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No other sound is quite the same as your name
No touch can do half as much to make me feel better…
Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby
"Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing Baby" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (1968)
The pub is loud and crowded, which is what Crowley expected on a Saturday night. It’s why he picked this place for their rendezvous. Loud and crowded makes it difficult to talk. The less talking the better, as far as he’s concerned. If things go the way he hopes they do, once they leave the pub there won’t be any talking at all.
He saunters up to the bar and leans back against it, scanning the room. The bloke he’s looking for shouldn’t be hard to spot.
There he is, at the end of the bar, his back to the room, talking to the barman. Crowley can’t see his face, but he doesn’t need to. It’s impossible to miss those blond curls glowing under the bar lights. He shivers at the thought of running his fingers through them, tugging at them just a bit. As he runs his eyes down the man’s body, he admires the broad shoulders filling out the old-fashioned tweed jacket, how his wool trousers hug those deliciously thick thighs.
But enough of just looking.
Crowley stalks through the crowd to the other end of the bar. There’s no way he can be seen or heard as he comes up from behind, and he takes advantage of it. When he reaches his target, he places his hand on plush hips, pressing his own against the man’s ample backside in greeting.
“Been waiting for you all night,” Crowley growls, his breath hot in the man’s ear.
He waits for him to turn around, knows exactly what will happen when he does. No surprises here. They arranged this meeting only an hour ago on the app, and planned the whole thing. It’s a scenario, a game, a way to take the edge off. Just another hookup on a lonely Saturday night.
Story of his life.
“What the devil?” The man turns and steps away from Crowley, anger flashing in his eyes.
Blue eyes that Crowley hasn’t seen in an age.
“Az-Aziraphale?” he stutters, confused and disoriented.
“Crowley?”
“Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I’m so sorry,” Crowley mumbles, feeling his face flush. “Thought you were someone else.”
“Obviously,” Aziraphale says. As his anger turns to amusement, his face changes completely.
He’s gorgeous, and Crowley nearly says so. Instead he says the only other thing that comes to mind.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” Aziraphale laughs, his eyes sparkling. He steps closer, closing the distance between them and laying a warm hand on Crowley’s bicep. “Damn, it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, it really is,” Aziraphale says. “Here, let me buy you a drink.”
“That would be…” Crowley swallows over the lump in his throat. He can’t believe this is happening. He tries again. “That would be great,” he says. “Let me get us a table.” Scanning the crowded pub, he sees a group exiting a booth in the back. “I’ll grab that one,” he says, and when Aziraphale smiles and nods, Crowley saunters off to claim it.
In the few minutes it takes Aziraphale to get the barman’s attention, Crowley sits and watches him. He has to focus on something, otherwise he’ll lose his mind. How the fuck did he end up in this random Soho bar having a drink with the only man he ever truly loved?
They met in secondary when Aziraphale saved Crowley from a beating he more than likely deserved. It was another case of Crowley asking questions when he shouldn’t have, a habit he was well aware could get him in a lot of trouble. This time, it looked like he was going to pay for it in the form of a bloody nose. Or worse.
And then…
“Excuse me.” It was the most calm, most posh voice Crowley had ever heard. The boy who possessed it gently took the ringleader aside, threw an arm over his shoulder, and spoke to him quietly. When they returned, the boy and his friends took a quick look at Crowley, then left without another word.
Crowley had no idea what the fancy-dressed posh boy could have said to make his tormentors leave, but instead of thanking him, he did what he always did. He smarted off.
“Who do you think you are, my guardian angel?” Crowley hissed.
“Something like that,” the boy laughed. “I’ve seen you in situations like this before.”
“Wot, you been watching me like some creeper?” Crowley asked.
“Not at all,” the boy said. “You’ve simply earned a reputation as a troublemaker since you moved to Tadfield. I’m Aziraphale, by the way.”
