Chapter Text
It had most certainly been some amount of time since Aziraphale had gone up to heaven, and that was about all Crowley could have told you about the matter.
He’d spent some amount of time crashing in the Bently, listening to whatever Queen song it decided fit the mood. (Mostly Queen, at least. It had tried some classical music at one point, but Crowley had put a stop to that as quickly as he possibly could. He’d also started avoiding the glovebox. Little caramel candies kept falling out of it.) But the specifics of how much time or even what he was doing with that time were a little lost on Crowley. If asked for a rough estimate, he probably could’ve told you it was less than 100 years.
Which was indeed correct, just by a bit of a wide margin.
The point was, it didn’t entirely matter exactly how much time it had been, or even roughly how much time it had been. Crowley had decided it was an Acceptable amount of time, and that was that.
He was standing in front of the bookshop.
In fact, he had made it as far as putting his hand on the doorknob, and then he had stopped.
Should… was he supposed to knock?
Of course, he never knocked when it was Aziraphale’s bookshop, but now it belonged to that other angel, and he wasn’t sure if that maybe called for a quick knock or two. He could even knock and then go in right after, without waiting for a response. Maybe that was a nice middle ground.
Then again, he could just go inside, not just because he was a demon and he could do whatever the hell he wanted (although that certainly was true) but because it was a bookshop, and it was open.
A bell rang over the door to announce his arrival, and Crowley glared at it for tattling. Luckily, no one seemed to mind, because the bookshop was empty; Muriel was nowhere to be found.
In some ways, the bookshop was achingly similar to how it had been before. The shelves were in that perfect state of organized disarray that no one could understand but Aziraphale, the carpet just barely covered the symbol carved into the wood underneath (Crowley nudged it a bit back on center with his foot), the piles of books and papers that looked halfway to falling over, the circles of wax stuck on various wooden surfaces. Even the floorboards creaked exactly where he knew they would, steps Crowley usually avoided, but somehow forgot to, this time around.
Then again, it was hard to ignore the fact that there was clearly a new tenant here. The chairs had been swapped around, that was a bit strange, there were open books all around, even ones Aziraphale usually didn’t touch, a cup of tea sat on the desk that had been left to go cold, and, most notably, there were fucking hats everywhere.
Set on top of bookshelves, on the backs of chairs, just sitting on the floor. Fireman hats, police hats, chef hats, fedoras, beanies, all completely, absolutely, inexplicably present.
Crowley carefully stepped inside, half-expecting Muriel to show up at any moment, probably pop right out of that pot– Crowley leaned over just to check– no that was empty. Well then, he straightened up, dusted off his shirt (it was perfectly clean beforehand) and went further into the bookshop, mentally going over his list:
- One jacket
- One pair of sunglasses
- And exactly eight potted plants.
All items Crowley had realized were missing during that some amount of time, and all items that he knew had to be somewhere at the blasted bookshop. He just needed to find them, grab them, and then leave , ideally without running into Muriel, and even more ideally without running into Maggie or Nina.
The plants were the easiest; he had to move the moodiest of the bunch into the bookshop after they’d decided they couldn’t handle the fickle conditions of his Bently, and no amount of threats could convince them otherwise. They sat, tall and proud and incredibly smug about their arrangements, in various windows around the shops, and Crowley wasted no time in heading that way.
In return, the universe wasted no time in making sure he fell flat on his face.
He tripped over a hat, a cowboy hat of all things, and it took a great deal of cursing to propel him to his feet again. Which was when, with unintentionally excellent timing (or horrible timing, depending on how you looked at it), Muriel stuck their head out from behind a bookshelf and startled him so badly he had to do the whole thing again.
“Hello, hello, hello!” she greeted him brightly, looking down slightly as Crowley picked himself back up. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you there Mr. Crowley.”
“Nah, didn’t scare me at all. Perfectly un-scared, I am,” he assured her, holding out the hat. “Although, it would be nice if you cleared out some of the fuckin’ hats .”
“Oh!” They grabbed the hat from him and put it on their head, on top of another one they were already wearing. “Sorry about that, but I can’t just clear out my hats, I’m still trying to find the right one. Ooo, maybe you would know!”
“Know what?” Crowley asked, already half disinterested and returning to the task at hand, collecting his potted plants from the windowsill.
“What hats booksellers are supposed to wear! When I was posing as inspector constable, if you’ll remember, I had an excellent hat that I felt was quite convincing. So now that I’m a bookseller, I need an equally suitable hat.”
“Booksellers don’t wear hats .” Three plants down, five more to go. Crowley dumped what he’d already collected onto the desk, wishing he would have remembered to bring a box or something. Ah well, there had to be one laying around somewhere.
Muriel had a sort of confused smile, like what he’d just said was something incredibly silly. “I’m pretty sure they do. I’ve been reading up on it, and I’ve found that most human professions have a hat, it’s just a matter of finding the right one.”
“Is it now?” Crowley asked, drifting over to the next window. His pitcher plant was wilting, the sensitive bugger.
“Oh absolutely. I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon enough, don’t worry.”
“Ah, good. I was getting pretty nervous,” he muttered, picking up two more pots. Muriel seemed content to quiet down as he moved around the room, gathering the rest of the pots and collecting them on Aziraphale’s desk. He was just beginning the search for his jacket, with Muriel trailing after him, when they decided it was time to interrupt again.
“Oh, I just remembered!” she announced, flitting away to go digging around in one of the desk drawers while Crowley rummaged through some old boxes. “I have something for you.”
