Chapter Text
"There is no better place to heal a broken heart than on the back of a horse.”
- Missy Lyons, Cowboys Don’t Sing
Part One – Crowley
Scarlett Meadows, Lemoyne. A Monday, 1899.
If there had been a single doubt left in Crowley’s mind as to whether or not his current assignment was a punishment, it would have been like a tiny flame on a candle left in a mouldering sconce at the end of that long-abandoned hallway of thought. This evening had tromped down the hallway, gleefully licked its fingers, and pinched the flame out.
“They’re takin’ chase!” Karen cried, her blonde ringlets gone wild about her face in the wind. “Hold on tight, Mr. Crowley!”
As if he had any other option. They were on a horse, thundering down a dry, red dirt road in the moonlight, and it would have been hard to argue whether the hooves or the gunshots around them were kicking up more dust.
Crowley wrapped his left arm tighter around Karen’s soft middle. Her ample, corseted bosom had been flirting with the idea of mutiny all evening but seemed serious about it now, what with all the turbulence. Crowley hoped the corset would hold. Karen had half of the night’s petty thievings tucked into that bodice. He’d be blessed if he was slithering down off the back of this animal to scrabble about in the dirt for a handful of coins and jewelry.
The theft hadn’t been Crowley’s true goal for the night’s venture, anyway. It was the commotion he’d been after. He just thought he’d have a chance to slink away before he ended up in the thick of it.
“Aw, hell! More on the right,” Bill shouted. He was a bear of a man and rode a horse with feet the size of dinner plates. Crowley followed his gaze to the trees to see a pair of men riding up fast, pistols raised.
Crowley had a pistol in his own free hand; A Schofield revolver he’d designed himself to have gold filigree engravings on blue steel. There was a rattlesnake carved into each side of the ebony grip. It was terribly pretty and he hated to use it. Then again, being shot off the back of a horse by any number of no-named American hooligans would be an idiotic way to get discorporated. He raised his pistol.
In the weeks that he’d been traveling with the Van der Linde gang, Crowley’d acquired a nickname: Sidewinder . He’d like to think it had something to do with his, you know, venomous charm or some such. Really, it came down to the fact that he hadn’t bothered to learn to shoot his gun properly and people around him had started to notice that no matter where he sort of aimed it, his bullets tended to curve about and then miraculously hit their mark.
Miraculous being the key word.
Crowley pulled a bit of demonic energy to his fingertips, willed it up into the barrel of the gun, and shot twice. Bill whooped, Karen barked a laugh, and Crowley holstered his gun. He could feel the life force of the leader of their troop, Arthur, a ways back down the road. He could also feel when Arthur extinguished their remaining threats.
“Er, slow up,” Crowley said. “I think we’re in the clear.”
Karen pulled her horse back into a brisk trot and Bill followed suit. Moments later, Arthur caught up with them, his horse snorting and carrying on.
“Well, that was a damn mess!” Arthur said in greeting. He pulled off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his arm before replacing it.
“Now now , Arthur,” Bill said. He held up a placating hand. “I bet you we made outta there with more’n a hundred dollars in cash, not to mention whatever Karen and Mr. Crowley shoved down their drawers before those bastards caught on.”
“Not a scratch on us, neither,” Karen added. Arthur looked to Crowley.
“Right,” Crowley said. “Yeah. Cheers.” He wasn’t entirely sure what response Arthur was after.
Arthur Morgan was not an easy man to parse. Crowley should know. He’d been trying to tempt him toward various evils for the better part of a month with limited success.
Arthur raised his eyebrows, seeming to just notice that Crowley was perched precariously on the rump of Karen’s little grey mare instead of in the saddle of his own separate beast. He heaved out a sigh.
“Do I even wanna know?” Arthur asked.
There wasn’t much to know other than that Crowley had been avoiding horse riding at every turn for most of the last millennium and wasn’t about to pick up the hobby now. Last night around the campfire, he’d told the gang that he’d be riding out before the sun for a mysterious errand and would meet them at the rendezvous point at dusk for the burglary. He’d just miracled himself there, and would have miracled himself out if he’d had his druthers.
