you'd like to stay in heaven (but the rules are too tough)

if heaven knows, then who will stop

I'm back with more ineffable husbands!! I can't put this with the one-shot collection because it's 9 parts. Thanks to anyone reading!! Love y'all!

Sunday, January 16th, 2039

The day that it comes crashing down is Sunday, January 16th, 2039.

It is 20 years after Armageddon was set off its course, and the close call has made Aziraphale more and more in love with Earth and its funny little humans every single day in between then and now. The snow falls thickly, leaving the pavement a dark, gleaming grey as Aziraphale makes his way to the bookshop. Two brown-haired children chase each other around him, slipping and shouting, snatching at each other's shirts.

Aziraphale is thinking about, as he often does, how beautiful humanity is in its foolishness: there are couples leaning so hard into each other they seem likely to topple as they make their way down the street and a handful of teenage boys voraciously consuming ice-creams as if their ears and the tips of their noses aren't red from the cold. Traffic gets stopped up by a woman dropping off another woman in the middle of the street but failing to drive on because they can't seem to conclude their conversation through the open window of the car.

Humans. These baffling creatures who are born, live, and die as quickly as flash paper burns. It's no wonder they live as if every day is their last, as if they must milk the life out of every moment. They hardly have a handful of them before they go either up or down. (As opposed to Aziraphale, who blinks and fifty years have passed because Paris has once again distracted him with their crepes, or Crowley, who will fall asleep for entire centuries if he finds them boring.) Hell is a nasty, dirty, hot place that Aziraphale doesn't care for one bit.

And, well. And Crowley—as much as Aziraphel tries to avoid thinking about Crowley—was right: Heaven is, just a little bit, boring.

Anyway, this is what Aziraphale is thinking about when the beginning of the end hits.

No, not that beginning of the end. Of course not. It takes more than 20 years for Heaven and Hell to recover from such a setback as losing the Anti-Christ to... a little boy's extreme human-ness. At the very least, Satan hasn't made another kid. Perhaps he has burned everyone he has tried to go to bed with to ashes.

It doesn't do to dwell.

No, this is the end: Aziraphale is walking down the wet pavement towards his bookshop, thinking about the wonders of human nature, when he feels a light tickle on his right arm—a pleasant, tingling feeling, as if someone has just blessed it. He's very familiar with the feeling of blessings.

"Oh no," he hears himself saying outloud, "It can't be today, can it? What's today's date?"

Without slowing her pace or even looking his way, one of the pedestrians passing him by says, "January 16th."

"It isn't," Aziraphale mutters to himself. He checks his watch.

It is.

"Bugger," Aziraphale says to no one in particular. He is late, and as much as Heaven babbles on and on about forgiveness, they sure can hold a grudge when it comes to punctuality.

Aziraphale talks to himself a lot these days, as if performing a one-man play to an invisible audience. Often, in his head, Crowley is that invisible audience, as if they are back 20 years ago (give or take) and he's once again in the passenger seat of Crowley's beloved Bentley. He thought that Crowley found it endearing, so he did it more and more, and now it is a habit too deeply ingrained in him to uproot without some serious effort.

Of course, Aziraphale hasn't talked to Crowley in six years.

He hurries the last few steps to his bookshop, which is exactly the same as it has always been, even though bookshops have been going out of business one-by-one around him as E-books and audiobooks dominate the market. Sometimes he considers making it look a little more run down, to suggest to passers-by that it is struggling financially, but he cannot bring himself to desecrate his own bookshop in such a way.

Once he's inside—the bell jingles quietly, a pleasant sound—he turns the sign to "Closed" (even though the shop's hours are now listed online and he's supposed to have it open) and takes a deep breath.

He takes another.

Aziraphale paces to one bookshelf—his well-loved volumes of prophecy—and then to another—his towering Queer Theory shelf—turning so sharply on his heel his coat flaps around his legs.

"Get a hold of yourself," he mutters, but there's no getting ahold of himself. He thinks, what if it's him and he thinks what if it isn't him, and he cannot decide which one is worse. Oh, how had he lost track of the days slipping by? He has watched this day approach with increasing apprehension and excitement for weeks and weeks and weeks and now it is here.

He doesn't know if he wants to know.

Please, God, he thinks, and he pulls his sleeve up. It's a hard sleeve to pull up—the old coat is worn soft, but he's worn several layers underneath it, to ward against the cold. He could, of course, miracle himself warm, but that would simply be wasteful and—in the words of High Offices—frivolous. (Speaking of Head Offices, he is late. Very. Probably nearly three hours late: he, along with all the other angels, were supposed to be there for the grand release.)

Aziraphale pulls up, first, the coat sleeve. Then he pushes up the thin sweater he's managed to slip under it. Then, the long sleeve he's wearing under that. And he looks at his arm.

There is a name there, just as Aziraphale knew it would be.

It isn't a surprise. He, of all people, should know better than to ask the Almighty for anything, given his past experiences with trying. Maybe he has simply conveyed his wishes to the Metatron. Again. Whatever the case may be, the wish clearly did not get through.

Crowley.

Never fear, this story will not be abandoned—I'll be posting every Sunday! Keep your eyes peeled!

                 —tigerlilycorinne