Happy Holidays, Thatshinyrock!
Title: your apple-eating heathen
Recipient: thatshinyrock
Characters: Aziraphale & Crowley
Rating: PG
Summary: History is written without them, and Crowley’s no lady.
In the beginning…
Eden is green, and lush, and the rain falls as a gentle mist on soft grasses. All around is bold and bright and so furiously, furiously alive that Crawly can hardly stand it. "Get up there and cause a little trouble," they said, like it was easy to find problems in Paradise.
For ages Crawly lurks under bushes and suns herself on rocks, waiting for inspiration to strike. She thinks that lighting something on fire would be nice, or maybe knocking something down - those trees over there seem good candidates - but neither idea seem like it would work, and at any rate what bad would a little petty damage do long-term? Not enough, she fears, for those Below to be sated.
So she keeps watching, and waiting. She watches the humans, mostly, because while the birds are entertaining she grows tired of them. The humans are marvelous, in their way, and Crawly enjoys them at first, coiling around branches and on stones to listen to their conversation. They fascinate her, if she is honest with herself (she tries not to be). Every living thing is pointed out, described, named, even each other. The tall, bearded one is Adam, and the smaller one with clever eyes is Eve. They are methodical and inventive, learning what is edible and what is best left alone, what their hands (and other parts) can be made to do.
Crawly likes Eve best, for she stops and listens, taking in the sounds of the world, and sometimes she pauses and looks at Crawly, like she knows what Crawly is and is waiting, waiting for her to speak. But at the end of the day she returns to Adam, to listen to him and to prepare their evening meal, and over the days their conversation sours: Eve speaks of the sound of rain, and Adam tells her what he named that day, what he found, what he discovered, that it was good eating, that if you hit it just like this, something would happen - and slowly Eve falls quiet. Crawly waits for her at the olive tree (what creativity, to name these things) and Eve walks faster than before, determined and deliberate, gathering the necessary plants for their meal with tight, tense movements. Crawly can hardly stand it.
They are not alone in the Garden. Four gates surround Paradise, and at each stand great angels, immense fiery beings standing guard. Crawly has no time for them, and they haven’t noticed her. (That is a thing Crawly appreciates - not a blessing, but you know. A good thing.) She isn't sure they notice anything, really. They look cut out of stone, majestic and distant and on fire. Crawly isn't sure you could see anything well if you were on fire. (If she doesn't find something wrong in Eden, soon, Crawly fears she might have a chance to prove that first-hand.)
Trees, though, trees are interesting. Olive trees, fig trees, pears and oranges and cherries, sweet and fine. Big, too, and from the tops Crawly can see all around. There is one tree, though, one tree that neither Eve nor Adam go near - that even the angels dare not look at. It is not the largest tree, nor the fairest, but it is sturdy and strong, and it gives Crawly an idea. She heard them talking about this tree, in whispers. It is a forbidden tree, they said, it would cause bad things - but bad things are what Crawly likes best, or at least what she is up here to do.
Crawly coils herself around the branch, and offers Eve the apple.
The city of Jericho, during the reign of Salome Alexandra
The market is loud and busy, which is just how Crowley likes it. Humanity has blossomed into something really interesting, she’ll give Him Above credit for that. They’ve come up with some fascinating things. First and foremost of these, she thinks, is wine. Wine is marvelous.
What Crowley is not so excited about is the golden head on the other side of the market. She can practically smell the holiness coming off her, and it’s putting her off her dates. She should get out of here, because the angel can be a bit smitey sometimes, but frankly she doesn't see why she should be the one to sacrifice a nice view and a nice drink.
The drink is really very nice. So nice, in fact, that Crowley is on her fifth when a powerful whiff of Good hits her and she rather belatedly looks over to the aforementioned angel, sitting at the other end of the bar. She isn't looking at Crowley at all; rather she is absorbed in looking something over.
“Angel,” calls Crowley, stretching out the first syllable. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
She doesn’t move. Her fingers are running across the sheets of the funny box she is holding, a rapt expression on her face.
“Angel!” Crowley shouts. It doesn’t seem to make a difference, and a rather nasty little idea walks into her head, fully formed. Grabbing her sixth as-yet-unimbibed drink, Crowley swaggers over to the angel’s end of the bar. Calm as anything, she lifts her drink over the angel’s head, and tips it.
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
The wine freezes in the air. Aziraphale looks up at Crowley, eyes burning blue flame.
Right. Smiting.
“Well it’s a good thing you’re here to thwart me, then,” says Crowley, by means of apology. “What are you looking at?”
“Something new,” says Aziraphale. The wine retreats back into its flagon, which lands upright on the bar table. “The Romans are calling them pugillares membranei.”
Crowley sits down on the stool next to her and picks one up. It’s wider than both of her hands, length-wise. “What’s it for?”
“It’s a kind of flattened scroll,” Aziraphale explains. “Except you can open it at any page - so you don’t have to unroll the whole thing to just check one part - and the box is built in, so you can put it on shelves, or take it with you when you travel.”
“Huh.”
“Humans are terribly clever sometimes,” adds the angel. “See, you can write on both sides of a sheet of papyrus or vellum, too. So clever.”
She is beaming, utterly pleased. Crowley hasn’t seen her like this, really; normally she is sort of stern and disapproving, and sometimes she tries to throw things at Crowley. It’s almost nice. Absentmindedly, Aziraphale reaches for Crowley’s drink; she doesn’t stop her.
They settle into a strange truce, where Aziraphale reads and drinks whatever Crowley hands her, and Crowley just drinks. And stares at the angel’s face, and tries not to think too deeply on her growing list of problems, a melting pot of suspicion and a sort of vague nice feeling.
“You know what would be amazing,” Aziraphale says, into the relative silence of the bar. The marketplace has emptied out, now, but they are still there and Crowley is still paying, so the bartender hasn’t left.
“What, angel?”
“If someone could get a whole lot of these, these...flat scrolls into one room. As many of them as they could find.”
“Why?” Crowley stares.
“Think of all the knowledge. In one room! And anyone could just walk in there and read them, and learn all those things…” Aziraphale says, a strange note of hope in her voice.
“Assuming any person who walked in there could also read,” Crowley reminds her.
“Well-er, yes,” concedes Aziraphale.
“And doesn’t want to steal them,” adds Crowley.
“That is a very uncharitable thought.” Aziraphale sips her drink primly. “But then, I suppose that’s what your sort are for.”
“Yep.”
The barkeep coughs loudly, and Crowley digs out more coins for him, but he makes a vague gesture to indicate that it’s closing time. Aziraphale is, of course, utterly oblivious - her purchases have entrapped her once again - and Crowley taps her on the shoulder.
“Angel, it’s time to relocate,” she says. “Up and at ‘em.”
“Oh, right.” Aziraphale gathers her belongings, stacking them in a series of satchels. She staggers under their weight a little when she gets to her feet - or Crowley assumes it’s the weight, it might well be the wine.
“Do you need help getting back to wherever you’re staying, with all those?” Crowley almost kicks herself for asking, because the last thing the angel is going to do is tell her Enemy where she is living, but to Crowley’s surprise Aziraphale nods. Shouldering one of Aziraphale’s bags, Crowley gathers her own belongings (amphora: one, for later).
“Lead on,” Crowley says, and the angel leads her, stumbling, into the heat of the night.
