Happy Holidays, silverfox!

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Silverfox, here's a special gift written for you by your Secret Author!

For Silverfox
A/N: Crossover with Shadowhunters. I hope you enjoy!
Pairings: Magnus/Alec, Aziraphale/Crowley

Couched in Amicable Terms

Ragnor has ever been a thorn in Magnus’ side, so of course he has asked – as a final act of inconvenience – to have Magnus act as the executor of his will.

Wills are an odd sort of thing when one is practically immortal. It’s difficult to have any doubts about the higher powers when you’re born of a demon and associate with angelic beings on a regular basis, but he’s not sure whether there’s an afterlife waiting, nor where he is likely to end up. For the most part he’d rather not think about it; he has a piece of paper somewhere, likely tucked into a book on something horribly dry, that simply says ‘don’t ask me, ask Ragnor.’ He supposes he’ll have to write a new one, now.

It’s strange. Ragnor had always been certain that he would predecease Magnus, but Magnus had never taken him seriously, and it still doesn’t feel quite real. He still half-expects Ragnor to rattle down the wood-panelled hallway with cups in hand and a teapot floating along after him, already halfway through some form of complaint. The house is cold and drafty without him, and Magnus finds a dreadful old paisley-green dressing gown on the back of the bedroom door, and he wraps it around himself, grateful that there’s no one there to see.

Most of the bequests are simple enough to arrange: books and keepsakes for students of his, a truly hideous carved wardrobe for Magnus, a quite beautiful magic-infused mirror for Catarina. The rest, Ragnor insists, is to be sold in an estate sale, with the proceeds going to various charities in percentages that have been specifically designed to torture Magnus with maths.

He’s going to miss the curmudgeonly git.

It’s when he’s sorting through the personal correspondence, snorting now and then and earmarking which things to burn, which to throw away, and which to keep as blackmail material on various warlocks of his acquaintance, that he finds it.

It’s old, even for something belonging to a warlock, and the writing on it is crabbed and spidery and unpleasant to look at, rather as though it’s reading you right back.

Nowe Ragnor hath gonne my dealings muft be with yowe, Magnuf Bane, it says, and Magnus hauls off the dressing gown, drapes it neatly over the back of the chair, and makes a run for it. The envelope flutters to the floor, coming to rest on its front; the back of it reads, in the same spidery print, yowe cowarde.

The temptation is there, of course, to leave it be. To arrange the estate sale from the safety of New York and to blazes with the lot of it, only Magnus has had more than enough experience of magical artefacts in the wrong hands to know that he cannot, in all good conscience, leave the house for mundanes to look through. That and his curiosity, which is nudging meaningfully at him like a hungry cat, has him portalling back to Ragnor’s house once more, taking entirely unnecessary precautions to counter protective wards that he keeps forgetting are no longer there.

The letter hasn’t moved, of course, because that would be ridiculous. Magnus glares at the words on the back and flips it over with a careless gesture. He taps his fingers on the chair back, his rings clicking gently against the old wood, before stooping to pick it up and open it in one movement, dark painted nails sliding under the wax seal and unfolding the ancient paper.

Ye shalle do as I bid, Magnuf Bane, it says, and by the time he’s finished reading there’s no other choice but to agree.


*

Aziraphale honestly does his best, but there’s really no helping some people. The young lady will insist on buying the Dan Brown that he had certainly never ordered – all secondhand bookshops end up with them eventually, it’s a curse. Or possibly Crowley. Regardless: despite his most concerted effort to direct her towards more edifying fare, he ends up taking her money and giving her precise change, watching with some small amount of pleasure as she deposits her spare penny in the charity box by the till.

He follows her to the door but is distracted at the crucial moment by a Fox among the Dickens, and the small brass bell gives a cheerful ting to announce another customer before he can bolt the front door firmly shut.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, “but –“

He trips over his tongue when he sees the slit-pupilled yellow eyes regarding him, a shocked expression on the young man’s face. Aziraphale isn’t entirely sure what expression’s on his face – you do of course see all sorts in Soho, but the eyeliner and the gold-tipped hair, those are certainly new.

“Crowley?” He says, uncertain. “Did something happen to your old body?” It’s a pity – Aziraphale had been rather a fan of the most recent model.

“You’re an angel,” the man says, and his accent is entirely unfamiliar.

“And you’re –“ Aziraphale puts on the glasses that are lying on the counter and squints through them, using muscles he hasn’t in years. “You’re not entirely a demon, are you?”

The man makes a small gesture in answer, golden sparks swirling around his hand, and Aziraphale lets out a long and heartfelt sigh. Warlocks never seem to want anything good.

“Ah,” he says. “I imagine you’re here after a book?”

“Making a delivery, in fact,” the man says. “Magnus Bane, at your service. Provided, of course, that you can pay.”

Now Aziraphale may be an angel, but for the better part of four centuries he has also been a salesman, and he folds his arms across his chest and makes the low and dubious noise that is the universal signal that haggling is about to take place.

