Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“All right, everyone, I have an 11:45, so let’s try to stick to the agenda today, got it?”

Aziraphale sighed and flipped open his notebook. It wasn’t that he had any particular objection to sticking to the agenda—truthfully, he wished they’d do it more often—but the preemptive scolding raised his defensive hackles.

“Right,” continued Gabriel, “first off, team updates. Communications?”

Sandalphon stood. “Thanks, boss. Our monthly newsletter went out last week, reaching over 50,000 constituents. The most popular stories were You Can’t Have Reading without Reading, and then an external link to that Guardian article that mentioned us. Oh, and, as a reminder, we are no longer reporting on email open rates because of changes to Apple’s privacy policy that greatly reduce their accuracy. So any numbers I report back are going to be clickthrough rates, which should still be accurate but are almost always much lower. So don’t get confused, they haven’t gone down, it’s just a different measurement.” He grinned. “Only other thing to report is that we’re working with an outside vendor on developing the print materials for the gala, and the deadline for corporate sponsors to appear on the invitation is next week, and for them to get in the program it’s the 18th. Any questions?”

Aziraphale wrote Gala invitation sponsor deadline - next week in his notebook. He’d been dragging his feet on getting out some of the solicitations—working with corporations was always such a hassle—but he really did need to set aside some time this week and get it done, or they’d be behind target and Gabriel would start saying things about “benchmarks” and the “strategic plan.”

“Thank you,” he was saying now, as Sandalphon sat down. “On that note, Events, want to go next?”

Uriel nodded. “Of course. We’ll be sending out the print invitation two weeks from Friday and begin the email campaign a week later. We’re currently finalising the criteria for the invite list, so if there’s anyone that you want to include please email me ASAP, and if there’s anyone who definitely shouldn’t be included please make sure that information’s up-to-date in the CRM. Oh, and we’ll be having the tasting session at the hotel this Friday, and I have two open spots, so if you’re interested in a free lunch of mediocre chicken or if you have strong opinions on the wine pairings, Aziraphale—” everyone chuckled, except for Aziraphale, who still thought the objections he’d put forth last year had been entirely valid— “let me know by end-of-day today and I’ll see if we can squeeze you in.”

“Development?”

Aziraphale turned back to the page of notes he’d made that morning. “Ah—let me see. Oh yes. The Nutter estate gift should come through within the next week, I’ve been informed. I also have a meeting with a new prospect, a Ms. Marjorie Potts, who actually reached out to us, for once, so that’s nice. It’s about wanting to endow a fund specifically for girls in the neighbourhood she grew up in. Which I think is just lovely, because—” He caught himself. Gabriel had been very clear in the past that while Aziraphale’s enthusiasm for the work the Angels Literacy Alliance did was a tremendous asset when it came to talking with donors, no one on their team was interested in hearing what he thought about the programs. “Well, anyway, that’s this week as well. And then of course we’re doing sponsor solicitation for the gala.”

“Fantastic,” Gabriel said. “Prospect Research?”

“We’ve identified four new possibilities who have documented interest in literacy and who have capacity to make a major gift,” Michael said. “This week we’ll be doing full evaluations. We’ve also updated the list of corporate donors who we believe would cause reputational harm to the organisation if we were to accept gifts from them—Gabriel, once you’ve reviewed that we can get it into the CRM system so it’s on record.”

Aziraphale wrote down Ask Michael for updated no-go donor list. He didn’t think any of the businesses on his list as potential gala sponsors were likely to have made it onto the list—none of them were, as far as he knew, guilty of anything other than typical corporate skullduggery—but it couldn’t hurt to check.

“Fantastic,” Gabriel said. “Any other updates anyone would like to share?”

“I really like your tie,” Sandalphon volunteered. “Very tasteful pattern.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Uriel muttered under her breath. “It’s just stripes .”

Aziraphale stifled a laugh. There were a number of things that he and Uriel didn’t see eye-to-eye on—putting it mildly—but he’d always had a healthy respect for her competence, and he certainly shared her frustrations with the way Sandalphon had wormed his way into being Gabriel’s de facto second-in-command by parroting the right buzzwords and engaging in shameless personal flattery. 

