Chapter Text
Aziraphale sits at the two-person table at Chez Suzette, his favorite place to get crepes, and tries not to fidget or look anxious. It’s five minutes past the hour and C hasn’t showed up yet. He resists the urge to check his phone for the tenth time and instead closes his copy of Pride and Prejudice before setting it in the middle of the table so that the binding faces outwards. He wants his friend to be able to spot it easily… that is, if C hasn’t stood him up.
Was this all a terrible mistake?
When they were texting at three in the morning, proposing an in-person meeting with C had seemed like the most natural thing in the world. But now in the harsh light of day, Aziraphale can’t help but wonder how the other man—a complete stranger—will react to him. Will he be disappointed that his pen pal is a dowdy middle-aged bookseller? Will he stop talking to Aziraphale altogether?
Dread and self-doubt curl in Aziraphale’s stomach and he takes a sip of his tea and smiles tremulously when the waiter stops by to ask if he’d like to order or if he’s still waiting for his friend.
“Just a few more minutes, please,” Aziraphale says. “I’m sure he’ll be here any moment now. Thank you.”
The door opens again and Aziraphale looks up, trying not to seem too eager as he makes eye contact with the person who has just entered. He’s hoping that this time, a friendly, tentative stranger will make his way over to the table and say something about how nice it is to finally meet after all this time.
But to Aziraphale’s horror, the person who has just walked into the restaurant is the last one he wants to see.
It’s that damned Anthony J. Crowley.
It’s infuriating how attractive the man looks in his dark jeans and a red jumper that fits him perfectly. He’s wearing sunglasses indoors and his hair is wavier and less stiff than usual. When he’s in corporate armor, Crowley always looks so unapproachable and razor-sharp. But in his weekend attire, he almost looks benign. Like someone you would want to get to know.
Aziraphale sinks lower into his seat. Could he hide or slip out of the restaurant before Crowley sees him? But no—the other man has spotted him already, his gaze locking on Aziraphale’s table and a slow smile spreading over his angular features.
“Oh, hey. Aziraphale,” Crowley says. He has the nerve to slide into the chair across from Aziraphale and kick out his long legs as though he’s sitting in a sun lounger. “How’s it going? Fancy seeing you here.”
“Excuse me!” Aziraphale says. He had been embarrassed to be seen here sitting alone in a restaurant, but any self-consciousness fades in the face of Crowley’s appalling manners. How dare he sit down like he owns the place! “I didn’t say that you could join me. I’m waiting for someone. That’s his chair.”
“Eeeeh, I don’t see anyone here.” Crowley shoots him a grin and lets his sunglasses slide down the bridge of his nose. Aziraphale catches a glimpse of unusual, amber-colored eyes. He’s loath to admit that they’re beautiful. “How’s this? I’ll keep you company while you wait for your friend. I promise I’ll scuttle away as soon as he shows up.”
Aziraphale feels miserable and frustrated. What a situation to be stuck in: possibly being stood up by his online pen pal while his real life nemesis insists on having a conversation for some godforsaken reason. He honestly has no idea why Crowley seems so insistent on prolonging their interactions every time they run into each other. The man must be some kind of masochist.
“I suppose,” he says, because clearly he has no choice in the matter, “that you could stay for a few minutes. If you absolutely must.”
“Oh, I must,” Crowley says, drawing out the words in a way that is almost salacious. His eyes land on Aziraphale’s book and he runs a long finger over its worn spine. “ I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. I always liked that one.”
Good heavens. Aziraphale hates this man—or at least dislikes him quite a lot—and yet he cannot quell the heat of attraction in his belly when Crowley starts quoting Pride and Prejudice.
Avoiding eye contact, Aziraphale pretends to look through the menu for the fiftieth time. “I didn’t know you read,” he says snippily. “You seem more like the sort of person who gets his news off social media. All those bite sized little clock-tock videos.”
“TikTok,” Crowley corrects. “I do read, actually. Big reader, me. I even like Shakespeare, especially his comedies.”
Is Crowley taunting him? When Aziraphale shoots a quick glance at the man, he seems serious enough. He’s just… sitting there, with a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as though he has some kind of secret. It’s annoying. It’s also making Aziraphale feel overly warm and confused.
“Hmm, Shakespeare is a classic,” Aziraphale says idiotically. “I like his tragedies.”
Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He knows it’s terribly rude to be on one’s phone in the middle of a conversation, but he doesn’t care. He can take the couple minutes that it takes to tap out a message to C to regain his composure. He’s so busy composing a text to ask C if he’s alright or needs to reschedule, that he doesn’t notice that the waitress has come to their table and started taking Crowley’s order.