“Never mind,” Arthur said suddenly with a quick glance to either side. “Let’s move. Split up and we’ll meet back at camp.”
Crowley had been asleep when the first work order came through three months ago.
To be precise, he’d been asleep for thirty-seven years. It was sort of a long-term, stroppy depression nap that he wasn’t ready to face the cause nor the consequences of yet. He honestly thought he’d been getting away with it, too. That was hubris for you.
When Crowley woke, he hadn’t even been sure what woke him. It was the second slip of paper popping into existence over his bed and fluttering down onto his chest that clued him in. Then, there was a third.
The third paper left a soft trail of black smoke as it fell. Crowley was quick to snatch it up away from the others and indeed his bed linens once he realized the edges were lightly smoldering. He gave it a quick look-over for the important bits.
INTERNAL AUDIT, it said. Compliance Reports Overdue, it said. Failure to attend staff meetings , it said.
“Well, shit,” Crowley muttered, frowning at the paper. A moment later, it truly caught fire. Crowley startled and flicked it to the side, but not before he felt the tepid brush of flames against his fingertips. It was naught but ash when it hit the floor and Crowley rolled his eyes.
“Dramatic,” he said, still lying so flat in bed that he was giving himself a double chin just looking forward at his chest. He picked up the other papers and read the first that had fallen.
‘ General Temptation Request for one ARTHUR MORGAN. Special attention to be given to GREED, with a minor in SLOTH. To be carried out IMMEDIATELY through to HIS DEATH - UNAIDED*
*(NATURAL or BY HUMAN VIOLENCE)
Missive ONE of TWO’.
Bit abstract, but standard enough. He tossed it aside to read the next page.
‘ Order of Relocation to UNITED STATES OF AMERICA for General Temptation Request , ARTHUR MORGAN (see Missive ONE).
Total Integration Required*, **
Supplementary Goals should include fomentation of CIVIL UNREST, REJECTION OF INDUSTRY, PROMOTION OF INDUSTRY, GENERALIZED CARDINAL SINNING.
*Free Week-ends and Holidays suspended until project completion
**Suggested human social groups for maximum efficacy: Following of DUTCH VAN DER LINDE or Following of COLM O’DRISCOLL
Missive TWO of TWO’.
That one had Crowley sitting up.
The bloody colonies. The so-called Wild West. Crowley curled his lip in distaste. Oh, he’d been there before. Lately, even, for a relative definition of lately. He’d nipped in just before their civil war had popped off and he still had a bad taste in his mouth.
His eyes slid to the pile of ash on the hardwood floor next to his bed. It seemed it would not go unnoticed if he bunked this one. ‘ At the same time’ , a tiny voice in his head chirped up, ‘ wouldn’t it serve him right if you skipped the continent? Aziraphale, I mean.’ (Another voice, somehow smaller, did add, ‘Are you sure he’d even notice?’ but that voice was shoved back violently and told on no uncertain terms to shut it.)
And so, options apparently being limited, Crowley went to America.
By the time Crowley decided to wake on Tuesday morning, the sun had been up for hours and he was the last of the gang out of bed. There were twenty-two of them in the Van der Linde gang, twenty-three if you included Crowley (and in accordance with his current infernal orders, you did). They were holed up in a great, crumbling plantation house that was hidden away on all sides by swampland and cypress trees. Hidden being the true appeal.
Even before Crowley had hooked up with this merry band of criminals, they’d been doing a bang-up job of starting absurd, disruptive shite on their own that required they stay well away from the law. They were a real mixed bag of the variety of mortals one might find here, and they all had their individual hopes and dreams… with their preferred illegal ways to accomplish them.
Aziraphale would have romanticized them all within an inch of their lives. It was too easy for Crowley to picture.
If Aziraphale were here, he would be pottering about the house during the day, making himself available should any of these miscreants betray a seed of kindness that might be coaxed into taking root against the odds, like a dandelion poking up through a seam in the cobbles. Still a weed, Crowley might get him to admit eventually, but far more beautiful than the nothing that was there before.
