A/N: And the rescue ^_^
The shop had never been so happy to hear the rumble of the Bentley's engine or feel the racing of the tires. So far, Aziraphale had only worked his way up to the time of the crucifixion. Well before any mention of The Swap, thank the Librarian. He'd given the angels a remarkable lecture on a dozen different types of cuisine and a stunning analysis of why, in his opinion, each of the demons were associated with the specific creature that they were. He'd further given them a thorough breakdown of the different sorts of snake eyes that Crowley was capable of exhibiting, from the easily hidden fiery irises to the "full snake", as well as what each was likely to signify as far as Crowley's current mood and objective. This had quickly devolved into a discussion on infrared and night-vision, and weren't the humans clever to have worked out how to manufacture devices to allow for such things, and weren't they in turn quite terrible at the way they could weaponize them.
This further rolled into a dialogue on the other various methods of warfare humans had developed through their thousands of years on Earth. The Big Dick Himself was still staring at Aziraphale with a glazed expression. It was obvious he was neither absorbing any of the information nor in the slightest bit interested, but Aziraphale left not a single second of silence in which anyone else might interject.
All of this being said, The Big Dick Himself was likely to come out of his stupor very quickly if he realized Dearboy was there. They were far enough from the front door that none of them had seen the Bentley pull up, but the bookshop was anxious for Dearboy not to come waltzing in without warning.
Thinking quickly, the shop manifested a large sign to splash across the front doors:
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, THE BIG DICK HIMSELF.
Then it quickly remembered that Dearboy would probably only know Gabriel's polite name, so grudgingly changed the sign.
It worked like a charm; Dearboy paused as he studied the sign, then jerked back with a hiss.
"Sssshit," Dearboy whispered, looking quickly this way and that. "Ssshit ssshit ssshit..."
The shop was just wondering how it might entice Dearboy to go around through the alley and thus come in the back way when the demon suddenly and surprisingly shifted into a small-ish sized snake. If he'd been planning to attack, surely a much larger snake would have been more efficient... But Dearboy gave no indication of attacking, instead slithering up the doorframe and nosing against the brass mail slot until the shop realized what he was trying to do and pushed it open for him with a light squeak. The door creaked a bit from the ticklish feeling of scales slithering through the slot, a chuff of wind slipping through the open room in laughter. Then Dearboy was inside and the angels interrogating Aziraphale all straightened and froze.
"Do you smell that?" The B.D.H. asked, holding a hand up and lifting his nose.
Weasel Face inhaled deeply, then drew his sword with a growl. "Smells like demon to me."
"Oh," Aziraphale said brightly. "This is my favorite part."
"What is?" The B.D.H. demanded, spinning sharply back towards him.
Aziraphale gave him a dazzling smile. "He always comes to my rescue."
The bookshop chose that moment to helpfully throw a stack of metal pots to the floor back in the kitchen with an incredible clatter and ruckus. The four angels whirled towards the side room, on their feet in an instant.
"Get him!" The B.D.H. shouted as he led the charge into the kitchen, just as the shop had hoped. As soon as they had burst through the door, the bookshop slammed it shut after them again and braced.
Immediately, Lapdog tried to shove the door back open, but the shop kept it firmly closed and secure. It wouldn't be able to hold it against the likes of an archangel for long though, and the bookshop silently prayed that Dearboy hurried. But, as always, Dearboy's cleverness and presence of mind proved their worth. The demon turned back into his human shape in a flash, racing towards the chair Aziraphale was still dazedly sitting in, and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Can you move?" he demanded in obvious desperation.
Aziraphale only hummed thoughtfully and gazed up at him with utter tranquility. "Good gracious, I'm not a stone. Of course I can move." Yet he showed no signs of doing so.
