#may not be online a ton today bc lots of family stuff but sending you all soooo so so much love and many kisses!!!!!!

[madaqueue]

GOOOOOD MORNING / AFTERNOON / EVENING LOVELIES!!!!!!!!! merry christmas to those who are celebrating today!!!!!!! sending you all warmth and hot chocolate and a wonderful day!!!!!! i love you all!!!!!!!!!!

[luckyspike]

Adventures in America, Ch. 6 - In which Adam learns about the formation of shelf clouds (literally, this is not a metaphor)

and this chapter took so long because in order for adam to learn about the formation of shelf clouds i had to learn about the formation of shelf clouds

thank you to wikipedia, and the 5 hours of meteorology youtube videos i watched, as well as the many, many hours of storm chasers i watched

reminder that this fic is not on AO3 yet bc tbh i want to finish it first but here’s the link to the other chapters

or follow this link to my fanfiction tag

ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3 | ch 4 | ch 5

-

Four-thirty in the morning, and it was still dark. Generally, Adam wasn’t a fan of getting up before the sun, but generally, Adam was not hunting tornadoes. He rolled out of bed the minute the alarm went off, silenced it, and moved to turn on the light. Lucky beat him to it.

“You ready?” the other boy asked, dark eyes bright and eager. “You ready to go?”

“Absolutely.”

They threw on clothes - whatever they could find - and stuffed the few things they’d actually unpacked back into their bags. Adam paused only to send a text to his friends - ‘Day 1, here we go!’ - before he and the other student walked quickly into the parking lot, their excitement poorly-disguised. They arrived at the truck and stopped. It was dark. Rachael and Noel were absent. Lucky frowned, and looked at his phone.

“Oh. We’re early.” He dropped his bag to the ground, and sat on the asphalt next to it. “Oh well, better early than late.”

“Sure,” Adam agreed, leaning back against the truck and wondering if maybe the extra 15 minutes of sleep might have been worth it. He sighed and looked around. In Tadfield, the streets would have been empty at this hour. But in Austin, by the airport, cars came and went. At a lower volume, certainly, than they might in a few hours, but still, the road was not deserted by any stretch of the imagination. He wondered, distantly, where all those people might be going. 

“Hey, Adam.” Lucky held up his phone. “You wanna do a snap?”

“Oh, selfie? Yeah, sure.” He crouched down next to the other boy, Lucky beaming through his beard and Adam holding up a peace sign while his blonde hair spilled over his face and shoulders. It probably would have been a good picture, had it not been so dark that the only discernible thing was two dark shadows crouched in front of a slightly reddish shadow that may have, with better lighting, looked like a truck. Undeterred, Lucky nodded approvingly and captioned it ‘day 1 fuckers!’ before sending it off, presumably to a group of friends. 

“I should probably take another one for my parents and stuff, too.” This was done as a selfie only, Adam standing back up to look to the east instead, watching the sky turn purple with dawn. Although Adam didn’t like to look over anybody’s shoulder, he did note that the caption on the second photo was a tamer ‘Bright and early for storm chasing day 1!’. He smiled. 

“Your parents are cool with this, huh?”

“Eh.” Lucky shrugged. “My dad is. He’s like super stereotypical masculine dude - his only concern was that I didn’t plan on taking a gun with me.” He rolled his eyes, while Adam tried not to look too shocked. Well, that was America for you. “My mom was kind of worried, but like, we always watched those storm chaser shows when I was a kid, so I think she’s excited too. She told me to send a ton of pictures.” He looked up, over his shoulder, to Adam. “Yours?”

Adam shrugged a shoulder. “They felt like it was a good opportunity, they just felt it was maybe more dangerous than needed but … eh.” He laughed. “I was more worried about my godfathers trying to stop me, but they just let me go.” He frowned. “Which is kind of weird, actually, ‘cause they seemed really worried at first, but I did tell them it was really not that dangerous, so I guess they believed me.”

