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“Hello, welcome to Fire and Brimstone Café, what can I get for you?” Crowley says, not looking up from his notepad and fully aware that he’s talking too fast to be really understood but also desperate to move through the line. (He’s never understood why so many people choose to get their morning coffee here. It’s tasty, no question, but the dingy building and sketchy neighborhood would be more than enough to keep Crowley away if he wasn’t desperate for a job.)
“Um, yes, hello. I have - well, I was wondering - well.”
Crowley looks up and meets the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen and somehow knows, deep down, that he will never be the same, not after laying eyes on this…
Well, what do you call someone who is round and beautiful and blonde and breathtaking and is wearing a tartan bowtie?
An angel, Crowley thinks wildly, he’s an angel.
And the angel’s lips are moving and Crowley, after being thoroughly distracted by them for a moment, forces himself to focus.
“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,” he says, praying that the man (angel) somehow missed the lengthy, longing gaze that had been accidentally fixed upon him. “Been a long morning.”
“Oh, I understand completely,” says the angel, and that voice, his eyes, Crowley can’t do this, he’s mortal, he was not made to withstand gentle crinkly eyes from angels… “I was just wondering if I might get….”
He trails off, and Crowley bites his tongue to keep himself from saying something silly like anything, I’ll get you anything, anything you want.
“Well,” says the angel, leaning in. Crowley leans in, too, without meaning to, enchanted with the way the motion makes him feel like a confidant. “It’s a bit silly, I know, but I am rather partial to hot chocolate.”
“That’s not silly,” blurts Crowley.
“Oh, you’re very sweet,” says the angel, inadvertently causing Crowley’s heart to perform some aerial tricks, “but I’m well aware that I’m a bit… oh, eccentric, you might say.”
“‘S not a bad thing,” says Crowley, blurting, again.
The angel smiles, a soft, warm, dazzling thing, and Crowley blinks, momentarily blinded.
“You’re very kind, my dear.” Crowley’s brain fizzles. “If you would be even kinder - ” and again Crowley bites back the urge to say anything for you, angel, anything - “would you consider calling out - oh, I’m so very ridiculous - ”
Crowley doesn’t know if it’s the oh or the ridiculous or how flustered the angel is by his own (quite reasonable, Crowley is certain of it) request, but his heart is melting and he wants nothing more than to give the angel a hug.
But he can’t do that, so he just does his best to look encouraging and says, “I’ve heard a lot of ridiculous things, and I can assure you that whatever you’re about to say isn’t actually that ridiculous and I’d like to hear it.”
The angel’s hand flutters to his heart.
“Oh, well, I was going to ask if you could possibly announce a… different drink? Than hot chocolate? When you call my order? It’s just…”
He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze flickers to the pompous pricks that have already come through the line and are now waiting for their orders and harassing Bee and Ligur, and he understands. The angel is worried about their opinions.
“Soy latte it is, then,” he says, and the angel beams.
“Oh, thank you, dear boy!” he says, like Crowley has changed his life, and Crowley blushes.
“No problem,” he mumbles, finding that he simply cannot bear to look at the angel’s face anymore. The man is so beautiful that it hurts. “Can I have your name?”
“Aziraphale,” says the man.
Crowley looks at him, pen in hand, a little dismayed. He has no idea how to spell that.
“Like the angel,” says the angel, and Crowley has to fight the urge to burst into hysterical laughter at the irony.
Before he can say, “yes, but how do you spell it,” the angel - Aziraphale - gives him another earth-shattering smile before making his way over to the pompous pricks that he’s apparently here with. Crowley wonders, as he writes ‘soy latte’ on a cup but tells Ligur in an undertone to make a hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles, why Aziraphale is here with them. He clearly doesn’t like them; the full-body flinch when they start laughing about something is proof of that.
But it’s none of his business, and he knows it, so he watches Aziraphale and thinks about Aziraphale’s eyes and manages to tune into reality just in time to intercept Bee as they head for the counter, hot-chocolate-in-disguise in hand.
“Can I do this one?” he asks.
They give him a look that he knows he deserves but he stands resolute, holding out his hands for the cup.
“Fine,” they snap, but he knows they’re only letting it happen because the shop is busy, and that he’ll be hearing about it later.
“I have a soy latte for Aziraphale,” Crowley announces to the room, and Aziraphale approaches the counter, beaming at him.
“Oh, thank you again, dear boy,” he says, taking the cup.
“Of course,” Crowley mumbles, unable to look directly at him for very long. No one person should be that beautiful.
“Oh!” says Aziraphale, sounding so flustered that Crowley looks back up at him, despite himself. “What have you written on here?”
“Oh,” says Crowley, feeling himself turning a bright, bright red. “I - er - can’t spell very well, and you said it was an angel, so…”
Aziraphale looks from the scribbled ‘soy latte - angel’ to Crowley.
“But how could you remember if you didn’t write it down?” he asks, sounding genuinely bewildered.
Crowley snorts at the very idea.
“You’re not exactly forgettable,” he says, and then promptly regrets it.
Idiot. Who says something like that? Now he thinks you’re -
“So kind,” says Aziraphale. “You are so kind, Crowley. Thank you.”
Crowley splutters a lot more than he means to.
“How d’you know my name?” he demands, because addressing the other thing the angel said is completely out of the question.
“It’s on your name tag,” says Aziraphale patiently.
“Oh,” says Crowley.
They stand there and look at each other for a minute, both trying to work up the nerve to say something (and both things would have been remarkably similar, and would have contained the words ‘you’ and ‘again’ and ‘sometime’), and then Bee shouts, “Crowley! Back to the till, right now!” and Crowley has to go.
“Have a good day,” he says hastily.
“You, too,” says Aziraphale to his retreating back, and Crowley spends the rest of the day thinking about fluffy hair and beautiful eyes.