Happy Holidays, Cojsz!
Title: Hell's Kitchen
Recipient: thecojsz
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word Count: 3900
Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Prompt: I actually combined two prompts because they both seemed fun! "Aziraphale and Crowley body-swap. Nothing specific, much fun!" and "Crowley and Aziraphale, kitchen shenanigans. Again, some light-hearted fun. One of them trying to teach the other one (who's really bad at it all) how to cook, hilarity ensues."
Adam may not have remembered the events of the Apocalypse very well, but he was still the Antichrist, technically, and he was still a twelve-year-old boy with a love of creating good, old-fashioned mischief. He was also a twelve-year-old boy who watched far too many cartoons with body swap episodes, and when he heard Crowley remark one day that he wouldn’t be caught dead in Aziraphale’s clothes (Aziraphale sniffed “Likewise” in return), the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
Aziraphale yawned himself awake, stretching his arms and settling his head back onto the pillows to gaze out the window at the lovely tree outside their cotta-
He frowned. He blinked. He squinted. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be right at all. The corporation he was currently in needed glasses, and now even without his glasses on, every leaf on that tree was as clear as the hand in front of his fa-
He sat up with a sharp yelp, gazing down at his hands in absolute horror. The fingers were still a deep brown, as they usually were, but… now they were long. Slender. His fingers were short and plump and podgy, as was the rest of his body. With an expression close to terror itself, he lifted up the blankets covering his midsection. The soft, flabby tummy he was so used to seeing there had been replaced by a spindly, skinny chest and a belly far flatter than his had been... well, ever.
In a sort of mortified wonder, Aziraphale rose from the bed and gawked at his reflection in the full-length mirror propped up near Crowley’s half of the room. He caught a glimpse of yellow snakelike eyes and James Bond boxers, gasped in realization, and burst out laughing.
From their bed, Crowley hugged his pillow tighter and mumbled, “Five more minutes, angel, I was dreaming the plants had behaved…”
Aziraphale ignored this request entirely and pulled back the blankets covering the demon. Sure enough, what he found underneath them was a fat, dark-skinned ethereal creature with messy black curls and tartan pajamas.
“Aaaaaangeeeeellll,” whined Aziraphale’s body. “I was sleeping!”
“Not anymore, dear,” said Aziraphale. “I believe we have a bit of a problem.”
Crowley blinked open one eye and then the other. He squinted up at Aziraphale. “Why’re you gone all blurry? ’M I still drunk…?”
Aziraphale picked his glasses off the bedside table and handed them to the demon. “I sincerely wish that were the case, but I’m afraid it’s something far more troubling. Look in the mirror.”
Crowley groggily placed the eyeglasses on his nose. He gazed into the mirror. His face contorted in horror. “I-I’ve got-!” He clutched at his shirt in a panic. “Angel, I’m wearing tartan!”
“I believe we’ve become the butt of some sort of demonic practical joke,” Aziraphale sighed. “Tasteless and childish, really.”
“Definitely tasteless! Only tasteless people wear bloody tartan pajamas!” But Crowley’s head snapped back to Aziraphale then. “Wait a minute. Demonic practical joke? What makes you so sure this was my side?”
“… My side has absolutely no sense of humor.”
“Well, can’t we just miracle ourselves back? It’s not a very practical practical joke if we can reverse it just by snapping a few fingers.” Crowley did so a few times, waved his hand around a bit, narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Blimey, angel, you have fat fingers!”
“Oh, shut up,” Aziraphale grumbled. “Do you really think I haven’t tried that already? It seems our jokester friend went to great lengths to make sure that this prank was irreversible. At least, by ethereal means.”
“Wow. Okay. So I guess I’m stuck as you for a while. I can do that.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, made the primmest expression he knew how. “Oy, I’m the principality Aziraphale! Go away, Crowley! Even though you’re the most stunningly handsome demon of all time, you’re annoying me while I’m trying to reread some old musty book I’ve read about eighty thousand times even though it’s like ten thousand times more boring than you are!”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I think it’s best if we stick to being ourselves, dear. At the very least, if you act yourself you can annoy potential customers away from the bookshop.”
“Ehehehe. Suit yourself, angel.” Crowley stood up, running his hands through his new curls as he ambled towards his closet. “Speaking of which, it’s time to get dressed. I’d rather have someone pour holy water on me than wear these blessed pajamas a minute longer.”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “That’s your closet, dear. The one with your clothes in it.”
“Yeah, I know? You think I’m gonna wear your bloody ridiculous clothes? I’d rather run around London completely nude than in a tartan jumper and old man trousers.”
“So you’re going to… wear your own clothes?” Aziraphale blinked.
“That’s the idea!”
“… They aren’t going to fit, dear.”
“I’ll make them fit!” Crowley grabbed a red button-down dress shirt from a hanger and pulled his arms through his sleeves. Even without doing up a single button, the shirt looked terribly tight. “See? Perfectly fine!”
“… dear.”
Crowley did up the buttons bottom to top, ignoring entirely the huge expanses of brown tummy that showed through in the enormous gaps between buttons. “Oh, come on, angel. You’re not that much fatter than I am. See?” He lifted his arms. The button at the center of his tummy flew across the room with a ping.
Aziraphale’s face flushed crimson. “For Someone’s sake, Crowley, please just put on my clothes!”
