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There’s a late summer heatwave forecast for London, so Crowley and Aziraphale escape to Anathema and Newt's for the bank holiday weekend. Not that Tadfield is a lot cooler, strictly speaking, than London -- but it does have the advantage of more trees. And Adam.
Adam’s presence has a way of making the weather just a bit more … amenable than it would be otherwise. Nothing so noticeable as to cause consternation among weather prognosticators but something that beings like Crowley and Aziraphale can feel within a roughly 2.5 to 3 kilometer radius. They enter the zone with a slight pop of pressure against the eardrums. It’s the sort of good fortune zone that causes a cooling breeze to arrive just when you feel too warm, or the sun to break through the rain clouds just as you begin to worry about your plans for an afternoon picnic.
On this particular weekend, it means that just as the Them are moaning about the heat from a hammock in Anathema's back garden, Crowley comes out onto the back stoop and asks: “Does anyone fancy a much-too-fast and therefore quite thrillingly dangerous drive to the seaside?”
A cheer erupts from the hammock; Aziraphale and Newt, sitting in the shade of the oak tree each with a book in his hands, exchange a worried glance between them; Anathema closes her laptop. Even Dog lifts his head from his paws at the word “seaside” and possibly also “drive.”
"Come on, you lot," Crowley says, clapping his hands in a manner reminiscent of his Nanny Ashtoreth days. "First one to the Bentley gets to ride up front with me and Anathema, no safety belts required!"
"Oh, really," Aziraphale grumbles, tucking a bookmark in his Cat Sebastian novel. "Just so I'm forced to come with you to prevent any traffic accidents. You could have simply asked." He levers himself out of the garden chair, trying to decide which pair of shoes (he’s brought several) will best keep the sand from between his toes.
"Ah, but where's the thrill in that?" Crowley grins, ostentatiously presenting his cheek for a kiss as Aziraphale passes him en route to the guest bedroom.
The drive from Tadfield to the nearest stretch of seaside is harrowing enough in a Bentley stuffed with three children, one antichrist, two adult humans, one demon, one angel, and one hellhound not to mention the beach towels, a picnic hamper, and a change of clothes for everyone. They back precipitously out of the drive and careen down the lanes at Crowley’s usual unlawful speed; Anathema's presence in the front seat, squeezed between Wensleydale and the window, seems to inspire the Bentley, and P!nk’s “Raise Your Glass” starts filtering out of the car stereo.
Aziraphale watches the countryside go by in something of a blur from his position wedged between Adam and the back left door with Dog on his lap. It still feels strange, this life with so many friends that they barely fit in the demonically-flexible interior of Crowley's automobile. For so many years it was just him and Crowley and humans who came and went from the bookshop. People he cared for but who didn't really know enough about him to care back.
"Have you ever been to Weston-super-Mare, Aziraphale?" Pepper leans over Adam to ask, just as the Bentley screams around another turn. Aziraphale can't help but notice Brian looks a bit green about the gills and pushes just enough grace in his direction to keep the boy from being sick all over their feet.
"He might not remember the last time," Crowley observes over his shoulder, just as the car stereo switches to “Freak Like Me” by Halestorm. "It rained all week and he refused to leave the hotel lounge."
"It wasn't the whole week," Aziraphale is indignant. "Remember that delightful cafe on the sands? Where I helped that kind woman brew her lapsang souchong correctly?"
Crowley raises his eyebrow in the rearview mirror, "You mean the cafe where you took refuge after we had to check out of the hotel on the last morning?"
"The seaside is even more delightful in poor weather, anyway, I've always thought," Aziraphale says, making an end-run around Crowley's teasing. "We had a nice quiet morning in that shop watching the rain and drinking tea. You said at the time they were the best Bath buns you'd had since 1986." He isn’t even stretching the truth for the sake of winning an argument; he likes the fierce, raw storms that blow in off the sea in this corner of England. They have always reminded him of Crowley: dangerous and unpredictable and life-giving all at once. Impossible to sleep through and yet wonderfully soporific under the right circumstances. Shall I compare thee to a tempest, Aziraphale thinks to himself and smiles back at Crowley's reflection. Crowley blushes and drops his eyes back to the road.
"Are we going to get Bath buns, Mr. Crowley?" asked Wensleydale. The Them have fallen into the habit of deferring to Crowley on group outings -- a pattern that Anathema finds terribly funny, Newt seems slightly horrified by, and Aziraphale thinks is probably inevitable. Crowley has always been captivating to young humans, a natural talent only strengthened by his decade in service to the Antichrist-that-wasn’t. Since Aziraphale also enjoys letting Crowley plan their adventures, he hasn't worried too much about Crowley’s influence over the Them.
"Ice cream, I thought," Newt says from the far left passenger seat behind Anathema. Decisiveness from such an unusual source causes everyone in the Bentley, even Dog, to look over at him.
"I mean," Newt says, backpedaling. "It's what we always had. At the beach. When I was a child."
"Then ice cream it shall be," Aziraphale declares before Newt can start to apologize further for having preferences. Wensleydale and Newt fall into a discussion about whether single-flavor or double-flavor cones are the best, Anathema entering into the fray with a persuasive case that gelato is better than custard ice cream, and Aziraphale turns contentedly back to petting Dog's ears and watching the countryside speed by.
