with Crowley's card. Crowley grins and moves to stand up, sauntering away when Aziraphale follows.

"Don't be ridiculous, angel. Am I a liar?"

Aziraphale calls after him, "Yes! You notoriously are."

Crowley points at a plant on the ground.

“I’m here on the Caribbean coast of Panama, in the San Blas Province rainforest. This is a Monstera minima. It’s the smallest species of Monstera genus, but it’s pretty similar to Monstera obliqua and Monstera xanthospatha. Hold on, it would be easier to show them side by side. Let me show you those, then, I have them in my car.”

He turns around and walks over to the Bentley, parked in a small clearing on the rainforest, transported there via miracle, and he opens the back door to take out his box of potted Monsteras, carrying them back to sit next to the Monstera minima wildly growing.

He mumbles to the plants, “Play nice,” before addressing the camera again.

”Notice the fenestrations. Very similar. Hole-y. But there are some differences, and that’s not just because I grow a bloody good Monstera. Aside from the differences in appearance, though, they grow different places. This one—“ he points at the M. xanthospatha, “—grows in Cordillera Central. This one—“ he points at the M. obliqua, “—grows in a lot of different places in South America.”

He pets the leaves and fenestrations on the wild Monstera very lovingly.

Monsteras have always been one of Crowley’s favorite plants to study and hoard, ever since that very first time he saw one back during American colonial times — he was a bit earlier on the transcendentalist curb that everyone else — and wondered whether or not it was an animal leaving the holes in the leaves or if they just grew like that.

He loves how freaky-looking they are, loves the reason for their adaptations.

Plants that evolved to have holes to maximize the amount of sun they got, plants that were careful not to grow leaves like atop other leaves to ensure the least amount of shade— it all felt very metaphorically significant, if not at least biologically fascinating. Like, this plant is more than just aesthetics. Like, this plant is survival by any means necessary because survival is the only necessary mean. Like, there is a reason for every little thing it is or does. 

Well, anyway.

Pointing at the obliqua, Crowley says, “This one’s the rarest, though, despite all the places it grows. Fucking difficult to grow, too. Can’t yell at it like most the other ones if you want it to grow big. It’s too fragile. Weak willed, I say.”

He sighs, remembering his old plant room, and sympathizes slightly with the plants in his Bentley— all the favorites that were small enough for him to carry around.

“I had a bunch more of the giant Monstera plants, before, but the big ones’re all in my witch friend’s house now, since I got sacked from my old job and was forced to leave my old place. A real pity. These ones were even more verdant in a climate-controlled plant room than they are now, if you can even imagine that. But it’s fine. Living in my car has taught them discipline and humility. Perhaps they can learn a thing or two from this wild Monstera here. Spoiled brats.”

Crowley exhales heavily. 

“Anyway, I can talk Monsteras all day, but I’ll save some excitement for the next Monstera video, if anybody is interested. That’s it for now.”

He uploads the video later that night under the title, “I Introduce My Monsteras To Ones In The Wild.” Anathema texts him a picture of his old giant Monsteras. They are thriving in her cottage.

The Monstera video blows up. 

Crowley spends a couple hours scrolling through the thousands of comments, liking and replying to a handful of good ones.

Some are speculations over Crowley’s shady criminal operations as well as his concerning travel habits. 

Like, sacked from his old job… forced to leave his old cushy house… obviously rich… travels a lot. he is so clearly a criminal. or at least running from something

Like, does he have a private jet or something? how is he in panama? was he not just in canada yesterday ? (Most of the replies to this particular comment dismissed the concern by claiming Crowley probably prerecorded videos months in advance before posting them. Of course, the fault with humans was that they lacked imagination.)

A lot are about the brief appearance of the Bentley in the video. 

Like, is that a fucking 1926 Bentley in the middle of the goddamn rainforest or am i fucking high.

Like, yo how the hell did you get that car in there man 😭😭???

In hindsight, maybe Crowley shouldn’t have shown the Bentley, at least not in the middle of the rainforest where there aren’t any roads for miles. But, oh well. Whatever. 

Anyway. Thankfully, this time, most of the comments are about the plants. 

Like, Getting monsteras to grow that beautifully in the BACKSEAT OF A CAR is so fucking attractive. 

Like, Tips on getting plants to grow that good? (Crowley replies to this one with, Fear is the greatest motivator.)

Like, Full monstera tour video when.

He pops over to Anathema’s cottage again the week after he posts the Monstera video. 

He really likes Anathema. She asks questions, but never about the demon thing, which is great, because in Crowley’s experience, most humans, upon finding out he himself was not, often either bombarded Crowley with questions about afterlifes or tried to have him publicly executed. Anathema is a refreshing change.

He guesses her disinterest in the occult has something to do with her whole life being predetermined for her up until four years ago. After averting the apocalypse, she understandably doesn’t want to invite anything too crazy into her life, which makes Crowley always so grateful whenever she invites him into her home any time he comes by, despite having full knowledge that he is, in fact, a demon. 

Today, Anathema greets him at the door with a great hug and delighted laughter and he greets her with a vintage Château Cheval Blanc. Anathema, being young and American, doesn’t care much for the quality of wine like Crowley does, but being young and American, she does appreciate expensive things and daydrinking.

They move to the sitting room and catch up excitedly over glasses of wine, even though it hasn’t been very long at all since they last saw each other. She congratulates him on his YouTube channel, and they laugh about that like hyenas for a while. Anthony J. Crowley, demon and erstwhile servant of the Satan, running a botany channel. Who would have guessed it?

It’s terribly funny, even without the wine. With the wine, it’s hilarious.

”They want a Monstera tour,” Crowley snorts. 

He’s sitting on Anathema’s sofa, relaxed against the cushions, and Anathema is laying down on the far side, her head rested on the armrest, her socked feet on his lap. 

“I know!” Anathema raises her head to face him and gestures with her half-full glass of wine. “Really, though, Crowley, that last video? Actual gold.” She starts to giggle. “I couldn’t stop laughing when you panned your camera from rainforest shrubbery and boom! Your fucking Bentley.” Her voice goes high and teasing. “Couldn’t find a parking lot? God, that was good. I love your car’s comedic timing.”

Crowley rolls his eyes fondly. “She steals the show again. Should just rebrand to a bloody automobile channel. Cars Pay And Botany Doesn’t.” 

Anathema grins at him, sharp-toothed. “Could do. Bet the same people in your comments sections talking about your forearms would die to see them slathered in motor oil, tinkering with a sexy classic car.”

A groan. “Don’t debauch the Bentley like that, Anathema.”

”Imagine the views.” 

“No.” Crowley rolls his eyes. “‘Sides, botany’s just a bit more interesting than car repair, methinks.”

She raises her glass to that.

“The plants are always interesting.” Anathema finishes the last of her glass. “Fuck, I want a Monstera tour, and I live with the fucking things.” She kicks at his thighs and stares at him expectantly. “You should do one.” 

Crowley frowns, trying to gauge her expectant expression. “Wot, right now?”

Anathema shrugs in a way that's not really confused at all. “Well, you’re here right now, aren’t you?”

”I mean. I guess.”

She kicks him again. “Go, do one. So I can watch it later. Give the people what they want.”

”I’m tipsy and I’m tired.”

”So?”

”So, I don’t want to get up and do a Monstera tour, I want to sit here and keep drinking.”

“The wine will still be here when you’re done filming the plans.”

”And the plants will still be there when I’m done drinking. You know, you’re a terrible host, really.”

Anathema goes to argue, but the chime of the doorbell interrupts her before she can say anything. She groans loudly.

”Expecting anyone?” Crowley asks.

Anathema stares blankly at him.

“Did that groan sound like I was expecting someone?” She moves to get up, and when she’s up, she gives Crowley one last light kick to the shin. “Go film that stupid video while I take care of the door and tell whoever it is to piss off.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes.

He grumbles, "Never should have started that damn channel. Deleting it when I next have the chance, and then what'll you do?"

Anathema flips him off and Crowley sticks a tongue out at her. Nevertheless, when Anathema rounds the corner and disappears to open the front door, Crowley pushes himself off the couch and goes off to Anathema’s other sitting room, where most of Crowley’s houseplants have lived since he was sacked from the Mayfair flat.

He grumbles as he pats his pockets down for his phone, strains his ears slightly to listen for Anathema chewing off whatever poor delivery man or door-to-door salesman has come ringing her bell.

But instead of annoyed scolding, Crowley catches Anathema’s pleasantly delighted, “Oh! I didn’t know you were coming in today!”

Newt, Crowley figures, rolling his eyes. 

Except, instead of the perpetually sheepish voice that belonged to Anathema’s boyfriend, there came a perpetually fussy posh one, filled with the cadence of the world’s sexiest Winnie the Pooh.

“Dear girl, are you drunk at eleven in the morning?”

A defensive pause. “… I’m tipsy.”

Crowley can imagine Aziraphale’s admonishing frown. He’d been the subject of it a fair enough amount. He can imagine Anathema looking ashamed at the sight of it. “It was Crowley’s fault.”

Wicked witch threw him under the bloody bus.

Crowley glares at the Monstera karstenianum (or, Monstera Peru, which was not actually from Peru and was really a Philodendron and not a Monstera at all— Philodendron Opacum, to be precise) in front of him, as if to say, Are you hearing what I’m hearing right now?!

The pathologically lying plant, despite all the months apart from Crowley, still shudders on instinct. It makes Crowley grin as he focuses back on the conversation happening a few rooms away. 

"Yes, I saw the Bentley parked out front,” Aziraphale is saying. “He's here, is he?"

Anathema hums in confirmation.

"Yeah, he's in the other room with his plants. I'm making him film a video for the channel."

"The channel?"

"Yeah. You know, the YouTube one. The botany channel."

Crowley rushes out the plant room and to the front door to interrupt the conversation. "Angel!" 

"Crowley!" Aziraphale brightens up. "What's a channel?"

"He doesn't know about the channel?”

"No, Anathema," Crowley grits out with a forced smile, screaming in his head, Shut up, shut up, shut up, and hoping Anathema picks up his mental anguish through witchy telepathy or some shit, "Aziraphale doesn't know about the channel."

"What channel?"

"He makes videos and posts them online. They get loads of views."

"Like the sneezing panda?" 

“No, angel, not like the sneezing panda—"

"Yes, exactly like the sneezing panda! Except for plants. He goes around the world to film them. Newt and I watch them all the time, Crowley sends us the links and everything. You really don't know?"

“I think it’s well established by now, Anathema, that Aziraphale doesn’t know.” 

“Well,” says Aziraphale. “Now I do.”

”Now he does,” agrees Anathema, delightedly.

Crowley’s tongue feels very ill-fitting. Glumly, he nods, and says, “Now he does.” 

Anathema hums in consideration.

She invites Aziraphale into the cottage and shoos Crowley off to film the plant room, and Crowley, annoyed as he is by her exposing what currently was his third most well-guarded secret, is glad to take the excuse to get away from Aziraphale before the angel starts wanting to talk about it. 

He walks with a rigid saunter away and does not look back even when he can feel Aziraphale’s blue gaze piercing curiously into his back. 

He goes to the witch’s plant room and starts filming the plants, slightly jittery with the thought of Aziraphale nearby, listening just a room away. 

He’s good at talking about plants, though. So despite the nervous breathlessness of his voice as he prattles on about all the different types of Monsteras housed in Anathema’s cottage, he doesn’t miss a beat reciting the interesting facts about them, doesn’t stutter when saying their scientific names, doesn’t make a single mistake telling them apart, lightly petting the leaves as he makes commentary.

He finishes up recording and takes a closer look at his beloved plants, feeling one of the leaves and letting out a small huff. He hates leaving the plants here. He hates leaving the plants anywhere he’s not, really.

Don’t get him wrong— he’s very grateful for Anathema taking the too-big or too-delicate or otherwise unfit-for-the-Bentley plants in once he got evicted and even more thankful that she’s well informed on the proper amounts of water and sunlight each pot needs but… it’s clear she spoils the plants. A rookie mistake, that. Scared plants cry, spoiled plants— well… they won’t die, but their presentation will certainly look lifeless.

A couple insolent pothos plants with vines too long for Crowley to bring into the Bentley have begun slacking off in the corner, their green coloring not up to standard. They’re perfectly green now, but Crowley can just tell they’re less green when he’s gone, when they’re only performing for Anathema. It shouldn’t do. They should be perfectly green all the time, like before.

