Crowley really, really wanted a chat with Dagon. This was not something that he had often felt in the last sixty centuries. He tended to avoid his superiors except when he was pretty sure a commendation was on the way. But he needed an expert in celestial contract law, and Dagon was the best he knew.

Unfortunately, Dagon was presumably on Asmodeus' side now. Crowley had to be his own expert.

Crowley had obediently left the bookshop on Aziraphale's request. Fifteen minutes later, he headed back in, the doors unlocking at his gesture. Demons couldn't enter angelic ground without permission. Apparently his snowy white wings were enough to change the rules. It probably didn't occur to whoever drew up the rules of contact that angels would even want to break into each other's property. More fool them.

It all depended on how much Adam had changed the bookshop's collection. Aziraphale had seemed quite content with the changes to his stock, the dear old chap, once he'd looked them up in the price guide. What had he said? Whoo-ee. He would, too, head firmly lodged back in-- No. That was wrong. Aziraphale didn't care what his books were worth, their value just made it more difficult to keep track of the tax and insurance, and he detested paperwork. It wasn't like he ever let anyone buy them anyway. Crowley's head was hurting.

He had to concentrate. The entire bookshop couldn't be children's books. Aziraphale would have broken his heart. He specialised. Books of prophecy, Bible misprints, Apocrypha. Angelogy and demonology, Crowley was pretty sure. Aziraphale's sense of humour wouldn't be able to resist it. There had to be something on supernatural contracts there.

Two hours of reading later, Crowley's head was aching. Plenty of stories of getting out of demonic contracts, although he doubted any of them were true, not if Dagon had penned the contracts. In any case, they generally required fasting to show self-denial, which probably didn't count if you didn't exactly require material sustenance in order to survive, and intercessional prayer to retrieve the contract. Which meant appealing to Sandalphon. Crowley considered his chances of getting Sandalphon to intervene on his and Aziraphale's behalf, and groaned.

Heavenly covenants were worse. Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed—better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

He had uttered hastily, all right, at least in his heart. And he was pretty sure he was a fool. "So what precisely," Crowley asked the air, "did I vow to pay?"

He needed to know the exact words. After all, in contracts, the words, as well as the intent, mattered. Had his intent had been as simple as let me be someone Aziraphale can love? Or even simpler, please stop this hurting? Somewhere, in the gap between intent and wording, was where the loophole Gabriel had exploited would be. And when there was one loophole, there would be another, for Crowley to exploit.

Asmodeus was not going to give him any clues. He was going to have to figure this out himself. As long as Aziraphale didn't remember him, it felt hopeless.

Crowley picked up the books to return them to their places. He really didn't want to be here when Aziraphale and—oh, Heaven and Hell, he really didn't want to know if Asmodeus was with Aziraphale when he returned. Some things were better unseen. One of the books slipped from his arms. The Sepher ha Zohar, which he had picked up on the off chance and not got to reading. One of the many bookmarks the books were bristling with slipped out of it, and Crowley picked it up, guiltily worrying if Aziraphale would, among these thousands of books, notice a bookmark out of place. He wouldn't put it past him.

On a scrap of paper was scribbled an English translation of a verse. They went down to the serpent and saw the desire of the world. And his ways were swayed to this place of Malchut, which is the secret of eating of the Tree of Knowledge. And under it, written in beautiful looping writing stylising the C into a rearing snake and the tail of the y into a heart, was written the name Crowley.

Crowley stared at it. A heart. Aziraphale, who had learned to write in cuneiform at the dawn of writing, who had mastered every form of writing humanity had created, had written his name with a heart at the end, like a schoolgirl with a crush. Crowley drew his hand down the bookmark. It was slightly yellowed and crackled under his fingers. How many years ago had Aziraphale found a damning reference to his Adversary in a Gnostic text, and drawn a heart with his name, and used it as a bookmark? The idiot. The complete, soft, adorable, loving idiot.

Tears prickled Crowley's eyes, as he swiped and pocketed the bookmark. He was going to set Aziraphale free from whatever had been done to him, and he was going to win. Because a love so ridiculously true still had to still exist.

The contract arrived at 12 am. Of course. Asmodeus would be dramatic like that. It was a masterwork of length and misdirection and complexity, but it was no Mafia contract. Crowley read it carefully over and over, and his heart burned with fury and, even more strongly, with hope.

