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“Where do you want them, angel?”
“Oh, put them with the rest, dear. I don’t think I’ll start classifying them till tomorrow.”
Crowley puts the box full of books next to the pile of equally full of books boxes they had spent the whole day moving —he offered to miracle them automatically into the shelves, but Aziraphale refused, reminding him they shouldn’t go around using their powers for any reason—. The houseplants weren’t so difficult to transport and they are already in the greenhouse —which Crowley thinks doesn’t provide the atmosphere for the kind of terror he wants to inspire on them—, but the most precious items in Aziraphale’s collection are a whole different story.
“I don’t know why you can’t keep them at the bookshop,” Crowley comments, picking up an especially old book and flipping through the pages.
“I already told you, dear,” he replies, finishing unpacking one of the first boxes to arrive. “It wouldn’t feel right. And you love sleeping.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, what am I supposed to do while you sleep? I need something to keep my mind busy.”
“But you could simply go to London once a month and bring what you…” He stops when something falls from inside the book. A yellowed piece of paper. “What’s this?”
“What is what?”
“This…”
When Aziraphale turns around and walks towards him, Crowley has already grabbed it and is staring at it with wide eyes. The angel doesn’t even have a second of shock and embarrassment before the tenderest rush of acknowledgment runs through him. He caresses the edge of the aged paper, a soft smile on his face.
“Oh…” He sighs, “This must have been Edward.”
“Edward?”
Crowley alternates between looking at the picture and looking at him. It’s a portrait. Charcoal, it seems. And it’s rather explicit and, most importantly, it’s Aziraphale.
Alright, maybe it’s not that explicit. But it’s certainly evocative. He’s lying in some kind of elegant daybed, on his side. His gaze is on the spectator, as if he was just taken by surprise, but his features are still relaxed and dignified. Even though nothing can be seen under the sheet that partially covers his body, his bare hip showing sends a clear message: he’s not wearing anything underneath.
“Yes, Edward,” present-day Aziraphale confirms, like Crowley should already know who he’s talking about. “You can tell it’s him because he sometimes applied too much pressure on the paper, but I think it was part of his charm as an artist, you know? See what he did with my eyes? So expressive. Edward was known for capturing people’s souls with his…”
“He truly is great, angel, but I still have no idea who he is.”
Aziraphale seems astonished.
“Do you mean I never told you about Edward?”
Crowley shrugs and he can’t help but giggle.
“Oh, I’ve made a fool of myself, then! I completely forgot to tell you about my good friend Edward.”
“Were you friends?”
“Yes, of course. We met back in 19th century, at a discreet gentlemen club we used to visit.”
“Interesting,” Crowley nods, hands in pockets. “And exactly how close were you?”
Aziraphale blushes a bit.
“Quite close, as you can see. When he said he wanted to draw me I was honestly very reluctant. I mean, we angels are used to be represented in human art, and it’s not like there haven’t been some… suggestive portrayals of us, but never this specific… never about me.” A shadow of sadness crosses his face for a second. “But Edward was so insisting. He said there was something timeless… ethereal about me, and if he couldn’t immortalize it, he would die.”
“But you’re already immortal, angel.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, you know what he meant. At least I knew it. And it made me feel so… so loved? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like that. It’s a very… a very special kind of love, the love from an artist to his muse. It can create the most beautiful things.”
“And…” He searches for the better words. “And what happened… I don’t know, after he drew this one, for example?”
Aziraphale gives him a weird smile.
“Are you asking if he… if I let him make love to me?”
Without intending to and incapable of doing something to prevent it, Crowley’s face turns red.
“That’s a way to put it, I guess.”
Aziraphale chuckles.
“Well, not after this particular one, but… there were others.” Crowley gulps. “I don’t know where they are, though. I suppose he just kept them or… burned them, perhaps.”
“Burn them? Why would he do that? This is great…”
The angel looks suddenly hurt, his voice lowers.
“It wasn’t an easy time for people like him… like us, dear.”
Crowley sighs and Aziraphale figures out he needs to lighten the mood.
“He was truly something. Not only a remarkable illustrator, but also a prodigious musician. He even composed a piece about me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He named it Sonata for an angel… No, I never told him. Lucky guess, it appears. He always said I reminded him of a cherub.”
“That’s awful!”
“I told you not to be like that!” He exclaims, laughing. “You know what he meant. Something to do with my shape and my eyes, he told me. I don’t quite remember. But he did composed a piece about me.”
Suddenly not wanting to hear more about this artistic Hercules that has been dead for decades and who shouldn’t make him feel threatened at all, Crowley turns around and focuses on his plants at the other side of the room.