But he can’t very well tell Anathema to start screaming at his plants. She’ll try to psychoanalyze him, or something. Try to get him to unpack why he feels the need to project perfection into his plants. She’ll accuse him of compensating for something. No, he can’t tell her to stop coddling his plants. She’ll make a whole thing about it and take knowing sips of wine and not say much with her mouth but say far too much with her cynical gaze. 

Crowley sighs, feeling a bit defeated. He really ought to start looking into finding some sort of permanent housing for himself. His plants shouldn’t stay here forever. He doesn’t actually know why he’s not started that house-hunt yet already. (He does. Secretly, shamefully, he knows why. But he’ll hold on to that secret for a little while longer, if it can be helped.) 

Crowley takes one last glance around the room — at the towering Monsteras and stretching Epipremnums and the pygmy water lilies growing in teacups — and he gives the plants one last baleful glare before turning on his heels. 

He saunters his way back to the living room and finds Aziraphale alone, blue eyes staring at him from the sofa with a curious expression.

He pauses at the doorway, his breath hitching a little in his throat. 

“Where’s Anathema?” Crowley asks, cautious.

Aziraphale’s head tilts infinitesimally, like the universe’s coyest puppy dog. His hands are crossed daintily on his lap and his lips are not quite quirked upwards, but even without a smile, he looks to be amused.

“In the kitchen. Making tea.”

”Right,” breathes Crowley. He walks slowly over and sits on the other end of the sofa, eyes slightly narrowed at Aziraphale. “So.”

”So,” Aziraphale drawls out. “Botany.”

Crowley stiffens.

”Hardly,” he denies. “It’s hardly botany. It’s all just a joke. The whole thing is a joke. Not even worth mentioning, really. Just one big joke.” 

“Hm,” frowns Aziraphale. “You spend half the week every week traveling the world and taking recordings of plants as… ‘a joke’?” 

Crowley squirms. “Basically,” he lies. 

“What’s the punchline?”

”The punchline is,” starts Crowley, and then he trails off.

”Yes, do go on,” encourages Aziraphale. 

“The punchline, angel, is,” Crowley fumbles, “is, err….”

Aziraphale says, dryly, “Hilarious, my dear.” 

Anathema walks back in the room with the tea. As she sets the platter down on a side table, she begins, “So, it’s been a while since I’ve had the both of you as guests at once. How have you been, Aziraphale?”

Crowley crosses his arms and shuts up about the botany channel. Aziraphale fixes him with a look that says, Oh, don’t think we aren’t talking about this later, and he answers Anathema like a good little guest. Crowley looks away and glares at his feet.

Indeed, on the drive back to London, Aziraphale brings it up again.

”I happen to find it very charming,” the angel begins, in response to nothing, and if there was a less subtle way to begin such a conversation, it completely escaped Aziraphale’s mind. 

Crowley contemplates driving them both into a ditch. But then, he imagines the state the poor Bentley would be in if he did that. So he restrains himself by gripping the wheel of the Bentley tightly between his fists and clenching his jaw hard enough that his teeth grind against one another. 

“That’s me,” Crowley attempts. “Mr. Charming.”

”No, really, it is! You make informational plant videos!”

Crowley shrinks self-consciously into himself. If there was a lamer way to describe his new hobby than how Aziraphale just did, Crowley can’t imagine it.

“Sure,” he manages.

Aziraphale nods primly. “And, err… it’s all on the internet? On… I want to say YouChew?”

Crowley prays for God to strike him down. He makes a noise in his throat somewhere in the middle of “hhng” and “gguuh” and “ngk.”

Aziraphale frowns at him. “I just don’t understand why you would hide it from me.”

”I wasn’t hiding it from you,” lies Crowley lamely.

“Really?” Aziraphale gives him an unimpressed, unconvinced stare, dry as the Atacama. “Because I happen to remember you going through extensive lengths evading my questions about what you were getting up to.”

”That’s not lying. That’s just not explaining.”

”It’s a lie by omission.”

”It doesn’t count.”

”You hid it from me. We both know it, stop denying it.” 

Crowley throws his hands up, face red and embarrassed. Aziraphale grumbles at him to keep his hands on the wheel. 

“For somebody’s sake, Aziraphale, it’s a YouTube channel, not a giant vat of Holy Water. It’s nothing. Not even worth mentioning.”

Aziraphale’s voice comes off as a bit peeved when he argues, “It’s something you like. You’re passionate about it, you care for it— don’t even try to say that you don’t. It’s worth mentioning. It’s worth mentioning to me.”

Crowley lets out a guttural groan. 

“Don’t be rude,” snaps Aziraphale.

Crowley quiets. He keep his eyes past the windshield, keep driving all stiff, and then he grumbles, guiltily, “Sorry.”

Aziraphale looks at him.

“Weeks and months you’ve been disappearing and I don’t know where you go. Turns out you’ve got an entire part of your life hidden away.”

”’S not hidden. Last video got, like, a million views.”

”Well, looks like it’s not hidden for everyone but me.” 

They drive in silence for a few moments. Crowley’s discomfort mutates into something like regret. He lets out a heavy sigh and glances sideways at Aziraphale, who is now slumped against the window, tucking himself into the corner. 

“Listen,” says Crowley, “I just wanted to keep this thing separate from everything else, okay?”

Aziraphale blinks. “‘This thing’ being your botany videos.”

”Yes.”

”And… ‘everything else’ being… me.”

Crowley pauses. “No, wait, that came out wrong.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes are sad. Crowley doesn’t have to look at him to know. 

“You’ve told Anathema. You’ve told Newt. You’ve told a million people on the internet. But not me.” In his periphery, Crowley can see Aziraphale’s face harden, not cold or angry at all, but restrained, like he’s trying very, very hard to put on a brave face. The angel always was sensitive to feelings of rejection. It makes Crowley’s chest tighten. “I just want to know why.” 

Crowley forces out a frustrated noise. “Because it’s dorky. It’s— It’s a stupid pastime. What’s so interesting about plants?”

”There must be something interesting about them,” Aziraphale groans, “you’ve a whole thing dedicated to talking about them.” He rolls his eyes wildly. “Why is it so difficult for you to accept the fact that I like whatever you like?”

Crowley laughs humorlessly.

“That’s not true. You hate what I like.” He thinks of Queen, of fast driving, of messing about with humans, of James Bond films. All the things he likes, Aziraphale tolerates at most. Aziraphale doesn’t like to budge about things. He likes to divide all things into the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ bins in his brain and that’s where they stay forever. Crowley, on the other hand, is more flexible. When Aziraphale decides he likes something, no matter how mind-numbingly boring or cringe it is, Crowley decides he is fond of it, too. Such was the case with Shakespeare, and classical music, and books, and food. “I’m the one who likes what you like.”

Aziraphale sniffs. “I still care about your hobbies. I could… I could go and hike with you.”

”You hate hiking.”

”You don’t know that.”

”I know you. I know you hate hiking.”

”But I like you. I could endure hiking!”

“Drop it,” Crowley sighs. “It’s just a thing that I do. It’s not important at all.”

But Aziraphale insists. “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

“Drop it,” Crowley repeats. And the rest of the drive back is silent.

When they make it to the bookshop, Crowley steps out the car and walks to the passenger side to open Aziraphale’s door. Aziraphale looks up at him kindly but does not step out just yet.

He invites Crowley inside.

Crowley politely declines.

“Gotta do something.” 

Still sitting on the passenger side with Crowley holding the door open outside, Aziraphale bites his lip.

“Would you at least tell me what you’re going to do?” the angel asks. “And not lie about it this time.”

Crowley eyes Aziraphale cagily, hesitating, but then there really is no use trying to hide this hobby anymore. He searches Aziraphale’s face for any hint of judgment that might give him reason to hold back, and finds nothing but restrained curiosity.

“I’m gonna edit the new video,” answers Crowley, truthfully. “And maybe poke around the Nicaragua for a bit. Look at trees.”

”Going to film another one?”

Crowley shakes his head. “No. Just, err, look around.”

Aziraphale fixes him with a soft look. And his features melt into a supportive affection. He smiles, slight, at Crowley and says, “You really like doing this?”

Crowley can’t help it, he returns the smile.

“Yeah.”

“Go on, then,” Aziraphale sighs affectionately, and he steps out the Bentley. A hand reaches up to softly, gently pat Crowley’s face, palm lingering for so long that it’s almost a caress, and he says, “Have fun.”

Crowley does a hike-with-me video while on a nature trail in Texas, USA.

He’s got a handheld camera now, a small camcorder with a strap that wraps snugly around his fingers, and he points it at interesting shrubbery while he walks.

When he’s not pointing at the plants, he’s going off on small tangents about his life.

Usually, it starts off with some plant-related anecdote with a tangible point to be made, but Crowley is easily distractable, so more often than not, Crowley finds himself talking about cattails one moment and his living situation the next. It’s very therapeutic, if not sometimes a pain to listen to and cut out of the video when he’s editing. But he can’t exactly help it. He just… likes to talk. It’s gotten him into many a unfortunate situation.

“Anyway,” Crowley sighs, kicking a pebble off the path as he walks, “what was I even on about? Ah, right. Recently, a friend of mine found out about the channel. This is the, uh, same friend I talked about, err, was it three videos ago? On that Aroids classifications video, in the botanical gardens. He’s the one I got off, err, death row. Due to be executed before I showed up, but he was innocent, I promise. Just wore poncy clothes, wrong time, wrong place.”

Crowley gets distracted by a particularly large cluster of prickly pears. He hums to himself.

“Lots of Opuntia basilaris on this trail. Look at the fruits on some of them. Err, Opuntias are pretty neat, you can find them almost everywhere in the American Southwest. We passed by that impressive Opuntia alta earlier on this trail, remember that? Magnificent species, just gorgeous. My favorite ones are the Opuntia microdasys, but I haven’t seen any on this trail yet. We might be a little too far North into Texas for them. Anyway.” 

He walks away from the cacti.

“The channel’s grown a bit, I guess. Fucking nerds and freaks, all of you subscribed to me. But I appreciate it. People are recognizing me by voice sometimes. Can you fucking believe that? I went to a plant nursery yesterday and someone asked me if I was Sin Pays But Botany Doesn’t. Fucking crazy.”

Crowley sighs.

“Well, I guess this whole thing starting out as a joke has spiraled into something else, now. Everyone whose opinion matters knows I run a bloody botany channel. I figure I ought to fully embrace it. Maybe start an Instagram. Who fuckin’ knows. Anyway, we’re here.”

He reaches the apex of the trail, high enough to see where he’s come from, almost high enough to catch a glimpse of the car park a couple miles off. It’s a rewarding view of all the hues of browns and oranges and greens of the Texas trail. It’s not a very memorable view— not like Eden during sunrise from atop the Eastern wall, not like the Nile the day the river turned back to water, not like the very first rainbow, but it is still beautiful in its own right. 

Crowley smiles, wide and satisfied, all alone, all by himself, and records the view before something near his feet catches his eye.

”Hey, wow! Would you look at that!”

He points the camcorder to a small cluster of flat paddle cacti, hard to distinguish from the others on the trail he’d passed so far to the untrained eye. But Crowley can tell it apart without even skipping a beat.

The spines are small and fluffy and white, almost beckoning to be touched, embodying fragility despite being a cactus, exemplifying delicacy despite its enduring, adaptable nature. The bunny-ear cactus, or the polka-dot cactus, or the angel’s-wings cactus.

“There’s an Opuntia microdasys after all.”

”I watched your videos,” Aziraphale says, over dinner. “Not all of them, not yet, but I watched a lot.” 

Crowley inhales sharply. Not that he wasn’t expecting this. He knew Aziraphale was going to search him up the moment the angel found out about his internet presence. Granted, he did think he would have a bit more time before Aziraphale actually figured out how to search things up. But still. He knew Aziraphale would find a way to watch his videos at some point. 

It’s all still a bit nerve-wracking though. Aziraphale’s opinion matters so highly to Crowley, and until now, he’s always managed to project a semblance of cool and mysterious about him when Aziraphale was involved.

Back in the 60s, Aziraphale had once pointed out a young man’s black leather coat and called it “cool.” It was the first time Aziraphale had ever incorporated that word in his vocabulary to mean “awesome” and the very next day, Crowley had gone out and bought a leather coat which was arguably much better than the young man’s because it had even more pockets for sunglass storage.

