thinking about Crowley and Aziraphale driving around, doing whatever, before everything went to shit in the end. Crowley's driving the Bentley, obviously, and the two of them have fallen into a comfortable silence that they're both used to after 6000 years together, especially the past few, since the stopped Apocalypse.
Crowley is driving like a maniac as per usual, blasting Queen and whatever else happens to have been in his car for less than two weeks. He glances sideways from beneath his glasses, a stolen glance that he allows himself towards his the angel, and he sees -
Aziraphale has fallen asleep.
Crowley is surprised. He hadn't even known that the angel did sleep. and then he remembers that night in his flat after the Apocalypse-that-wasn't, when, before they had made their plan to stop their own respective sides from getting to them (thanks, Agnes Nutter) they had passed out, spectacularly drunk, on Crowley's couch that had become soft just for the occasion, and the demon had awoken to the angel snoring, leaning over his leg. So, yes. Aziraphale slept.
Crowley contemplates this for about three seconds before letting out an extremely exaggerated, dramatic sigh and slowing down the car, stopping his inane swerving and speeding and dropping to just below the speed limit. And then some. And then some more.
He miracles any and all possible bumps in the road to be smoothed over, and muffles the outside noise through suddenly-tinted windows. He flicks the radio down, Freddie Mercury barely audible over Crowley's bated breaths and Aziraphale's small, huffing snores.
The Bentley recognizes the significance of its owner's actions, and it too works to quiet its own engine, smoothing out its drive and warming its insides to be the perfect temperature for a fussy angel.
Crowley glances at Aziraphale once more, and settles back into his driver's seat, fully prepared and ready to loop around, driving slowly with barely any music, if it means that his the overworked angel can have a well-deserved rest.
When Aziraphale wakes up later, he cracks open an eye to see Crowley, driving slowly and purposefully, mouthing the words to some barely-audible song of his (probably be-bop, Aziraphale thinks disapprovingly), his sunglasses having been placed in some compartment. His gorgeous yellow eyes are barely visible in the dim light of the car through the windows, even though it's still day out. Almost as if someone has miracled the windows to be purposefully dark, as to not disturb someone. A sleeping someone, perhaps. Perhaps that is the same reason why the Bentley is driving slow enough for it to be of a concern, and why the usually-deafening music is at an all-time low volume.
Aziraphale watches for a long moment - an extended stolen glance, of sorts - and then lets out an exaggerated yawn and stretches, blinking slowly, smiling at Crowley, who, at the sight of him, reddens, and immediately clocks up from going 30 miles per hour to 95, the music abruptly becoming blaring again, Queen's Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy.
"Sleep well, angel?" He asks, slamming his sunglasses back over his nose, and Aziraphale smiles, rolling his eyes. Silly demon.
"It was quite undisturbed, yes." And then, more cheekily: "Thank you, my dear."
"Dunno what you're thankin' me for," says Crowley gruffly, and Aziraphale merely smiles wider before leaning back in his leather seat, watching the demon's gaze flicker over to him ever so often from behind his sunglasses - as if to check that his counterpart is still awake, and to check that he has no need to be as kind as he just was.
(might write an actual fic of this lmk if that’s something y’all would want to read!)
I dont think I'll ever be able to get over the "I work in Soho, I hear things," line Aziraphale says in 1967. Cuz like if you exam the scene background for more than a couple of seconds you realize how fucking ridiculous Crowley and Aziraphale are being.
Because, Crowley KNOWS where the bookshop is. Crowley was probably there when Aziraphale came up with the idea and when he chose the property and for sure was there for opening day. Crowley KNOWS it's still there in 1941, they go back at the end of the magic show for wine.
The fucking Dirty Donkey is established as being across the street from the bookshop with a perfect view to the inside during s2e4.
See how the crossed out windows the zombies are looking through are visible through the window over Crowley's shoulder. If Aziraphale were heating up the tea kettle on his little parlor stove, he might even be able to see the pub's entrance or any cars coming up the street.
And I doubt that the pub moved locations in or around 1967 only to be moved back by 2023 so we can safely assume that what's visible in 1941 is visible in 1967 during Crowley's meeting.
I went back to the 1967 bit in s1e3 to figure out where the fuck Crowley is parked and I'm pretty sure the ramp he speaks alone to Shadwell in front of is the same ramp that Marguerite's restaurant has.
And in s2e5, as Aziraphale leaves to invite all the shopkeepers to the 'meeting' we see Marguerite's sign through the windows to the right of the front door.
Which means Crowley's conversation with Shadwell is fucking visible from the front door of the bookshop.
And it also means those fucking strip tease signs that Crowley has parked the Bentley in front of are covering up the record shop and the window over Aziraphale's desk (Which I'll admit, unfortunately means that the ramp isn't visible through the window and might only be seen via the windows of the front door of the shop). Why are these windows covered up? Maybe the set designers wanted to give the illusion that they are on some different part of the street. UNFORTUNATELY I CAN FUCKING SEE THE BOOKSHOP PILLARS IN THE CORNER OF THE SCREEN YOU CANT FOOL ME.
Let's put it all together now: Crowley drives the Bentley, his ICONIC Bentley(no doubt who's fucking Bentley that is if you see it come down the street through the window), just past the bookshop, and parks. He has to get out on the bookshop side of the street and backtrack, PAST THE FUCKING BOOKSHOP DOOR, and to the pub that is in perfect view of one of the (only unblocked) bookshop windows, and has a conversation with a strange man in view of the bookshop's front door.