Oh yes, if he were here, Aziraphale would be pruning away at every last one of them to find that bud of kindness, that fragile stalk of good intention that surely only needed to see the Light to bloom.
No doubt in the evenings, Aziraphale would be out there sitting around the campfire with the lot of them, choking down moonshine and singing along with their vulgar songs to fit in. The firelight would warm his complexion and dance in the joyful squint of his eyes as he doled out those sunny, hopeful, indulgent smiles of his, encouraging everyone to bloody well blossom . Crowley scowled.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on the receiving end of that smile. Or rather, he probably could remember, but he wasn’t going to right now. Privately, he’d loved Aziraphale’s smile. Still did, most likely. Jury was out on whether he’d ever been allowed.
That day in St. James’, the day where Aziraphale made it explicitly clear that their friendship, their fraternization , was expendable to him, conditional… Well, Crowley had left feeling inexplicably hurt. More hurt than their actual argument might have earned. A brand of hurt that warranted some self-reflection, should Crowley choose to self-reflect. Unfortunately, Crowley hated to be honest with himself.
Crowley preferred to sort of let his subconscious haltingly spell out his feelings for him letter by letter like a pair of whispering siblings around a Ouija board in the dark after everyone’s gone to bed. He had the distinct feeling that throughout the last few hundred years, they’d been giggling and shushing each other through the spelling-out of ‘P-O-S-S-I-B-L-Y Y-O-U A-R-E I-N L-O-V’ before Aziraphale had stomped into the theoretical parlor like so many maiden aunts and snatched the board away, ushering them to bed because, whatever would their mother say if she found out ?
It was an awkward, existentially painful place to find himself. Awake, anyway. Crowley needed to get out of bed and do something or other with his day before he fell into a full-on wallow again.
The gang had set up their caravan of four wagons in a semi-circle in the courtyard facing the house. It helped to enclose the living spaces that they couldn’t set up inside, like the cookfire and the few tents of those who didn’t trust the more dilapidated rooms in the house not to crumble out from underneath them in the night. Crowley’s floor wouldn’t dare.
His room was on the second storey and the stairs creaked and groaned in the typical fashion as he descended them, but they held. On his way through to the foyer, Crowley snagged a packet of biscuits from the kitchen to brandish as a shield against whomever might try to offer him food. He stepped out into the oppressive bayou heat, and not even his tinted glass spectacles could save him from how disgustingly bright it was outside.
“’bout time you showed your face today, English!” A young man called from his seat around the fire. It was Sean, his Irish lilt rough with disuse as though he himself had only just woken. If not the voice, the way his overlong ginger hair was still a bit plastered to the side of his head was a giveaway.
He gestured toward Crowley with the tin coffee pot. At Crowley’s nod, Sean poured him a cup and handed it over. Crowley took it and sprawled down onto a rickety chair. He may have hated coffee, but lately this body of his fiended for the caffeine and he wasn’t above indulging it.
“Karen said you lost that fancy hat of yours last night,” Sean said. Before Crowley could confirm or deny, Sean picked up a decidedly un-fancy hat from the stump next to him and plunked it down on Crowley’s head. “Good thing I had a spare, eh?” He laughed and sat himself back down.
For as much demonic influence as it had taken to convince the Van der Linde gang that Crowley was who he said he was (which is to say, someone he definitely wasn’t), they had been quick to tuck him under their collective wing. Aziraphale would have been proud, Crowley noted. He took a sip of his coffee and winced at the bitterness.
“Thanks,” Crowley drawled. Sean grinned and winked. They set to drinking their coffee in silence.
It was interesting to Crowley that he could find a companionable silence with a being who wasn’t Aziraphale. Not that Aziraphale was big on silence when they were together. Just, Crowley’d definitely been lying when he’d told Aziraphale that he had plenty of others to ‘fraternize’ with. It was somewhat steadying after weeks of the sort of chaos that was, well, grittier than Crowley strictly preferred.
That being said, Crowley started to think that today might be the perfect day to relax. He could drink his disgusting coffee, be a bit demonic around camp for a change, and then take a solid nap well into the evening before Arthur was due to return and he ought to get down to some real tempting. The idea was newly formed, just the skeleton of a possibility, when it was slapped right out of his hands.