“Crowley.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Aziraphale said with a chuckle. “As I said, your reputation precedes you. Why are you so determined to make sure no one likes you?”
“It’s not like I do it on purpose,” Crowley said. “Seems to be a natural talent.”
Aziraphale laughed, and Crowley grinned, and from then on they were friends, even though Aziraphale was four years Crowley’s senior, sixteen to his twelve. They weren’t in secondary together for long, only three years, but they spent those three years glued at the hip.
Then Aziraphale left Tadfield for university, and they didn’t see each other nearly as often. Crowley had made a few other friends by then, but none like Aziraphale. He missed him terribly. And while Aziraphale always made time to visit Crowley when he came home from university, it was never the same after he moved away. It was never enough.
A big reason it was never enough, from Crowley’s point of view, was that he had started feeling a lot more than friendship for his best friend. He didn’t know how to tell him, or even if he should, because Crowley didn’t know if Aziraphale was gay, though he suspected he might be. Crowley was afraid that if he told Aziraphale he was interested, and Aziraphale wasn’t, he might lose the best friend he’d ever had.
For a long time, it hadn’t seemed worth the risk.
Then, when he was seventeen, Crowley made plans to visit Aziraphale at university, and he decided that he’d waited long enough. He would tell Aziraphale how he felt and hope that Aziraphale had feelings for him, too. It was the perfect opportunity.
Crowley would be staying with Aziraphale in his flat and would have all weekend to talk to him. They could work things out together. Crowley had high hopes that by the time he was on the train back to Tadfield, he would know what it was like to kiss Aziraphale. Maybe he’d know what it was like to do a whole lot more than that.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. The entire weekend had been a disaster from the moment Aziraphale met him at the station.
“Crowley, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Oscar.”
It was all Crowley could do to shake Oscar’s hand and keep a smile on his face. The weekend he had imagined—the two of them cuddling on the sofa, walking around campus, together at the pub—became a nightmare where Crowley was the third wheel watching Aziraphale do all of those things with Oscar. His Boyfriend.
Aziraphale apparently had no idea Crowley was dying inside. Why would he? Crowley and Oscar both loved him, after all, and they made a show of getting along. Why wouldn’t Aziraphale remain innocently oblivious to the pain he was putting Crowley through?
But Oscar obviously knew how Crowley felt, and he made a point of rubbing salt in his wounds. At every opportunity he would hold Aziraphale’s hand, wrap him in his arms, or, worst of all, kiss him, long and deep. At that, Aziraphale would blush and stammer, and look at Crowley with an apologetic smile. But it didn’t stop Oscar from doing it again.
At the train station on Sunday, when Aziraphale was getting tea, Oscar took Crowley aside.
“Best to let it go,” he said, squeezing Crowley’s hand tightly as if shaking it goodbye. “I see how you look at him. But I have one advantage you don’t. I’m here. Every day. And, more importantly, every night.”
Crowley got the message.
So Crowley put any thoughts that he might have a chance with Aziraphale out of his head. As he turned eighteen and was looking at the end of his school days, he began pursuing young men who were more likely to appreciate him. So what if they happened to be blond and sturdy looking? That was beside the point.
If Aziraphale noticed anything had changed between them, he never spoke of it. The two of them stayed in touch, and Aziraphale still sought Crowley out when he came home to Tadfield. But their visits grew less frequent. Crowley went to university, then traveled for a year. Eventually he got a job in London, found a flat, and built a life. By the time he was in his mid-twenties, the two had lost contact. It wasn’t as if Crowley ever forgot about Aziraphale. It was more like he put him on a shelf and moved on. After a fashion.
And now here they were, in a pub sharing a drink.
Small world.
“Here we go,” Aziraphale says, setting two coasters and two pints on the scarred tabletop. As he sits down, Crowley admires his thick thighs, the way his waistcoat hugs his plush belly, the tweed jacket straining across broad shoulders. Fuck. How has he gotten even better looking with age?
