Happy Holidays, Aethelflaed!
Dec. 14th, 2022 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle: To Creep Under His Gabardine
Summary: Sharing a sleeping space used to be much more common, historically. It didn’t mean that Crowley and Aziraphale had (literally) slept together very often…but they had done so. By the middle of the 1800s or so that practice had fallen out of fashion, and it began to feel like a shocking sort of intimacy. Basically: five times Crowley and Aziraphale shared a bedtime before the Apocalypse, and the first time they shared a bedtime after.
Rating: T
CW: Mention of a historical public health outbreak in the section labelled "1854."
33
The young man had been dead for the last several hours or so. Night had fallen: true night, not the ineffable darkness that had covered the land that afternoon. The light of the oil lamp filled the little house that Aziraphale had rented in Jerusalem.
Aziraphale was a very practical sort of man (if you weren’t splitting hairs) and had brought dinner home, but he had not yet eaten it. He reclined at his table and stared at the dish of lentils and bread. The lentils in the dish had crusted over as they cooled right before his eyes.
He never skipped a meal. It felt silly to skip this one. But when he told his hand to reach out for a crust of bread, it didn’t move, so he just kept staring.
Public executions had never sat right with him, was all. He usually chalked such things up to the other side’s influence on humanity. But there had been rather more involvement from his side than he was used to, with this whole Jesus business.
Which only meant that all was well, and he should stop fretting and eat his dinner.
Just then, a small ruckus outside pulled him out of the slight stupor he’d found himself captive to. Perhaps someone needed help he was actually able to give. He was up on his feet before he could think, and hurried over to the cut-out window to twitch the curtain back and see what was going on.
He hadn’t expected to see a crumple of red hair and black linen sprawled in front of his very doorway.
“Crawley,” he hissed, feeling his stomach swoop about inside his body and intensely ignoring the sensation. “What are you doing here, you foolish thing?”
A pair of arresting yellow eyes turned up towards him. “Where else would I be?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Aziraphale said peevishly. He leaned further out of the window and looked this way and that up the street. “Wherever else you’ve been since this afternoon?”
“Anyway,” Crawley said as if Aziraphale hadn’t spoken, “It’s Crowley. Told you that earlier.”
“Right,” said Aziraphale. “Crowley. Can I help you find your way, or…?”
“Found my way already,” Crowley muttered, finally breaking eye contact. He fiddled with his shawl. “But no, sorry to bother you, just tripped on a sandal thong, you know how it goes. I’ll be out of your hair.”
Aziraphale felt that same swoop in his tummy at the thought that Crowley had sought him out. “Well you might as well come in,” he said, before he could think better of it.
Crowley stood up. There was a complicated look on his face. “I brought wine,” he said.
“Very good. In you come.” Aziraphale darted back inside, letting the curtain close, and opened the door before he could think better of it.
After that, neither of them spoke much. Neither of them made any reference to the crucifixion they’d witnessed earlier, or to any sort of plan, ineffable or otherwise. At one point, Aziraphale offered to share his cold dinner with Crowley, who said no thanks, he’d had a little something to nibble on when he’d made sure Mary and the other ladies had got some dinner. Aziraphale had said something like wasn’t that nice of him, and Crowley had gone as white as a sheet and quickly changed the subject. He’d needled Aziraphale into reheating the dish with a subtle miracle so Aziraphale would actually enjoy it.
Through it all they drank a good deal, because the wineskin Crowley had brought was of a very obliging sort and didn’t seem to wish to run out.
It was late, late, late, when Aziraphale noticed that Crowley had somehow got even more withdrawn and quiet. He was huddled up on a pile of mats, leaning back against the wall, and every few moments he would blink and his eyes would stay closed for just a moment before he jerked them open again.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, not sure where he was going even as he opened his mouth. He finally settled on, “Are you going to sleep?”
Crowley jerked his eyes open fully and he gave Aziraphale a very focused, forced glare. “No.”
“Oh, jolly good,” Aziraphale said. The room was quiet again for a few moments. Then, “You can, you know.”
Crowley’s eyes had fallen shut again in the meantime. “Isn’t that saintly of you,” he said.
Aziraphale had not missed the sullen, sour tone of his voice that had fallen away over the course of the evening, but seemed to be back in full force as Crowley got sleepier.
“It’s not saintly,” Aziraphale defended himself. “Or particularly angelic. But you’re falling asleep sitting up. Lie down, will you, and I’ll get you a blanket.”
“No blanket,” said Crowley, but his eyes remained closed and he laid himself down on the mat.
Aziraphale, who had stood to retrieve the blanket, stopped what he was doing and stared down at Crowley. As he fell more deeply into sleep, the harsh lines of his face smoothed out and he began to look quite peaceful.
What a funny night. What a funny day. Crowley had seemed quite upset with him out at Golgotha, and hadn’t seemed too friendly afterwards either.
