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On the morning of the seventh day after Crowley moved into the bookshop, Aziraphale returned from his barber to find all of his long-playing record albums, which he had always kept in random order because he liked the serendipity of it, had been rigorously reorganized by composer and then by opus number.
He had an idea about who was responsible. But Crowley was nowhere in sight. Probably upstairs napping again. Aziraphale scratched his head, Why had the dear fellow felt compelled to impose his own cataloguing system on this collection? The records had been sitting there for decades without interference of any kind and in fact, as far as he knew, Crowley never even looked at them.
But no one else could have done it, not since he had permanently closed the bookshop to customers in order to make it feel more like a home.
Aziraphale strolled over to the spiral staircase and called, “Crowley? Are you awake?”
Silence.
He considered going up to check, but then he happened to glance over at the kitchenette in the back of the shop. Something seemed…off. Why did it look so shiny?
When he went over to investigate, Aziraphale discovered that every mug, cup, glass, and piece of tableware had been cleaned and polished. Every surface had also been cleansed of any sign of dirt, and not a single crumb remained.
He returned to the stairs. “CROWLEY!”
This time he heard noises. Snuffling, snorting sounds, and a long drawn-out groan.
Aziraphale waited. A minute later, a perfectly dressed housemate with perfect hair appeared at the top of the railing. Of course he looked that way after just getting up. The lazy fellow always used miracles to create his clothing and to dispel any hint of bedhead. Crowley never needed to visit a barber.
“Whassup?”
“I’d like you to come down here, please. I have a question.”
“Ask it from there.”
“Just please come downstairs? I have something to show you.”
“Ngk. Fine.” Crowley frowned as he made his way down the spiral steps. “Is it about your desk?”
“What? No, it’s —” Aziraphale gasped. “My desk??!” Oh, hell.
He dashed over to his beloved rolltop desk, which only this morning had been covered with papers, pens, his cocoa mug, a magnifying lens, several postcards, five books, a scissors, tape, a Regency snuff box, a pair of gloves, and a lovely wooden box for holding the spectacles he didn’t actually need to wear.
It was now completely devoid of any and all clutter, just sitting there with a polished blank surface. He looked over at the staircase, where Crowley had just landed at the bottom. “Did you straighten my desk?”
“Er…uh…possibly. Just a tiny bit.”
“And clean the kitchen?”
“Maybe…” Crowley froze in place.
“Did you organize my records?”
“Ngk.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. The fellow was exasperating. “Please come over here.”
His best friend and former hereditary enemy did not saunter cockily towards the desk, as he normally did. He didn’t even sashay, nor did he swing his hips even once. Instead, Crowley shuffled across the floor with all the panache of a guilt-ridden slug. “What?”
Aziraphale felt a twinge of sympathy for the idiot. But it was only a twinge, because his desktop was clean and he had no idea why. Or where anything was. “Ahem.” He cleared a throat which did not need clearing. “Would you care to explain what you did with all of the items?”
Crowley bit his lip, and looked down at the pristine surface. “Put them away.”
“I see. Is there any particular system to your organization of my things?”
“Sorry.” Crowley hung his head. “Couldn’t help myself. It was…messy.”
Aziraphale groaned. “My dear fellow, this desk has been messy for over two hundred years, during which you have visited this shop countless times without rearranging, neatening, or cleaning any single portion of it!”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t living here then.”
He had a point. Aziraphale had insisted he move in, having learned that after becoming independent of Hell a week ago, Crowley had immediately found his flat repossessed and his demonic wages rescinded, thus rendering him homeless. The idiot had wanted to live in his car, of all things, but that was something Aziraphale simply refused to countenance.
He had worn the dear fellow down over several bottles of merlot, and now Crowley was a permanent resident of the bookshop.
“I see. So you ignored the mess all these years, until making this your home.”
“Yeah…sorry. It started to bother me too much.”
Aziraphale sighed. Living together might present more challenges than he had anticipated. “What did you do with it all?”
“The mug is washed and in your kitchen. The rest is neatly arranged in the desk drawers according to function first and then by size.”
Aziraphale tapped his fingers on the desk. “Why do you wish to impose order on my clutter?”