“I meant it when I said it’s good to see you. How long has it been, Crowley? Ten years?”
“What? Oh, yeah, I think so,” Crowley agrees. “Might have been that time we both happened to be back home at Christmas. That was probably ten years ago.”
It was exactly ten years ago. Crowley remembers how Aziraphale looked. What he was wearing. How he smelled, for fuck’s sake. As if he could forget.
“I must say, you do look good,” Aziraphale says as he picks up his pint. He looks at Crowley over the top of his glass. When he sets it down, his eyes stay on him.
“I, um. Yeah, thanks,” Crowley stammers. He feels his face flush again. “You too. Look just the same.”
Aziraphale laughs, then pats his belly. “Oh, you’re quite the flatterer. I think we can both agree that I’ve aged a bit.”
Crowley looks at the man who set the standard for every other man he’s ever been attracted to, every man he’s ever had sex with. He can’t see a damn thing wrong with him. Crowley’s heart beats faster, and his pants grow tighter as he gazes at Aziraphale. He’s everything Crowley’s ever wanted. Everything he still wants. Even if he hasn’t talked to him properly in nearly a decade.
“Tell me, Crowley, what is it that you do?”
“You mean for work?”
“Well, yes, if you like,” Aziraphale says. “Or, anything you wish to share. I want to hear about your life.” He looks away shyly. “To tell you the truth, I’ve thought about you over the years. And… I’ve missed you. I’d like to get to know you again, if that’s something you’d like, too.”
Crowley feels the air knocked right out of him at that. Aziraphale still thinks about him? He’d always assumed he’d only ever been some kid Aziraphale had once known. Crowley never thought that he’d really mattered to Aziraphale. Not the way Aziraphale has always mattered to Crowley.
“Aziraphale, you have to know how much you—”
“There you are.” A man with blond curls wearing a tweed jacket is standing next to their booth. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You said you’d be at the bar.”
Crowley looks up, then at Aziraphale, who is staring at the interloper with a squint. His heart sinks.
Oh, fuck.
He’d completely forgotten why he was at the pub, how this whole evening had started.
“Yeah, listen mate. Change of plans,” Crowley says. “Bumped into an old friend, and we’re catching up.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, mate,” the man growls. “We agreed on this, and I made the effort to show up. You’re here. I’m here. Let’s go.”
“Excuse me,” Aziraphale says, sliding out of the booth and standing up.
Oh no. Nononono.
Crowley can see his slutty life flashing before his eyes. He can see how it’s going to come round and bite him in the arse, and not in a fun way. And lastly he can see Aziraphale walking out of this pub, refusing to talk to him ever again.
“Angel, please,” Crowley begs. “Let me explain.”
“No, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “I don’t need an explanation.”
Crowley groans and drops his forehead to the table, then picks it up and drops it down a couple more times—thwack, thwack—for good measure. It hurts.
He deserves it.
He sits in his misery with his forehead on the table, his eyes closed. The pub is loud, but it’s quiet in the booth. The kind of quiet that means he’s well and truly alone. Crowley sighs, sits up, rubs his forehead, and looks around.
What he sees is not at all what he expected.
Aziraphale has walked Crowley’s hookup to the bar. He’s talking to him, that’s obvious enough, his mouth close to the man’s ear, his face in the man’s blond curls. From this distance, they could be brothers.
Fuck. Crowley groans, and if he weren’t so fascinated by the scene before him, he'd slam his head into the table again, then slink out the door and disappear into the night.
The hookup is frowning and nodding, his face growing pale. Crowley can see Aziraphale gripping the fellow’s arm, firmly but not aggressively. When it seems he’s said all he intends to say, Aziraphale pats the man on the back as if they are old friends and gives him a smile. Then they shake hands, and the man gives Crowley a furtive glance before leaving the pub. The whole thing couldn’t have taken five minutes.
Crowley watches as the barman grins at Aziraphale while sliding two pints across the bar. The next thing Crowley knows, Aziraphale is back at their booth.