But he’d sought out Aziraphale regardless.
Crowley looked rather small on the pile of mats he’d fallen asleep on. It was Aziraphale’s usual place for sleeping, when he slept, which he tended to do several times a week. There was an intimacy to seeing another where he usually bedded down by himself. It was uncommon to sleep alone, he knew that. He knew other families and friends shared a space to sleep in, but it happened that he was lodging by himself in Jerusalem and it had been several years since he’d shared sleeping quarters with anyone else.
Crowley’s hair was very red, and the curls had gone all tangly. Aziraphale’s fingers twitched with the desire to smooth them out.
That would be an imposition. He shook the thoughts away from his silly fingertips and gathered a blanket for himself, and one for Crowley, despite the demon’s earlier insistence. It was a cold night. A blanket should be close at hand.
He sat down at Crowley’s head, on the edge of the sleeping mats, and propped himself against the wall. He would sit up tonight, and protect Crowley. He had taken the crucifixion so hard today, the poor thing. Aziraphale was able to soothe himself with ideas about the Great Plan, but Crowley didn’t have such comforting thoughts to fall back on. It was very sweet that he had apparently turned to Aziraphale in the midst of his discomfort. It was the least Aziraphale could do, to sit up and watch over him.
Barely a few minutes had passed, when Crowley shivered slightly. Well, of course he did; he wouldn’t accept a blanket while he was awake.
Surely it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition. Aziraphale draped the second blanket across Crowley’s thin back. Crowley clutched at it and curled up tighter, but the shivering subsided.
Aziraphale smiled to himself a little. It felt good to take care of Crowley.
He sat there and kept watch, feeling the slight warmth coming off of Crowley’s prone form against his leg. Things felt somewhat more manageable somehow, knowing he was there.
Eventually, despite his best intentions, his own tiredness must have got the better of him, and he leaned his head back against the wall of his dwelling and fell asleep.
–
Crowley awoke in the morning with a terrifically awful taste in his mouth and a crick in his neck. His head was pillowed on something high and soft, which explained the crick. He blinked his eyes open and was met with an eyeful of thickly woven wool that he didn’t recognize. He looked up and saw a pale, soft throat, chin stretched up to face the ceiling. A halo of white blond hair was just visible behind the foreshortened throat and chin.
Aziraphale.
Moving very slowly both in deference to his hangover and the angel who he hoped was sound asleep, Crowley extracted himself from the angel’s lap and stood up, throwing off the blanket he’d been covered with. Through it all, the angel did not stir. He was sound asleep.
A night of drinking with the enemy. After which Crowley had all but climbed into the bastard’s lap to sleep. How wonderful.
The crick in his neck remained, but the side of his head, neck, and shoulder which had been pressed into Aziraphale’s body suddenly felt devastatingly cold. He was tempted to crawl up in that soft warmth again.
But that was stupid, just as stupid as coming here in the first place. Heaven was full of people who would hang you out to dry as soon as they’d look at you. As they’d demonstrated yesterday. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to be alone last night and he hadn’t wanted to be with humans and Aziraphale had been the only person he could think of. But with dawn’s light filtering through the semi-sheer curtain in the window, Crowley remembered what he’d been too exhausted and unhappy to remember last night.
The weak light played over Aziraphale’s face and he looked very beautiful for one heart-clenching second. Then Crowley left, shutting the door behind him to avoid waking the still-sleeping angel. He was done with Jerusalem.
1020
From across the other side of the Great Hall, there came a self-indulgent, dramatic, demanding sigh. It was the third such sigh in the last quarter of an hour. The other servants were obviously beginning to notice.
Crowley wrapped himself tighter in the thick wool cloak which was his only covering and stared up at the smokey ceiling of the hall. He wouldn’t go over to him and give him the satisfaction. If Aziraphale had listened to Crowley five hundred years ago, maybe Aziraphale wouldn’t even be in this draughty old hall. They could have compared notes and maybe Crowley could have taken this one, and Aziraphale could be cosy at home.
He had known, when Aziraphale had shown up posing as a servant “looking for work” the same week Crowley had a big assignment, that something like this would happen. Most of the household slept in the hall itself, paired off or in piles of three or more people, or even whole families all cuddled up together for warmth. Aziraphale had been insufferable that afternoon and Crowley had not been up for it. When it came time for bed, Crowley had waited until Aziraphale laid himself down, and headed to find a bit of floor on the opposite side of the hall. But it had been stupid of him to do so, because Aziraphale had generally been making a nuisance of himself since.
There came another sigh, this one punctuated by a truly pathetic (and very loud) sniffle.
“What’s with the new guy?” asked the fellow to Crowley’s left. “Has he never slept in a hall before, for heaven's sake?”