Crowley gaped at him in utter humiliation. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I should.”
Five minutes later, Aziraphale was clad in a smart black suit and sunglasses, fidgeting with his tie and complaining, “How can you possibly see indoors in these awful things? It’s so dark!”
Snug in a fluffy argyle jumper, Crowley shot the angel an absolutely scathing glare. “We don’t all have the luxury of showing off our gorgeous brown human eyes in public, angel. Some of us are snakes.”
“Well, I don’t like being a snake one bit,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Why don’t you own any shoes? You’re cold-blooded, for goodness’s sake! I’m cold!”
Crowley snorted. “That might have more to do with your sudden lack of insulation, angel.”
“Well, I don’t care what it is. All this corporation switching nonsense has left me absolutely starving. I need breakfast.” Aziraphale whisked out of the bedroom, and Crowley followed.
The demon snorted as they walked along. “You’d think since we switched bodies, I’d be the one always complaining I was hungry, yeah? And yet I’m just as not hungry as I always am.”
“Well, since we don’t technically need to eat, it’s more of a mental hunger than a physical one, I suppose,” Aziraphale mused. “But goodness, it’s just as real as any human’s hunger, I’m sure. If I didn’t get enough to eat I’d be terribly unhappy.”
“Don’t I know that,” Crowley agreed. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. It’s not like we can really go out and do any thwarting or wiling in each other’s bodies, right? So why don’t we stay in for a while? Actually cook breakfast for a change instead of just miracling it into existence?”
“… Er. I’m. Not a very proficient cook, Crowley.”
“Come on! It’ll be fun! I took a cooking class in like… 1950 or something! I’m a great cook! I’ll show you how it’s done!”
“Er.”
Crowley turned to face the angel, round, eager face positively shining with excitement. “Come on! You know you’d love a home-cooked meal! Let’s do it!”
Aziraphale’s snakelike eyes softened. It was rather difficult to turn down his own smiling face. And Crowley was so endearing when he was truly excited about something. “All right. I could do with a bit of real food for a change.”
“Yeah? Awesome!” Grinning, Crowley hurried to the fridge and began taking out ingredients that definitely had not been in there the moment before. “We’ll make a full English, yeah? That sound good to you?”
“Sounds lovely.” Aziraphale shook his head fondly. It was very odd to be watching himself from afar when he was so used to gazing at Crowley’s gorgeous eyes and chest and arms and smile. This time, instead, the angel spent a moment admiring his own jumper and how it clung to his ample curves. He rather liked the way he looked, he realized. It would be good to get back to being himself again, whenever that might be.
Crowley called him out of his reverie by pointing at the eggs on the counter with a podgy finger. “Crack these, will you?”
“Er, all right.” Aziraphale stepped next to him and picked up an egg. He blinked at it blankly for a moment before looking to Crowley for assistance. The demon was busy pouring oil into the pan to prepare it for bacon and sausage. Aziraphale looked at the egg again. He held it high above the bowl. He dropped it in.
Egg splattered all over his own eyeglasses. Crowley let out a yelp of displeasure and leapt away. “What the bloody Someone was that?!”
“I cracked the egg! Like you said!” Aziraphale huffed. “What on earth is the problem?”
Cautiously, Crowley peered forward into the bowl. He groaned. “Angel, you’re supposed to crack it on the side of the bowl! So the bloody shell doesn’t go in! Do you want to eat eggshells?”
“Well, that’s hardly my fault!” Aziraphale bristled. “You didn’t tell me what to do!”
“Because I assumed you’d already know what to do! It’s not rocket science!” When the angel pouted at this, Crowley chuckled and kissed him on the nose. Then he frowned. “’S kinda weird. Kissing myself.”
Aziraphale nodded. “I would give you a proper kiss if it wouldn’t feel like I was kissing myself.”
“Eh, I dunno. Might be cool. Finally get to see what it’s like to make out with someone else who can do that tongue thing.” The demon winked and turned back to the counter, miracling the crushed eggs out of existence along with all the yolk in his curly hair. “Okay, try something easier. There’s a pack of bacon over there. Put it in the pan. If you don’t bloody drop it, not even you can mess this up.”
“That I can most certainly do.” Aziraphale ripped open the package, pulling out a long, greasy, delicious-looking strip of bacon…
Crowley busied himself with cracking the eggs delicately and carefully into the bowl, making sure not a single piece of shell made its way in (and that one bit that did, well, he miracled it away, no harm done). Everything seemed to be going quite well until he heard a crunching, crackling, distinctly chewing noise from across the room.
He twirled around. Aziraphale was quite happily munching on strip after strip of bacon, devouring the entire pack at a frankly alarming rate.
“Angel!” Crowley gaped. “Are you eating raw bacon?!”
“Of course not!” Aziraphale picked another strip from the package and touched it with an ethereal finger. The bacon was instantly cooked to perfection, sizzling and steaming and smelling absolutely delicious. He hungrily crammed it into his mouth. “See?”
Crowley snacked himself in the forehead. “Angel. Angel. We are supposed to be cooking it manually.”
“Oh, I know that! I’m going to cook most of it that way, of course I am! I was just… well, it looked so delicious that I thought I’d have a bit of a snack before breakfast, that’s all.” He dangled another piece of bacon above his mouth, gobbling it down with a blissful look in his eyes.
