there are always more logs for the fire, here

“And what now?” Enchi asked, small on Alice’s laptop screen. “Back to the Spike?” She’d grown her hair out to her ears, it looked shaggy and soft in a way that was totally unfamiliar. Her piercings were back in, too. Less chance of taking a blow to the face working in R&D, or at least that’s how the dress codes saw it.

“No,” Alice said. “They want me to go back to Teo.”

She closed her eyes and imagined she could feel Enchi’s concern through the blue, even across thousands of miles. She couldn’t, but when she opened her eyes the from greeting her was far from a surprise. “Who wants that? You’re the best pilot on that base.”

Crowley was used to the atmosphere in a bar souring as soon as he walked in. Mishaps, pettiness, cruelty, tiny incidents that humans escalated all by themselves and a thin layer of tarnish for all involved. It was as natural as breathing[1].

[1. Which Crowley had spent a good century mastering, back in the day, and now only occasionally got wrong.]

Tonight, though, he was trying not to meddle. He honestly just wanted a drink and to lose himself among a very gay cross-section of humanity. His nerves were still shot a year after the apocalypse hadn't happened, and while being alive was infinitely better than being caught in an eternal battle, or dead, or both at once, sometimes he just wanted to get drunk and pretend he was human. That he didn't keep waking up wondering how many days till The End, that he could relax in Aziraphale's bookshop without smelling phantom smoke, that he wasn't afraid of messing the world around and equally afraid of what he would do with himself after 6,000 years at the same job.

So he didn’t pay attention to the clamor immediately, but sometime after his first drink he became aware of raised voices and breaking glass and general scuffling sounds. He glanced over his shoulder, wracking his brains to figure out what he could have done by accident.

That was when the breathtakingly gorgeous being slipped onto the stool beside him. As Crowley watched, their appearance seemed to change slightly, as though they were a video game character and someone was scrolling through customization options. The general takeaways were long legs, silky red hair cut androgynously short, a smirk that could cut glass, the smell of blood, and an overwhelming sense of danger.

Crowley stood to leave.

“Crowley,” the person-shaped-being said, their voice a low purr.

Crowley sat down again with a shiver. “War,” he said, aiming for casual and failing.

“Carmine, please. There’s no need to stand on formality. Neither of us are on duty, are we?”

In Crowley’s opinion, there was every reason to stand on formality. His leg bounced against his stool, and he almost thought he could feel his teeth involuntarily turning into fangs just from War’s ancient, instigating presence. “What’re you doing here?” he asked.

“I was in the area and I thought we could catch up.”

Crowley’s stomach plummeted; he dreaded finding out what War had been doing. She was the sort of… she wasn’t even a co-worker, really. She and the other horsepeople were like experts from another department who took one look at what you’d done and decided it needed to be escalated about 500%. He hated it, and he really ought to say something, except that impulse was definitely her doing and he squashed it down for his own self-preservation.

“I’m too sssober for this,” he said.

War laughed and raised a hand to the bartenders, who immediately began squabbling amongst themselves as to who would serve her. At least half of them were gay men, but, well, Crowley supposed she was walking the twink/butch line to good effect.

Nobody seemed likely to come out on top, so Crowley filled his own glass and took a long drink. Then he filled it again. “What do you want with me?”[2]

[2. Usually the horsepeople only wanted to thank him for things he hadn’t intended on doing. Sometimes they wanted to “collaborate” and Crowley was hard-pressed to say no. Once Famine and Pestilence had gotten in some sort of row and he’d wound up passing passive-aggressive messages back and forth for about seventy years.]

War looked him over and grinned, like she was about to eat him. She said, “you’ve got spunk.”

“And you hate spunk…?” It didn’t sound right, but Crowley had spent too many nights watching Mary Tyler Moore reruns to respond with anything else.

“Nah, I love it.” Somewhere in the distance came the clatter of an overturned table. “I’ll be honest with you. I wanted the whole place to go up. We’ve had this, but destruction on an apocalyptic scale would have been awesome.” Her eyes flashed. Crowley winced. “But, eh. I can wait a couple thousand more years or whatever for the big blowup.”

“Not if we sstop it again!” Crowley burst out. “Er. That is. Not if someone stops it again.” Shitshitshit he hadn’t meant to say that.

“Here’s the thing,” War said, leaning closer. “Those children outmaneuvered us, but we stuck around to see how it all played out. I saw what you and that angel did.”

“Well—” said Crowley.

“A tire iron?” said War.

“Ngk,” said Crowley.

“See, that’s what I like about you. Tactically unsound, but I can respect going for blood for a lost cause.”

“I had to,” Crowley said.

“I know,” War said. “I could feel it coming off you. You would have done anything. I see it all the time, but mostly it’s a town or a country or a narrow ideal or something. You? You picked the whole damned world.”

“What’s your point?” Crowley demanded.

“You don’t look like a fighter, but you are,” War said. “So if Hell keeps sweeping you aside and you’re looking for work, you know where to find me.” She clapped a hand on his shoulder, and he shuddered with the heat of it.

