The 13th night

“Here we are,” Aziraphale says, jimmying open the door.

Late afternoon sunlight drifts weakly through the space, catching on dust motes and heightening the smell of mildew. The house isn’t exactly in tip-top condition, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it—uncovering the layers, the secrets. Finding what hides beneath.

Aziraphale likes places with a sense of history. He’s an old thing, after all. It makes him feel a little more at home.

He takes off his fedora and leaves it on a hat stand, which has the slightly affronted look of something that had been enjoying a quiet day in a bookshop and had been suddenly relocated. A sofa groans into existence underneath the long window in the sitting room; the flue sneezes, and the chimney finds itself clean and clear for the first time in half a century.

“Yes, this should do nicely,” Aziraphale murmurs, snapping an antique rug down onto the floor. “Quite nicely.”

He’s just getting comfortable when the door creaks on its hinges, easing itself open behind him. The afternoon darkens; a chill shivers through the air.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” he calls.

There’s a pause, then the afternoon snaps back into its usual autumn formation and Crowley steps through the door.

“Got to make sure everyone knows who will be boss around here,” he sniffs, one eye still looking over his shoulder at the garden.

“No one is going to be the boss. Come help me with this sofa, is it long enough?”

“S’long enough, it’s just hideous. Don’t your miracles ever come in something like, I dunno, black leather?”

In the end they compromise on a worn brown leather, with enough paisley throw blankets and plaid cushions to make it look like something else entirely. Crowley gets the sense that he’s lost, somehow, but Aziraphale doesn’t stop smiling for hours and it doesn’t really matter anymore.

It had been a rare thing, that smile. Always brief, always already on its way out, guilt and fear nipping on its heels.

That was before. Now that smile is growing more familiar every day, settling into itself in the aftermath of the world ending-but-not-quite. Now that they’re deciding what it will mean to be on their own side.

So far it means a cottage in the South Downs and something of a future being planned together.

Right now there’s plenty to plan, plenty to sort: the kitchen needs a full gut, which takes them nearly an hour before they can find something they agree on—warm walnut cabinets with an orange-gloss range, and an eat-in table with a linoleum top instead of a breakfast bar. The less said about the bathroom, the better—Victorian tiling and a modern soaking tub—and they’re both surprised to find they each have strong feelings about dining rooms.

There aren’t always arguments, though. Aziraphale fills the library with cherry shelves and green velvet furniture while Crowley watches from the door, learning to smile his own secret smile at the sight of a chaise Aziraphale has no intention of ever sitting on; an hour later, Aziraphale watches as Crowley fills the conservatory with green palms and white linen cushions, chairs cluttered rather closer together than needed.

It takes most of the day, to renovate and redecorate the place to their liking. It would have taken humans the better part of three years, but Crowley and Aziraphale expect to move in comfortably, and so they do.

“Do you suppose that’s cheating?” Aziraphale asks, halfway through a celebratory bottle of 1989 Bordeaux that evening.

Crowley shrugs. “S’not cheating if no one is watching,” he says, and they smile those smiles, those beautiful secret smiles, and toast.

Eventually it grows late. They turn out the lights and follow the moonlight as it spills across the floorboards, spelling out shadows in the dark. The two bedrooms upstairs rustle for a while, then fall silent.

Crowley sighs beneath his blankets. Aziraphale turns a page.

Downstairs, the shadows begin to move.