Chapter Text
It was nearly noon on a Saturday in Soho. The demon Crowley was trapped in traffic. He anxiously tapped his foot on the gas, then brakes, then gas, then breaks. And so on. He had somewhere to be.
Meanwhile, Aziraphale had a phone’s receiver to his ear in a donation processing room somewhere in a dingy basement of the BBC. He volunteered himself for this, as per instructions of Heaven. It smelled like his bookshop. He liked a bit of dinge, and he liked helping people.
You see, it was Saturday, July 13th, 1985, the day that Live Aid was set to happen. One might assume this organization was all Heaven’s doing - in fact, the humans actually set this one up. Famine was plaguing the nation of Ethiopia, and practicing for the impending doomsday. This was an egregious thing to humans. A gregarious thing for Famine.
Aziraphale, along with a handful of other angels, were asked by Gabriel to help collect donations during this concert. Aziraphale, being a known resident of London and a regular on Earth, was in charge of showing 37th degree scrivener angels how to do this particular task. As it turns out, handling a phone line actually required an angelic and inhuman amount of patience.
The angels and Aziraphale sat around a large round table. Each had a phone in front of them, with no buttons or dial on the front.
“This is a telephone.” Aziraphale held up his receiver away from his head and showed the angels in a circle. They ooo’d and aah’d at it - 37th degree scrivener angels were rather… dim-haloed. He imitated taking a call for the angels and showed them how to write down the credit card numbers of the caller, and their donation amount.
“Thank you for your kind donation to Live Aid. Have a wonderful day.” He gently clicked the phone’s receiver down.
By this point, Crowley was too frustrated to think clearly, and was being taunted by the vague outline of a familiar bookshop. He pulled off the road and sauntered down the street to the bookshop of a Mr. A. Z. Fell. A small miracle happened when he pulled on the handle of the locked and closed bookshop.
“Angel!” He shouted in the entryway. “Where are you, anyway,” Crowley slithered his way around the stacks, “Did you get some new copies of Virginia Woolfe in or something? Come on, I have a little surprise for you! And I need your help with a little miracle…” He trailed off as he spotted a wax-sealed envelope on Aziraphale’s desk.
Crowley,
I’m out doing official Heaven-related business. I’ll be back around 10:30 tonight if you need anything.
- Aziraphale
Crowley thought that was strange. They hadn’t seen each other since 1967, with that whole holy-water-in-the-tartan-thermos thing. What had happened is that Aziraphale felt terrible about rejecting him in that manner, and kept expecting him to show up at the bookshop. Since that night, he’d always write Crowley a note in case Crowley happened to walk into the bookshop while he wasn’t there. There was a about a meter high stack of wax-sealed envelopes on the windowsill.
Crowley growled and crumpled the note.
Aziraphale’s phone, along with all the other angels’ phones began ringing as the director announced the time and the beginning of the concert. Just before picking up the phone, he felt a pang of familiarity. Someone was in the bookshop. Someone with red hair and yellow eyes. Aziraphale answered the phone.
“Hello, thank you for calling the Live Aid donation line-” He was cut off by some feedback and Crowley’s voice overlapped the caller.
“Angel, listen, I need your help with something.” Aziraphale began to panic and glanced around his table. Every other angel was too preoccupied with holding the receiver upside down. “Crowley!” He whispered into the phone “I am currently surrounded by-”
“Yeah yeah, 12 angels from Heaven, listen, where are you, I need you to come help me perform a little miracle.”
“I- Crowley I’m trying to take people’s donations!”
“... What do you mean?”
Aziraphale huffed, “I volunteered to work the phone lines for Live Aid.”
“You volunteered to talk on the phone with people? Your lot must be taking a page out of my lot’s book, that sounds like punishment. Well, anyway, can you come to your bookshop right now, I need you to help me get to Wembley Stadium.”
“Crowley, please, I can’t get out of this, I put my name on the sign-up sheet and everything. They’ll know if I leave!”
“You cannot actually tell me the Archangel Michael is next to you right now. They’re just low-rank scribes, aren’t they? They won’t notice, come on, come help me.”
Aziraphale stammered over his words. He felt guilty for ignoring Crowley for 20 years, but he’d feel more guilty leaving these poor, stupid angels here too.
“Please?” Crowley hissed out.
“30 minutes, that’s all.” Aziraphale put the phone down quickly. He muttered something out about realism and looking like a human and taking a bathroom break like a human to the circle of angels.
Aziraphale fuddled with the skeleton keys in his pocket on the stoop of the bookshop. Crowley opened the door suddenly and brushed past him. “Come on, no time to explain, in the car, come on,” he trotted to the Bentley’s driver’s side.
“How did you get in?” Aziraphale said, flustered, but made his way over as well.
The world quieted in the cabin of the old car. Aziraphale was still panting from rushing over. “I need you to help me through this traffic. Just, make the car into an ambulance or something, I don’t know, I just need to get to Wembley as fast as possible.” Crowley pulled and wrung his hands on the steering wheel nervously.
Aziraphale didn’t talk, just placed his palms on the dashboard and miracle’d a disguise for the car. Other cars began to move out of the way.
“Shall I say thank you?” Crowley said.
“Crowley, why do you want to go to this concert?”
“Oh- well. Like I said, no time to explain, really, I just.. Sort of wanted to I guess.”
“Crowley!”
“Okay, alright. Fine, you want to know the reason? I made a bet with Dagon, Lord of the Files, Master of Torments, that Live Aid will be a great success and that it’ll raise a bunch of money for Ethiopia. So I need to be there to make sure nothing happens to change that fact.”