Lucky was watching him with a puzzled expression. “I don’t have any godparents. Well, I mean, not that I’ve stayed in touch with. I think my parents picked some of their friends or something. But you know yours?” He thought about it. “Was your family really religious or something?” And then he winced. “Yikes, actually, that’s really personal. Sorry, don’t feel obligated.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I mean … kind of.” He snorted. “It’s weird, but I guess we’re kind of religious in a way. They taught me a lot about religion, anyway, but like, I dunno.” He shook his head. “I was heading for trouble when I was younger, and that’s sort of when they started hanging around more, I think at first to help me? But now they’re just kind of cool weird uncles.”

Lucky nodded appreciatively. “Nice.” He picked up a stone from the parking lot and chucked it, idle and bored. “I learned most of my religion from, uh, well, we had a nanny and a gardner until I was like, eight, and it was mostly them.” He laughed. “So weird, honestly - the gardner was like, a monk, I swear to God, and my nanny was actually like, a literal Satanist, like pentagrams and the whole thing, but they ended up getting married after they retired together.” Adam frowned. That was … odd. “Nanny used to like, tell me to destroy all lesser humans and stuff, and then she’d hand me off to the gardner for a few hours and he’d be like all into love of all living things or whatever.” Oh, she. Adam relaxed. A little.

Very strange.

“Up and at ‘em, eh, boys?” Noel’s voice rang across the parking lot, loud and clear even over the steadily-increasing airport traffic. “Excited for the first day?”

Adam nodded and Lucky said, “Yeah!” Rachael, tagging behind, laden with camera bags and an oversize travel mug, offered up a weak and drowsy smile. “Lots of driving on the agenda today, guys. Hopefully will get us into position to see some stuff this afternoon. But first -” she wagged the mug in the air, “we need to find a Dunkin.”

Lucky made a face. “You’re a Dunkin devotee?”

“What’s your brand?” She was packing her things into the bed of the truck, and Adam and Lucky followed suit. “Please don’t say Starbucks.”

“... Well.”

She sighed and laid her hand on his shoulder. “So I have to teach you more than just storm chasing this trip, I guess. It will be my cross to bear.” The truck started up, and Rachael brandished her mug like a sleepy knight charging into battle. “To Dunkin.” She trod around to the front passenger seat, and Lucky laughed, shutting the bed cover and heading to his seat. 

Adam waited until they were in the truck and on the road before he asked, “What’s Dunkin?” He thought it over, trying to remember where he’d seen the name before. Online, certainly, but in relation to … what?

“Oh.” Rachael was watching him in the rearview mirror. “Oh, Adam. Oh, you sweet, summer child.” She turned around, slinging her arm across Noel’s shoulders. “Do you drink coffee? Or tea?”

“Both.” He considered it. “Coffee’s nice in the morning.”

“Dunkin Donuts has the best coffee in the world. Hands down, best.”

“Sometimes they burn it,” Noel said, already flinching away from the playful slap she aimed at his shoulder. “I said sometimes! Not every time!”

“Never. They never do.” She looked to her phone, where a GPS was chirping out directions to the nearest Dunkin. “I will convince you boys by the end of this session that Dunkin coffee is superior to any other coffee, and not to be unappreciated.” She sighed. “It is better than Starbucks, mark my words.” Lucky hummed, uncertain. “What’s your preferred brand, Adam?”

He thought about it. “Uh, well. I dunno. Costa is what we have in town, and that’s pretty good, but I don’t think there’s any of them over here. Starbucks is okay, I guess, in a pinch, but my godfather makes the best coffee.” He shrugged. “He’s super into it.”

Rachael nodded. “Oh, well, obviously home-brew rigs are going to beat out chain places every time.”

“She does make an amazing cup of coffee,” Noel agreed.

“But no, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Costa.” Rachael looked thoughtful. “I’ll have to try it some day. I’ve always wanted to visit the UK, so I’ll put it on my list of things to do for that trip!”

Adam laughed. “There are definitely better things to do in England than go to Costa. If you’re serious about going, I can give you a list of stuff if you’d like.”

Noel turned into a parking lot, and Rachael yawned. “Ah, sorry. Yes, I’m definitely going to take you up on that. But first, coffee. You alright taking the first leg driving, Noel?”

“As always!” He hopped out and waited for the rest of the party to join. “The donuts are also fairly good here, so if you guys want breakfast this will probably be our stop. They have sandwiches an’ all that, too.”