He wore the thing around every time he was out with Aziraphale for the rest of that decade, even though it probably made him look like he was cosplaying Blade and it clashed terribly with his too-pale skin and too-red hair. Well, it got the desired reaction, at least, because Aziraphale always got all starry-eyed any time he saw Crowley in it, and the angel would say, “My, dear, how very cool!” 

Anyway. Point was, cool cars and cool clothes and cool sunglasses and cool yelling at things that displeased him with cool carelessness for how that made others feel was how Aziraphale saw him, Crowley saw to that.

Nature trails and botanical gardens and long informational rants peppered in with the scientific names of plants— that was a far cry from the personality Crowley’s cultivated for Aziraphale’s viewing pleasure.

He shudders at the thought of Aziraphale thinking less of him and grips his fork and knife tightly in his hands as he cuts into a steak. Measured, he thinks. He needs to act measured. Not like he’s shitting his pants, measured. 

“And?” Crowley asks, commending his voice for not shaking like how he wants it to. 

Aziraphale hums. “They’re very good. I knew you liked plants but I didn’t know you knew so much about them.” 

Crowley nods stiffly.

“And?” he repeats.

Aziraphale tilts his head. “And I found it charming. I think it’s very cool. I liked seeing that part of you.”

Well. That’s it, then.

Crowley measuredly releases a held breath. He nods and he swallows and he tries to relax, because that’s it. That’s the end of that. 

Aziraphale saw him, whether he wanted to be seen or not, and Aziraphale has decided he still likes him. Aziraphale does not lie (at least, not lately, not since Armageddon), so Crowley knows, definitively, that all his fears have been for naught. That’s just it. 

Terribly anticlimactic. Perfect. Aziraphale thinks it’s cool. Ha-ha.

Crowley relaxes. He loosens his grip on the silverware and raises his gaze to meet Aziraphale’s. He figures he ought to stop being so cagey about this part of himself, and makes an effort to share it with Aziraphale instead. 

“What videos did you watch?” he asks, conversationally, even though he’s still kind of shitting bricks. The way the angel brightens up at his opening up is worth it. 

“Oh, nearly half so far! I’m watching starting from the earliest, and I keep stopping to Google the plants you’re talking about.”

”Yeah, the names are tough.”

”How do you have the memory for it?”

”’S all Latin, innit?” Crowley shrugs. “Just look at the plant and think about what it looks like, then figure out what’s Latin for that and see if you remember a plant named that. Easier than it looks, I promise.” 

“My Latin’s a bit rusty.”

“Like your French?”

”Anyway. I left off on the, err, Manfreda long— lounge— longi—“

”Manfreda Longiflora,” Crowley pronounces, smirking. “From the Asparagaceae family. You can call it ‘longflower tuberose,’ if that’s easier.” 

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. “You’re teasing me,” he accuses. 

Crowley shakes his head, still grinning. He corrects, “I’m showing off.”

Aziraphale looks down at his plate. “It’s very impressive,” he admits, flushing. “I can’t believe this is why you’ve been out of London so often, though.”

”Yep,” says Crowley. “Documenting the plants of the world. What did you think I was doing?”

”You said you were doing ‘demon stuff.’” 

Crowley shrugs, still smirking.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes.

“I wish I’d known sooner.” And then his eyes sparkle. “Dear boy, we’ve been limiting ourselves to restaurants and duck ponds. You could have been showing off at the botanical gardens all this time.”  

“We’ve famously been in gardens together,” Crowley says. 

“But you didn’t shown off your botanical knowledge in Eden. Or in Babylon.” Aziraphale takes a small sip of his wine. “Imagine how enjoyable it would be, teaching me.” 

Crowley hides his flattered smile by raising his wine glass and drinking. “Asking me out to the gardens, angel?” 

Aziraphale smiles. “It could be an educational experience.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes so hard he sees a new color. “Oh, go read a book if an educational experience is what you’re after.” 

The angel giggles sweetly. “There’s not a single book that keeps me company quite as well as you do, dear.”

Crowley fights a wide smile. “Shut up.” 

“Kew Gardens? Next week?” 

“Of course, angel. I’d be delighted to.” 

Crowley hands the camcorder to Aziraphale with minimal hesitance. 

“It’s already recording. Don’t film above the shoulders.” 

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. He points the camcorder at Crowley’s chest and then starts trailing the view of the camera down to his arms before catching onto his hands and trailing the demon’s hand gestures instead. “Yes, I know.” 

“Well, just make sure you don’t,” stresses Crowley, eyeing the camcorder warily. It wouldn’t actually be much of a bother if Aziraphale accidentally filmed his face or anything— that could easily be edited out later, but if Aziraphale insists on helping Crowley record a video, then Crowley might as well teach him right. 

“I won’t, quit fussing. Just start talking.” 

The day began how their outings usually went, with Crowley picking Aziraphale up at the bookshop, them driving out to the botanical garden, and walking around amongst the impressive array of plants once they got there, but as they made their ways through the different greenhouses, Crowley and Aziraphale found new conversation in Crowley’s vast knowledge of plants.

Aziraphale was genuinely interested in what Crowley knew, pointing out each and every flower that caught his eye, not even bothering to look at the plaques in front of them before turning to ask Crowley delightedly, “What’s that one, dear?” It was terribly endearing.

Later, when they passed through the Temperate House, Aziraphale began bugging Crowley to make a video. Just like Anathema, Aziraphale’s apparently become addicted to Sin Pays But Botany Doesn’t. He still hasn’t watched all the videos in Crowley’s channel yet, but he’s sure planning ahead, making sure Crowley’s making more content for his future consumption. 

Trouble is, all the plants Aziraphale wanted him to take videos of were not very interesting. Most all of them were flowers, and no shade to flowers at all, but Crowley fancied himself a botanist, not a florist.

Anyway, he relented to Aziraphale’s urging him to make a video when they got to the Amorphophallus titanum, the famous corpse flower, but Aziraphale didn’t get to watch much of Crowley’s commentary, having rushed out of the room not even two minutes later because of the stench. Crowley had cackled and continued to film while Aziraphale waited for him outside. 

But since the corpse flower, Aziraphale’s been bugging Crowley to let him handle the camera. “It would give you two free hands,” was his argument. As feeble as the argument was, Crowley’s a fucking sucker, so Aziraphale won anyway. 

And now they’re at the Waterlily House, stood in front of the aquatic collections.

Aziraphale zooms in on a very, very small water lily as Crowley points at it. 

”This is the Nymphaea thermarum,” says Crowley, a bit unsteadily, unused to talking without his hands being unoccupied by a camera. Behind the camera, though, Aziraphale is smiling brightly at him, giving him strength. “It’s the world’s smallest water lily, endemic to a single hotspring in Rwanda but now extinct in the wild. Back in 2008, they were nearly fully extinct. That little hotspring they were native to in Rwanda dried up when humans started using it for agriculture. I mean, the Nymphaea thermarum literally only grew in a few square meters.”

”Fascinating,” says Aziraphale, and Crowley snorts. 

“Anyway, a couple of the seeds were saved, but nobody could figure out how to propagate ‘em. And then—“ Crowley laughs “—then a rat fucking eats one of the last two surviving plants, and then they really had to figure out how to propagate the fuckin’ thing then. They figured it out eventually, obviously. Anyway, turned out, the secret was the carbon dioxide and temperature. Horticulturists at Kew Gardens figured out they grew in shallow mud in twenty-five degrees Celcius. Native to a hot spring, remember?

“So, they saved the Nymphaea thermarum, and now you got these tiny little buggers in a loads of other botanical gardens. But it kind of makes you wonder how many other plants there are that’ve grown in such unique conditions that they became extinct the moment humans fucked with them.” He points at the camera. “Careful what hot springs you interfere with.” 

Aziraphale drops the camcorder to his side but doesn’t stop recording, probably because he doesn’t know how. “How grim,” he says.

“Naw,” Crowley dismisses. “People need to be reminded, sometimes.”

Aziraphale considers this, and then he hums in agreement. He walks over to Crowley’s side and looks down at the Nymphaea thermarum.

“Was the bit about the rat eating it when it was critically endangered true?”

Crowley snorts. “Mhm. Funny, yeah?” 

A slight smile graces the angel’s lips. “Hilarious.”

Crowley leans in a little closer, conspiratorially. “Wanna know something funnier?”

The angel raises a brow. “What?”

He reaches over to take the camcorder from the angel’s hands and stops the recording before whispering into the angel’s ear, “I nicked one of these in 2014.”

Aziraphale barks out a surprised laugh. “You what?”

”Scooped down and took one.” The grin on Crowley’s face is so wide, it hurts. “Put it in my pocket and just walked out. Was easy enough.”

Aziraphale is giggling behind the manicured hand covering his mouth. “Could I see it?”

Crowley thinks of the several teacups in Anathema’s cottage where the stolen lily and all the others Crowley’s propagated from it live. He imagines them in Aziraphale’s bookshop and feels warm. He imagines all of the plants in Aziraphale’s bookshop and feels hot.

“‘Course,” he says. “I’ll bring it some time.”

The Kew Gardens video, predictably, is a hit. It receives an overwhelming amount of comments. 

Is the cameraman staying? (Crowley replies, Probably not. He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, so expect no 3rd person POV hiking vids. But he might make an occasional appearance for garden content.) 

Chest! Chest! Chest! Third person point of view has given the people what they wanted— Chest!

Nice video! Nymphaea thermarum is my favorite water lily :) So happy every time you cover an aquatic plant. Fun fact: somebody stole one od these from the Kew Gardens in 2014! (Crowley replies, Hahaha.) 

New cameraman zooming in on hands and chest more than the waterlily… either spbbd is deciding to cash in on all the thirst comments and this is intentional or this new cameraman is WHIPPPPPPED

First

Is the cameraman the witch friend that was behind last month’s monstera tour vid? I’m confused. (Crowley replies, No, witch friend is different. But both of them like to squeeze me for content.) (A new commentor replies, I would like to squeeze you too)

Hands and chest in one video. You’re fucking sick for this spbbd.

Corpseflower being the only plant in this video recorded in first person pov IS SO FUNNY LOOOOL spbbd please confirm whether or not cameraman left you to fend for yourself in that room. (Crowley replies, He almost threw up when the smell hit him hahaha had to step outside.)

The next time Crowley comes by the bookshop, he’s got a platter of teacups, each shallowly filled with some water and topped off with a Nymphaea thermarum. He hands the platter to Aziraphale without so much as a greeting and says, “Keep them,” his voice gone involuntarily soft like he’s giving Aziraphale pieces of God in teacups. 

Aziraphale blinks up at him, caught by surprise. And then his eyes widen.

“Oh, no, dear, I only meant to look at them!” He tries to hand back the platter, but Crowley steps back. “They’re yours, I can’t take them!”

 Crowley grunts.

“Technically, they’re yours. Just gave ‘em to you, see.” 

“Crowley.”

”Just take them, angel. I haven’t been able to take them around with me like the others. They can’t spend the majority of their time in a moving car. I need someone to take them. Really, you’d be doing me a favor.” 

Aziraphale shakes his head firmly.

“I know how much you care for your plants, Crowley. And I’m rubbish at plants, I know nothing about them! I don’t want to— to mess anything up. It’s too much pressure, I can’t take them.”

”You don’t have to take care of them at all,” Crowley insists. “Just leave them some place warm, and I’ll take care of the rest any time I come back.”

”Leave them with Anathema!”

”They were at Anathema’s, but I want them to be with you!” Crowley groans. “Anathema doesn’t know how to care for them, anyway. She spoils them rotten.”

”What makes you think I’d spoil them any less?” 

“Fair.” Crowley sighs. He stares at Aziraphale with knitted brows. “But, please, angel. I… I don’t have anywhere to put them, and I’d feel much better if they were with you.” 

That gets him. Crowley can tell the exact moment Aziraphale relents, big blue eyes going soft, shoulders drooping slowly as he holds the platter closer to himself. 

“I—“ the angel begins, and then interrupts himself with an inhale. “Okay. I’ll keep them in the shop. But they’re still yours, all right? I’m just keeping them.”

That’s perfect, Crowley wants to say. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. My things at your place. Our things at our place.Gorgeous. 

He bites his tongue and says, “Thank you.” 

