headcanon st. patrick actually drove crowley out of ireland specifically and now he’s not allowed back there
Okay but why am I imagining St Patrick chasing Crowley all the way to the Irish coast with a broom like my Irish grandmother when she sees a rat
imagine aziraphale wants crowley to go take care of something in ireland as per the Arrangement, and crowley has to explain that he Physically Cannot
“What do you mean you can’t go to Ireland? It’s only a minor miracle and I know you’ve got a tempting to do over there!”
Crowley doesn’t drop his head into his hands and groaned but it’s a near thing. Very near. They’re in Aziraphale’s shop—as usual—and although the weather outside suggests otherwise, it’s cold as space* inside the dusty book-filled place.
“Because,” is what he says after a moment, glaring at the angel. His signature sunglasses were tossed on the desk an hour after their arrival at the shop and Crowley somewhat wishes to put them back on. That would, however, infer to Aziraphale that he’s leaving and Crowley really doesn’t want to leave.
Even if this specific line of questioning sort of makes him wish to.
“That isn’t a good enough reason, Crowley.” The angel responds tartly, and Crowley wants to throw the nearest book at him. Unfortunately, considering his serpent-like nature, the heat makes Crowley quite sedate. The cold of the shop, too, does much the same.
He really can’t win when it comes to temperature.
“I’ll owe you for next time, angel,” Crowley tries, actually promising for once, and he hopes that’ll convince Aziraphale to drop it. Crowley offering him this olive branch of sorts.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
“I’ve performed every task we’ve been given in Ireland since the 5th century, Crowley. This is becoming a tad bit unequal,” Aziraphale says, standing directly in front of the demon sprawled on the sofa. It’s the only time the angel is taller than him and can look down at Crowley.
Crowley finds the sight quite enticing.
“I can’t go to Ireland!” Crowley snaps.
“Can’t or won’t?” Aziraphale snaps back, glaring down at the demon.
Crowley really doesn’t want to answer. Because he knows, if he tells Aziraphale the truth, the angel will honestly laugh. And… Well… Crowley likes hearing Aziraphale laugh but not about this. This is… It’s… It’s humiliating, is what it is.
“If I tell you…” Crowley trails off before sighing. “You’re going to laugh, angel.”
Aziraphale gasps, offended. “I would never!”
Crowley gives him a dark look. Never say never.
“You know that Saint fellow the Irish love, yeah? Think you met him once,” Crowley begins reluctantly. Aziraphale nods a little uncertainly until Crowley expands: “Saint Patrick.”
“Oh yes! Lovely chap! Performed a lovely set of miracles assisted by yours truly, absolutely grand man!” Aziraphale exclaims, frowning after a moment. “But what does he have to…”
Crowley nods. There we go. Connection.
“Oh.”
Aziraphale stares at him. Crowley stares back.
“Oh my.”
The angel’s head drops, he looks away. Aziraphale’s shoulders start to shake.
“Angel?”
Crowley sits up, tired sluggishness forgotten in the face of his angel in distress. He reaches out with a hand and touches Aziraphale’s arm.
He’s far enough forward now that he can peer up at the angel’s face, see the expression on it and Crowley blinks.
“Are you—are you laughing?”
That breaks the angel’s silence and loud laughter echoes around the shop.
“You absolute bastard! Stop laughing, angel!” Crowley stands up and grips Aziraphale by both arms.
“I’m sorry. I—it’s just,” Aziraphale hiccups out, still laughing. “You got chased—out of ireland—as a snake!”
Crowley hisses in frustration and it only makes Aziraphale laugh harder.
“I hate you, angel,” Crowley mutters. He doesn’t, not really, but he really really wants to in that moment.
__
* Space is, Crowley recalls, very fucking cold. Too cold to be entirely honest but still miles preferable to the muggy heat of London in summer. At least space doesn’t stink of boiled piss and sweaty humans.
Despite being a demon, Crowley is cold blooded. Quite literally. His hands are always cold, especially in winter, a time of year he detests when he can feel each and every single one of his 6000 years in his aching human bones.
“You should have brought gloves,” the angel tells him, and it’s all Crowley can do not to mimic him out of sheer annoyance as they walk through St James’s park.