“Anthony J. Crowley!” Dutch Van der Linde called across camp, and Crowley barely managed not to fling himself out of his chair and have a tantrum in the dirt like a toddler.
He should have turned into a snake and slithered off through the brush last night, disappeared for a while, taken a holiday under a warm rock somewhere. Below probably wasn’t even watching him anymore, if they’d even been watching him so closely in the first place. After he’d gotten on the boat to the States and started turning his paperwork in on time again, he most likely went back to being just another drop in the demonic bucket, right?
Dutch sauntered over, cigar dangling between his knuckles, and Crowley tossed the rest of his coffee into the fire before he stood to meet him. Dutch placed an arm around Crowley’s shoulders without quite touching him and gave him what passed for a winning smile.
“Walk with me, my friend. I have a job for you.”
Dutch Van der Linde wore fine clothes. He must have had a substantial pomade budget, as Crowley had yet to see a single dark hair on his head out of place. He inhaled self-importance and exhaled confidence past a neatly kept mustache. He was a snake in the grass, and Crowley would be happy to assert that on a takes-one-to-know-one basis.
The job he had for Crowley was hardly unique. Ride out with Arthur, he said, to track down a man whose name Crowley didn’t listen to, to collect a debt that man owed the gang through whatever means necessary. In Crowley’s experience, that meant Arthur was either going to punch him very hard, or punch him very hard twice.
Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets as he listened and glanced up at the mid-morning sun.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t appreciate opportunities to encourage Arthur to be a bit violent and greedy handed to him on a platter, but it was going to be unbearably dull. Honestly, Crowley just wasn’t in the mood for it anymore.
He wasn’t going to do it.
“Well,” Crowley said when Dutch stopped talking, “I’d love to help, obviously.” He looked back at Dutch apologetically. “I’m a bit, er, horseless at the moment, though. Won’t be getting anywhere fast, me.”
As excuses went, it was thin. It was going to get Crowley out of this conversation long enough for him to skedaddle though, and that’s all he needed. The snake holiday plan was a go. Crowley was feeling altogether too confident about it when a hand clapped down on his shoulder from behind.
“Mr. Crowley,” Arthur said. He gave Crowley’s shoulder an ironic companionable wobble. “Looks like today’s your lucky day.”
“Ah. Where did you get, er, this,” Crowley said, hands on his hips.
He was stood at the side of a horse, looking at it over his glasses as if he really knew what to look for. This one was stout and tallish. It was a dark mahogany brown that seemed to want gleam red in the sunlight underneath all the dirt. There were two ears, four legs, the whole shebang. The large, dark eye nearest to Crowley seemed to be mirroring a similar level of weary disinterest back at him.
“Found her on the road into Emerald Ranch, fella in the saddle dead as a doornail,” Arthur said, arms crossed over his chest. “She was just walking on home, sweet as you please.”
Crowley felt his face inching into a grimace as he listened and corrected it.
“Thought that seemed like the kind of, uh, even-temper you might like in a horse,” Arthur finished. There was the ghost of a smile just behind the matter-of-fact expression on his face. Not mocking precisely, but… It was no secret Crowley was arse at horse riding. He flicked his gaze from Arthur and back to the horse.
“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Shit.”
Crowley pulled himself together. He straightened up, cleared his throat. “That is, are you sure you shouldn’t keep it? Nice horse like this?”
Arthur was sure.
“We should get a move on if we’re gonna catch Wilson while he’s still in Strawberry,” Arthur said. He reached out a hand and gave the horse a pat on the neck. “She’ll do alright. Get your stuff together and we’ll head out in ten.”
Arthur went to the house to collect his own things and Crowley watched him go, the idea of rebellion still kicking about half-heartedly in his mind. In the end it just wouldn’t be worth the effort it would take to get back in the gang’s good graces if he legged it now. He sighed and looked back to the horse.
The saddle on it was plain and crusted with blood on one side. One saddle bag held an unmarked bottle of something that smelled like bourbon, thirty-six cents, and a tarnished silver ring in a little velvet bag. The other saddle bag looked to have been blown apart by gunfire.