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, smoothing down the tie. He smiled. Sandalphon smiled unctuously back. Aziraphale strongly considered vomiting.

“Well,” Gabriel continued, “if we’re done with updates, then it’s my turn. And I’m happy to announce that I have an exciting new opportunity to share with everyone!”

Aziraphale resisted the urge to make a face. Years of experience with Gabriel had led him to view any “exciting new opportunities” with a healthy dose of scepticism, as previous iterations of this concept had turned out to be a rock-climbing trip that was supposed to bolster team morale but had turned out rather more blistering than bolstering (Aziraphale’s hands hadn’t been the same for weeks) and an office-wide campaign to reduce time wasted in meetings by setting a hard limit of 30 minutes (which had only resulted in additional meetings being scheduled when the agenda inevitably wasn’t covered in 30 minutes). A new “opportunity” just as gala season was getting kicked into high gear was rather more alarming than exciting.

“I have arranged,” Gabriel said, “for our team to take part in an exclusive leadership development program!” He glanced around the table as though expecting a rush of accolades, but apparently even Sandalphon wasn’t dedicated enough to express premature enthusiasm for anything so vague as “exclusive leadership development program.” 

“Is this mandatory?” Michael asked.

Gabriel sighed. “Yes, this opportunity is mandatory. But I prefer you to think of it as not a burden, but a special chance to explore your own potential!”

“And how does that work, exactly?”

“I’m so glad you asked, Sandalphon,” Gabriel said. “First we’ll all take a personality test to learn about our Unique Work Style and Leadership Type, and then the Certified Facilitator will develop an individualised training plan for each of us to Grow in our Key Focus Areas.”

“I’m sure this is going to be very useful,” Uriel said, not sounding remotely sure of any such thing, “but I just wonder whether this is the right time for this. With the gala coming up…we might not be able to give this, uh, exclusive opportunity the attention it deserves.”

“It sounds like time management might be one of your Designated Growth Skills,” Gabriel said brightly. 

Uriel raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything else.

“So!” Gabriel said, clapping his hands together. “You should all be getting a link to fill out the personality test in the next day or so, and I’m going to ask that we all complete it by the end of this week so that we can get going right away with our training plans. Any questions?”

Aziraphale had learned long ago that asking too many questions only led to trouble, so he stifled the impulse to ask whether there was any scientific basis whatsoever for this so-called personality test, or how much of the donors’ money Gabriel was spending on this Certified Facilitator. None of this was his decision—or, crucially, his responsibility. It wasn’t as though, Heaven forfend, he wanted Gabriel’s job.

But that didn’t quite silence the part of him that wished Gabriel would at least listen to his opinions occasionally.

“Well,” Gabriel said brightly, “I think that’s about it for this morning, then! Good meeting, everyone, and let’s keep up the hard work. Don’t forget—it’s for the children.”

From the corner of his eye, Aziraphale could see Michael sarcastically mouthing it’s for the children to a snickering Uriel. He felt, as always, both slightly disappointed to be left out of their in-joke and slightly relieved he didn’t have to join in. 

Well, he thought, walking back to his desk, if he was going to lose hours of valuable pre-gala work time to Gabriel’s leadership development opportunity, all the more reason to get on with his sponsorship solicitation emails.

He pulled up the spreadsheet he used to track donors (one of the administrative assistants had been after him for ages to switch to storing information in their database, but his system had worked perfectly fine for him for the better part of twenty years and he’d no intention of changing it now) and looked at the sponsors from last year’s event. He had personal contacts at almost all of them, which made things a bit easier; a warm, direct email and a follow-up call a few days later if he’d not heard back. But for one of the sponsors, there was only a generic corporate-responsibility email address. 

Aziraphale frowned, trying to remember whom he’d spoken with last year, but they did all blend together rather. Well, generic email it was, then, and if he didn’t hear back he’d have to figure something else out.

He sighed, pulled up the template he used for the purpose, and began writing.

Crowley made a face at his desktop monitor. Fortunately, he’d managed to wheedle his superiors into giving him an opaque office door (the default was clear, to indicate transparency, and while Crowley was all for transparency in the figurative sense, he drew the line at the literal), and no one saw. He had enough problems already; the last thing he needed was a lecture on keeping up morale as a senior staff member. 