They arrive at Weston-super-Mare shortly after 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It's only when everyone tumbles out onto the pavement (and from thence out onto the sands) that Aziraphale remembers human children have parents who typically like to know when their offspring cross county lines.
"Already taken care of," Anathema murmurs beside him, tapping what was presumably her mobile in the pocket of her skirt. "They're a bit of a handful for the usual sort of parent. Newt and I help take the edge off from time to time during school holidays." She pushes her tinted lenses up her nose in a gesture that reminds Aziraphale of a nervous Crowley.
As promised, it's cooler by the sea, even with warm wind off the land. There's an incoming tide and the Them, along with Newt, Crowley, and Dog, are barefoot and down to the beach before Aziraphale has untied his shoe laces.
"Do angels swim?" Anathema asks curiously, making no move toward the sands herself.
"An excellent question to which there is no singular answer," Aziraphale replies, carefully tucking his socks into the toes of his shoes and knotting the laces together for carrying purposes. "I have always rather liked oceans, myself, but Michael -- just to take one example -- has always held firm in his belief that salt water was all down to Dagon. Won’t go near the stuff."
"That doesn't make any sense," Anathema points out, fixing her wide-brimmed sun hat a bit more firmly on her head as the ocean breeze tries to steal it away.
"And that," Aziraphale says -- with what he feels is justified smugness -- “is why we won and they lost."
Anathema gives him a look. "You're very English sometimes, you know that, don't you?"
"I suppose the local character was bound to rub off after a thousand years," Aziraphale allows.
They stroll down the pavement together in companionable silence, eyes on the rest of their party at the water's edge. Crowley, Pepper, and Wensleydale appear to be in some sort of pitched water battle with Adam, Brian, and Newt. Dog paddles back and forth through the surf, either attempting to join in or herding everyone back to shore. Possibly both; it’s difficult to tell at this distance.
"Did you ever imagine the post-not-apocalypse being quite so ... populated?" he asks, thinking not only of himself and Crowley, but the Them, and Newt and Anthema, and of Sky tending the bookshop in London ... humans he and Crowley have somehow become important to in ways that could be considered friendship.
He hasn't had many friends over the millennia. And he may have this entirely wrong but he imagines Anathema may not have had either. Since the days of Cassandra, women driven by prophecy have had rather a hard time of it. He's glad she has Newt.
"I certainly wasn't expecting all the children," Anathema admits. "I am not the motherly sort."
"This lot have mothers already," Aziraphale point out. "I imagine you and Newt offer something much different."
"I suppose --" Anathema stops, pursing her lips in thought. "I didn't have a me, you know, growing up. I suppose I'm a bit jealous."
Angels came into existence fully formed, materially speaking, but they had a youth of sorts. Aziraphale has memories of his own youth, many of them memories he prefers not to revisit. Existence before the Garden had been before Crowley -- before he knew Crowley -- and that before held a great deal of loneliness and pain for them both.
"I had not thought of jealousy," he admits, swinging his shoes by the laces as he considers. "Young ones seem such fragile beings to be jealous of. But I take your point." Out in the surf Crowley and Newt have lifted Pepper and Brian on their respective shoulders and appear to be engaged in a face-off that involves much splashing and shouting on all sides.
"When did you know?" Anathema asks, sitting down on the low concrete wall that between the pavement and the sand. "About Crowley, I mean."
Aziraphale doesn't immediately follow. "Know?"
Anathema hunches her shoulders. "It's all been very ... fast. Newt and I. But I don't feel unsure. Is that ..." she stops herself and shakes her head. "I was going to say 'is that normal' but I imagine neither of us know that, do we?"
"I expect not." Aziraphale settles beside her. A seagull hops closer, hoping for bread; Aziraphale miracles a stale baguette and scatters a handful of crumbs.
"I think," he ventures, after a companionable pause. "I think it would not surprise me if your life has taught you how to pay attention to the right sort of signs."
Anathema twitches her nose dubiously. "It's kind of you to say so."
"I don't know about 'kind.' Paying attention to signs -- discerning them, interpreting what they mean -- is not a ... comfortable responsibility." Aziraphale tosses another handful of crumbs to the growing number of seagulls milling around them. "You asked when I knew, about Crowley." He looks again out at the group in the waves. "It's different, for our kind. We aren't encouraged to -- in fact, we're actively discouraged from -- forming particular attachments. We don't reproduce in the way humans do. We are not born but ... willed into being. By God. We are expected to focus our existence on serving God's plan. Love for a -- loving someone as opposed to everyone is frowned upon. Among the Fallen, caring is a weakness to be exploited; those willing and able to exert the most raw power typically prevail. It is ...not a situation conducive to loving. What Crowley and I have..." he looks down at his hands, where a still-unfamiliar silver ring glints on his finger. "There is no room for us in Heaven or Hell. I think there is a reason we were sent to Earth, and a reason we have been allowed to stay. Perhaps we were early experiments in God's creation of humanity."