“Oh I’m sure he has, and almost certainly for Heaven’s sake,” Crowley said bitterly.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it. See you tomorrow.”
Crowley got up, grabbed his boots, and walked across the hall, picking his way through some people who were sleeping, some people who were trying to sleep if certain angels would stop complaining audibly, and some people who were definitively Not Sleeping. Crowley wished them the best, and noted that they at least had the good grace to keep the noise down in a communal sleeping situation.
He finally made it to Aziraphale (the huffing and puffing had desisted as soon as Crowley stood up, honestly) and prodded at him with a stocking foot. “Budge over, will you.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, sounding like the cat who had got the cream. “It is so good of you to join me. I’ve been feeling frightfully cold.”
“I’ll show you cold,” Crowley muttered, arranging some rushes underfoot to provide maximum cushion before he laid down next to Aziraphale.
“I don’t know why you went and slept over there, when I know you saw where I had laid down,” Aziraphale whispered as he curled up close to where Crowley had laid down. It was funny, Crowley thought, how he was actually able to whisper quietly, after the racket he’d been keeping up. “It’s good fun to sleep with a – well. With a colleague. As it were. It’s a shame we’re both here, but still, a bit of company’s no bad thing, is it?”
A thought occurred to Crowley. He could use this.
“You know,” Crowley said, curling over so he and Aziraphale were turned in to each other like two ‘Cs,’ “We both didn’t need to be here.”
Aziraphale wiggled a little, fussing with the long cloak around his shoulders. “Well, since we are both here, all I was saying is it is nice to see you.”
Crowley took a moment to feel a little flattered. He and Aziraphale had been seeing more and more of each other in recent centuries (although never before in quarters quite so close), and he was fond of the angel. Sometimes he wasn’t sure the feeling was mutual. So, annoying as it might have been, the attention was perhaps a little gratifying as well.
“Sure it is,” he agreed, sincerely enough. Still: as nice as it was to run into the angel, he’d rather be at home. And so would, he knew, Aziraphale. “All I’m saying is, you’ve heard my proposition. About an Arrangement we could come to. Would stop you needing to sleep in so many draughty old halls.”
“Or I’d need to sleep in more of them by myself,” Aziraphale countered. Crowley didn’t want to admit to himself that Aziraphale made a good point. “How much longer are you on assignment here, anyway?”
Crowley knew when to back off. Anyway, Aziraphale had just arrived. There was time yet. “I’m here at least through the end of the week, maybe longer than that. And yourself?”
“The meeting that’s meant to be on Friday? Yes, I’m here for the same, of course.” Aziraphale looked a little irritated. He was starting to show that he saw the merits of Crowley’s campaign of the last five-hundred-plus years to develop a mutually beneficial arrangement. It wouldn’t be long before he folded.
“Naturally,” Crowley said lightly, always careful not to oversell. Despite himself, he shivered a little. It was really cold in the draughty old hall.
“I told you it was cold,” Aziraphale said. “Why don’t we cuddle up, then? Share warmth. It’s beastly uncomfortable sleeping on rushes like this.”
Cuddling seemed somewhat dangerous, somehow. Not out of the realm of reason, considering how blasted cold it was, but there was a riskiness there, and not, Crowley thought, the fun kind.
The not-fun kind of riskiness tended to make Crowley tetchy. “I suppose the fine gentleman keeps his own bed, then,” Crowley said. “When he’s not on assignment as a lowly servant.” He neglected to mention his own nicely stuffed ticking back in the lodgings he kept in London.
“As if you don’t,” Aziraphale said sourly. Crowley thought about protesting, but Aziraphale was right after all. “Now are you willing to huddle up with me and be reasonable, or are you going to force me to make friends with my new coworkers very quickly and do away with the point of my calling you over here in the first place?”
He had a point. It was only practical.
Crowley scooted closer and there was an awkward negotiation of the way their corporations fit together. He supposed he had better hold Aziraphale, since Aziraphale had been the one to demand his attention in the first place. But when he held out his arms, Aziraphale said, “What are you doing, my dear? You’re ever so much slimmer than me. Let’s be pragmatic about this. Turn around and I’ll warm you up. You’ll keep me warm that way.”
Pragmatic it might have been, but the feeling of warm Aziraphale all up and down Crowley’s back nearly sent him right into a tizzy of the most embarrassing sort. He supposed it shouldn’t have been that big a deal. He’d slept very close to people before, in similar situations of deep and biting cold. Sometimes they’d even cuddled a bit – the better to fit closer together and to share warmth. Aziraphale’s corporation was exactly the ideal form for Crowley to be all enveloped by. His stomach pressed all against Crowley’s back, his soft thighs snugged up against Crowley’s skinny ones, and a lovely warm arm closed over Crowley’s chest.