“Yes well I didn’t.”
“Put them in your pockets?”
“In these jeans?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake” the angel says, removing his left glove, and handing it to Crowley, “there, put that on.”
The demon arches an eyebrow at him. “One glove, really?”
“Just put it on.”
“Well at least I’ll only lose the one hand,” he grouses, slipping the glove on and flexing his fingers, thoroughly enjoying the warmth left over by Aziraphale’s hand. “But what about you, won’t your left hand be cold now?”
“No,” Aziraphale replies, taking Crowley’s right hand in his left, and slipping them into the warmth of his jacket pocket as they begin to climb the steps and head out onto the main street, the demon falling uncharacteristically silent as they walk close together side by side as the first snow of the season begins to fall. “Not really.”
It’s also why he likes to sleep so much. There’s just something in him that’s hard wired to find a nice cozy spot and curl up and sleep for a few hours centuries. After the end times fail to happen, Aziraphale’s shop becomes one of his favorite spots. After all, he’s got some time now, he can enjoy it now.
The couch in the back isn’t just the couch anymore, it’s Crowley’s couch, and it’s not uncommon for the angel to slip back there every so often and find the demon fast asleep, his long limbs splayed out in a gloriously decadent sprawl as he naps the day away. Other times he’ll be curled in on himself, limbs taught, breathing rapid. Those are the times Aziraphale finds it hard to leave. He doesn’t sleep himself, not really, not in the way Crowley does. But he knows the value of rest, and there’s something so incredibly restful about sitting there in the cloistered back room, a good book in hand, a cup of tea on the table beside him, and Crowley’s slumbering head in his lap.
It happened in a garden. It happened when his hereditary enemy slithered up beside him and they watched human history unfold for the very first time in front of their eyes and out of their reach, wondering about Right And Wrong when really they ought to have been wondering why they were standing side by side.
As the first rain drops fell they huddled together, one Fallen Angel and one About To Fall but in a different way, hovering on a precipe he did not see until centuries later. The snake’s yellow, amused eyes had burned themsleves into his being, and Aziraphale had known back then that they would never quite leave him. He extended one wing, and with it an unspoken invitation.
It happened in Rome, when against his better judgement he approached the demon he should have been thwarting only to offer him temptation, of all things, and to rejoice when he received a smile and dinner company. Aziraphale had loved oysters before, but that day they had tasted sweeter. He’d credited Petronius.
It happened in London–where it would happen many times more–when Crowley did Good for his sake and Aziraphale betrayed Heaven for logic; when he could no longer deny that they were opposing forces complementing each other as shadow complements light. Maybe they weren’t cancelling each other out. Maybe they were completing each other.
They came to agree on an Arrangement, a transgression that felt far too right to be so very wrong, not when it was him he was transgressing with (and when it changed nothing of the outcome, Aziraphale reminded himself, almost as an afterthought). And not when he suspected that a part of Crowley was rejoicing in the reverse betrayal of Hell, in doing good for Goodness’ sake.
It happened in France, when Aziraphale had been supposed to die and found himself, crêpe in hand, beside an old friend who had saved his life for the hell of it, expecting nothing in return. The sound of Crowley’s voice made his heart beat faster, even if he tried blaming it on the guillotine outside.
It happened in a church, when a demon tread on holy ground to rescue an angel. When Crowley handed him a bag of old books saved by a demonic miracle while Heaven was silent and Aziraphale toppled off that precipe he had been balancing on for thousands of years. The church was gone but Crowley was still there, waiting for him, and Aziraphale was standing in between rubble but Falling, and his heart ached at the impossibility of it.
It happened in a car–not in a car, in the car, the same one that had driven him home through the Blitz and in which he was now handing his best friend the tool for his destruction because he could not bear to think of a world without Crowley. They had been together since the Beginning, and he needed to know he’d be there with him until the End.
It happened at the End Of All Things, when all was lost and still they could not give up, not the world and not each other. Aziraphale had not been able to run away because he knew there was nowhere to run, but as human history folded in on itself as they stood side by side one last time he realized that Until The End was not enough.