In the year of our Lord 1156
All empires fall, but Crowley is starting to get used to it. After Rome, she goes east; but there are too many memories in the dust and the dates and the old cities, so for the first time she turns west.
Sitting on a boat in the middle of the Rhine, she begins to regret it. For one, it is cold; secondly, the food isn't nearly as good.
They put anchor at Bingen, where the river curves. Thorbjorn, the chief of this voyage, bellows for goods to be put ashore. They have little enough, but hope that good Norse furs and salted fishes can be traded for Rhenish wines; there is gold, too, from the Rus, but Thorbjorn had confided that he planned on keeping that for himself, if possible. The harbour is busy, or busy enough at any rate. Inland traders and their clerks look on, scoping out their purchases and deciding their prices. They are not of interest to Crowley, not really - too easy a temptation. Greed and gluttony come easy to their kind, as easily as wroth and lust to Thorbjorn’s ancestors.
She gathers her skirts, and creeps onto the gangplank. Perhaps beyond the docks she might find something - or someone - of greater interest. Bingen isn't much of a town, even by the low standards of the west, but certainly there has to be some fun in this place. There are taverns, of course, there are always taverns - and taverns have their uses, certainly, though Crowley has enough of drunken river-men nightly.
She heads back to the wharf, where trade appears to be going well. The crowd is hardly thinning out - Thorbjorn is good at drawing that, at least - and Crowley climbs on top of a disused cart to get a better view. (It always frustrates her that she’s never managed a tall body.) Not that it helps, because everyone is still extremely boring - except, hmm. At the back of the crowd she spies a nun’s habit, of all things. Well, she thinks, hopping off the cart, at the very least this one is a rather rebellious sister, out at the docks in the middle of a crowd of men. Hardly holy behaviour, that.
She elbows her way through the crowd. Halfway there, the sister turns her face, a round face with strands of golden hair escaping her wimple. Crowley smirks, because well. Certainly no bride of Christ, that one.
“Angel!”
Aziraphale sighs heavily. Crowley pushes two apprentices out of her way, because the angel is definitely interesting.
“How goes the work of the holy house?” she calls. “It seems most unholy for a lady of your - station - to be out here, amongst us of the world…”
“I am purchasing inks,” says Aziraphale primly, tucking her hair back under the wimple. “Or trying to, at any rate.”
“What for? I thought that was the monks, with the writing. I thought all you holy sisters were good for was praying,” sneers Crowley.
“The Abbess is a woman of ideas, I’ll have you know,” says the angel.
Crowley snorts. “Whose ideas? Yours?”
“She is a learned scholar and a fine theologian,” Aziraphale says primly. “And quite a good herbalist, too.”
“Really now? Is that all?”
“She composes, too.” Aziraphale raises her hand to her face, ostensibly to block the sun.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m quite certain I do.”
Aziraphale lowers her hand. “Is it too much for you that there might be women on this Earth who are actually interested in helping their sisters?”
Crowley frowns. “Of course not. I just don’t -“
“Oh, don’t you start. Hildegard is a good woman, she knows how to help the women of the village - and from afar! - who are in need. In pain.” The angel looks at Crowley pointedly. Her eyes are cool, shuttered. Crowley wonders what she did this time. “You do know what you did, don’t you? That every woman’s pain is God’s punishment for the sins of Eve, for what you tempted her into.”
“As if you didn’t give her the bloody sword -“
“I was helping!” Aziraphale’s hands fist in her habit.
“You think I was not?” Crowley hisses. “You truly think I wished pain upon anyone?”
Aziraphale casts her a glance. “Well - of course you did - that’s what your kind do. Er.”
Crowley stares at her. Aziraphale looks at the ground, at the dirt on the cobbles.
“The nuns are getting to you,” Crowley tells her. “Try doing me the service of thinking with your brain, instead of whatever claptrap people are saying about me this century.”
The angel frowns, lifting her eyes to Crowley’s hands. They are thin and worn, golden skin criss-crossed with ship’s scars; Crowley likes them. They are her hands, and as she's stuck with them for the time being, she might as well like them. Aziraphale grumbles and rummages around in the leather bag at her waist, pulling out a pair of thick woolen gloves.
“There are for you,” she says. “I’m sorry about, you know.”
“Being a terrible person who is easily spoon-fed lies perpetrated by a prejudiced establishment?” Crowley offers.
Aziraphale grimaces. “Not quite that.”
“Ah,” says Crowley.
Paris, le douzième mars 1790
She does not die in hospital.
Josseline passes painfully, in Crowley’s room at a dingy little hotel, coughing and hacking and shedding her lungs into bowl after bowl. Her breath rattles terribly, and Crowley holds her hand until the end. There are no eloquent dying words; there is no moralizing. Just Crowley, and Josseline, and Death.
She sleeps next to her that night. She prays for no miracle, for human lives are short; she only wants to stay close a little longer.
The next morning, she sits her wide-brimmed hat on her fine black hair, pausing only to tell Mme Lavoine that the undertaker ought to be called, and not to worry about the arrangements, Crowley has good money to spare her a pauper’s grave.
She walks the busy streets in silence, letting her feet guide her to her destination. Crowley's body has always known what it wants, even when her mind does not. She finds herself in front of a coffee-house, of all places, and follows her feet inside.
The place stinks of tobacco, and coffee grinds, and men. People are yelling, which is par for the course in these establishments, so Crowley orders a coffee and tries to ignore them. They're going on about politics, which is more or less the usual these days, and it hurts her, a little. Josseline cared a lot about that, and that made Crowley care; now, it all feels like salt in a fresh wound.
“I think you need a little more than coffee, dear.” A glass of cheap red is pushed into Crowley’s gloved hands.
She mumbles her objections, but the stranger does not take back the drink.
“Seriously, I don't want any -"
"Crowley, dear, you look a sight. Please humour me and have a drink?
Crowley’s head snaps up. Aziraphale is sitting next to her, looking sombre and stern in a slightly tattered rust-coloured dress. Her hair is tied in a modest chignon, and her cap is plain and white. For once Crowley is glad that fashion has always been a bit beyond Aziraphale; it will keep her safe. (Had Crowley ever bothered with real clothing, she would have had to burn most of it. As it is, she sometimes finds herself changing clothes as she moves between quartiers.)
"Fine,” mutters Crowley. “But not red.”
The wine becomes a vinegary white. Aziraphale looks around, but the rest of the cafes patrons are too busy discussing the electorate to notice any minor miracles.
She puts her neat hands on the table, fingers wrapped around a small cup of coffee. “Was it another one of your humans?”
“They're not mine,” says Crowley, taking an indelicate drink of the wine. “They don't belong to anyone.”
“Right,” says the angel, though it's clear from her tone she thinks it folly. “I don't know why you do this to yourself, you know how long it lasts.”
“She was part of the Women’s March, you know. That's where I met her. She was screaming for bread and I just wanted to see what was going on, see about causing some trouble - and they were causing plenty of trouble on their own, each and every one, and Josseline was so angry…” Crowley had loved her handsome face, the fire in her eyes. Josseline had not wanted to die meek in a corner, not when she could die screaming for the bread and justice no one she knew had ever had.
Aziraphale is feigning polite interest. It's not that she doesn't care for humans - she does - but she cares from a distance. Crowley has never been able to be like that, even when her heart feels torn up into a thousand bloody pieces.
