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Title: Albion Rhapsody

Summary: Good Omens/Supernatural crossover. Sam and Dean can't escape heavenly entanglements--even on vacation.

Word Count: 4088

Rating: All Ages

Albion Rhapsody

It was supposed to be a vacation.

Dean had known for a long time how much Sam had wanted to visit England--the obsession had a disturbing correlation to the release of Shakespeare in Love--and he knew that Sam couldn't afford to study abroad when he was at Stanford. So as soon as Castiel backed off a little, Dean decided that the remaining sixty or so seals could go to hell, and he bought two plane tickets to London for Sam's birthday.

Of course, Dean knew that buying the tickets meant that he would actually have to fly. He wound up chasing half a dozen Dramamine with half a dozen airplane cocktails, and before he was done being airsick they were landing at Heathrow. Two hours of badge-flashing and bad jokes later, they picked up their bags from the carousel and stepped out into the English sunlight. Things went smoothly for all of five minutes.

Then Dean saw the rental car. "Oh, hell no. Tell me you're kidding, Sammy, please."

Sam opened the door and dumped his bags in the backseat. "Sorry. I asked, but they didn't have any classic American muscle cars available."

"So you got us a lime-green clown car?"

"Stop whining and get in, jerk."

Dean rolled his eyes and went to open the trunk--they called it a boot here, right?--only to raise the hatchback and find that the "boot" was about six inches deep. "Where are we going to stow all of our gear?"

"Dean, we're here on vacation--we're not here to hunt."

He shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, I know that."

Sam sighed. "How much did you bring?"

"Not much! Just--the machete, you know, in case of vampires. I mean, Transylvania's not that far away. Uh, shotgun, rock salt, Dad's journal, one of Missouri's gris-gris bags..."

"Did you leave anything in the Impala?"

"...The spare machete?"

Sam looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. "Uh, actually, I brought that."

Dean smirked. "I thought we weren't here to hunt," he mimicked in a voice two octaves higher than Sam's.

"It doesn't hurt to be prepared."

"Well, when you put it that way, we're regular Boy Scouts, aren't we?"

Sam made a rude gesture.

"Hey now, I don't think that's the standard Boy Scout salute."

Sam just rolled his eyes and climbed into the car. It was surprisingly roomy, really--at least, he wasn't quite eating his knees, and that was all he could ask for in a rental car.

Dean got in on the driver's side, which would have been the passenger side in the Impala, and frowned. "It's all freaking backwards," he muttered. "Wonder if the pedals are still in the right place."

"You want me to drive?"

"No." Dean started up the car and made a left turn out of the parking lot.

Into oncoming traffic.

He swerved back into the right--that is, left--lane just in time to avoid hitting another stupid sardine-can of a British car. "I got it, I got it, it's under control!" he announced, straightening the car. "Okay, Sammy, get out the map--where are we going?"

***

Dean had gotten the hang of London roads half an hour later, and he had long since decided that roundabouts were more entertaining and dangerous than the Jersey Jug-Handle Escapade of 2002.

"So where do we get off this thing?" he asked, cruising past streets with names that were absolutely nothing like 'Steak-and-Kidney Lane.' "Sammy? You want to tell me where to go, or you want to keep driving around in circles forever like a slow-mo NASCAR race?"

"Shit," Sam muttered.

Dean glanced over to see Sam hunched in the passenger seat and pinching the bridge of his nose, his face scrunched up like a bulldog's. "Sammy? Hey, what is it?"

He didn't answer, and Dean risked taking one hand off the steering wheel to shake him by the shoulder. "Sam!"

He shuddered and sat up. "Oh no."

"What did you see?" Dean asked grimly. "Never mind, tell me later. We'll head back to the airport, catch the first flight home. There's time, right? Whatever you saw, there's got to be time to get there--"

"No, Dean, it's here."

"Here? What's here?"

"The demon. Our demon."

Dean braked hard. "No way. We killed that yellow-eyed son of a bitch."

"I know, but I saw him, and he's here. There was a license plate in the vision, a British one, on a really old car. And I don't think there's much time."

"Okay," Dean said, instantly determined. "Where do we need to go?"

"I don't know, I just--" He looked out the window. "That's it. Dean, that's the car from the vision!"