“... and he’ll have a hot cocoa and the crêpes Provençal to start, please. Ta.”
By the time Aziraphale sets his phone down and looks up, the waitress has placed two sets of silverware on the table and taken their menus. Apparently, while he was looking at his phone, Anthony J. Crowley had the temerity to order for them both .
Aziraphale gapes at him in outrage. The crêpes Provençal is exactly what he had planned to order, but still. The fact that Crowley managed to get his order right doesn’t make his behavior any more acceptable.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” Aziraphale says. “But you can’t just-”
But Crowley does something unexpected again. The man pushes abruptly away from the table, his chair’s legs scraping against the tile in a way that momentarily renders Aziraphale speechless. He watches as Crowley stumbles backwards, pulling his own phone out of those impossibly tight jeans and grimacing.
“Gotta go to the loo,” he mutters. “I’ll be right back.”
Aziraphale watches him disappear and for the hundredth time since he met Anthony J. Crowley asks himself: what in the world is going on with that man?
A: Hello there, my dear. I’m at the restaurant waiting for you. Are you alright? I don’t mind if you’ve changed your mind or need to reschedule. Just let me know that you’re safe.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Crowley leans forward against the bathroom sink and stares at his reflection in the mirror. Under the harsh fluorescent lighting, he looks like a vampire—far too angular and pale, with dark circles forming underneath his eyes. He’s gotten himself mixed up in a hell of a situation and he knows it. He has to respond to Aziraphale’s text, but he doesn’t know what to say. How can he possibly make this right?
He had fully intended to come clean as soon as he walked into the restaurant. Crowley may be an asshole, but he’s not heartless. He wasn’t going to let Aziraphale Fell sit there by himself, waiting in vain for someone who never showed up. He was going to walk up to him and admit to being the C to Aziraphale’s A.
But then he’d started thinking about what would happen afterwards.
Aziraphale would be angry and hurt. He probably wouldn’t believe that Crowley had no idea who he was corresponding with all this time. He would assume that Crowley targeted him specifically, to get under his skin and mess with him. And he would never talk to Crowley again.
At his core, Crowley is selfish. He lives for the messages that A—Aziraphale—sends him every day. He doesn’t know if he can do the right thing and deprive himself of that one thread of human connection, the one that keeps him sane when Lucifer is being an asshole and Crowley is questioning all of his life decisions.
He takes a deep breath in and exhales to a count of seven. Then he picks up his phone and texts back.
C: I hate doing this, but something came up and I can’t make it. I’m so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. My life is really complicated and messed up right now and as much as I would love to have lunch with you (it’s all I want, really), I don’t think it’d be a good idea. Maybe someday.
There’s a terrible moment after he hits send where Crowley wonders if Aziraphale will cut him off anyway, even without knowing his true identity. He’s done a shitty thing by any measure—leaving that soft, lovely bookseller sitting alone, waiting for someone who’s never going to show up. He wants to cry at the thought, except Crowley never cries. It would ruin his whole vibe.
A moment later, his phone pings.
A: That’s quite alright, my dear. I can’t say that I’m not disappointed, but I understand that life can be cruel and derail our best laid plans. I would love to have lunch with you someday, anytime you’re ready x
It’s the first time that Aziraphale has ended a message with a kiss and Crowley wants to frame the image for posterity. He’s beginning to suspect that he likes Aziraphale far more than he should.
This can’t possibly end well.
Still, when Crowley returns from the loo, he can’t bring himself to make his excuses and leave. He reasons that he already ordered food for them both. Besides, Aziraphale looks deflated and keeps shooting his phone sad glances as though it has wounded him.
So Crowley sits down and sheds a bit of his usual slick persona.
“I can…” he clears his throat. “I can leave if you want. But if you’ll allow it, I’d like to buy you lunch. Y’know. As repayment for being a complete wanker.”
That brings a soft, amused upward turn to the bookseller’s lips.
“Well,” Aziraphale says. “I just learned that my dining companion can’t make it today, so I would appreciate the company. I feel odd about letting you pay…”
“Please,” Crowley interrupts. “It would make me feel better.”
Aziraphale nods and they lapse into awkward silence until the food arrives. Crowley doesn’t particularly like crepes, but he does like to have something to do with his hands and his face when he can’t think of a single thing to say. Aziraphale, on the other hand, seems absolutely enamored with his meal. He does this thing where he flutters his eyes closed and hums when he takes his first bite, and it strikes Crowley as so erotic that he can barely breathe.
