Chapter Text
For one very wily demon and one very ineffably-challenged angel in the beginning there was light, and at the end there was probably something else. And in the middle? In the middle there was a great deal of moping about and denying themselves a very simple thing, a thing many creatures deny themselves on instinct anyway.
You could call it “free-will,” but God said only humans could have that after all, so they would have to call it something else.
Maybe “antipathy that became too soft” or “a very calm and decent friendship which was neither of those things.”
Or perhaps we could simply go back to an older God, a God discovered before God (though I’m being informed there is only one, but as a witch I plead the fifth), a Goddess you may know.
Aphrodite does not play dice with people’s hearts, she does however smirk, put on her good heals, and make the bastards work for it.
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The study of sociology first starts with an observation, close observation, data finding, and then conclusion.
One observation is that most revelations in life and in the movies- which is much like life, start with a strange feeling, a sudden mental connection, or swelling dramatic music (which Crowley would have surely included if he was consulted on such things). However, for Anthony J. Crowley it started with a word.
Now, the thing about words is that they are both powerful and nonsense all at once, humans made them up, and yet we need every other one of them to make any sense at all.
As the English majors say before they salivate over their own clever use of apostrophes, language starts and ends the universe itself. It started and ended Anthony J Crowley’s* universe at least.
*[Now, you may be wondering what the “J” stands for, Crowley himself doesn’t know, but according to Apphia’s impeccable second sight it stood for “James,” or “Janthony.”]
As such, Anthony Janthony Crowley was standing in the pouring rain on a Tuesday afternoon, an angel was standing next to him.
It was a bleak day, the clouds thick and tangy with their own self-indulgent grey moisture. A quilted sky drenched the streets of London in sheets of chilly autumn waters. It was deafening with the busy static of one fat raindrop hitting the ground after the next
It was the type of day that made you believe in global warming in the way occultists believe in cthulu and people pray to accountants during tax season.
An angel and a demon stood under a building overhang and observed both the noisy colorless rain and people running with their heads down from it. A square was in front of them with a statue in the middle and a round-about carefully circling the bronze lady.
Cars drove slowly round and round the square with little urgency to their movements, and a lot of smug satisfaction for not being the one running around outside.
“Oh dear,” the angel’s eyes traveled over the taxis passing them by. “Do you think you could hail one? You’ve always been better at getting their attention.”
Crowley was sighing heavily, “we couldn't have just let me bloody drive?”
Aziraphale frowned in the way that mime’s can’t make their way out of invisible boxes. “No one drives through Piccadilly Arcade. It’s a pedestrian zone Crowley.”
Crowley just grumbled, “not if you let me drive.”
Aziraphale waved a hand limply in the air, “you’re not helping.” He looked around, clutching a very well-bound book to his chest. “Can you tell when the weather will let up at least?”
“Yes, my forked tongue vibrates like a weather tuner to tell me when clouds are going to part,” he shook his head, “how long have we known each other?”
Aziraphale pinched his lips together tartly, “I meant, don’t you have one of your devices for this?”
“Oh,” Crowley’s shoulder shrank a little bit, but he was rather fond of the snappy tone. Even if Aphrodite would rate it as a perfectly disastrous execution. “Yes, yes, here.”
He took his phone out and easily brought up the weather app, which showed a string of tiny rainclouds all the way down.
He waved the little picture in front of Aziraphale’s nose, “I can teach you to actually use a smartphone. It’s easy.”
“You helped invent them,” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, “how easy could they be?” The words were slightly pointed, poised with their usual earnestness, but he was smiling with only the corners of his mouth.
Crowley’s heart did a funny thing that considered itself less funny and more of a very purposeful sailor tying knots there.
“I’ll just order us an Uber.”
“Wait!” Aziraphale stepped forward into the road, “there, I see an empty one now.”
Aziraphale stepped out from under the overhang into the cascading deluge and Crowley raised an eyebrow. They had just spent two hours haggling in a thrift shop to buy a bible with the word “smite” spelled wrong (“snite” was apparently continuously used in its stead). And Aziraphale was braving the natural elements still, merchandise in hand.
The angel ran off to hail the black cab in the middle of the circle, waving a hand in the air and employing a “good sir!” or two. The cabby however must’ve seen something terribly interesting or extremely important, perhaps sudden onset foodpoisoing. He veered off into another lane, sending a significant amount of water splashing over the curb.
Aziraphale froze in place on impact.
“FUCK.” He was hit with a wave of cold, ground-flavored water, he looked down at his parcel, “THIS IS A FIRST EDITION.” Aziraphale shook the book off and wiped at his face, “ fuck. ” He said it again more quietly but with no less passion.
A shiver went down Crowley’s spine. It was a good word, a solid word, a word that made lesser words contemplate their lack of uprightness and general shortcomings. And it also made Crowley’s mouth go dry.
“Well a very bad day to you!” Azirphale shook his fist lightly after the car and Crowley couldn’t help but grin. The angel retreated from the curb, expression soured and huffy in all the right angles.
Something warm hovered behind Crowley’s tongue and a feeling of biting into eternity hit in the back of his consciousness. Aphrodite whispered in tongues to him, but he was technically part of a different club than her. And was also extremely thick.
He didn’t hear her.
“Come on Angel,” Crowley gestured, “Tom in a green hatchback is coming. I’ll miracle you a towel.”
Aziraphale was still grumbling and probably considering some good old-fashioned smiting (or “sniting”) of a cabby or two. Perhaps bring down a plague of customers who kept forgetting their wallets in their other pants.
Crowley just shook his head and pulled a towel out of the celestial linen closet, using it to pat down his shoulder tops, “just clean off the book.”
Aziraphale gave a put-upon sigh, “it’s really about the principle of it.” He sighed and quickly dried himself before Tom pulled up and waved at them.
Crowley put a hand on the small of Aziraphale’s back to guide him for just a moment, and for a moment it felt normal. Expected. Like surely this wasn’t his first rodeo, maybe even his second one, and maybe this time he was going to get it right.
Aziraphale cursed when he tripped down the curb and Crowley swallowed roughly. The way the angel’s mouth formed the word just seemed so much more correct than when Crowley said it. Like the syllables adored him and were all too eager to form and find purpose.
Crowley tripped after him as well.
Aphrodite groaned from somewhere distant and technically non-existent.
The courting between angels and demons was done in a language no one spoke and in ways that moved in circles. It was going to take a lot to break that circle, luckily it was the night for such things.
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