“Yeah, whatever,” he shrugs, “Did you know Freddie Mercury wrote a song about me?”
“Did he?” Aziraphale questions with genuine curiosity.
“You might heard it before. Let me tell you, humans love it. ‘Better than sex’, some of them say. Bohemian Rhapsody. You know ‘Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me’ and all that… Well, not exactly a devil, but we can’t blame humans for not using the proper terms, right? Their lives are too short.”
“Sometimes shorter than they should…” the angels agrees, voice changing as he looks at the drawing.
And damn, Crowley feels bad. There he is, more than a century later, jealous of a guy who spent his whole life hiding in a discreet club, keeping his art a secret and hoping for a happy ending that would never come. He can’t do this. Whoever this man was, Aziraphale truly cared for him, and that should be enough for Crowley to be thankful for his existence.
“Ngk, angel, I…” He clears his throat. “Bohemian Rhapsody is… is not about me. Sorry I lied, I just… ngh.”
Aziraphale looks back at him, hurt and surprised.
“It’s alright, though. I mean, I’ve never actually… met Freddie or anything, but… it’s not like you fucked your precious Oscar Wild or something, uh? Heh.”
Aziraphale makes a funny face.
“No way, angel, Oscar Wilde, too?!”
“I-it was a long century you were gone, alright?!” Aziraphale defends himself. “And… and it’s not like we lied to each other. Edward and I, I mean. Oscar was just a… one-night experiment, would you say? But… Edward knew I already had someone and I knew he had someone, too. And the two of us knew… thought we could never be with them.”
And damn, Crowley feels even worse now.
“Angel…”
“It’s not… it is not a tragedy. Not at the start, at least. He loved this human. Tom, I think. He showed me a picture of him once. Nice, warm eyes. Quite… charming, with all due respect.”
“And did he feel the same?”
“Yes, of course. But they couldn’t… it couldn’t happen. It was not that simple. I think that brought us together. I already told you we deeply loved each other. Not in a conventional way… not like I love you, but we still did. And spending… spending some quality time together at night really helped us.”
Crowley gulps at the thought. He keeps repeating to himself that he has no right to feel betrayed, that at the time it was unthinkable for Aziraphale and him to share that kind of contact, that things were different. Still, the demonic, possessive part of him wants to know every detail and find one that can make him either feel better about himself or have an excuse to hate the poor dead guy.
“Did you… I don’t know, enjoy it?”
“Enjoy it, dear?”
“What am I asking? Of course you enjoyed it. Why would you even…? Ngk, of course, forget it.”
“Oh, but I didn’t enjoy it in a conventional way, either.”
Crowley freezes.
“Excuse me, what?”
“I said I didn’t enjoy it in a conventional way.”
The demon chuckles.
“Was he… that bad?”
Aziraphale turns red.
“No, he wasn’t bad at all! He just… I wasn’t in my most comfortable shape, I suppose.”
“You weren’t what?”
“Listen, I…” He lowers his voice. “I was making a… a female effort with him, yes?”
Crowley frowns.
“Didn’t you say he went to gay clubs? Wouldn’t you both have enjoyed it much more if…?”
“I told you it was not that simple. His family… his family expected him to marry a woman. And… and he told me he couldn’t do it, that it would destroy him from inside out. So I… I pretended to be… wait, they have a word for that now, don’t they?”
“Trans?”
“Yes, that’s it! I pretended to be trans. And he didn’t mind, clearly. I was pretty…”
“Cis-passing?”
“That. At least with my clothes on. I knew he didn’t quite understand how it was possible and he wanted to ask a lot of very personal questions, but he remained polite and he wasn’t disgusted by it at all. In fact, I believe he was thankful. That was the point, after all.”
“Sorry, what was the point?”
“They were planning to force him to… to be with a woman. I guess I wanted to make sure that, when he was with that lucky unfortunate lady, he could just turn the candle off and… pretend he was with someone he actually loved. At least the physical sensation would be the same and I also tried to fake a more… high-pitched voice, just in case she was… loud.”
A thick silence fills the air for a while.
“I hope this knowledge hasn’t changed your opinion on me, dear.”
Crowley takes his hand.
“Angel, I can’t believe that the… holier bloody thing you have ever done wasn’t an order from people upstairs.”
Aziraphale laughs, shaking his head.
“Well, it was not that holy, but…” His smile slowly fades. “I know we are not supposed to become… fond of specific humans. It’s just a recipe for disaster, isn’t it? But sometimes, once in a lifetime… one of them really touches you. Not… not in a sinful sense, even though it certainly sounds like it. And you touch them, too. And you never forget them, no matter what.”
“What happened to him?”
