Chapter Text
When Aziraphale went out, he typically wore at least three layers of clothing.
Certainly, in the Beginning, there hadn’t been any clothes at all. But after the Fall things had changed. For a good few centuries at least, the custom in Europe had been layers. These days he wore an undershirt, a collared shirt, and usually a vest or jumper. Then there was his jacket, or an overcoat, or sometimes both. Some of his scarves, Crowley said, could count as a conservative layer of clothing all on their own.*
*He usually said this about ten minutes before taking them from him and wrapping himself in them, the poor cold-blooded thing.
Aziraphale wore a brown sweater and his camel-hair coat when he met Crowley outside his shop to be driven to the Ritz, a decision which earned him a shake of the demon’s head.
“What is it with you and beige?”
“What’s wrong with beige?”
Crowley shrugged as he opened the door to the Bentley for him—how many years had he been doing that?—and Aziraphale got in. “It’s such an in-between color,” he said. He walked around the other side of the car and got in, but instead of starting it, he turned in his seat to face him. “Not really bright, not really dark. Just beige. It’s dull.”
“What is it with you and black and white?” Aziraphale glanced down at the demon’s clothes and then back at his face, which Crowley twisted to show that he couldn’t deny the angel’s point. Crowley wore his usual white shirt and black jacket. That was at least two layers, but they were significantly thinner than any of Aziraphale’s clothes. The fabric of Crowley’s clothes seemed to get thinner with every passing decade. It was as though he was trying to whittle away anything that was separating him from the rest of the world.
Or maybe that was just the way they made clothes these days. Crowley never actually bought them from stores, but he always paid close attention to these sorts of things. Aziraphale still wore fabrics of a sturdier build, like they made in the old days, which was why he could still wear the same clothes that he’d worn in the old days, but fifty years later.
Crowley had noticed that Aziraphale was still looking at him. His face had gotten a tight look around the lips, like he was trying not to smile. Aziraphale looked away—there could be none of that.
After a moment, Crowley started the car, and they were on their way to brunch.
Aziraphale wasn’t sure why he was doing this. Why they were doing this. There was nothing in particular they needed to talk about. Nothing to discuss. It wasn’t as though the Arrangement still held up, after Armageddon had been effectively canceled. They didn’t have anything they needed to do for each other.
Just another morning spending time in each other’s company, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Can’t believe we haven’t done brunch at the Ritz in so long,” Crowley said.
“It’s your sleep schedule,” Aziraphale murmured. “You never wake up early enough.”
“I’m awake early enough,” Crowley said. When Aziraphale gave a doubtful huff, he went on, “I have a routine! It takes time to pick out these black and white clothes, you know.”
He was casting Aziraphale a sly grin, but Aziraphale was determinedly staring straight ahead. Or, he had tried to, but from the fact that he had just noticed Crowley’s sly grin, the angel reluctantly had to admit that he must have glanced at his face for at least a moment. Bugger.
They made it to the restaurant and sat at their usual table, which admittedly looked different in daylight. The candles were gone. Brunch was still one of the more sentimental of mealtimes. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had done this on purpose.
You’re being paranoid, he thought. But he couldn’t help noticing that the table between them seemed smaller than it usually did.
As though reading his mind, Crowley, once he’d sat down, immediately leaned far back, sprawling across the back of his chair in that ridiculous way he did. He didn’t look at Aziraphale. Just grinned at the tablecloth.
“So,” Aziraphale said. “What is the—er—plan?”
Crowley’s grin faded and he continued to stare, seemingly lost in thought. For once, Aziraphale wished it were the demon saying something to break the silence, pulling him out of his thoughts and back into the present, like it always used to be. Like they were normal.
“I thought,” Crowley said, slowly, “we might see a movie.”
Aziraphale blinked, as though he had no idea what a ‘movie’ was. Then his brow creased. “You mean at the cinema?”
Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Yes,” he said. “The ‘cinema’.”
Aziraphale frowned. “You know I don’t particularly enjoy going to the cinema.”
“But this is different.”
“Really? How so.”
Crowley paused. “It’s a different movie from what we saw last time.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes.
“And you can get popcorn.”
“I don’t want—”
“I know you say you don’t like it, but angel, last time you ate half of mine before the trailers were through.”