Dean swore and executed a turn that was illegal no matter which country they were in. They passed under a traffic signal just as it began to go haywire, flashing a shade of violet not often found in the traffic-light spectrum. From somewhere in front of them came a screech of tires and the horribly familiar sound of crunching glass and metal. Dean slammed on his brakes and swung the tiny car up to the curb, forcing a fashionable-looking guy to leap away from the ancient car as Dean narrowly avoided sideswiping him.

They jumped out of the car, guns already in their hands--

--and found themselves to be the first responders at a perfectly ordinary fender-bender.

Dean lowered the gun and looked around the street. The two drivers involved in the accident were exchanging insurance information with rueful smiles. Nobody's eyes were turning black, nobody's skin was melting.

"A car accident, Sam? Seriously? Nobody's even hurt!"

Sam's brow crinkled as he lowered the gun. "I thought...that car over there, I know that's the right car..."

Dean tucked the pistol into the back of his jeans. "Then let's go talk to the driver," he said, loping over towards the well-dressed guy that they'd nearly hit. He was in the process of standing up, brushing imaginary dust from his pristine black trousers.

The man's sunglasses had been knocked off in the fray, and they lay on the sidewalk with a crack through one lens. He picked them up and slid them back on smoothly, but not before the Winchesters caught sight of his eyes.

Bright.

Glowing.

Yellow.

They swung their weapons up to bear. "You son of a bitch," Dean said, wishing they still had the Colt. Wishing they still had Dad.

The man tilted his head pensively. "If I had a mother, I feel I'd be insulted by that statement."

"Shut up!" Sam growled. "You don't get to talk about mothers. Not to us."

"Very well, then. What shall we talk about?"

"Nothing," Dean snapped. "At least not for very long. Sam? We're gonna have to improvise, here. There's some holy water in the duffel bag."

Sam lowered his gun and went back to the car, so Dean was the only one who had the satisfaction of seeing the demon go pale. Paler, anyway. "I really don't think that's necessary," the demon reasoned. "This appears to be a simple misunderstanding, one which we can easily solve without resorting to such painful...permanent measures."

"A misunderstanding? The only thing I don't understand is how you got back out of hell so fast. Did your friend Lilith bring you out to play?"

"I truly do not know what you are talking about, gentlemen." He took a half step back as Sam approached with the dented flask of holy water.

"Oh, right," Sam said, "you're a perfectly normal human being who just happens to have an irrational fear of holy water. Yeah, I buy that."

The demon glanced around nervously, then caught sight of an approaching figure and suddenly seemed to relax. "Oh, thank G--er, Someone."

A blond, bookish sort of gentleman insinuated himself between Dean and Crowley. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, and he really did look it, "but I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

Dean hesitated only a second before cocking his gun. "You want to get out of the way."

"No, thank you."

"This isn't the time to be a hero, man. I'm not kidding--I'll go right through you to get to him, don't think I won't."

"Would you really?" he asked, not fear but curiosity coloring his voice. "Wouldn't that make you as bad as he, then?"

"You don't know what he's done."

"Actually, I do," he countered wryly. "But frankly I don't think tying up all the traffic in central London is worthy of annihilation. Even if it is a Friday afternoon."

"He killed our mother!" Sam snarled.

The blond stranger looked aghast. "Oh, no, I highly doubt that. According to the Rules--well, what little we think we know of the Rules--he's only supposed to tempt. And while he is many things, not all of them good, he is certainly not a murderer."

Dean removed his finger from the trigger of the gun, but didn't lower his arm. "What the hell is going on here?"

The demon sighed. He straightened his sunglasses--hadn't they been cracked a moment ago?--and held out his hand. "Anthony Crowley. Angel, of the...rather slightly fallen variety. Apologies, I've never quite got 'round to having cards made. Oh, and the stuffy one in front of me is Aziraphale. He didn't fall."

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. This was exactly what he did not need. "More angels? Can't you people ever give us a minute's rest?"

"You people?" Crowley echoed, smirking. "That sounds like racism to me."

Dean shifted his aim. "We're not done with you yet, either. How many yellow-eyed demons do you expect us to believe there are?"

"At least two, evidently," Aziraphale replied calmly. "Evil on that scale is hardly Crowley's style. It's too personal. He doesn't go in for that sort of thing."

"Could be Hastur," Crowley put in. "Overly complex, big on ambition and personal advancement...it's definitely not a modern approach."

"And Crowley is very modern."

He snorted. "You would know, wouldn't you?"

Dean and Sam were now thoroughly confused; it wasn't exactly normal for people to start bantering with each other at gunpoint. A few drops of holy water might do a lot to clear things up.

