each day you'd rise with me

Crowley doesn’t remember who suggested it first. 

He remembers, of course, why it’s there. It’s a physical seal and proof of the Arrangement, a reminder of the pact that they have both agreed upon. It’s just that he can’t recall who’d thought of the idea, because as far back as he can remember, he’s always worn a golden ring strung on a necklace. 

He asks the angel over a bottle of wine at the Ritz, eventually, on one of the evenings when he doesn’t forget to.

The angel blinks, and looks down at the golden band on his right pinky finger. 

“You know, my dear, I can’t quite recall either,” Aziraphale says. 

“Ah.” Crowley nods. Fair enough, it’s been a while.

“I’ve never taken this off since I’ve put it on, but I can’t remember which one of us thought to get rings,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley feels heat crawl up to his ears. He takes a sip of his wine. 

“Probably doesn’t matter anyway,” he says, “They’ve served their purpose.”

Aziraphale nods. “Not that we need much reminding these days.”

Crowley smiles. Ever since Adam’s put up a No Meddling sign up on the world, both of them have essentially retired, although they don’t have a lot of vacation spots in mind - Heaven is a bust, Hell is hell, and Purgatory is drab and made of cold light - so they’re just slumming around on Earth, as per usual. It’s Soho, Mayfair, St. James Park, and every now and then, Lower Tadfield.

“Are you going to take it off?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale shakes his head. He looks slightly scandalized at the thought. “I feel like it would feel wrong to. It’s been with me for so long.”

“Sentimentality, angel,” Crowley jokes.

Aziraphale just smiles at him softly. Crowley decides his heart rate, which isn’t even that important, will do better if he doesn’t meet his gaze, so he pretends to look out the window and drink the rest of his wine. 

-

While Aziraphale wears his ring on his hand, absolute madman that he is (although Crowley doesn’t know how often Heaven checks up on him), Crowley wears his on a necklace and tucks it under his shirt, and for good reason. 

Hell, for all their faults when it came to efficiency and grasping the concepts of fast communication (they really refused to get with the times no matter how many messages Crowley sent them, littered with suggestion over the years - the only time they’d actually taken his advice was when the printing press was invented), made sure to keep a tight leash on him. 

Sure, they let him run around and invent things, cause mayhem and inconveniences for humanity, and they didn’t quite care what he did as long as they saw results (even when some of those results weren’t even caused by him), but they were Hell, and if there was anything Hell was good in, it was terror. 

So every now and then, he’d see his reflection warp and snarl and say his name in his own voice. He’d read books where the ink on the pages suddenly rippled and moved to address him. At one point, a possessed child ran up to him and started speaking in many voices and he’d just stood by in horror. 

Part of the terror was the constant reminder that Crowley never really had any freedom. That he was being watched, and watched closely, and Hell wasn’t afraid to use actual demonic possession on children in order to keep an eye on him so if he got it into his head to do any funny business, they’d know, and he’d be in big, big trouble. 

(It was almost a relief, really, when they’d botched up understanding his suggestion on radios and mobiles and instead started talking to him from the television and his Bentley’s radio. At least those were electronics.)

Galavanting around with an angel could count as funny business, so he’d found a simple necklace and looped his ring into it and hid it. Whenever Hell sent one of the possessed to send him a message or to talk to him, he’d hide it under his collar. Whenever Hell used his reflection against him (terrible, really, the faces they made the thing do), he made sure not to draw attention to the chain in case it peeked out of his shirt. He’d started wearing high collars, scarves, anything that could scream and be touted around as fashion while at the same time hide the evidence of his pact with the angel.

It takes him a while to relax after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t. 

Months after the whole mess, he and Aziraphale haven’t heard anything from their superiors. Above hasn’t sent down surprise messengers to collect Aziraphale. Below hasn’t sent up a swarm on Crowley’s doorstep.

The Bentley’s radio doesn’t get interrupted, neither do Crowley’s shows. 

