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“Crowley, my boy. Time to eat.”
Crowley blinks, and he’s staring up at a canopy of leaves shading most of the sun’s light from view but none of the warmth. He feels grass poking up underneath the red-checkered blanket he’s lying on, and he smiles wryly. St. James’s Park. Of course.
He closes his eyes and shifts so he’s sprawled back against the trunk of the tree. “Hey, Aziraphale.”
“Crowley!” The angel sounds delighted, and the edges of Crowley’s mouth flick up in response. “Are you ready for lunch?”
“What do you have?” he asks, and Aziraphale smiles so wide Crowley can hear it.
“Cream scones and currants, and this new type of pastry that- oh, I’ve forgotten the name, but it’s from the bakery down the street, just exquisite . And oysters - remember those, when I ‘tempted’ you back in Rome?” He giggles, and Crowley’s heart breaks and remakes itself, just like it has every day since Eden.
Aziraphale keeps talking, and Crowley lets it wash over him. He loves hearing Aziraphale talk with a smile in his voice, and his goodness and kindness so apparent. He loves hearing Aziraphale talk to him without hesitation, without the ever-present rift between them. He isn’t a demon right now, he knows, though Aziraphale is still an angel. He always is, his beauty forever out of reach, even here. Crowley can taste the dangerous divinity floating around the park if he runs his tongue over his teeth, and it’s more heady than the wines Aziraphale is clinking together as he brings them out of a basket.
He’s still talking about something Crowley can’t hear, and suddenly, in between his fourth laugh and third enthusiastic reference to various bakeries Crowley knows don’t exist, Crowley has had enough.
“Aziraphale,” he says smoothly, sharply. It’s time for an end. His eyes stay closed, though, because above all he is a coward. “Why are we here?”
“Why, my boy,” Aziraphale says, surprised. “Lunch.”
“No, why are we here ?”
Aziraphale is startled into silence. Crowley almost laughs. He doesn’t know either.
“I told you here, a century ago, that I had other people to- to fraternize with.”
“Crowley, please-”
“But I don’t,” he says, and doesn’t blink back his tears. No one’s looking. “I have no one. You’re my- my only. In everything. If I can only fraternize with you, I’ll take it. I’ll take everything with you, everything, but I can’t take this.”
Aziraphale is quiet.
“‘Perhaps one day we could go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz,” Crowley says softly, and opens his eyes. Aziraphale is blurry, because of his tears and the dazzling sunlight and the knowledge Crowley has had all along, that Aziraphale was never here at all.
Perhaps one day we could go for a picnic, a voice echoes from above him, too far above, and Crowley closes his eyes.
“Today isn’t that day, Aziraphale,” Crowley says, and wakes up.
His room is cold, and so is his bed, and for a moment Crowley longs for the warmth of the dream again, if only for a place to dry his tears.