He can already imagine the teacups, lined up at a windowsill, gone golden with the sun, or spread around, on top of some of the shop’s endless number of side tables. He can imagine the water lilies thriving here, where it is so warm all the time, so perfect all the time. Even being held by Aziraphale, they look at home. Why hadn’t he ever given Aziraphale a plant before again? Why didn’t he just leave the plants at the bookshop instead of with Anathema? 

Aziraphale gives Crowley a fond look before walking off, presumably to find a place to place the teacups. Crowley follows, expecting Aziraphale to just deposit the platter of water lilies in the back room of the bookshop, but the angel walks in the direction of the stairs instead.

Crowley shadows Aziraphale curiously as the angel walks up the steps to the flat above the shop, and as he’s walking, Aziraphale is saying, “How do your plants feel, do you think, being so separated from their owner?”

Crowley shrugs, bitterly remembering his graceless eviction. As far as severed loyalties went, Crowley wasn’t all too saddened by Hell firing him — he’d checked out his loyalty to Hell long before he was fired — but getting sacked from Hell was still sort of a blow to his ego, considering his previous experience of getting sacked from jobs and evicted from homes. Crowley had begun somewhat of an expert on evictions, but it no less hurt. First, the star nurseries were stripped away from him, and now, his plant nursery was gone, too.

“Somebody knows I don’t like to be separated from them either,” he grumbles.

Oh, the things he would do to get the grow room in his old flat back. The things he would to have all his plants in one place, all lined up for him to be cared for or managed or chastised. He misses his plant room so much.

Aziraphale gives him an odd look, glancing back. They’re in Aziraphale’s home space now, a place Crowley’s not often in, and it’s a bit distracting being in the upstairs, so Crowley isn’t paying much attention to what Aziraphale is saying, busy taking in as much of Aziraphale’s living space as he can.

“If you dislike it so much,” Aziraphale is saying, setting the platter down on a coffee table bordered by comfortable sofas and arm chairs, “why don’t you cut down on the amount of time you spend away from London? I love your YouTube just as much as the next person, Crowley, but the plants in the Amazon rainforest will miss you less than the plants you currently own. You could move them out of Anathema’s cottage and back into your flat. I’m sure they’d appreciate being back at Mayfair, being taken care of by you again.” 

Crowley freezes.

Ah. Right.

Aziraphale doesn’t know he’s, err, been in between homes. He’d forgotten he’d never particularly disclosed The Great Crowley Eviction Of 2019 to the angel before. 

I’m sure they’d appreciate being back at Mayfair, being taken care of by you again.

Is that what the angel assumed, then? That his new hobby, going around the world filming plants, was the reason why he couldn’t take care of his own? That being away from London was the reason why all his precious plants were stuffed in Anathema’s second living room? Did the angel still assume he had a flat?

Crowley swallows nervously.

He thinks about what to say. Should he tell Aziraphale he’s been living in his car these past couple years? No. Aziraphale would question.

Aziraphale would demand to know why he hasn’t attempted to find housing all this time. And the truth would come out, wouldn’t it? If Aziraphale asked why he didn’t get a new flat, the truth would come out—

Secretly, all this time, Crowley’s been holding out on finding a new place to live, because— because he was a creature of high expectations. Because, at his core, Crowley was an optimist.

Secretly, all this time, Crowley’s been hoping. Hoping that Aziraphale would ask him to move in with him. 

He thinks about what to say. He thinks about saying something. But then, he is silent for too long. And Aziraphale moves on. 

The water lily teacups are all lined up at a windowsill, gone golden with the sun. Aziraphale turns back to smile at Crowley, and the brightness of his face rivals the sunbeams easily. 

“Aren’t they lovely?”

Crowley swallows dryly. “Gorgeous, angel.” 

Crowley is in New Zealand, taking videos of Rubus plants when he gets the call. 

Aziraphale is yelling before he’s even got the phone to his ear.

“YOU’VE BEEN LIVING IN THE BENTLEY THIS WHOLE TIME?” 

Crowley inhales sharply and flinches.

“Shit,” he says. “How’d you find that out?”

“What do you mean how did I find it out, you— you horrible—“ Aziraphale screams frustratedly. “Why didn’t you tell me? Averted an apocalypse together, raised a child together, and I find out you’re living in your car through a bloody Monstera video—“

Crowley frowns. Ah. Right. He’d forgotten he talked about living in his car online. Fuck, digital footprint really was a real thing, huh? He runs a hand down his face and sighs. 

“Listen,” he interrupts Aziraphale’s furious rambling, “angel, it’s not that big of a deal.”

”Like Hell it isn’t!” 

“Really, it’s not.”

”Where do you sleep? Where do you bathe?”

“I’m a demon. It’s all snaps and miracles, you know that. I drove the Bentley from London to New Zealand today to record a YouTube video, angel, I don’t need a house.”

“But you like having a house. You— You like beds and baths and— and, oh, Crowley, your plant room!” Aziraphale’s voice breaks. “Is… is that why your plants have been at Anathema’s? Oh, Crowley….”

Crowley balances the phone up in the crook of his neck and kneels down to examine the cluster of Rubus cissoides while Aziraphale is talking. He runs his hands down the sharp, hooked stems and the saw-tooth-like edges of the leaves.

The thing about Rubus plants is, once the thorns scrape against skin and find purchase, they attach, not letting go until they’ve drawn blood. It is a cruel adaptation but a necessary one for the plant’s survival. The common name for Rubus plants are “bush lawyers.” Crowley thinks it is an unfair name, for the plant. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Crowley repeats. The conversation is starting to exhaust him. “I don’t need a house. I never needed one in the first place. Remember the Old Testament days, angel? When we’d bunk out in caves and on the tops of trees?” 

Crowley can hear Aziraphale’s frown through the phone. 

“Crowley, you are living in your car and you hate it.”

”You don’t know that,” Crowley protests weakly.

”I know you.” 

Crowley doesn’t know what else to say. He stays silent. The line is silent, for a while. And then Aziraphale sighs. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” In his mind’s eye, Crowley can see Aziraphale massaging his temples, slouching into himself, looking sad or defeated or disappointed. Softer, the angel asks, “Why don’t you ever tell me these things?”

Crowley swallows thickly.

The answer, if Aziraphale prodded enough into Crowley to rip it out of him, is I like you too much. But Aziraphale is not the type to rip into things. So the answer stays hidden inside of Crowley, and the question hangs in the air, the miles, the silence between them. He has no excuse. He attempts no excuse. 

Aziraphale breathes shakily.

“When you come back,” he says, “we’re going to go look for places for you to stay. Okay?”

Crowley bites his lip. His whole body tenses in on itself.

“Okay.” 

“Aziraphale’s been taking me house hunting,” Crowley tells Anathema the next week. 

It’s a warm and pleasant day, so they’re out in her garden instead of inside, and they’ve already finished the bottle of wine Crowley brought, so in the center of the glass patio table between them sits instead a pitcher of what Anathema, the American that she is, calls “lemonade” despite it not being carbonated or fizzy at all. 

“House hunting?” Anathema inquires. 

Crowley hums in confirmation. “Yeah. So I’ll probably be taking my plants back out of your hands soon.”

Anathema looks thoughtful. She tops up her glass with more from the pitcher and asks, “Why does it sound like we’re not happy with this development?” She takes a slow sip and then sets the glass back down. “I thought you missed your plants.”

Crowley frowns. “I don’t want to buy a house, though.”

Another slow sip. “Why not?”

”Um.” Crowley hasn’t had time to practice his excuses on this yet. He is terribly unprepared. “The, err, housing market is… abysmal. Erm… housing crisis… economy in shambles…. Err.”

Anathema narrows her eyes. “You are just saying words. Why don’t you want to buy a house?”

”Gas and electric bills.”

”Crowley.”

”Water bills?”

”Crowley….”

“Homeowners associations….”

Crowley squirms. He shrugs, evasively, and then looks out into Anathema’s garden like not looking at the witch will get her to drop the subject, even though it was him who brought it up in the first place. Anathema stares at him, unimpressed.

Crowley sweats as she scrutinizes him. Anathema has a way about her that makes eye contact with the witch feel like eons and eternities are passing by. Crowley thinks he’ll never escape that gaze. But then finally, she turns her scrutinizing gaze away and looks out into her rosebushes.

”Does Aziraphale know?” 

Crowley croaks, “Know what?” 

“That you want to move in with him.”

The demon freezes. “What?”

Anathema blinks slowly at him. ”It’s very obvious, Crowley.” She rolls her eyes. “‘Homeowners association’, ‘gas and electric bills’, Jesus, I thought you lied better.” 

“It’s not obvious.” Crowley crosses his arms defensively. “Is it?” 

The witch nods emphatically. 

“Bugger.”

Crowley groans and miracles the pitcher of lemonade into wine. He empties his old glass into the dirt and fills it with alcohol before downing it in its entirety. Anathema judges him only a little, and silently.

“He took me to a showing for a townhouse yesterday. Do I look like I want to live in a bloody townhouse?” A frustrated noise crawls up and out his throat. “Fuck’s sake, we’re looking into condos next week.” 

Anathema snorts out a laugh. “So what? You’ve just been walking around real estate showings humoring him?”

”Well, I’ve no intention of buying a fucking house, do I?” Crowley runs a hand down his face. “I’ve been considering just buying one, you know? Just… to get him to back off and shut up about it.”

Anathema’s lips droop into a frown. “You wouldn’t be happy in a house you don’t want.”

Crowley leans back glumly into his chair, feeling defeated. “It would be nice to have a bed again,” he considers. 

Anathema shakes her head. She repeats, firmer, “You wouldn’t be happy in a house you don’t want.” And then she leans forward, leveling with Crowley. “You’ve lived in your car since Armageddon because having a home without him is worse than having a home at all. I know you miss your plants, and I know you miss having someplace to rest at the end of the day. But you wouldn’t be happy in a house you don’t want.”

And it wouldn’t be home without him, adds a voice in Crowley’s head. 

Crowley exhales heavily. 

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks her, feeling ragged. 

“Live with him,” she shrugs. Like it’s that fucking easy. “Tell him, ‘I don’t want to live in a condo, I want to live with you.’”

Crowley stares blankly at Anathema. “I’m not doing that.”

”Why not?”

”It’s stupid.” What if he says no? “He’s literally taking me house hunting. If he wanted me to live with him, he’d have asked me before we went and looked at townhouses.”

”Or,” Anathema argues, “he hasn’t asked you because he didn’t think you’d want to. Just like how you haven’t asked him because you don’t think he wants to.” 

“It’s stupid,” Crowley dismisses. 

And Anathema shrugs. She dumps out the lemonade in her glass on the dirt and refills with wine as well. And she drops the subject but looks at Crowley like she knows he’ll be thinking of what she said for several, several nights. 

The conversation moves on to lighter things. Anathema asks about the channel, Crowley asks about Newt. But Crowley is distracted while they talk, busily imagining what actually living with Aziraphale would be like.

He’s definitely not going to be taking Anathema’s advice about just asking Aziraphale if he could live there. But it’s not like the bookshop wasn’t already his home. When he wasn’t out of London or editing videos in his Bentley while parked in an alleyway, Crowley was in the shop, drinking with Aziraphale or sitting watching Aziraphale read or helping Aziraphale put his coat on before they went out together. 

Crowley thinks about the teacups in the flat above Aziraphale’s bookshop. He thinks about them a lot. Around the thought of him, Crowley forms the basis of a plot. 

When the day ends, he hugs Anathema goodbye and thanks her for her insight.

He drives all the way back to the bookshop and when he arrives there, he steps out carrying the box of plants that have lived in his Bentley for years. He enters the shop, and Aziraphale pops out from behind a couple bookshelves at the sound of the bell.

”Crowley!” the angel greets excitedly. 

Crowley grins. He walks over and deposits the box into Aziraphale’s hands. 

“Keep these for me,” he says.

Aziraphale blinks at the plants, eyes narrowing with recognition at the box they’re stored in, seeing them in a new light since he first learned of why they were in a box instead of a plant room. He asks, “Are these the ones that were—“

”Living in my Bentley, yes.” 

Aziraphale’s gaze goes soft. He pets one of the leaves of a small Anthurium crystallinum. 

“I’ll find places for them,” he promises, and Crowley nods gratefully. 

“Don’t make them too comfortable,” he tells Aziraphale as the angel begins to walk upstairs with his big box of houseplants, and he smiles wider at the genius of his plot.

