Title: The Nightingale
Author: shuixian
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Fandom: Good Omens
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to the geniuses known as Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
Summary: It's a day after the Armageddon-that-wasn't. Aziraphale and Crowley have lunch at the Ritz while considering the implications of not-doomsday.***
That certain night, the night we met,
There was magic abroad in the air,
There were angels dining at the Ritz
and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square -Aziraphale had ordered a salad.
Looking at Crowley?s face, one might have guessed the angel was aiming to eat a member of the Kalashnikov family instead. He stared at the plate with incredulity, and poked it with a fork, looking for any hidden dressings. He found none. Nada. Zip. It was just a plain salad. He sniffed the dish, expecting it to smell of lard or become a cake at any second. Neither one happened.
He then looked carefully at the angel, scrutinizing him slowly, as if he were an imposter with especially good makeup and a wallet full of professionally forged ID cards.
"What? " the subject inquired. Aziraphale was slightly miffed and more than a little offended at the suggestion Crowley's look was giving him.
"Nothin?," Crowley said. "Well?" he smirked slightly, "don't you usually get the deviled eggs with coffee and kippers? Or something to that extent." He paused. "Certainly nothing like a salad, for the Light-bringer's sake."
"Oh, hush," Aziraphale muttered quickly. "It's just, well, since the next Apocalypse seems to be a far way off?"
"-so you're going to seize the opportunity to lose weight? "
"Er. Well, er, no. You see?"
Crowley cut him off. "Wow, I didn't know it mattered that much to you." He looked curiously at the angel, sizing him up. "It's not that bad, really, but you know, if you wanted to slim down, you could just think about it."
"Yes, but?? Aziraphale blinked hard and mentally slapped himself"...that's not why I'm doing this."
"What?s the reason, then??
"I?ve never eaten a salad before, and I? wanted to see what it was like."
"Really.?
"Also as a thing to celebrate the un-happening of the Apocalypse?" Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Try something different, you see."
"Ah." Crowley feigned acceptance. "In that case, I'll get - hmm - a nice steak." He beamed at the face across the table.
Aziraphale shrugged nonchalantly. "Whatever suits you, my dear."
They waited for the rest of their food to arrive, to Crowley's chagrin. The server explained that the Ritz was unexpectedly understaffed at the moment, and no matter how many times Crowley willed the queue list to change its order in his favor, it appeared there was nothing he could do about it.
He rapped the table impatiently. "What do you think will happen to the Adam boy?"
"That depends, I suppose." Aziraphale attempted to counterpoint Crowley, and gave up. The demon's beat was simply too bluesy. "If he keeps his powers, one could reasonably expect him 'watching over the world', so to speak."
Crowley ceased his tapping. "Didn't he say something against messing around yesterday? Or maybe I just imagined that bit." The demon's imagination, fueled by ethanol and recently given a kick of high-grade petrol by Adam's revisions, was populated with diverse creatures. Hieronymus Bosch could have made woodcuts of them.
Aziraphale looked pensive. "Perhaps he would only take action if the event affected him directly."
Crowley thought about this. "Maybe," he remarked.
A waitress in a prim miniskirt wheeled a cart over with the dishes. "For you two sirs," she giggled, unloading the plates onto the table.
"Thank you very much, miss," Aziraphale beamed. "Er, by the way-would you happen to have any ranch dressing?"
Crowley looked around at the wealthy families eating as the young girl scampered off to find the salad toppings. Poof, and several grizzled patriarchs turned, one pointedly staring at the small derriere in its short skirt. Crowley felt a tap on his shoulder.
"Was that really necessary?" Aziraphale?s tone was definitely disapproving.
"Sorry," Crowley mumbled.
Aziraphale frowned. "One would think you'd give the wiles a little break."
"Old habit."
"Well." It seemed that nature had done Aziraphale's job for him: the transgressing husbands were already being admonished by their stern-faced wives. "Do you see? Divine influence."
"Motivated by jealousy, more likely." The demon looked skeptical. Aziraphale pretended to not hear him.
They sat in silence for a while. The waitress came back with the dressing (receiving less attention that time; Crowley was currently engaged with eating his lunch) and Aziraphale dug in.
The salad wasn?t half bad, he realized. Come to think of it, he should really do this kind of thing more often.
Crowley, on the other hand, was still in a state of shock. His angel, fan of cakes, pastries, and sweets, enjoying a salad? No, this couldn't be right. He began to have a creeping suspicion that perhaps Adam Young had altered Aziraphale's memory a little too much. Maybe it was another strange joke.
