Chapter Text
Crowley would insist, long afterwards, that he had gone to that island purely for a holiday.
And from a certain angle, this was even true. He had gone for a holiday — Hell's year-end reviews had just concluded, and Beelzebub had called him into their office and fixed him with a look that said, "Although your performance is once again top of the rankings, do not imagine for one moment that I haven't noticed you've been coasting," and held it for a full three minutes before saying, "Go and rest. At the very least, spare me the sight of your face for the next few weeks — but you get two. No more."
And so Crowley went to a small island in the Aegean. Sun, sea breeze, olive trees, and the freedom to wear whatever he pleased without anyone giving him a second glance.
His plan was perfectly clear: do absolutely nothing, lie on the beach, and enjoy his hard-earned leisure with a cool sea breeze and an even cooler drink.
What he had not anticipated was that, on his third day of doing precisely that, there would be a murder on the island.
Satan below, he swore this time it wasn't him.
The local police, however, appeared to hold a different view.
"Sir, your passport, please." An officer in an ill-fitting uniform intercepted Crowley on his way back from the beach, flanked by two further officers whose uniforms fitted them no better.
Crowley lowered his sunglasses and peered over them at the trio — humans. Ordinary humans. The sort of ordinary humans he could make forget they'd ever laid eyes on him in about three seconds flat. His hand twitched, ready to rise.
The problem was, there were too many people on the island. Too many witnesses, too many tourists, and Crowley knew perfectly well that Hell's stance on "large-scale miracle exposure" had always been: shoot first, ask questions later — with the small caveat that the shooting would be directed at him.
So he "cooperatively" handed over his passport, "cooperatively" allowed himself to be escorted to a makeshift questioning station — the terrace of a seaside restaurant — and "cooperatively" answered a barrage of stupid questions. He didn't even use a miracle to make himself seem more credible.
"Travelling alone, are you?"
"Yes."
"And what's the purpose of your visit?"
Crowley's mouth gave a few twitches. He was fairly certain he had answered this already. He drew a breath and, with considerable restraint, said again: "Tourism."
"Holidaying alone, in a place like this? It's a honeymoon spot, you know."
One of Crowley's eyebrows arched upwards. He felt distinctly discriminated against. "Is that a crime?"
The officer didn't answer, merely jotting something down in his notebook. Crowley began calculating how to wrap this whole business up if it got messy. Engineer a minor disaster? Bring all the fish in the kitchen back to life? No. No, that wouldn't do.
Since the Barcelona incident, Beelzebub had made it abundantly clear that the next act of frivolous miracling would result in a century's worth of budget cuts.
He was seriously considering whether to simply tamper with the timeline when he saw someone.
Someone who was also being questioned.
The someone was seated at the far end of the terrace, dressed in a white suit, with soft, fluffy, pale hair — rather like a stick of candyfloss — and looked, from head to toe, as though he had been fastidiously groomed by the sea breeze itself.
Two officers stood before him, and he was answering their questions in a manner that was excessively polite, excessively earnest, and excessively — Crowley spent three whole seconds searching for the right word, though he truly loathed having to use it — angelic.
"Yes, I'm travelling alone."
"…Er, no. I don't know any of the other tourists."
"Oh, how dreadful. The poor man. Though he was wanted on record as well, wasn't he? In any case, I do hope you apprehend the culprit soon."
Crowley nearly laughed aloud. The man looked like the very antonym of "suspicious." Every soft line of his being radiated harmlessness; every blink declared, I am a law-abiding, upstanding citizen; even the buttons on his cuffs were done up with fastidious precision.
And then the man's gaze turned.
Their eyes met in the afternoon sunlight.
In that moment, Crowley felt something rather peculiar. It was emphatically not love at first sight — Crowley did not believe in love at first sight.
He was a demon who had been alive for six thousand years, and he had witnessed a great deal of "love at first sight" curdle into "stabbing each other at second, third, and fourth sight."
The peculiar sensation was more like — well. He genuinely had no idea how to describe it.
But before he could sort out any of his thoughts, the man stood up. And walked towards Crowley. His stride was remarkably determined, as if he had resolved upon something.
The white suit fluttered gently in the sea breeze, the sun gilded the edges of his hair, and the overall effect was that he appeared even brighter than before.
Crowley watched him approach, utterly motionless, his mind racing: Had this person come to identify him? No, he'd never met him. An agent of Heaven? No, he'd never seen that face. What, then —
"Darling!"
Said the man, in a voice tinged with a shade of delighted surprise.
Crowley blinked. He could admit, privately, that he blanked for approximately one second.
"There you are." The man turned to the officers stationed in front of Crowley, offering a gentle and faintly apologetic smile.
"This… is my husband. We're here on honeymoon. He only stepped out for a stroll along the beach just now."
Crowley's brain suffered a shutdown lasting roughly zero-point-three seconds.
His body then made the decision on his behalf.
"That's right," he said, rising to his feet, lips curling as he fluidly slipped an arm around the man's waist — softer than he'd anticipated, that — "You were quite right, this is a honeymoon sort of place. Terribly sorry for the little joke. This is my —" He tilted his head to glance at the man. "Angel."
The figure in his arms stiffened slightly, then broke into a radiant smile. "Yes, he always calls me that."
