Chapter Text
Crowley didn’t have much time. He had to intervene before the angel discovered dank memes, which was the start of the slippery slope towards surrealism and deep fried memes. Crowley himself was aware of their existence, but refrained from engaging with them, they constituted the dark web of millennial humour — and for some — the point of no return.
If he were honest, he didn’t mind Aziraphale’s sense of humour to begin with. Sure, it was usually lagging a few decades behind and peppered with god-awful jokes that even the average dad wouldn’t want to associate with. But he got sarcasm and he had an exception grasp of irony and used both liberally and cuttingly, much to Crowley’s delight. The delight was doubly so when the snark was directed at an authority figure, like Gabriel or the man at the post office who held Aziraphale’s book orders captive without proof of a valid ID*.
* [Aziraphale didn’t have one from the last century. Timothy, a representative of “The Royal Mail” couldn’t, in good conscious allow him to collect the parcel without photo ID. The angel had nodded sagely, commending him on doing such a thorough job as a means of distraction whilst he conjured up an appropriate card. He pulled it out of his waistcoat pocket and held it out. Timothy squinted.
“It’s says your birth year is Undefined, Mr Fell.” Shit.
Aziraphale gave up the charade and let Crowley wipe his memory whilst he marched off with his book.]
The point was: Aziraphale was Aziraphale and that was enough for Crowley. That was comfortable. That was what he’d come to know over the years, the constant anchor in the unwieldy storm of humanity’s whims. He avoided the fast lane that was tripping over your feet to own the latest phone, fast fashion and online streaming services whose lineup changed hourly. Crowley invented the fast lane, and did his best to keep up appearances, but would settle down in the bookshop at the end of the day to a conversation about Richard III with the only person who mattered.
His internal dialogue was on autopilot by this point and he all but missed the stunning confessions his brain was making unattended. He was currently distracted by sorting through his wardrobe of snake skin boots, expecting to find a appallingly garish pair of Heelys somewhere. Naturally, he did.
It does not hurt to mention that the demon’s processes of logic were faulty at the best of times. Part and parcel of this was that he always failed to realise this until it was too late. This was his current idea:
He’ll take Aziraphale out to the park to show off his Heelys. The idiocy of them in a public place would leave the angel so embarrassed that he abandons his pursuit of meme culture and trades his dusty phone in for a dustier copy of a book that they could argue over whilst drinking themselves into a stupor.
It would be generous to call this a logical chain of events but most of Crowley’s cortex was unknowingly panicking with the thought that his angel had been corrupted by the likes of Pepe.
“I thought we could go out.”
Aziraphale looked up from his old manuscripts in surprise, smile blossoming across his face.
“Really, my dear?”
Crowley gave him a funny look.
“Uh, yeah,” his tone leaning towards “duh”, they went out quite often, after all.
“Like, out-out?” Asked the angel cautiously.
Crowley peered out the window. It wasn’t raining if that’s what the other was implying.
“Yeah, out-out.” He was too busy deciding whether the clouds were looking particularly ominous to notice the way Aziraphale’s face flushed.
“Well, I better get ready. What time are you picking me up?” He jumped up, eyes darting around, not even thinking to ask where they were going. Crowley wanted to go out with him.
The demon frowned at the flurry of activity.
“I guess I can come back in half an hour if you really need time to get ready.”
“Nonsense, you can just wait here, I’ll be back in a jiffy!” The angel paused, giving Crowley a once over. “Is that what you’ll be wearing?”
It was what Crowley was always wearing.
“Surely you’d want to, I don’t know, dress up a little dear?”
Crowley smirked at the proposition. Yes, he would be dressing up quite a bit. He thought of the eclectic heelys stashed under the backseat of the Bentley.
“Maybe, a suit?” Why was Aziraphale flashing him with the puppy dog eyes? Suddenly Crowley felt like he was missing something, but obliged, snapping his fingers to appear in a svelte black suit that hugged his slim frame. He had a sudden vision of himself gliding through St James’ park, dressed to the nines with the atrociously atrocious shoes that were the work of the devil*.
* [Well, technically they were invented by Crowley, so the work was outsourced.]
He chuckled to himself as Aziraphale began to dart around, muttering a hurried “back in a minute” and shuffling to the back room.
Aziraphale had taken a minute to himself to freak out. He stood in the back room, almost trembling. It was actually happening. He felt like he’d all but screwed up his chances when he told Crowley “he went too fast”, the demon hadn’t even hinted at anything romantic since barring the unfortunate tension created by the fortunately diverted apocalypse.
“Breathe, breathe.” He whispered, trying to compose himself, before stepping back out in to the bookshop where Crowley was waiting patiently.