The face-making had been brought on by the fact that he’d missed a meeting last week and had been volunteered in absentia to run the Corporate Responsibility program. He’d not thought it worth pushing back on at the time, but now apparently he had to somehow identify a worthy charity and organise a company-wide volunteer day within the month. Hastur, he thought, had enjoyed informing him of this entirely too much.

Crowley was tempted to write back that Hastur could take the entire Corporate Responsibility program and shove it, this wasn’t his job, but resisted the impulse. Hastur had been mocking when he’d called this Crowley’s moment, but just now Crowley himself could use the reputational boost just as much as Styx could. 

Besides, he hadn’t thought much of the charity Hastur had picked for last year’s Company Volunteer Day—Save the Frogs? Really? — and he’d heard rumours that you could finesse a free lunch out of some of the fundraising types, so long as you dangled a big enough cheque in front of them. 

And he’d made the company enough money over the years. It would, if nothing else, be a novelty telling them how to spend it.

He wondered whose decision it had been to take the program away from Hastur. Not that Crowley disagreed with the decision—if anything, he thought more things should be taken away from Hastur, up to and including his salary and title—but he had a strong suspicion that it was a direct result of Styx needing to boost its image in the community after their latest disastrous product launch. Crowley winced, thinking about it—a flaw in their new smart home device that had resulted in the virtual assistant, Adam, responding to every request by playing a Best of Queen album. The papers had had a field day with the headlines— Don’t Stop Me Now, Says Styx’s Rogue Assistant; Another Styx Product Bites the Dust; Styx Customers Want to Break Free; Styx ‘Under Pressure’ as Adam Glitches, and, Crowley’s personal favourite, Good Old-Fashioned Cock-Up. Crowley and the rest of the marketing department had put in significant overtime trying to do some damage control. This whole push for more high-profile do-gooding was really just more of the same.

It was a strategy Crowley understood perhaps better than most people.

As part of the Corporate Responsibility gig, he’d been given access to the email alias and its inbox, and he opened it up, figuring that was as good a place as any to start looking for a possible Volunteer Day candidate. 

He scrolled through. End Hunger Now! — a noble goal, no doubt, but a bit vague, and sounded suspiciously like soup kitchens, and soup kitchens really weren’t Crowley’s thing— Raise Funds for Cancer Research — that was a possibility, anyway — Save the Frogs — Hastur’s stupid idea from last year — Help Children Read — well, that was something. Children were good, everyone liked children, it was hard to object to helping children, and reading sounded both specific and achievable as a success metric.

Crowley opened the email.

Well—a gala sponsorship request wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting, but the suggestion of a meeting sparked Crowley’s interest. If he could get this guy in the room, he was fairly certain he’d be able to talk him into some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement. Crowley’d always been good at talking people into things.

He opened a new email window, thinking for a moment before switching over to his own account. He wasn’t sure whether Hastur still had access to the Corporate Responsibility inbox, and although Crowley wasn’t fool enough to think anything you wrote over work email was ever truly private, he’d feel better without the suspicion that Hastur was constantly looking over his virtual shoulder.

He thought for a moment, and began writing.

Aziraphale peered quizzically at the screen in front of him. Well—at least he’d got hold of a person, anyway. He could work with a person. Even one who referred to the event that his coworkers spent half the year planning as your gala thing. And an in-person meeting—that was Aziraphale’s bread and butter. He could guilt-trip people into opening their wallets with the best of them. The heartwarming stories of the Child You Could Be Helping for the Cost of a Coffee, the carefully calibrated asks, the questions phrased in such a way that you felt like an absolute heel saying no—he’d got it all down to a science. 

And Aziraphale had learned, over the years, to balance this calculated approach with his own genuine belief in the mission. It made for a potent combination, and he’d no doubt that he could convince this Anthony Crowley to hand over a nice big cheque on behalf of Styx & Company. It was simply inevitable.

He clicked the link.

Crowley grinned at the incoming notification. Perfect. All he needed was to get Aziraphale Eastgate in the room with him, and he’d be able to break out every tempting tool in his considerable arsenal to make this gala sponsorship into something that would make Styx—and Crowley—look better than they ever had before. 

It was simply inevitable.