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“What does handsome even mean, anyway?” Aziraphale slurred. “‘S ridic- ... ridic... anyway it’s quite silly, I think.”
“Wha?” Crowley lifted his head off of the arm of Aziraphale’s couch—it might once have borne a remarkable resemblance to the slick black minimalist kind of thing that Crowley liked to acquire, except that it was now what Crowley insisted was a truly egregious shade of tartan, comfortably overstuffed and no longer suitable for Crowley’s flat.
Crowley blamed Aziraphale, which left Aziraphale feeling quite pleased with his new sofa and wondering who exactly had done it. “Who’s handsome? I’m quite handsome, I think.”
“Nononono, not being handsome. The word. Hand-some. It’s a funny word.” Aziraphale wrestled with his thoughts. His thoughts, having been greatly bolstered by the addition of inhuman amounts of alcohol, wrestled right back.
“I-“ Aziraphale said. “I mean you do have hands.”
“Well, technically,” Crowley allowed. He lifted the hands in question and waggled them in a way that warmed Aziraphale’s cheeks considerably. “They’re quite clever, you know. Hands. Fantastic inventions. All kinds of things to do with them. I suppose we’re both quite handsome, when you look at it that way.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said. This was not the conversation they were supposed to be having, he was sure of it. “Wait, what?”
Crowley groaned, and Aziraphale’s body suddenly had feelings where he’d always managed to studiously avoid them before. “Angel,” Crowley said urgently, glasses tipping down his—it was quite a handsome face, Aziraphale thought, how had he never noticed that?
“You are, you know. Quite handsome. I just never looked before,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley sat up and rubbed his eyes with the air of one who had been blackout drunk only the moment before but has suddenly become quite sober. “You’ve been looking at me for 6,000 years,” he said. “What do you mean you never noticed?”
Sobriety crashed into Aziraphale like certain birds crash into aircraft engines, when those aircraft are full of passengers and over the open water.
Crowley stared at him. Aziraphale’s thoughts were a screaming mess, strapping on oxygen masks and assuming crash positions.
“It’s just that you’re you,” Aziraphale began. Crowley flinched. “No, no, my dear. I just never paid much attention to the outside, you see. It wasn’t my job.”
“And now you are?” Crowley asked. He was smirking. Aziraphale was struck with the sudden urge to smirk, himself. Maybe if he smirked, Crowley would smirk ... closer. Much closer.
Aziraphale opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again miserably. Somewhere in the back of his brain, a pilot was asking everyone to please remain calm and remember that their seats could be used as flotation devices in the event of an unscheduled water landing.
“You’ve lived here for 6,000 years,” Crowley said slowly, “and not once noticed the way I look.”
“Of course I have! Not. I have not.” Aziraphale looked down at the space in his lap where Crowley’s legs had recently been. He sighed and slumped back into the sofa. He glared half-heartedly at the bookshop’s telephone, but it stubbornly refused to ring.
Crowley’s smirk softened into something Aziraphale had only caught glimpses of before, fond and exasperated. Every inch of his skin felt hot and tight with anticipation and embarrassment.
“Better late than never, I suppose,” Crowley said, standing. “Come on, Angel. I could do with some food. Crepes? You can notice me all you’d like over crepes.”
“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale, whose head felt like a large passenger airplane making a violently unscheduled landing on the water.
Crowley opened the door. “I’ve been looking at you for millennia. Only fair to return the favor.”
---
Aziraphale noticed Crowley a lot over crepes. Crowley, being Crowley, had ordered an entire table of foods both sweet and savory, some of which Aziraphale was positive hadn’t been prepared in centuries. Those, he politely re-miracled when Crowley was looking elsewhere.
Crowley had an eye for what things looked like, Aziraphale decided privately, but he’d never truly appreciated the nuance of flavor the way Aziraphale had.
Crowley lounged across the table—there was no other word for it, it was a posture that managed to convey that he was both very interested and not interested at all in whatever might happen next.
Aziraphale—Angel, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Friend to both the Antichrist and the serpent of Eden—fidgeted with his fork and watched the aforementioned serpent as subtly as possible.
“You’re staring,” Crowley said. There was laughter in his voice. Real laughter, not the sneering, dismissive kind that Crowley used to scoff at everything else. The sound of it was unexpectedly lovely, the feel of it was like sitting in a favorite chair surrounded by stacks of books with the late sun shining through the window and Aziraphale puzzling through another botched translation. It was the smell of old paper, the satisfaction of having found just the right words. Crowley was a puzzle, and Aziraphale loved puzzles.
Crowley, Aziraphale was beginning to realize, was Aziraphale’s very favorite puzzle of all.
“Have I got something on my face?” Crowley asked, amused. A speck of whipped cream to the right of his mouth that Aziraphale had in fact noticed trembled and winked out of existence as Crowley summarily disbelieved in it.
At the surrounding tables, dozens of angry patrons began to complain loudly that all the whipped cream had gone from their dishes. The servers were just as surprised, as was the dessert chef, who found himself in possession of an industrial-sized mixing bowl full to the brim with absolutely nothing.
Aziraphale muttered under his breath and the angry buzzing of the crowd stopped entirely as the cream reappeared and everyone got down to the serious business of forgetting the previous 30 seconds had ever happened.
Crowley rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
Aziraphale beamed. The desserts were delicious, the company was fine, the world would continue, and that was where all of Aziraphale’s thoughts came to a screeching halt.
“What do you mean, you’ve been noticing me?”