“So much warmer,” Aziraphale said. “And better with you than any old human, you know.” His breath hissed out hot and insistent against Crowley’s ear. Crowley tried not to shiver again and mostly succeeded. Aziraphale could be so obtusely tender.
“Not too bad,” Crowley agreed. Completely unbidden, a memory of the time he woke up in Jerusalem nearly a thousand years ago sprang to mind. The sensation of warmth under his head and shoulder, gone as soon as he’d stood up and jerked away. That warmth was back.
“Sweet dreams, dear,” Aziraphale said.
“And to you, angel,” Crowley said. He tried to throw out the title in a cutting, formal way, like he was used to doing. But it sounded rather softer than usual.
Aziraphale dropped off to sleep behind him quickly, but Crowley laid awake for hours, mentally tracing and noting all the ways their bodies touched.
–
Aziraphale woke up with all the muscles in his corporation stiff and tender. He missed the soft mattress he had back in London. He had slept on the floor before, and had managed it plenty in centuries past, but he’d gotten out of the habit, as it was rather miserable.
Despite the ache echoing through his body – sleeping on rushes with a cloak for warmth, how abysmal – Aziraphale had to pause and register his situation. In the night, he had shifted to lay on his back, and his companion must have clung to him as he did so.
Crowley’s head was pillowed on his chest. Aziraphale had an arm around him, almost possessively. Aziraphale’s hand flexed, unbidden, pulling Crowley closer.
He hadn’t meant to do that. It was one thing to curl up together out of necessity, it was another to pull Crowley close in the morning. He should desist at once.
Instead, he just lay there for a minute. Crowley’s sweet face was all relaxed in sleep. The curve of Crowley’s waist felt good to hold in his band.
He made himself stop. He managed to gently encourage Crowley to roll away from him. The poor boy must have been tired, for he stayed asleep, and made a mournful little snuffling noise as he curled back up by himself. Aziraphale stood up regretfully. His bones somehow ached more without Crowley sprawled on his chest to distract him, and he shivered a little.
The day had begun. He pulled his shoes on, cleaned his clothes with a discrete miracle, and went to find some breakfast.
1534
“Aziraphale!”
Aziraphale stopped in the draughty castle hallway and looked around. He couldn’t see where the voice could possibly have come from.
“I’m behind the tapestry!” whispered the voice again. Aziraphale looked at one tapestry-covered wall, then the other. Neither of them seemed to hide a person behind them.
A long-fingered hand reached out and grabbed him around the wrist and pulled him into an area behind the tapestry which had previously been to his left.
“Sorry,” Crowley said quickly, for indeed it was the demon whose voice Aziraphale had heard. “Needed to talk to you. And I know you’ve been getting touchy about public appearances.”
“I’ve hardly been touchy,” Aziraphale said, smoothing down his doublet. “Just a bit cautious, is all.”
“Yes, yes,” Crowley agreed. “Whatever you say. Anyway. Good to see you. How’s things.”
“Well, they’ve been looking up, ever since Henry established the True Church,” Aziraphale said. “Just on a bit of a tricky stop nowadays to make sure he doesn’t take it too far.”
Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Right.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re up to the opposite?” Aziraphale challenged. “Why didn’t you tell me, anyway? Surely we’re not both needed. What with, our you-know-what, and all.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me you’d be here either,” Crowley pointed out. Aziraphale magnanimously ignored the pissy tone. “Anyway, I’m just here to keep my eyes on a few cardinals. And between you and me, I’m a little worried for Her Majesty, these days.”
Aziraphale felt a little uncomfortable, hearing that. He didn’t particularly feel reassured by the relations between Henry and Anne that he had seen, either.
“Well, here we both are,” Aziraphale said, determined to move the conversation forward. “Very good. I suppose we’ll just have to…pretend not to see each other. Or something.”
“We could pretend not to know each other,” Crowley said. “Easy.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, “That’s really not too bad, as ideas go. Certainly we can, my dear. Perhaps we can arrange a way to make each other’s acquaintance – we could make a jolly good time of it. I’ve only just arrived today.”
“Me too,” Crowley said. “I think we can make this work. But listen, I need a favour.”
“I suppose I owe you,” Aziraphale said gamely. “For the business at the monastery.”
“You do, don’t you?” Crowley said, looking innocent, which was rarely a good sign. “Anyway, this might make the ‘we’ve just met’ lark a little funny, but I really need you to be my bedfellow tonight. While we’re here, really.”
Aziraphale flushed, and he hoped it was dark enough in the concealed alcove that Crowley wouldn’t be able to tell. He had expected to be roomed with some visiting noble or other. He hadn’t given it much thought. There weren’t ever so many beds to go around, one did expect to share. He just hadn’t dreamed of sharing with Crowley.