“I do like their hashbrowns,” Lucky added, half a step behind Adam, hands in his pockets. “You have to have a donut though, Adam. Just to try one. It’s like … I mean, America runs on Dunkin.” He laughed. “Or at least that’s what their commercials say.”

Ultimately, Adam selected a donut for breakfast, as well as a cup of coffee. He debated getting the hashbrowns as well, but on reflection it seemed likely that this would not be his only opportunity to eat at Dunkin, and he decided to save it for another day. Rachael paid for him - “The first hit is free,” she said solemnly - and they took their leave.

The coffee was pretty good, Adam thought, sipping at it on the way back to the truck. Maybe a little too sweet. But good. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to drink for the next six weeks, anyway. He assured Rachael he thought it was delicious, and they loaded back into the truck.

Rachael spent the first portion of the drive north looking at her computer, studying the weather maps, and drinking her coffee. She and Noel talked in low voices about where to go - maybe a bit more east? Or stay westward? - and the truck rolled on. Adam, a stranger in America, watched the desert of Texas go by, pink and gold in the dawn and then bright and brown in the harsh light of day. Lucky, in spite of drinking his coffee faster than anybody probably should, was asleep within the first hour, leaned against the window with a string of drool running from the corner of his mouth. Adam considered taking a photo of him on Lucky’s own phone - it was laid on the seat between them, idle - but decided against it, instead pulling out a book about supercell formation and other weather patterns, and starting to read.

Rachael and Noel switched drivers after a few hours, stirring Lucky from his nap. With the students more awake, and no driving duties at hand, Noel took the opportunity to talk Lucky and Adam through the weather tracking software on the laptop, and discussed what they were looking for. “You want to see a big, cool system meeting with some warm air where there’s a lot of moisture,” he explained. “So here’s the barometric pressures as they stand now, and the current radar. Either of you have an idea of where we should go for ideal storm tracking?” Adam and Lucky, each with their own notebooks, did their level best to calculate the possible and likely movements of the systems. Adam considered his work and, eventually, penciled in a careful ‘x’ over a part of the map where it appeared two states met on the north side of the Oklahoma panhandle. Lucky had already finished his own calculations, and they passed their notebooks forward. 

“Alright, let’s see here.” Noel turned around, one notebook in each hand and laptop open in front of him, comparing each of their calculations to his own model. Adam shifted nervously. He was pretty sure with the jet stream so far south, they wouldn’t need to go as north as Lucky had calculated, but then again he hadn’t been confident about the low-pressure area … “Both good maps,” Noel concluded at last. “But I think today we’re going to end up closer to Adam’s.” He turned back to them, smiling, and passed the notebooks back. “Partially because we won’t be able to get that far into Kansas without losing daylight, sorry Lucky, but I don’t know … we’ll have to see. Time will tell.”

“Part of storm chasing,” Rachael added in, “is guesswork. Doesn’t matter how good your models are, doesn’t matter how correct your math’s been, the weather always seems to end up surprising us. It’s part of what makes it fun! And scary, sometimes.”

“Oh, which reminds me: safety briefing.” Noel turned around, suddenly serious as the grave. Adam nodded attentively, shutting his notebook and folding his hands on top of it. “We’ll go through some of Rachael’s lightning equipment afterwards, because eventually you two are going to be doing a lot of work with that, but we need to talk safety.” He sighed and rubbed his neck. “It’s not all fun and photos out here. Let’s talk the anatomy of a storm. Lucky, you first, go over what you know about inflow and outflow, and why that’s important.”

The safety “briefing” actually lasted an entire 3 hours which, honestly, Adam appreciated. They discussed the anatomy of a supercell, the places where you were more likely to get caught off-guard by a rain-wrapped tornado, the places where lighting is more likely to be active, where and how hail forms, and how to best stay safe while studying storms. Noel showed and taught them about the ‘bear’s cage’, and made it very clear that for the most part they would be avoiding that portion of the storm, as neither Noel nor Rachael had a death wish. At the conclusion of his briefing, they stopped for lunch - fast food, which Adam viewed as a particular treat, not having much selection in Tadfield - and switched drivers again.