“There now, all settled,” Aziraphale says with a smile as he hands one of the pints to Crowley. “Where were we?”
Indeed. Where to even fucking start?
Crowley is curious about what Aziraphale said to convince his latest Grindr mistake to leave the pub, but he knows that if he brings it up, he’ll have to share the reason the guy was here in the first place. There’s no way Aziraphale didn’t notice the guy’s build. His hair. The way he was dressed. Honestly, he’s probably figured a lot of it out by now.
How embarrassing.
“So, yeah,” Crowley says, scratching the back of his neck. “About that.”
Aziraphale raises an eyebrow but says nothing, as if he’s letting Crowley decide how much, if anything, to say about what just happened.
“The thing is…” Crowley has no idea how to get into this. It’s probably best to just spit it out. “Earlier, when I came on to you at the bar? I thought you were that guy,” Crowley admits. “We had a date tonight.”
“A date?” Aziraphale asks, his question serious but his eyes full of mirth. He takes a drink of his beer. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
Fuck, Crowley has missed this arrogant bastard.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Crowley huffs. “I planned to meet him here tonight. When I saw you, I thought you were him. You know the rest of the story.”
Aziraphale doesn’t say anything for a minute, then he tilts his head to one side. “Oh, I think there is a lot more to this story, Crowley. Why don’t you fill me in.”
“Are you really going to make me spell this out?”
“I believe I am,” Aziraphale says, then leans back into the booth, wiggles around, and gets comfortable, a satisfied smirk on his face.
“Bastard,” Crowley growls. But he thinks that after all the years of asking his hookups to cosplay his first crush, maybe he ought to tell him about it. So he does.
“When we were in secondary, we were friends,” Crowley starts. “Best friends, yeah?”
Aziraphale smiles and nods. “The best.”
“But then you went on to university, and I stayed behind. I hated it there without you. I missed you something terrible.”
“I knew that,” Aziraphale says. “That’s why I visited as often as I did. It was surely not to see my parents,” he says with a bitter laugh. He looks fondly at Crowley. “I came to see you.”
Something warm springs to life behind Crowley’s ribs. Something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Aziraphale came back to Tadfield to see him? All of those long train rides for all of those years?
But even knowing that, he’s got to tell him the next bit, and it’s the hard part. He dives right in.
“What you don’t know is that I—” Crowley takes a drink of his beer. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, Aziraphale is looking right at him, waiting patiently. That isn’t making this any easier. Crowley has to look away.
“I had a crush on you,” he says to a spot on the wall. He pauses, then turns and looks into Aziraphale’s eyes. “That’s not true,” Crowley says, rushing on. “Aziraphale, when I was seventeen I realised that I was in love with you.”
The silence is deafening. Crowley wants to take it all back, or say he’s joking. Something. Anything. And then Aziraphale reaches across the table and takes his hand, and that makes it possible for Crowley to continue.
“When I came to see you at university, I tried to tell you.” He swallows and somehow marches on. “But you were with someone, and he let me know I would never have a chance with you.”
“Oscar,” Aziraphale says. He closes his eyes, presses the thumb and index finger of his other hand, the one not holding Crowley’s, to the bridge of his nose. “Now what he said makes sense.”
“He told you?” Crowley squeaks, mortified for his younger self.
“Not as such,” Aziraphale assures him. “And not until much later.” He looks at Crowley with gentle fondness. “He laughed about it. He told me ‘the boy from Tadfield’ had a crush on me. He found it amusing.”
“I’m sure you both did,” Crowley says bitterly.
“I most certainly did not,” Aziraphale says, squeezing Crowley’s hand. “He only said it to hurt me, you see. We were breaking up.” Aziraphale’s eyes take on a faraway look as he recalls the memory.
