Chapter Text
Tulip kept pulling the wheel of the Chevelle hard to the right, kept hitting the brakes and gas in response to changes in the car’s momentum. The engine roared with every pump of the accelerator, and each spin of the tires sent a fresh stream of sand and dust into the air.
Featherstone and her goons couldn’t have arrived at a better time. They’d pulled up to the Holy Bar and Grail while Tulip was just about ready to lose her mind over the waiting. How long could a rescue take when there were a couple of angels involved? Too goddamn long, apparently. She’d heard the hum of engines approaching, the clatter of weaponry and boots on the ground, and had been all too happy for the distraction of a joy ride. She’d crashed the Chevelle out of the side of the garage, leading the Grail soldiers into the desert, eventually down a slope into a wide bowl of land. Just when they’d thought they had her trapped, Tulip had started doing donuts, going round and round in a circle and kicking up a big old dust cloud.
By now, she couldn’t see a damn thing five feet from the bumper — but neither could the Grail. And their dinky little cars were no match for the wide, solid frame of hers. She barely had to graze them to send them tumbling, and then she could peel away with little more than a scratch to the paint. Most powerful organization in the world, cutting corners on their hardware. She counted as she knocked them down, kept on spinning until there was only one left. But the last car seemed to be nowhere in the cloud.
Tulip stopped the car, letting the engine idle while the wind swept through the dust, swiftly clearing it away. True to her count, there was one Grail vehicle left, parked at a distance that would have kept it out of the fray. Behind her shades, Tulip squinted: was that a short dark bob of hair behind the driver’s seat? She revved the Chevelle’s engine, announcing the next challenge, then shot forward.
The Grail car bobbled over the bumps in the sand in its attempt to get up to speed. The two vehicles sped toward each other, and the details of Featherstone’s face became clearer. She looked pissed. Tulip added more speed.
The game of chicken ended when Featherstone relented, veering off to make way for Tulip. Tulip rolled back to the slope leading out of the bowl, and was carried easily up the incline. She peeled out back toward the main road, with a glance to the rearview, looking for the Grail car to crest the hill — but it wasn’t to be seen. Tulip imagined the tires on that tiny car struggling to make it up the slope, and grinned.
On the drive back toward the hideout, she spotted a shadow in the sky, shaped like a massive bird. Tulip pulled over to the side of the road, exiting the car for a better look. Sure enough, at the center of that wingspan was Crowley — with Cassidy wrapped in his arms, shielded from the sunlight by his shadow.
Crowley watched Cassidy slump toward the bar before turning back to Aziraphale. “You all right?”
“Oh! Yes.” Azriaphale adjusted one of his shirt cuffs. “No trouble at all. Some viscera, but at least none of it got on my clothes.” He offered Crowley a tight smile, which quickly flipped into a frown. “Now perhaps you can tell me where Reverend Custer ran to with our offspring.”
“I can’t.” Crowley’s throat bobbed. “He used Genesis. I can’t say or do anything until twenty-four hours have passed. The second I’m able to, I am telling you where he’s gone.”
Aziraphale’s mouth tightened further, in concert with the furrow that flashed across his brow. “I barely had a chance to get to know the man.”
“He really didn’t like me at first.” Crowley shook his head. “Still doesn’t, I think.”
“And what does Genesis think about him?”
“Well, you remember, it’s. Difficult. To have a conversation with.[1]” Crowley thought back over the few interactions he’d had with Jesse. “But it’s not unhappy. It feels safe with him. Safe enough to not blow him to bits. Do you think God meant for them to find each other?”
“I don’t know what to think about God,” Aziraphale fretted. “But that has been the case for quite some time now.”
The sun had gone down outside, leaving the windows black, turning the diner’s interior an island of light. Everyone inside had found their own little islands: Aziraphale and Crowley sat at a table in the corner, sharing a bottle of wine. Kamal, the owner of the Holy Bar and Grail, lingered at one far end of the bar, scrolling through an app on his phone. And Tulip and Cassidy had posted up on stools at the bar with a bottle of whiskey.
Tulip shook her head as she lifted her shot glass to her lips. “I cannot believe you didn’t burst into flames the moment he possessed you.”
“You and me both.” Cassidy was still holding his glass on the bar top, slowly spinning it with his fingertips. “When it came down between that and endless circumcision, though — seemed like a better way to go.” He downed his shot, then reached for the bottle to pour both of them another.
“What was it like?”
“Gettin’ circumcised?”
