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They were having another one of their taxonomical arguments.
“Not a bird.”
“’S definitely a bird.”
“Linnaeus is rolling in his grave. It’s a mammal, Crowley.”
“Wings! Big wings! Flapping around! Bird!”
Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose. “Conge— convere— came up separately, the wings. No feathers, y’see?”
Crowley waved a hand. “Wants to be a bird so bad, shouldn’t we let it?”
“That’s the providence of the Almighty,” Aziraphale sighed. “Not within our power, dear.”
A dark look fell across Crowley’s face at the mention of Herself. He silently took another long drink of wine, draining his glass and setting it down on the side table with a soft thunk.
“Know what I think,” he said then, in a way that implied he knew Aziraphale didn’t know what he thought, but was very excited to tell him.
“What?”
“They’re cute.”
“‘M sorry?”
“Bats.” Crowley fixed Aziraphale with a bleary, drunken stare, his shades long since lost between the cushions of the bookshop’s ancient back room sofa. “They’re cute.”
Aziraphale had never known Crowley, in six thousand years, to ever call any of God’s creatures cute. He wouldn’t have thought that word was in the demon’s vocabulary.
Crowley had no compunctions against being complimentary, of course; he called things brilliant and wicked and wonderful and awesome every day.
But cute?
“Are they, now?” Aziraphale managed.
Crowley’s stare drilled deeper into Aziraphale, which had a rather unbalancing effect. His discomfort must have shown on his face, because Crowley drawled, “Something wrong? You don’t agree?”
“No– far from it! I’ve just. Not heard you say that before.”
“What? Cute?”
Aziraphale nodded minutely.
“Nah,” said Crowley. “I think lots of things are cute.” He ran a hand distractingly through his hair.
Aziraphale felt rather like he was treading on top of quicksand, and was liable to fall through at any moment. “Such as?” he heard himself ask, distantly.
Crowley pulled one of his faces as he thought about it. “Babies, for a start,” he said, beginning to count off on his fingers. “VW Bugs, the older ones. Little toys you get inside of Kinder eggs. Um. Snapdragons, cutest flower.”
He paused.
“And you.”
“…Pardon?”
“You, I said. You’re cute . ”
Aziraphale was helpless to stop the hot flush creeping up above his collar (which, when had it gotten so tight?) and suffusing his face.
“Like that, that, there—!” Crowley leaned forward, pointing. “The— the blushing! You don’t even know you’re doing it, and that just makes it all— makes it—”
Summoning all of the God-given ethereal strength of the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Aziraphale hoisted a single eyebrow, and let loose a small smile.
Crowley slumped back against the couch weakly, reduced to wordlessness. Aziraphale suddenly felt immensely powerful. He got up from his armchair and sat down next to Crowley on the sofa, head spinning.
“Tell me more,” he said quietly, feeling braver than he had ever felt, braver than back on that airbase field, even, facing down Satan himself.
“Mmm,” Crowley groaned, shoving his head into the sofa, away from Aziraphale. “Do I have to.”
“Yes.”
Slowly, Crowley removed his face from the cushion. He sank down until he was lying askew, head against the arm of the sofa, looking right up at Aziraphale.
“Your hair, for a start,” he mumbled, “so fluffy, you don’t even do anything to it… your stupid clothes, just, unnessa— unneces— don’t have to be all soft like that…”
And he just kept going, and going. It seemed like nothing would shut him up.
Aziraphale considered his options carefully. By the time Crowley had gotten around to describing the inherent cuteness of Aziraphale’s reactions to plot twists in bad action movies, the angel had made his decision.
“—and you just make that face , like you’re surprised, even though I know you’re not, it should be idiotic, but it isn’t, it’s—”
Crowley’s babbling was cut off at the source by the press of an angel’s lips to his mouth. The kiss was swift, yet dizzying; somehow chaste and deeply sensual at the same time. Aziraphale wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to recreate it; the conditions were too unique.
“Cute?” Aziraphale finished Crowley’s sentence for him as he drew away.
“…Yeah,” said Crowley, utterly dazed. “Mmhm. Really… really… cute.”
***