Work Text:
Aziraphale had never seen so much chrome in one place. The museum grounds were positively bustling, visitors young and old wandering about and cooing over the multitude of rare vehicles on display. Something about the automobiles especially drew the public’s fascination; pristine, beautiful physical artefacts from a bygone era which could still function as intended seemed to be very inspiring.
He supposed he might owe the vintage automobile community an apology, even if only in his own mind. When the museum had asked for ideas on a new short-term event display, Aziraphale, as head curator, had thrown himself into researching the usual travelling collections and university contacts he could quickly negotiate loans with. Hell, he’d even written up a lovely invitation to the folks at Antiques Roadshow offering the museum grounds for an event.
The concept for an automobile exhibition arrived at his office doorstep by chance—quite literally, in fact—in the form of a tall, slender, cuttingly fashionable fellow. This fellow, Anthony J. Crowley, Esq. according to his maddeningly uninformative business card, had been in search of a safe yet accessible location for his auto enthusiast club to hold an event.
Aziraphale had very little recollection of the actual conversation. To his later embarrassment, he only recalled agreeing enthusiastically to every one of Anthony J. Crowley’s requests. He had no great depth of knowledge about automobiles, and he honestly hadn’t known there was such a passionate community surrounding them. Mr. Crowley’s enthusiasm was simply infectious, he supposed.
And, of course, he was also rather distracting.
Indeed, shortly after Mr. Crowley left his office, Aziraphale had scrambled to review his notes, hoping he’d written something useful about what exactly he’d agreed to on the museum’s behalf.
Despite Aziraphale’s subsequent panic and misgivings about the event, Mr. Crowley had proven a capable collaborator. Their exchanges over email had been substantially easier to respond to intelligently, which was a great help as well.
Now, the public milled about the vehicles in awestruck joy, and any lingering doubts he’d held toward the auto club’s relevance to the community had been shattered.
The only problem Aziraphale could find with the occasion was the conspicuous absence of Anthony J. Crowley.
“Chin up, dearie! He’s bound to arrive before long.” Marjorie Potts, the museum’s director of public outreach, nudged Aziraphale with a chiffon-draped elbow.
“I’m sure I have no idea to whom you are referring,” he replied, and squeezed his clasped hands tighter in front of him.
Marjorie winked knowingly, her long false lashes and vibrant makeup exaggerating the action. “Of course you don’t.” She took a sip from her complimentary cup of tea, and whatever wizardry she’d used for lipstick didn’t leave a trace on the plastic travel lid. If Aziraphale had met her twenty years ago, he surely would have begged her for the brand name. “You know, it’s never too late to enjoy yourself, love. You work hard—everybody can see that much—but life’s for having some fun! If a handsome rogue wants to take you for a spin, why not let him? I know I would.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes to cover for the heat he could feel spreading over his face. “Yes, well. That’s a lovely sentiment, my dear, but I’m afraid I’ve done my fair share of ‘spinning,’ and all it did was turn me about. I’m perfectly content as I am.”
Marjorie studied him, her expression caught somewhere between sympathy and skepticism. At length, she sighed and looked back to the crowd. Aziraphale’s shoulders unclenched a smidge, grateful to have escaped the topic, when Marjorie’s brows suddenly raised.
“Oh!” she cooed. “Another participant. Fashionably late, but my, what a beauty!”
Following her gaze, Aziraphale’s breath caught in his chest. Many of the vehicles on display were magnificent specimens, polished and detailed to showroom standards. None of them he’d seen thus far could come close to matching this one.
A sleek, elegant black and grey automobile rolled into the museum grounds, its windows cranked down to catch the breeze and some sort of stereo system ringing out a spirited rendition of “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy”. The car made an easy circuit of the rest of the show, taking its time to weave through every aisle of parked and displayed vehicles and visibly enchanted pedestrians.
At first, Aziraphale was mildly amused at this slow patrol, the driver apparently taking it upon themselves to make a parade of their arrival. Then, he caught a glimpse of the driver’s silhouette, their head craning left and right, and he realised they were looking for someone. Aziraphale squinted into the light, and he recognised the red hair and dark clothing, the glint of an expensive watch, the flash of ever-present sunglasses.