The angel fills Crowley's morose silence with chatter about the goings-on in the Assemblée Nationale. She isn't as suspicious as she ought to be; the hope of the revolutionaries seems to have infected the angel, too. Crowley wonders if she has heard their talk of abolishing the Church in France - probably not, although Aziraphale always seemed curiously neutral in regards to clerical reform, back in the days of Martin Luther.
“It's just nice, you know, to see such hope - they want to change things. They have such glorious ideas,” says Aziraphale. “
Crowley snorts, and pushes the wine away, half empty. She has lost her taste for revolution already, it seems; between Aziraphale’s blathering and the students behind them, her ears feel crowded.
“You do know they’ve abolished the monastic orders?” Crowley tells the angel, hoping for a reaction.
Instead Aziraphale offers a non-committal shrug. “Above doesn't seem concerned…”
“And you, angel? Don't tell me you've forgotten what old king Henry did to your English abbeys.”
She looks decidedly uncomfortable. Good, thinks Crowley, although she isn't sure why this is a good thing.
Aziraphale stutters out some excuse, but Crowley is hardly listening. She misses Josseline’s thick hair, her crooked smile, the way she knew Crowley was no lady.
“- and I'm sure that with they will come up with something to replace the work of the orders, hospitals and hostels, sanitoriums…they've included women in their declaration, you know, I think that's very important -“
“Right,” snaps Crowley. “Because documents always help, people are starving in the streets but that's okay, because someone signed a document. No document ever helped Josseline, all she ever wanted was food anyone in her street could afford - and she never got that, did she?”
Aziraphale looks at her, puts her hand on Crowley’s wrist. “I am sorry, you know, but you always do this -“
“Yes, excuse me for having feelings, for caring, instead of just being fond.” Crowley stands sharply to her feet, knocking her chair to the floor. “Josseline was beautiful, and ordinary, and wonderful -“
“And now she's dead,” snaps Aziraphale. “Sit down.”
“Don't you order me about, I'm as strong as you are - just because I spend my existence with something more important than books - and to think that me, of all creatures, would be the one trying to do some good in this miserable little world-“
“Can someone shut the madwoman up?” The students are staring at them, now. She hadn't realized she was that loud. Aziraphale is flushing red, apologizing, tugging on Crowley's wrist, cajoling.
No,thinks Crowley. I am not ashamed.
She drains the rest of the wine, and storms out.
The rivers run red with blood in the end, anyway.
Hong Kong, October 1927.
“Honestly, Crowley, why are you always so swept up in these fads,” Aziraphale grumbles, pulling strands of hair out of her mouth. “This is completely ridiculous.”
Crowley grins, and holds on to her cloche hat as the next automobile comes racing around the corner. “It’s the future, angel.”
Aziraphale harrumphs and turns her back on the racers. “Man has done perfectly well without motorized nonsense for millennia.”
Crowley laughs, and leans out over the barrier. “Keep saying that, angel.”
The race finishes too soon, with automobile 6 coming out the winner. It’s a handsome green thing, and certainly not the favourite - but it’s fun to watch the punters, colonials and Chinese alike, squabble over lost money and the lucky few who end the day on top. Crowley drags Aziraphale around to the garages, ignoring her squawks of protest. She wants to see these fast machines up close. She hates horses, she can never stay on them, doesn’t understand how Aziraphale manages to ride gracefully. Crowley can barely stay atop one of the beasts sitting astride, and for centuries Aziraphale has laughed politely at her from the back of one appropriately-feminine palfrey after another. These new machines, though…Crowley likes them.
Hong Kong is hot in October, though the grueling summer heat is starting to pass. Aziraphale, as usual, has made zero concessions to the weather in her wool suit with an unfashionably long skirt. She fans herself rapidly with the brim of her large straw hat, but it’s clearly not helping. Crowley herself is much more suitably attired in black silk with highlights of green, cut a la mode just below the knee, revealing silk stockings and daring (yet practical) black leather heels.
“You there!” calls a race attendant. “You can’t be back here!”
“Oh look,” says Aziraphale. “Look at that, we can’t be here, let’s just leave, Crowley…”
Crowley smiles and turns toward the attendant. “I’m sorry, sir, what did you say?”
“You can’t be here. This area is for drivers and their crew only,” he says. “Not busybody women.”
“Is that true?” Crowley asks, one hand on her hat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Crowley grins, a feral thing. Beside her, Aziraphale is furiously gesturing to stop, but Crowley does not care. With a graceful sweep of her hand, she removes her hat, and looks the attendant in the eyes.
“May we be on our way?” she asks, primly.
He stares, stunned, stuttering out admonishments, but it all withers and dies. Crowley sweeps away, Aziraphale shuffling behind her.
“You know you shouldn’t be doing that,” the angel mutters. “One day you’ll get found out, or someone will throw something at you -“
“If it hasn’t happened yet, angel, it’s not likely it will,” Crowley replies. “And anyway, no one Down There cares enough to bother. It’s only one miserable little man.”
Aziraphale grumbles. Crowley sighs, reaches into her hand-bag and passes her a silver flask. “There you go, stop ruining my fun.”
The angel looks at her flatly. “You’re a terrible influence.”
“Yes, and?” says Crowley. She spies a lovely machine just over there, she really ought to have a closer look…
The machine is wonderful. The black paint gleams in the sunlight. She runs her hand over its bonnet, not caring that it isn’t hers. The owner doesn’t seem to mind; as he pushes himself out from under his other automobile, he smiles at her.
“Something you’re interested in, miss?”
“Tell me about this one,” says Crowley. “It looks a fine machine.”
“It is,” he replies. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Crowley tells him. He doesn’t seem taken aback by her, which is nice; unsurprisingly, the world of automobiles has already been marked out by men as yet another woman-free zone - not that Crowley will let that stop her. It's a new Bentley, he tells her proudly, with a six-cylinder engine and four valves per cylinder and a single-piece engine block and cylinder head, cast in iron this time, no need for a head gasket. She absorbs all the technical details, even as Aziraphale is growing visibly bored (and invisibly drunk), because she loves learning how humans build things, how they figure out how to put pieces of metal together to make something happen.
“How has it raced?” Crowley asks. “I didn’t see it in the race earlier.”
“Oh, it hasn’t, not yet. It’s a spare automobile, in case my Blue Beauty over there fails,” says the owner. “Haven’t even added any modifications yet, it’s fresh from the factory in England.”
Crowley hesitates only a second. “Would you be willing to sell it?”
Aziraphale chokes on Crowley’s whiskey. The car’s owner looks over at her, and she makes a show of catching her breath.
“Depends on what you’re willing to pay,” he says, uncertain.
“Double what you paid, and extra for the inconvenience,” says Crowley. “Money’s no matter.”
“£3,000,” blurts out the owner. It’s a high price, but Crowley doesn’t care. She wants it.
“Done,” she says. She materializes a wallet from her handbag, and materializes a rather large amount of cash, which she makes sure to count in front of him. (It may or may not disappear later; Crowley never bothers to make sure her money stays around forever.)
He hands her the keys, looking sort of stunned. Crowley supposes women buying racing cars on the spot isn't an everyday occurrence. Too bad.
“I cannot believe you,” says Aziraphale. “What are you going to do with that thing?”
"Drive it," Crowley says. The car feels right, under her feet and in her hands.
“All the way back to London?” asks the angel, incredulously.
Crowley smiles. “Why not?”