“I don’t know!” Crowley looked up at him with a pleading expression, eyes wide with confusion. “It’s just that…you know…I’m used to cleaning stuff and putting things out of sight. It’s how I’ve always lived.”
Aha. Now that Aziraphale thought about it, he realized that Crowley’s Mayfair flat, like all of the places he had resided in over the centuries, had been kept pristine, with nary a single dust bunny — well, not even a dust mouse — marring its shining perfection. Aziraphale had never remarked upon this dedication to cleaning and organizing (for Crowley also made a habit of rearranging his art, plant, and CD collections in new, and ever more efficient ways). It simply seemed different from his own chosen way of living on Earth.
But now he wondered if there wasn’t a deeper reason behind this devotion to neatness. Could his former demon friend have been acting subconsciously all this time? Perhaps, deep down, he did it in order to make a clear distinction between his Earthly habitations and the chaos which was Hell.
Aziraphale had not actually seen Hell in person until a week ago, but Crowley had vividly described it to him early on in their time on Earth. And his recent visit confirmed that it was even worse than he’d imagined, with fetid, cluttered rooms, grimy corridors, leaky plumbing, and an overall sense of contaminated disarray. Not nice at all.
“Tell me something,” he said, attempting to tamp down his annoyance, “is it because you were trying to create a space in which to dwell which was the opposite of Hell — Oh!” He smiled. “That rhymes!”
“Clever.”
“Thank you.”
Crowley pursed his lips as his brow furrowed. “Never thought of it that way. Huh.”
“I believe it is a matter of wishing to distance yourself from that wretched place, because you clearly didn’t belong there.” Now that he had a theory to explain the behavior, Aziraphale felt happier about the assault on his desk. He gave Crowley’s arm an affectionate pat. “It’s alright. I am no longer irked by what you did, now that I understand your motivations. As you’ve told me in the past, you never meant to Fall. You simply hung around the wrong people, yes?”
“Yeah…more or less.”
“Yes, so therefore, you only went along with Hell as far as you could in order to survive, while rejecting its basic nature.” Now he was on a theorizing roll, and was not about to let up any time soon.
Crowley shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad, once I got used to it.”
“Don’t be silly. Hell is a bottomless pit of torments and despair. And also rather filthy. When you escaped it to stay on Earth, you found subtle ways to rebel against its demands, and to further affirm your views, you subconsciously manifested your independence by maintaining abodes which were glaringly opposite from Hell’s squalid jumble of detritus. You kept them clean and neat and well-ordered to spite your former masters.”
“I did?”
“Absolutely.” Aziraphale felt chuffed at his brilliant analysis. “But it’s no longer necessary to do so! You are free to live anyway you choose!”
“I am?”
“Of course you are. And since you are now sharing this bookshop with me, you can embrace a new lifestyle by learning to enjoy clutter!”
“I can?” Crowley looked around. “Are you sure?” He strolled over to a bookcase, and ran a finger along a shelf, and then held the tip towards Aziraphale. “See that? That’s probably a good year’s worth of dust. It’s not just cluttered in here. It’s dirty.”
“Oh. Well, um.” Aziraphale frowned. “Not all the shelves are dusty. Only the ones with books I don’t peruse that often, like popular fiction. And chemistry, and er…physics, and geology, and foreign languages, and…oh, dear.”
“You know what?” Crowley picked up a china figurine of a shepherdess from a shelf, examined it, put it down, and then picked up a small clock. “I think you may be on the right track after all.”
“I am?”
“Yeah…” He set the clock back down, and stood back to gesture at the entire bookcase, which was overflowing with double-stacked tomes, knickknacks crammed into any available spaces, and a few odd items lying on top of books — a rolled-up map, an ancient scroll, a handful of old letters. “This is a mess.” Then he turned around in a slow circle as he waved at more disorderly bookcases, as well as the tables stacked with cluttered piles of books and statues and the random lamp or two. “This entire place is filled from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with stuff. And if your idea is right, then this bookshop is the opposite of Heaven.”
“It is?” Aziraphale gaped as he looked round at all the things he’d accumulated over the years poking out of every nook and cranny. “I thought it was merely cozy.”
“No, no, hear me out. If I rebelled against Hell’s chaos by keeping my homes tidy, then maybe you rebelled against Heaven’s shiny barrenness by surrounding yourself with the most excessive clutter you could. It’s not just cozy. It’s two fingers pointing straight up.”
