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The air between them is heavy and stale. Silent. Listen. Do you hear that? Crowley turns the dial. Vera Lynn, Bing Crosby, Queen– he glares in the direction of the radio– Vivaldi.
They aren’t talking, not strictly. This doesn’t count.
Crowley drives twenty miles per hour above the speed limit, instead of his usual thirty. There is hardly anyone on the road, and this is mountain driving. Not as fun to speed without Londoners to antagonize. This is work–or mutiny, or whatever. Aziraphale would probably call it capital-E Espionage, if he asked, which he won’t. And afterwards, if there is an afterwards at all–Crowley will go somewhere. Preferably with a beach, and Aziraphale will go–where he belongs. Back to the bookshop, probably. He doesn’t know why the thought stings.
Aziraphale always brought something to nibble on, on long drives, or made eyes until Crowley agreed to pull over for roadside curry chips. Or–he used to. There is no tartan tin of biscuits to be seen, no thermos of tea. They had passed the occasional food truck, and Aziraphale hadn’t once commented on the smell– Don’t you smell that, my dear? You simply must try some, I can’t finish it all on my own. He doesn’t comment on the egrets along the Mississippi, or make a sad little noise when they pass the places where wildfires have left nothing but shale and blackened husks of trees in their wake. This Aziraphale wrings his hands, and stares blankly out the window.
“Your car doesn’t usually play Vivaldi,” he says, pointedly. They’re back to your car. My side. Lines in the sand.
Crowley wrenches the music off, and they drive through most of Arkansas without a word. Crowley counts three billboards proclaiming that Hell is Real, one very large and unflattering statue of Jesus Christ, and at least two suspicious-looking exits for overpriced roadside attractions. He considers playing twenty questions with himself. The Bentley gives it another go–this time it’s Sondheim. Crowley thinks very, very hard about television shows that play on Sunday afternoons to catch the armchair-napping contingent, where vintage cars have their beautiful original interiors gutted and replaced by sleek, new bluetooth sound systems. He doesn't mean it, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Somewhere” abruptly–blessedly–cuts off.
When it gets dark, and the silence becomes unbearable, Crowley pulls into a bar called Paradise.
“I’m going for a bite,” he says, and doesn’t wait for Aziraphale to follow him.
Aziraphale isn’t drinking at all, at first. He stares at his glass of house red–printed with the word PARADISE in a garishly large font, and a toucan in a panama hat–like it had dared to purchase a prized Woolf first edition.
“You don’t drink?”
“Not anymore, no. It–doesn’t agree with me.”
“Doesn’t agree with you? Something change, after the last four-thousand years?” it comes out sharp, and Crowley does not care.
“That’s not–”
“Fair? No, I suppose not. I couldn’t possibly understand .”
“I never said that.” Aziraphale reaches for the bottle. He sniffs, scrunching his nose. The house red becomes a respectable vintage Malbec. Crowley hums his thanks. Lifts his glass. “To all the time left in the World.”
Aziraphale hesitates–and it’s been so long since they’ve shared a bottle of something, like this–and even longer still since Aziraphale had been anything but ecstatic to do so.
“To all the time left in the World,” he says, without mirth.
They talk.
“And Michael is–well, she and I have never exactly gotten on.”
“She’s a wanker. You can say it.”
“I–She is, rather.”
“Go on. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I couldn’t.” Crowley raises an eyebrow.
“It’s been said. Need I?”
“Go on. It’s not about it being said, it’s about saying it.”
“Alright.” He makes a show of breathing deep, straightening his tie. Performer’s instincts. It’s almost inaudible, when he does say it. “Michael’s a wanker.”
Crowley is not giggling. Decidedly undemonic, that. Aziraphale is smiling, too–the kind where he’s trying very hard not to. Crowley had catalogued. He hadn’t seen that one in a while. “I missed–”
Shit. Is he that drunk already? “ This. I missed this. Good wine.”
It is now, anyway. Aziraphale doesn’t let him off easy. “Good conversation?”
“Don’t act all smug, I’m not–this doesn’t mean we’re–” Fixed. Back to–whatever it was they’d been heading toward.
“You, too.”
“Yeah, well.”
Aziraphale seems very interested in the peanut shells inside the tabletop. How very out of place he is, here. He is wilted and quiet in a loud American bar, ignoring loud American football at the end of the world. “You have people, though. I’m glad.”
“ People, Aziraphale, not–” Something is fragile here. Crowley suddenly feels very tired of waiting for fragile things to break. They always do. His voice is thick with it. He watches an overserved man in a backwards cap completely miss the dartboard. He gives up on finishing the sentence.
Aziraphale reaches out for his hand, for the first time since he pulled Crowley out onto the bookshop floor to dance. It is soft, the way he’d always thought–shockingly cold, like he’d been bathing in ice. Like he’d forgotten to turn his corporation back on. And it is altogether too late.
He pulls away. Clicks his fingers, and sobers up. He doesn’t look at Aziraphale.