Sam unscrewed the cap on the flask. Dean saw Crowley flinch back for an instant, and then Aziraphale seemed to swell and change and the phrase "avenging angel" had never made more sense than it did just then. "Put it away," he said softly, but his voice resonated painfully in their ears. Dean lowered the gun. Sam stared, dazed, at the vast white wings that had unfurled from the back of Aziraphale's sweater-vest. Then he carefully tightened the cap and put the flask away in the duffel bag.

The wings faded out of sight, and Aziraphale looked like a normal librarian again. Crowley smirked at him. "I didn't know you cared," he purred.

"Yes, you did," Aziraphale replied impatiently.

Dean and Sam exchanged glances. Dean still had a death-grip on the gun, and just because his hand was down by his side didn't mean that he was at all off his guard. "So did Castiel send you?" Dean asked Aziraphale. "Or are you another 'specialist,' here to blow up London or something?"

"Castiel does not command me," Aziraphale replied, and Dean got a sense that he'd definitely ruffled the angel's wings a little bit. "And I have never blown anything up. In fact--" He sighed. "I think we could all do with a cup of tea, don't you?"

"Sure," Sam replied eagerly, "That would be great." He seemed to have forgotten all about this new yellow-eyed demon, and now he was on the verge of turning into a little fangirl, just like he had when he'd met Castiel.

"We'll take my car," Crowley volunteered.

"No thanks, we'll follow you," Dean replied. But even as he approached the car he knew something had gone wrong. When he'd spun the car up to the curb, the back tire had scraped sharply against the sidewalk and was now entirely deflated. He didn't even have to look in the tiny boot to know that the car wasn't carrying a spare.

"Well, isn't that convenient," he said dryly, rescuing his gear from the backseat. He locked the doors with the little button on the keying; the car made a ridiculously cheerful mneep-mneep sound, and the headlights flashed twice. He could feel the damn car emasculating him. He walked back to the demon's car, which he thought might be a Bentley.

Ancient or not, demon-owned or not, there were certain Rules that had to be obeyed. "Shotgun!" Dean shouted, squeezing past Sam to slide into the front seat. Sam sighed and folded himself into the back. It made sense--if Aziraphale and Crowley turned out to be less than they claimed, each one would have a Winchester to cover him.

But only if Dean could stop pestering Crowley with questions about his car. "So how do you keep this thing up? It's got to be eighty years old, and it still looks new--where the hell did you get it?"

"Exactly," Crowley replied enigmatically.

That was when Dean caught sight of the sleek matte-black CD player on the dash. "I bet that didn't come standard."

Crowley shrugged. "Don't all cars have them?"

"Nope," Sam muttered from the back, still sore about the iPod incident.

"Oh," said Crowley. "I just sort of assumed."

Without asking permission, Dean reached forward and poked a button.

--Gunpowder, gelatin, dynamite with a laser beam--

He grinned. "Hey, Queen!"

Crowley looked down at the player in dismay. "It was supposed to have been Rachmaninoff. But--yes, I suppose it was two weeks ago yesterday, wasn't it?"

"Huh?"

"Any music left in a car for longer than a fortnight becomes The Best of Queen. Not my idea."

Sam snorted. "Well, that certainly explains your music collection, Dean."

He twisted around in the seat to glare at Sam, but couldn't come up with an appropriately biting response.

Crowley pulled up in front of a bookstore in what Sam thought, but couldn't swear, was Soho. Aziraphale unlocked the shop door and led them all inside, down twisting aisles of shelving.

"Whoa," Sam murmured, stopping in the middle of an aisle and causing Dean to barrel right into him. He pulled a book off a high shelf. The leather binding was cracked and flaking, and Aziraphale, looking back, flinched as Sam opened it. He relaxed somewhat when he saw that Sam was cradling the spine very gently in one hand, turning pages with a delicacy that belied his gargantuan frame.

"What is it, research boy?" Dean asked, trying to peer over Sam's shoulder and failing.

"It's a fifteenth-century grimoire," Sam said absently, tracing a finger over an illuminated capital. "An incunabulum, one of the first books printed in movable type--" He glanced up at Aziraphale. "This has to be worth a fortune. How did you get hold of it?"

Aziraphale's lips quirked in a smile. "It was only worth a small fortune in 1488, which was when I bought it."

Sam gaped, and Dean could tell that he was about to launch into serious Geek Mode, so Dean broke in. He flashed a credit card. "So how much?"