Aziraphale blushed. “It’s not that I don’t like popcorn. I just don’t particularly want popcorn.” It always made him feel a bit queasy. And he really couldn’t stop eating it. Dangerous stuff.
Crowley opened his mouth and started to say “And why—” but he cut himself off, biting his tongue and scrunching up in his seat in a peculiar way. His tone was so different lately. His usual wry self was there, underneath, he could hardly keep that concealed, but there was a—carefulness to it all that made Aziraphale uncomfortable precisely because of the fact that it was there in an attempt not to let that very thing happen—at least not too far.
Luckily, they were prevented from having to say more about Aziraphale’s popcorn eating habits by the arrival of their waiter.
Over the course of their brunch, they discussed alternatives to the ‘cinema’. Aziraphale wanted to go to the museum, but Crowley insisted they had been too many times that month. ‘Let some new history happen before we go again, it always does eventually.’ Crowley suggested a concert of which he knew very well the angel would not approve. They both halfheartedly brought up several other possibilities that they both knew would be far too crowded for their tastes. In the end, Crowley circled back to the movies.
“It’s one you’ll like,” he said. “Trust me.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, scraping frustratedly at his plate in an attempt to round up the last bits of his egg. “It’s just that I suspect you don’t entirely know for certain what kind of ‘films’ I like. Not enough for me to risk sitting in a cinema with sticky floors and people less than a meter away from you and—well—other features.”
“’Suspecting’ is the exact opposite of trust, you know,” Crowley said, one corner of his mouth pulling up. He sat back and crossed his arms. His plate still had a third of his food on it.
Aziraphale gave up on the eggs and sighed. “Fine, then. I don’t trust your taste in ‘movies’.”
“And I suspect your ability to judge what you should and shouldn’t trust is imperfect,” Crowley shot back. “You’ll like it, and that’s the truth. I know you.”
He sounded pleased with himself. Aziraphale was still thinking about that half-smile of his from before, in the car, when he’d caught him looking, trying to decide if there had been any hope in it. Trying to see if there was anything he needed to snuff out.
“You don’t know everything about me,” Aziraphale said, weakly. It was a sorry argument.
Crowley only raised an eyebrow. He looked down at Aziraphale’s plate. The angel tried not to stare at Crowley’s, tried not to stare at him, but there were only so many places one could look at a tiny little table like this.
“Sure, I don’t,” Crowley said. Then, his tone suddenly becoming bright and cheery, “Want the rest of my breakfast?”
“Pancakes,” Aziraphale said, not hiding his disgust. “At the Ritz. Since when did they start offering that sort of thing?”
“They’re really good,” the demon said in a horribly singsong voice.
“With chocolate chips, of all things.”
“Wouldn’t’ve been the full experience without them.”
“And you’ve doused them in syrup,” Aziraphale tutted. “Must you try to be so American?”
“If you can change the vintage of a wine, then I’m allowed to give the table some real authentic maple syrup,” Crowley said. He pushed the plate forward with one hand. Aziraphale scowled. Crowley beamed. “It’s like cake, angel. I know you’re missing your usual since we’re here so early.”
“It’s breakfast,” Aziraphale said. “And it’s not breakfast, anyway. It’s brunch. Just because you only got up an hour ago doesn’t mean—you’re not dragging me into your awful schedule.”
“You got up at noon back when it was the fashionable thing to do, with your fancy artist friends a century or two ago, and don’t deny it.”
Aziraphale squirmed. Crowley grinned. It felt like the old days, with the demon making the angel feel inordinately uncomfortable and tempted and just guilty enough to fill his quota, thereby not having to feel guilty about the fact that he was spending time with the demon at all. Not that he’d felt guilty about that in ages. Not since he’d come to consider him his friend. His best friend. And then it all came crashing down, just by Aziraphale noticing something, something different in the way Crowley was around him, as though Crowley was wanting to somehow topple them right back to the way they were before, right back to that horrid awkwardness. As though now that they had finally gotten to the point where them being in each other’s presence wasn’t anything to make note of, where they could be close to each other without hardly even noticing, now Crowley wanted them to notice. Now he had to make a point of it. Until Aziraphale had finally caught on, and perhaps, though he hadn’t entirely meant to, he had spooked the poor demon. Now Crowley was even worse, because now he always sounded so bloody careful.
Perhaps it was better if Aziraphale had inadvertently scared him off, after all.