Funny, though. If Crowley really thought about it, Aziraphale wasn't too fat. While his mostly-starch diet did make an impact on his constitution, it did not have the extreme effect it should have, as a normal human being. Not that the angel was a human being. But it was a strange halfway, in between total manipulation and letting reality run its course. Why hadn?t Aziraphale been more like him, Crowley, who used supernatural power to be any way he wanted?
(Adam had already seen all these puzzling questions as well as their answers the night before. Then again, he was the Antichrist.)
Crowley could simply not fathom any reason for it. He considered asking Aziraphale but quickly decided against it.
He also realized that for some peculiar reason, the angel's subtle contradictions intrigued him. Six thousand years wasn?t enough to sort them all out.
Lost in his internal world of contemplation and steak with tartar sauce, Crowley did not notice that his hand had slowly ended up on top of Aziraphale?s. Neither did the angel-at least until he attempted to take a sip of wine, and found his spare hand pinned by a barrier with all the limp weight of an unnoticed limb.
"Crowley," he said.
"Hm?" Crowley emerged from the deep seas of inner reflection. "What's u- oh."
His face went flat. "Um."
While it is true that angels and demons can read minds, this usually applies to humans only, and is limited to the most obvious emotions. Needless to say, communication between the two types of divine being are restricted to outward expression.
And Aziraphale knew exactly what Crowley?s expression meant.
And Crowley knew very well that Aziraphale did. (He was vigorously denying it in his head, but a good chunk of his soul was already resigned to fate.)
"My dear," Aziraphale began, then smiled warmly. "You know what this means.?
"No," Crowley blurted desperately. "No, I don't."
"Oh yes you do." An idiotic grin slowly expanded on Aziraphale?s face. Crowley?s countenance was stony; it might have been etched out of rose quartz. "I didn't believe you were capable of it, dear.? The angel became more and more annoyingly enthused. "Oh, you old serpent, you know exactly what this means."
"No," Crowley said wretchedly.
"Yes," Aziraphale said happily. "You love me, don't you."
A knot of dread settled in Crowley's stomach.
"You love me. You LOVE me!" The angel bounced out of his seat, still holding the demon's hand. "Don't try to deny it. You love, you actually lo?"
"Alright, alright, alright,? Crowley capitulated, face now flushed not out of shame so much as plain embarrassment. The other diners were starting to stare at the two men confessing their affections. The miniskirted waitress giggled. One of her colleagues elbowed her meaningfully, smirking.
"What I mean to say is?" Aziraphale took notice of the suddenly rapt audience and quickly sat down. He lowered his voice and leaned in, closer to Crowley. ?I?ve always known there was a spark of goodness in you, my dear."
Crowley groaned. "If the people Down Below ever catch wind of this?" he groaned again? "Look, I'm already known as the guy who owns houseplants. Do you want them to think I'm in love? That would get me dismembered faster than you can say 'improper'."
Aziraphale shifted. "I'm relatively that my compatriots Up Above would not take well to me being with you, either."
The once-angel gave him an askance look. "I thought your lot was all up in loving everybody."
"Well," Aziraphale sighed, "that's a specific kind of love, of course. "Agape", I think it was. Or maybe 'storge'. Er." Crowley looked at him coolly. "Whatever it was called. It's a sort of well-meaning feeling, I suppose, but not the article we?re talking about here."
Crowley did not contribute. Greek escaped him. The myths were formulaic and more often than not bafflingly filled with both the awful, unjust crimes and unconditional, soul-saving blessings only a functional human brain could come up with. The rest was Socrates, who Crowley strongly suspected as too good to be real, and Aristotle, who even Aziraphal acknowledged as stuffy. The demon did know a little about the gods, though.
"You mean Eros?" There was an awkward silence between them: the term was all too close to a certain word whose implications Crowley would rather not consider at the moment.
"Er, yes. Anyways," Aziraphale cleared his throat, ?that?s not something Heaven would approve of."
"I see," said Crowley. "You've really been bastardized a good bit, you know. No longer the statue of righteousness."
A definite look of guilt passed across Aziraphale's face. "It's okay," Crowley said hurriedly. "After all," he grasped at figurative straws, "Armageddon II is a long way off. You?ll have time to reform before your pals check in."
"You too," the angel murmured absently. "You'll have to forget how to love."
"It?s a long way off," Crowley said with forced casualness. "In the meantime, I guess?"
He was quieted by Aziraphale?s hand, the soft palm a welcome weight, grounding him on the table, in the Ritz, on Earth.
Aziraphale had guessed his thoughts, and he knew, and he smiled.
The nightingale trilled outside.
***