He expected the Bentley to head in the direction of the Ritz, or maybe the National Gallery, but they were pulling up at the park of all place.
Well, thought Aziraphale as he stepped out of the passenger side, it was sentimental at least… but it was also bordering on zero degrees and the ducks had all taken shelter for the abrupt burst of wintery weather.
“What about the ducks, dear?” Aziraphale all but pouted. He knew Crowley had a soft spot for the little devils and it seemed unbefitting that they weren’t milling around trying to scavenge food the duo didn’t bring on their first actual date.
“What about the ducks?” Crowley said absently, he was leaning against the Bentley, somewhat out of the angels view.
“They’re special,”
“Of course they’re special, angel.”
Aziraphale sensed he wasn’t quite getting the point.
“This has to be special.” He snapped.
“Don’t worry, it will be. You walk on ahead and I’ll catch up.”
Aziraphale took off, imagining the redhead jogging up alongside him and linking their arms together. That wouldn’t be too fast would it? No, it’d be perfect.
Only half a minute later, he heard a burst of laughter. Someone had taken out their phone and was pointing the camera at something behind him. He turned to find a demon speeding towards him with a look of smug glee on his face. They collided somewhat and that’s when Aziraphale saw them:
The shoes.
“What the devil?” He recoiled slightly.
“Like ‘em, angel?” He kicked one of his feet up in an inhumanly display of flexibility. “Another fun millennial invention.” He drew out the words, letting them sink in, waiting for Aziraphale to screw up his nose and insist the demon cease and desist before people started staring.
People had already started staring and the Youtube video of a middle aged man zooming through the park in a three piece suit already had 50 hits and steadily rising.
But Aziraphale didn’t stammer and fluster, he just tipped his head curiously.
“Why would you think that was proper attire for a first date?”
Crowley took a few seconds to catch up to this one.
“Ngk… What?”
“Why are you wearing those.”
“No, no, the other thing. Since when is this a date?” Crowley’s cheeks burned.
He’d imagined it, sure, but always thought he’d get more than -15 minutes notice.
Aziraphale’s expression was unreadable.
“You asked me, dear.” With a tone of surprising patience. “To go out-out with you.”
This time Crowley actually fed these words and their connotations through the language centre of his brain, which promptly spat out:
“Oh, fuck. I did, didn’t I?”
To his surprise, the angel was giggling. Yes, giggling like a teenage girl with her first crush. He grabbed Crowley’s arm and began to lead him slowly back to the Bentley, somewhere along the way Crowley’s body gave up on movement and he was being dragged by Aziraphale, helpfully aided by the wheels on the soles of his shoes.
“I’m afraid I’ve shaken you up a bit with my modernity recently. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I’m not an idiot, my dear.” They stopped outside the Bentley. “I know what’s going on in the world, I just choose to ignore it.”
“I know that,” Crowley mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. “And I’m glad you ignore it. It’s what makes you, well, you. Actually, I was trying to get you to give up the whole charade.”
“That’s what these were for,” Crowley gestured.
Aziraphale looked down at the offensive shoes.
“My dear that’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard. I’d love you to sit down and explain to me how you thought all that was going to work out because I haven’t the foggiest idea about where you were going with this one.”
“Turns out I was going on a date.” Crowley without a hint of his usual sarcasm.
Aziraphale averted his eyes.
“Yes, well, sorry about the misunderstanding. I can see now you had… other things on your mind and I obviously misinterpreted.” He fussed about with the hem of his sleeve. Crowley took a step closer, cursing his stupid shoes and the way the slide treacherously over the frozen ground.
“I actually had you on my mind.” He laughed softly. “It was just you, and your books, and your mannerisms and they were drowning out my commonsense and I just wanted it all.”
Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat, eyes searching the other man’s face as if trying to divine the truth.
“So, you mean you would be happy to—?”
“Honoured, in fact.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale exhaled with a giddy smile, and tentatively brought his arms up to Crowley’s shoulders, pulling him closer.
“I would too,” he whispered as they fell gracelessly in to their first hug in how-many-millenia. “Just one thing though,” the angel opened the passage door of the Bentley and Crowley frowned.
“What, angel?”
“So you do realise I’m going to have to tell everyone who asked that you tried to romance me by wearing heelies on our first date.”
Crowley glared at him, but a small smiled played at his lips.
“That’s so sad,” pouted Aziraphale. “Bentley, dear, play Despacito.”
In an uncharacteristic move, the Bentley acquiesced to this request, the angel slipped in to the passanger seat, smiling sweetly as the music blared.
"You bastard," Crowley said grinned as raced around to the driver's side.