But now, Crowley looked like his old self. There was no self-consciousness in the way he slid his plate forward, across the whole pitifully tiny table, towards the angel. He raised his eyebrows and Aziraphale, with yet another sigh, couldn’t help but smile and take it.
“At least let me tell you the plot,” Crowley said.
“I’m sure it will be most enthralling,” Aziraphale replied. “But will it be so enthralling that I don’t notice the smell of weeks-old beer on the goodness-knows-why carpeted floors? Doubtful, my dear.”
Crowley scoffed, and Aziraphale, satisfied, picked up the demon’s fork and mentally prepared himself to try some of these chocolate-chip pancakes.
One thing Aziraphale had always noticed, even from way back when it had first started, was the way Crowley watched him when he gave him his leftover food.
At first it had been an almost sly expression across his face as millennia-ago Aziraphale had tentatively accepted what the demon swore he didn’t want. ‘He was full. No, really, go ahead. Why let it go to waste?’ He had watched him like he was seeing if he would take the bait. To combat this, Aziraphale had eaten every last bite with affected indifference, refusing to accept this display of metaphor. And Crowley, ignoring this, watched his ‘temptation’ work. He would sit back and smile.
At some point, the sly expression had transitioned into a front. The metaphoric temptation became a mere excuse for the demon’s actions, and this was a fact of which they were both aware. Crowley had nothing to prove. He still gave him food. Aziraphale accepted it.
Centuries passed, it became a habit. No one needed a motivation for continuing a habit. Crowley watched Aziraphale like he was looking for something anyway.
Then, for a brief time, while they were working together to try to raise Warlock and avert the Apocalypse—there had been a time when Crowley had looked at him with pure, undisguised contentment. He just, for whatever reason, wanted to share. He would wait for Aziraphale to finish whatever dessert he had ordered, then he would push over his own plate, untouched, and the angel would accept it, and Crowley would nod, and smile, with nothing but calm joy that he had given him something. No pretenses at all. Just a gift. Aziraphale might have fallen in love with him then—
—if he did that sort of thing.
But Aziraphale, wrapped in so many layers of cotton and wool that you could spend eternity unraveling them, didn’t go around falling for things.
Crowley was watching him now. Aziraphale tried to ignore it. He sliced the spongey cake with the edge of his fork, speared it and raised it to his lips. But right when he closed his mouth around it, the bittersweet taste of the chocolate chips startlingly strong, his glance flickered back up to the demon’s face. Watching. Crowley pressed his lips together and looked down at the tablecloth. Aziraphale forgot to chew. He let the dark chocolate melt in his mouth, not looking away from Crowley’s face. He slid the fork out of his mouth and felt his own lips pressed against each other.
“It’s historical,” Crowley said. His voice was quieter than usual, because there was no use pretending he hadn’t just come out of something like a trance.
Aziraphale swallowed.
“It’s about—uh—” He had to clear his throat to sound more normal. “Queen Victoria.”
“Again?” Aziraphale said, his dismay allowing him to somewhat snap out of his wayward thoughts.
“No, no,” Crowley laughed. “This one’s about someone who worked for her.”
“It will still inevitably be about her,” Aziraphale said. “Humans these days. What is their fascination—?”
“With Victoria? What was your fascination at the time? You really ought to let me go, you know,” Crowley said. “I could learn a lot about the time I missed. Otherwise someday you’re going to have to tell me all about that whole century.”
“I doubt they’ll be showing much of the century that I was having,” Aziraphale said. “Believe it or not, I didn’t play nanny to the queen’s children the whole time you were asleep.”
Crowley snorted. He put his hands up in surrender. “If you hate the ‘cinema’ so much,” he said, “then will you at least let me play it on the screen in my flat? It’ll be a big hit, they’ll’ve made plenty of money on it without the price of our tickets.”
Aziraphale considered it. He thought about the smell of old popcorn. Then he thought about Crowley’s flat. The scent of plants and growing green things in the darkened room as they sat on the sofa, farther apart than they were sitting now. The screen lighting up the room in flashes during the brighter scenes, then going black and silent. Only the two of them.
“Let’s go to the cinema,” he said brusquely. He added, “If you’re so keen on it.”
“What changed your mind?” Crowley asked, and then, damningly, looked like he regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He could be too clever, sometimes. Aziraphale winced.
“I want popcorn,” he said, quickly.