Tulip whapped him on the shoulder. “Bein’ possessed by an angel. Dumbass.”
Cassidy chuckled, but the humor faded and his forehead wrinkled while he worked to put the experience into words. “Didn’t really feel like much of nothin’ — ‘cept for sometimes he’d take over, and his voice would be comin’ out of me mouth. If you can imagine that.” He danced his fists in front of his face like an old-fashioned boxer and raised his voice into a posh falsetto. “‘Good show, Cassidy! You showed that nasty Sicilian what-for!’”
They both laughed at that, and were left smiling at one another as the laughter died down. Cassidy was the first to break eye contact, but the smile remained on his face.
“It’s good to have you back.” Tulip raised her shot glass off the bar and held it toward Cassidy, offering a toast.
“Good to be back.” He met her glass with his. “ Slainte .”
“Yeah. That,” Tulip quipped before throwing back her shot.
Kamal approached them behind the bar. He was looking at something on his phone, and held it out for Tulip to see: “Nissa, look. Bad news.”
Both Tulip and Cassidy leaned forward to watch as Kamal pressed play. On the screen, a dark-haired reporter sat with her hands folded on a desk. As the video began, a picture faded into view near the reporter’s head: a grayscale photo of Jesse.
“The search is on for the man police say brutally murdered a group of innocent sex tourists here in the Middle East. The manhunt grows as the Holy Man turned pervert-hating killing machine was reportedly last spotted at a local airport, though his destination is still unknown.”
“Christ,” Cassidy murmured. He turned to Tulip, who looked like all the air had gone out of her. She was still, stone-faced. Cassidy reached for the bottle and refilled both their glasses. “Zira told me he took off. Didn’t say nothin’ else about it.”
Tulip stared past the wall for another couple of seconds, before drawing a decisive breath through her nose. “Did you tell him we slept together?”
Cassidy closed his lips and gave a hesitant shake of his head.
“Did you tell him we had sex?” Tulip pressed. She turned toward Cassidy with a placating smile. “I’m not mad. Just tell me, did you?”
Cassidy mistrusted the smile enough to swallow his next shot before he answered: “Yeah.”
Tulip pressed her lips together in a thin line. Then she swiveled and punched him in the nose. While Cassidy was nursing the injury, she downed her shot and set the glass decisively back on the bar.
“I’m gonna go clean up the car.” She hopped down from her stool and left before Cassidy could say anything else.
Across the room, Aziraphale touched Crowley on the sleeve - a silent please excuse me. His chair scraped on the floor as he stood and crossed the room to the bar, where Cassidy was now drinking from the bottle directly.
Aziraphale set himself onto the stool Tulip had vacated and folded his hands on the bar top. “That looked painful.”
Cassidy swallowed a large gulp of whiskey. “I’ve had much worse. In the last twenty-four hours, even. You were there.” He offered the bottle, which Aziraphale waved away.
“All the same, it can be worse when it’s someone you care for.”
“Yeah, well.” Cassidy lifted the bottle back toward his lips. “Maybe it’s best we go our separate ways after this.”
“But you do love her.”
“She’s me best mate’s girl. It’s not gonna happen.”
“You may be right. Who am I to give advice? I followed my heart, and look what it got me. Cast out of Heaven, exiled, imprisoned… and yet in hindsight I can’t imagine things turning out any other way.” He glanced back across the room, to where Crowley stood leaning over the jukebox. “Love isn’t easy. Forbidden love especially. But right when you think your heart can’t take another second, it gives you life. Dazzling and new. A love worth fighting for.”
“That’s enough.” Cassidy gave Aziraphale a firm look. “For the love of God, I’m tryin’ to do the right thing, okay? For once.”
Aziraphale held on to his soft, conspiratorial smile. “And you will. No matter what. An act of love is always the right thing.”
The jukebox stirred to life. As the record began to spin, Crowley turned and lifted a hand. Aziraphale let out an “ah,” and stood to join him in the center of the room. Hand in hand, they faced one another, preparing to dance[2].
Love of my life, you've hurt me
You've broken my heart, and now you leave me
Love of my life, can't you see?
Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me
Crowley and Aziraphale danced half-leaning on one another, cheek-to-cheek with their arms arranged like an older couple dancing at a wedding. Every once in a while, Crowley would step back to let Aziraphale spin under his arm. As the music swelled near the end of the song, they spun together faster. Two pairs of wings – one white, one black – unfurled to form a feathered cocoon around them.
