The Curious Condition of Being Human

Chapter 2

If Crowley didn't know better, he would have sworn there wasn't a thing wrong with Aziraphale at all.

Breakfast was completely ordinary, like dozens of others they'd had in recent months. They sat at the cafe they often frequented. Aziraphale hemmed and hawed and scanned the entire menu before ordering one of the three dishes he always chose.

Today's choice was French toast with berries and cream and a tiny dribble of maple syrup. Then a testing bite. Then a little more. He scooted half his side of sausage over onto Crowley's plate without asking, where it joined two over-hard eggs, white toast, and an already-impressive pile of various kinds of breakfast meats and a ladle of beans.

Crowley hadn't touched any of it. Instead, he sipped at his black coffee and listened as Aziraphale chatted away about the rare book conference.

Crowley was only half-listening to the sordid tale of drama and Dickens. Most of his sharp, serpentine mind was coiled around the problem of their predicament. The little sleight of hand with bodies had done well to spook both Heaven and Hell, but it also left them without clear allies of the celestial sort. Any demon he might try to contact might very well tell that Crowley had broken his enchantment. The forces of Heaven would be no better, even if he could get one of those bastards to take his call.

"Crowley, have you heard a word I've said for the past ten minutes?" asked Aziraphale as he speared a pair of blueberries on his downturned fork.

"Yip. A catfight over a couple of first editions, drunken debauchery at the evening reception. Sounds like a wild time indeed."

Aziraphale sat up a little straighter and made a soft, indignant sound. "Well, you look like you're a million miles away. And you've barely touched your food."

"Not hungry."

"Well, you've got to eat something. It would be such a waste."

Crowley picked up the sausage and then made a show of biting off the end before he tossed it down on the plate.

Aziraphale sighed heavily. "Well, you didn't have to make such a big show of it."

As Crowley chewed the salty mouthful, he felt a stab of guilt. He wasn't prickly at the angel, after all, he was prickly for him.

As Crowley watched Aziraphale swirl his last few bites of French toast through a puffy mound of cream, he had a thought. Well, several, but one, in particular, would allow him to test the limits of the enchantment.

"Angel, do you remember when we first met?"

"Of course I do," said Aziraphale.

"Tell me," drawled Crowley.

Then the demon watched the angel. Even though the enchantment to make his serpent eyes look a very human shade of brown was still in place, he was still wearing his shades. He did, however, push them down his nose so there was nothing in the way of him reading Aziraphale's expression.

Surety gave way to confusion, then an expression that looked very much like the one Crowley would be making in a few hours had he consumed the mountain of beans on his plate without erasing the matter from existence. But that expression, as gassy as it was, melded into something more relaxed in the blink of an eye. "I don't see the point. You were there, after all."

And then Aziraphale resumed chasing the last few blueberries around his plate.

Crowley curled his lip. "What about your parents? Where did you go to school? What was the name of your childhood pet? When was the first time you got drunk, or...what's the colour of your toothbrush? When was the last time you went to a dentist, or..."