The first day of the rest of their lives
Crowley wakes sooner than she wanted to, unexpectedly cold despite her dream. She untangles herself from her duvet, and pulls on a jumper Aziraphale bought her one Christmas. The sleek digital clock on her nightstand reads 15:30 08|27|1991. Too early, indeed. She stares at the ceiling for a while, but neither sleep nor thought come, so she rolls over and grabs for the phone, dialing from sense memory. She cradles the handset against her ear; the mouthpiece brushes her knees.
Aziraphale picks up on the fourth ring. "Hello," she says blandly. "We're closed for - um, repairs, right now so if you could maybe ring back oh, in October -"
"Repairs?" says Crowley. "What sort of damage, angel? Spill tea on the paperbacks again?"
"What? No," replies Aziraphale peevishly. "Although there is a sort of burned smell about the place. It's the books, though. They're all - er. Children's books. I mean, I suppose that's what he thought bookshops had, is children's books, and I suppose the ones he goes to do, but well - not mine - anyway, there's a first edition Alice in there so I shouldn't be - it's worth a lot of money. Not that that's much of a consolation." She huffs, a staticky exhale that makes Crowley pull the handset away from her ear.
"Look, clearly you need to get out a bit," says Crowley. She scratches her calf; it needs moisturizing. "I was thinking maybe the ducks, you know, it's a good summer day and if anything's going to be exactly the same as last week, it's going to be the ducks. I'm sure you've got bread going stale, so..."
"We could get supper at the little cafe there," muses Aziraphale. There's a soft slurping sound; presumably Aziraphale has, as usual, been easing her pain with tea or booze or both. "You'd have to hurry up and get dressed though, they close at half four."
"Why do you always assume I've just woken up when I call you?" grumbles Crowley, though she dearly wishes she had.
"Precedent," answers Aziraphale.
Crowley sighs, but her frustration is melting away regardless. "Be there in ten."
They park the Bentley south of St. James, Crowley checking the clamps on the Bentley with more care than usual. That had been a surprise; she'd walked out of the lobby and it was just there, offering no explanation for its belated reappearance whatsoever.
"I'm glad you got the Bentley back," says Aziraphale. "I can't say the Jeep suited you. I mean - er - it is your Bentley, right?"
"It's got the patina and the tapes and everything," says Crowley. "No more messin' about, indeed."
The weather is nice and warm, and the birds are up and about, squabbling and squawking. There's lawn chairs set out all over the greens, and they snag two not too far from the pond, within bread-throwing distance. Aziraphale pulls her stale oat loaf from its paper bag and tears it in half, getting crumbs all over her mauve dress. She hands half to Crowley, who shreds it more tidily over the side of her chair. The ubiquitous pigeons don't dare get that close; generations of London pigeons have learned Crowley's harsh lessons. The ducks are eying them with interest. Crowley lobs a chunk of bread at them, starting a veritable riot of hungry mallards and a particularly stubborn northern shoveler.
It's not long before Aziraphale gives in and pulls a large bottle from her purse. Crowley raises an eyebrow, because the angel has a very casual attitude towards physics when it comes to her purse, but also because the bottle is filled with what looks like Aziraphale's home-made sangria.
"Did you make this special, or do you just keep this lying around?" she asks. "Not that I'm complaining…"
"Oh shush," Aziraphale tuts. "It's been a very terrible...week -"
"You mean decade."
"- and I just thought maybe it would be nice. A sort of celebration," she finishes. She pulls two glass tumblers out, handing one to Crowley and pouring.
"Yes, 'Congratulations, you stopped Armageddon! Probably. For now?' Very reassuring," mutters Crowley into her glass, taking a rather long swig. The sun is bright, and her eyes hurt, even with the sunglasses. Alcohol probably won't make anything better, but it definitely can't make it worse.
Next to her Aziraphale is taking prim sips, trying not to look like the raging day-drinking alcoholic she is. She throws bread with more grace than Crowley, and has a knack for making sure each duck gets its share, although whether it's out of a sense of fairness or a dislike for squawking is up for debate. One long wisp of hair has escaped Aziraphale's loose bun, and it floats in the breeze. She looks ridiculous, which is the angel's default state, really. Not that ridiculous is necessarily a bad thing - Crowley knows that's never stopped her from staring, and neither did the rather large number of suitors over the years, especially that one Italian who made those …passionate sculptures. She was rather selfishly glad when long, lean body shapes came into fashion, if only because it meant that Aziraphale's soft, curvy shape was Crowley's alone to look at.
“Have your people been in contact?” Aziraphale asks.
“No,” Crowley looks up at the bright blue sky. “Yours?”
“No. I think they’re pretending it didn’t happen.”
“Mine too, I suppose. That’s bureaucracy for you.” There are perfect white clouds floating in it. It would be unnerving if it wasn’t so picturesque.
“I think mine are waiting to see what happens next,” says Aziraphale.
Crowley shudders. She knows what next means. “A chance to morally re-arm. Get the defences up. Ready for the big one.”
“Sorry?” says Aziraphale. “I thought that was the big one.”
“Don’t count on it,” says Crowley. “For my money, the really big one will be all of Us against all of Them.”
Aziraphale looks at her, really looks. And then sighs and takes a long drink of the sangria.
Somewhere around half-six they realize that it's August and the café does not, in fact, close at half-four and the only thing stopping them from eating a nice meal is their own incompetence. There is much rejoicing on Aziraphale's part, because she has a deep and abiding love for food, particularly after she has resigned herself to not having any. They meander their way over to Inn the Park, dodging ducks and tourists, the fading summer sun warming their bodies.
The waitress seats them on the patio, with a nice view of the bridge. Aziraphale orders the lamb, because it's a Sunday special, and frowns at Crowley when she orders only a house salad and a passable French white wine. Their dinner is quiet. Aziraphale eats as she usually does, commenting on the quality of the meat and praising the chef and trying to convince Crowley to taste pieces from her fork. Crowley gives in after the third time Aziraphale sticks a piece of lamb under her nose; it's alright, but the angel has overdone the mint sauce. She picks at her salad, pushing the beets and carrots around the plate and smiling when the high-pitched noise of utensil on china makes their fellow diners wince.
A rotund black-and-white cat appears just as Aziraphale is finishing, meowing and purring and sticking his paws through the wooden slats that separate the patio from the park. Crowley flicks a piece of carrot at him, but it doesn't faze him at all. Aziraphale offers him some of the lamb gristle and a piece of goat cheese from Crowley's plate, which he graciously accepts.
"You are feeling good about the universe, if you're feeding stray cats," Crowley tells the angel. "Last I checked you didn't even like them that much. I thought you'd decided they were a menace to songbird-kind?"
"Yes, well - they're only a menace if they're hungry. I can't see them causing any harm if you keep them fed," says Aziraphale. The cat is chewing the meat, spitting it out, and chewing again. "And anyway, you're a menace and I like you perfectly well."
She smiles at Crowley and leaves more than enough cash to pay the bill underneath the little black cheque folder. That settled, she stands up and gathers her purse, slipping the after-dinner mints inside. "Come on, then. You can drop me at the shop on your way back to your flat."
Crowley rises and follows her, feeling dazed and dopey. Aziraphale waits for her on the path and offers Crowley her arm. Crowley takes it, letting Aziraphale lead the way.
"I've had a lovely day, you know," says Aziraphale. "Thank you for that."
"We survived," Crowley murmurs.
