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Crowley drummed his fingers against the wheel of the Bentley and let his eyes unfocus. The summer sun seared London like the touch of a demon, making up for a thousand and one days of clouds and rain and wan, milky skies with pure brightness and heat.* He could hear the sounds of a bustling city about him, the tides of people that strode across the sidewalk in front of the bookshop in droves.
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*The sun is the rough equivalent of a tormented stepchild who, every so often, releases the pent up aggression that years of smothering by clouds have kindled in his very soul to destructive results. The author cannot at all relate to the sun. What are you talking about? Projection and coping mechanisms? Who let that therapist in here?
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Queen was playing over the radio--“Another One Bites the Dust” blasted through the speakers, louder and more irritable than the original track. He’d gradually had to start checking the volume to ensure it wasn’t getting louder than he’d turned it.
“Freddie,” he said, the third time he’d had to turn the volume knob back down, “what’s the issue?”
The music wavered, its tone flickering into normal (albeit smooth and kind on the ears) speech.
“The issue ,” Freddie Mercury said, a little huffy, “is that you keep picking this song.”
“It’s a good song! You sing it!” Crowley said, hands raised in bafflement. “Do you want me to switch to another singer?”
“We both know that isn’t an option,” the singer sighed, “but Jesus, Crowley--”
“Don’t mention my middle name.”
“ Jeez , Crowley,” Freddie said, “it’s been seven hours.”
It was 1 in the afternoon, and Crowley had been driving around the city since he’d woken at dawn in a foul mood. The song he’d picked--and picked and picked and picked again--made him feel infernal, like he had some control over what he felt and what he was doing in a world after the apocalypsn’t.
“So? It’s my car.”
“And it’s my possession of your car.” Freddie said. “I think your boyfriend will notice if you pick him up for lunch and all that’s playing is this.”
“Fine!” Crowley said pulling off his sunglasses to glare balefully at the dashboard. “ You pick the music. Whatever you like. I don’t care. And he isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Thanks,” Freddie said, the sound of a guitar being tuned playing through the background of the tape. “Tell your lovely angel friend that I said hello.”
“I’ll tell him,” Crowley said, perking up as Aziraphale exited his bookshop, wiping his forehead in the heat. “Whenever you’re ready, Freddie.”
Crowley’s brain was catching on the word lovely , thinking about how appropriate it was. Aziraphale always seemed to have a halo around him, despite his corporeal form. It was made up of love--the love that all angels had around them, magnified a hundred times and shining from his eyes whenever he smiled. It even contributed to the angel’s scent--the smell of rosewater, of an open field and clean air and soft linen.
Or maybe that was just Aziraphale’s normal scent, and the fact that Crowley was very certainly in love with him was making him go insane.
Oooh, you make me live!
Crowley swallowed, glancing sideways to the radio as he stepped out of the car, crossing to open Aziraphale’s door for him. The song continued to play behind him, and he cursed himself for not sticking to what he’d said initially, for not telling Freddie that it was his Bentley and they’d be playing “Another One Bites the Dust” whether he liked it or not.
“I heard we were trying a new restaurant?” Aziraphale said, looking down along Crowley’s body in a way that made the demon swallow hard. Crowley was wearing a suit, black with a red tie and tight-fitting.
“It isn’t my thing,” Crowley said, wrinkling his nose and smiling, “but I’m sure you’ll love it. Nice place.”
“Well, I’m excited to be going with you,” Aziraphale said, “and that’s very kind, dear.”
“Making my day again,” Crowley said, ducking back into the car to hide a flush unrelated to the weather.
“I would hope so,” Aziraphale said, smiling as he listened to the radio, “you’re my best friend.”
“Ngk,” Crowley said, accidentally accelerating much more quickly than he should have as his angel yelped next to him.
It wasn’t exactly a love confession, but Heaven, Aziraphale’s affection could still make him feel like a schoolboy with a crush. It had been coming more often these days, untethered by allegiance to Heaven.
“What?” the angel teased, as Crowley eased into a steady 40 over the limit. “I thought we were on our own side.”
“We are,” Aziraphale said, voice close to a giggle, “and now I can say that you, Crowley the demon, are my best friend. Whenever I like.”
The song continued on as Crowley muttered something about a monkey’s paw wish and Aziraphale laughed, a sound drowned out as Crowley rolled down the window, hoping the wind would do enough to take care of the blush. The song became louder to combat it, and Crowley remembered (to his own detriment) that the song was about a wedding.
“Alright,” Crowley said, running a hand through his hair. “You’re my best friend. Now we’re even.”
“The song was what reminded me. I’ve been wanting to say--wait!” Aziraphale said, mouth opening as he turned to Crowley. “I was the best friend!”
“Who?” Crowley asked, turning toward him with a raised eyebrow.
“The one you said was killed!” Aziraphale said, making Crowley flinch with the memory of the fire. “When I was discorporated!”
“Yes, you figured it out,” Crowley muttered. “Through your incomparable powers of deduction, you figured out that you are and always were my closest friend, and that I think you’re--erm. Well, that you were the person I was talking about.”
Aziraphale blushed, looking down at the seat, tracing little patterns in the leather with his finger. An adorable habit. Crowley glanced from the radio and back to Aziraphale as “Somebody to Love” poured from the speakers, as the light of the stereo turned into an airy summer blue that highlighted Aziraphale’s face and reflected in his eyes.
