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“What is that?” Crowley asks Aziraphale as he brings over a bright red box, all shiny and new and out of place in the dusty bookshop.
“I believe the humans call it a ‘bored game.’ As in, something to do when you’re bored!”
Crowley pauses in the middle of uncorking the wine bottle to stare at Aziraphale over the rim of his glasses. “I’m pretty sure it’s a board game, angel. Because it’s played on a board.”
“Oh, whatever it is. I thought it would be nice to try it out.” He sits down on the couch next to Crowley and places the box gently on the table.
“Scrabble? Really? Of all the board games out there, you had to pick the one where we actually have to think?”
“Thinking every now and again is good for you, dear. You really ought to try it sometime.”
“Like you have room to talk.” He fills two glasses as Aziraphale opens the box and studies the instructions.
“It doesn’t seem that hard,” Aziraphale says, exchanging the glass of wine Crowley hands him with the instructions.
“Instructions are for losers,” he says, tossing the paper to the side without a second glance. “What could be so hard about it? Just putting letters together to make words, it’s right there on the box.”
“There is a little bit more to that, my dear, the rules said –”
“Fuck the rules. Let’s get this started. You go first.”
Aziraphale sighs, setting the game up carefully before picking seven tiles out of the bag and putting it on his rack, making sure to tilt it away from Crowley’s prying eyes. He looks the letters over before placing the word ‘splits’ vertically in the middle of the board. He counts the points up before writing it down on the scorecard with the little pencil that came in the box. He sets the pencil down and pulls his replacement tiles out as Crowley looks over his rack. Through all of this, a content little smile spreads across his face.
“I’ll make ‘lame,’ like what this game is.” He puts the three letters down off of the ‘l’ in splits, and Aziraphale adds his score to the card.
“I shall use your ‘e’ and make ‘stooge,’” Aziraphale chirps. He is having all too much fun as he places the tiles down. Meanwhile, Crowley is already on his second glass of wine.
“Stooges,” Crowley says, placing the ‘s’ down.
The game continues like this for a while, with Aziraphale making long words and Crowley adding a letter or two at the end to change them. They were both having their fair share of wine, so they were through two bottles before the tiles were even half gone.
“I see your ‘infest’ and raise you ‘infests.’”
“Crowley, you can’t just keep adding an ‘s’ onto each word I place!”
“Why not, angel?” he teases. “Is it against the rules? Is it because of that itty bitty paper over there?” He gestures vaguely to the entire table. “I’m making words; I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”
Aziraphale purses his lips. “Yes, but last time you placed an ‘s,’ you placed it on a triple point tile, and managed to get more points than I did for the entire word!”
He shrugs. “That’s not my fault. It’s just part of the game.”
“Fine.” Aziraphale finishes another glass of wine and passes it to Crowley for refills. “I’ll use this ‘t’ and make ‘outgo.’ And if you make outgoing, Crowley, I swear to – someone–”
“Hmmm?” Crowley interrupts, a playful smile on his face. “What are you going to do, angel? Make me go home to my lonesome and not talk to me for the rest of the night? Make me cover the check the next time we’re out?”
Aziraphale adopts a disapproving stare but does not say anything.
“Thought so.” He looks around the board and builds off of one of the ‘s’ tiles he has placed. “I’ll make ‘stan.’”
“Dear, that isn’t a word.”
“It is too!” Crowley defends. “You just don’t get out enough to hear literally any of the young humans use it.”
“Let me hear it in a sentence then.”
Crowley pauses as he thinks it over, muttering something before taking a generous drink of wine.
“I’m sorry, dear, did you just – did you just say you ‘stan’ me?”
“What about it?”
“There is no possible way that is a real word; it doesn’t even make sense!” Aziraphale stands and walks over to his desk, looking over the books before pulling out the one he needs.
“Oh, no, come on, angel, there’s no need to pull out the dictionary–”
“I will absolutely pull the dictionary out; I am not giving you points for a made-up word!”
Crowley huffs. “Angel, that thing has to be centuries old. There’s no way any sort of modern dialogue is going to be in it. The word street might not even be in it! Unless you want to tell me ‘street’ isn’t a real word either?”
Aziraphale glares at him before settling back onto the couch with the dictionary in his lap, placing his little reading glasses on the bridge of his nose as he opens the cover. “Stan. Let’s see. St, st…”
As he starts to flip through the pages, Crowley wiggles his fingers out of sight of the angel, so when Aziraphale does reach the right page and carefully runs his finger down the line of words, it is sitting there on the paper, clear as day.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Aziraphale says as he reads the definition. “What does this say? ‘An extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan?’” He looks over to Crowley, who is suddenly very interested in a bookshelf on the far wall, where he does not need to look at Aziraphale. “My dear, you said you ‘stan’ me as your sentence?”