~end
Happy Holidays, thatshinyrock, from your Secret Writer!
Recipient: thatshinyrock
Characters: Aziraphale & Crowley
Rating: PG
Summary: History is written without them, and Crowley’s no lady.
In the beginning…
Eden is green, and lush, and the rain falls as a gentle mist on soft grasses. All around is bold and bright and so furiously, furiously alive that Crawly can hardly stand it. "Get up there and cause a little trouble," they said, like it was easy to find problems in Paradise.
For ages Crawly lurks under bushes and suns herself on rocks, waiting for inspiration to strike. She thinks that lighting something on fire would be nice, or maybe knocking something down - those trees over there seem good candidates - but neither idea seem like it would work, and at any rate what bad would a little petty damage do long-term? Not enough, she fears, for those Below to be sated.
So she keeps watching, and waiting. She watches the humans, mostly, because while the birds are entertaining she grows tired of them. The humans are marvelous, in their way, and Crawly enjoys them at first, coiling around branches and on stones to listen to their conversation. They fascinate her, if she is honest with herself (she tries not to be). Every living thing is pointed out, described, named, even each other. The tall, bearded one is Adam, and the smaller one with clever eyes is Eve. They are methodical and inventive, learning what is edible and what is best left alone, what their hands (and other parts) can be made to do.
Crawly likes Eve best, for she stops and listens, taking in the sounds of the world, and sometimes she pauses and looks at Crawly, like she knows what Crawly is and is waiting, waiting for her to speak. But at the end of the day she returns to Adam, to listen to him and to prepare their evening meal, and over the days their conversation sours: Eve speaks of the sound of rain, and Adam tells her what he named that day, what he found, what he discovered, that it was good eating, that if you hit it just like this, something would happen - and slowly Eve falls quiet. Crawly waits for her at the olive tree (what creativity, to name these things) and Eve walks faster than before, determined and deliberate, gathering the necessary plants for their meal with tight, tense movements. Crawly can hardly stand it.
They are not alone in the Garden. Four gates surround Paradise, and at each stand great angels, immense fiery beings standing guard. Crawly has no time for them, and they haven’t noticed her. (That is a thing Crawly appreciates - not a blessing, but you know. A good thing.) She isn't sure they notice anything, really. They look cut out of stone, majestic and distant and on fire. Crawly isn't sure you could see anything well if you were on fire. (If she doesn't find something wrong in Eden, soon, Crawly fears she might have a chance to prove that first-hand.)
Trees, though, trees are interesting. Olive trees, fig trees, pears and oranges and cherries, sweet and fine. Big, too, and from the tops Crawly can see all around. There is one tree, though, one tree that neither Eve nor Adam go near - that even the angels dare not look at. It is not the largest tree, nor the fairest, but it is sturdy and strong, and it gives Crawly an idea. She heard them talking about this tree, in whispers. It is a forbidden tree, they said, it would cause bad things - but bad things are what Crawly likes best, or at least what she is up here to do.
Crawly coils herself around the branch, and offers Eve the apple.
The city of Jericho, during the reign of Salome Alexandra
The market is loud and busy, which is just how Crowley likes it. Humanity has blossomed into something really interesting, she’ll give Him Above credit for that. They’ve come up with some fascinating things. First and foremost of these, she thinks, is wine. Wine is marvelous.
What Crowley is not so excited about is the golden head on the other side of the market. She can practically smell the holiness coming off her, and it’s putting her off her dates. She should get out of here, because the angel can be a bit smitey sometimes, but frankly she doesn't see why she should be the one to sacrifice a nice view and a nice drink.
The drink is really very nice. So nice, in fact, that Crowley is on her fifth when a powerful whiff of Good hits her and she rather belatedly looks over to the aforementioned angel, sitting at the other end of the bar. She isn't looking at Crowley at all; rather she is absorbed in looking something over.
“Angel,” calls Crowley, stretching out the first syllable. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
She doesn’t move. Her fingers are running across the sheets of the funny box she is holding, a rapt expression on her face.
“Angel!” Crowley shouts. It doesn’t seem to make a difference, and a rather nasty little idea walks into her head, fully formed. Grabbing her sixth as-yet-unimbibed drink, Crowley swaggers over to the angel’s end of the bar. Calm as anything, she lifts her drink over the angel’s head, and tips it.
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
The wine freezes in the air. Aziraphale looks up at Crowley, eyes burning blue flame.
Right. Smiting.
“Well it’s a good thing you’re here to thwart me, then,” says Crowley, by means of apology. “What are you looking at?”
“Something new,” says Aziraphale. The wine retreats back into its flagon, which lands upright on the bar table. “The Romans are calling them pugillares membranei.”
Crowley sits down on the stool next to her and picks one up. It’s wider than both of her hands, length-wise. “What’s it for?”
“It’s a kind of flattened scroll,” Aziraphale explains. “Except you can open it at any page - so you don’t have to unroll the whole thing to just check one part - and the box is built in, so you can put it on shelves, or take it with you when you travel.”
“Huh.”
“Humans are terribly clever sometimes,” adds the angel. “See, you can write on both sides of a sheet of papyrus or vellum, too. So clever.”
She is beaming, utterly pleased. Crowley hasn’t seen her like this, really; normally she is sort of stern and disapproving, and sometimes she tries to throw things at Crowley. It’s almost nice. Absentmindedly, Aziraphale reaches for Crowley’s drink; she doesn’t stop her.
They settle into a strange truce, where Aziraphale reads and drinks whatever Crowley hands her, and Crowley just drinks. And stares at the angel’s face, and tries not to think too deeply on her growing list of problems, a melting pot of suspicion and a sort of vague nice feeling.
“You know what would be amazing,” Aziraphale says, into the relative silence of the bar. The marketplace has emptied out, now, but they are still there and Crowley is still paying, so the bartender hasn’t left.
“What, angel?”
“If someone could get a whole lot of these, these...flat scrolls into one room. As many of them as they could find.”
“Why?” Crowley stares.
“Think of all the knowledge. In one room! And anyone could just walk in there and read them, and learn all those things…” Aziraphale says, a strange note of hope in her voice.
“Assuming any person who walked in there could also read,” Crowley reminds her.
“Well-er, yes,” concedes Aziraphale.
“And doesn’t want to steal them,” adds Crowley.
“That is a very uncharitable thought.” Aziraphale sips her drink primly. “But then, I suppose that’s what your sort are for.”
“Yep.”
The barkeep coughs loudly, and Crowley digs out more coins for him, but he makes a vague gesture to indicate that it’s closing time. Aziraphale is, of course, utterly oblivious - her purchases have entrapped her once again - and Crowley taps her on the shoulder.
“Angel, it’s time to relocate,” she says. “Up and at ‘em.”
“Oh, right.” Aziraphale gathers her belongings, stacking them in a series of satchels. She staggers under their weight a little when she gets to her feet - or Crowley assumes it’s the weight, it might well be the wine.
“Do you need help getting back to wherever you’re staying, with all those?” Crowley almost kicks herself for asking, because the last thing the angel is going to do is tell her Enemy where she is living, but to Crowley’s surprise Aziraphale nods. Shouldering one of Aziraphale’s bags, Crowley gathers her own belongings (amphora: one, for later).
“Lead on,” Crowley says, and the angel leads her, stumbling, into the heat of the night.
In the year of our Lord 1156
All empires fall, but Crowley is starting to get used to it. After Rome, she goes east; but there are too many memories in the dust and the dates and the old cities, so for the first time she turns west.