Aziraphale gasped. “Good heav—I mean—oh, damn.” He had been hoist by his own petard. Well, at least by his own theory, which he was starting to doubt had any merit. “I don’t think that’s true. It was because I enjoy Earthly objects so much. Especially the books!”
“Yeah, I’m not saying you don’t. Obviously you do. But there are libraries, you know.”
“Going to libraries is simply not the same! What if I need to check something I read years ago immediately? I have to have all the books where I can reach them quickly!” Aziraphale sniffed. “They also smell nice.”
“Fine. But you didn’t technically have to own a bookshop to keep them all in, and then fill this huge space with all the other bits and bobs you’ve been hoarding for centuries.”
“I am not hoarding them!” Aziraphale huffed. “I am keeping them safe.”
“Uh huh. In a messy, piles-on-top-of-piles overflowing shambles that is the exact opposite of Heavenly order.”
Aziraphale crossed his arms. “I do not allow subconscious thoughts to rule my conscious choices. This bookshop is messy, cluttered, and cozy simply because I like it that way.”
“Really? Well, I’m not ruled by my subconscious either, then! My places were always sparsely furnished simply because it was easier to keep tidy that way.” Crowley paused. “And I also like to stress-clean.”
“Sorry? You do what?”
“I, er, tend to clean a lot more when I’m stressed.”
“Oh.”
A massive, albeit imaginary beast suddenly hit the space between them.
An elephant in the room.
Aziraphale looked down at his pristine desktop, and then back up at Crowley. His best friend who had just moved in with him. His best friend who was prone to stress-cleaning.
Crowley assiduously studied his fingernails.
Oh, dear.
Aziraphale wondered how much wine he had in the racks.
Crowley looked over at the nearest bookcase. “Do you have a feather duster?”
“I’m not sure that will help matters.”
“No?”
“No.”
Crowley crossed to a table where a large pile of books was stacked haphazardly, and began straightening them.
“That won’t do any good, either.”
“It’s calming.”
Aziraphale went off to fetch the wine. By the time he returned with four bottles of cabernet sauvignon, a corkscrew, and two glasses, Crowley had put the tottering pile of books into a neat alignment, and had moved on to the sofa, where he was busy rearranging the throws and pillows.
“Please stop.” Aziraphale held up his provisions. “I’m afraid we need to talk.”
“Damn.” Crowley sighed. “Fine. Just give me a whole bottle, then.”
“Very well.” He handed one over.
“Maybe two.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes as he gave him another one. Then Crowley collapsed on the sofa in his usual sprawl, while he sat on the desk chair with his typically proper posture. He carefully removed the corkscrew and poured the wine into a glass, while Crowley just snapped his miraculous fingers to remove the cork and slugged wine straight from the bottle.
“Tsk tsk. Manners, my dear.”
“I’m in a mood.”
“I can see that. Is it really so stressful to live here?” There. He had said it. He had addressed the large pachyderm in the room. “Is living with me causing such anxiety, after a mere seven days, as to force you to clean?”
Crowley stopped drinking and clutched the bottle with both hands as he slowly turned it round and round. “Ngk.”
“You know, I have always wondered how that favorite grunt of yours is spelled. Is it U-N-K? Or possibly N-G-CH?”
“How should I know? It’s a grunt.”
“Grunt at me again, please. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, especially regarding language.”
Crowley grunted at him several times rather volubly.
Aziraphale listened, and then nodded happily. “I have it. Your favorite expression which conveys the notion of being tongue-tied due to inconvenient feelings is spelled N-G-K.”
“Good to know.” Crowley took another long drink, and smacked his lips. “Maybe I’ll just grunt NGK at you from now on.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re friends. We can discuss this without resorting to non-verbalisms. What sort of inconvenient feelings have you been having? Did I not welcome you into my home with sufficient grace?”
“It was great. Thanks again.”
“Well, then, is there anything the matter with the bedroom I gave you? It’s the largest one.”
“Nope. It’s peachy.”
