Chapter Text
London, Present Day
The end of the world had completely failed to materialize four years ago, and sometimes Crowley still couldn’t believe it, still riding high on the first flush of freedom he’d felt in 6000 years. He couldn’t believe he got to have this. Lazy afternoons in the bookshop, napping on the sofa in the back room because he could, because he didn’t have to look over his shoulder and pretend it wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be. Dinner at the Ritz, picnics in St. James, day trips to Tadfield, all with Aziraphale at his side, no need for careful distance and clandestine meetings and the Arrangement. They could just be together, out in the sunlight, under the stars.
Sometimes he thought Aziraphale might feel the same. He certainly seemed intent on dragging Crowley to every half-cocked tourist trap in the city, or to little hole-in-the-wall restaurants because he’d heard their chocolate souffle was the best in London, or because, “I’m feeling peckish, fancy a drive in the Bentley and see where she takes us?” They’d seen each other nearly every day for four years, and surely Aziraphale couldn’t be that bored, even if he pretended to be, even if Crowley pretended he was doing Aziraphale a favor by keeping him company in the bookshop or getting dragged all over the city.
Of course, that inevitably ended up with days like today, when Aziraphale had pressed him into a trip to the National Gallery to see a bunch of old paintings and sculptures that they’d probably already seen when they were new. Well, some of them, anyway. Aziraphale was really the art connoisseur between the two of them. He’d gotten a great number of assignments that involved Heavenly inspiration for classical artists, making any museum trip more a self-congratulatory tour of Aziraphale’s greatest hits. (For Crowley’s part, there had been that thing with Leonardo, but that wasn’t an assignment. Honestly Crowley just thought the man was fun, and a bit mad.)
Azirphale’s art enthusiasm was evident by the way that they had been dragged into some kind of museum tour group that they hadn’t signed up for, just by the sheer force of Aziraphale’s gusto. It reminded Crowley of that first showing of Hamlet and Aziraphale’s eager interjections being encouraged by William, although in this case it was some bored art history major latching onto a museum patron who had a level of interest for brush strokes and composition probably unheard of in the usual groups of pensioners and bored grandchildren glued to their smartphones.
Crowley had spent most of the afternoon casting Aziraphale withering stares usually reserved for his abysmal forays into French, but Aziraphale’s enjoyment was undeterred. And secretly Crowley was amused by the way Aziraphale would sometimes correct the tour guide’s information under his breath or mutter a bitchy comment out of the side of his mouth about one of the artists he’d met personally. Truly, Crowley didn’t really mind where they were or what they were doing, as long as he got to spend more time with his angel.
Well…there was perhaps one way he would have preferred to spend his time with Aziraphale. But that involved a lot less clothes and a lot more horizontal surfaces, and Crowley still wasn’t sure if Aziraphale might be amenable to that sort of activity with him.
Aziraphale followed the tour group into a new section of the gallery and Crowley followed Aziraphale. He let his gaze meander aimlessly around the room, not really listening to the droning of the tour guide, until he caught something about the painting before them being a depiction of Bacchus and Ariadne and his eyes snapped to Aziraphale. As if on cue, Aziraphale made a dismissive noise behind his teeth and glared at the painting with pursed lips. He spun on his heel and kept his back to the painting, wandering off as if his interest had just happened to be drawn to something at the opposite end of the room. Crowley followed, his eyes narrowed in curiosity behind his sunglasses.
The thing was, Aziraphale had never really been bothered much by all the pantheon of deities that the humans cooked up over the years, insisting that they were just transient fads that would pass with time. He left it to the church to either mete out the abolishment of any pagan idols or just fold them into the ever-fluid narrative of the saints. But for whatever reason, ever since the invention of Bacchus, Aziraphale had held a particular and mysterious grudge.
Crowley had never really questioned it before, it didn’t seem important in the grand scheme of things, and despite what Aziraphale might have said Crowley was always careful not to push too much at the bounds of their Arrangement. But lately he’d been getting used to being with Aziraphale without the eyes or the rules of Heaven and Hell attached, and he decided to indulge his curiosity.
Crowley sidled up to Aziraphale who was pretending to be very interested in another painting and said, “What’s the deal with you and Bacchus, anyway?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale sniffed. “It’s just a ridiculous painting. Who jumps out of a chariot like that, honestly.”