Aziraphale stared at him.
You see, it was around this time that Hell began growing an interest in politics. After successfully tempting Richard Nixon, it was time that Hell sent one of their own to rule over one of the other more powerful nations. Dagon had developed a ‘masterful disguise’ and became Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, in 1979. Many of Dagon’s - Thatcher’s - policies caused suffering in Ireland and the poor parts of the country.
Dagon particularly disapproved of feeding and nourishing children, who were said to be ‘little angels.’ By this time, he had already donned the nickname “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher”, and certainly cheered at the growing hunger crisis in Ethiopia. He disapproved of the charity event for obvious reasons.
As for the bet with Crowley, well, he and Crowley never really liked each other. Part of the reason he offered to preside over the UK was because he knew he could make it a Hell on Earth for Crowley.
During a meeting in Hell, Crowley off-handedly mentioned the event. “Big ol’ event live at Wembley stadium, which is an opportunity to cause a bit of traffic, huh? Bit of congestion on the ol’ M25?”
The room stirred in disapproval. The Lord of Files gnashed his pointed teeth. “Crowley, why didn’t you bring this up until now?”
Crowley paused for a beat. “Seriously? Oh,” he leaned back “So what I’m hearing is that you weren’t paying attention to what was happening in your country.”
“As any bad politician would.” Dagon smiled.
Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, piped up, “If Heaven’s the one behind this, Dagon, we must thwart their plan.” A fly buzzed by Crowley’s ear, disturbing him. He hated sitting next to Beelzebub.
Dagon scoffed, “Heaven’s not behind this, they’re too stupid to figure all of that out.” The room of demons was split between cheers and worried hisses. Beelzebub looked irritated. The flies whizzed around more hurriedly.
“Oh, I don’t know, Lord Dagon,” Crowley placed extra emphasis on ‘Lord’, “I think it’ll go swimmingly. All those little children down in Ethiopia, they’ll all have milk and biscuits. That won’t look too good for you.”
“Is that a bet, Crowley?” Dagon stood from his throne. He shouted, “have you been collaborating with the opposition?”
“No, no, it’s just that I hear Queen’s going to be playing, and everybody likes a good ol’ Bohemian Rhapsody, if you know what I uh…” Crowley went quiet and his smug expression faded.
“Live Aid will fail. End of discussion, Crowley.” Dagon beat his fist into the chair’s arm.
Aziraphale began, “Are you going to interrupt the phone lines?”
“No! Angel, if I was going to do that I wouldn’t be on my way to the stadium. I can do that from my couch at home.”
The angel gasped, “You’re going to do something to the concert? Interrupt the broadcast? Make a stray stage light crush one of the performers?” Aziraphale braced as Crowley took a sharp left turn.
“Good God, no. You’ve got it all wrong, I’m not going to concert to make it fail. I’m going to… to help out, yeah that’s all.”
Aziraphale shook his head, “You don’t just go and ‘help out.’ That’d be very kind, but it’s not what demons do. What are you really doing there?”
“Fine!” Crowley beat the steering wheel. The car went quiet for a moment. He softened, “I want to see Queen live in concert.” He sighed. “And I guess I’ll tempt some people into donating money so it’s not a total failure. Happy?”
Aziraphale smiled, “Yes.”
“Good.” The car went quiet again, minus the irritating siren belting out.
“What do you need me for?”
Crowley thought for a second, “I just… wanted you to come along I suppose?” He mumbled.
“What was that?” Aziraphale sat up.
“I haven’t seen you in nearly 20 years, what was I supposed to do, ignore you forever?
Aziraphale smiled again. “That’s very kind of you, Crowley. Thank you for inviting me.” His eyes bulged, “Oh- what time is it?”
“About half past 3, why, you got a date or something?” He grinned.
Aziraphale got close to Crowley and whispered “I have to get back, Crowley, what about those angels at the phone line?”
“Oh, well, don’t worry about it. They’re probably doing fine on their own.”
The cretin angels hadn’t figured out yet that the people’s credit card number wasn’t their donation amount. They thought that humans were being so generous.
The pair ended up having some drinks in a nearby pub before Queen came on. That turned into a private room with a decorative phone, which wasn’t decorative in the hands of an angel and a demon. 4 bottles of wine had sat empty on the coffee table, each of them more delicious than the last.
Crowley slammed down the phone and let out a big laugh. They had done increasingly more drunk sounding Irish impressions for the better part of an hour. “Take that one, Dagon, you mangy milk snatcher. Right, you do one.” He passed the receiver to Aziraphale, who called the number and asked to donate 400 dollars. Each time they called they miracle’d the money into existence. As well as the silly names on each fake card.
“The name on the card is Christopher Bacon.” Crowley giggled, confused. “Right, thank you!”
He looked at him. “I neglected to mention that the middle name starts with a P. Chris P. Bacon.” Aziraphale laughed and leaned back in his chair.
As Crowley had pointed out, it’d be very ironic if a lot of donations had come from Ireland, just as an extra little jab at Thatcher, since her policies were very anti-Irish - and Dagon hated Ireland. By the time the concert ended, they had long been kicked out of the pub and had somehow donated well over 3 million dollars - one million of that being from one donation that Crowley did, where he posed as the prince of Dubai. Crowley had missed Queen live, but knew he would see them again at some point. He was just happy to spend the evening with his angel - and happy to know there were no hard feelings amongst them after their last meeting.