Back, hurry back
Please, bring it back home to me
Because you don't know
What it means to me
The song drew to a close and both pairs of wings drew back to reveal the end of a kiss, Crowley just barely pulling away so that their noses still touched. Their hands, still clasped, lowered to the side.
“The Lost Apostle,” Crowley said. “He’s gone to Australia.”
The other three found Tulip in the garage, still wiping the dust off the body of the Cheville.
“Australia, huh?” She didn’t so much as pause while running the rag in her hand over the top part of a door. “Well, he can have a good old time in the outback. In the morning, I’m headin’ out. Cass, you can come with me or not.”
“And go where?” Cassidy asked.
“Wherever the hell we want.” Tulip’s hand, the cloth, moved in rapid circles against the car's roof. “Get high, watch tv, play mini golf, rob a bank. Leave all this God business behind for good.”
“And in the meantime, Jesse gets hunted down like a dog over an orgy murder.” Cassidy glanced over his shoulder to Crowley and Aziraphale. “Give us the room, angels, will yeh?”
Once he and Tulip were alone, Cassidy stepped closer, joining her by the side of the car. “You know, it’s all my fault. It’s not Jesse. He turned up like a good friend should. He said, I know we’ve had our differences, you and I, but that doesn’t matter right now on account of you gettin’ repeatedly foreskinned by a meat-handed Italian man. Christ, he was there to stop it. He’d come to help. And do yeh know what I said to that? Yeh know what my stupid, selfish response was?”
Tulip finally paused. “You said you’d rather be circumcised.”
“That’s right. Which means I've got a lot of work to do to make it up to him now. So maybe goin’ down to Australia to get him out of whatever godforsaken mess he’s got himself into seems like a pretty good start, doesn’t it?”
Tulip looked toward the ground, shook her head. “I ain’t goin’.”
“We’ll sleep on it.” Cassidy retreated toward the door. Alone, Tulip stayed still for one more moment before restarting, this time really putting her elbow into the work.
Long past nightfall, Cassidy stretched out on the floor behind the bar, a thick blanket making do for some padding. It was certainly not the worst conditions he’d ever laid down in, and so he was sleeping soundly – until he heard Tulip.
“I don’t wanna sleep on it.”
Cassidy started awake, lifted his head and squinted into the dark. He could feel the warmth of her kneeling next to him, and could barely make out her silhouette in the near-total blackness of the night.
“What if I said it could just be you and me?” Tulip’s voice was soft, her tone gentler than it ever was in daylight. “On the road, findin’ trouble. Stayin’ in the same hotel room, with one bed… Isn’t that what you want?”
For a moment, Cassidy let himself imagine it. “Christ, I would like that.”
“Then let’s go,” Tulip said. “Right now.”
“But I don’t want it like this. Not when it means leavin’ him in the lurch.”
“He left us .”
“Sure, he broke his promise to yeh.” Cassidy sat up and folded his elbows on top of his knees. He could sense the heat coming off Tulip’s arm against his. “It doesn’t mean you have to break it back. Look, if you’re gonna go, I can’t stop yeh. You can do whatever yeh want, just like yeh said. That’s always the case, all the time, for everyone. Hell, I think that’s what makes it so bloody hard.”
He looked toward where he figured her face was. Only a touch more movement, and he would have been able to feel that, too. He waited.
Tulip said nothing.
“I’ll see yeh in the mornin’.” Cassidy lowered himself back to the blanket and closed his eyes, swapping from one kind of darkness back to the other.
The sun beat down on the desert sand, a relentless wind kicking up the occasional cloud of dust. With a keffiyeh wrapped around his head, sunglasses over his eyes, and the rest of him dressed neck-to-toe, Cassidy stepped out of the bar and into the light.
Both cars were already outside, engines purring. Tulip was behind the wheel of the Cheville. She looked up at Cassidy from behind her own shades.
“So,” Tulip said. “Australia?”
“Australia.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
After the Cheville’s passenger door slammed shut, both it and the Bentley were surrounded by sparkling, golden light. The two cars levitated away from the sand, then shot toward the horizon, due southeast.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world…
The man on the beach leapt to his feet, all the better to get a look at what he thought he’d just seen.
“Crikey! Did you just crawl through the center of the Earth, mate? Would’ve thought that was physically im–”
He was cut off by a bullet to the head. The Saint of Killers lowered his gun, then turned to stride along the beach. A moment later, Eugene Root pulled himself from the hole in the sand and followed after.
At the edge of the water, soft waves lapped at an abandoned life raft.