He still thought sometimes of their week as servants back before sweet William had come across the sea. He’d slept with Crowley in his arms for five nights straight. The relative anonymity of their disguises as servants had meant it was as natural as anything. He was sure neither of them had meant anything by it, probably. And anyhow, it was a time before Gabriel had really started cracking down with the micro-managing. Crowley was a pleasant fellow to have in one’s bed. Or, he supposed a bed with Crowley in it would be nice. That week they’d only had the rushes on the floor.
“It’s just I happened to fall in with some second son or other on the way here and we were bedfellows in an inn last night and I think he’s thinking we’ll bunk up here too, and he was perfectly respectful last night but he snores and I can just feel that he’s going to be a handsy one. And if you’re here, well. When we were further south all those years ago it worked out alright. So why not now, again?”
Crowley had recalled the very same week! Aziraphale hadn’t imagined it had made an impact on the demon. Crowley was a capable man, he could easily miracle the other man each night to keep him subdued, or twist reality as necessary to get a different bed sharing arrangement. But then, Aziraphale didn’t particularly relish the thought of Crowley bunking up with someone else. He didn’t begrudge the dear fellow custom or the ability to stay warm, but if the opportunity presented itself –
“Would you mind giving me an answer, please, it’s embarrassing enough that I had to ask,” Crowley said, all in a rush. “You know I can handle it if you won’t, I can make do well enough, you can get me back for the monk’s habit some other time.”
“Oh!” Aziraphale said. He hadn’t realised he’d gone off in his own little world. “Ah, that is. If we can make it so that it looks like a bit of happenstance. I think we can just about handle it.”
“Fantastic,” said Crowley. “I’ll make a suggestion to the groom in charge of the guest apartments. I won’t use any miracles or anything. I’ll make it sound like we got to talking in the stables or something and took a liking to each other. There won’t be any trace. Don’t worry.”
“I never –” Aziraphale started, but Crowley had already swept out from behind the arras and Aziraphale could hear his footsteps rapidly heading away down the hall.
Another night – nights? – with Crowley. It was perfectly ordinary, of course. Plenty of people shared a bed. As had he and Crowley, before. Nothing untoward. He gave himself a little shake and exited the alcove as well.
–
“Good even, Sir Aziraphale,” one of the higher-class servants said to Aziraphale later, when he passed him in the hallway. “I’ve had your things packed into the guest apartments off the west gallery. Per Sir Crowley’s request.” Aziraphale could have sworn the man threw him a wink as he said that. “How pleasant you made each other’s acquaintance. I trust you will find your lodgings most comfortable.”
“Thank you, sir,” Aziraphale said. The man cast a look down to Aziraphale’s feet and back up to his head, and nodded, as if Aziraphale met with his approval.
The man hurried off. Aziraphale wondered what Crowley had told him to organise the room swap. He hoped it was all quite above board.
–
It was very late when Aziraphale and Crowley finally retired to their chamber. A masque that evening had provided plenty of delicious opportunities: for food, for wiling and thwarting respectively, for companionship.
They undressed quickly in deference to the cold which filled the room. There was one funny moment, at which Crowley had stopped undressing to simply stare at Aziraphale, who had shrugged out of his doublet and was standing in his shirt and stockings.
“Can I help you, my dear?” he asked. Crowley’s eyes, which had snagged on an area around the opening of his shirt, snapped up to meet Aziraphale’s.
“Nope,” Crowley said, and resumed undressing at double speed.
Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder if Crowley had been admiring his form. He knew it was a good one. A full, soft body which communicated satiety and means. Gentle sloping lines. He was rather partial to it, himself. Could it be that Crowley was too?
Such thoughts were silly, of course, and he turned them aside.
Both down to their shirts and stockings, they dove past the curtains into the four-poster which took up the bulk of the little guest apartment. A hot brick had previously been placed under the coverlet and the little enclosed space was quite toasty as a result.
Aziraphale thought of holding Crowley close that week in the eleventh century. The increase in luxury was considerable: from posing as servants, huddled in meagre cloaks on the rushes covering the floor, to sharing a fluffy bed kitted out with hangings on all sides as nobles. And yet, there was no reason to hold Crowley close in this warm little space. They had plentiful blankets, and their body heat was already filling the four walls made by the curtains around the bed.
They both laid quite still next to one another in the dark. Aziraphale’s arms ached to take Crowley in them. What a foolish notion.
“Angel?” Crowley’s voice broke the silence which had settled thick over top of them. “Thank you. For the favour.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. In a private, dark room, full of food and wine, lying with Crowley by his side, it was hard to feel as though the “favour” had been any such thing. “You’re most welcome, I’m sure, my dear.”
More silence. Aziraphale did not fall asleep. From the purposeful silence emanating from Crowley’s side of the bed, Crowley did not either.
Aziraphale wondered if he should check on Crowley. Surely Crowley would let Aziraphale know if there was anything Aziraphale needed to know.
