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“Ladies and gentlemen...” the disembodied voice of the announcer echoed over the auditorium as the floor manager counted down from the ad break. “Whickber Street! ”
The stage was in darkness, as Muriel had arranged with the production company weeks ago. She had also arranged for a single spotlight to flick on and beam down on Crowley, leaning into his microphone stand like his spine was merely a suggestion and not an inherent part of his anatomy, leaving Az, Nina and Maggie in darkness.
The team in charge of the awards and the TV broadcast had wailed and gnashed their teeth at the production meeting in the lead up to the performance, making a show of being severely put out by the change in schedule that Crowley, via Muriel, was requesting, and the impact it was going to have on their running time.
“Look,” Muriel had said sweetly. “It’s Crowley. We all know he’s going to do exactly what he wants to do on the night. He’s being... courteous,” here she had visibly bitten back the word nice, “in letting you know, so you can adjust the schedule.”
Muriel had said this like Crowley hadn’t been sprawled in the chair next to her, scowling like the demonic rock god he was behind his sunglasses, and capable of asking for his own schedule adjustments like a grown adult. Crowley had given the team his best trickster grin, and said nothing.
“If it helps,” Muriel went on, and this time her voice had hardened into what Crowley thought of as her baby bastard voice - not quite as much of a bastard as Az was capable of being, but someone who had observed and learned and developed her own version of it. Muriel had been nice. Now she was whipping out the Book of Muriel to show she wasn’t messing around. “Crowley will deliver your viral moment of the evening. Give him these extra 3 minutes and he’ll launch a million memes, fancams and gifs from it.”
The hardened, cynical TV producer in charge of the show finally looked up from where they were scribbling notes on their tablet. “Really? For a lifetime achievement award? The least anticipated and interesting award of the night?”
And Muriel smiled her best trickster smile, the one that purposefully didn’t reach her eyes, and said, “trust me.”
And the producer did. It was clear she wasn’t sure why, but she was going to trust Muriel, even as she looked at Crowley like she wished she could banish him back to the hell he’d clearly emerged from solely to vex her.
“Oh, one last thing,” Crowley said, as he lurched to his feet to signal the end of the meeting. “No one can tell Az about this. It’s a surprise.”
“No one can tell… You mean it’s going to be UNREHEARSED?” The producer shrieked.
“Unrehearsed?” Crowley scoffed. “We’ve been doing this for a lifetime, love.”
He slid his sunglasses down his nose and sneered at her over the top of them. “About to get an award to prove it and all.” And he winked.
Waiting in the dark for the ad break of the telecast to finish gave Crowley time to think, which was always dangerous. When he’d first conceived of this departure from the schedule it had been a spur of the moment, throwaway idea; create a viral moment with a little tribute to the King, sing of his love to his angel and embarrass and delight him in public again (it never got old), and get a classic song to trend on the TikkyToks, as Az innocently called it, for no reason other than to make the kids writhe in secondhand embarrassment. If the producers had pushed back with any real intent Crowley would have relented, but they’d caved annoyingly quickly at the slightest hint that Muriel was prepared to go full executive assistant BAMF on them.
And now he was standing in the dark, a weird pulse of anxiety kicking up for a performance he’d been bribed with a lifetime achievement award to do, and why was his focus not on the auditorium filled with his musical peers, the industry heavyweights who still resented him for refusing to be biddable, and the cameras about to beam him worldwide, but instead thirty years in the past in a shitty pub in Soho? Why?
Oh.
OH.
That’s why.
He was nervous. Nervous in a way he’d not really felt since that night in Soho, standing, for the first time in his career, on a stage with a band he’d chosen, who’d chosen him. With the love of his life (even then!) doing his best to hide behind an amp, and a crowd who hadn’t yet worked out who he was. With the media gearing up for a feeding frenzy over Morningstar’s malicious outing of him, coupled with Morningstar’s furious revenge hanging over him, threatening to bury not just him but his love and his love’s friends. Plus his own rage. That blinding, cataclysmic fury, at Morningstar, at the press, but most of all at himself, for his cowardice and his reckless disregard for his own reputation, for not caring enough about himself before he met the angel who would love him unreservedly and teach him to love himself as well.
Morningstar liked his revenge hot like magma vomited from the depths of the earth rather than a dish tasted cold; which meant that he overreached in his haste to smite Crowley. But it turned out that Az’s friends were Crowley’s friends as well, and if anyone was going to be smited (smitten?) it was Morningstar. Who had convenient allies and frightened minions, but when inconvenient truths began to emerge thanks to Crowley’s new friends, had no friends of his own to support him, and, it turned out, no shortage of enemies to finish tearing him down.
These last few weeks dredging up the past with Ana, picking out the seeds of truth from the mythology that had sprouted from them over the years, had also dredged up fears that were long buried and nearly forgotten. His fear of losing Az a second time, having only just found him again. His terror that he, that they, would be forced to choose between their love and the music that gave them life, purpose and meaning. And the screaming horror that he never gave voice to, that who he was before he met Az would ensure he would never get to be the man, the singer, the partner, he had the potential to be once he met Az, that his own past would ensure the destruction of his future.
And then the gig in Soho that launched them beyond the reach of those who wanted to do them harm, beyond the reach of his past self. The gig that eventually enabled them to build their own label to get their music out to a hysterically enthusiastic audience despite the industrial music complex arrayed against them.