“Most of it, eh?” Crowley smirked, jabbing the angel in the… not belly. Aziraphale winced, unused to the lack of cushioning there. “I’d say most of it is in here, actually. How many pieces are left in the pack? Like two?”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to retort that almost all of it was left in the package, thank you very much, but paled when he caught sight of the truth. “Er. Three?”
“Right. So I can’t trust you with bacon.” Crowley rolled his eyes and miracled some more bacon into the pan. “Why don’t you microwave the beans? I’ll bloody supervise you this time if I have to.”
“Er. All right.”
Crowley watched carefully as Aziraphale picked up the can and opened the door to the microwave. He nudged the can inside. He closed the door. He stared at the buttons. He stared some more.
He stared some more.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake-!”
“It’s not my fault!” cried Aziraphale. “I’ve never used one of these ridiculous machines before! Why would I, when I can simply miracle the food the proper temperature when I want to eat it?”
Crowley groaned and miracled the microwave to run for the correct amount of time. “You are an absolutely hopeless cook!”
“I told you that!” Aziraphale glared. “I’m used to miracling all my food! It’s not my fault you suddenly decided to do things the difficult way!”
“Just sit down. I’ll have breakfast ready in a minute, yeah?” Crowley miracled some sausage into a second pan. “Can you at least make toast? Bloody nothing is easier than making toast.”
“Absolutely.”
A few minutes later, as promised, Crowley set a full English breakfast onto the table: sausage, bacon, eggs, beans, tomatoes, and… “Where’s the toast?”
Aziraphale’s mouth fell open. The smell of something burning was suddenly very evident to both of them. The angel chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Er… I may have… forgotten about the toast…”
Crowley smashed his head onto the table.
“Goodness, dear! Don’t damage my glasses!”
After toasting a new batch of bread (refusing to allow Aziraphale anywhere near it this time), Crowley finally sat down to breakfast. Practically drooling at the sight of it all, Aziraphale began cramming food into his mouth immediately. Crowley chuckled fondly. He had always found it quite endearing just how much the angel enjoyed food. It had definitely come in handy in convincing him to stop to Apocalypse, anyway. Preaching about the horrific fate humanity would endure had earned him nothing but an eyeroll, but one word about the lack of sushi in Heaven and the angel was off ardently protesting the Apocalyptic cause.
“Thish ’s delishush!” Aziraphale declared through a mouthful of food. “We shoul’ cook more of’en!”
“Or I should cook more often. You should stay as far away from the stove as possible.” Crowley snorted, watching the angel eat until he’d finished off the contents of his plate with a soft sigh of contentment. The demon pushed his own virtually untouched plate forward. “Still hungry?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I am!” Aziraphale instantly reached out to grab Crowley’s plate. “I only had one plate of-” And then he frowned. And then he frowned deeper.
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Angel? Something wrong?”
Aziraphale slumped against the back of his chair, crossing his arms with an absolute scowl. “I don’t believe this. I’m full.”
“Don’t be daft,” Crowley said. “You can’t be full. You always steal my meals when we go out to eat and end up eating mine as well as yours. You’re used to eating two portions. How can you be full after one?”
Aziraphale’s glare was icy, made of pure disgust. “I can’t be full after one. But you can. And I’m your bloody body.”
Crowley’s mouth fell open. “Oh my Someone-”
“I’m starving!” Aziraphale wailed. “I’m starving but I can’t eat any more because I’m you! This is horrible! We need to switch back immediately!”
“I would if I bloody could!” Crowley snapped. “You think I enjoy having to wear these awful tartan jumpers-”
“Are you joking? You think that’s anywhere near the punishment I suffer by being forced to starve-?”
“You’re not bloody starving, angel, you ate a full English, for Someone’s sake-”
“One! One full English! That is not nearly enough-!”
Briiiiiingggg!
They stopped. They looked at one another. They slowly turned their heads towards the door.
“Did you leave something in the microwave?” Crowley asked.
Aziraphale shook his head. “It’s the doorbell. And I know who it is.”
“Well? You gonna spill the beans? Actually, don’t, I don’t want beans all over my sui-”
“A human I’m helping. On angelic business. She needed a shoulder to cry on and I told her to stop by. Dreadfully dull, but if I do it once a month or so for some poor human it keeps Up There off my back, I’ve found.”
“Oh? Go on, then. Go to the door. Help her. Do your angelic mumbo-jumbo. Give her a pat on the back and a biscuit and send her on her way.”
“I can’t, Crowley,” Aziraphale sighed. “She’s expecting angelic comfort from me. But…” He lowered his sunglasses, revealing two slit-pupiled eyes. “Right now I’m not me.”
Crowley tensed in sudden panic. “No.”
“Just give her a hug and put on a pot of tea, dear. Do what I do. It’s hardly difficult.”
“Not difficult for you, maybe!” Crowley’s eyes were wide with terror. “Angel, I’m a demon! Comfort and cuddles aren’t exactly my specialty! If you needed mayhem and destruction and mass irritation, then we’d talk. But I don’t do hugs!”
“Perhaps you don’t. But I do. And right now you’re me.” Aziraphale gave him a meaningful look and little push in the door’s direction. “Go on. It won’t do to keep her waiting. Hardly very angelic of you.”