The realisation arrived upon him at the same moment the driver, Anthony J. Crowley, happened to meet his eye. Immediately, the car pivoted and made its way toward him.
“Oh, um. Oh,” Aziraphale stammered, his lungs somehow both overfull and completely empty.
“What did I tell you, dearie?” Marjorie said, taking another pointed sip of her tea. “Quite a specimen, hm?”
He startled, having forgotten about her presence entirely. “What? Ah, yes, quite right. I think I… Right. Back in a tic!”
Marjorie laughed and called something after him, but Aziraphale wasn’t listening. He hastened down the steps at the museum’s rear entrance until arrived at the courtyard grounds, and the beautiful car with its distracting driver rolled to a smooth stop alongside him.
Mr. Crowley tilted his head and gave Aziraphale a smile which might have seemed sharp if not for the softness of his bright amber eyes gleaming over the rims of his sunglasses. He flipped the stereo off, silencing Freddie Mercury’s vocals in favour of focusing on Aziraphale alone, and that on its own pinned Aziraphale to the spot. “Hi,” he drawled, and gestured to the empty seat beside him. “Care for a lift?”
It was the first time they’d been face to face since that day at Aziraphale’s office, and the mind-scrambling power of Mr. Crowley’s general comportment had not waned at all. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Aziraphale finally found his thoughts again. “Hello. Um. Lovely to see you again. W-Where exactly would we be going? We’re already at the automobile exposition.”
Mr. Crowley grinned and rolled a shoulder nonchalantly. “Nothing in the rules to say we couldn’t pop out for lunch. It’s a nice spread your lot worked out, the free tea and pastries, but I’ve got a suspicion that isn’t quite enough to really satisfy.”
Aziraphale blinked, then blinked again, then swallowed. “You’re asking to… ‘take me out for a spin’…?” he asked quietly, regretting it the moment it escaped his mouth.
Mr. Crowley laughed, a full-throated thing that made Aziraphale quiver on his toes. “Been in the classic car circuit for years, and I haven’t heard anybody actually say that. Sure, yup. A spin. If you’d like.”
Before Mr. Crowley had even finished speaking, Aziraphale found himself seated in the vehicle beside him. Only once the door was closed, giving a satisfying clank as it shut, did Aziraphale catch up to himself.
“Wait, Mr. Crowley—“
“Ngh. Just Crowley’s fine.”
“Right-o, Crowley it is. Um.” Aziraphale cast about in his prodigious mind, adrift in a sea of tangled vocabulary. “I’d like to know why. If you’d be so kind, I mean. I’m not so young as I once was, and… Well.”
Silence fell as Crowley’s face cycled through a variety of expressive movements, brows lifting and lips quirking and nose scrunching. For once, Aziraphale thought his distraction might be mutual. Finally, after many unsuccessful starts and stops, Crowley’s suave composure began to return. “Aziraphale, I’m a modern man. Mostly. But there’s something about a vintage car. My Bentley here, right? It’s not the fastest. It’s gotta have constant maintenance. It’s not even the most expensive. But this kind of quality… y’can’t find anything better. Turns every head on the street when it goes by. Some people only see somethin’ like it in their wildest dreams. ‘S’worth keepin’ around, takin’ care of.”
Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I am not an automobile, you understand.”
Crowley blanched, and he tore a hand through his artful coiffure as he stammered. “No! No, nono, no. Not sayin’… just. Some things’re once in a lifetime. Like this car was. For me. And you. Uh. I guess when we worked out this show, I thought. You… This… It might be that once.”
A warm, soft feeling soothed over Aziraphale, the decadence of a mug of cocoa on a chilly day, of a lie-in with his favourite book. “I see. In that case, I don’t think I have a single objection. In fact, I’d love to chat a bit more. A lot more, actually. Shall we to lunch?”
After a beat, the stress on Crowley’s sharp features melted away, and he grinned, starting up the Bentley’s engine. “Absolutely. Anywhere you want to go.”
As they made their way out of the show, Aziraphale knew he’d return to a million questions from Marjorie, and he thanked her sense of intuition for being so very spot-on. It had been a while since he’d allowed himself to hope, but perhaps there was no sense in missing an opportunity when it arrived.