The officers exchanged looks, evidently still struggling to catch up.
"But — just now you both clearly said —"
"We'd quarrelled. Cold shoulder. But we're past it now," Crowley said, without a flicker of expression. "Perfectly normal to row on one's honeymoon. Isn't that right, angel?"
"Oh, yes, perfectly normal," the man picked up without missing a beat, his tone excessively sincere. "It's our…" His ears went a little pink, as if the word itself cost him tremendous effort. "Our little… spice. I was cross with him, so I pretended not to know him. I've quite got over it now."
"Identification?" the officer asked.
Crowley was about to snap his fingers and conjure two marriage certificates out of thin air, but the man had already produced a passport from the inner pocket of his suit, composed as you please.
"Here you are. Our marriage certificate is back at the hotel. We can fetch it, should you require it."
The officer took the passport, flipped through it, and his expression relaxed somewhat. Another officer murmured, "They do look like a couple."
Crowley had no idea what "looking like a couple" was supposed to mean, but he found, to his own mild surprise, that he was rather pleased by the remark.
"All right, you're free to go," the officer said, shutting his notebook. "But don't leave the island for the time being."
"Oh, certainly not," the man said, with a sincerity that was positively compelling. "We have a great many honeymoon plans left to get through."
Crowley kept his arm around the man's waist as the two of them exited the restaurant terrace and walked along the flagstone path in the direction of the beach.
The sun stretched their shadows long across the ground, overlapping in a way that was — Crowley had to admit, with some satisfaction — really quite couple-like.
Once they had put a few dozen metres between themselves and the police, well out of earshot, Crowley let his arm drop.
The two of them stopped at the same moment and stood facing each other.
The world seemed to fall silent.
Only the sea breeze passed between them, carrying the distant sound of waves and the rustle of olive leaves.
"So," Crowley said, raising an eyebrow and studying the man before him with keen amusement, "I'm your husband?"
"For the moment," the man said with a mild smile. "And you did call me 'angel.'"
Silence descended once more. A seagull sailed overhead, contributing a "caw-caw" to the proceedings.
"I'm Aziraphale," the man said, still smiling, and extended his hand. "Delighted to make your acquaintance."
Crowley looked down at the hand — clean, pale, nails trimmed to impeccable neatness, the sort of hand that looked as though it had never performed a day of manual labour in its existence. He took it, gently, and gave it a shake.
"Crowley."
Their hands remained clasped for three seconds, or perhaps four. In any case, it was rather a long time.
"So," Crowley said, releasing the hand and pushing his sunglasses back up onto his nose, attempting to resume his usual air of studied nonchalance, "we are now a couple — or at least, we are on this island."
"It would appear so," Aziraphale said, a flicker of unease crossing his features, followed by something that looked faintly like puzzlement.
"To avoid arousing suspicion, we may need to…" He paused, pursed his lips, and then asked, "Well. Share a room?"
"Mine's large," Crowley said. And then added something which, for years afterwards, he would remain entirely unable to explain his reasons for saying: "Big bed, too."
What happened next, Crowley elected not to recall in any great detail. Not because it was unpleasant — quite the opposite, in fact.
It was so pleasant that he very nearly forgot his own identity entirely and wanted nothing more than to quietly sink every remaining day of his existence into the soft embrace of the one he'd found.
Satan below, he truly did not know how things had begun. They had only drunk a little — all right, perhaps it had been more than a little.
At any rate, the moment their lips met (he couldn't even remember who had initiated it), the entire situation went completely and utterly sideways.
In the end, Crowley lay in bed with Aziraphale in his arms.
He stared at the ceiling and thought: Well. Now there's a problem.
The person beside him was already asleep. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, striping Aziraphale's face in bands of silver, making him look impossibly saintly.
Asleep, he appeared even more innocent than he had when they'd first met, even softer, even more — Crowley gritted his teeth — though he still loathed the word, it was undeniably fitting: angelic.
Crowley thought he ought to erase his memory right now. A single snap, a patch of blankness, and then each of them would go his own way, never to be entangled again.
It was standard operating procedure. It was the correct —
Aziraphale wrinkled his nose, made a small snuffling sound, and opened his eyes.
"Is something the matter?" he asked, his voice carrying a certain post-coital softness, rendered slightly husky by sleep.
Crowley's fingers froze three centimetres from his forehead.
"Wondering if you might catch cold," Crowley said, his hand rerouting itself with seamless grace to the pillow beside them.
He leaned a little closer to Aziraphale's cheek. "You kicked the blanket off."
"Oh," Aziraphale said, looking somewhat abashed. "Sorry." He offered a sheepish little smile, tugging the blanket towards himself and pulling it up to cover the lower half of his face, leaving only a pair of blinking eyes visible above it.
Crowley was still holding that half-leaning posture. He pocketed the snap. The dim lamplight cast his shadow across the bed, and the shadow nearly swallowed Aziraphale whole.
Aziraphale, utterly guileless, continued to gaze at him. He yawned, a shimmer of moisture rising to his eyes, and this reminded Crowley of certain… ineffable images.
He had to admit, he now had something else he very much wanted to do.
Oh, to Hell with it. One night. Everything else can wait until morning.