"I hear things" Aziraphale, baby girl, you didn't have to hear anything you can literally see Crowley at every moment.
And also Aziraphale, you're not off the hook for ridiculousness either. Why the fuck did you teleport into the Bentley. THE BOOKSHOP IS RIGHT THERE. You fucking depraved me of a full cravat outfit shot because you wanted to spookily and mysteriously appear to your beloved demon. YOU'RE KILLING ME AZIRAPHALE.
as stupid as it may sound, sometimes i have to remind myself that they don’t have the privilege of knowing how their own story ends. they don’t know about the south downs cottage and “it ends with a garden”. this is is to say, they also don’t have any guarantee that in the end everything’s going to be fine.
looking at their story from their pov just makes it worse. to take the most obvious example, when crowley kisses aziraphale he does it desperately. but like, yeah. for all he knows this could be the last time he sees him. it's not just "fuck you're going away for a while" it's "fuck, this could really be goodbye"
Thinking about when Aziraphale's hand hovers to his lips after the kiss but his hand is shaking and quivering so much that the lightest touch makes him push his upper lip up ever so slightly and his eyes are darting around, thoughts are racing and 'do that again...please'. I know we joke about Aziraphale getting bitches but what if he hasn't, what if, other than the oblivious naked hug from Gabriel, that kiss is the most intimate touch Aziraphale has had in 6,000 years. Centuries of watching humans form relationships and friendships and experience love in all kinds of ways, watching them fight and break up and fuck and all the things in-between. Having unconditional heavenly love for humans that die so young, have such a short life span compared to celestial and occult beings, but boy do they cram an awful lot of living into those lives. Nothing lasts forever except Heaven, Hell, and Crowley - and here's Aziraphale realising that despite being one of the oldest beings in all of creation he has wasted so much time. Here he is, in his beloved bookshop watching the love of his eternity walk away because he's too late, he's 6000 years too late and what if never gets to feel Crowley's lips on his ever again?
I love Crowley because he's so aware of what Heaven, Hell, the world are really like, but he gently guides Azi through moral dilemmas and lets him find out harsh truths for himself, supporting along the way, but never forcing his opinions.
I love Crowley because he does little snort laughs and cheesy grins. He bounces around all silly-like, unabashedly himself. He has such an infectious smile.
Because his style is always changing, not because he wants to be with the latest fashion (he's always a bit behind) but because he loves exploring and experimenting with his looks.
Because despite millennia of being told he's evil, he's still a sweetie with a heart of gold.
Because he has a vast imagination and enormous will power. He's creative and adores human inventions, taking precious care of his Bentley for over 90 years.
Because he is so fiercely loyal and protective, not just of Azi, but of humans.
Because he's lived such a long, difficult life and he still finds so much joy in the every day, he's still an optimist.
Because he has endured immense abandonment and suffering, loss of identity, cruelty and fear - and despite it all, he's still kind.
Because he's immensely intelligent and wise and light-hearted and good.
Because even though he wouldn't believe it, he is so worthy of a happy ending.
There is such a special place in my heart for Crowley.
Maybe it's just the feral ace person who resides within me, but I desperately want Crowley and Aziraphale's first real kiss to be entirely awkward and innocent and honestly kind of chaste
I want Aziraphale, desperate to hold Crowley, words tumbling out of him as he says "You know, the first time in my bookshop didn't count. And I should very much like to try, er... kissing again. Perhaps. If you were amenable?"
I want Crowley, mute with shock, but nodding incredibly enthusiastically. And Aziraphale's hands, hesitant but still reaching, hovering over Crowley as he shuffles forward and tries to learn how to touch him
I want blushing as Aziraphale asks softly "so, um... was it something l-like... like this?" and Crowley doing everything in his power not to move or self combust as he inches closer
I want the gentlest, most barely there brush of lips, so soft and sweet, and a sharp inhale as Aziraphale wrenches back to take in Crowley, his beautiful Crowley, and feel the tingling warmth against his lips
And then I want them to melt together, not even because the kiss is particularly charged, but because they adore each other and have been kept apart for far far too long, and no amount of closeness or intimacy could ever be enough for them
One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.
I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.
As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.
Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.
We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'
...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'
Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship.
Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.
Hm.
I'm also reminded of the M25.
The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.
That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.
Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.
But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.
It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:
The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.
(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)
In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.
Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"
11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'
(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)
Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.
Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.
It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:
He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.
(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?
...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)
Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.
Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).
Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."
To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.
...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?
...Anyway.
There's also the matter of the crank handle.
This thing:
This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.
The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.
He made stars with it.
[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]
If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:
Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.
Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.
Stopping time. For instance.
(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)
I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.
(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)
Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?
He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.
Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.
Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.
...And yet.
It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.
In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.
Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?
Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?
What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?
...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.
In case you were wondering I'm still thinking about the composition of this shot. The absolute split down the middle between light and dark colors. The way that despite that both sides have their own lights and their own shadows because one cannot exist without the other. The fact Aziraphale's side is a warmer sort of light that compliments Crowley's colors and Crowley's is a blueish sort of dark where the windows even look like tartan. The fact Crowley's side isn't the green dark of Hell and Aziraphale's isn't the sterile white of Heaven but are both shades shifted slightly to the left into something distinct and totally their own. It's balance - even in the middle of heartbreak - and it drives me absolutely wild.