And on one lazy afternoon, when he’s sprawled out on his couch, napping in the sun, he wakes up to the ring having slipped past his shirt, as he’d slept face down and gravity had done its work. He spends a few seconds staring at the golden band, admiring the shine of it, before sitting up and hurried tucking it down his collar, looking around for any sign of trouble.I

No one.

His flat is empty, save for his plants and his furniture. His television isn’t on. 

This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course, but everything seems a little more dangerous now that Hell knows he’s messed up with the Antichrist (although he’s actually quite glad that Adam had grown up the way he had) and had actively participated in attempting to foil Armageddon.

He waits for hours, and hours, and nothing happens, except for the day carrying on like usual. It’s almost surreal, really, when he lasts until the next day, and no one’s snatched the ring up with an Aha! and sent him to Hell to be flayed. 

The next time it happens, he’s at Aziraphale’s, passed out on the angel’s couch after a night of drinking. Aziraphale finds him panicking and hurriedly trying to stuff the ring down his turtleneck and looks puzzled for a few seconds but doesn’t ask. He makes Crowley coffee and hands it to him silently. 

Eventually (meaning: several more instances of the ring being in full view by one accident or another and no one pops up the ground to stab him) he just lets it be. He even hedges a curious experiment to see as to what would happen: for twenty four hours, he leaves the ring out in plain sight while he goes about his day.

Nothing happens then.

Nothing happens the next time either. 

And the next, and the next, and the next. In fact, that most that happens is Aziraphale glancing at the ring and getting a funny look on his face, and a few passing glances from the people who notice the item when the light glints off of it. 

He actually forgets that he has reason to hide it, and realizes this when it smacks him in the face during Adam’s 12th birthday, as he and Aziraphale had been invited to join The Them (along with Anathema, Newton, Shadwell, and Madame Tracy) at a fair that had suddenly arrived at Lower Tadfield and completely didn’t seem to be a weird coincidence whatsoever. He’d been bullied into riding the rollercoaster.

Aziraphale laughs at him when he gets out of his seat, while Shadwell, beside him, still has a death grip on the safety rail. 

“I will agree that hadn’t looked too safe, but did you have a good time?” the angel asks.

“Blasted ring tried to blind me thrice,” he says, adjusting the jewelry so the chain isn’t trying to strangle him, and then that’s when the thought hits him.

It surprises him so much he almost doesn’t take the cotton candy Aziraphale is extending to him. 

“Something wrong, my dear?” the angel asks, when he’s silent for too long.

“No, nothing,” he says. “Just remembered something.”

Aziraphale doesn’t ask, although he does glance at the ring. Crowley fiddles with it, considers tucking it back under his shirt again.

Instead, he takes Aziraphale’s arm when the angel offers it. He leaves the ring alone. 

-

It’s Aziraphale who suggests getting a cottage in South Downs. Crowley agrees. 

He supposes it has something to do with finally processing exactly what’s happened a year and a half after the Apocadidn’t. Heaven and Hell have been radio silent, for one reason or another, and it’s the first time in centuries that they’ve both had this long a period of no communication from their superiors. 

It’s a blessing, really. Crowley’s mornings don’t start with the anxiety of what fabricated slight Hell is going to pin on him anymore. Aziraphale argues less and listens more, and when he does argue it’s with the righteous fury of someone who’s been around humanity for so long instead of a soldier who knows the rules by the book and is hesitant to break away from it. 

They look at listings and mark down places to visit. Crowley drives them down the area the next day to see which cottage they’d like, and they find an old one with a faded sign above the door, an empty study with shelves that reach the high-enough ceiling, and a small garden at the back. 

They take it. 

They spend a few weeks tidying up their respective living spaces and closing up contracts, telling everyone who needs to know that they’re both moving, and pack up everything that they can into Crowley’s Bentley and the rest into a moving truck.

The next few days are spent turning the house into a home; Aziraphale stacks his books into the study, no longer having to hide his collections in backrooms or worry about customers, Crowley puts his plants in the garden and tells them they’re not getting lucky just because they’ve moved into another house.