“S’pose your day hasn’t been very peaceful,” Crowley muttered dryly. The horse had no comment.
When Crowley’s casual inspection got to the face-end of the horse, he saw that there was a word carved into the leather of the bridle. He ran a finger along the crude letters.
“Angel,” Crowley read aloud. He swallowed around the sudden, strange lump forming at the back of his throat. “That your name, then?”
The horse eyed him passively and sighed out a gentle huff of warm breath against his chest. Then, as if catching a whiff of something interesting, started to nuzzle and lip hopefully at the fabric of his shirt.
“What? Oh,” Crowley patted his left trouser pocket and found the slim packet of oat biscuits he’d nicked on his way out the house. He unwrapped the stiff paper and offered her one. She took it and closed her eyes as she chewed, seemingly pleased.
“Angel, indeed,” Crowley said with a wry smile. As coincidences went, he hated it, but had to admit that it suited.
Arthur returned shortly with his own restless horse in tow. He swung himself up into the saddle and wheeled the animal around to face Crowley.
“We need to stop at the train station in Valentine on the way,” he said. He tapped the breast pocket of his vest where a bit of folded letter paper poked out the top. True to form, he didn’t explain further and Crowley didn’t bother to ask. Instead, Crowley nodded, mounted his horse, and they were off.
Valentine, a livestock town, was alive with the grunting of pigs and the bleating of sheep on top of the usual hubub in the streets. The streets, speaking of, were pure mud that unapologetically squelched and splattered as men and horses and wagons alike made their way through town. Even Aziraphale would have had to stretch to find it charming.
Crowley had yet to meet anyone in Valentine who wasn’t a complete hard-weathered tough. He could be biased of course, seeing as he’d only visited twice, but the first time he’d hardly had to bat a lash to coax an entire saloon into the most ridiculous, window-busting bar fight he’d ever seen. The second time, he and Arthur had gotten so disgustingly drunk in that same saloon that he’d woken up alone in a field without one of his boots, so his statistics weren’t great.
The point was, the people here were crap, the air stunk of sheep, and you couldn’t take a step without getting covered in muck. The idea of Aziraphale kicking about in a place like this was frankly laughable. Funnily, laughing felt like the least available option when Aziraphale actually did turn up.
Crowley knew he was there before he saw him. It was to do with the aura.
This place, like many Crowley had been to on this assignment, felt like drudgery and pain and the kind of mean-spirited boredom that was just waiting to kick out a leg and trip an innocent bystander for a laugh. It made sense; Crowley’d been around awhile and he’d been doing good work. Bad work? He’d done his job. But then the train that Arthur was here to meet squealed into the station with a great hiss of steam, and suddenly Crowley was near drowning in goodwill.
He was waiting inside the train station with Arthur when it happened. He’d been leaning against the wall near a window, casually watching the traffic outside for good opportunities to flick his fingers and untie a horse from the hitch or make a couple of drunks stagger into one another. Then, in the space of a heartbeat, he felt positively loved .
It could be a priest, Crowley thought frantically, like a really good one. Were there nuns around here? Could be nuns. His palms felt clammy.
“Mr. Morgan! Oh, you did receive my letter after all. How wonderful!” Aziraphale said, because it was him. Crowley turned around.
There, just off the train and coming toward them at a brisk walk was Aziraphale. He had a relieved smile on his face that was aimed straight at Arthur, and he was wearing the same vest, jacket, and unflattering trousers as he was when Crowley last saw him in the park. The hat was new, though, and it really was awful. It was a good thing Crowley didn’t technically need to breathe.
“Angel?” Said a voice, utterly baffled and not nearly quiet enough for comfort. It was Crowley’s voice, apparently. Crowley had said that and his mouth was still open. He shut it.
Both Arthur and Aziraphale turned to look at him. Arthur’s eyebrows went skyward. Aziraphale seemed as truly shocked as Crowley had seen him in a few centuries. Aziraphale took a breath as if to speak, but Arthur beat him to it.
“You boys know each other?”