The heart racing anxiety of the first couple of songs of that gig, uncertain of his welcome and the crowd’s reaction, the slow dawning recognition of who he was and what his presence at the gig meant, and then the flag and the kiss that reverberated around the world. Az’s hand in his on that tiny stage. His trust. His love. Leading, all this time later, to a poxy bloody lifetime achievement award. For what? Not just surviving, but re-shaping an industry that would have chewed him and Az up if they hadn’t chosen their own side, like it did Gabriel and Sandalphon?
The thoughts that had been doing a million light year swan dive through the last thirty years of his life slowed and settled on the conversation they’d had a couple of hours ago, in their kitchen, staring at that photograph.
Still can’t believe you let me kiss you in front of all those people.
And that slightly smug, very bastard smile on Az’s face as he’d plucked the photo from Crowley’s grasp. Under a Pride flag too...
Crowley’s fingers found the flag from that night underneath the jacket of his tuxedo, still wrapped around his waist like a cummerbund. What was it that Muriel had promised the production team on his behalf? A moment that would launch millions of memes, fancams and gifs? Fuck giving the kids a new sound to trend on the TikkyToks. He’d give them a whole new theme. He thought of the photograph again. How it started. He pictured how the next three minutes would go, if Az did what he always did, and trusted him. How it’s going. He smiled his own bastard smile in the darkness, as the floor manager counted down from the break.
Crowley had closed his eyes before the spotlight came on, so he wasn’t blinded even through his sunglasses. It was grounding, as he took a breath and let his voice fly. When he looked back on it later his mind would play tricks with the memory and insist that his voice soared through the auditorium in perfect silence, filling the void with his song. In reality he knew that the crowd beyond the light was creating a soft murmur of whispers, coughs, the rustle of clothing and the soft susurration of a vast roomful of people breathing. No crowd was silent. But in this moment it was just his voice, filling the silence like the pyroclastic blast of a long dormant volcano erupting.
Take my hand...
As he sang he dramatically flung his hand out into the darkness behind and to the right of him, leading properly from the wrist like Ana had shown him all those years ago, and held it there. And he waited. He couldn’t hear the exasperated but amused huff he was sure was coming, but he waited only a couple of seconds before he sensed movement in the darkness, and those beautifully manicured but calloused fingers slid into his hand.
Take my whole life too...
There was a sigh and a murmur that sounded suspiciously like “awww” from the audience as he drew Az out of the darkness and into the spotlight beside him, pulling him in as close as he could manage without bumping the guitar hanging from its strap across his shoulders. Crowley draped his arm possessively around Az’s neck as he tilted his head to look at him without taking his mouth away from the microphone.
For I can’t help falling in love with you...
That beautiful, brilliant smile lit up Az’s face as he sang. He gave the delighted little wiggle that never ceased to undo Crowley. His fingers found the strings of the guitar and he started picking out a very Whickber Street version of the melody as Crowley picked up the next verse with his own take on the lyrics.
Like a river flows
surely to the sea
Angel so it goes
some things are meant to be...
By now the crowd, the lights, the cameras and the millions if not billions of people who were either watching it, or soon would be, had disappeared for Crowley. It was just them, again, bound together through music, Az the other half of himself Crowley hadn’t known he needed, or had been looking for, until they found each other.
Az was leaning into him. The initial tension that had screamed “Crowley what are you doing?!?” had melted away when he started plucking notes out of the air like the magician he was. Crowley felt the expansion of Az’s ribcage against his chest as he drew in a deeper breath to sing, and he angled the microphone toward him so they could share.
Together, as if they’d rehearsed it (ha!), they picked up the refrain in perfect harmony:
Take my hand
Take my whole life too
For I can’t help falling in love with you...
Crowley stopped singing, but Az kept playing. His hands went to his waist and he tugged gently at the Pride flag, unwrapping it and letting it fall open as Az brought the song to a close on his own. He stopped playing and let his own voice soar alone, head tilting to look at Crowley as he sang.
For I can’t help falling in love with you...
Crowley lifted the flag above their heads as the crowd, the industry, their peers, went nuts. Az was beaming his thousand watt angel smile as he slid his hand up Crowley’s neck to cup his jaw and bring their lips together. Crowley leaned into him, deepening the kiss and triggering a spate of wolf whistles from the screaming audience.
He heard a delighted squee from behind them and a ba dum tss on the cymbals as Maggie, giggling, reminded them what they were there for. Az broke the kiss, laughing, and turned away, the opening chords of Trust spilling from his hands as he returned to his place on stage, Nina’s bass and Maggie’s drums joining in, and Crowley, Pride flag draped around his shoulders like a scarf, pulled the microphone from its stand so he could pace around the stage and sing.
I’m searching for a truth to save me...
And just like that, the anxiety was gone. He felt... not reborn, or liberated, or any of the poetic cliches Ana would suggest if she were to write about it. But the grumbling resentment he’d been nursing about the award was also gone, burned away in the catharsis of recreating their defining moment as musicians, partners, past and future rock gods. He felt... Energised? Inspired? He knew that if he focused on the memory of that brilliant blinding smile right before he was kissed by his angel after a lifetime together he’d have material for at least one album, more likely two. And a new album meant a tour, and suddenly months bouncing from hotel to hotel with Az at their age didn’t seem like intolerable torture anymore. He’d probably change his mind later, but tonight, singing Trust like it was the precious, barely polished jewel it was in that dive bar in the American mid west, to riotous acclaim, he felt like he could conquer the world all over again.
Turns out there was still plenty left to do even after a lifetime achievement award. Lifetime achievement award? More like an Achievement Unlocked award. Take that Tikkytok.
Anyway, Muriel had been right. The moment went viral.