“Could this unease you are experiencing be merely a transitional phase, then? You were in that flat for ages. It can take a while to adapt to change. Or perhaps you need more time to adjust your schedule to better match with mine? I know you tend to rise late while I rarely sleep at all, and then there is the question of noise, too. Mayfair tends to be quieter at night than Soho, and you may not be getting enough rest. Oh, and then there is the music I prefer to listen to while reading, which I play more often now that I’ve closed the bookshop permanently so it will feel more like a proper home, and classical music is something you may not wish to hear hour after hour, or I suppose it might be—”
“YOU!” Crowley blurted.
“What?” Aziraphale stared at him.
Crowley belched. “Forget I said that.”
“HOW? You just said it! That it was me making you stressed!” What on Earth? “Why? What have I done?”
“Nothing!”
“Oh.” He felt utterly perplexed. And they hadn’t even drunk much wine yet. “But Crowley, you cannot say you are upset with me one second, and then state that I have done nothing to cause you distress the next. It’s confusing.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Then what in the world did you mean?”
Crowley twisted his mouth in a peculiar grimace, sighed, and murmured, “I meant…nothing has changed.”
Silence fell.
Crowley sprawled there, staring with intent at his wine bottle.
Aziraphale decided he ought to pout, so he did.
The elephant in the room snorted. Or at least, he imagined it probably would snort, and flap its ears at them in an impatient, and possibly derisive fashion if it actually existed.
He had no idea what was going through Crowley’s mind. Which was absurd. They had known each other forever. They were friends. They were probably closer than any two beings in the entire universe had ever been close, all things considered. He really ought to know everything about the best friend, former enemy who had never truly been an enemy, and lifelong companion who he loved sitting across from him.
Aziraphale blinked. He stopped pouting. His best friend…who he loved.
Oh. Ah. NGK.
What did I do?
Nothing.
Nothing has changed.
A thought began to coalesce in his vast angelic mind. It was a complicated thought composed of many strands woven together.
It began with a friendship born in the stars. A friendship which crept forward in small, tentative movements at first, where words and ideas often collided with touches of tension, yet somehow, never turned to anger. A friendship that grew over time, an eternity of days not counted in days as they knew them now, nor did their lives as angels overlap as much then, with separate duties in different spheres of Heaven. And yet they did find one another whenever they could, and shared moments of communion more meaningful than any other Aziraphale had ever known.
The thread of long ago connection wove into the thought slowly forming in his nonhuman heart, and joined with another from ages past, one terribly frayed strand which threatened to end everything he cherished. A rebellion, and a war, and then a great Fall. The connection unraveled, for far too long…leaving him alone, and lonely…but not forever. Earth arose into being, and life rose, too, and one day, on a wall in a garden, the threads began to weave together once more, tentative once again.
More strands wove their lives together through the fraught years ahead, when friendship often had to be denied when least desired, when warring houses strained — but never broke — the strengthening cord which bound them each to each. And it did grow stronger. And it did hold, and it would not be denied in the deeper places beneath the surface of the masks imposed upon them from above and from below.
The thought which formed from countless threads found substance too within Aziraphale’s angelic soul, eternal, and unbound. My thoughts are free… He had never known any walls which could imprison his truest emotions.
And his truest emotion has always been love.
He loved his friend. He knew he was loved in return. The complicated thought he had now, as he looked at Crowley, was woven from a million strands, from all the threads of their past, from every filament of their immortal minds, hearts, and souls, fibers which wound and twisted together until one strand could not be told apart from another.
The thought was this: We have not spoken of love in the open. And we should have.
He had asked, What did I do? Why had living here caused this stress?
Nothing, Crowley had replied.
But he had meant it in a very particular way. Nothing had altered between them, when one extraordinary thing should have absolutely changed.
For an entire week now, they had existed beyond the walls of Heaven and Hell. They had celebrated their freedom, yet no words had been spoken about love.
For seven days, Crowley had been right here, closer than close, with no more external barriers between them. And nothing important had been said.
Why should I need to speak first? Aziraphale pondered the question as he took more sips of his wine. It seemed that Crowley had been waiting for him to do just that. Why not you? Were you worried I would deny you again? Can you not see how my heavenly mask has been removed once and for all time?
He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the dear fellow, who looked back, and lifted both his eyebrows, too.
Aziraphale set down his glass, rose, and crossed to the sofa. “May I?”
Crowley put the bottle aside, and straightened to allow enough room to sit down beside him.