Crowley did not say anything.
The silence was excruciating.
Finally, once again, Crowley spoke. “All right?”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said again. “Yes.”
Crowley said “Mm,” to that. He sounded disappointed.
Aziraphale did not wish to disappoint him.
“I’m perhaps,” Aziraphale started. “A bit.” He stopped again.
“...a bit?” Crowley prompted, after quite a formidable pause.
“Chilly,” Aziraphale landed on. “A bit chilly. If I’m being honest.”
Crowley propped himself up on one elbow. Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s eyes on his face as Crowley stared down at him. “You’re chilly.”
“Mm-hmm,” Aziraphale said, pressing his lips together and avoiding even the suggestion of eye contact with Crowley. He wished he would have thought of something cleverer.
Crowley flopped back down.
“Could be pragmatic again,” he suggested. His voice sounded very thin. “Seemed to help last time we were in a spot like this.” He turned to face away from Aziraphale and scooted closer to the middle of the bed.
The air trembled for a moment. And then Aziraphale reached out to Crowley.
It felt so terribly transgressive, this time, to reach out and take Crowley in his arms. Shivering on the floor of an airy, freezing great hall, one did what one had to do. And then sharing a bed was intimate, certainly, but not out of the realm of common acquaintanceship. But this: holding on to Crowley in this space which was already slightly over-warm. It felt close to an admission of something Aziraphale wasn’t sure he could articulate.
Just like the last time they slept together, Crowley’s body fit right against Aziraphale’s something like puzzle pieces. Where Aziraphale curved out, Crowley bowed in. Aziraphale tucked an arm over Crowley’s chest and Crowley snuggled in close.
“Feel better?” he asked, and for a moment Aziraphale couldn’t begin to think of what he meant.
“Yes,” he blurted out once he had realised it. “Much warmer, my dear. Such a thoughtful suggestion.”
“I was a little cold, too,” Crowley said.
Well. That explained it, then. Nothing to read into.
Regardless, Aziraphale felt soothed, holding Crowley in the quiet night.
After some time, Crowley made a noise like “mmprh,” moved slightly away from Aziraphale, and flopped down flat on his tummy. Aziraphale couldn’t help but smile at the sleepy ruckus. He laid down on his own stomach next to Crowley, settling down on the pillow and gazing over at his bedmate. Crowley made a noise of protest, though, and as if in his sleep reached out and scrabbled at Aziraphale’s closest hand. It seemed as though Crowley was requesting Aziraphale’s hand back over him, as it had been when they were on their sides.
And who was Aziraphale to deny him, really?
Crowley fell asleep with Aziraphale’s hand heavy on the small of his back, and Aziraphale followed not long after.
–
Crowley awoke in the middle of the night to a great loud sawing noise.
“Whaa?” he said, pushing himself upright.
It was so dark in the little bed he could hardly see anything, even with his eyes adjusted to the dark. But the loud grating noise came again, and he could just about make out Aziraphale, lying on his back next to Crowley, snoring away.
He flopped back down. Of course Aziraphale snored. Why would he think Aziraphale wouldn’t snore? He hadn’t that week back in the eleventh century, but perhaps that was a fluke, and he just snored sometimes. After all Crowley had done to avoid a bedmate who snored, look where it got him.
He laid on his side facing Aziraphale. His eyes traced the beautiful line of Aziraphale’s profile. Every so often, the picturesque, tender lines would be marred by another rumbly snorfle of breath through Aziraphale’s open mouth.
Crowley closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.
Acghghhghgh. Acghghhg. Achgghhghghghghghghhg.
Crowley opened his eyes.
“‘Ziraphale,” he said. “Aziraphale.” He prodded at Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Hey. Angel.”
“Hmm?” Aziraphale said blearily. He seemed hardly awake.
“What if you rolled over,” Crowley proposed sensibly.
It seemed that a sleepy Aziraphale was a suggestible one. Aziraphale did so immediately, and wrapped Crowley in his arms.
He had not been expecting that.
He thought perhaps they had better do something about this cuddling lark. It was nice, when it happened. But it wasn’t necessary here in bed where it was warm enough without the closeness of extra body heat.
But Aziraphale had asked for it. Crowley would never tell him no, not if he could help it.
It felt so good, too. Perhaps he might allow it. Just this once.
He turned around in Aziraphale’s arms until they were back to chest again. The snoring had abated. That was good.
He cuddled up closer to Aziraphale, and dropped back to sleep.
1742
Crowley was just finishing setting his things down in the room he’d been given at the inn, when there was a knock on the door.
“Hello, Mr. Crowley,” she said as he opened the door for her. “I know you requested a private room, but I’m sorry to say due to some new arrivals that is no longer possible.”