“We can discuss a price after I’ve had a look at what you’re selling,” he says, and Magnus reaches into his impeccably tailored pocket and extracts a paper that’s older than the majority of the stock in his shop and covered with awful, and familiar, handwriting.

“She says you’ve got a few grimoires,” Magnus says, casual as you please, but Aziraphale can’t hear him for the high whistling that is suddenly filling his ears, and may, in fact, be coming from him.

“Agnes?” he says. “You’ve got something from Agnes?” He unfolds the paper, pulling away the outer sheet, and then he clasps the inner to his chest, feeling a little faint. “Oh, and it’s addressed to me.”
Magnus gives him a very unimpressed look.

“I thought,” he says, “considering the accuracy of what she had to say, it was best to deliver it right away.”

“Well, whenever you did,” Aziraphale answers absently, already reading, “it would of course have been exactly the right time.”

Magnus wanders off, as he’s reading, as he’s making notes in a small notepad that had appeared out of the ether – or a traffic warden’s pocket, perhaps – and becoming more and more perturbed.

“But what’s your place in this?” he asks, looking up to find that Magnus has unfolded the centre pages of a book in a worn red binding and is squinting at it with a professional’s eye. “That’s not mine,” he squawks, and Magnus gives him a knowing look before folding it precisely and setting it back on the shelf.

“My part in it is done,” Magnus says. “The grimoires were a gamble – I thought it was worth a try.”

“And ye shall do as I bid, Magnus Bane,” Aziraphale reads out loud, “if you would make your angel right proud.” He thinks for a moment, before reaching out to pat gently at Magnus’ shoulder. “Um,” he says. “Well done?”

“Not you,” Magnus says, with a roll of his eyes.

“Right,” he says, relieved. “Yes, that did seem odd.”

“What’s that on the back?” Magnus asks idly, and Aziraphale flips over the paper.

“Duck?” he reads, confused. “Where’s a –“

The sentence was left incomplete, since that was the moment Magnus dived over the counter and knocked him to the floor, right before a 1926 Bentley crashed through the front window.


*

I don’t know what I want yet. That was the last message Alexander had sent him, and Magnus – like an idiot – had responded well I have a few ideas ;). They were supposed to be taking things slow, and instead he made juvenile comments and then… nothing. Radio silence for the better part of a week, and Magnus really doesn’t want that to be the last impression Alexander has of him.

“As old as I am,” he says, carefully, “I still consider myself far too young to die.”

Crowley – who had climbed out of the wrecked Bentley surrounded by a cloud of noxious smoke, because apparently he likes to make an entrance – blinks at him with reptilian eyes.

“I’m not going to –“ he turns to Aziraphale, who has – contrary to expectations – thus far failed to smite him with holy fire. Instead he offered him a cup of tea, which Crowley had politely refused.

He had taken a biscuit.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Crowley says, turning back to Magnus. “Who’s been filling your head with that sort of –“

“Apparently he knows Shadowhunters,” Aziraphale says, looking, more than anything, embarrassed.

“Ah. They’re the ones with the –“ he gestures illustratively, and he’s either miming a stele or saying something rather unflattering about Shadowhunter anatomy.

“I’m sure they do very valuable work,” Aziraphale says, politely, and shushes Crowley when he sniggers.

“I don’t,” Magnus says, picking apart a custard cream and staring hopelessly at the interior, which seems to be neither of the above. “This isn’t what I expected,” he says.

“Yeah,” Crowley says sympathetically, “sorry about that. Those were mine.”

Magnus snorts quietly. He hadn’t been talking about the biscuit.

He’d assumed, should he ever meet an angel, it would be apocalyptic. For him, at least. He had assumed swords wreathed in holy fire, and possibly something dramatic and pointless involving Alexander, and not nearly enough left of him to make a good looking corpse.

Instead there’s an overstuffed couch with a crocheted blanket on the back of it. A mug of tea with a chip in the rim. A backroom of a bookshop that smells like old churches and dust, and an angel whose absent, flustered smile makes him feel like just about everything will turn out alright, in the end, after all.

And the angel is sitting shoulder to shoulder with a demon, too. It’s the absentminded closeness that comes from owning a couch long enough to wear a hollow in it, just precisely the size of the two of you. It’s the kind of couch that Magnus suddenly, desperately wants to own one day with Alexander, and he runs a hand through his hair and climbs a little unsteadily to his feet.

“Good luck,” he says. “Sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“You did precisely enough,” Aziraphale says, patting the breast pocket in which the letter rests, and Magnus walks through the shop and out onto the bitterly cold London street, and pauses for a moment to type quickly on his phone.

I saved an angel’s life today, he says.

I’m very proud, Alexander replies, and Magnus can just about imagine the dry tone of his voice, and it makes him bite his lip on a smile. The smile is a little, too, about the speed of the response; it’s a little about the possibility that Alec has been waiting.

Magnus crosses the road and ducks into a little alleyway to make himself a portal; by the time he steps out into New York he’s already on his phone and looking at couches.