As they entered the Great Plains region, Adam was taken aback by just how flat everything was. Miles and miles stretched out on either side, level and grassy in the places where it wasn’t level and covered with farmland. Cows - so many cows - grazed and stood and slept and stared at the highway, sometimes, and although Rachael’s instruction on lightning and atmospheric electrical activity was truly interesting, Adam found his mind wandering. 

“Adam?” he was startled from his reverie and study of the plains of the Texas panhandle by Lucky. He turned to find both the other student and Rachael smiling at him. 

He blushed. “Oh, sorry.”

Rachael shrugged. “Don’t worry. It’s a lot of information. We’re probably a few hours out yet, too - are you tired? We can take a break and you can have a nap. We have you both at our mercy for the next six weeks anyway, right?”

Adam laughed. “Yeah. I might nap. Uh, if that’s okay, I mean.” Rachael waved a hand, the universal gesture of ‘go ahead’. Lucky nodded too, slouching back against the seat and stuffing a bundled-up sweatshirt between his head and the window. He was asleep in minutes, eyelids fluttering as he dreamed. Adam leaned up against the window, too, wishing he’d had the foresight to pull a sweatshirt or something out of his own luggage as a makeshift pillow. Still, even without, he found a comfortable position between the headrest and the side of the cab, and drifted off to the sound of the road beneath the truck. 

He wasn’t sure how long he slept, but he didn’t dream, and when he woke up, it was because Lucky was nudging his shoulder. “Hey, dude. We’re getting there: look!”

“Whazz?” Adam blinked, bleary, and then remembered what he was doing. He focused his eyes, rubbed a bit of sleep from them, and looked to Rachael, or at least her shoulder. Her laptop was open on her lap, Baron running. Although he could only see her face in profile, she didn’t look happy.

“Check out the clouds,” Lucky said, pointing across the back seat and out of Adam’s window. “Look. Cumulonimbus.”

Noel glanced out of the window at the clouds. “Yep, for sure. Capped, though. How’s the radar looking, Rachael?”

“Not great,” she replied, glumly. “Honestly it looks like … I hate to say it, but it looks like it might fall apart.” She ran a hand over her hair, pulling a few dark strands loose from her already-messy ponytail. “It just isn’t hanging together like we want it to be.” Turning in her seat, she set the laptop on the center console, the better to show the students in the back seat what she was looking at. “You see this line of storms here? Ideally, I would have liked to see them consolidate more, but they’re spreading out into a squall line.” She pointed to one of the still-consolidated blobs on the radar. “That’s going to be a low-precipitation system, but it might be a good one to see for your first day.” She scowled as she zoomed out. “Look at that - the storms to the east look much better.”

Noel shook his head. “That’s the business, unfortunately. And things might change - you get hooks in squall lines, sometimes.”

“Well, I didn’t want to start these guys out on a bust day.” She studied the radar again after pulling the laptop back onto her knees. “I guess this looks somewhat favorable here, up by Sturgis. No hook, though.” She sighed. “Still might get some lightning and hail, though. You guys want to practice a little with the lightning equipment?”

Adam nodded eagerly. He was disappointed, a little, that the storm was falling apart, but still, a big storm and some lightning would be exciting. Maybe hail. The biggest hail he’d ever seen wasn’t even pea-sized, but he’d seen videos and photos of much larger and he figured it might be cool to see that in person. Providing the windscreen didn’t shatter. He’d seen videos of that, too. He also, he considered, might not want to be out in the hail, setting up monitoring equipment, especially if it was very large.

“Alright. Onwards to Sturgis, then.”

They arrived in Sturgis in the mid-afternoon, moving from blue skies and fluffy cumulonimbus clouds into a giant wall of white and gray. “Shelf clouds,” Rachael said, tracing across the front of the cloud formation. “Adam - what’s the difference between shelf and wall clouds? They look similar, but they’re not the same thing, yes?”

“Right.” He answered slowly, deliberately, making sure he responded as accurately as possible. “Shelf clouds typically form at the front of a storm line, where wall clouds are usually at the back. The shelf cloud is usually because the uh … The downdraft -” Rachael nodded encouragingly, “- Right, the downdraft at the leading edge of the storm cuts under the warm, moist air and forces it up which makes it have the wall shape.”