Crowley groaned through his teeth. He knew bed-sharing while travelling was a possibility, but it had been a long trip and he hadn’t been in the mood to put up with who knows who. He had just started to pull a bit of power up to rearrange things in a more favourable manner, when he caught sight of the head of white blond hair coming up the hallway behind the landlady. It couldn’t be –
“Mr. Fell will room with you this evening.” Behind the landlady’s shoulder, Aziraphale looked alarmed. He raised his eyebrows, lowered them into a scowl, shook his head, and got into a sort of charade of attempted communication. When the landlady sensed movement behind her and turned around, Aziraphale gave her a pleasant smile and a wave.
“Mr. Fell, this is Mr. Crowley who you’ll be rooming with. Mr. Crowley, Mr. Fell.”
“How good to meet you,” Crowley said, pretty sure that he had interpreted Aziraphale’s wild gesturing correctly.
“Likewise, I’m sure.” Aziraphale looked relieved.
“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The landlady went off down the hall, and Aziraphale rushed Crowley back inside his room and shut the door behind him.
“Dreadfully sorry, old thing,” Aziraphale said. “Awful spot of bother. I had no intention of landing here, you see, but I got waylaid as I set out and didn’t make it as far as I had hoped. Hello. Why are you here?”
Crowley had barely recovered from the Aziraphalean storm which had blown up unexpectedly and overswept him. “Hello yourself. I’m here because I’m nearly home but couldn’t make it the rest of the way before nightfall.”
“Well, we just about fooled the landlady,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. Crowley made no comment. “So no qualms there. It might be a bit of all right, do you think, to have another night together? It’s been some time since we have. We can catch up with no fear of prying eyes.”
“Right,” Crowley said. “Right.” He looked from Aziraphale to the bed, and back to Aziraphale. His stomach seemed to have vacated his body, if the feeling around his belly button was anything to go by. “Bedfellows again, then.”
Aziraphale’s face fell a little. “You don’t mind, do you?” Aziraphale said, wringing his hand. “I could try to swap with someone. Like a reverse of that time at Henry’s court. Hah hah.”
“Nooo no no,” Crowley said quickly. He didn’t want Aziraphale to feel badly. He didn’t want Aziraphale to rescind this unexpected offer of closeness. “It’ll be great. Don’t worry. Nice night for it.”
Nice night for it. Right. Smooth.
Aziraphale, it turned out, was feeling peckish, but said he didn’t want to go down and join the company if it could be helped. Crowley knew an invitation when he heard one, so he snapped up a few bowls of stew from what was on offer downstairs and they sat down to dinner on their own.
They had a quiet night in, catching up with each other. Aziraphale told Crowley that he’d been starting to think of getting rather serious about perhaps investing in a bookshop. Big moves for the angel. Crowley was feeling good about some correspondence work he’d picked up over in the colonies.
After their meal, Aziraphale banished the dishes back to the kitchen before yawning theatrically. “I’d say it’s just about bedtime, wouldn’t you, dear boy?” he asked. It was barely eight o’ clock.
But Crowley said wouldn’t you know he was feeling tired too, before he knew it they were once again tucked away in the dark cloth walls of a four-poster.
“Hello,” he whispered up at the canopy, lying flat on his back. He felt sort of like an idiot. They’d both stayed at court for nearly a month two hundred years ago, and had bunked together the whole time. They had got into an easy rhythm by the end of it. They hadn’t always tucked up close together, but they knew how to share the space. After more than two hundred years’ distance, Crowley was less sure.
“Hello,” Aziraphale whispered back.
Crowley wondered why Aziraphale had been in such a rush to get to bed. Neither of them had anything to say. Neither of them were touching the other.
For one wild moment, Crowley wondered if Aziraphale had thought of something like sex. It hadn’t come up when they’d shared a bed (or a bit of floor) before. And they’d been pressed close enough on more than one occasion that Crowley was pretty sure that something would have (if you’d excuse the vulgarity) quite literally come up.
Crowley had not partaken in such activities, himself. He thought he might one day. If he ever got around to it. It didn’t seem like much of a priority, though. Was it something Aziraphale felt was a priority? Maybe he did. Maybe tonight was the night. They had been friends for so long, helped each other out of binds. Why not try something new?
“Have you ever had sex?” Crowley asked, before he could think better of it.
Aziraphale physically pulled to the edge of the bed and Crowley winced. Why had he said that?? This was surely a breach of etiquette. Asking another person if they’d had sex while they were lying barely a foot away. Oh no. He’d read the room very, very wrongly.
“No,” Aziraphale said, after an excruciating pause.
“No me neither,” Crowley said, trying desperately to find a way forward. “I mean, I don’t know if I ever would, either, really.”
Aziraphale’s form in the dark relaxed a little. “Oh.” A quiet moment. “Never?”
Crowley didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t know. Never say never.”
“Quite so,” said Aziraphale.
He did not say anything else.