He would bring his plants in, little by little. Keep all the things he loved in one place. That was all he really needed.

Crowley didn’t need to live here for it to be his home. It already was his home. He didn’t need a bedroom, or his toothbrush in a holder at the sink upstairs. He didn’t need to live here. He didn’t need to sleep here and wake up here and cook in the kitchen here and bathe here for it to be the place he called home. The couch in the back room was his, that was enough. The wine in the cellar was his, that was enough. The shop opened for him no matter the hour, no matter the day, that was enough.

But if this was to be home — and it was — it wouldn’t do to for his plants not to be here. Home wasn’t home without 1) Aziraphale, and 2) his plants. And Aziraphale was already here.

Anathema was right: it wouldn’t do to buy some stupid new house, because he didn’t want a stupid new house. Crowley wasn’t going to buy a new house. Not when he already had a home. 

The next time he’s at Anathema’s, he takes all four of his fiddle-leaf figs from her living room and loads them into the backseat of the Bentley.

She watches him curiously and asks, “Found a place to live then? Bought yourself a house?”

Crowley glances back at her and purses his lips. “Not as such, no.” 

Her eyes narrow with suspicion. She says nothing more on the subject but keeps her eyes narrowed even after Crowley’s backing out of her driveway and speeding away.

Crowley situates the fiddle-leaf figs in the bookshop’s back room just before Aziraphale pops down the stairs, dressed for another real estate showing. He stares curiously at the new plants but does not comment beyond an offhanded, “How pretty.” 

When they get to the showing — a small house with a wraparound patio — Crowley finds everything wrong with the place and nearly reduces the real estate agent Aziraphale has hired to tears. Aziraphale glares admonishingly at him and accuses him of not even giving the place a shot. Crowley just shrugs and grins privately to himself.

After the showing, he and the angel get dinner. After dinner, the pair makes their way back to the bookshop for a nightcap. When the sun begins to rise, Crowley sobers himself up and says goodbye to the angel before hopping back into the Bentley to drive to whatever plant Crowley’s been itching to make a video about. 

When he finishes with that, he drives back to England, making a stop at Anathema’s cottage to wail in Anathema’s ear about the various living spaces Aziraphale suggests before loading more of his plants into the Bentley to bring back to the bookshop.

This becomes routine.

Go to Anathema’s cottage to pick up plants, go to Aziraphale’s bookshop to drop off plants, go to a showing of a house Crowley is definitely not going to buy, go to dinner with Aziraphale, go to a different country to film plants, go to Anathema’s cottage to pick up plants— whatever.

It is a repetitive process, but it fills the days satisfyingly.

Anathema stares judgingly at him every time he leaves her house with one of his plants in his backseat. But she doesn’t say anything. Crowley finds something wrong with every apartment/condo/townhouse/studio they visit. Aziraphale glares with disappointment, but he respects it when Crowley rejects the homes proposed to him. 

The bookshop steadily fills with houseplants. Anathema’s second living room steadily empties. The number of potential real estate listings in or around London dwindles. Eventually, Aziraphale stops booking as many showings.

Perhaps he’s grown to expect Crowley’s endless excuses against buying the offered houses. Perhaps there’s just not that many available listings anymore. In any case, days usually spent humoring the angel and scowling at real estate agents are replaced with days pleasantly spent walking around parks and botanical gardens or trying out whatever hole-in-the-wall restaurant Aziraphale’s found now.

Not that Aziraphale has completely stopped trying to find Crowley housing. Crowley thinks the angel is far too worried about Crowley’s housing situation to stop trying to find accommodations for Crowley entirely. 

This month, Aziraphale took him to a showy mansion which Crowley complained was a bit too gauche, even for him, and a loft apartment, which was actually quite nice, except for the fact that it was a loft apartment.

Today, they are driving to the next destination— a small cottage in the South Downs. Aziraphale promises they don’t have to go anywhere else this month if Crowley just looks around this last place and keeps an open mind. He promises that this cottage looks perfect for Crowley like no other dwelling they’ve visited before. Crowley, thinking about the flat above the bookshop, highly doubts that.

Nevertheless, Crowley lies straight through his teeth and agrees, already knowing he’ll turn the cottage down. He is always a little bit guilty every time he lies to Aziraphale, but this wild goose chase for a house is starting to annoy him more than anything.

Still, he drives the Bentley to South Downs with Aziraphale at his side. 

“Did you know,” Aziraphale says while they’re speeding through the countryside with Queen serenading them through the stereo, “when I first saw the plant boxes in your backseat after Armageddon, I thought you were going to leave.” 

Crowley’s brows knit together. “What?”

”Thought you were moving somewhere far away, and I would never see you again,” says the angel. He’s got this very sad smile on his face. “I kept thinking, when is he going to disappear? And then you started your YouTube channel and started traveling the world, and I didn’t know where you were going, but you weren’t around very often anymore. I figured, oh Lord, he’s leaving. Slowly but surely, he’s leaving.”

Crowley’s jaw is set into place. He doesn’t know what to say, can’t think of anything comforting or reassuring on the spot except, ”I wasn’t.”

”I know that now—“

“Good.”

”—but back then, it was my biggest worry.“

“How relieved did you feel finding out the boxes were just because I was homeless?” he attempts to joke, and then cringes the moment he hears it back.

Aziraphale fixes him with a bemused glare. Crowley tightens his hold on the Bentley’s wheel to keep from facepalming.

“Not relieved at all.” And he launches off onto one of his practiced rants about the necessity of a home, “To think, all these years you’ve been living in a car, Crowley. It’s—“

”Really unacceptable, yes, yes, I know,” Crowley interrupts, before Aziraphale really gets going. “And I’ll tell you again this time like I have a thousand times before, angel, it’s fine. I don’t need a place to sleep or bathe or cook— I’m a demon, I never have!”

”But it is good to have them, either way,” argues Aziraphale. “It’s good to have a place to go to at the end of the day.” 

Crowley purses his lips and stays quiet. He thinks, I already have one of those, but bites his tongue to keep from saying it. Aziraphale is waiting for him to say something, though, so Crowley decides on a reaction. 

He rolls his eyes and groans. 

Aziraphale’s frown deepens.

“You’re not giving these places a shot,” he says. “Can’t you at least tell me why?”

The Truth rushes to the forefront of Crowley’s mind and makes his head ache dully. I want to live with you, I want to live with you, I don’t want to live alone, I want to live with you. Crowley’s grip on the wheel tightens so hard that his knuckles turn white. I want to occupy the space you occupy. I don’t want to sleep unless you’re near. I want you to be just a room away, all the time, always. I want to live with you.

He forces out, lies out, “I am giving them a shot.”

”No, you’re not.” Aziraphale is looking at him with an unwavering, hard expression. “Why haven’t you looked for a place, all this time? Why have you stored your plants at Anathema’s when you so easily could have bought yourself a house? Why aren’t you buying a house now?”

Crowley locks his jaw hard. His teeth grit against each other with the tension. Crowley is afraid of them fracturing. (Last week, he made a video about exoparasites and endoparasites. He did not post it, because it felt a bit on the nose, after moving most his plants into the bookshop without Aziraphale knowing what he was doing.) He stays silent. 

Aziraphale mumbles, “You never tell me anything.”

”I tell you things,” tries Crowley.

“No, you don’t,” Aziraphale says firmly. “You didn’t tell me about YouTube, and you didn’t tell me about being homeless, and now you’re holding out on me again. Tell me why you reject all the places I offer you.” 

Crowley doesn’t know what to say. He sighs. 

“They’re just not what I’m looking for,” he half-lies— or, depending on your perspective, half-truths, which is enough of a truth to excuse the lie, probably. Aziraphale looks very unconvinced. “But I’ll keep more of an open mind about them from now on. I promise.” 

The angel sighs. He nods and looks out the window to watch the rolling hills pass by.

The cottage is fucking perfect. 

Fucking Hell, the cottage is perfect. 

The driveway is dark gravel. Crowley is barely out of the car when he registers the garden and freezes. It’s… fuck, there’s no other word for it: it’s perfect. 

The garden is large and primarily filled with leafy greens and shrubs with the occasional tastefully placed cluster of flowers, all of which Crowley can tell promote wildlife. It’s thriving and lush and biodiverse. Holy shit the garden is beautiful. Words can’t even describe it. It’s the most gorgeous thing he’s ever laid his eyes on. He can’t peel his gaze away.

He doesn’t even notice the real estate agent has come out of the house to greet them until Aziraphale is tapping his shoulder, bringing him back to earth. It is difficult to keep his face looking unimpressed and neutral when the sight of the garden has activated his salivary glands and he’s sure he’s maybe close to tearing up in admiration.

“I see you’ve noticed the garden,” says the real estate agent. There is some pride in her voice, like she knew the garden would be a selling point from the moment she saw the house. 

Crowley swallows thickly and reinforces his effort to look even less impressed but fails. “It’s, uhh… it’s fine.” 

The agent nods knowingly.

“The back garden is even more impressive,” she stage whispers, like she’s letting him in on a secret. “Would you be all right touring the house first before we see it?”

Crowley can feel his knees go weak. There’s a back garden. There’s a back garden that is even more impressive. The real estate agent watches him with a curious expression, awaiting a response, and when Crowley can’t get anything out without betraying his excitement but a grunt, Aziraphale answers for him. 

So, Crowley is led around the interior of the cottage with Aziraphale hanging off his arm. 

There’s no entrance corridor— the front door opens straight into the large living room and open kitchen, though wooden beams and changes in flooring separate the space quite well. It’s harmonious. 

The inside of the cottage is spacious, but not empty. It is homely. Despite the aged exterior, the agent explains, the inside of the cottage has been entirely updated by the old owners. The floors — stained hardwood in most of the house except for the bathrooms and kitchen, which are tiled — are all heated, the stoves are electric, all that. 

Crowley imagines filling the empty walls with bookshelves and a large TV. He imagines buying kitchen appliances that match the deep blue mosaic backsplash on the kitchen. He imagines an angel wing mug atop the gray limestone counter. Almost as fast as he imagines these, he shakes his head. But the image of them has already stuck fast to the walls of his brain, and they stay.

The agent leads them off to a hallway.

There’s two large office spaces on the right side of the hallway and a guest bathroom on the left. Crowley doesn’t have much of a need for office spaces, and while the agent is leading them around both offices, he places a palm on the shared walls between them and thinks about tearing it down, turning it into just one big room for something like… like a library. Or something. 

Anyway. The agent leads Crowley and Aziraphale out of the offices and out to the end of the hallway, to the stairs. Crowley follows the agent up, hands on the ornately carved wooden railing, trying very, very hard not to look awed by the beauty in the smallest of details of the cottage. 

Upstairs, unlike most other homes Crowley’s toured with Aziraphale so far, isn’t just a bleak hallway with doors on either side. Instead, it opens up to another cozy living space with large bay windows and a skylight. 

This would be a great place to sleep, thinks Crowley. Under the skylight, when the sun is warm and golden, or when gray clouds are pouring rain atop it, blurring the view of the sky, or when it’s nighttime and the moon is high. Curled up in the bay window — he’d turn it into a reading nook, of course — it would be warm as anything. He could spend days up here, in lazy afternoons or easy mornings and cool nights, just napping.

The agent sweeps through the space and moves them along to the individual rooms. 

There are three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. The agent spends a long time in the smallest one of them and says, “Perfect for a nursery,” and Crowley can’t fathom what that’s about. Why would he keep his plants in the smallest bedroom? He doesn’t dwell on it much, and continues trying and failing not to look like he really, really wants to live here.

They move back downstairs. Crowley is buzzing/shaking with anticipation. He can’t wait to see the backyard. 

But then it gets better. 

The glass sliding door opens up into a greenhouse. 

“Oh, good Lord,” Crowley can’t help but moan. He doesn’t need to look at Aziraphale to know the angel’s looking smug.

“This is the greenhouse,” the agent says, amused. “But you could easily turn it into a conservatory, if you’d like.”

”Oh, under no circumstances is that happening,” Crowley mumbles under his breath. 

The agent flashes him a smile, eyes twinkling. “Ample room for plants, I’m sensing that’s your thing. Temperature, humidity, and light controls are over there. The door to the back garden is over here, come follow.” 

Crowley swallows and obeys, head swiveling as he walks across the greenhouse, taking in the size of it, the control it offers, the look of the glass before he’s led out the door. 