“Right! Good start for description of a shelf cloud. So a wall cloud - ?”

“Is … is due to uh, en, uh …” He flapped a hand, as if grasping for the word. “En-something, um …”

“Entrainment.” Rachael nodded. “Yeah, that’s right, good start, keep going.”

“Okay so entrainment is when the warm, moist air gets drawn up and like, starts to push out the colder air. And then the warm air continues to gather moisture and condenses into a cloud. It usually happens really quick, and in supercells wall clouds usually rotate due to the mesocyclone.” He was on firmer footing there - he hadn’t done all that reading on supercells that morning for nothing. “Usually they’re under the rain-free base of the storm, not on the leading edge.”

“Right!” She turned back to the windscreen and gestured to the clouds ahead of them. “So these are shelf clouds. They’re still in the distance a little, but what should we expect as we get closer, Lucky?”

“Gusty winds,” the other student answered quickly. “As the cold downdraft shoots forward over the warm air.”

“Right. And what will the clouds look like?”

That was tougher. “If it’s very strong winds,” he said slowly, after a break for thought, “then uh, like the clouds will be kind of messy at the leading edge, and there might be scud along the ground, right?”

“Yep. In really strong storms you can get straight-line winds, vortices along the ground, and gustnados. Which are not tornadoes, right?” She grinned as the boys in the back seat each fixed her with looks of varying puzzlement. “Yes? Either of you know the difference between a gustnado and a tornado?” Neither did, and Rachael was more than happy to explain. Adam diligently took a few notes - outflow, not inflow, and straight line winds versus cyclonic activity - and let Lucky read them over his shoulder. 

“I’m not sure I really understand straight-line winds,” Adam said, when she’d finished her explanation. “I’ve read about them, but can you explain more what -”

“Yeah, for sure!” She continued on, going through the details of a straight-line wind, and how that might be more likely in a squall line than a supercell. Noel would chip in on occasion as well, although for the most part he drove deliberately, watching the clouds, taking measures of the surrounding roads and towns, and following the highways to some nebulous destination. Rachael would add a direction to him mid-lecture sometimes, after consulting Baron, and then would return to the rapt students with more information.

“This is a lot of information,” she added at the end of her lecture. “I’m glad you’re taking notes, but I don’t think many people could remember all of this after one day. We’ll go through it a few times over the weeks, alright?”

“Perfect,” Lucky said, a little glassy-eyed. “Adam, do you mind if I copy your notes? I left my notebook in my bag.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Noel pulled over on the main highway, as if arriving in some predetermined destination that only he knew, and put the truck into park. “Seems as good a place as any to wait for it to roll in, huh?”

“Not a soul around.” Rachael kicked her door open and jumped to the dusty ground outside. “Great place to practice with the lightning instruments. And we can hang out in the car and watch the storm, as long as it’s safe, yeah?”

Adam and Lucky were already hopping out of the car and headed toward the back gate. Under Rachael and Noel’s tutelage, they set up two of Rachael’s field instruments - a high-speed camera station and a small portable weather monitoring station - and fixed them into the ground with spikes. “Not any good if you can’t find your data-gathering instruments,” Rachael laughed. “Learned that one the hard way early on.”

“Before she met me,” Noel added, and she rolled her eyes. “First chase with me and I asked her ‘so you just let the tornadoes take your high-speed cameras every time?’ and she stared at me like I had three eyeballs all of a sudden.”

“I only ever lost one to a direct hit,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest and then, suddenly, wrapping them around herself more tightly. A cold breeze, no, a cold gust blew toward them, kicking up the dust and tossing it into their eyes. “Yep, there’s the gust. In the car, guys, unless you want to experience hail first-hand.”

Two minutes later, and Adam found himself wincing in solidarity with the truck as marble-sized hail hammered the roof and the windscreen. “We use special glass,” Noel shouted to them, over the noise. “It still breaks sometimes, but I have a guy that puts it in for us when we need it.” Lightning forked across the sky, and a blink later a crack of thunder split the air. Lucky jumped, right hand clenched on the door handle and left wrapped tight around his phone, forgotten. “You get that?”