The angel finally met his with a raised eyebrow. “Is there something on my face?”
“No!” Crowley said, too quickly, for once forcing his own eyes back to the road without having to be forced by Az. “Not at all. Nothing. It’s, um, the song. Changed pretty suddenly.”
“You’re right. I could have sworn there was more of the song to go.**” Aziraphale said, and Crowley sagged forward with relief. A new subject.
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**There certainly was more to go. It must have been a glitch of some sort. Old car and all.
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Then Aziraphale laughed, light and soft, and folded his hands in his lap. “This one is significantly more romantic.”
“Yes!” Crowley said, voice cracking upward. “I s--s’pose it is.”
“I don’t remember a time when this car hasn’t played Queen.”
“Well, it’s been around the block. Queen wasn’t always around, but it stuck.”
The dashboard thrummed, briefly. It felt like Freddie was winking. The two settled into amicable silence as Crowley hummed along to the tune, keeping his eyes on the gleaming gray road to avoid having to look at Aziraphale, the way the wind through the window ruffled his pale hair and made his soft blue eyes narrow slightly.
“Find me somebody to love…” Aziraphale sang. It was slightly out of tune.
“Oh, come on, we can do better than this,” Crowley said, letting slip a small smirk. “Find me somebody to lo-ove…”
They were close to the restaurant, and before Crowley could stop it, stop himself from being an idiot, they were both singing along, and his heart was beating a ball peen hammer against his ribs. This hadn’t been a good idea--his pulse was filling his ears and he had to press himself to his seat to keep from veering off the road in his haze. He felt as though someone had painted rose watercolor over his eyes. Sappy . And yet he was still singing along to the song.
“You know,” Aziraphale said, through the final strains of music. “Part of me thinks that this song is about us. Crowley, for somebody’s sake, watch the road!”
Crowley had to slam to a halt in front of the restaurant, breathing hard. He’d almost hit a kindly looking woman, and he didn’t want to do that again. It would make a bad impression on the angel. The one who had just compared their relationship to a song about being in love.
“Come again?” Crowley said, feeling like a Victorian woman in need of smelling salts.
“Oh! Well, dear--I, erm,” Aziraphale stammered, gesticulating wildly, “you know. We were both looking for something other than our… sides. Somebody who wasn’t like everyone else that surrounded us.”
“Somebody who would give away a flaming sword to a couple God had given the old boot to the road?” Crowley murmured.
“Somebody who would come get me out of the Bastille,” Aziraphale said, “when I’d been going to get crepes.”
“Somebody who’d refuse to give me holy water, because they wanted me to stick around for some blessed reason.”
“Somebody who’d save me from a whole church of Nazis,” Aziraphale pursed his lips, “when I’d, erm, misjudged my ability to handle the situation myself.”
Crowley chuckled, flexing the arch of his foot as he remembered the crackling sear of the consecrated ground against his feet. “Somebody to be a real friend.”
“Yes!” Aziraphale said, excited. He swallowed, looking to Crowley with an expression that Crowley couldn’t place but desperately wanted to. “Somebody who somehow feels more like home than Heaven.”
Crowley watched Aziraphale’s face. He needed to say something. Say anything in response to something that warm and good and angelic. But he couldn’t. He was just looking at Aziraphale like an idiot, without a voice or a thought in his head.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale said, brow furrowing. He looked as unsure and confused as Crowley felt, and the demon felt guilt bubble in his chest. He couldn’t stop looking at his angel. He wanted to be called dear and he wanted to go home with Aziraphale now.
“Angel,” he began, “I--I don’t--”
He flinched as Aziraphale touched his face, running a finger under his eye. A tear. Bless it, he’d been caught crying .
The radio had turned off. It should have continued to play, but Crowley got the feeling that it was giving him some kind of respect and solitude in himself. That they were being left alone.
“Crowley, look at me.”
In the silence of the car, it felt like dragging himself through molasses, like his ears were full of static and his whole movement was lagging behind his thoughts. He was making eye contact so completely, now, sunglasses removed, wondering how those slice-of-Heaven eyes were staying with his own so completely.
Crowley had had golden eyes once. Not yellow, luminous, snakelike ones. Ones that looked like drops of copper dipped in honey, glimmering and deep. Aziraphale was so beautiful. So gentle. He could have a thousand men with the eyes Crowley had once called his own, and yet here they were, quiet and unsure.
“What’s there to look at?” Crowley asked, throat dry. They were too close and so far. They were separated by 6000 years, by their very natures, be experience and morals and a plunge a thousand miles down, and yet they were barely a foot apart in the car.
“You.” Aziraphale said.
Crowley understood, then, that something had just broken. A barrier, strained by years of talks over wine and smiles and rescued books, had finally broken, leaving them in the silence of the car with nothing to say.
Aziraphale wiped one more tear away and pressed in. It was a soft kiss--one that should have been hungry, should have been untethered, but instead was caring and reverent in a way that made Crowley’s shoulders shake as he returned it.
He held it, for a long time. Rain began to fall outside--sudden, but gentle, like a hand on the cheek. The Bentley’s radio started up again, softly, as Aziraphale ran a hand through his hair like he was the only thing that mattered.
Everything was soft guitar and rain and the faint smell of sage wafting in from the restaurant, which could wait a little longer, because they’d been waiting 6000 years.
“ You will remember
When this is blown over
Everything's all by the way
When I grow older
I will be there at your side to remind you
How I still love you (I still love you).”