Crowley shot him a dark glare. “You owe me for this.”
“Naturally.” The angel lazily snapped his fingers. “The traffic is now unbearably slow in half of London. Happy?”
“I’m way more creative than that,” Crowley grumbled, but he consented to open the door.
A tearful woman was huddled there, sniffling and trembling and gripping at the doorframe for support. Before Crowley could even open his mouth to say hello, she had thrown herself on him in a crushing, vice-like, impossibly tight hug. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I half thought I’d show up and you’d have fled the country for fear of me! But I desperately need you! I have so many things to say!”
“I-ah-I-” Crowley’s panicked eyes met Aziraphale’s, silently begging the angel for assistance. Aziraphale merely smirked and nibbled on a bit of toast, gesturing for the demon to hug her back.
A few hours later, a dazed, very tear-stained Crowley showed the woman out, enduring one last wounding hug in the process. It took every single ounce of willpower he had not to slam the door in her face. He shivered in horror, turning to find the angel seated unperturbed on the sofa, nose in a dusty, heavy tome.
“’S weird to see me reading,” Crowley said.
“It was odd to see me so skilled at comforting humans,” Aziraphale remarked, turning a page. “I usually just pat them on the back and offer my condolences for two hours. You actually spoke to the poor woman. I wouldn’t have the patience.”
Crowley bristled. “Hey! I was pretending to be you! Being a good angel and all that! I’m not actually good at comforting! I was acting!”
“Of course you were, dear.”
“… In retrospect, if I were really pretending to be you, I should have been a terrible angel, shouldn’t I?”
“Precisely.”
The demon rubbed at his temples. “I hate being you. I swear to Go- Sa- Someone, if I have to console another bloody human, I’ll-”
“It can’t be worse than my predicament, dear.” Aziraphale glared at him over the top of his book. “I can assure you that I’ve never been hungrier.”
“You’d have to yell at my plants for me, if we stayed this way,” Crowley realized. “They won’t respond to me, only you.”
“I suppose you’d have to run the bookshop,” Aziraphale mused. “It wouldn’t make sense if the owner suddenly changed his appearance entirely.”
“You’d have to wear sunglasses all the bloody time.”
“You’d never be able to stop wearing tartan.”
“Well, you’re not driving the Bentley!” Crowley huffed. “She’s mine and you’re not allowed to touch her, in my body or not!”
“Fine by me.” Aziraphale turned another page. “But I do hope whoever caused this happens to turn up soon. Being you was amusing at first, but now it’s simply growing frightfully dull.”
“Hey.” The demon pouted. “’M not dull. ’M hot.”
“Naturally. But I can hardly appreciate your beauty when it’s on my face instead of yours, mm? I’d be a slave to a mirror.”
“I hate this,” Crowley whined. “I don’t wanna kiss me. I wanna kiss you.”
“And I want to eat more than a single breakfast, dear. But we can’t always get what we-”
Briiiiiingggg!
They looked at each other.
“If it’s that bloody woman again,” Crowley grumbled, but when he opened the door, what he found instead was a smirking twelve-year-old antichrist.
“Hi, Crowley,” said Adam. “Enjoying bein’ in Aziraphale’s body? I’m sure enjoyin’ it. I’ve been watching the whole thing an’ it’s absolutely hilarious.”
Crowley’s mouth fell open. “You little shi-”
Aziraphale looked up from his book, with interest this time. “Ah, so it was you? That would make sense. Could you switch us back, please? I’d really quite like to put on some shoes.”
“Well, tha’ depends.” Adam scrunched up his nose, looking quite serious for a boy of his age. “Have you both learned your lessons?”
“And which lessons would those be, dear?”
Adam seemed deep in thought for a moment before replying, “No lessons, really. I just kinda thought it’d be hilarious. I can switch you back now if you want.”
“Please.”
With a jolt, Aziraphale staggered to adjust to his new standing position. Crowley blinked in surprise at the book now resting between his slender fingers.
He jumped up with an expression of absolute glee. “Angel! Angel! We’re us again!”
Aziraphale looked over his brown pudgy arms, his brown pudgy fingers, his brown pudgy belly. He felt his own glasses on his nose and his own jumper on his body and leapt into Crowley’s arms in utter joy. “I’m me! I’m me! It’s wonderful! I love me!”
Crowley laughed and buried his face into the angel’s soft chest. “It’s pretty bloody great not to be wearing tartan. I love you too.”
Aziraphale reached up to press his lips against the demon’s, and their tongues met in a loving celebration of themselves-
Until Adam coughed loudly and pointedly from the doorway. “’M still here, you know. You two ’re gross!”
“My apologies, dear. Let me help you out a bit.” Aziraphale flicked his wrist. The door slammed shut in his face.
“Angel! You’re terrible!”
“Mm, no I’m not. I’m simply in need of a good lunch,” the angel murmured, and went right back to kissing his demon again. “You know, you’re beautiful. I never realized just quite how beautiful until I was you.”
“O’ course I am.” Crowley rolled his eyes and kissed him back. “So’re you.”
“It’s certainly good to be back in our own bodies,” Aziraphale noted. “Otherwise certain… activities involving bodies might get a tad bit awkward.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow high. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Perhaps I am.”
“You mean… right now?”
“I’m thinking after lunch. You know what, dear? Breakfast was so delicious, I rather fancy cooking again.”