“I don’t think it was a clear shot.” Rachael had her window rolled down as far as she could without letting in undue amounts of hailstones, her camera pointed out toward what had thus far been the most active part of the storm. “Working on it.”

“She can sell these shots,” Noel shouted. “Honestly, taking students and stuff is a good steady source of income, but sometimes the lightning shots are what makes a season for us.”

“No pressure or anything.” Rachael leaned back as the hail pinged off the side of the truck and into her neck. “I dunno, I think there’s too much hail and rain here.”

“You wanna move? We could run east and see if we could get ahead of it.”

She shook her head in response. “Nah, not today. Let’s wait for the worst to pass and then we’ll grab the instruments. The remote might’ve got something.” She didn’t look away from the storm, but she called, “How you two doing? You’re awfully quiet.”

“This is wicked,” Adam said loudly, over the hail, wide-eyed and watching the storm surge around the truck. It almost looked like snow on the road, the hail was falling so heavy and fast. Lucky, still glancing at the lightning shooting through the sky above, had recovered from the shock of the thunder enough to bring his phone up and start taking video. Adam, prompted by that, pulled his own phone out and started recording. “Marble-sized hail,” he explained to the video. “Just outside of Sturgis, Oklahoma.” He’d have to send it to the group when he got back on wi-fi, he resolved, before he stopped the recording and tucked his phone back into his pocket. Definitely the whole extended family of The Them - the core four and the rest of the Nahpocalypse crew - and his sister. He would decide whether or not his parents should see it later. 

-

When the message dinged onto Crowley’s phone late that night, he and Aziraphale studiously watched Adam’s video of the hail and the storm. “Well, he doesn’t sound afraid,” Aziraphale said. “That’s good.”

“What’s he got to be afraid of?” Crowley reclined his seat and took his phone with him, swapping from the video to some game or another. “Hail wasn’t even that big. We’ve been through bigger storms than that.”

“Not while avoiding miracles,” Aziraphale replied, testily. He had not enjoyed the storm. Crowley hadn’t either, but only because the demon had spent the majority of the time threatening the 4-Runner that if it dared allow the windshield to crack, there would be absolutely horrific repercussions. Aziraphale had had to cut him off when he’d started getting into really descriptive methods of car torture. 

Crowley made a noise of vague disagreement. “There were loads of humans out in it. Weren’t even scared.”

“Because they don’t know better.”

“Or because there wasn’t anything to be worried about.”

Aziraphale relented, slightly. He sat back in his seat, watching the motel across the street with disinterest. The red truck in the parking lot shone in the light. “And you didn’t sense anything evil about it?”

“Not in the slightest.” The music from the game paused. “Why? You get anything?”

Aziraphale frowned, and shook his head. “Not … exactly. But I’m uneasy about this whole thing, Crowley. Not just the weather, bad as that is, but … something feels wrong.” He crossed his legs. “I can’t put a name to it, exactly, but there’s just a strange feeling about all of this.”

“Yeah, two kids you like a lot are in a truck chasing tornadoes. Gives me a weird feeling too, angel.” He propped a foot on the steering wheel and crossed his other ankle over it. “S’called anxiety, not sure you’re familiar with it.”

“I’ve known you for 6000 years, of course I’m familiar with anxiety.”

“That was unfair.” Crowley sniffed, only theatrically offended, and the game resumed. “I have a condition.”

“Which I am familiar with, my dear demon. You’ve made my point.” He waved a hand. “Either way, that’s not the feeling I’m talking about. It’s … Well, it’s almost like we’re being watched. But I don’t sense any goodwill, and you said you’re not sensing any hatred or anger, so?” He made a vague gesture, and then settled his elbow on the windowsill, chin in his hand. “It’s a bit hard to describe.”

Crowley looked to him over the rims of his glasses. “You know, now that you brought it up, I’ve noticed it too. Just thought it was being out of England, though. Or a demon thing.” He shifted in his seat. “We’ll have to pay attention tomorrow.”

“Yes. Yes, quite.” He glanced sidelong at Crowley. “You don’t notice it now, though?”