“Actually,” he managed. “I’m retiring.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but as soon as he did he knew it was true. “I’m not helping downstairs, I’m not helping you, I’m going to… get a house somewhere and retire.” He downed the last of whatever-number-drink this was and waited for the consequences.

The final, victorious bartender came up at that moment, plunked another glass in front of Crowley, and slid War a Bloody Mary. Then she passed out behind the counter.

“So… do you take those with actual blood in them?” Crowley asked, partly because he was morbidly curious, partly in an attempt to change the subject.

War shrugged and sipped at her drink. “You,” she said to Crowley, “are lucky you’re cute. Don’t throw out my number, but have a thrilling retirement.” She stood up, taking the glass with her, and waked out.

The doors closed, and the chaos in the bar slowly faded as people started coming to their senses. Crowley let out last shudder that released some of the angry tension in his back and sipped at his last drink. He needed to get out of here and, before his nerve ran out, he needed to talk to Aziraphale.

It had all seemed fine for the first year or so, when he’d absorbed himself completely in learning a new craft, stopping only to provide small miracles and the occasional gentle-but-firm talking-to over the Antichrist’s pram. Crowley would shove the baby in his direction sometimes, and then cross her arms and look away, lips pursed, until she felt that Aziraphale had done enough to balance the child out. He was so focused on the minutiae of the work— and under the right circumstances Aziraphale would focus very deeply indeed— that he barely noticed time passing.

And then, one summer afternoon a bit after Warlock’s first birthday, he was tending to a rather stubborn yellow rose bush when Crowley and Warlock came outside. Crowley sat stiffly on a bench and unwrapped what appeared to be a jam sandwich. These days she wore long black dresses and tilted her head severely and never strayed far from her carpet bag and umbrella. Her Hellhound went to explore the perimeter of the yard, and Warlock crawled about in the grass. Crowley kept a close eye on him, and seemed to be encouraging him to catch and eat bugs.

It was as though the fog Aziraphale had been wrapped in solidified and shattered all at once. Suddenly he was thinking of other benches and other sandwiches and times when his fingernails were not caked with dirt despite his best angelic efforts. It seemed to him that Warlock had grown to the crawling and bug-eating stage remarkably fast, and what year was it again?, and what if it didn’t work? What if all of this was for a long shot that went against Ineffability? He would be spending the last of his years on Earth tending to an uncooperative plant.

He stood, and sent a polite suggestion to the rest of the Dowling household that there was no reason to look out in the garden right now, and called “Ms. Ashtoreth?”

 hey I wonder how long the witch of the waste had the idea of building a new “perfect” man out of bits of other men. what I mean is when she was courting Howl did she bring the idea up in subtle ways, playing on his vanity, in the hopes that she might get him to agree to it one day? it was never a solid plan, but maybe she believed it, maybe her fire demon encouraged her– anything to keep her distracted while it grew stronger. 

maybe she told howl things like “you know, find the right spell and you could be done with this leg hair forever,” and then “well of course there are spells to alter your whole body, if you want it.” 

“just keep your head,” she might have added with a smile, “I like your head, and you already do so much to your face and hair.” 

maybe howl didn’t realize at first, because he wanted new spells, because he thought he wanted her, because he was a vain fool and didn’t know how to physically walk the line between rugby wing and squishy wizard. maybe it took too long for him to realize that when the witch said she could get him a new set of arms, she meant she could take them from somebody else. and of course he bolted, commitment to a girl, commitment to a line of casting, commitment to a new set of body parts that turned his stomach to think about, none of that was worth staying for. 

maybe the curse was the witch’s second attempt, maybe if you can’t convince the world to change, you need to do it by force. maybe she’d imagined howl’s head on different shoulders from the very beginning.

By the time they finally got things sorted, Crowley was yawning. Every time he yawned, Aziraphale’s stomach turned over. He had strong misgivings about the whole thing. “You’re quite sure you need a nap?” he said, pausing halfway through turning down his bed. “It’s only been a few decades.”

“There was a war in there. That takes a lot out of someone.” Crowley yawned again. “Angel c’mon. It’s not like I’m—”

“Getting discorporated? No, that’s never taken longer than half a century to get sorted out.” There was something deep in Aziraphale’s chest, hard and sharp and not at all conducive to sleeping. Which hardly mattered, as he never slept, but it was also not at all conducive to Crowley sleeping.

Crowley looked down at his clothes, one of those short dresses that were all the fashion, red and black, and quite a lot of beads. He blinked and they became a soft pair of pajamas.

“Sleep, on the other hand.” Aziraphale scoffed. “I might have to spend another century playing both roles, and that hardly seems fair, now does it?”

Several years after they parted ways, Marwood and Withnail run into each other in Paris. As they get cake and try to navigate their new dynamic, the staff of Antique Bakery have a reunion of their own.

After a few exceptionally busy months, the forces of Heaven and Hell attempt to outwit each other in Aziraphale’s kitchen.

That is, Aziraphale makes pancakes and Crowley eats them.