With another curse, Dearboy snatched Aziraphale up and slung him over his shoulder. He spun, quick eye also noting the still half full ewer on the table and snagging that as well on his way to the front. The bookshop flung the door open so he could escape just as The Big Dick Himself wrenched the kitchen door right off its hinges only to run face first into an area rug the shop had stretched across the opening. By the time the other angels had gotten through the veritable obstacle course the bookshop put in front of them, the Bentley had already raced away, bearing Dearboy and Aziraphale to safety.
o\[]/o
The Bentley did not care at all for Angel's condition, nor it seemed did Crowley. He didn't appear injured in any major way, beyond a few cuts and bruises on his face and a bit of a puffy lip. It was more the laxness in his body that was worrisome, the clear lack of recognition at his own predicament. He hadn't said a word yet, either to thank Crowley for the rescue or explain what exactly they were rescuing him from, nor had he tried to work himself free even though his hands were tied behind him.
"Angel?" Crowley pressed as they tore through London at breakneck speed to evade any pursuers. "Angel, what did they do? Are you hurt? Talk to me!"
"No, I'm quite well, thank you, dear," Angel hummed, slightly glassy and distant. "I do ache a bit and my throat's beginning to get scratchy. Feels like I've been talking for hours. Also it's nearly time to gather my tax documents together, which you know is always a bit stressful—"
"I don't give a bloody damn about your taxes, you ninny!" Crowley shouted. He cast a harried glance over his shoulder. "Gabriel and Sandalphon! What did they do to you? And what is this stuff? Did you drink it?" Snatching the ewer back off the center console where he'd balanced it, Crowley sniffed the golden liquid inside. "Not holy, that's good. Aziraphale? What is this?"
"Oh, that," Aziraphale said brightly. "It's a truth serum."
The brakes on the Bentley squealed with all the delicacy of a Hellhound in heat as Crowley skidded and fishtailed into a panicked halt in the middle of the street. The ewer toppled over, spilling on Angel and the front floorboards of the car.
The Bentley instinctively recoiled from the water, but it didn't burn or sizzle as it had feared. Actually, the liquid was quite warm, almost pleasant, and suddenly the Bentley wondered what it had really been so worried about. It was just water. Nice, soothing, lovely water.
"Truth serum!?" Crowley all but screeched. He twisted towards Angel, taking him by the shoulders again and giving him a light shake. "Aziraphale, think, I need you to think. Do they know? About the Arrangement, the swap, any of it?"
"I daresay not," Angel said with an uncaring sigh. "Otherwise they wouldn't have been asking me."
"Wh— they would if they needed you to admit it! Did you? Aziraphale, damn it, snap out of it! What did you tell them!?"
"Ah, well, let me see... I started in the beginning, you know, with the feathers and the scales and a brief explanation of the serpent iconography across the cultures and its evolution of purpose..."
"The— the feathers..."
"And scales. Oh, I do hope it's alright that I did. They're really marvelous, my dear, I'm afraid I got a bit carried away in my descriptions, and they kept trying to hurry me on you know, but there's just so much to say. I hadn't even gotten to Shakespeare yet, and that was one of my favorite stories."
Crowley regarded Angel, starting to relax a bit as a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "You didn't tell them about us swapping then? They don't know you really are vulnerable to hellfire? How long did they have you?"
"Quite some hours. And no, I hadn't gotten there yet. Perhaps if they hadn't explicitly stated they wanted to know everything, but Gabriel always was a right prat."
With a strangled, aborted laugh, Crowley sliced through the rope around Angel's wrists and picked up the now empty ewer. "So now you have to be honest. Wonder how long it lasts. You're telling me you'd have to tell me anything I asked?"
"That does seem to be the overall effect," Angel said dreamily. He rubbed his wrists and turned dopey eyes towards Crowley. "But I feel quite safe now. Gabriel and the others might use me like that, but I know you would never."
"What? Er... no, of course... never..."
From the abashed and slightly crestfallen look on Crowley's face, he actually had been planning on doing just that, just for fun, but of course now he couldn't. The Bentley's engine rumbled in tipsy amusement as it switched the radio on.
"Liar, liar, liar, liar!
Liar! That's what they keep calling—"
"What in the blazes," Crowley grumbled, turning the radio back off. "Come on, we need to get somewhere safe until this wears off. Dunno if they've got the flat figured, but we'll take a long way around. And if we run into any angels—"
"Hey, I'm gonna get you, too!
Another one bites the dust!"