Recipient: thecojsz
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word Count: 3900
Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Prompt: I actually combined two prompts because they both seemed fun! "Aziraphale and Crowley body-swap. Nothing specific, much fun!" and "Crowley and Aziraphale, kitchen shenanigans. Again, some light-hearted fun. One of them trying to teach the other one (who's really bad at it all) how to cook, hilarity ensues."
Adam may not have remembered the events of the Apocalypse very well, but he was still the Antichrist, technically, and he was still a twelve-year-old boy with a love of creating good, old-fashioned mischief. He was also a twelve-year-old boy who watched far too many cartoons with body swap episodes, and when he heard Crowley remark one day that he wouldn’t be caught dead in Aziraphale’s clothes (Aziraphale sniffed “Likewise” in return), the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
Aziraphale yawned himself awake, stretching his arms and settling his head back onto the pillows to gaze out the window at the lovely tree outside their cotta-
He frowned. He blinked. He squinted. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be right at all. The corporation he was currently in needed glasses, and now even without his glasses on, every leaf on that tree was as clear as the hand in front of his fa-
He sat up with a sharp yelp, gazing down at his hands in absolute horror. The fingers were still a deep brown, as they usually were, but… now they were long. Slender. His fingers were short and plump and podgy, as was the rest of his body. With an expression close to terror itself, he lifted up the blankets covering his midsection. The soft, flabby tummy he was so used to seeing there had been replaced by a spindly, skinny chest and a belly far flatter than his had been... well, ever.
In a sort of mortified wonder, Aziraphale rose from the bed and gawked at his reflection in the full-length mirror propped up near Crowley’s half of the room. He caught a glimpse of yellow snakelike eyes and James Bond boxers, gasped in realization, and burst out laughing.
From their bed, Crowley hugged his pillow tighter and mumbled, “Five more minutes, angel, I was dreaming the plants had behaved…”
Aziraphale ignored this request entirely and pulled back the blankets covering the demon. Sure enough, what he found underneath them was a fat, dark-skinned ethereal creature with messy black curls and tartan pajamas.
“Aaaaaangeeeeellll,” whined Aziraphale’s body. “I was sleeping!”
“Not anymore, dear,” said Aziraphale. “I believe we have a bit of a problem.”
Crowley blinked open one eye and then the other. He squinted up at Aziraphale. “Why’re you gone all blurry? ’M I still drunk…?”
Aziraphale picked his glasses off the bedside table and handed them to the demon. “I sincerely wish that were the case, but I’m afraid it’s something far more troubling. Look in the mirror.”
Crowley groggily placed the eyeglasses on his nose. He gazed into the mirror. His face contorted in horror. “I-I’ve got-!” He clutched at his shirt in a panic. “Angel, I’m wearing tartan!”
“I believe we’ve become the butt of some sort of demonic practical joke,” Aziraphale sighed. “Tasteless and childish, really.”
“Definitely tasteless! Only tasteless people wear bloody tartan pajamas!” But Crowley’s head snapped back to Aziraphale then. “Wait a minute. Demonic practical joke? What makes you so sure this was my side?”
“… My side has absolutely no sense of humor.”
“Well, can’t we just miracle ourselves back? It’s not a very practical practical joke if we can reverse it just by snapping a few fingers.” Crowley did so a few times, waved his hand around a bit, narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Blimey, angel, you have fat fingers!”
“Oh, shut up,” Aziraphale grumbled. “Do you really think I haven’t tried that already? It seems our jokester friend went to great lengths to make sure that this prank was irreversible. At least, by ethereal means.”
“Wow. Okay. So I guess I’m stuck as you for a while. I can do that.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, made the primmest expression he knew how. “Oy, I’m the principality Aziraphale! Go away, Crowley! Even though you’re the most stunningly handsome demon of all time, you’re annoying me while I’m trying to reread some old musty book I’ve read about eighty thousand times even though it’s like ten thousand times more boring than you are!”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I think it’s best if we stick to being ourselves, dear. At the very least, if you act yourself you can annoy potential customers away from the bookshop.”
“Ehehehe. Suit yourself, angel.” Crowley stood up, running his hands through his new curls as he ambled towards his closet. “Speaking of which, it’s time to get dressed. I’d rather have someone pour holy water on me than wear these blessed pajamas a minute longer.”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “That’s your closet, dear. The one with your clothes in it.”
“Yeah, I know? You think I’m gonna wear your bloody ridiculous clothes? I’d rather run around London completely nude than in a tartan jumper and old man trousers.”
“So you’re going to… wear your own clothes?” Aziraphale blinked.
“That’s the idea!”
“… They aren’t going to fit, dear.”
“I’ll make them fit!” Crowley grabbed a red button-down dress shirt from a hanger and pulled his arms through his sleeves. Even without doing up a single button, the shirt looked terribly tight. “See? Perfectly fine!”
“… dear.”
Crowley did up the buttons bottom to top, ignoring entirely the huge expanses of brown tummy that showed through in the enormous gaps between buttons. “Oh, come on, angel. You’re not that much fatter than I am. See?” He lifted his arms. The button at the center of his tummy flew across the room with a ping.
Aziraphale’s face flushed crimson. “For Someone’s sake, Crowley, please just put on my clothes!”
