I’m Imagining Just Like, The Most Banal AU. Just Life. Just An Aziraphale Who Is An Insomniac And A

I’m imagining just like, the most banal AU. just life. just an Aziraphale who is an insomniac and a Crowley who works the graveyard shift most days of the week so he can’t sleep except during the day, even on his days off. and their lives overlap at the launderette. and maybe it’s summer and it rains a lot and they always go at around midnight to the same Nite Owl launderette with the neon sign all lit up and the cheeky looking owl on the glass in the front window. 

they set up, always, opposite each other and there is on occasion the elderly shift manager in the middle between them on a little folding chair. he grumbles about damn kids awake at all hours and shakes his head a lot. he falls asleep most nights so it means that the music coming through the tinny speakers in the ceiling is quiet and set always to the top tunes of the 60s. Everyday by Buddy Holly and The End of the World by Skeeter Davis and I’ve Been Loving You Too Long by Otis Redding.

it starts up small at first, just some glances at the only other person doing laundry at midnight on a most unexceptional Tuesday. Aziraphale wonders about why the only other patron wears sunglasses, although, (and he’ll look up at the fluorescent lights and wince) perhaps he has a point. it’ll start with watching Crowley wrestle with a vending machine and doing a very thorough job of cursing it out for eating his coins. it’ll really start with Crowley opening the door for Aziraphale one night, as he struggles it open one-handed, arms full of a blanket in the most hideous shade of beige he can imagine. 

Aziraphale will say thanks, breathlessly, and take one of the machines for bulky-items next to Crowley’s usual spot. 

there will be might I borrow some detergent? and more let me get the door for you moments. there will be forgotten coins and the two of them looking beneath the machines for any that had fallen from previous patrons. there will be singular red socks ruining an entire set of white towels (they’re just slightly pink. pink is okay. pink suits you). there will be a fluorescent light flickering over Aziraphale’s head across the launderette and making the white of his hair look like a halo.

there will be, eventually, Times They Are A-Changing by Bob Dylan playing on the tinny speakers and the shift manager snoring in his plastic fold-up chair and Aziraphale sitting next to Crowley on the wooden bench, circles beneath his eyes and exhaustion in his shoulders. he’ll eventually lie down on the bench and Crowley will slide his denim jacket beneath his cheek, because the pink towels are still in the dryer. 

he’ll stay there all night. long past the time that the towels are dry and the laundry has been folded. he’ll stay there until the sun breaks up over the horizon and filters through the dirty windows, until Aziraphale wakes up and frets over the creases he has left in the denim jacket. 

don’t worry about it.

I am. I know you hate wrinkles.

I’ll let you make it up to me, then.

how?

by letting me buy you breakfast. 

and if the next time the shift manager sees them, back at the Nite Owl launderette on an unexceptional Tuesday with only one laundry basket between them, he decides to say nothing about it at all.