Crowley stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned into Aziraphale’s line of sight. “Nah,” he said. “There’s more to it than that. You never held a grudge against any of the other ‘gods’ the humans invented. And I know for a fact you found the whole Loki thing funny.”
Aziraphale fought a losing battle against the smile lifting at the corners of his mouth. “Yes. Well. You can’t really blame me. You got yourself into that mess.”
“So, out with it,” Crowley pursued. “What’s so special about this one false god over all the others?”
Aziraphale pressed his mouth into a thin line and his eyes darted everywhere but Crowley, and he looked so uncomfortable that for a moment Crowley considered just dropping the whole thing entirely. But then, in a tone that reminded Crowley starkly of an admission about a flaming sword gone missing, Aziraphale muttered, “I’m Bacchus.”
Crowley blinked and his eyebrows lifted, certain he couldn’t have possibly heard that right. “You what?”
Aziraphale met Crowley’s eyes and then said rather forcefully despite the flush of color rising in his cheeks, “I’m Bacchus!”
Crowley reeled back. “You. You’re Bacchus?” he said. “Bacchus? The god of wine and drunken hedonism and all earthly delights? And actually now that I say that out loud it doesn’t seem so off the mark.”
Aziraphale closed his eyes and sighed. “Oh, Crowley. Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not, I’m just trying to picture you at a Bacchanalia.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale groaned, sounding pained and fluttering a hand as if to cover his face but to do so would mean he could no longer properly glare at Crowley. Eventually Aziraphale found a compromise by letting his hand cover his mouth, only to then mutter between his fingers, “I…may have…started the first one.”
Crowley felt his eyebrows make a valiant attempt to climb to his hairline. “…You what?”
“Oh could you please stop acting so appalled?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s really a requirement, at this point,” he said. And then, because he was still doing mental gymnastics to try to make some sense out of it all, he said again, “Bacchus? Really? Angel, you owe me a story.”
Aziraphale heaved a resigned sigh and then looked upwards, as if asking for divine deliverance from this conversation. “You already know it, you were there.”
Crowley felt like his expression was twisting itself into heretofore unknown levels of disbelief, because he was certain he would remember being at a citywide drunken orgy with Aziraphale, of all people. “I was what? When?”
“That night in Rome,” Aziraphale said, voice heavy with things said in between the lines in a way it hadn’t been since before the failed apocalypse, back when half of whatever they said had to be in code. “With the wine.”
Crowley scrubbed a hand through his hair in thought and blew out a breath between his lips. “You’re gonna have to narrow it down a bit more than that, angel. There’s been literally dozens of—” Crowley froze, hand still in his hair, as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. ’Oh,’ he thought, and his eyes met Aziraphale’s. ’Oh,’ he thought again, slightly hysterically.
“Ah. So you do remember,” Aziraphale said, sounding a cross between smug and utterly mortified.
“Wait. That was—That was—” Because Crowley absolutely remembered the first night that he finally, finally got Aziraphale to try wine, and how that little spot of temptation promptly spun around and bit him in the ass, per usual. But now, with over 2000 years of distance and an almost-apocalypse between now and ‘that night with the wine’ he could peel away all the layers of self-loathing and denial and fucking karmic vengeance of that experience and see it now as, quite frankly, one of the most bizarre and hilarious experiences of his life. Especially in the face of Aziraphale’s irritated embarrassment.
He let a devilish grin spread across his face and felt a laugh bubbling up in his throat. “Aziraphale, you absolute tart!”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale said, scandalized.
And that just made Crowley laugh harder. “You—you spend a week as a handsy lush and they invent an entire religion around it!”
“Oh,” Aziraphale groaned, and Crowley threw his head back and cackled.
“And you did fall out of a chariot! Do you remember?”
Aziraphale was positively tomato red behind the cover of his hands, and Crowley let out another burst of laughter that eventually died to a few errant, rolling chuckles that he just couldn’t keep in. “Aw, c’mon angel, it’s not that bad. I mean, again,” he said, gesturing to himself, “Loki.” He guided Aziraphale by the shoulder towards the exit. “Let’s get out of here, I’ll buy you lunch.” And with a flash of teeth, he added, “Maybe I’ll even buy you a drink.”
Aziraphale scoffed and gave Crowley a tight-lipped glare, but allowed himself to be led.