Crowley gaped at him in utter humiliation. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I should.”
Five minutes later, Aziraphale was clad in a smart black suit and sunglasses, fidgeting with his tie and complaining, “How can you possibly see indoors in these awful things? It’s so dark!”
Snug in a fluffy argyle jumper, Crowley shot the angel an absolutely scathing glare. “We don’t all have the luxury of showing off our gorgeous brown human eyes in public, angel. Some of us are snakes.”
“Well, I don’t like being a snake one bit,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Why don’t you own any shoes? You’re cold-blooded, for goodness’s sake! I’m cold!”
Crowley snorted. “That might have more to do with your sudden lack of insulation, angel.”
“Well, I don’t care what it is. All this corporation switching nonsense has left me absolutely starving. I need breakfast.” Aziraphale whisked out of the bedroom, and Crowley followed.
The demon snorted as they walked along. “You’d think since we switched bodies, I’d be the one always complaining I was hungry, yeah? And yet I’m just as not hungry as I always am.”
“Well, since we don’t technically need to eat, it’s more of a mental hunger than a physical one, I suppose,” Aziraphale mused. “But goodness, it’s just as real as any human’s hunger, I’m sure. If I didn’t get enough to eat I’d be terribly unhappy.”
“Don’t I know that,” Crowley agreed. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. It’s not like we can really go out and do any thwarting or wiling in each other’s bodies, right? So why don’t we stay in for a while? Actually cook breakfast for a change instead of just miracling it into existence?”
“… Er. I’m. Not a very proficient cook, Crowley.”
“Come on! It’ll be fun! I took a cooking class in like… 1950 or something! I’m a great cook! I’ll show you how it’s done!”
“Er.”
Crowley turned to face the angel, round, eager face positively shining with excitement. “Come on! You know you’d love a home-cooked meal! Let’s do it!”
Aziraphale’s snakelike eyes softened. It was rather difficult to turn down his own smiling face. And Crowley was so endearing when he was truly excited about something. “All right. I could do with a bit of real food for a change.”
“Yeah? Awesome!” Grinning, Crowley hurried to the fridge and began taking out ingredients that definitely had not been in there the moment before. “We’ll make a full English, yeah? That sound good to you?”
“Sounds lovely.” Aziraphale shook his head fondly. It was very odd to be watching himself from afar when he was so used to gazing at Crowley’s gorgeous eyes and chest and arms and smile. This time, instead, the angel spent a moment admiring his own jumper and how it clung to his ample curves. He rather liked the way he looked, he realized. It would be good to get back to being himself again, whenever that might be.
Crowley called him out of his reverie by pointing at the eggs on the counter with a podgy finger. “Crack these, will you?”
“Er, all right.” Aziraphale stepped next to him and picked up an egg. He blinked at it blankly for a moment before looking to Crowley for assistance. The demon was busy pouring oil into the pan to prepare it for bacon and sausage. Aziraphale looked at the egg again. He held it high above the bowl. He dropped it in.
Egg splattered all over his own eyeglasses. Crowley let out a yelp of displeasure and leapt away. “What the bloody Someone was that?!”
“I cracked the egg! Like you said!” Aziraphale huffed. “What on earth is the problem?”
Cautiously, Crowley peered forward into the bowl. He groaned. “Angel, you’re supposed to crack it on the side of the bowl! So the bloody shell doesn’t go in! Do you want to eat eggshells?”
“Well, that’s hardly my fault!” Aziraphale bristled. “You didn’t tell me what to do!”
“Because I assumed you’d already know what to do! It’s not rocket science!” When the angel pouted at this, Crowley chuckled and kissed him on the nose. Then he frowned. “’S kinda weird. Kissing myself.”
Aziraphale nodded. “I would give you a proper kiss if it wouldn’t feel like I was kissing myself.”
“Eh, I dunno. Might be cool. Finally get to see what it’s like to make out with someone else who can do that tongue thing.” The demon winked and turned back to the counter, miracling the crushed eggs out of existence along with all the yolk in his curly hair. “Okay, try something easier. There’s a pack of bacon over there. Put it in the pan. If you don’t bloody drop it, not even you can mess this up.”
“That I can most certainly do.” Aziraphale ripped open the package, pulling out a long, greasy, delicious-looking strip of bacon…
Crowley busied himself with cracking the eggs delicately and carefully into the bowl, making sure not a single piece of shell made its way in (and that one bit that did, well, he miracled it away, no harm done). Everything seemed to be going quite well until he heard a crunching, crackling, distinctly chewing noise from across the room.
He twirled around. Aziraphale was quite happily munching on strip after strip of bacon, devouring the entire pack at a frankly alarming rate.
“Angel!” Crowley gaped. “Are you eating raw bacon?!”
“Of course not!” Aziraphale picked another strip from the package and touched it with an ethereal finger. The bacon was instantly cooked to perfection, sizzling and steaming and smelling absolutely delicious. He hungrily crammed it into his mouth. “See?”
Crowley snacked himself in the forehead. “Angel. Angel. We are supposed to be cooking it manually.”
“Oh, I know that! I’m going to cook most of it that way, of course I am! I was just… well, it looked so delicious that I thought I’d have a bit of a snack before breakfast, that’s all.” He dangled another piece of bacon above his mouth, gobbling it down with a blissful look in his eyes.