“Well how kind. ”
“I agree! It’s from that human, Maggie she said her name was. She seems lovely, her and the lady from the coffee shop have both stopped by a couple times. They had a lot of questions about things, especially you and the archangel.”
“Archangel?” The boxes were unhelpful in providing either his jacket or his sunglasses, so Crowley straightened up and scanned the room. What a mess. “What the hell do they care about what Gabriel’s up to?”
“No, no, not Gabriel. Your friend, Aziraphale.”
Oh, well… he supposed that made sense. Crowley adjusted his glasses, pushed them up on his face. “Ah, right, that fellow.”
“Yep!” Muriel acquired whatever they were looking for in the desk drawer and brought it over to him. “That’s actually sort of what I wanted to talk to you about too. See, that Maggie lady brought this over again, said it was something called ‘rent’? I wasn’t sure what that meant, but she seemed to want to give it to Aziraphale, so I figured if I would give it to you, you could pass it along for me.”
Crowley stared at the piece of paper in their hand for a moment, before whirling around to resume his search. There had been a suspiciously jacket-shaped bundle on top of one of the bookshelves that seemed worthy of investigating. “And what makes you think that?” he asked Muriel. “Why would I, a lowly demon, want to go sending messages to the archangel of heaven? ”
“Well, I mean, it did seem like you two are pretty close, so I just figured-”
“Figured wrong it seems, doesn’t it?” Crowley interrupted. He slipped on the jacket, which had been on top of the bookshelf after all, and stuffed his hands in its pockets. Bingo, extra glasses. “Listen, I didn’t come here to play errand boy for heaven, yeah? I’m sure you can find the time to run that up there yourself.”
He grabbed one of the boxes from the ground, and started loading up the plants so he could get out of this damn bookshop already. About three plants in he realized he’d grabbed the box Gabriel had showed up with, took a moment to ruminate on that bit of misfortune, and then decided a box was a box. Mostly, he didn’t want to bother with finding another one.
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, he’s the archangel now, I doubt he’d want a visit from little old me.”
“It’s Aziraphale,” Crowley pointed out, as if that was sufficient explanation. The look in Muriel’s eyes (confusion, it was fairly clearly confusion) told him it wasn’t. “I’m sure he’d be positively delighted to see you.”
“Well, if you’re so certain, maybe I’ll have to pop up there myself sometime!”
“Great, excellent, hope you have plenty of fun with that one.” Crowley picked up the box, now loaded with plants, leaves rustling around, shying away from the door he was getting ready to take them through. Sensitive bastards. “See you, ah I don’t know, couple hundred years?”
“Oh, well before you go, could I interest you in buying some books?” Muriel asked, tipping their cowboy hat in his direction.
The door was open, Crowley even had one foot on the sidewalk outside, he could’ve just kept going. Kind of. Not really. The bell overhead jangled obnoxiously as the door opened, and then abruptly closed. “Have you been selling the books? What the hell do you think this is, a bookshop?!?”
“Yes?”
“No!”
“Are you sure? Because that’s what the sign outside says…”
“No! Well, alright, yeah, sure, it’s a bookshop! And sure, yeah, sometimes bookshops sell books, but not this one. This is Aziraphale’s private collection. When someone comes in to buy a book, he smiles, and very politely tells them to piss off. ” He whipped off his glasses, pointing them at her chest. Muriel backed up a bit, looking up at him with the kind of innocent, surprised confusion he expected to see on the faces of kicked puppies. (Of course, as a demon, Crowley tried to convince himself he didn’t give much of a shit about kicked puppies, but as someone who had once gone remarkably out of his way to save some poor, doomed goats, he cared quite a bit.)
“Well…” Muriel offered up hesitantly. “I mean to be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure he’ll be needing them anymore. I mean, archangel of heaven is quite the job, so he’ll be pretty busy! That’s why the metatron assigned me here!”
“Ah yes, the metatron! Metatron this, metatron that! Crowley, the metatron wants us to go to heaven. Crowley, the metatron put me in charge of the bookshop! He gave me a coffee! What a lovely fellow! Quite frankly, I’d like to take the metatron’s stupid, floating head, shove my fingers into his eyeballs, and take a trip bowling, y’know what I mean?”
“Um… no? I don’t think I want to do that. Also I don’t know what bowling is?”
“Course ya don’t,” Crowley muttered. He picked up the box of plants and, continuing quite a bit louder, “Angels!” he shouted. “Angels, angels! Done with em!” The bell jingled over the door. Muriel waved to him. “The whole lot of ya! More trouble than you’re worth!”
“Bye Mr. Crowley! I’ll see you soon!”
“Alright, yeah, sure!” The bell rang again as Crowley left the bookshop, the door swinging shut behind him.
Horns honked, birds shouted their grievances from the rooftops, people mingled about, talking, listening to music far too loud, saying nothing at all, letting their shoes rapping against the pavement speak for them.
It felt like the kind of place- the kind of place that wasn’t a place, the kind of place that was more of a waypoint, a feeling of transition, the cusp of change- where Crowley might like to spend another some amount of time. He could stand there as long as he wanted, afterall, on the entryway of that bookshop, that sort of border between decisions. He could stand there until the bookshop was no longer a bookshop (unless, of course, by some miracle, it was). Hell could freeze over, heaven could fall from the sky, and-
“Crowley?”
He needed to leave this place immediately.