“He’d been telling me how he was the best thing that would ever happen to me, how I was lucky he’d ever looked at me,” Aziraphale says sadly. “On his way out the door he said that, oh yes, maybe there was one person who would have me: the boy from Tadfield. Unless, of course, he’d come to his senses and realised he could do much better than the likes of me.”
“What the fuck?” Crowley growls. “I’ll kill him.”
Aziraphale chuckles. “It’s fine, dear. That was long ago and far away. But I did wonder if he was right, if you might have had some feeling for me that I’d unfortunately overlooked.”
“Yeah, I did,” Crowley says quietly, pulling his hand away from Aziraphale’s. He doesn’t deserve to touch him, knowing what he’s going to say next.
“But after that visit, I gave up on ever having anything with you. Still, I was young, and I had all of these feelings,” Crowley admits. He can’t look at Aziraphale. “I didn’t realise what was happening until it had happened. And once I did realise, well, it was something I didn’t want to give up.”
“Crowley, what on earth are you talking about?” Aziraphale looks confused. And concerned.
“Okay, listen,” Crowley says sheepishly. “When I need, um, company, I seek out men with a certain look. I have what you might call very specific tastes.”
When there’s nothing more forthcoming, Aziraphale encourages him to continue: “Go on.”
“I look for men, usually online, with a certain build. With hair of a certain color, a certain… texture,” Crowley says. He doesn’t say what kind of build, or what sort of hair. He simply can’t. But when he looks at Aziraphale, he sees the wheels turning. He sees when the penny drops. Still, he asks, “Do I need to continue?”
“I wish you would.”
Like he said before—bastard.
“I’m sure you do,” Crowley mumbles. “Fine. I ask them to dress a certain way. We meet somewhere public, then go somewhere private. I tell them not to talk to me, because no one else can ever really be…” He pauses. He can’t say it. He can’t say, No one else can ever really be you, Aziraphale. What he does end up saying is, “...the man I have in mind. After all, it’s a fantasy.”
Aziraphale is blushing, and Crowley can’t help but think he’s beautiful. Even if he knows his appalling confession is the reason for the colour in the man’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry, angel,” Crowley says, hanging his head. “It’s not something I’m proud of. I suppose it’s a habit, after all this time. A bad habit, but one that’s gotten me this far. I suppose I thought that if I couldn’t have you—” Oh, fuck. Did he actually say that out loud?
“Why not?”
Crowley’s head jerks up. “What?”
“Why do you think you can’t have me?”
Crowley feels like all of the air has been punched out of his lungs. He can’t breathe. He couldn’t have heard that right. Because why would Aziraphale say that? What would that even mean?
Finally, Crowley gasps, pulling in one breath, then another.
“What did you say?” he asks, leaning across the table, reaching for Aziraphale, then drawing his hand back.
“I asked why you think you can’t have me? Why all of the… facsimiles?” He’s been looking away, but as he asks that, he turns to Crowley, waiting for an answer.
“Because you never seemed interested?” Crowley asks. He notices his voice is a little shaky, and he sounds angry. Maybe he is angry. This conversation has been a long time coming. “Was I supposed to wait for you to show some interest? Or even assume it was there?”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale sighs. “It was simply never the right time.”
“The right time?” Crowley growls. “What the fuck, Aziraphale?”
“Think about it,” Aziraphale asks calmly. “When we first met, you were a child. You were twelve. I was sixteen. Our age difference mattered. You have to see that.” He looks at Crowley, his eyes pleading for understanding.
Crowley says nothing. Aziraphale continues.
“When I was in university, there was still a difference. You were seventeen, and I was twenty-one. You were living at home with your parents while I was off living on my own.” Aziraphale stops and takes a drink of his beer. “Then you were away at university, and I had started working in London. As I said, it was never the right time.”
Crowley hasn’t said anything yet, but now he interrupts. “What about after that? When we were both here, in London? Was the timing still wrong? Or did you just think I wasn’t old enough yet?”