“Most of it, eh?” Crowley smirked, jabbing the angel in the… not belly. Aziraphale winced, unused to the lack of cushioning there. “I’d say most of it is in here, actually. How many pieces are left in the pack? Like two?”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to retort that almost all of it was left in the package, thank you very much, but paled when he caught sight of the truth. “Er. Three?”
“Right. So I can’t trust you with bacon.” Crowley rolled his eyes and miracled some more bacon into the pan. “Why don’t you microwave the beans? I’ll bloody supervise you this time if I have to.”
“Er. All right.”
Crowley watched carefully as Aziraphale picked up the can and opened the door to the microwave. He nudged the can inside. He closed the door. He stared at the buttons. He stared some more.
He stared some more.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake-!”
“It’s not my fault!” cried Aziraphale. “I’ve never used one of these ridiculous machines before! Why would I, when I can simply miracle the food the proper temperature when I want to eat it?”
Crowley groaned and miracled the microwave to run for the correct amount of time. “You are an absolutely hopeless cook!”
“I told you that!” Aziraphale glared. “I’m used to miracling all my food! It’s not my fault you suddenly decided to do things the difficult way!”
“Just sit down. I’ll have breakfast ready in a minute, yeah?” Crowley miracled some sausage into a second pan. “Can you at least make toast? Bloody nothing is easier than making toast.”
“Absolutely.”
A few minutes later, as promised, Crowley set a full English breakfast onto the table: sausage, bacon, eggs, beans, tomatoes, and… “Where’s the toast?”
Aziraphale’s mouth fell open. The smell of something burning was suddenly very evident to both of them. The angel chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Er… I may have… forgotten about the toast…”
Crowley smashed his head onto the table.
“Goodness, dear! Don’t damage my glasses!”
After toasting a new batch of bread (refusing to allow Aziraphale anywhere near it this time), Crowley finally sat down to breakfast. Practically drooling at the sight of it all, Aziraphale began cramming food into his mouth immediately. Crowley chuckled fondly. He had always found it quite endearing just how much the angel enjoyed food. It had definitely come in handy in convincing him to stop to Apocalypse, anyway. Preaching about the horrific fate humanity would endure had earned him nothing but an eyeroll, but one word about the lack of sushi in Heaven and the angel was off ardently protesting the Apocalyptic cause.
“Thish ’s delishush!” Aziraphale declared through a mouthful of food. “We shoul’ cook more of’en!”
“Or I should cook more often. You should stay as far away from the stove as possible.” Crowley snorted, watching the angel eat until he’d finished off the contents of his plate with a soft sigh of contentment. The demon pushed his own virtually untouched plate forward. “Still hungry?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I am!” Aziraphale instantly reached out to grab Crowley’s plate. “I only had one plate of-” And then he frowned. And then he frowned deeper.
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Angel? Something wrong?”
Aziraphale slumped against the back of his chair, crossing his arms with an absolute scowl. “I don’t believe this. I’m full.”
“Don’t be daft,” Crowley said. “You can’t be full. You always steal my meals when we go out to eat and end up eating mine as well as yours. You’re used to eating two portions. How can you be full after one?”
Aziraphale’s glare was icy, made of pure disgust. “I can’t be full after one. But you can. And I’m your bloody body.”
Crowley’s mouth fell open. “Oh my Someone-”
“I’m starving!” Aziraphale wailed. “I’m starving but I can’t eat any more because I’m you! This is horrible! We need to switch back immediately!”
“I would if I bloody could!” Crowley snapped. “You think I enjoy having to wear these awful tartan jumpers-”
“Are you joking? You think that’s anywhere near the punishment I suffer by being forced to starve-?”
“You’re not bloody starving, angel, you ate a full English, for Someone’s sake-”
“One! One full English! That is not nearly enough-!”
Briiiiiingggg!
They stopped. They looked at one another. They slowly turned their heads towards the door.
“Did you leave something in the microwave?” Crowley asked.
Aziraphale shook his head. “It’s the doorbell. And I know who it is.”
“Well? You gonna spill the beans? Actually, don’t, I don’t want beans all over my sui-”
“A human I’m helping. On angelic business. She needed a shoulder to cry on and I told her to stop by. Dreadfully dull, but if I do it once a month or so for some poor human it keeps Up There off my back, I’ve found.”
“Oh? Go on, then. Go to the door. Help her. Do your angelic mumbo-jumbo. Give her a pat on the back and a biscuit and send her on her way.”
“I can’t, Crowley,” Aziraphale sighed. “She’s expecting angelic comfort from me. But…” He lowered his sunglasses, revealing two slit-pupiled eyes. “Right now I’m not me.”
Crowley tensed in sudden panic. “No.”
“Just give her a hug and put on a pot of tea, dear. Do what I do. It’s hardly difficult.”
“Not difficult for you, maybe!” Crowley’s eyes were wide with terror. “Angel, I’m a demon! Comfort and cuddles aren’t exactly my specialty! If you needed mayhem and destruction and mass irritation, then we’d talk. But I don’t do hugs!”
“Perhaps you don’t. But I do. And right now you’re me.” Aziraphale gave him a meaningful look and little push in the door’s direction. “Go on. It won’t do to keep her waiting. Hardly very angelic of you.”
Crowley shot him a dark glare. “You owe me for this.”