Crowley smacked the dash, so the Bentley rumbled another metallic snicker and trundled on. By now, other cars had started zooming past with horns blaring from Crowley's impromptu stop in the middle of the road, but honestly the Bentley didn't care all that much about them. Not that it wished harm on the humans, it just didn't hold them in the same light as, say, Crowley. Dear Crowley. Dear, clever, stupid Crowley. The Bentley snickered again, lazily weaving this way and that across the road despite Crowley never turning the wheel.
"Oi, what is wrong with this blasted car?" Crowley regarded the ewer he was still holding, then looked down at the sodden floorboards. He froze. "Oh, nghlklh," he eloquently groaned.
Angel hummed in questioning.
"Those twice blessed assholes beat up my best friend and poisoned my car!"
"Oh, I don't really think they could have done. It's just a car, can't be poisoned, can it? Not like it's alive. Am I your best friend, Crowley?"
Crowley turned pink around the ears and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Haven't got any others, have I?" he muttered with the heated embarrassment he always exhibited when caught being nice. It was adorable, really. Crowley was the nicest demon around, the Bentley reckoned. "Just shut it. Come on, car, move!"
With a cooing rumble, the Bentley swerved on back into the proper lane, then turned down another street that Crowley hadn't directed it to, but it was clearly a much better route if only Crowley would take the time to learn the map. Crowley snorted in frustration but thankfully gave up trying to steer, since he didn't know nearly as well as the Bentley where they ought to go.
"Never mind, it'll wear off," he grumbled. "If I don't know where it's going, the other angels won't, either. Reckon you'd better avoid the shop for a few days, angel."
"Oh," Angel sighed unhappily. "I suppose you're right. You'll let me stay with you though, won't you, dear?"
"I mean, can't have you wandering London like this," Crowley pointed out, as though he wouldn't have readily offered in any case, which the Bentley knew perfectly well he would have.
Angel sank back into the leather with a contented sigh matched by the Bentley's engine. "Thank you, dear friend. You're my best friend too, you know. You always have been. Long before I knew it. You're quite easily the best thing that's ever happened to me."
The pink around Crowley's ears and cheeks intensified and he made a strangled, incomprehensible noise.
"I mean it, and I clearly can't lie to you right now. Won't you take those glasses off? Your eyes are so lovely, dear, it's a shame to hide them away."
Another strangled sound was the best response Crowley seemed capable of coming up with. The Bentley's engine rumbled in another snicker as it pulled up to a quiet park under the gently swaying fronds of a willow tree and turned off. Crowley smacked the dash a couple of times, then gave it up as a fruitless endeavor.
"Fine," he relented in what was probably supposed to be a grouchy voice but wasn't fooling anyone. Plucking off his sunglasses, he tossed them onto the dash. He turned to Angel and snapped his fingers to materialize a dish of ice and a cloth. "Since the car doesn't seem to want to work right now, might as well get you taken care of. Looks like they knocked you around a bit. Here."
Crowley wrapped a few pieces of ice in the cloth and gingerly dabbed it against a shallow cut on Angel's cheek where someone's fist had split skin. He winced when Angel did and muttered a quiet apology.
For a second, no one said anything. The Bentley was content to sit there in the hazy, drunken glow of magical uninhibition, only dazedly coming back to attention when Angel shifted in discomfort.
"Crowley," Angel started hesitantly.
Immediately, Crowley withdrew his hand and twisted away. "Sorry."
"No, not that. It feels marvelous. It's a rare treat, you know, being taken care of for a change. I quite like it. Do you think God is terribly disappointed with me?"
The compartment on the dash fell open in shock at the question, at the same time that Crowley's eyes widened.
"Disappointed— why? What?"
Angel rubbed his wrists, still raw from being bound, and he looked away. "Sometimes I think she must be. Gabriel used to warn me about what would happen if I failed her. Nothing splendid, I can assure you. Sometimes it seemed anything I did would surely disappoint her, everything I said or did needed a reprimand. And leaving Heaven... that was big. I don't regret it, but do you suppose she's cross over it?"
"Listen, I think you're just feeling vulnerable because of that truth serum, you don't really suppose she'd be mad at you."