“I do,” Crowley mumbles. “Not in like a creepy way or anything, because trust me, some people take stanning way too far. But like, a, supportive way. Very supportive, me.”
Aziraphale hums thoughtfully as he reads the definition over again. “I suppose I ‘stan’ books, then.”
Crowley nods suddenly, looking over to him. “Yes, yes, of course. That makes much more sense than mine.”
Aziraphale shuts the dictionary and sets it on the table next to him, carefully folding his glasses back up and placing them on top. “Well, I suppose I need to give you your points then.”
The game progresses slower and slower the more wine the pair drinks. Any normal game would have been over by now. There seems to be no end to the letter tiles though, so there may be a small demonic or angelic intervention hanging over the game, completely accidental on whoever’s account it is.
Aziraphale holds the scorecard out and is waving it in Crowley’s face, as if he means to hit him with it. “Stop taking my points!”
“‘M not taking your points. They’re their own points. Stop assigning them to yourself; they can do as they please.”
“That’s – that’s the point of the game though! Points! They have to be assigned!”
“Well, maybe you should ask them before you assign them, then they are consenting points.”
Aziraphale furrows his brow as he tries to take a drink from his glass, making it to his mouth on the third try. He looks down at the scorecard and says, “Do you all want to be our points?”
The paper does not answer.
“No protest there, angel. Consenting points. Now, who's turn is it?”
“I’m not quite sure.” Aziraphale hums. “Suppose its mine.” He looks to his letters and frowns, blinking a few times to make sure he is seeing it properly. “Well, that’s sta– strn– odd.”
“Mmm, what is?”
He turns the small rack, and the seven letters it contains spells out ‘Crowley.’
“You can’t use that,” Crowley says immediately, accidentally spilling wine down his shirt as he falls back across the couch. “You said I couldn’t use names, so. No names for you either.”
“I was certain I had an ‘x’ there,” Aziraphale continues. “Very certain. I couldn’t think of a word with x in it, so it’s been there for a while.”
“Xylophone,” Crowley offers. “Fox. Hoax. Mixtape.”
“Mixtape?”
Crowley nods. “Somethin’ them humans do. Put their music together on a tape, sell it themselves. I think.”
“How do you put music on a piece of tape?”
“No, no, angel. Tape – uh, tape – tape as in, like, tape recorder. Or cassette.”
“Ah,” Aziraphale nods. He vaguely knows what a cassette is.
Crowley frowns and sits back up, looking at his own rack of tiles. “Well, that’s new.”
“Did yours change too?”
He turns the rack so it is next to the other, the letters ‘aziraph’ sitting in a row.
“Oh, stop messing with the letters, dear, we’ll never finish the game.”
“I don’t think I’m the one doin’t.”
This causes Aziraphale to frown. “I’m not either.”
They look to the board, where most of the words have changed to something else. Words like ‘love’ and ‘adore’ scatter the square, as well as ‘fond’ and ‘enchanted.’
Aziraphale clutches at his glass of wine, looking at it before gently setting it down. “Perhaps we should sober up.”
Crowley wordlessly nods, and in a few seconds, the pair are looking upon the same board, but with much more sober eyes.
Scratching the back of his neck, Aziraphale asks, “So this wasn’t you?”
“Not that I’m aware of, at least.”
“Would…” Aziraphale starts, losing confidence. “Would you want it to be?”
Crowley turns to look at Aziraphale, confused. “Would you?”
Aziraphale sighs, looking back across the board. He was not sure if he was the reason for it, either, but he knew his answer. He nods briefly, eyes trained on the table.
“Me – me too,” Crowley croaks. Aziraphale’s head snaps up to meet Crowley’s eyes, hidden behind the dark frames. Reaching out, Aziraphale takes the glasses off, folding them up and placing them next to his own. Without them, Crowley looks much more vulnerable, and Aziraphale can see exactly what those sunglasses have hidden for the last 6000 years – love.
Aziraphale is the first to lean in, but Crowley meets him in the middle, foreheads touching before their lips connect in a tender, sweet kiss. It’s shocking for both of them as their bodies mold together, each burying a hand in the other’s hair.
They do not know how long they kissed for, for all sense of time had vanished the moment their lips met. When they finally, finally pull away from each other, their hair all messed up from the other’s hand, the board and all the tiles are back to how they had been.
“I ‘stan’ you, Crowley,” Aziraphale says.
Crowley chuckles. “I stan you too, angel.” He pulls Aziraphale back in for another kiss, determined to make up for 6000 years of pining.