Sitting on a boat in the middle of the Rhine, she begins to regret it. For one, it is cold; secondly, the food isn't nearly as good.
They put anchor at Bingen, where the river curves. Thorbjorn, the chief of this voyage, bellows for goods to be put ashore. They have little enough, but hope that good Norse furs and salted fishes can be traded for Rhenish wines; there is gold, too, from the Rus, but Thorbjorn had confided that he planned on keeping that for himself, if possible. The harbour is busy, or busy enough at any rate. Inland traders and their clerks look on, scoping out their purchases and deciding their prices. They are not of interest to Crowley, not really - too easy a temptation. Greed and gluttony come easy to their kind, as easily as wroth and lust to Thorbjorn’s ancestors.
She gathers her skirts, and creeps onto the gangplank. Perhaps beyond the docks she might find something - or someone - of greater interest. Bingen isn't much of a town, even by the low standards of the west, but certainly there has to be some fun in this place. There are taverns, of course, there are always taverns - and taverns have their uses, certainly, though Crowley has enough of drunken river-men nightly.
She heads back to the wharf, where trade appears to be going well. The crowd is hardly thinning out - Thorbjorn is good at drawing that, at least - and Crowley climbs on top of a disused cart to get a better view. (It always frustrates her that she’s never managed a tall body.) Not that it helps, because everyone is still extremely boring - except, hmm. At the back of the crowd she spies a nun’s habit, of all things. Well, she thinks, hopping off the cart, at the very least this one is a rather rebellious sister, out at the docks in the middle of a crowd of men. Hardly holy behaviour, that.
She elbows her way through the crowd. Halfway there, the sister turns her face, a round face with strands of golden hair escaping her wimple. Crowley smirks, because well. Certainly no bride of Christ, that one.
“Angel!”
Aziraphale sighs heavily. Crowley pushes two apprentices out of her way, because the angel is definitely interesting.
“How goes the work of the holy house?” she calls. “It seems most unholy for a lady of your - station - to be out here, amongst us of the world…”
“I am purchasing inks,” says Aziraphale primly, tucking her hair back under the wimple. “Or trying to, at any rate.”
“What for? I thought that was the monks, with the writing. I thought all you holy sisters were good for was praying,” sneers Crowley.
“The Abbess is a woman of ideas, I’ll have you know,” says the angel.
Crowley snorts. “Whose ideas? Yours?”
“She is a learned scholar and a fine theologian,” Aziraphale says primly. “And quite a good herbalist, too.”
“Really now? Is that all?”
“She composes, too.” Aziraphale raises her hand to her face, ostensibly to block the sun.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m quite certain I do.”
Aziraphale lowers her hand. “Is it too much for you that there might be women on this Earth who are actually interested in helping their sisters?”
Crowley frowns. “Of course not. I just don’t -“
“Oh, don’t you start. Hildegard is a good woman, she knows how to help the women of the village - and from afar! - who are in need. In pain.” The angel looks at Crowley pointedly. Her eyes are cool, shuttered. Crowley wonders what she did this time. “You do know what you did, don’t you? That every woman’s pain is God’s punishment for the sins of Eve, for what you tempted her into.”
“As if you didn’t give her the bloody sword -“
“I was helping!” Aziraphale’s hands fist in her habit.
“You think I was not?” Crowley hisses. “You truly think I wished pain upon anyone?”
Aziraphale casts her a glance. “Well - of course you did - that’s what your kind do. Er.”
Crowley stares at her. Aziraphale looks at the ground, at the dirt on the cobbles.
“The nuns are getting to you,” Crowley tells her. “Try doing me the service of thinking with your brain, instead of whatever claptrap people are saying about me this century.”
The angel frowns, lifting her eyes to Crowley’s hands. They are thin and worn, golden skin criss-crossed with ship’s scars; Crowley likes them. They are her hands, and as she's stuck with them for the time being, she might as well like them. Aziraphale grumbles and rummages around in the leather bag at her waist, pulling out a pair of thick woolen gloves.
“There are for you,” she says. “I’m sorry about, you know.”
“Being a terrible person who is easily spoon-fed lies perpetrated by a prejudiced establishment?” Crowley offers.
Aziraphale grimaces. “Not quite that.”
“Ah,” says Crowley.
Paris, le douzième mars 1790
She does not die in hospital.
Josseline passes painfully, in Crowley’s room at a dingy little hotel, coughing and hacking and shedding her lungs into bowl after bowl. Her breath rattles terribly, and Crowley holds her hand until the end. There are no eloquent dying words; there is no moralizing. Just Crowley, and Josseline, and Death.
She sleeps next to her that night. She prays for no miracle, for human lives are short; she only wants to stay close a little longer.
The next morning, she sits her wide-brimmed hat on her fine black hair, pausing only to tell Mme Lavoine that the undertaker ought to be called, and not to worry about the arrangements, Crowley has good money to spare her a pauper’s grave.
She walks the busy streets in silence, letting her feet guide her to her destination. Crowley's body has always known what it wants, even when her mind does not. She finds herself in front of a coffee-house, of all places, and follows her feet inside.
The place stinks of tobacco, and coffee grinds, and men. People are yelling, which is par for the course in these establishments, so Crowley orders a coffee and tries to ignore them. They're going on about politics, which is more or less the usual these days, and it hurts her, a little. Josseline cared a lot about that, and that made Crowley care; now, it all feels like salt in a fresh wound.
“I think you need a little more than coffee, dear.” A glass of cheap red is pushed into Crowley’s gloved hands.
She mumbles her objections, but the stranger does not take back the drink.
“Seriously, I don't want any -"
"Crowley, dear, you look a sight. Please humour me and have a drink?
Crowley’s head snaps up. Aziraphale is sitting next to her, looking sombre and stern in a slightly tattered rust-coloured dress. Her hair is tied in a modest chignon, and her cap is plain and white. For once Crowley is glad that fashion has always been a bit beyond Aziraphale; it will keep her safe. (Had Crowley ever bothered with real clothing, she would have had to burn most of it. As it is, she sometimes finds herself changing clothes as she moves between quartiers.)
"Fine,” mutters Crowley. “But not red.”
The wine becomes a vinegary white. Aziraphale looks around, but the rest of the cafes patrons are too busy discussing the electorate to notice any minor miracles.
She puts her neat hands on the table, fingers wrapped around a small cup of coffee. “Was it another one of your humans?”
“They're not mine,” says Crowley, taking an indelicate drink of the wine. “They don't belong to anyone.”
“Right,” says the angel, though it's clear from her tone she thinks it folly. “I don't know why you do this to yourself, you know how long it lasts.”
“She was part of the Women’s March, you know. That's where I met her. She was screaming for bread and I just wanted to see what was going on, see about causing some trouble - and they were causing plenty of trouble on their own, each and every one, and Josseline was so angry…” Crowley had loved her handsome face, the fire in her eyes. Josseline had not wanted to die meek in a corner, not when she could die screaming for the bread and justice no one she knew had ever had.
Aziraphale is feigning polite interest. It's not that she doesn't care for humans - she does - but she cares from a distance. Crowley has never been able to be like that, even when her heart feels torn up into a thousand bloody pieces.
