Work Text:
The premise of the project was simple enough; choose a place - somewhere in or around London, preferably - that you have a strong personal connection to, and which is at least a bit historic. Look into the history of that place, make a report, et cetera. It was all very straightforward, all very simple.
What wasn’t simple was explaining why the same man had owned A. Z. Fell & Co. since it opened.
From everything Nat could find on the internet and in old newspapers, the small Soho bookshop had been opened by one Mr. Aziraphale Z. Fell in the year 1800, and there was no documentation of the property ever changing ownership. This didn’t seem strange at first - the store had probably just been passed down through the generations and nobody had bothered to update the paperwork. Nat had met Mr. Fell a few times during their occasional trips to London with their mom as a child, and during the more frequent visits now that they’d moved out here for uni, and he seemed the exact sort who wouldn’t care about something as trivial as legally owning his store. Maybe it was genetic. Nat worked with this assumption until they stumbled upon a photo from sometime around the shop’s opening that stopped them dead in their tracks.
Because there, staring back at them, was Mr. Fell. Dressed maybe a tiny bit more old-fashioned than he did now, smiling at the camera, hands folded in front of his belly like he was absolutely going to die at some point and wasn’t still a living, breathing person over 200 years later.
Nat tried, desperately, to tell themself it must just be strong family genes - like, really strong - and searched the picture thoroughly for a missing dimple, or an extra crease in the crow’s feet, or- or- anything that would prove that this man was not the Mr. Fell currently living and running that same bookshop in Soho (that’s impossible, people don’t live for 200 years, it can’t be him) but everything was as they remembered from every visit they could recall since they were a kid, and had the man ever aged in the first place? He’d been old when Nat was a toddler, visiting the city on holidays and shopping sprees with their mother, and now Nat was a young adult and Mr. Fell was still old, but not old er , just the same amount of is-he-forty-or-sixty that he had always been. Even his damn smile was the same, just as beatific as it always was, with that same goddamn twinkle in his eye. (How did an eye twinkle come through on some shitty 1800’s camera? Could they even get that much detail back then? Can cameras even do that now?)
After some moments[1] of panic, Nat decided there was only one way to decide if this photo meant anything. Which was to find more photos.
[1] Several hours, actually, though they’d never admit it.
Nat went to the closest library, then another library, and even dug around on the internet here and there when sources were reliable. Eventually, they came to the unfortunate realisation that maybe they would have been better off if they’d just left it all be.
There was too much.
Apparently, for the last few centuries at least , Mr. Fell had been doing a pretty awful job of hiding the fact that he was immortal. Either that, or he had some very, very strong genes, which even Nat’s sceptic mind couldn’t believe. Somehow, this man cropped up in photographs since cameras were invented, and even a few sketches and things from before that. It was impossible, it was stupid, it was magic and magic isn’t real , Nat reminded themself. But this - this fucker - there was no way it wasn’t him.
When they simply couldn’t stand thinking about it alone anymore, Nat reluctantly decided to tell Kyle, their flatmate, and see what he thought. Maybe he could come up with a good, reasonable explanation for all of this, and Nat would finally be able to get some rest.
~
“He’s totally immortal.”
“But how can that be? That’s not- it’s not- it’s not possible!” Nat threw their hands into the air. This was not going how they had hoped it would.
“How am I supposed to know? It’s obviously true, whether or not we know how.” He sipped at his coffee and levelled Nat with a stare that they supposed he must think would flatten their protests. Probably because he was an American. Maybe it worked on some people, but unfortunately for him, Nat wasn’t one of those people.
“Well, what do you think I should do then? I can’t think about anything else!”
“Ask him.”
Nat blinked at him once, twice. Three times.
“The fuck?”
“Ask him.” He said it nonchalantly, like a person might say Lovely weather today , or We’re out of milk .