"But I do, Crowley. Honestly—and honestly is my only option right now—I don't believe half of what comes out of Gabriel's mouth, not really, not anymore. But, well, she did put him in charge, after all. What if he is right, and I'm wrong? You must admit I'm not much like the other angels—"
"That's what I like about you," Crowley maintained stubbornly.
"But isn't it more likely that I'm a singular mistake, like Gabriel says, and not the one right angel made by an infallible God?"
Angel's eyes were so anxious and so pleading as he looked at Crowley that the Bentley immediately felt compelled to turn on the seat warmers it hadn't had a second before, just to warm Angel up a bit, the only move of reassurance it had. Of all the crazy notions, it thought dizzily. As though anyone could be disappointed in Angel or think him a mistake. He had a heart of gold, it was what made him so well suited for a friend like Crowley. If the Bentley ever saw this Gabriel fellow again, it was going to run him over and then back up over him again.
"Gabriel told you you were a mistake?" Crowley demanded. He exhaled a long, low growl, then carefully reached out to press the ice against the angry bruises on Angel's face. "Well, I think Gabriel can jump off a cliff."
"I don't think that would do much—"
"Fine, then I think he can bloody well burn in hellfire, how's that? The nerve of— no, Aziraphale! I don't think she's at all disappointed with you. Do you know what happens to angels she gets disappointed with? Because I do. I know exactly what happens to them. And it didn't happen to you and that's the only thing I'll ever thank her for. And you're not a mistake either! I don't know what God was thinking when she made the others, I really don't, but just because you're different doesn't mean you're a mistake."
"But—"
"No, listen. All I've ever seen you do was love things. You love the earth and you love people and you love food and books and human things and you love all creatures, great and small, even serpents, and you protect everything that ever crosses your path. And if I remember right—and I'm not the one drugged up right now so we can trust my memory—that was what she told you to do. You've never done anything but what she wanted, what's to be disappointed by? That you didn't love harder? That you didn't protect more? You helped save the whole bloody world, what the hell is left for an encore? You're perfect just the way you are and Gabriel has no bloody right to try and make you feel otherwise, got it?"
Angel's mouth tilted upward hopefully. "Do you really think so?"
"If there was any truth serum left, I'd take it right now so I could tell you the same," Crowley snapped. "I don't think so, I know so."
Angel was quiet as Crowley continued to ice the bruises and cuts on his face. After a long minute, he murmured, "I suppose she wouldn't have left me in the care of such a good friend if she was too terribly disappointed. I talk to her about you, you know. I keep thinking if she knew how truly decent—"
"Alright, leave off," Crowley interrupted, a little darker now. "This is the way it is, angel. I wouldn't change anything, so just don't. We are what we are and that's the end of it. We've got each other and our own side and that's enough for me. Alright?"
Thinking it over, Angel finally nodded and smiled brighter. "I daresay you were getting tired of waiting for me! Heavens, but I was slow to come around. I fear I must have been insufferable all those years! It's mortifying, really simply ghastly!"
Some of the darkness that had come across Crowley's face eased away as he tried to hide a smirk and failed. "You were being careful," he allowed. "Though it's satisfying to hear at least you're mortified by it now."
"Oh, that isn't fair, I wouldn't have admitted it on my own... didn't I tell you once that I was holier than thou? Imagine!"
Angel blushed, making Crowley snicker. "Yes, more than once. Reckon that one's fair, though. It does come with the job description. Aziraphale..."
He waited until Angel was looking at him again, Crowley's snake eyes softening to warm, gold irises, before saying quite firmly,
"I never would have gotten tired of waiting for you."
Angel's smile could have banished a thunderstorm with its radiance, Bentley thought through a muddled sleepiness. Everything was starting to get heavy and it wondered vaguely how big of a dose was left in that ewer that had spilled all over it, because it thought it might like to sleep for a while. It would finish driving Crowley and Angel home later once the serum had worn off from both it and Aziraphale.
For now, it was just going to drift off to the sound of total contentment and happiness in Angel's voice as he quietly whispered,
"Alright then. I guess everything's alright."