Chapter Text
The night is thick and soft and velveteen, descending upon Crowley and the Bentley like a well-loved blanket. Her engine roars to life the instant he settles into the driver’s seat. He has the keys somewhere, and the build of the car suggests that one has to use said keys to actually start the thing. But Crowley possesses a general disregard for things such as “mechanics” and “logic,” and more to the point, he and the car have an understanding. The Bentley sputters for a brief moment before settling into a mild rumble. Indicators tick to their correct positions on the various metres of the dashboard.
She has seemingly not predetermined what he’ll be listening to for the drive. Every time he started the car Freddie Mercury’s voice would blare out of the speakers, generally singing about something that was clearly a snide commentary on Crowley’s life at the moment. He’d cycle between singing along, staring off into space and contemplating everything, or angrily shutting off the stereo in a huff and attempting to invent a new and extraordinarily potent swear word for the rest of the drive.
But tonight the silence is deep. It settles in his ears and deafens in its completeness. No grass swishing in the breeze, no crickets crying their summer song, none of the noises of Aziraphale puttering about the college. Just the engine idling and the nearly imperceptible whisper of his own breath.
Aziraphale. He’s supposed to return home tonight. He’d gone off on some book deal, apparently the sort that was incredibly last minute and set to fail were he to bring along any visitors in any capacity. Crowley took it in stride and set about doing all the things that Aziraphale wouldn’t let him do when he was home (this list included yelling at the plants slightly more aggressively than normal and conducting elaborate schemes to confusticate government officials that he didn’t like), and yet he still found himself checking his watch not just to admire its hedonistic nature, or on occasion staring wistfully out the window like some lovesick git. It wasn’t that he was incapable of existing by himself – Hell, or Heaven, rather, they’d gone literal centuries without seeing each other. He hadn’t enjoyed it, but he’d lived.
It was that things changed. Angels fell, apples were bit, worlds were saved. Love was spoken and kisses were shared and the empty cracks in his life were found and filled. He hadn’t noticed them before, but now that he was aware of them, it suddenly became more difficult to cope with their vacancy. It was that the space they shared had become so tightly interwoven that he just didn’t quite know what to do with himself.
In lieu of sitting about the house, waiting with no company save for the ticking of his wristwatch and the canned laughter on reruns of The Golden Girls, he stepped outside and into the car. Where he now sat, still somewhat aimless but at least given something to occupy his hands.
He lifts his hand to shift the Bentley into reverse. Something on the dashboard glints under the light of the streetlamp on the corner.
Crowley pauses.
He reaches for the object, slowly wrapping his fingers around it. His other hand adjusts his sunglasses to get a better view. A CD. There’s nothing printed on it, no label, no hand-scrawled Sharpie to denote what album was illegally downloaded onto it. Just an expanse of holographic sheen.
Strange.
Might as well, Crowley thinks as he shoves it into the slot above the radio. There’s a soft whirring noise.
This better not be Queen, he then thinks as a guitar riff almost instantaneously booms. Nothing that he’s heard.
Not Queen, then.
The gravel driveway crunches beneath his wheels. A small light flashes on the dashboard, his rarely used blinker ticking as he turns onto their street.
No destination in mind. Just him and the Bentley as one, soaring down the road at impossible speeds, careening faster and faster until he can almost pretend he’s flying. Aimlessly passing the time. Greater things lie ahead.
He swerves to fit the familiar curve of the winding country backroads, melancholic vocals croon into the night, and he’s off.