Good fucking God. 

The back garden is marvelous. There’s a fucking water feature. 

He could die here. He could be murdered here and he’d thank his killer. His dying wish would be to be buried under the fragrant shrubbery. In fact, Crowley wants to die here. He is slightly disappointed when no killer appears to stab him in the back. Fuck, he wants to die here so bad. He thinks he might be crying. If not, he’s terribly close to.

“Oh my God,” Crowley chokes out, so overwhelmed by the variety of flowering and evergreen shrubs and pollinators buzzing around them that he has to force himself to look away and focus his gaze at the water feature. A small bird drops down to exactly where he’s looking and starts bathing in the water. “Oh my God,” Crowley repeats. 

The agent laughs but she sounds far away. Crowley is in a land of his own now, his legs walking into the garden as if they had a mind of their own. Distantly, he can hear the agent chatting with Aziraphale before she leaves him and the angel alone in the garden to discuss things. The grin on her face as she walks back into the greenhouse is one of a woman’s who is sure she’s about to get a large commission.

A warm hand presses between Crowley’s shoulder blades, grounding him.

He looks at Aziraphale in awe. Aziraphale is smiling fondly up at him. 

“So,” the angel drawls. “This is the one, isn’t it?” 

Crowley looks back at the garden, canary yellow eyes wide with wonder. At the greenhouse. Up at the tudor-style windows above them. Inside the ground floor windows and into the sexiest living room and coziest kitchen he’d ever seen in his life. He almost nods. All the muscles in his neck ache to nod.

But then he thinks about turning the bay windows into reading nooks. He thinks about turning the two offices into one big library. He thinks about covering the bare the walls with bookshelves or painting them yellow, thinks about filling the pantry with baking ingredients, thinks about a cellar with aged cases of white wine.

And he realizes he likes red wine, not white, and he doesn’t know how to bake, and he hates to read, and he hates the color yellow. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. 

He’s not building a fucking home for himself. He’s building a home for him and Aziraphale.

Crowley shakes his head. He feels miserable.

“No,” he forces out. It hurts him just to say it. It feels like his throat is full of thorns as he does— No, not thorns, gravel. Gravel like the driveway of the cottage, gravel like the road leading up to it. No, he says, and he almost chokes on the word. Like it’s gravel. “This won’t do. I can’t live here.”

Aziraphale’s face falls. “What?”

”I— I can’t live here, angel.” 

The drive home is an argument. 

“You clearly liked it!” Aziraphale is saying, and has been saying since they left the poor real estate agent with nothing more than a strained, we’ll contact you and Crowley drove away — away from a perfect garden and a perfect cottage and fuck — with haste. “Why are you being like this? Why won’t you just—“

”I didn’t like it,” Crowley insists, and has been insisting since Aziraphale started questioning him, as if repeating the lie will make it any more true. “I can’t live there. Not at all. Just not a cottage guy, me! Can we just—“

”We are not dropping it!” Aziraphale’s face is alight with frustration. “Months. We’ve been looking for homes for months, and we find the perfect one, and you won’t get it, and you won’t even tell me why!” Aziraphale’s hands move wildly, like they’re going to slam against the Bentley’s dashboard, but they never do. “Tell me why you won’t buy a house, Crowley. I know you fell in love with that place, I could see it in your face. And don’t you dare lie to me again, or so help me God.” 

Crowley speeds up to shorten the drive. His Bentley, understanding and sympathetic, starts pushing 200 miles per hour. He grinds his teeth together and wills himself not to sweat.

Aziraphale throws his hands up. “Well, you can’t just stay silent either!”

Crowley’s breathing so hard and hot that he’s amazed the Bentley’s not fogged up yet.

He keeps thinking about the cottage, and Aziraphale in the cottage, and waking up next to Aziraphale in the cottage, and making Aziraphale a cup of tea in the cottage, and it hurts something fierce. Because thoughts about the cottage are immediately proceeded by thoughts about the bookshop, and the bookshop on opening day, and Aziraphale busily buzzing about contentedly in the bookshop every day since. He thinks about the angel wing mug— how perfect it would look in the cottage and its already established place in A.Z. Fell and Co. 

He can’t imagine living in that cottage without Aziraphale. And he can’t imagine Aziraphale leaving the bookshop. He certainly won’t ask. Aziraphale wouldn’t move from the home he’d built for himself to build a new one with Crowley, perish the damned thought. 

And if he would, then that would be like— like removing the princess from the castle and sticking her into a tower with a dragon. Or something.

“Crowley, please,” Aziraphale begs. He’s begging now, Somebody help Crowley. “Tell me why you won’t.”

”I can’t,” says Crowley. “I just can’t.” He looks at the angel and pleads, just as well, “Angel, it’s not something I can do. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

Aziraphale stares at him like he’s lost his head. 

“Are we friends?” Aziraphale asks, his voice cracking. It’s not a rhetorical question, Crowley can tell. It’s genuine, good God it’s genuine. “Crowley, are we friends?”

Crowley can’t help the groan that falls from his lips. “Don’t ask that, of course we’re friends! Best friends, all right?”

He spots London in the distance and speeds impossibly faster. Aziraphale doesn’t even seem to register how fast they’re going. For once, he isn’t complaining about it, too preoccupied looking at Crowley like he’s a small puppy and Crowley just kicked him six feet into the air.

Crowley dodges and weaves through the London traffic. They reach the bookshop in no time.

Home, he thinks forcefully as he parks on the curb. He thinks it so loud that it makes the inside of his skull vibrate, and still, phantom images of him and Aziraphale in South Downs persist in his brain, unshaken. This is home. This place is home. I don’t need anything else, I don’t want anything more.

Aziraphale sits pin straight on the passenger side. He is white as a sheet, but not from all the driving. Crowley feels incredibly guilty, but there’s no way he’s going to tell Aziraphale he won’t buy the cottage even though he really wants to because he’s already moved into the shop, and there’s no way he’s going to reach over and hold Aziraphale’s hand between his own and say, I’ll buy it. I’ll buy it if you come live there and occupy it with me. 

Crowley goes to get out of the car and open Aziraphale’s door. But Aziraphale stops him with a gesture and he never leaves his seat. And they sit in a grave silence for a moment longer.

Aziraphale takes in a shaky breath.

He says, quietly, so quietly, “Crowley, you don’t tell me things. Important things,” and Crowley prepares himself for the argument to come back again with a vengeance, replenished. He prepares himself for further raised-voice questioning, prepares himself to deflect and evade and change the subject. 

But then Aziraphale doesn’t go off on a rant. Instead, he says, still quiet, “I can’t keep being left in the dark like this. Please don’t come back until you’re ready to tell me why.” 

The angel steps out the Bentley and into the shop without looking back.

Crowley stares dumbfoundedly at the space where he just was. 

“Hi and welcome back to another episode of Sin Pays But Botany Doesn’t.”

Crowley feels like shit. He probably sounds like shit, too. But doing something makes him feel just a little better, a little calmer, a little less like miracling a clone of himself into this bitch of an Earth so he can kick his own ass. 

”Today I’m at, uh, Southern Scotland in a pretty old woods here. I know it’s an old woods because of this yellow little perennial bugger down here. This is the Ranunculus auricomus, commonly known as the goldilocks buttercup— nothing to do with those fuckin’ bears. As you can see, uh, it’s very unassuming, quite small, but a great indicator of an ancient woodland.”

Crowley pans the camera around the woods. It’s very green and, err, woody, as heavily forested areas in the United Kingdom often are. There’s an undeniably strong charm to it. Crowley almost wishes he’d packed a thermos of coffee or something, so he could sit on a dew-dropped patch of weeds with his back against a Pinus sylvestris and listen to the birdsong with warmth in his belly. 

“Some other indicators are… let me see if I can spot some to show you. Err, there. See those? Red campion. Ancient woodland indicator, though there never seemed to be that many back then…. Hm. Some barnacle lichen on the trees. Hart’s tongue ferns. You get the picture.” 

Crowley walks to a tree. 

“Ancient woodlands in the UK are woods that have been around or existed continuously since at least the 1600s. Or, well, in parts of the UK, I should say. Woodlands are considered ancient if they’ve been around since the 1600s in Wales, England, and Northern Ireland. But in Scotland, which is where I am now, woodlands are considered ancient if they’ve been around since the 1750s. I’m not really sure what the fuck’s up with that, if I’m honest. Anyway. This one’s been around since far before 1750.”

Crowley crouches down to rest his legs from standing. He dirties his pants on the damp soil, but that doesn’t matter much when he can just wave the dirt and wet off when it becomes too bothersome. 

“Ancient woodlands are neat. Relatively undisturbed by human activity, so there’s a bunch of interesting growth. And the way the life here interacts with each other is just fascinating. Every fungus, plant, animal here is interdependent on each other in a way that's unique to this wood. They’ve existed with each other for so long. They’re used to each other. Hundreds of years, they’ve been used to each other. And you wouldn’t know unless you knew the signs.”

The camera pans down to the goldilocks buttercups again. “Great indicators of ancient woods,” he repeats. And then he sighs.

“Not that some of you care for the woods,” he says in a stage-grumble. “Some of you are just here to see my hands. Freaks. I get it, though. Bit of a niche, innit? Plants? Bloody plants. Well, whatever. Thanks for watching anyway.”

He sits against the trunk of a Scots pine and pans the camera up its trunk, lightly covered in lichen and moss. Up the bark, perhaps twelve or so feet up from the ground, somebody ages ago has carved a crude drawing of a snake with an arrow pointed at it, labeling the carving “me.”

“This tree’s a Pinus sylvestris. Scots pine.” He zooms into the carved snake, says, “I carved that up there when I was, err… younger. This tree’s about… well, I don’t know how old it is, exactly. I’m a fucking botanist, not a dendrochronologist. It’s old as fuck, though. Older than four hundred years is for sure.”

Crowley pats the trunk like it’s an old friend. Which, it sort of is.

”Back when was younger, I used to camp out in these woods. Climbed up this exact tree and would sleep on a thick branch up there. There were a couple inns some ways away which I bet woulda been loads warmer and more comfortable, but hey, the woods’ve never failed me.”

Crowley pauses.

“Erm, don’t take that as me telling you to sleep in the woods. The woods are right dangerous. Lots of predators. Wolves. Erm… big cats. Bears? Are there still bears in Scotland? Haven’t seen a bear in a while…. Anyway. Point is, if you’re going to sleep outside, don’t sleep in the woods. I was pro’ly lucky I wasn’t eaten by a big ol’ bear.”

By lucky, he meant he was probably a big ol’ red and black snake even the biggest predators around here knew not to mess with. But he doesn’t talk about that. 

He talks about surrounding plants and their evolutions. He likes plant evolution. Having spent his life observing some evolutionary adaptations in real time, Crowley can appreciate plant evolution far more than the average person, and he hopes speaking about it to a receptive audience will ignite some appreciation in other humans. Mostly, though, talking is a distraction.

He talks plant morphology, launches off on a rant about bird of paradise flowers and green birdflowers and orchids. Then, he talks plant genealogy, which gets him into talking about natural and artificial selection somehow, which gets him into talking about his plants back at the shop.

”Not to say that my plants back home are spoiled or anything,” he’s saying, and he’s long since lost the original plot of this particular YouTube video, but rambling on aimlessly is very nice, “but they don’t know how lucky they are, y’know? I mean, I used to simulate storms for them in my old flat, so they’d stay vigilant, but really, some of the pothos plants… put them back in the Solomon Islands and they wouldn’t know how to survive. They need my discipline. Can’t be reintroduced into the wild, like those videos of animals that were born and raised in the zoo. Wouldn’t last a day back in their natural habitat.” Crowley considers this, and then he shrugs. “Or maybe they would. I’m not gonna try.”

He rambles on. He films a bit more for a while longer. When the sun starts to set, when the woods begin to cool into the night, Crowley shivers. 

“It’s getting chilly,” he mumbles. “Don’t know how I ever used to spend nights out here. Looks like I’m not young anymore.” 

He ends the video, puts away the camcorder, and walks out the woods to the Bentley and starts the car. But then he finds that he has no other place to go. 

Crowley sighs. He turns the Bentley’s engine off and cozies himself in the driver’s seat. Somehow, it is lonelier tonight, falling asleep in the car. 