Crowley watched Aziraphale’s eyes widen and dart to Arthur and back. He watched the rosy blush bloom across Aziraphale’s cheeks (and a bit on the tip of the nose). Aziraphale’s lips did a funny little soundless wobble as he tried to think of the right thing to say.
“Oh, well,” Aziraphale said and suddenly Crowley was dropped back into the Globe Theatre, listening to a flustered Aziraphale blurt out, “Oh, he’s not my friend. We’ve never met before. We don’t know each other ”. Only, it had felt harmless then. Cute, even. Aziraphale didn’t go in for harm as a general rule, but this time Crowley felt a bit of harm coming his way. It was his fault though, his feelings. His responsibility.
“No,” Crowley interrupted. He sounded surprisingly smooth to his own ears. “I don’t believe we’ve met after all. My mistake.”
“Haven’t we? Ah.” Aziraphale took off his hat uncertainly and held it to his chest. He set his case down and thrust out a hand for Crowley to shake. “Ezra Fell,” he said earnestly, and Crowley needed to get out of there immediately.
“Crowley,” Crowley said. He took Aziraphale’s soft, dry hand into his own overlarge, sweaty one and then dropped it as soon as was reasonable. “I’ve some shopping to do, so.”
“Oh, you’re not coming to lunch with us? I’ve heard Smithfield’s does a very decent lamb fry--”
“No,” Crowley said again. He thought he ought to say more, but something about the confused little wrinkle between Aziraphale’s eyebrows made it hard to speak.
Angel the horse picked her way down the muddy street with little guidance from Crowley. In their short acquaintance, it had been quickly established that, of the two of them, she had the better judgment when it came to navigating questionable terrain. Crowley wasn’t wont to argue. He steered her vaguely toward the strip of shops at the center of town and hitched her up in front of the general store. Call him a coward if you like, but he was going to hide in there until he could get a grip.
Thing of it was, Aziraphale didn’t come to Crowley. It was almost always the other way around. The surprise of it nearly made him sick to his stomach. Was this how Aziraphale had felt every time Crowley had ‘been in the area’? But of course it wasn’t because Aziraphale wasn’t in love with him, and Crowley … Well, anyway it didn’t matter. He went inside the store.
There was a sort of rustic charm about the place that Crowley honestly didn’t give a toss about, but Aziraphale might have liked. The shelves that lined the walls were crowded to near claustrophobic proportions with tinned coffee, and foodstuffs, and sundries. As Crowley pretended to peruse, he pocketed another packet of biscuits for the horse.
“You’re not here to make any more trouble, are you?” The shopkeeper asked warily and Crowley rolled his eyes to cover a grin.
So, that little bar fight of his had made an impact. Always nice to see a job well done. Crowley turned and flashed the man an uncanny smile from behind his shades.
“Do I look like I was the one rolling around in the mud with some brute?” He asked dismissively. “No, you’ll want to thank Mr. Arthur Morgan for that spectacle. I’m here to buy a hat.”
The changing room at the back of the store was hardly more than a closet with an oval standing mirror in the corner, but it was a wonder that the place had a changing room at all. Crowley looked at the boxes of hats the shopkeeper had set in the room for him to choose from and plucked a hat from one of them at random. It was made out of a warm beige leather, wide-brimmed with a beaded tassel at the back. Crowley gave it a twirl and it shifted into dark snakeskin with a neat black band. He put it on his head and looked in the mirror.
Satan below , he looked stupid. He doffed the hat and ran a hand through his messy hair, not even thinking of trying to tame it.
Crowley had certainly managed to put some thought into his look when he got to the states, just… He would have put a different amount of thought into it had he known he might run into Aziraphale.
Generally speaking, Crowley liked to look good. Good may have been relative, but he had a very distinct definition in his own mind. He liked dark colors, clean lines, and a sleek silhouette. Living in a swamp with a gaggle of bandits didn’t a stylish lifestyle make, but he’d been doing alright for the most part.
For example, his vest may have had fringe all across the chest, but it was nicely fitted. His trousers may have been absolutely filthy from riding all afternoon down dusty trails, but his arse still looked great in them. But then, there was the mustache. It was truly unforgivable.