Anathema twists to look at him. “That’s a lot about Heaven and Hell and God but very little about you.”
"I'm putting it very badly,” Aziraphale admits, lifting a shoulder. It still frightens him, to speak in terms of his own desires rather than divine responsibilities. Particularly to anyone but Crowley himself. “I didn't have the words. For a very long time. But ... loving Crowley came first. Before words. Before anything. Before history properly began. I've always known. It just took me many centuries to ... to trust what I already had. And to understand it in ... more Earthly terms. I was afraid.”
"Newt and I don't exactly have centuries," Anathema sighs. "But .. yeah. Yeah, it feels like -- ugh." She shakes her whole body and scrubs her face with her hands. "I always thought I would never have a partner. I was fine with the idea of never having a partner! And then --" she gestures at Newt, who has been defeated in whatever battle had been playing out and is now back on the wet sand helping Wensleydale build a sand fortification complete with moat and driftwood drawbridge. "-- He's, he's --"
"-- Frustrating, maddening, beautiful, brilliant, precious, and absolutely necessary?" Aziraphale finishes wryly.
Anathema laughs. "Yeah. A bit."
"I, too, thought for many years -- centuries -- that I was meant to be alone," Aziraphale confesses, twisting the ring on his finger for reassurance. The little silver snake warms under his touch. "Crowley slipped in around the edges. And my life is so much better for it. I am more myself with him than without him. I try -- I really do try not to be frightened by that."
The children are drooping by teatime; Newt and Anathema take them out the Grand Pier in search of ice cream while Crowley and Aziraphale meander hand-in-hand up the Marine Parade to the little seaside cafe of Bath bun fame. It's hardly changed at all from Aziraphale's memories. There are some new sketches on the walls, the collection of dogs outside the front door are different, but the young blonde woman behind the counter is the same, and the menu boards hanging above the counter hold much the same collection of offerings as the last time.
Crowley winks at Aziraphale -- a twitch of the cheek only visible from behind the sunglasses because he knows to look for it, and sidles up to the counter. "We'd like a pot of lapsang souchong and two of those Bath buns."
The buns are, indeed, invitingly displayed beneath a glass dome on the counter and Aziraphale feels a wash of memory: The sound of the September gale against the cafe windows; Crowley's restless energy as he sat across the table from Aziraphale and watched him eat; the worn out feeling in Aziraphale's form that always accompanied the work of easing difficult life transitions -- the nuns may have led a contemplative life, but their sorrow at leaving the home they had shared for decades had run deep.
"Lapsang souchong!" the young woman responds, a smile lighting up her face. "I remember you!" Her eyes slide from Crowley to Aziraphale and the smile -- it shouldn't be possible -- increases its glow. "I did wonder, that is --" her eyes dart back and forth between them and Aziraphale notices the signs of a human confirming that they're together. "It's good to see you again. On holiday?"
"Just for the day," Aziraphale agrees. "We've brought some young friends down for an afternoon at the seaside."
"That's so lovely!" The woman -- Sam, that was it, Aziraphale remembers -- is practically clapping her hands with enthusiasm. "And don't worry, I'll make your tea nice and hot."
"Just off the boil," Aziraphale agrees. "And might the buns be warmed up?"
Crowley pays for their purchases and they make their way to an empty table by the window with a little wooden figure bearing their order number. It's a painted carving of one of the living statues Aziraphale remembers from their last visit and a glance around the cafe suggests that each of the little figures is a lovingly detailed representation of one of the cafe's regulars. Perhaps by the same artist who seems to have been responsible for all of the artwork on the walls?
Crowley's ankle catches his below the table and Aziraphale puts out his hand, palm up, on the table for Crowley to slide his into. The wordless vocabulary of contentment.
“The last time we came here,” he says, looking over at Crowley. "You were trying to cheer me up." He's been remembering that week from 2015 since Crowley brought it up on the drive. The rain. The hotel. The energy it had taken to ease the pain of those four sisters at the convent as they readied themselves to close up the house and move to assisted living. Crowley had followed him here with papery-thin excuses that neither of them believed, but honored for the sake of appearances and quarterly reports.
"Was not," Crowley objects with no real heat.
"You were, my dear," Aziraphale runs the tip of his index finger along the underside of Crowley's wrist for the delight of watching Crowley lick his lips in an attempt not to smile fondly.
"I was trying to cheer myself up; you were already having a lovely time what with the nuns and the rain and the endless pots of tea."
"And that excellent third volume of Mather's Biblia," Aziraphale smiles reminiscently. "But you know? I think it was in this shop here that I realized humans looked at us and saw a couple."
"Can't have been." Crowley frowns.
Aziraphale shakes his head. "I don't mean the first time a human had assumed we were lovers -- surely that happened before the birth of Christ? I mean in the modern sense, a human -- that one, in fact --" he waves his tea spoon toward the counter. "-- treating us like we belonged with one another, in the way that humans do. I had no interest in correcting her."
Crowley's hand tightens in Aziraphale's grip and Aziraphale feels a cool draft sweep through the room and wrap itself around his form. "I didn't either," he says. "Never have, never will."
"Good," Aziraphale says with a smile.