Crowley needs to water his plants. That’s his excuse for driving back to the bookshop. That’s his excuse when Aziraphale narrows his eyes at him from across the room as he enters. 

“Come to talk?” asks the angel. He’s no longer looking sad like he was in the Bentley. Instead of soft and vulnerable and pleading, he is cold and closed off and self-assured. It’s just something Aziraphale does, just how his moods work. He gets sad, and then when that doesn’t solve an issue, he becomes a bit of a bastard. Would turn Crowley on, if it didn’t happen at the worst of times.

”I need to water my plants,” says Crowley lamely, shaking his head. 

Aziraphale glares at him. His pale blue eyes flash like lightning. “I’ve watered them.”

It’s Crowley's turn to narrow his eyes.

”You don’t know how to water them.”

“I learned.” 

“I’d feel better if I could take care of them myself.”

“Well, I’d feel better if you communicated.” 

“Are you going to hold my plants hostage from me, angel?”

”Wouldn’t be holding them at all if you had a house, would I?” 

Crowley inhales sharply. He knows a losing battle when he sees one. (Sometimes, he sees a losing battle even when it’s not there.)

He sighs, making sure he sounds pathetic enough to make Aziraphale guilty later, and turns on his heel, walking right out the shop door. Best leave to fight another day.

”In the doghouse, are you?” Anathema cackles at him.

”Shut up.” Crowley is searching Anathema’s pantry for bottles of wine sufficient enough to be getting drunk on. He finds none aged enough to his liking, but he does manage to scavenge out a bottle of brandy, which is basically wine, if it fell from Heaven. “We’ll get over it. We always get over it. You can’t befriend someone for six thousand years without mastering getting over it.” 

Anathema looks doubtful. She arches her brow like, Are you sure? Her lips twitch downwards like, Trying to convince me or yourself?

”Shut up,” Crowley repeats.

Her hands come up in mock surrender. ”I didn’t say anything.” 

He twists the cap off the brandy bottle with his teeth and spits it out onto the kitchen floor. Anathema glares at him like he’s an animal, which, fair, and he miracles the bottle cap away with a sigh. 

After a long swig straight from the bottle, Crowley insists, “We’ll get over it. I already have a plan.”

Anathema crosses her arms. Her doubt is growing by the minute, like radishes. Those grew quick.

“What’s your plan, then? Let me hear it.”

”I’ll buy the stupid cottage. It’s what he wants.” Crowley thinks bitterly about living there alone. All that space to himself, all that land to himself, all to himself. His dream turned nightmare. He shudders before he steels himself with another drink.

”That’s not what you want,” points out Anathema. 

Crowley ignores her. It’s not about what he wants. 

“I’ll buy it by tonight if I have to. And then I’ll come to him and grovel, like I always do — Oh, Aziraphale, you were right, I was wrong, please stop being a bastard, please — even though I don’t ever really mean it, and he’ll forgive me, like he always does — Oh, Crowley, I knew you’d come around — and it’ll be fine, and we wouldn’t even have to talk about it. I won’t have to admit anything about wanting to live with him and all the baggage that comes with that. I’ll just… fucking live in a stupid cottage, alone, but it’ll be fine. It’s going to be fine.” Crowley pulls a face. It’s very difficult to convince himself that when he’s still feeling pretty sober. “I just… gotta get drunk first.”

He walks away from the pantry and saunters out of the kitchen. Anathema would grumble about him acting like he owned the place if she didn’t already know well enough that complaining would only make him act more insufferable. Crowley had a pretty strong psychological reactance. All demons did. It was a mandatory qualification, actually.

So Anathema just sighs and follows this demon out into her living room. She settles on an armchair and says, “Can I at least see the house to know what all this fuss is about?”

Crowley grunts from where he’s situated himself at the corner of her sofa, cradling the bottle of brandy like it’s a newborn. He tries to remember the address of the South Downs cottage and tells her. She pulls out her mobile to search it up.

“Oh, wow,” the witch whistles, scrolling through the virtual house tour. “This is perfect for you.”

Crowley grunts again. Once more, images of occupying the home alone overtake him.

“It better bloody be,” he grumbles, wondering what he’d fill the walls with if not bookshelves. James Bond posters? Bring back the old evil triumphing over good statue? 

“No, seriously, Crowley this is gre— Oh.” Anathema goes quiet. She looks up from the phone with sympathy and pity and a small flinch.

Crowley gives her a suspicious look. “What? What’s the matter with it?”

Anathema shakes her head. “Um, nothing, just… uh….”

”Spit it out.” Maybe if it’s something big he’d missed at the showing, like a huge sinkhole in the backyard, he’d have an excuse to not buy the house and still make up with Aziraphale. Maybe. 

Anathema cringes. ”It’s not available anymore.” 

Crowley freezes. And then he thinks she must be joking. But then she’s still pulling that sympathetic-pity-cringe face and Crowley feels dread pool into his stomach. 

“Say you’re kidding,” Crowley speaks, tone grave. “Anathema, say you’re kidding right now.”

”It’s been bought, Crowley.” She turns the phone to face him. “Look. Sold.” 

“Fuck.” Fuck. 

Anathema purses her lips and looks uncomfortable. “Look on the bright side,” she attempts, weakly, “now you don’t have to buy it.”

”That’s not a bright side, Anathema!” Crowley wails. That house was his ticket to making up with Aziraphale, it could not be fucking gone, that could not do. 

He pales.

Oh, Hell, there’s no getting out of it now. He’ll have to talk to Aziraphale about it.

Anathema’s brows knit sympathetically at him. 

“Hello, Crowley,” says Aziraphale without getting up from the armchair, radiating an air of icy bastardry about him. “Come to talk?” 

The drive up from Anathema’s was illuminating and nerve-wracking. 

He did a lot of thinking to the soundtrack of sad Queen songs, and came to the very disappointing conclusion that he was a bit of a fucking dick, keeping so many secrets from Aziraphale for the simple reason that he was afraid of how the angel would react when Aziraphale’s been nothing but accepting and supportive all this time.

Perhaps Crowley’s faulty reasoning could have been pardoned if they were still working on opposite sides, but this was years after armageddon. They’d turned a new leaf, and they’d forgiven each other for the way they acted under the pressures of Heaven and Hell, and secrets were unnecessary now. But he’d disregarded that turning of a new leaf, and now…

Well, now here he was. Standing in the bookshop like a dog who bit his owner, head hung apologetically. Starting at Aziraphale — or rather, bring stared down by Aziraphale — as the angel asks come here to bloody talk.

Crowley purses his lips. If Crowley were more pedantic, he would point out the fact that duh, of course he was here to talk, or else how would they communicate? Through writing? And if Crowley were snarkier (hard to imagine), he’d roll his eyes and walk right out the door without saying a word, which in itself would be a loud and clear no, actually.

But as of this moment, Crowley is not particularly feeling pedantic or snarky or anything else that would drive him to react badly to the angel’s righteous bastardry. He’s feeling… sorry. And ashamed. And guilty and nervous— no, scared, scared shitless. Scared like nothing else. 

So.

He thinks about what someone contriteful and apologetic and would say. 

He could say, Angel, I’ll say anything you want me to say if it means you’ll stop being angry at me. And he could say, Angel, I’m sorry for acting like a right piece of shit. Just that, the thought of presenting myself to you and you not liking what you saw scares me like nothing else. Or simply, he could say, Angel, I was wrong, and you were right, and I love you, and I’m sorry.

“The cottage has been sold,” he says, instead of all that. He’ll work up to it.

“Hm,” replies Aziraphale, impassively. Or, as impassively as Aziraphale can manage pretending to be— Crowley can still notice Aziraphale’s sadness and disappointment peeking through that façade of nonchalance, and it kind of hurts more than thinking Aziraphale doesn’t care. “And why didn’t you buy it?”

”How’d you know I wasn’t the one who bought it?”

Aziraphale gives him a look. His blue eyes are piercing. They could do that quite well sometimes— be piercing. It was an angel thing.

Crowley raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, I wasn’t. But I was going to. Before I saw it was sold.”

Aziraphale stands from the chair.

“No,” he huffs, swaying a little with frustration, “why didn’t you buy it when you were standing inside of it? Why didn’t you buy any of them? Why do you insist on depriving yourself of a home?” 

Crowley stares at Aziraphale, a good distance away from him, and his entire being itches. He stares at Aziraphale, at the desperation in the angel’s eyes that silently screams and begs for Crowley to tell the truth for once, and a breath lodges in Crowley’s throat and hardens into something he has to swallow around.

Tell the truth for once. Tell the truth. Six thousand years of avoiding it, and now, after all that time, it’s suddenly imperative that he must spit it out. Six thousand years of this elaborate game of emotional poker and now he has to show his hand— Christ, how frightening.

Well.

To tell the truth—

The truth is a captive animal, chased into the cage of Crowley’s ribs sometime long ago. The truth is something fierce, but it is also something fearful. The truth is, Crowley’s ribs are open as anything, and the truth isn’t really caged so much as it is hesitant to leave.

The thing about Crowley is, it takes him a while to say things. But when he gets going, it’s difficult to get him to stop. E.g., when it took him until 537 AD to ask Aziraphale to form the Arrangement with him when he’d been wanting one since the angel put a wing above him in Eden, and when Aziraphale refused, he asked for another 1,064 years until the angel finally agreed. E.g., when it took him six thousand years to ask Aziraphale to run away with him, and when he finally did, he did it twice. 

All that to say, the truth must come out, and it must come out now. And if now was the time for the truth to come out, then all of it must come out, all of it. 

Crowley steps closer to Aziraphale, but only just a little, only just barely. The space between them is still gargantuan. The little step barely makes a difference, but still, he’s closer, and that gives him strength.

“Right,” he says, clasping his hands together and gritting his teeth with anticipation. “Right, I’m going to tell you everything. But you’re going to  have to let me finish. If I start now, I won’t be able to stop, and you can’t try to stop me, or I’ll never start again. Okay? Nod if you agree.” 

Aziraphale nods, confused but desperate for answers. Something has shifted in Crowley, from closed off to frantic, and it covers the shop in a buzz.

“Okay,” breathes Crowley, and he inhales deeply, and he gets going.

“I didn’t tell you about botany because I didn’t want you to see me differently. You knew I was interested in plants, but I’d never shown you the extent of that interest before. Recording my interests— that was a new development, and I thought if you knew, it would change, err, how you saw me. So I hid it from you. That’s why.”

Aziraphale’s brows furrow like he has something to say, but he keeps Crowley’s previous disclaimer in mind and dutifully keeps silent, uninterrupting. Crowley continues, hands shaking wildly where they’re plastered at his sides. 

”I didn’t tell you I was homeless because the last thing I wanted was for you to urge me to get my own place. I lied about why. I told you I didn’t want my own place because I was fine in the Bentley. Truth is, fuck living in the Bentley. Seriously, great car, shit house. Cramped like you wouldn’t fucking believe and restricting and boring and, like, zero privacy. Can’t tell you how many times I anguished over not having a bed, or Jesus bleeding Christ a plant room. Still. I didn’t want my own place. Or, rather, I didn’t want to look for someplace new. I’d— I already know where I want to live. And I either take that or nothing.” 

Crowley watches Aziraphale’s expression as it sinks deeper and deeper into confusion, and then they seem to realize something. His gaze flickers, for a moment, between Crowley’s face and the plants in the room, as if seeing them for the first time, seeing them in a new light, and he’s piecing things together, and dear Lord, there’s no going back now.

The angel’s cheeks are puffed out and his blue eyes are so wide with questions they’re almost bulging. It looks like it’s taking everything in him not to interrupt, the poor thing. 

“I didn’t buy the South Downs Cottage because I couldn’t live there. I couldn’t live anywhere. Not without you.” 

Crowley spreads his arms away from him slightly, presenting himself. Like, that’s the truth. It’s always been the truth. You’ve always been the reason. See it? See me? The hands on the ends of his arms are still shaking, shaking even more now, and Crowley feels unsteady on his feet. But he keeps strong. 

“It’s with you or nowhere, angel. It’s you or nothing.” Crowley’s heart hammers against his ribs, and the last bit of the truth demands to be known, demands to be seen, demands— “Because I love you. I’m in love with you. I am.”

The silence is deafening. All-encompassing. It is nothing, and it is large. See me, see all the way up to the heart of me, look. Crowley can feel a faint, wobbly smile on his face, there to costume his insecurity but only working to magnify it. He lets the smile fade and holds his breath instead.