“There’s a cow about 600 yards that way staring at the road,” Crowley said, pointing to the west. “Only thing watching us around.” Aziraphale hummed a noise of agreement, and settled back. “Do you ever get bored of your games?” he asked, at length, gingerly sliding the seat back and propping his feet on the dashboard. The 4-Runner’s engine purred and the fuel gauge needle, which had been on ‘E’ since early that morning, fluttered. Crowley glared at the radio. “Don’t you start that. Bad enough the Bentley loves him.”

“Jealous?”

“Possibly slightly.” Crowley tapped the phone screen a few times, and then groaned. “‘Course I get bored of this stuff. But, you know.” He let his head fall back. “Can’t read, didn’t pick an audiobook yet, and I’m not interested in the thing you’re reading right now, sorry.” He unpaused the game. “I’ve got a few podcasts but, eh, you probably wouldn’t like them. Suppose I could get out some headphones,” he considered, after a moment. 

“What’s a podcast?” Aziraphale asked, hands folded on his stomach.

Crowley looked at him, eyebrows raised, although he wasn’t sure why he was surprised. Aziraphale had yet to even get a mobile, and his technological comfort zone didn’t go much past 1945. “Like a … ah, like a radio show? Can be about anything. Educational, entertaining, unsolved mysteries, ah … interviews …”

The angel looked intrigued. “Like a radio play, you said?”

“Some of ‘em, yeah.”

“Let’s try it.”

The game paused again. “Really, Aziraphale? Go on, I know you’d rather read your … what’s it called? Mainlander? The one with the time travel lady, right?”

“Outlander, yes.”

“Right. You can read your book, I’ll put headphones on if I feel like listening -”

Aziraphale pouted. “But I’d like to listen to one.”

The demon looked dubious of this assertion. “Really? You’re serious?”

“You like them, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then pick one you’d think I’ll like and we’ll listen together.” Crowley looked shocked. Aziraphale sighed, and reached across the center console, hand outstretched. Comfortably, Crowley slid his into it. “You listened to me read an entire Outlander book, even though you hated it -”

“I didn’t hate -”

“Let’s try a podcast, Crowley.” He squeezed the demon’s hand. “You like the funny ones, I’m sure.”

Crowley watched him for a minute, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then cautiously, closed his game and flipped to a different app. “If you’re sure.” He chewed his lip. “And, uh, yeah. I prefer the funny ones.” He considered the options, squinting at the enlarged print on the screen over the tops of his glasses. “Right. What’re you in the mood for? Murder, dungeons and dragons, advice, ah … no, that’s technology, you wouldn’t like that one, ah, oh, and history.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows had gone up when Crowley had started listing the options. “I thought you said you preferred the funny ones.”

“I did do, yeah.”

“Murder?”

“It’s a comedy murder podcast.” Crowley caught a glimpse of his expression, and snorted. “It works but we can skip that.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “Hm. What kind of history?”

“American, mostly.”

“Do that one.”

“Right.” He tapped something on the screen, and then handed the phone to Aziraphale. “Pick a title that looks interesting. Just tap on it when you want it, and then tap the little triangle in the bottom left.” There were a few quiet minutes while the angel browsed, and then he grinned. “Do you have any idea what ‘whalesplosion’ might be about?”

“At a guess,” Crowley sighed, “an exploding whale?”

“I suppose we’ll find out. I wonder how it relates to American history.”

“Never paid as much attention to America,” Crowley agreed, adjusting himself in the seat to hold Aziraphale’s hand more comfortably, while the other laboriously hit ‘play’ on the podcast. The 4-Runner, which had never linked its bluetooth capabilities with Crowley’s phone, and indeed hadn’t really wanted to, nevertheless did so, projecting ‘You’re listening to the Dollop on -’ over the top-of-the-line speakers* with beautiful crystal clarity.

[*Which it hadn’t had, until Crowley had sat in it.]

Twenty minutes later, and Aziraphale and Crowley both were laughing, exchanging incredulous looks, and wordlessly agreeing that they really should be paying more attention to America. And that they would certainly be choosing a second episode at the conclusion of the first one.

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Now with Chapter 7!