Aziraphale closes his eyes for a moment. Crowley recognises this gesture. He’s taking a moment to regain his composure. He’s losing his patience. But why?
“Crowley, I did contact you then,” Aziraphale says with a sigh. “As soon as I learned you had moved to London, that you had a job and a flat. I made multiple attempts to meet for drinks. I asked you to dinner several times. I called and texted, over and over. If you will recall, it was you who never had time to see me.”
He wants to disagree, but with a slow, horrifying realisation, Crowley does remember. He had been angry with Aziraphale for all of the years he had loved him in vain, so when Aziraphale finally made the attempt to reconnect, Crowley chose to ignore him.
“Angel—”
“Oh, do let me finish,” Aziraphale says. “I’ve wanted to clear the air for years.”
Crowley stays silent, nodding his assent.
“I was hurt,” Aziraphale says, “but I assumed you were involved with someone. Or that you had outgrown our friendship. So I let it go. Let you go. I hoped we might reconnect at some point, but except for that one meeting in Tadfield a decade ago, it never happened. Until now.”
Crowley waits to see if Aziraphale has anything else to say, and when he’s quiet, Crowley reaches for his hand. “I’m so sorry I ignored your calls back then,” he says. “I was young and foolish, and I assumed you still thought of me as your childhood friend. I didn’t realise you might want something more.”
Aziraphale looks up at him through his lashes, and Crowley’s heart stutters. It’s a look he’s dreamed of receiving since he was a teenager.
“Anthony Crowley, I’ve wanted something more with you since you were barely legal,” Aziraphale murmurs. Crowley feels a booted foot slide up under the leg of his trousers. “It was all I could do not to kiss you every time I saw you from about the time you were fourteen. It’s been all I can do not to kiss you tonight.”
This is not something Crowley ever expected to hear. Not in this lifetime or any other.
“Angel,” he whispers.
“Now, what did you say earlier about less talk and more action?” Aziraphale asks.
“What?” Crowley asks, barely able to keep up with the conversation while Aziraphale is rubbing his leg underneath the table and caressing his hand on top of it.
“You mentioned that you convince these men to meet you in public places and then you take them somewhere private to have your wicked way with them. But no talking.”
“Well, yeah,” Crowley drawls. “But that’s only because they aren’t you.” Crowley can feel his face flushing, and he can’t be bothered to give a damn. “With you, I want the talking. All the talking. Big fan of talking when it’s you.”
Aziraphale is smiling, and Crowley feels himself grinning back.
“And, um, angel?” he says. “I don’t actually have my wicked way with them. I ask them to have their wicked way with me. Sort of how I always pictured it. With you and me, I mean.”
“Is that so?” Aziraphale hums.
Crowley can only nod. And smile. And hope.
“Well, then I dare say we should be looking for that private place you mentioned,” Aziraphale says, standing up and offering Crowley his hand. “Is your flat nearby?”
“Yes, angel.”
“And I’m assuming that since you had planned on having what you insist was a date tonight, you’ve prepared yourself?”
“Yes, angel.”
“Then let’s be on our way.”
Crowley’s head is spinning. Is this really happening? Is he about to experience the real thing for the first time in his life?
As they leave, Aziraphale nods to the barman, then holds the door for Crowley, wrapping his arm possessively around the younger man’s waist as they walk into the night.
“Oh, and Crowley?”
“Mmhmm?”
“I just want to say that you’ve been a very good boy tonight.”
“Oh my god, Aziraphale,” Crowley moans, pressing Aziraphale against the brick of the closest building. The kiss is deep and filthy and exactly right. There will be time for long, slow kisses in the future. For now, they both need something else. Something hot and needy. It’s been a long time coming.
“Damn, angel,” Crowley says when they come up for air.
“Yes, darling?” Aziraphale asks.
“Please take me home,” Crowley moans.
“Exactly so,” Aziraphale says, pulling on Crowley’s hand. “Good boy.”