“Naturally.” The angel lazily snapped his fingers. “The traffic is now unbearably slow in half of London. Happy?”
“I’m way more creative than that,” Crowley grumbled, but he consented to open the door.
A tearful woman was huddled there, sniffling and trembling and gripping at the doorframe for support. Before Crowley could even open his mouth to say hello, she had thrown herself on him in a crushing, vice-like, impossibly tight hug. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I half thought I’d show up and you’d have fled the country for fear of me! But I desperately need you! I have so many things to say!”
“I-ah-I-” Crowley’s panicked eyes met Aziraphale’s, silently begging the angel for assistance. Aziraphale merely smirked and nibbled on a bit of toast, gesturing for the demon to hug her back.
A few hours later, a dazed, very tear-stained Crowley showed the woman out, enduring one last wounding hug in the process. It took every single ounce of willpower he had not to slam the door in her face. He shivered in horror, turning to find the angel seated unperturbed on the sofa, nose in a dusty, heavy tome.
“’S weird to see me reading,” Crowley said.
“It was odd to see me so skilled at comforting humans,” Aziraphale remarked, turning a page. “I usually just pat them on the back and offer my condolences for two hours. You actually spoke to the poor woman. I wouldn’t have the patience.”
Crowley bristled. “Hey! I was pretending to be you! Being a good angel and all that! I’m not actually good at comforting! I was acting!”
“Of course you were, dear.”
“… In retrospect, if I were really pretending to be you, I should have been a terrible angel, shouldn’t I?”
“Precisely.”
The demon rubbed at his temples. “I hate being you. I swear to Go- Sa- Someone, if I have to console another bloody human, I’ll-”
“It can’t be worse than my predicament, dear.” Aziraphale glared at him over the top of his book. “I can assure you that I’ve never been hungrier.”
“You’d have to yell at my plants for me, if we stayed this way,” Crowley realized. “They won’t respond to me, only you.”
“I suppose you’d have to run the bookshop,” Aziraphale mused. “It wouldn’t make sense if the owner suddenly changed his appearance entirely.”
“You’d have to wear sunglasses all the bloody time.”
“You’d never be able to stop wearing tartan.”
“Well, you’re not driving the Bentley!” Crowley huffed. “She’s mine and you’re not allowed to touch her, in my body or not!”
“Fine by me.” Aziraphale turned another page. “But I do hope whoever caused this happens to turn up soon. Being you was amusing at first, but now it’s simply growing frightfully dull.”
“Hey.” The demon pouted. “’M not dull. ’M hot.”
“Naturally. But I can hardly appreciate your beauty when it’s on my face instead of yours, mm? I’d be a slave to a mirror.”
“I hate this,” Crowley whined. “I don’t wanna kiss me. I wanna kiss you.”
“And I want to eat more than a single breakfast, dear. But we can’t always get what we-”
Briiiiiingggg!
They looked at each other.
“If it’s that bloody woman again,” Crowley grumbled, but when he opened the door, what he found instead was a smirking twelve-year-old antichrist.
“Hi, Crowley,” said Adam. “Enjoying bein’ in Aziraphale’s body? I’m sure enjoyin’ it. I’ve been watching the whole thing an’ it’s absolutely hilarious.”
Crowley’s mouth fell open. “You little shi-”
Aziraphale looked up from his book, with interest this time. “Ah, so it was you? That would make sense. Could you switch us back, please? I’d really quite like to put on some shoes.”
“Well, tha’ depends.” Adam scrunched up his nose, looking quite serious for a boy of his age. “Have you both learned your lessons?”
“And which lessons would those be, dear?”
Adam seemed deep in thought for a moment before replying, “No lessons, really. I just kinda thought it’d be hilarious. I can switch you back now if you want.”
“Please.”
With a jolt, Aziraphale staggered to adjust to his new standing position. Crowley blinked in surprise at the book now resting between his slender fingers.
He jumped up with an expression of absolute glee. “Angel! Angel! We’re us again!”
Aziraphale looked over his brown pudgy arms, his brown pudgy fingers, his brown pudgy belly. He felt his own glasses on his nose and his own jumper on his body and leapt into Crowley’s arms in utter joy. “I’m me! I’m me! It’s wonderful! I love me!”
Crowley laughed and buried his face into the angel’s soft chest. “It’s pretty bloody great not to be wearing tartan. I love you too.”
Aziraphale reached up to press his lips against the demon’s, and their tongues met in a loving celebration of themselves-
Until Adam coughed loudly and pointedly from the doorway. “’M still here, you know. You two ’re gross!”
“My apologies, dear. Let me help you out a bit.” Aziraphale flicked his wrist. The door slammed shut in his face.
“Angel! You’re terrible!”
“Mm, no I’m not. I’m simply in need of a good lunch,” the angel murmured, and went right back to kissing his demon again. “You know, you’re beautiful. I never realized just quite how beautiful until I was you.”
“O’ course I am.” Crowley rolled his eyes and kissed him back. “So’re you.”
“It’s certainly good to be back in our own bodies,” Aziraphale noted. “Otherwise certain… activities involving bodies might get a tad bit awkward.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow high. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Perhaps I am.”
“You mean… right now?”
“I’m thinking after lunch. You know what, dear? Breakfast was so delicious, I rather fancy cooking again.”