Aziraphale huffed and puffed up the three hundred and thirty three steps to Crowley’s penthouse flat. Technically, he didn’t need to take the stairs. He could have simply appeared at Crowley’s door [1]. But Aziraphale felt that some things were worth doing properly and showing up in breathless indignation when one’s erstwhile friend and sometime lover had been ignoring your calls, texts, and sundry demonic summonings for the better part of six months was one of them.
The snake knocker knew better than to hiss at Aziraphale. It meekly shuffled aside under his withering celestial glare [2]. The door also knew better than to be locked. Aziraphale burst into the flat and immediately doubled over coughing. Dust. Dust was everywhere. On everything. Even the statue of the demon “wrestling” an angel into submission was covered in a thin layer of grime. For the first time in the past six months, Aziraphale’s throat seized up with true anxiety [3]. What if something truly horrible had befallen Crowley? What if he--no, it was impossible--had died?
“Crowley?” Aziraphale called, a flaming sword flaring to life in his hand. “Crowley are you in here?”
The plants in the alcove had been too terrified to die for so long that they were now practically immortal. As Aziraphale passed them, their leaves rustled in a non-existent breeze and the hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stood up.
Aziraphale approached the door of Crowley’s bedroom. Dread formed a ball in his stomach, hard and smooth like the pit of one big avocado. Aziraphale kicked the door in. Crowley was not here either. Aziraphale stood at the foot of the dark bed, flaming sword held aloft, and wondered if it was time to schedule a panic attack. As Aziraphale was rapidly coming to the conclusion that a panic attack might not politely wait to be penciled in for a convenient time in the not-to-distant future, a disgruntled hissing sounded from above him and a voice groaned. “Put the bloody light out would you, demon ssssleeping here.”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale gasped, deciding that panic could be put on hold for a more imminent appointment with ire. “Get down here this minute. I thought you were dead!”
“‘Ziraphale I don’t want to pick a peck of pickled pepperssss” Crowely murmured, turned over on the ceiling, and went back to sleep.
With a grim set of his jaw not unlike that of someone about to pull the covers off of a friend in danger of oversleeping, Aziraphale snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “let there be light!”
The facts, it seemed, were these:
Crowley had decided to sleep when the world shut down due to a pandemic
Crowley who was more of a “big picture thinker” usually let Aziraphale deal with “the details” of various plots and schemes
The “big picture” in this case was napping through a crisis, while “the details” involved procuring an alarm clock, setting it, and waking up when it went off
Crowley had expected Aziraphale to wake him up
“Gosh, it’s already October,” Crowley said, sitting cross-legged on the bed, sipping the hot cider Aziraphale had very begrudgingly [4] miracled up. “Wow, why didn’t you wake me up sooner.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, infusing the two syllabus with a surge of exasperation that threatened to overflow into warm protectiveness so intense it would automatically light a cozy fire in every grate in a three block radius. “It’s not the 19th century anymore. I’ve decided you can’t just ghost me any time you're in a strop with the world.”
Crowley’s mouth opened and closed. “Ghost….you….what?”
“Ghost,” Aziraphale said intensely irritated with the slow blink of Crowley’s lamp-like eyes, with his assuredly deliberate incomprehension, with the rush of profound and utterly inconvenient relief he felt, seeing Crowley here, safe, sound, just a little sleepy. “Of germanic origin from the Old English gāst meaning “soul,” used here with its 21st century lexicological meaning, id est to cut off all communication without any kind of explanation, leaving the ghostee certain that a horrible fate had befallen the ghoster or worse yet that somehow the ghoster had gotten sick of waiting after six thousand years for the ghostee--
A pair of cool [5] lips pressed against Aziraphale’s, effectively ending the most ambitious crossover event of the century, an Oxford English Dictionary rendition of the jilted lover’s monologue, before it properly began.
“Who taught you that word?” Crowley asked when he pulled back. “Was it Adam?”
“It was,” Aziraphale said, a bit bashfully. “And you won't?”
“Ghost you? No. I would never.” Crowley was serious now. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me angel.”
Aziraphale hummed deep in his throat. “Well, maybe we ought to move in together. Just in case. What if you forget to set an alarm again?”
Crowley’s lips curled into a smile. “You know I was having such a lovely dream about a cottage in the South Downs…”
[2] it was a glare that announced “I will smite you with the wrath of the almighty if you stand in my way foul beast,” and then whispered “you haven’t been polished in ages have you? And you work so hard too. You poor dear. I’ll be sure to fix you up as soon as I can.”
[3] and also, the aforementioned dust
[4] begrudgingly and not at all devotedly, affectionately, fondly, or adoringly
[5] Crowley was a poikilotherm after all, and had been in a state of extended brumation