It happened when Aziraphale no longer wondered about Right And Wrong because he knew. It had always been them, side by side, without question. At a bus stop, on a park bench, in a quiet flat, a bustling bookshop, at the Ritz. In a garden. He understood, now. It had happened when they’d started it, and when they had refused to let it end. It had been happening all along, slowly and all at once. And it was still happening.
Aziraphale had not exactly fallen in love: he had sauntered vaguely downwards.
Look at how they framed the shots of Adam’s confrontation with Satan.
He’s got, quite literally, a demon and an angel over each shoulder.
AND THAT’S NOT EVEN THE BEST PART.
Because in those classic depictions of the angel and the devil each perched on a shoulder, the two are always portrayed as fighting with one another, each trying to influence a person for Good or Evil, but HERE they’re not fighting. At least, not with each other.
Though they’ve employed different methods to reach this end, they are united in a common goal. Save Adam. Save the world.
Crowley and Aziraphale are a visual representation of what Adam has within himself – what all humans have within themselves, the potential for good and evil / light and dark / whatever you want to call it.
And I think what this scene is visually implying is that it’s okay to have a bit of both – in fact, it’s probably for the best, given the cruelty we see dished out by those who are purely angel and demon.
Adam has both good and evil within him. All humans do. And THAT is what allows him to choose to rebel against his father. And it’s that very choice which makes the rebellion possible because it proves beyond all doubt that he is something the antichrist could not possibly be – human.
Do you ever think, on one of their many, many “Totally-Not-A-Date” lunch dates that Crowley (who only ever seems to eat around the angel) ever just like, orders apple pie for dessert just to be a little shit.
“Sure I can’t tempt you?” he says, proffering the bowl forward where a slice of hot apple caramel pie is slowly melting the vanilla ice scream scoop on the side, “it really is quite good.”
And Aziraphale, declines politely, sipping on his after dinner coffee like a gentleman while the demon shrugs and demolishes the whole thing in under a minute flat. “Suit yourself.”
Or one one other memorable occasion:
“Toffee apple?” the demon asks, the fun fair carnival lights flickering and swirling around them as the sound of children laughing intermingles with the bright clanking jangling melody of the carousel spinning in front of them to a tune that sounds suspiciously familiar.
“What? Oh, no…thank you,” Aziraphale declines, noticing that Crowley only procured the one anyway. “We really should get down to business…”
“Suit yourself,” he says, crunching into it and eating the whole thing, core and all.
He doesn’t even particularly like apples, he just likes the way the angel flusters whenever he does it. Still, these humans were onto something when they took the fruit of all knowledge and dipped it in molten sugar and baked it into pies, like some sort of clever metaphor for making the truth easier to swallow. Bloody ingenious humans, in their own round about way.
Eventually, at some point, the angel concedes and allows himself to be talked into a spoonful of apple pie somewhere down the centuries. It really is quite scrumptious, but it’s nowhere near as delicious as the look on Crowley’s face when he says yes.
I ALMOST LOST MY MIND. someone make this a fanfic because if you don’t I mcfreaking will on God I will if you would allow me!
Or yah know… you could write it 😉
I’ve got like, 1000 words tapped out in Ao3 right now lmao
do you ever think about aziraphale’s books, why he chose to surround himself with, of all that earth had to offer, books.
books are collections of knowledge and imagination; they are literally humanity distilled into stories. there is nothing, in my opinion, more profoundly, fundamentally human than a book. and aziraphale’s home is filled with them, filled with human stories that he doesn’t want anyone to buy take from him. he lives his entire life surrounded by books; he is an angel and can create the most lovely, safe space imaginable, and he chooses to stuff it floor-to-ceiling with books.
I just love thinking about the scene where Crowley and Aziraphale hit Anathema from Anathema’s point of view. A bickering gay couple (one who’s wearing sunglasses at night) hits her and her bicycle with a car from the 1920s in the middle of the night. The bicycle and her are perfectly fine. The gay couple offer to drive her home, Bicycle Race by Queen is playing. One second her bike has new gears, the next it doesn’t. They drop her off. One calls the bike a “velocipede.” She was so confused by it all she forgot her super special book, poor thing.