Crowley takes a surreptitious look at the diners around them. No one else seems to be staring at Aziraphale and his lovely, blissed-out face. How are people not completely transfixed by the sight?!
“Nghhh… s’good then?”
“Oh yes,” Aziraphale says, pale eyelashes fanning his cheeks as he takes another bite. “There is no better place to get crepes, except Paris, of course. I haven’t been to France in ages. I’m a nervous traveler, you see. But I do dream of the food sometimes.”
“M’not crazy about travelling either,” Crowley responds, eager to be on a neutral topic that doesn’t involve Acheron Corporation. “Flying freaks me out. I know that planes are perfectly safe and you’re statistically speaking, more likely to die in a car crash… but it doesn’t feel that way when the plane’s taking off and you’re thinking to yourself, oh shit this shouldn’t be possible. ”
For what may be the first time since Aziraphale learned what Crowley did for a living, the bookseller laughs and shoots him a smile that’s almost fond. Crowley feels the force of that smile like a punch to the solar plexus. He is very, very fucked and he doesn’t think he can bring himself to care.
“Even the train can present issues,” Aziraphale says. “Do you know, I was once on a train to Barcelona that was stalled for over three hours due to engine failure! The passenger car was unbearably warm and they didn’t even pass out refreshments. It was an utterly miserable experience.”
“Ugh,” Crowley grunts sympathetically. “They should at least have given you water. Or better yet, something alcoholic.”
“My thoughts exactly!”
“That’s why I prefer to drive myself,” Crowley says, unable to keep the smile off his face as he thinks about his sleek black Bentley. Aside from his minimalist flat and rare plant collection, his car is his most prized possession. “Even if it’s to another country. I don’t mind the long drives. I mean, we could even-”
He stops himself mid-sentence before he says something very, very stupid. He almost offered to drive Aziraphale to Paris, as though they’re friends or lovers and not acquaintances on shaky ground at best. How humiliating. How utterly pathetic and creepy.
“We could?” Aziraphale prompts, raising one delicate eyebrow as he spears another bite onto his fork.
“M’nothing. I just like to drive.”
Aziraphale shoots him an odd look, but at least he no longer looks furious or suspicious to see Crowley. Baby steps. Give it another six thousand years and maybe they’ll be proper friends.
Though he’s disappointed that C didn’t show up, Aziraphale is surprised to find that lunch isn’t a complete loss. Spending time with Crowley—who he should see as his nemesis, or rather, his executioner—is rather pleasant. Once you break through the prickly, too-cool-to-be-bothered exterior, the man is almost endearingly rambly in his speech patterns. He seems eager to find common ground with Aziraphale and avoid any mention of their respective jobs altogether.
Aziraphale learns that Crowley grew up in the country and that he misses driving down wide open roads and seeing the stars at night. He tells Crowley all about his own religious upbringing and gets a sympathetic grimace at the mention of Catholic school.
He once believed that he would not be able to spend ten minutes in the other man’s presence, but Aziraphale is proven wrong when he looks up and catches sight of the clock in the restaurant. It’s gone past two, which means that he’s been sitting here talking to Crowley for hours . The waitress must have whisked away his empty plate and Crowley’s half-eaten one at some point, and also refilled their cocoa and tea.
“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says, winding down a story that he was telling about hunting down a rare first edition of The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde. “I’ve talked your ear off, haven’t I? How mortifying. You must have somewhere else to be by now. I’m sorry to have kept you for so long.”
“Nonsense. Said I’d buy you lunch, didn’t I? Besides, I enjoyed myself.”
“You barely ate,” Aziraphale points out. To be honest, he had eyed the remainder of Crowley’s salmon and crème fraiche crepes with some longing. But they aren’t even friends; it wouldn’t do to ask to polish off the man’s leftovers. “Was the food not to your liking?”
“It was delicious,” Crowley says. “I’m just not much of a food person. More partial to coffee and wine, if I’m being honest.”
Aziraphale, who cannot imagine anyone not being a ‘food person’ nods dubiously. His hands twitch in his lap when the bill comes and Crowley sets down a black metal credit card, but he did agree to letting the other man pay for his lunch.
“Did you walk here?” Crowley asks as they rise from their table. He’s slipped his sunglasses back onto his face and Aziraphale finds himself missing those strange, almost catlike eyes. “Or did you take a taxi?”
“I walked,” Aziraphale says. “The shop is only a few blocks away and the weather’s behaving for once.”