He doesn’t worry about the ring the whole time they’re puttering around the house, nudging boxes without touching them or bringing each other plates of snacks whenever one of them forgets to eat (even when neither of them really need to - it’s more of a habit and a gesture of affection at this point). He just rolls up his sleeves and weeds the garden, arranges his potted plants, and cleans out the shed so he can set it up the way he wants it.

The ring hangs from his neck as he moves and he doesn’t touch it, doesn’t look around like he’s afraid someone else might see it. He tidies up the mess he’s made in the garden when he’s done and washes his hands, leaving his shoes on the back porch when he gets inside the house so he doesn’t track mud inside.

The radio is softly playing something from the living room. Aziraphale must’ve turned it on for some white noise even when he doesn’t really care much for Bebop, as he calls it. They should probably work on that if they’re going to blend in with the new neighbors.

Crowley finds the angel in the study, the shelves filled up with lines and lines of his collection, empty boxes around the floor. Aziraphale is climbing down a ladder.

“I knew you had a lot of books, but I didn’t realize you had a lot of books,” Crowley says.

Aziraphale preens. “They look lovely, don’t they?” he says, looking up. He waves up a hand. “Up there are my Oscar Wildes, first editions on the highest shelf - ”

Crowley moves to stand beside him, intently listening even when half of it is flying over his head. Aziraphale’s face lights up in a way it never does when he’s talking about books. Talking about Heaven just gives him a pinched look, sometimes. The only times Crowley has ever really seen him happy is when he’s dragging Crowley to a restaurant to try out something absolutely delightful or when he’s showing off a tome older than the Bentley.

Aziraphale moves around, animated, gesturing to the shelves and talking about which is where and why he’d thought to put them there, and in the glow of the setting sun, Crowley sees a band of light wrapped around his pinky finger.

“I can even arrange them by author and edition this time,” Aziraphale says. “This move really was a good choice, wasn’t it, my dear?”

Crowley would have preferred not to talk since he doesn’t want his words to make like his stuttering heartbeat right now, but Aziraphale expects an answer, so he says, “It was, yeah.”

The angel beams. Crowley rubs the back of his neck.

His fingers brush the chain of his necklace, and a memory comes to mind, suddenly, so old he can practically taste the sepia and the dust on his tongue, and the heat rises to his cheeks again.

“Oh, dear, are you alright?” Aziraphale says, stepping close to him and putting a hand on his cheek. “You’re looking a bit like your hair.”

Crowley bursts out laughing, suddenly.

“Really?”

“That got your attention, didn’t it?”

Crowley snickers, which seems like something demons do a lot, but in truth, Crowley hasn’t really had the luxury of feeling safe enough to laugh in a long time. He grimaces, winces, grins and smiles, but he surprises himself with his laughter whenever something does get the sound out of him.

It’s nice to hear it again, really.

Impulsively, he takes Aziraphale’s hand and kisses the ring on it. The angel turns a lovely shade of pink.

“You’re turning a bit like my hair,” Crowley says. 

Aziraphale tries to give him a pout, but he ends up laughing. “Cunning devil of a man.”

“I remembered whose idea it was,” Crowley says, lacing his fingers with Aziraphale’s. 

“What was?”

“The rings,” he says, “For the Arrangement.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. He puts it together. “Yours?”

“Mm,” Crowley says. He offers his other hand. Aziraphale takes it and follows his slow steps. “Thought it was brilliant at that time since humans seemed to be using the things to seal pacts.”

“I suppose it’s better than having to whip out written contracts all the time.”

“Could you imagine?” Crowley says, “Every time we argued, we had to take out scrolls.”

“Oh, dear, imagine if we had to write it down on clay tablets. Transferring it to other surfaces would have been a lot of work to do depending on where we were at times,” Aziraphale says. 

“Brilliant idea, then,” Crowley says.

“If you say so,” Aziraphale says. Crowley scuffs his socked toes with his own. 

“It was brilliant,” he insists.

Aziraphale glances down at the ring on his necklace, and Crowley actually feels a swell of pride and fondness at that. The angel smiles.

Behind them, the radio continues to play. It’s not a nightingale singing, but both of them dance to the music all the same.