The angel fills Crowley's morose silence with chatter about the goings-on in the Assemblée Nationale. She isn't as suspicious as she ought to be; the hope of the revolutionaries seems to have infected the angel, too. Crowley wonders if she has heard their talk of abolishing the Church in France - probably not, although Aziraphale always seemed curiously neutral in regards to clerical reform, back in the days of Martin Luther.
“It's just nice, you know, to see such hope - they want to change things. They have such glorious ideas,” says Aziraphale. “
Crowley snorts, and pushes the wine away, half empty. She has lost her taste for revolution already, it seems; between Aziraphale’s blathering and the students behind them, her ears feel crowded.
“You do know they’ve abolished the monastic orders?” Crowley tells the angel, hoping for a reaction.
Instead Aziraphale offers a non-committal shrug. “Above doesn't seem concerned…”
“And you, angel? Don't tell me you've forgotten what old king Henry did to your English abbeys.”
She looks decidedly uncomfortable. Good, thinks Crowley, although she isn't sure why this is a good thing.
Aziraphale stutters out some excuse, but Crowley is hardly listening. She misses Josseline’s thick hair, her crooked smile, the way she knew Crowley was no lady.
“- and I'm sure that with they will come up with something to replace the work of the orders, hospitals and hostels, sanitoriums…they've included women in their declaration, you know, I think that's very important -“
“Right,” snaps Crowley. “Because documents always help, people are starving in the streets but that's okay, because someone signed a document. No document ever helped Josseline, all she ever wanted was food anyone in her street could afford - and she never got that, did she?”
Aziraphale looks at her, puts her hand on Crowley’s wrist. “I am sorry, you know, but you always do this -“
“Yes, excuse me for having feelings, for caring, instead of just being fond.” Crowley stands sharply to her feet, knocking her chair to the floor. “Josseline was beautiful, and ordinary, and wonderful -“
“And now she's dead,” snaps Aziraphale. “Sit down.”
“Don't you order me about, I'm as strong as you are - just because I spend my existence with something more important than books - and to think that me, of all creatures, would be the one trying to do some good in this miserable little world-“
“Can someone shut the madwoman up?” The students are staring at them, now. She hadn't realized she was that loud. Aziraphale is flushing red, apologizing, tugging on Crowley's wrist, cajoling.
No,thinks Crowley. I am not ashamed.
She drains the rest of the wine, and storms out.
The rivers run red with blood in the end, anyway.
Hong Kong, October 1927.
“Honestly, Crowley, why are you always so swept up in these fads,” Aziraphale grumbles, pulling strands of hair out of her mouth. “This is completely ridiculous.”
Crowley grins, and holds on to her cloche hat as the next automobile comes racing around the corner. “It’s the future, angel.”
Aziraphale harrumphs and turns her back on the racers. “Man has done perfectly well without motorized nonsense for millennia.”
Crowley laughs, and leans out over the barrier. “Keep saying that, angel.”
The race finishes too soon, with automobile 6 coming out the winner. It’s a handsome green thing, and certainly not the favourite - but it’s fun to watch the punters, colonials and Chinese alike, squabble over lost money and the lucky few who end the day on top. Crowley drags Aziraphale around to the garages, ignoring her squawks of protest. She wants to see these fast machines up close. She hates horses, she can never stay on them, doesn’t understand how Aziraphale manages to ride gracefully. Crowley can barely stay atop one of the beasts sitting astride, and for centuries Aziraphale has laughed politely at her from the back of one appropriately-feminine palfrey after another. These new machines, though…Crowley likes them.
Hong Kong is hot in October, though the grueling summer heat is starting to pass. Aziraphale, as usual, has made zero concessions to the weather in her wool suit with an unfashionably long skirt. She fans herself rapidly with the brim of her large straw hat, but it’s clearly not helping. Crowley herself is much more suitably attired in black silk with highlights of green, cut a la mode just below the knee, revealing silk stockings and daring (yet practical) black leather heels.
“You there!” calls a race attendant. “You can’t be back here!”
“Oh look,” says Aziraphale. “Look at that, we can’t be here, let’s just leave, Crowley…”
Crowley smiles and turns toward the attendant. “I’m sorry, sir, what did you say?”
“You can’t be here. This area is for drivers and their crew only,” he says. “Not busybody women.”
“Is that true?” Crowley asks, one hand on her hat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Crowley grins, a feral thing. Beside her, Aziraphale is furiously gesturing to stop, but Crowley does not care. With a graceful sweep of her hand, she removes her hat, and looks the attendant in the eyes.
“May we be on our way?” she asks, primly.
He stares, stunned, stuttering out admonishments, but it all withers and dies. Crowley sweeps away, Aziraphale shuffling behind her.
“You know you shouldn’t be doing that,” the angel mutters. “One day you’ll get found out, or someone will throw something at you -“
“If it hasn’t happened yet, angel, it’s not likely it will,” Crowley replies. “And anyway, no one Down There cares enough to bother. It’s only one miserable little man.”
Aziraphale grumbles. Crowley sighs, reaches into her hand-bag and passes her a silver flask. “There you go, stop ruining my fun.”
The angel looks at her flatly. “You’re a terrible influence.”
“Yes, and?” says Crowley. She spies a lovely machine just over there, she really ought to have a closer look…
The machine is wonderful. The black paint gleams in the sunlight. She runs her hand over its bonnet, not caring that it isn’t hers. The owner doesn’t seem to mind; as he pushes himself out from under his other automobile, he smiles at her.
“Something you’re interested in, miss?”
“Tell me about this one,” says Crowley. “It looks a fine machine.”
“It is,” he replies. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Crowley tells him. He doesn’t seem taken aback by her, which is nice; unsurprisingly, the world of automobiles has already been marked out by men as yet another woman-free zone - not that Crowley will let that stop her. It's a new Bentley, he tells her proudly, with a six-cylinder engine and four valves per cylinder and a single-piece engine block and cylinder head, cast in iron this time, no need for a head gasket. She absorbs all the technical details, even as Aziraphale is growing visibly bored (and invisibly drunk), because she loves learning how humans build things, how they figure out how to put pieces of metal together to make something happen.
“How has it raced?” Crowley asks. “I didn’t see it in the race earlier.”
“Oh, it hasn’t, not yet. It’s a spare automobile, in case my Blue Beauty over there fails,” says the owner. “Haven’t even added any modifications yet, it’s fresh from the factory in England.”
Crowley hesitates only a second. “Would you be willing to sell it?”
Aziraphale chokes on Crowley’s whiskey. The car’s owner looks over at her, and she makes a show of catching her breath.
“Depends on what you’re willing to pay,” he says, uncertain.
“Double what you paid, and extra for the inconvenience,” says Crowley. “Money’s no matter.”
“£3,000,” blurts out the owner. It’s a high price, but Crowley doesn’t care. She wants it.
“Done,” she says. She materializes a wallet from her handbag, and materializes a rather large amount of cash, which she makes sure to count in front of him. (It may or may not disappear later; Crowley never bothers to make sure her money stays around forever.)
He hands her the keys, looking sort of stunned. Crowley supposes women buying racing cars on the spot isn't an everyday occurrence. Too bad.
“I cannot believe you,” says Aziraphale. “What are you going to do with that thing?”
"Drive it," Crowley says. The car feels right, under her feet and in her hands.
“All the way back to London?” asks the angel, incredulously.
Crowley smiles. “Why not?”