Aziraphale looks up.
“It just… It doesn’t sound like he died of old age, did he?”
“No… he didn’t.”
“I promise you can tell me… as long as you want to. You don’t have to…”
“He took his own life, Crowley.”
“He did what?”
“It was…” Aziraphale unsuccessfully tries to hold back tears. “Back in 1883, I believe. Exactly two days before his wedding. He left a note when he announced his plans. I don’t know what they did with his body. I suppose they hide it like a dirty family secret. We… we held a small goodbye party for him at the club… Tom never showed up, even though I wrote him a few letters. Guess he wouldn’t want to get too involved.”
“Angel, I’m sorry,” Crowley puts his arms around him.
Aziraphale accepts the gesture.
“I am sorry, too.”
A few days later, Aziraphale is comfortably reading a book by the fireplace when Crowley puts his cell phone between the novel and him.
“What…?”
“I need you to listen to something.”
“Oh, be-bop, isn’t?”
“No, it’s not. Put on the earphones, come on.”
Aziraphale obeys without enthusiasm and Crowley presses play like he just discovered something marvellous.
Then, it kicks in. Piano music. Sad, nostalgic, sweet and… soft. So soft it makes him want to cry. He hasn’t heard it in decades and, still, he recognizes it from the very first note. He could never forget.
Tears fall from his eyes during the whole piece. He can’t even speak. He wouldn’t want to. It’s just too perfect to spoil it with exclamations of happiness. Neither of them say anything until it ends and, even after that, they respect the silence for some minutes.
“Crowley…”
“I assume I got it right?” Crowley grins smugly.
“But… how? Dear, how did you find it?”
“Just searched Sonata for an angel and scrolled through several pages of results. It’s not very popular but… it’s fairly known by specialized circles.”
“I can’t believe this. I… I never thought I’d get to hear it again.”
“It doesn’t have his name, though. Wikipedia says the composer was some guy named Edgar Nightingale.”
Aziraphale couldn’t seem more confused.
“But,” Crowley adds, smile growing again, “what is even more interesting is… there is absolutely no register of him before 1883.”
“No register?”
“Not one single biographical fact. He just appeared at the French countryside with no past, barely knowing his name and age.”
The angel is still trying to process it when he continues:
“There’s a picture of him, if you’re interested.”
Aziraphale thinks it over. It obviously is the sonata, there’s no doubt about that. The dates make sense. But what if it’s all a mistake? What if this Edgar man just stole Edward’s work after he was found dead? Or even worse, what if Edward stole someone else’s work? He couldn’t bear to find out something like that. He knows he couldn’t live with it.
Does he have any other option, though? Is he prepared to live with the uncertainty? Of course not.
“Alright…” He takes a deep breath. “Show me.”
Crowley nods and opens the search engine. The picture is already there. And it is, in fact, Edward —looking a bit older, though—.
“It’s… it’s him. I… This is… Oh, Crowley, you make it so hard for me not to curse.”
“Well, I’m glad this time is because I did something right.”
Aziraphale pays attention to the man sitting next to Edward in the picture. Nice, warm eyes. Charming is the only adjective he can think of to describe him.
“And that’s… Tom.”
“His name wasn’t Tom, though. Not at this point,” Crowley clarifies.
“He must have changed it, too.”
“Yes. They moved to a small village in France and became quite appreciated by the community. People loved his painting. They even asked him to do a few frescos for the local church. ‘He paints angels like he actually met one’, they said. So, yeah, looks like you were a great muse.”
“Oh…”
“We could visit sometime, if you’d like. I heard they turned his old house in a nice little museum. Kind of a local celebrity, your old friend, angel.”
“So he faked his own dead…”
“I’m afraid so.” His face goes serious. “How do you feel about that?”
“I… I feel… relieved! All these years I thought he had a horrible life and an equally horrible death. But it turns out he… he got what he always wanted with the person he loved the most.”
Crowley puts an arm around him.
“Oh, if only that would happen to you, but you’re stuck with me instead.”
“Oh, shut it, you foul fiend!” He giggles, kissing his cheek.
They stare at the picture for a moment. Edward, Edgar or whoever he actually felt he was looks like the happiest man on Earth. He probably was the happiest man on Earth. Angels and demons don’t count.
“Well, I guess some things are meant to be,” Crowley can’t help but say.
Aziraphale opens his mouth.
“You know, angel, I’m feeling kind of tired. I could simply sleep through a whole century… and God knows she doesn’t make them like Oscar Wilde anymore, uh? So maybe… think it twice if you’re planning to make an ‘ineffable plan’ comment right now.”
And he shuts it.
And they kiss again.