“Kyle, I can’t just ask random booksellers why they’re immortal!” This was ridiculous. They should never have asked him, he was never serious enough, always smiling and joking his way through stuff, lightening the mood , he-
“Well no, of course not. You gotta be subtle about it.” He took another swig of coffee, this time opting for gazing thoughtfully over Nat’s shoulder.
“Be subtle about… asking a guy if he’s immortal?” they asked. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
He turned to look at them again, his green eyes meeting their brown ones with a new energy.
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
~
The bell above the door jingled as Nat slunk into the bookshop, Kyle close behind them. Nat twisted the strap on their messenger bag, picking at a loose seam and fiddling with some of the pins there.
Kyle gently pushed their arm down. “It’ll be okay, Nat, I promise. As far as we know, he’s just an old guy. Right?” He was trying to comfort them. It was nice. Nat wished it would work a little better.
“Yeah. A really, really old guy who’s probably magic,” they replied. Kyle chuckled quietly, but before he could say anything else, a familiar voice called out to them.
“Oh, hello dear!” Mr. Fell called, coming out from behind a bookcase (even though it seemed to be against the wall of the building). “How may I help you today?” He was cheerful because he knew Nat, but his gaze went steely when he saw Kyle standing next to them. “And who is your… friend?” He said friend like he wasn’t sure if it was accurate, which seemed strange. Nat filed it away as Something to Think About Later.
“Er, Mr. Fell, this is my flatmate Kyle. He’s helping me with a project.” This was the story the two had settled on to explain why Kyle had come along. It was close enough to the truth.
“Is he… looking for anything in particular?”
“No, Mr. Fell,” Kyle answered immediately.[2] “I’m just here to help Nat, that’s all.”
[2] Nat had warned him that under no circumstances was he to touch any of the books unless offered, and was never to insinuate that he would like to purchase one. They’d be rushed out right away, the shop would close for the day, and they’d have to wait years before they could try this again.
Mr. Fell’s face softened a bit. “Well… good.” He turned back to Nat. “Now, what was it you needed, my dear?”
Nat cleared their throat, straightened their posture a bit. “I have a project.”
“Yes, you have told me.” Shit, right, okay…
“Yes, I have. The project is, er, to research about a historical place in London, one that’s meaningful to you. I chose- I chose your shop.”
His face brightened. “Oh, how lovely!”
“May I interview you for it? It would be- uh… very helpful. For my research.”
At this, Mr. Fell’s expression changed again. It was one of apprehension, of concern. Like he’s got something to hide, whispered that part of Nat’s brain that believed all this ridiculousness. Eventually, something like determination won over Mr. Fell’s face, and he responded with a “Yes, right this way,” and a beckoning hand as he led Nat and Kyle into the back room of the shop. Once they were all there, he motioned for the two to sit on the sofa while he set about making tea in the kitchenette behind them.
He hummed happily as he made it. Like a normal person would.
When he finished, he set the cups on the low wooden table between the couch and a large, soft loveseat. He picked up the cup closest to him, blowing on it a bit to cool the tea inside.
“Now, what is it you’d like to know?” he asked, taking a tentative sip. He looked up at the two seated on his couch, and for the barest moment he almost seemed afraid.
“Oh. Er…“ Great start , Nat thought very sarcastically to themself, real cool . “Well, I just have some questions about the shop. For, er, for my project.” When Mr. Fell looked at them expectantly, they plunged on. “Like, er. The shop opened in… 1800, yeah?”
“Yes.” He waited for more.
“That’s a bit over two hundred years, isn’t it?”
This information seemed to startle him. “Well, I, I suppose it is, rather.” He seemed wistful, sentimental for a moment. Nat tried to ignore it.
“How long have you run this shop, Mr Fell?” Kyle asked, breaking the man from his reverie and earning himself a kick to the shin from one of Nat’s blue-grey converse.
Mr. Fell didn’t seem suspicious, though. At least, not of Nat and Kyle. He was acting fairly suspicious himself, however, looking around the room and twisting the signet ring on his little finger.