The first day of the rest of their lives
Crowley wakes sooner than she wanted to, unexpectedly cold despite her dream. She untangles herself from her duvet, and pulls on a jumper Aziraphale bought her one Christmas. The sleek digital clock on her nightstand reads 15:30 08|27|1991. Too early, indeed. She stares at the ceiling for a while, but neither sleep nor thought come, so she rolls over and grabs for the phone, dialing from sense memory. She cradles the handset against her ear; the mouthpiece brushes her knees.
Aziraphale picks up on the fourth ring. "Hello," she says blandly. "We're closed for - um, repairs, right now so if you could maybe ring back oh, in October -"
"Repairs?" says Crowley. "What sort of damage, angel? Spill tea on the paperbacks again?"
"What? No," replies Aziraphale peevishly. "Although there is a sort of burned smell about the place. It's the books, though. They're all - er. Children's books. I mean, I suppose that's what he thought bookshops had, is children's books, and I suppose the ones he goes to do, but well - not mine - anyway, there's a first edition Alice in there so I shouldn't be - it's worth a lot of money. Not that that's much of a consolation." She huffs, a staticky exhale that makes Crowley pull the handset away from her ear.
"Look, clearly you need to get out a bit," says Crowley. She scratches her calf; it needs moisturizing. "I was thinking maybe the ducks, you know, it's a good summer day and if anything's going to be exactly the same as last week, it's going to be the ducks. I'm sure you've got bread going stale, so..."
"We could get supper at the little cafe there," muses Aziraphale. There's a soft slurping sound; presumably Aziraphale has, as usual, been easing her pain with tea or booze or both. "You'd have to hurry up and get dressed though, they close at half four."
"Why do you always assume I've just woken up when I call you?" grumbles Crowley, though she dearly wishes she had.
"Precedent," answers Aziraphale.
Crowley sighs, but her frustration is melting away regardless. "Be there in ten."
They park the Bentley south of St. James, Crowley checking the clamps on the Bentley with more care than usual. That had been a surprise; she'd walked out of the lobby and it was just there, offering no explanation for its belated reappearance whatsoever.
"I'm glad you got the Bentley back," says Aziraphale. "I can't say the Jeep suited you. I mean - er - it is your Bentley, right?"
"It's got the patina and the tapes and everything," says Crowley. "No more messin' about, indeed."
The weather is nice and warm, and the birds are up and about, squabbling and squawking. There's lawn chairs set out all over the greens, and they snag two not too far from the pond, within bread-throwing distance. Aziraphale pulls her stale oat loaf from its paper bag and tears it in half, getting crumbs all over her mauve dress. She hands half to Crowley, who shreds it more tidily over the side of her chair. The ubiquitous pigeons don't dare get that close; generations of London pigeons have learned Crowley's harsh lessons. The ducks are eying them with interest. Crowley lobs a chunk of bread at them, starting a veritable riot of hungry mallards and a particularly stubborn northern shoveler.
It's not long before Aziraphale gives in and pulls a large bottle from her purse. Crowley raises an eyebrow, because the angel has a very casual attitude towards physics when it comes to her purse, but also because the bottle is filled with what looks like Aziraphale's home-made sangria.
"Did you make this special, or do you just keep this lying around?" she asks. "Not that I'm complaining…"
"Oh shush," Aziraphale tuts. "It's been a very terrible...week -"
"You mean decade."
"- and I just thought maybe it would be nice. A sort of celebration," she finishes. She pulls two glass tumblers out, handing one to Crowley and pouring.
"Yes, 'Congratulations, you stopped Armageddon! Probably. For now?' Very reassuring," mutters Crowley into her glass, taking a rather long swig. The sun is bright, and her eyes hurt, even with the sunglasses. Alcohol probably won't make anything better, but it definitely can't make it worse.
Next to her Aziraphale is taking prim sips, trying not to look like the raging day-drinking alcoholic she is. She throws bread with more grace than Crowley, and has a knack for making sure each duck gets its share, although whether it's out of a sense of fairness or a dislike for squawking is up for debate. One long wisp of hair has escaped Aziraphale's loose bun, and it floats in the breeze. She looks ridiculous, which is the angel's default state, really. Not that ridiculous is necessarily a bad thing - Crowley knows that's never stopped her from staring, and neither did the rather large number of suitors over the years, especially that one Italian who made those …passionate sculptures. She was rather selfishly glad when long, lean body shapes came into fashion, if only because it meant that Aziraphale's soft, curvy shape was Crowley's alone to look at.
“Have your people been in contact?” Aziraphale asks.
“No,” Crowley looks up at the bright blue sky. “Yours?”
“No. I think they’re pretending it didn’t happen.”
“Mine too, I suppose. That’s bureaucracy for you.” There are perfect white clouds floating in it. It would be unnerving if it wasn’t so picturesque.
“I think mine are waiting to see what happens next,” says Aziraphale.
Crowley shudders. She knows what next means. “A chance to morally re-arm. Get the defences up. Ready for the big one.”
“Sorry?” says Aziraphale. “I thought that was the big one.”
“Don’t count on it,” says Crowley. “For my money, the really big one will be all of Us against all of Them.”
Aziraphale looks at her, really looks. And then sighs and takes a long drink of the sangria.
Somewhere around half-six they realize that it's August and the café does not, in fact, close at half-four and the only thing stopping them from eating a nice meal is their own incompetence. There is much rejoicing on Aziraphale's part, because she has a deep and abiding love for food, particularly after she has resigned herself to not having any. They meander their way over to Inn the Park, dodging ducks and tourists, the fading summer sun warming their bodies.
The waitress seats them on the patio, with a nice view of the bridge. Aziraphale orders the lamb, because it's a Sunday special, and frowns at Crowley when she orders only a house salad and a passable French white wine. Their dinner is quiet. Aziraphale eats as she usually does, commenting on the quality of the meat and praising the chef and trying to convince Crowley to taste pieces from her fork. Crowley gives in after the third time Aziraphale sticks a piece of lamb under her nose; it's alright, but the angel has overdone the mint sauce. She picks at her salad, pushing the beets and carrots around the plate and smiling when the high-pitched noise of utensil on china makes their fellow diners wince.
A rotund black-and-white cat appears just as Aziraphale is finishing, meowing and purring and sticking his paws through the wooden slats that separate the patio from the park. Crowley flicks a piece of carrot at him, but it doesn't faze him at all. Aziraphale offers him some of the lamb gristle and a piece of goat cheese from Crowley's plate, which he graciously accepts.
"You are feeling good about the universe, if you're feeding stray cats," Crowley tells the angel. "Last I checked you didn't even like them that much. I thought you'd decided they were a menace to songbird-kind?"
"Yes, well - they're only a menace if they're hungry. I can't see them causing any harm if you keep them fed," says Aziraphale. The cat is chewing the meat, spitting it out, and chewing again. "And anyway, you're a menace and I like you perfectly well."
She smiles at Crowley and leaves more than enough cash to pay the bill underneath the little black cheque folder. That settled, she stands up and gathers her purse, slipping the after-dinner mints inside. "Come on, then. You can drop me at the shop on your way back to your flat."
Crowley rises and follows her, feeling dazed and dopey. Aziraphale waits for her on the path and offers Crowley her arm. Crowley takes it, letting Aziraphale lead the way.
"I've had a lovely day, you know," says Aziraphale. "Thank you for that."
"We survived," Crowley murmurs.
~end
Happy Holidays, thatshinyrock, from your Secret Writer!