“Oh, so you’re not going home then?” Crowley asks, looking surprised. “I didn’t know your shop was open on Sundays.”
Aziraphale smiles. This is a common misconception—that he has a cozy little flat somewhere across town where he goes after closing up the shop in the evenings. The truth is that his entire adult life is wrapped up in that one shabby shabby building. He doesn’t know what he would be without Celestial Books and the home he’s made above the shop.
“I have a flat above the shop,” he explains to Crowley. “I’ve lived there for, oh, almost twenty years now. It’s the only place that’s truly felt like home to me.”
He could go into detail about his cold, distant parents who acted like having a child in the house was akin to having an infestation of pests. He could even talk about the eighteen months when he’d moved in with his most serious partner, and how he had always felt as though his boyfriend resented Aziraphale’s constant presence. But Aziraphale chooses to leave those unpleasant memories unspoken. He’s already told Crowley more than he ever intended to share.
“Oh,” Crowley responds. He can’t seem to meet Aziraphale's eyes as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his tight trousers. “Oh. Well, I could walk you back there, if you want? Or I could give you a ride. M’car is parked just around the corner.”
“That’s alright, my dear,” Aziraphale says, softening the refusal with a smile. He finds that he no longer wants to wage war with Crowley. With Acheron Corporation, yes. He’d like to burn that place to the ground. But Crowley has been unexpectedly good company. “I could use a bit of fresh air and solitude. But I enjoyed our lunch.”
Crowley’s eyebrows raise over the top of his sunglasses and Aziraphale finds it strange that the man would be so surprised by this admission. Surely he knows that if Aziraphale hadn’t enjoyed his company, he would have found a way to end the meal over an hour ago?
“I did too,” Crowley says. “Maybe we could do it again? I’ve heard good things about the Ritz…”
His tone is so hopeful that it makes Aziraphale’s chest ache. The truth is that he would like to spend more time with Crowley, to go to lunch again or even invite him back to the bookshop to share a glass of wine. But they’re on opposite sides, aren’t they? Nothing good can ever come of this.
“If you didn’t work for Acheron and I didn’t own a bookshop in Soho,” Aziraphale replies, unable to find a reason to be anything but completely honest. “Then I would say yes. But I don’t think it’s wise for us to fraternize.”
As he walks out of the restaurant, he can feel Crowley’s gaze following him the entire time.
He doesn't know what to make of the fact that he likes it.
To: AfternoonTea
From: CalatheasAndCyanide
Subject: I’m sorry
Hi. It’s me.
I’m not one for praying usually, but I am begging every deity in the known universe to convince you to read this message. You’d be well within your right to delete it and never talk to me again, obviously. I did a completely shit thing by not showing up for lunch.
The truth is, I’m in a weird place. I know, I know, the whole “it’s not you, it’s me” line is trite. But in his case it’s true. My life is an ugly snarl of complications right now and I’m pretty sure that you’d want nothing to do with me if you knew the half of it.
I couldn’t show up but I wanted to. I wanted to very badly and I am so, so, so sorry.
I’ve never told you this, but it’s the truth: you’re the best thing in my life. It took me a while to figure it out but lately, the only bright spot of my day is talking to you. Texting with you. Re-reading your old emails and laughing at pictures of your mangy cat. Is that pathetic?
I hope that in some not-too-distant future, we’ll get to sit down and have lunch. No pretenses, no complications. Just us.
But until then, just know how sorry I am and how much I wanted to be there, eating crepes across the table from you.
Forgive me,
C
To: CalatheasAndCyanide
From: AfternoonTea
Subject: RE: I’m sorry
My dear C,
There’s nothing to forgive. I have never doubted your intentions or your kind, gentle heart. You have been a friend to me when I needed one the most and the least I can do is be patient and understanding when circumstances make it impossible for us to meet in person.
I will be here when you’re ready and we can have that lunch. As you said, without pretenses and complications. That sounds absolutely divine!
Although I was terribly worried about you the whole time, I ended up having a fine time at lunch. I’m sure I’ve mentioned in oblique terms (no identifying details and whatnot) that I’ve been in conflict with a certain individual recently. Well… this person serendiptiously walked into the restaurant where I was to meet you and we had lunch together. It was strange. I thought that it would be awkward or charged with malice.
But I found that I liked him as a person. It’s a reminder, I suppose, to remain open-minded and compassionate when you meet people. They can always surprise you in the best possible way.
I hope that the wrinkles in your life are smoothed out soon. You deserve ease and comfort.
With great affection,
A