“I- I’m not quite sure, exactly. For a long while, we’ll suffice to say.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure? How can you not know how long you’ve-”
“Kyle, stop!” Nat cut him off with a glare. “You’re being rude.”
Mr. Fell opened his mouth to speak, looking apologetic, but he was cut off before he could start.
“He’s only asking questions. Nothing wrong with that, is there?” The voice was a lazy drawl, coming from up the spiral stairs behind Mr. Fell, whose face lit up brighter than Nat had ever seen it.
“Crowley,” he sighed, as a pair of long legs ensconced in tight black jeans came into view, descending the stairs. Said legs were connected to a torso which wore varying shades of grey and black, and that torso was connected to an angular face partially hidden by large black sunglasses. It was all topped off with a bright red coif of hair that brought the whole look together quite nicely.
“Morning, angel,” the person greeted Mr. Fell, flopping onto the couch to his left. Nat’s heart warmed marginally at how much and how obviously this person loved him. Even immortal cryptids could, apparently, find love.
“It’s nearly four in the afternoon, Crowley, you fiend,” Mr. Fell said, but it sounded more like fond exasperation than anything else.
“Eh, you know how it is. Time’s all-” Crowley waved a hand around in the air, as if shooing away a cloud of pesky flies. “-flimsy, sometimes. Plus, I do love my sleep.” A mischievous smirk slid across thin lips.
Mr. Fell let out a long-suffering sigh. “I know, dear-” his eyebrows knit together. “Dear…?” he began again, a questioning note to his voice.
“Mm, boy is fine.”
“Alright.”
When Mr. Fell turned back to the two people on his sofa, they were both staring back at him with matching confused expressions. Crowley grinned a shark’s grin back at them.
“Aziraphale,” he began, something wicked in his expression even with the sunglasses taking up half his face, “I think I’ve spooked them.”
“Well of course you have, coming down all- what is the phrase?- all full-force like that.”
Nat saw Crowley mouth the words ‘all full-force’ confusedly before they shook themself out of whatever trance he had put them in.
“Who are you?” Nat blurted, which in retrospect was not the best way to greet someone new, especially a someone who appeared to be some sort of life partner to the eldritch entity one is interviewing. Crowley didn’t seem to mind, though. He threw his head back with a delighted-sounding quack of a laugh.
“Oh! Nat, Kyle, this is my partner Crowley. Crowley, this is Nat and Kyle, they are interviewing me about the bookshop.” Mr. Fell gestured between the couches, looking scandalised by his own oversight.
Although still confused as to how someone like Crowley was with someone as bright as Mr. Fell, Nat smiled. Maybe it was some sort of occult binding thing? A lifetime of partnership for Crowley’s immortal soul or something? Maybe Crowley didn’t like Mr. Fell at all, and it was all an act for his safety! Maybe Crowley needed to escape!
“Mr. Fell,” they said, aiming for affectionately chiding and landing somewhere closer to light panic, “you never mentioned a partner before.”
“Oh, well, I suppose not. We only recently took that particular step. We’ve known each other forever, though.”
“Forever?” Kyle asked, all too enthusiastically. Nat aimed another kick at him, but he moved his leg out of the way just in time. It was too late anyway. Mr. Fell seemed to have realised his error.
“Oh, well, you know, most of our- most of our lives. Our natural, human lives. Just like, like people. People who have known each other for-”
“Most of our lives, yes.” Crowley interrupted. “You do realise, angel, that this is an interrogation, not an interview, right?”
Nat froze, and felt Kyle do the same next to them.
“Oh, I don’t think-” Mr. Fell started, but one look at their twin cowed expressions stopped him. His eyebrows knit together. “My dear child,” he said, and Nat noted, from somewhere in the back of their mind where alarms weren’t going off, that he sounded nearly as concerned as they felt. “What reason would you have to interrogate me?”