Crowley liked to try out new facial hair styles regularly. They couldn’t all be winners. It was a laugh, and really, if you couldn’t have a little fun with your facial hair, were you even demonic? Right now he was clean-shaven other than the full, caterpillar of a thing on his upper lip that he’d been wearing curled up at the ends with a touch of pomade. Crowley idly re-twisted one crispy end of it around his finger.
There was nothing for it now. Aziraphale had seen it. He’d seen the dirt, and the fringy vest, and, unfortunately, the mustache. Crowley felt like such a tit.
Eventually, he couldn’t stare at himself any longer. He huffed out a sigh and started to leave, then stopped. He looked back to the mirror and snapped his fingers. The fringey vest disappeared. There was a new vest in its place, one made out of a dark, opulent silk which was patterned intricately with shimmering crimson thread. Pathetically, it did make him feel a bit better. He grabbed the hat and put it back on.
“Didn’t know I had the snakeskin in stock,” the shopkeep said a little dazedly when Crowley emerged from the back.
“My lucky day, apparently,” Crowley grumbled and paid him. Well, appeared to pay him. Now didn’t feel like the time to make a scene, but really.
Crowley stepped out onto the worn wooden deck that connected the shops and snagged a cigarette from the crumpled pack he kept in his vest pocket, prepared to settle in and blow smoke at passersby until Arthur and Aziraphale were finished with their little tete-a-tete. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much time to pass as he’d thought.
Across the street, Aziraphale pushed open the saloon door with a contented little smile. Their eyes locked and the smile wobbled like it wasn’t certain whether it should tip further up or down. With an inward sigh, Crowley tucked his unlit cigarette back into the pack and crossed the street.
“So,” Crowley said. He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the building in a fair approximation of nonchalance.
Aziraphale was holding a little hard-bound book in front of his chest with both hands. The fingers of his right hand beat an absent staccato over the pale green cover as the silence hung there for a beat too long.
For someone who was presumably mad at Crowley, he looked awfully anxious.
“You’re... here?” Aziraphale asked finally. It didn’t feel like that was the question he actually meant, but it was too late. He blinked. “I mean, you. So, you’re working, are you? You didn’t know I was here?”
“Yes, surprisingly I manage to occasionally exist without considering whether or not you’ll be around,” Crowley sniffed.
“There’s no need to be nasty,” Aziraphale said with a frown. Crowley pushed back off the building to stand upright and gave into the urge to loom.
“Actually, I think you’ll find I’ve a great need to be nasty. Working ,” Crowley reminded him. The looming had never worked on Aziraphale before and by the looks of it, today was not a day for firsts.
“I see,” Aziraphale said in a tone that admitted he didn’t at all. He paused. “I’m not so sure about that mustache.”
There it was. Crowley flushed.
“Who’s being nasty now?” He asked and then reached out to pluck the book from Aziraphale’s grip as a distraction.
“Oh!” Aziraphale protested, but Crowley wasn’t going to hurt it. He childishly held it just out of Aziraphale’s reach until he gave up his feeble attempt at retrieving it.
Crowley gave it a good look. The cover was blank, but there were small, neat letters gilded at the top of the spine. Persuasion , it said, and J. Austen .
“Haven’t heard of this one,” Crowley remarked, like that meant anything. They both knew there were a great many more books that he hadn’t heard of than he had.
Aziraphale fidgeted as Crowley idly thumbed through the pages. He wasn’t even certain why he was doing it. Maybe because it was getting a reaction and he was a bully.
Pulling pigtails.
Crowley frowned at himself and then cleared his throat.
“So. You and Arthur are “mates”, are you? That explains a lot.” It didn’t explain that much.
“Does it? Yes, well. Good then, I expect.” Aziraphale sounded distracted.
“Yeah,” Crowley drawled. “Our Arthur had quite the altruistic streak going last week. Hugged an old tramp in the street.” Crowley grimaced at the memory. “Honestly, you could smell the booze wafting off of him like anything, and all he had to do was trot up to Arthur and ask. Said he was lonely.”