Sam elbowed him. "We are not paying an angel with a fake credit card," he hissed. But Dean's comment had the desired effect: Sam put the book back up on the shelf and followed Aziraphale towards the back of the store.

The back room of the shop was cluttered with old books, new books, red books, blue books, and a number of large boxes which undoubtedly contained yet more books. Crowley was already busying himself with the teapot by the time Aziraphale led Sam and Dean into the room.

"So what was with the purple flashing traffic lights?" Dean asked, dropping into one of the chairs and snagging a pink-iced tea cake from a plate on the table.

"It was only a traffic accident," Crowley said modestly. "Well, two hundred and fifty-three traffic accidents all at once. But no injuries were suffered, and miraculously," he added, glaring at Aziraphale, "every one of the involved automobiles now runs more smoothly than it did before the accident."

For an angel, Aziraphale was remarkably bad at looking innocent. He poured the tea and made no effort to defend himself. Dean spooned an unbelievable amount of sugar into his teacup and stirred for a long time, watching the tea turn pale and opaque.

Crowley produced a bottle of whiskey that had not existed ten minutes ago and added a generous helping to his tea and, when the angel wasn't looking, to Aziraphale's as well. He passed the bottle to the boys, who tipped a bit into their own cups.

Aziraphale took a sip of tea, eyed Crowley in disapproval, and continued to drink it with every evidence of enjoyment.

"So," Dean said casually, "are you going to rat us out to Castiel?"

"No, I am not going to rat you out. What a charming expression. Castiel and I...we don't occupy the same spheres."

"...Meaning what, exactly?"

"We have different ideas about how the will of God should be carried out. I accept the Plan as ineffable, and Castiel insists that reality can be forced into the mold of his own expectations. We simply don't get along."

Crowley grinned. "Yesss, it makes the heavenly Xmas parties very awkward." Most people, of course, only used Xmas as a shorthand for writing 'Christmas,' but Crowley actually pronounced it that way--Eckss-mass. It was a handy way of circumventing that name-of-the-lord bit that always tended to sear his tongue.

"Okay," Dean said, continuing doggedly on the same track, "so you don't hang with Castiel. Do you know anything about the sixty-six seals?"

Aziraphale smiled and looked at Dean over the rims of his entirely superfluous spectacles. "My dear boy, I helped place the seals."

"Then you know how to protect them?" Sam broke in eagerly. "There are demons--some demons," he amended, with an apologetic look at Crowley, "trying to destroy the seals. If you could tell us how to protect them, then we could--"

Dean cleared his throat. "I was thinking...maybe we should let it happen. Open the door, let Satan out, and then take him down for good. That would solve everything, right?"

"That isn't how it works," Aziraphale said patiently. "You've got to have good, and you've got to have evil. They're sort of inseparable. Yin and yang."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "I knew I shouldn't have lent you that scroll on Eastern philosophy."

"I don't recall many complaints while I was studying Tantra," Aziraphale sniffed. He poured himself another cup of tea. "Where's the bottle, Crowley?"

He handed it over with a pitiful attempt at a guilty expression. Aziraphale glanced at the label and, cheered, added a goodly amount to his second cup of tea.

"So there are more of you, and it's all like the Bible says?" Sam asked, an earnest college-kid look on his face. "There's really an angel Gabriel, and Michael really has a flaming sword?"

"I had one too, you know," Aziraphale said petulantly. "Flamed like anything, it did. But I gave--I lost--er, I don't have it anymore."

"Actually, I think you still do," Crowley said smoothly. Underneath the table, his hand did something that caused Aziraphale to startle and slosh a bit of strongly whiskeyed tea over the rim of his glass.

"So what's the deal with you two, anyway?" Dean asked. "Not the...you know, whatever, but you're an angel and a demon. Shouldn't you be fighting instead of flirting?"

"We have an Arrangement," Aziraphale explained. "We keep things balanced around here--not too good, not too evil."

"Erring on the side of good," Crowley muttered sulkily.

"And as long as things don't get noticeably off-kilter, our...superiors...tend not to bother us."

"No-Man's Land," Sam murmured.

"Precisely. It's served us well for the last few centuries. With a few notable kinks."

Crowley tutted. "Now, now--it isn't polite to bring up your leather fetish in front of the guests."

Aziraphale shot him a look that could have withered entire forests.