Asmodeus must have written it himself, and Crowley would bet eternity that he had been too arrogant to bother running it past Dagon. Dagon would never, ever be sloppy enough to make one of the markers of success something neither of them had the right to supply.

They could bet on who won Aziraphale's heart, he supposed, repellant as the idea was. What they couldn't bet on was his soul. Asmodeus had assumed that if Aziraphale could fall in love with a demon, then Falling would be the natural consequence and punishment. And Falling really would be a punishment to a gentle, loving soul like Aziraphale, no matter how many tiny inconsequential sins he committed.

Crowley thought of Aziraphale's pure white wings and clear eyes and the name of a demon written with a heart, Aziraphale who had faced every injustice of Heaven and kept his faith in the Almighty's love, and smiled like a demon or an angel. Perhaps demons and angels weren't so unalike, after all. Neither could dent Aziraphale's essential goodness, no matter what tricks they played.

It was 4 am, according to Crowley's beloved watch. A completely uncivilised time to make a phone call. On the other hand, Aziraphale didn't sleep.

"Hello?" Aziraphale's voice held the wariness that suggested he was trying to decide if the early morning phone call was from was an international dealer willing to part with a book he was searching for and therefore to be treated with sweetness and light, or an international dealer rashly trying to acquire one of Aziraphale's treasures and to be dispensed with brusquely. Crowley had tried to convince him to upgrade to something with caller ID, but it had been hard enough to convince him to put in a telephone with an integrated transmitter and receiver in the handpiece.

"Hello, angel."

"Anthony." Aziraphale's voice was unreadable.

"Aziraphale, does the name Crowley mean anything to you?"

There was an intake of breath, and then a long silence. Crowley waited.

"I don't know," Aziraphale said uncertainly. "There was the human Thelemic prophet, wrote some very entertaining books, but—that's not what you mean, is it?"

"No. It's all right," Crowley said gently, fingering the scrap of paper in his pocket. He would take uncertainty. Anything but complete denial. "Aziraphale, you know that I love you with all my heart." So easy to say. No matter how tricked and tortured he felt, at least the vanishing of his chains had given him that.

"I do," Aziraphale said unsteadily. "I just don't understand it. We only spoke once, thousands of years ago. How could you possibly feel like that about me?"

"If you don't think anyone can fall in love with you in one conversation, then you seriously underestimate how loveable you are. But it's not just that."

"Asmodeus says you've gone insane and spent the last six thousand years spying on and obsessing over me, that you're inches away from doing something terrible that will make you Fall, and I'm in immediate danger. He wanted to stay the night to protect me."

Fuck. Crowley immediately abandoned his half-formed plans to barrage Aziraphale with his knowledge about his life on Earth to prove they had shared it.

"All right. Fair enough, I'm not much of an angel these days, and it's probably not going to take much to make me Fall. But do you feel in your heart that I mean you any harm?"

"No. No, I don't. I can't imagine you feeling like that and harming me."

Crowley's heart leapt. "You sent Asmodeus home?" he asked hopefully.

"I needed to think. And read." True to his ruling spirit.

"Aziraphale, who is your main supervisor?" He was sure it had been Gabriel.

"Michael."

Michael. Oh, no. The Archangel Michael was intimidating in a completely different way to Kerubiel. Less gigantic, bristling with power and blazing with storms than a cherub, but she was the First and Eldest and Father of Angels, and Crowley had always felt cowed by her ancientness and her cool self-possession. Not only was all the iconography of her treading on serpents a bit alarmingly personal, but Crowley always had an irrational fear that if she scolded him, he would humiliate himself by calling her Mummy. Better to face Satan.

Well, he had decided he would dare anything for Aziraphale. Time to prove it. And after all, who needed Dagon, when he could have the most clever being he had ever met by his side?

"Angel, I have something to show you. And then, I think we need to take a trip together." He swallowed hard. "To Heaven."

Notes:

1) Ecclesiastes 5:2-5.

2) I took a brief detour into PWP fluff, but this story is my obsession. Seriously, I think about it all the time, which is why I am updating at midnight, so I can get some sleep. Thank you so much for staying with me so far.