Nat opened their mouth to make an excuse, but Kyle had already started talking.
“Well, Mr. Fell, it’s just that there’s no history of this shop ever changing hands, like ever, and your name’s the same as the guy who originally bought the place, and he looked exactly like you, so it really makes a person wonder if- stop kicking me, Nat- if you’re, you know. The same guy. Like you’re immortal or something.”
Mr. Fell and Crowley gaped at him. Nat glared daggers at the side of his head, but he knew better than to look back at them. He just stared at his hands shamefully as the moments stretched by in silence, one after the other. Until Crowley started cackling .
“What is so funny, Crowley? This young man has just made it abundantly clear that I have been doing a horrible job blending in with humanity for over two centuries!”
“So you admit you aren’t human?” Kyle interjected, all too eagerly. It only served to make Crowley laugh harder.
Mr. Fell huffed, straightened his posture impossibly more, opened his mouth to argue.
“C’mon, angel,” Crowley managed to get out between his laughter, “they’ve got us figured out, there’s no point pretending anymore.”
“Us?”
“Kyle, shut up ,” Nat hissed.
“No, no, what did I say about questions? Yes, us . Me and Aziraphale here. What, did you think he was immortal and I was just… not?”
Nat froze. “Are you?”
“Hell’s sake, yes, I’m-” Crowley groaned. “I’m gonna need your help on this one, angel. I’m not good at this stuff.”
Mr. Fell sighed, but ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair affectionately. “Alright, dear.” He turned back to face Nat, taking a deep, steadying breath. “If you must know - I am an angel, and Crowley here is a demon.”
While Nat was trying to figure out what that could actually mean, Kyle’s God-fearing Christian upbringing made him tense, eyes flicking between the proclaimed angel and demon with equal worry.
“Way to be blunt about it,” Crowley muttered.
“Yes, well, would you rather I start from the beginning? Tell them the whole story?” He sounded peeved, his tone snippy, but also teasing and fond all at the same time. It was quite impressive, really, Nat thought through the haze in their mind. Crowley grumbled something vaguely in the negative, and looked away from Mr. Fell.
“You’re a- and you’re a- how-” Kyle began to stammer.
“Yep,” Crowley replied, popping the ‘p’ in a way that was obviously a coverup for nerves.
Nat, whose upbringing (and current worldview, for that matter) was considerably less religious than Kyle’s, shook their head. “That’s impossible. Angels and demons don’t exist, do you know how many-” they shook their hands around in the air- “cosmic questions that would entail?”
“All too well,” Mr. Fell muttered, and that really was the last straw on the camel’s back, or whatever the saying was. Nat genuinely stopped breathing for a moment, then slumped back against the sofa.
“I’ll be fucked,” they muttered, and all three people- entities- folk?[3] in the room simultaneously choked on their tea. Crowley restarted his howling cackle, whereas Mr. Fell and Kyle both just looked a bit scandalised.
[3] If Nat were capable of accessing more of their higher brain functions, they may have been a tad bothered by how their internal monologue had begun to sound like someone struggling with another person’s correct pronouns. As it was, they were still a bit caught up over the fact that they were sitting in a room with an angel and a demon who were apparently an old married couple, but the thought would occur to them, on a later date, and they would be thoroughly bothered, indeed.
“ Language , dear child,” Mr. Fell reprimanded, and Nat was so confused as to whether they should be afraid or not that they simply devolved into laughter, crossing their arms across their middle and leaning forward over the low table.
This would all take a while to process, but they felt so much less afraid than they had mere moments before, that they thought maybe everything would be okay. After all, Mr. Fell was still Mr. Fell, angel or not, and his Crowley seemed pretty alright too. Maybe things would be better than okay - maybe they’d be great. The secrets of the universe were sitting on a loveseat in a dimly lit backroom, and they were smiling.
Yes, Nat thought. Everything would be just fine.