At that, Aziraphale beamed. Crowley didn’t even have to be looking at him to tell. Maybe it explained more than Crowley thought.
“Oh, Crowley, that’s marvelous news!” Aziraphale said, clapping his hands together. “Well, maybe not for you, admittedly,” he quickly amended, but Crowley would have called his tone a far cry from contrite.
Crowley sneaked a glance up at him and had to look right back down at the book for his own safety. How the angel could look so sweetly delighted at the thought of a couple of old bastards hugging… As Crowley flipped through the book, his thumb caught against a slip of paper near the back.
He opened it to that page and found an old receipt there, hand-written and yellowing at the edges. That wasn’t the only thing, though. Crowley’s eyes caught on a passage, the sentences neatly underlined in bright black ink. Whoever had done the underlining had closed the book before it could dry completely, leaving dots of black to mar the opposite page. Aziraphale couldn’t have liked that. To Crowley’s detriment, he read the passage.
'I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.'
Then, a little further down, two more lines.
'I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.'
Crowley felt the color drain from his face as the words settled in his gut like a ball of ice. Was She torturing him? Could She? Probably She didn’t have to stick to her jurisdiction. Where the devil did Aziraphale get this book?
You pierce my soul , he read again. He snapped the book shut. How unbelievably weak was he that he couldn’t read a few words about unrequited love in front of an angel without feeling caught out? How paranoid?
How transparent?
“Well, I won’t keep you,” Crowley said. He started to fumble the book back over, but Aziraphale darted out a hand to stop him.
“Actually, that book.” He appeared to waffle for a moment, but then gently pressed the book back toward Crowley’s chest. “That book. It’s, well,” he looked up into Crowley’s dark spectacles for a beat. Then, the saloon’s doors swung outward and Arthur was walking their way. Aziraphale snatched the book from Crowley’s hand.
“It’s for Arthur,” he said in a rush. “For the specimens. To put the specimens between the pages so they aren’t damaged.”
“Specimens?” Crowley asked incredulously. “What specimens are these?” He couldn’t imagine what on Earth Aziraphale could find worthy of tarnishing the pages of a book. Specimens sounded ominous as well. Was he going to let Arthur crunch a host of beetles in there or something? That couldn’t be right.
“It’s only a silly little novel,” Aziraphale said, catching his skeptical expression. He fidgeted. “Nothing of consequence.”
That didn’t sound right, but Crowley supposed that between the two of them, Aziraphale ought to be the one to decide which books were important and which were silly enough to ruin, even if this was the first time he’d heard him make that distinction.
“I’ll be seeing you around then, will I?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley had a hard time figuring whether his tone was hopeful or dreading. He pursed his lips.
“Looks thataway,” Crowley said. Arthur was in hearing range now.
“Well then. Good to, to meet you, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his tone blowing straight past casual and landing on suspicious, but Crowley doubted very much that Arthur gave a shit.
The three of them rode back to the train station, Aziraphale chattering all the while. He was due to catch the next train to Saint Denis, having apparently only stopped in his journey to meet up with Arthur that afternoon. He did indeed give Arthur the book, and Crowley did an admirable impression of a man who hadn’t just had an impromptu personal crisis about a few words he’d seen inside it.
Crowley and Arthur left town before the train did, and part of Crowley didn’t like the idea of leaving Aziraphale alone there to wait for it. That was ridiculous of course. Aziraphale was a soldier and, moreover, Heavenly. Nothing untoward would happen to him in Valentine, regardless of the quality of its residents.
Further still, it was technically none of Crowley’s business if something did happen to the angel. It was his own strange weakness that lead him to this thinking, his own pathetic fixation on Aziraphale that nettled at him to keep tabs, ensure that Aziraphale stayed out of harm’s way, see that he was comfortable, encourage that kind smile.
Fuck’s sake.
If he was going to be having thoughts like these, Crowley decided, it was best if he avoided Aziraphale at all costs. At least until he got back to England. Maybe then he could work himself up into having a discussion. Something that might put him out of his misery.
Either way, he was going to shave this bloody mustache as soon as they got to Strawberry.