They had never shared the sofa before.
Aziraphale smiled softly. “First, I rather prefer our home to remain mostly cluttered. But a little dusting would not come amiss.”
Crowley visibly swallowed, and nodded. “I can handle that.”
“Good. Second, I assure you that I have fully shed every vestige of my former obedience to Heaven, and I will never lie about my feelings for you again.” Then he took Crowley’s near hand in his. “I love you. I have always loved you. I always will.”
Crowley sniffled. “Angel, I—I’m sorry—” His voice hitched. “I’ve been an idiot. I could have told you. I should have…it’s just, I kept waiting for you to say it. I wanted you to say it first. Don’t know why. And when you didn’t…when nothing happened, I started to think you didn’t want to say it at all.”
“Hm. Yes, that was quite foolish, my dear. That must have been stressful indeed for you.”
“Yeah…I kind of let it get to me. Kept questioning every single thing I thought I knew until it built and built over the week and then I just had to let it out somehow and that’s why I cleaned and organized your desk. And the kitchen. And the records. Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I can remedy all of that easily.”
“Great.” Crowley pressed their hands together more firmly. “Always liked it when we held hands.”
“Yes, so did I. Those were all too rare occasions.”
“So were the times we put our arms around each other…when I was too drunk or you were too drunk or we were both too sloshed to walk.”
“And the few moments where I put a hand on your shoulder, or your arm.”
“Once in a while, even on my chest. Those were the best touches.”
“I needed to show you, however fleetingly, that we belonged to one another.”
“I’ve never doubted that.” Crowley brought their joined hands to his lips, and kissed the fingertips. “We love each other. I love you, Aziraphale.”
“Of course you do.” He laughed lightly as he let go of Crowley’s hand and opened his arms wide. “Come here, please.”
The embrace felt warm and strong and full of long withheld yearning. Crowley wrapped his arms around him without hesitation, and Aziraphale responded with equal ease. They stayed within the deepening hold for some time, simply affirming the closeness and affection and unconditional love between them.
Aziraphale was glad they had not drunk very much wine. He needed to remember everything…the softness of Crowley’s shirt beneath his hands, and the firmness of his back and shoulders…the scent of him, a subtle mix of a woodsy cologne with an ancient, fire-touched earth…the smoothness of the cheek he rubbed his face across and the sight of golden eyes moist with unshed tears…that beautiful, ever familiar dark red hair, that slender neck…he imprinted it all in his memory, along with the reassuring rhythms of a heart that didn’t need to beat yet which pulsed against his own chest all the same, and the slow, steady rise and fall of breaths that never needed to be taken. Yet he matched the tempo of his breathing to Crowley’s own nonetheless, in a new form of intimacy the likes of which he had never known.
It was the longest they had ever touched.
And it was only a beginning.
He pressed his lips against Crowley’s forehead in a gentle kiss, and whispered, “Thank goodness for your peculiar reaction to stress.”
Crowley laughed, and he laughed, and they broke the tightness of the hold, but stayed in a looser embrace, just caressing each other here and there, as if to reaffirm that they were real and alive and whole.
“Thank goodness you keep a messy home,” Crowley said lightly. “No telling when we would have got round to this otherwise.”
“True. I honestly do not know why it did not occur to me to speak sooner, though possibly it was because things had changed so dramatically for us that I was still attempting to process what it all meant. But I was overjoyed when you agreed to move in, and I might have got round to saying the words when everything settled down.”
“Not your fault, Angel. I was too busy thinking about the past. I was still seeing the heavenly side of you too much. Just…you know, old habits and thought patterns take a while to fall away. But I do know that’s gone for good.”
“Gone forever, my dear. Nothing can be allowed to stand between us ever again.”
“No.” Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s cheek in a featherlight caress, which instantly sent a lovely tingling through his chest. “Thanks for breaking the silence. It was driving me crazy.”
“You are most welcome. I had to, though, to avoid coming in here one day to find all of the books put in proper order.”
Crowley smiled. “I could still do that. Just for fun.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t!”
“Yeah…okay, probably not. I prefer to stay on your good side.” Then Crowley lifted a singular eyebrow. “By the way, where do you keep the feather duster?”
Aziraphale just laughed, and pulled him into another hug.
It was going to be a very nice day.
*