Chapter Text
There was always an afternoon lull in the bookshop, when all of the morning’s customers had been graciously expelled and those afternoon browsers had yet to muster up the courage to face the owner’s icy glare as they perused his collection. During this lull, Aziraphale would often take pleasure in closing the shop briefly to pop around to the bakery across the road for an almond croissant. That was before the apocalypse came and went, a non-event in the whole scheme of human history. Now, he’d found it ever more difficult to pry himself away from his towering shelves and cluttered desk. As though, in light of their demise (and subsequent reconstitution by a certain son of satan), they were liable to spontaneously combust should he look away for even a second.
It didn’t escape the bakery’s notice that their more consistent and friendly customer had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, and it only took a few days of Aziraphale’s absence before the counter girl resolved to deliver his regular order to the shop instead. Must be overwhelmed with customers, she’d reasoned. Not that she’d ever set foot in Azira Fell and Co, but it emanated an aura of exclusivity and rarity despite its dusty windows and peeling paintwork.
Jenna, brown paper bag in hand, shouldered open the heavy front door to the tinkling of bells.
“Mr Fell?” She called, but stopped in her tracks. The place was empty, not a single customer in sight. The dust caused her nose to tickle as a small pile of books collapsed to her right and a dishevelled Aziraphale emerged.
“Ahh—“ the man looked slightly more drawn out and flat than the times Jenna had served him in the bakery. There was no sparkle, or soft smile, his posture was dejected, waistcoat missing a button. There was a glimmer of recognition, though, he’d seen that face somewhere but couldn’t quite place it.
“I brought over your croissant. We’ve missed you the last few days.”
Ah, the bakery! The one he couldn’t visit because he had to keep an eye on
“…My books.” The angel gestured the the piles that littered the shop. “Sorry, couldn’t quite pull myself away from them.”
He crossed the room and fished in his pocket, producing a five pound note.
“Thank you dear, that was ever so thoughtful.” But the smile didn’t reach its usual intensity, in fact, it seemed more like a grimace.
“No problem.”
Jenna left the man standing amongst his piles of tomes, looking slightly lost and hurried across the road to the bakery, where a line of customers had grown. When the sky began to grow dark, the angel was still huddled in amongst his shelves, books stacked around him as if a fortress protecting him from… whatever there was to be protected from.
Freedom?
His days since Armageddon should have been pleasantly filled with outings with Crowley (which he’d stedfast resisted, wouldn’t it be better to have a drink in the bookshop?), them toasting to the absence of their superiors breathing down their necks. Maybe some quaint little cafes with petit fours followed by a walk in the park. But, instead, darkness had well and truely blanketed the sky when he decided that the croissant, slowly staling in the little bag, wasn’t quite what would satisfy him right now.
Crowley was in a bar some six streets away and, had he known that the angel had just binned one of his favourite foods, he would’ve been sober and around in seconds flat. But he didn’t, because Aziraphale had withdrawn since the Apocalypse that hadn’t, now his outings seemed cursed to those spent drinking alone at a bar, the empty chair of his best friend haunting his peripheral vision.
How do you know if an angel is worthy?
It’s perhaps not as black and white as Aziraphale had once believed. He had spent centuries convinced in the binary wherein angels were beings of good and demons of evil, and yet, now he was facing a conundrum maybe even worse than Falling. He was an angel who didn’t quite fit in. He cast his mind back to the taunts of Gabriel, the finger jabbed at his soft midriff, the sneer of the other angels as they cornered him on the street. He thought back to his brief time fighting for heaven, before he was introduced to the earthly delights of treacle tarts and sushi. He was, had been, well, slimmer. It was in his control, by golly it was one of the few things he could control now that he thought about it. The only other thing that came to mind, to make him an outcast, was his friendship with Crowley. It wasn’t that he exactly wanted to get back in heaven’s good books, to be their star pupil, no, he just craved that sense of belonging again that had been torn away when he’d failed to perish in hellfire.
He wanted to feel… angelic again. He remembered, years ago, Gabriel’s displeasure at hearing that Aziraphale would willingly “taint his vessel” with the scourge that was human cuisine. Was that the path back to righteousness? A small act which could prove that, despite everything, he hadn’t “gone native”.
Someone knows, it’d be less of a sacrifice than trying to cut ties with Crowley. Sure, as his body had grown accustomed to food, there was a slight emptiness in his stomach that would usually be filled by a still-warm croissant, but the emptiness would never compare to that of casting the demon out of his life, just for the chance to be redeemed in heaven’s eyes.
No, there was a different strength in this kind of empty, almost victorious, and as the night wore on Aziraphale began to see why humans would fast for their god.
He was redeemable.