Aziraphale’s face is hard to read, and Crowley is too nervous to try. Crowley feels like he should say something more to break this awful, awful silence, but all his bravery has run out and all he can do is stand there, stock-still, petrified, presenting himself for judgment. 

And then Aziraphale moves.

He steps forward and forward and forward until he’s standing right in front of Crowley. And he reaches out, takes Crowley’s hands from either side of him, joining the both of them together between them. A shaking mess are the two of those hands, cupped between the dependable warmth of Aziraphale’s own palms. Crowley collects them into fists, to steady them, but that only partly contains the shaking.

The angel reaches into the pocket of his trousers, pulls something out in a fist of his own. Gently, he pries open Crowley’s hands until they’re palms facing up, receptive. 

Aziraphale drops what he’s retrieved from his pocket onto the skin and cups Crowley’s hands as the demon looks down at what he’s dropped. 

Keys. They’re keys. 

Crowley blinks at him, then back down at the keys, then back up at the angel. He gives Aziraphale a questioning look.

”I bought the cottage,” says Aziraphale. “Those are the keys.”

Crowley blinks slowly.

He thinks about what that could mean, Aziraphale giving him the keys. Didn’t he just profess he wanted to live in the bookshop? So why was Aziraphale giving him the keys to someplace else? Was Aziraphale turning him down? Something in Crowley’s chest starts to fracture. Aziraphale was kicking him out, wasn’t he? Aziraphale wanted him out the shop.

”Oh,” manages Crowley, a single croak as porcelain pieces of his heart land on the ground beneath his feet. He pulls his hands abruptly away from where Aziraphale has cupped them. “I understand. I, uh… I’ll… I’ll just get my plants and go, then.”

Aziraphale tilts his head, brows furrowed.

“Aren’t you going to help me pack my books?” 

Crowley blinks. “…What?” 

“You can’t live in the cottage without me, no?” Aziraphale’s eyes have gone piercing again. “Me or nothing, right?” 

What the Hell is happening? Crowley blinks slowly and nods. Aziraphale grins fondly at him. 

“Obviously, I’m coming with you.”

Crowley’s breathing stops, and then it catches up with him all at once. “Okay. Okay, what’s happening right now? I— I feel like I’ve been thrown in a loop. What’s—“

”I love you, too,” interrupts the angel. Again, he goes to hold Crowley’s hands between his own. “I love you. Let’s move in together.” 

And it’s everything Crowley’s ever wanted to hear.

Only, it’s more than he’s ever asked for.

“But the bookshop,” Crowley worries. Like Aziraphale didn’t just say he loves him. He’s half expecting to wake up from this moment, like a pleasant dream made unpleasant by the waking. The unabashedly selfish demon in him (which was all of him, except for the part that loved Aziraphale) groans loudly in his thoughts, screams inside of him, Stop ruining this for yourself! 

Aziraphale, for better or for worse, insists, “The bookshop doesn’t have you.” 

“It could.” Crowley doesn’t usually make a habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth. But the bookshop was important to Aziraphale— Is important to Aziraphale. And Crowley couldn’t ask the angel to leave it, love him or not. “If you asked me to stay here, I would. I don’t need the cottage, angel.”

“The bookshop doesn’t have a garden,” points out Aziraphale, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and it might be. “The bookshop doesn’t have a greenhouse. The bookshop doesn’t even have a plant room, dear.”

”It has you.” The that’s enough goes without saying.

Aziraphale takes a single step closer, and suddenly, they’re chest-to-chest, hands held between them, and Aziraphale’s so close, looking up at him with the most beautiful eyes Crowley’s ever had the pleasure of seeing, smiling like the sun.

“We don’t need to live in the bookshop for you to have me, Crowley. You can bring me with you everywhere.” A hand snakes up from Crowley’s hands, up his arm and to his face. Crowley leans into the touch. “It’s with you or nowhere for me too, my dear.”

Crowley swallows. He has an odd feeling like he’s about to cry, but it’s good. 

“We’re moving in together,” he says. 

Aziraphale breathes out a laugh.

“Into a cottage,” he confirms, grin face-splitting.

“We’re moving in together and you love me,” marvels Crowley. His smile is watery. 

“Very dearly,” confirms Aziraphale again, and he leans in close and kisses Crowley slow.

Something like fireworks comes alive in Crowley’s chest.

The South Downs Cottage is busy.

There are two moving trucks occupying the driveway and moving men go in and out of the house holding boxes that are miraculously lighter than they really are.

Aziraphale insists on moving house the human way, because placing the books and kept furniture and various knickknacks by hand ensures that he knows exactly where everything has been placed. But “the human way” doesn’t extend to big home renovation projects because doing those the human way is too messy. So, when the movers come, the two offices are already turned into one big space for a library with big French doors, the walls have already been miracled into the desired colors, and the bay windows have already been turned into book nooks.

All that’s really left for the movers and builders to do is to reassemble the bookshelves from the shop, bring in the heavy furniture, and put all the labeled boxes in the rooms they needed to be in before Crowley and Aziraphale can really start making this house their home.

Aziraphale, ever the worrywart, fusses over the movers’ handling of the boxes labeled “library,” and Crowley spends the day ensuring him that the movers knew what they were doing while simultaneously micromanaging them for the fun of it.

By the end of the afternoon, when the movers have finished and gone, the pair begin their unpacking in the library.

Crowley moves around the furniture with miracles and lazy flicks of his hands while Aziraphale situates himself on the floor and opens up the many, many boxes of books in the room to sort through them.

Crowley crouches down next to him soon enough, and they decide where the books go together. 

“Shakespeare’s folio should take pride of place on the shelf, don’t you think, dear?” 

Crowley wraps an arm around Aziraphale lazily while the angel considers the books. “But then where would you put Wilde’s collection?” 

Aziraphale frowns. “I rather thought those would look very good on the shelf in our bedroom.”

Crowley laughs. “Oh, absolutely not.” 

Aziraphale rolls his eyes fondly. He rummages around the box and starts pulling out the Wildes. “Given much thought to the garden yet?”

”Doesn’t need much improving,” Crowley hums, and it’s true.

The garden really is perfect. Second best one since Eden, Crowley reckons. Or maybe third best since Babylon. But still, one of the greatest.

The old owners seemed very intentional with their planting, and every time Crowley’s walked around the gardens since owning the place, the plants there almost seemed like they were grown for him, filled with flowering shrubbery and leafy evergreens and the challenging types of plants, the slow-growing ones that needed more care and attention than usual to thrive— all Crowley’s favorites. 

“How about a vegetable garden?” Aziraphale suggests. 

“There’s space for it,” shrugs Crowley. “But that’s not really my thing. I’m more of a horticulturist than a farmer.”

”Same with the flowers?”

Crowley groans. This conversation again. ”I’m a—“ 

“Botanist, not a florist, yes, yes, I know,” laughs Aziraphale, his tone light and teasing. “Except when it comes to orchids, huh?”

”Orchids are different,” grumbles Crowley. “They’re fascinating.” 

“So roses are out of the question because they’re ‘boring,’ but one hundred species of Monstera aren’t?”

Crowley tries not to be too offended. ”First of all, there’s fifty-nine species, not a hundred. And second of all, their leaves grow with holes, angel. It’s called fenestrations.”

“How particular you are with plants, my dear.” 

Aziraphale stands to place his selected books on the shelves. Crowley stands as well and holds the stack for him wordlessly.

The angel asks, “But do you think you could make one, though? Make a vegetable garden, that is? It would be a joy to grow our own ingredients, don’t you think?”

Crowley sighs fondly. 

“I’ll get you your garden,” he says, the sucker that he is, and he leans down and kisses Aziraphale, soft. 

Aziraphale grins up at him sweetly.

They continue shelving books, talking idly and happily about their future here— about the housewarming party they’ll definitely need to host as soon as they’re settled, about whether or not they’re fully decided on the bedroom wallpaper, about how great it is not having to pretend to sell books, about how happy Crowley’s plants will be having a temperature-controlled environment to thrive in again.

At some point, Aziraphale shelves the French philosophers in the bottom shelf and the Russian philosophers at the top, which Crowley has qualms with, because he’s sure Aziraphale’s putting Sartre down there not because of the actual material, but because he reads French just about as well as he speaks it.

Crowley remedies this with a snap, switching the two shelves’ contents while Aziraphale is not looking, and he thinks dimly to himself, this must be the reason why he exists— to mess up Aziraphale’s book placement, to live with him in a home with a big library, to be the angel’s lovable nuisance.

They spend the evening unpacking the library, and when the evening slips into night, Aziraphale insists that they go to sleep in the bedroom, even though there’s still a lot to unpack and, as creatures of the ethereal and occult, they don’t need to sleep.

He claims it is very important, for Crowley to consummate ownership of the house by finally sleeping on a bed for the first time in years. He uses the exact word “consummate” which of course makes Crowley double over in laughter on the way upstairs.

“Isn’t the tradition to pop open a champagne bottle when you move house?” asks Crowley as he is dragged upstairs into the bedroom. “Shouldn’t we christen the house with that instead?”

”Nope!” replies Aziraphale, entirely adamant on getting to sleep next to Crowley when Crowley sleeps on a bed for the first time since his Mayfair flat. The angel jumps under the sheets and miracles himself into pajamas. “Bed. Sleepytime.”

Crowley rolls his eyes. Nevertheless, he follows in Aziraphale’s footsteps and slips under the sheets as well. In the dark, they grin at each other like fools. 

“I’ll see you in the morning,” whispers Aziraphale.

”I’ll let you know how well I slept,” promises Crowley. 

They kiss each other goodnight and spend some time gazing moonily at each other in the dark before their eyelids get heavy and they fall asleep.

Crowley wakes first, which means nothing except for the fact that he has a couple more minutes of marveling at their intertwined mess of arms and legs than Aziraphale does.

The sun streams in through arched big windows, illuminating the bare bedroom, and the mostly empty sight should seem dauntingly new or nervewracking, but it only ignites a warmth in Crowley’s spine that travels sweetly up to his bed. The emptiness— it’s full of possibility, of opportunity. He wiggles pleasantly and pushes against Aziraphale beside him, holding the sleeping angel impossibly tighter. 

This house, this home, this life, thinks Crowley, it’s all mine.

Aziraphale stirs, and Crowley watches adoringly as the angel comes awake, blinking sleep from his eyes, focusing his gaze down on Crowley. A lazy smile graces Aziraphale’s lips. He presses a kiss atop Crowley’s head. 

“Good morning, dear.” His voice is soothingly gravelly. 

“Good morning.” All mine, Crowley can’t stop thinking. All mine, all mine, all mine. “Sleep was great.”

Aziraphale’s smile widens. “I’m glad.”

”Let’s lie in for today.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes for the first time today. Crowley could get drunk on the sight. Aziraphale kisses him for the first time today. Crowley feels like a firework. “We ought to unpack, Crowley.” 

And Crowley groans, loud and long, stretching out his limbs as he does. It’s all for show, though, and when he finishes his dramatic display, all he has to say is, “Yeah, alright.”

Aziraphale laughs. He sits up and pushes off the bed. Crowley follows suit. They walk downstairs together, Crowley’s hand a steady presence on the small of Aziraphale’s back. 

“I’ll make us some tea,” says Aziraphale, miracling the electric tea kettle from the box. 

Crowley miracles the espresso machine out, too. ”Coffee for me.” 

“Go wait in the yard.” Aziraphale leans up to kiss him. Second kiss of the day, thinks Crowley. And there will be more. “I’ll bring the drinks out. We could finish them out there.”

The demon hums contentedly and nods.

He walks out to the back and waits, staring, for the hundredth time, admiringly at the garden. The mental chorus of all mine reaches a high crescendo. Aziraphale joins him shortly and passes him a steaming black mug while holding onto his angel wing one. 

Aziraphale points at an evergreen shrub. “That one’s pretty.”

Crowley smiles. “Yes, it is,” he says, and languishes in the way Aziraphale’s eyes melt into fond focus on him rather than the flower. 

“Tell me about it.”

Crowley takes a sip of his coffee. He takes a breath and prepares all the facts he knows about the plants in their new garden, heart beating to the rhythm of mine, mine, mine. After all these years of secretly pining and mentally tormenting himself, it finishes to the beat of mine, mine, mine. 

And it ends, just as it began, in a garden.