Dean slurped up the last of his tea, subtly pilfered a few more of the little tea cakes, and stood up. "Well, this has been lots of fun, but we're on vacation here, and the last thing we need to do is get more mixed up in heavenly drama than we already are."

"That's certainly understandable," Aziraphale replied. "If I may make a suggestion, you might want to take a walk around St. James' Park. You can feed the ducks--entirely non-angelic, non-demonic ducks."

"Uh...right," Dean said. Actually, duck-feeding didn't sound like a terrible way to spend their vacation. "And--if Castiel should show up..."

Aziraphale's lip curled slyly. "I will take an entirely unangelic pleasure in delaying him as long as possible," he promised.

"Thanks. We owe you one."

"Not at all."

Sam lingered behind while Dean went out to call a cab to take them back to their car. "Mr. Crowley--"

"Just Crowley, please," he said, pouring yet another cup of tea.

"Crowley. Sorry about the holy water thing."

"No harm done. I've threatened demons with holy water myself--long story, Apocalypse and Horsemen and the Antichrist, very dull."

"Uh...right. I was wondering if you maybe knew what was going on with the seals? How to protect them, or how to stop the demons that are going after them, or--"

"How to get them to stop playing tug-of-war with you?" Crowley supplied. He shook his head. "I'm sorry; that sort of thing is a bit above my pay grade, you understand. But if we hear anything, either of us, we'll find a way to pass the message on to you."

Sam sighed. "Thanks. It was, uh, nice meeting you two. Thank you for the tea."

Sam wended his way back through the bookstore, casting one last longing glance up at the grimoire. He pushed open the door, and the little bell over the lintel tinkled cheerfully. Dean bounded up from the curb, a grin on his face that could mean nothing good.

"Dude, I just got off the phone with Bobby. He says there's this town up north that's got a werewolf and a black dog--let's go check it out!"

***

Epilogue: Of Angels and Angles

Aziraphale waited until he heard the bell jingle and the door sigh shut. "My leather fetish?" he asked indignantly, walking out to flip the sign on the door to "Closed."

Crowley chuckled. "I like it when you get your feathers all ruffled like that. It suits you."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and went back to clean up the tea things, but Crowley caught his hand. "Leave it," he pleaded softly, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips.

"Sloth is a deadly sin," Aziraphale reminded him.

"Ssso is lust. You've never worried about that one before."

"Would you like me to start?"

"I don't think that's necessary," Crowley declared, leaning in to kiss him. Aziraphale decided that the tea things really could bide for a time...

Crowley easily maneuvered Aziraphale to the edge of the desk, where they leaned for a long moment, pressed against each other.

He could have simply banished Aziraphale's shirt--indeed, he'd done it several hundred times before. But he liked the feel of stripping Aziraphale properly, his fingers working at the buttons, sliding his palms over the warm skin of Aziraphale's chest. And, thus distracted by the tangle of cotton now fettering his arms, Aziraphale could offer little protest as Crowley boosted him up onto the desk.

"Oh, Crowley, really," he sighed from his new perch. "The desk?"

Crowley gestured, and the books and papers that lay scattered across the surface suddenly lined themselves up neatly on the floor.

"It's just so awkward," Aziraphale sighed, relenting as he pulled Crowley in for another kiss. "The angles--"

Crowley laughed, deep in his throat. He trailed his lips up to Aziraphale's ear. "Angles? No," he murmured. "Non angli--sed angeli."

***

Notes

Sam's grimoire is listed as available at the Unseen University Library, where it may be checked out, provided that you do not attempt to interfere with the nature of causality.

Non angli, sed angeli: "Not Angles, but angels," a comment attributed to Pope Gregory I on the blond hair and pale skin of the Anglo-Saxons.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, you have no idea how much I love you right now, Secret Author. The crossover itself was beautifully done; I know next to nothing about Supernatural, but this fic has made me consider getting into that fandom. And the HP reference was so subtle and well-placed, it made me giggle. Dean is adorable and Sam reminds me of someone I know. This is excellent, excellent writing. Thank you so much for writing this.

Also, Crowley and Zira at the end = yum!

I know next to nothing about Supernatural, but this fic has made me consider getting into that fandom

Do it!!!!!!!!!!! You will not be sorry. Not at all.

2 hot guys, 2 hot angels, 1 hot demon, 1 strangely hot hilly billy renaissance old dude -- and a flamingly fabulous fandom that could benefit from your inputs!

xoxoWaxbean