Archive of Our Own ^beta

As they arrive in Crowley's flat, Crowley neatly sidesteps the holy water and goes to collapse on his living room couch.

It does, of course, give Aziraphale a mini heart attack to see the demon close to actual holy water, and he is quick to miracle it all away, check and double-check again that there is nothing left before going to join him.

Crowley himself miracled all the TVs around as some demons figured out how to contact him that way, and is now grimly staring into the distance.

(Well, really only the demons that are used enough to humans to try... Meaning, the now quite dead ones.

Still. Better safe than sorry.)

"Crowley?" 

Aziraphale's voice snaps him out of his thoughts. "Is everything alright?"

"Just thhinking" he half-hisses.

Slowly, Aziraphale sinks into the couch cushion next to him. 

"They'll come after us tomorrow" Crowley blurts out, perhaps reassured enough by Aziraphale's presence that he dares address his concerns out loud.

Aziraphale blanches as he thinks about what Michael and his lot might do to him for his disobedience- and then he thinks about what Crowley's people might do to him, and a shiver runs through him. Whatever the angels and archangels can come up with- what the demons will do will undoubtedly be worse.

Holy water, his mind is quickly to suggest, especially after he just cleaned up the one at Crowley's door. Goodness, there has to be something, anything, to spare his friend that fate? 

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Aziraphale pulls the- only slightly burned- piece of paper from his pocket and hands it over to Crowley. Agness Nutter's prophecies have never failed so far, and always ended up in the hands of whoever would need them the most...

"Chose your faces wisely" the demon reads out loud. "The hell, angel? This doesn't even mean anything!"

He doesn't mean to snap at him, but the thought of losing Aziraphale is wrecking him, tearing on his sanity.

"Oh, quite the opposite!" Aziraphale chimes in, interrupting dark thoughts of falling and hellfire. "It's from the book- from the bookstore, the one you saved, and I am still really grateful for that, I believe I didn't think to say so earlier? It's just that there was such a terrible rush and-"

"Yeah yeah and we're still in a rush now, so if you'd get to the point?" 

"Oh! Right. It's one of her prophecies! Agnes Nutter, I know they're all terribly vague, but if we figure out what it means, she can help us! I'm sure of it!"

Crowley suppresses a groan as he notices how Aziraphale is once again trying to cling to his optimism, and, if the way he had clearly not believed himself about the bookshop still standing is any indication, probably not believing a word of what he is saying now, either. Isn't his own clear pessimism a lot healthier than that? Although of course neither approach is actually helping them now at all. If they want to survive, it seems, they need to figure out this riddle. And Crowley hates riddles. Well, unless he poses them himself. Or already knows the answer.

"Faces, faces- would it mean the faces of allies we could ask to help? Perhaps we should try to camouflage ourselves" the angel chuckles. "What a pity that they would still be able to tell us apart from actual humans if we were to change our physical appearance... Maybe it means the face of who we go to confess our sins to, anyone who wouldn't punish us as hard? Or-"

"Wait!" Crowley interrupts him. "Go back to the one before that!"

"I'm sorry?" Aziraphale blinks at him. "That was just a silly idea...?"

Put the demon smirks.

"We won't dress up as humans. We'll dress up as an angel and a demon, just as what they are looking for."

"Oh but they would surely keep looking for us, and- oh. Oh! 

"Indeed" Crowley is grinning now, absolutely sure of himself.