Crowley felt mortified. Why had he brought it up in the first place!?
It was warm and cosy within the hangings of the bed, but Crowley wished for the easy closeness they had had when they had shared a bed in the past. But Aziraphale was still clear on the opposite side of the bed, and Crowley had all but come on to him like some kind of brute. He couldn’t exactly take his bottom and press it up against Aziraphale in the kind of cuddle he’d found so pleasant before. Aziraphale might think he had Ideas. And it wasn’t that he definitely had Ideas, but it also wasn’t that he had absolutely no Ideas ever, so it was especially awkward.
After several long moments, despite the way his heart pinched, he could feel his eyes drooping. It had been a long day of travelling. “Good night, angel,” Crowley whispered.
“Good night, my dear.”
Before he dropped off entirely, he reached out, just a little, sending his hand out to the empty space in between them. He was tired from his journey and embarrassed by Aziraphale’s reaction to his earlier question and possibly not thinking straight. As his hand reached the middle of the space between them, he began to think better of it. He couldn’t reach out to Aziraphale after putting him on the spot like that.
But before he could pull his hand back, he found Aziraphale’s hand, stretched out as if he had been reaching for Crowley too. Their pinky fingers just barely touched, then wrapped around each other.
Soothed by the slight contact, Crowley fell asleep.
–
The next morning, Aziraphale woke feeling suffused with dread. Crowley was still on the opposite side of the bed from him and it felt as if they were leagues apart.
He sat up and stared at Crowley for a long moment. His cheekbones were so sharp, and his skin looked so soft.
He got up and dressed quickly, troubled the cook for a packed breakfast of bread, fruit, and cheese, and was off to his assignment barely moments after dawn. It was dreadful cowardice, is what it was, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Aziraphale didn’t know what had prompted him to turn in so early last night. Well. Unless, perhaps, he did. But then, when Crowley had asked about…coitus, Aziraphale had been shocked, although if he forced himself to be quite honest, it had been on his mind too.
He felt guilty for rejecting Crowley so roundly, and yet faced with the reality of another body – of Crowley’s body – suddenly in his space, so close to him, Aziraphale had not been able to respond in any other way.
He had laid awake for some time, considering Crowley’s question. Considering possibly doing something about Crowley’s question. He’d got a little hot and bothered, even. He never had had sex, and it wasn’t on the top of his list of things to experience, but. He wasn’t sure. One day, possibly. With a partner who felt…right, somehow. Probably a romantic idea. Oh well.
It was a little thrilling, though, to think that Crowley had brought up the idea. To think that Crowley seemed similarly interested and disinterested. He probably would have felt disappointed, if Crowley was some sort of…sex fiend. Or if Crowley was entirely opposed to the idea. It felt reassuring, somehow, to suppose they held the same level of interest in carnal activities.
But why should it be reassuring? He and Crowley would never. Could never.
And anyhow, he thought to himself, you’re the one who rode off at dawn after the merest suggestion.
Aziraphale tore at the loaf of bread the cook had packed for him with his teeth. He had work and travel to focus on. Not…any of that.
1854
“Crowley, what the devil are you doing here?” Aziraphale hissed, shutting the door to the library behind them. Crowley had arrived at the country house Aziraphale was staying at just before dinner, which had quickly become an exceedingly strained affair and rather put off Aziraphale’s appetite.
“I was coming to make sure you were safe,” Crowley said, slumping into an armchair and taking his glasses off. He looked pinched and tired, as if he’d had a dreadful shock.
“Why wouldn’t I be safe?” Aziraphale asked.
“Broad Street, Aziraphale?” Crowley said, as if Aziraphale was being obtuse on purpose. “I heard about the fuss in Soho and came to find you. Imagine my shock to find the bookshop closed with no sign or note or anything!”
Aziraphale’s heart twisted uncomfortably. He did not relish the reminder of the outbreak in London he had travelled to escape. Some of his wealthier neighbours had invited him to come with them to their family’s country home after it had become clear just how deadly the cholera outbreak was becoming, and he had hastily accepted.
“People were dying, Crowley,” he said. “I had to – people were either staying, and dying, or they were leaving.”
“Were you worried about getting sick? We don’t do things like that. You would have been fine. Didn’t you want to stay and help? Don’t you have some noble principality thoughts about protecting your neighbours or something? Why would you leave in the middle of a crisis? Without telling me?”
Aziraphale did not appreciate the flurry of questions. He breathed in and out through his nose, slowly. Perhaps his nostrils flared a little as he did so. He was sure he couldn’t say.
“I’m not beholden to you, you know,” he said.
Crowley looked terribly hurt for a moment. “The arrangement,” he said, very softly.
Aziraphale felt another twinge of guilt. He stuffed it down. “The arrangement covers tasks which we might be able to consolidate,” he reminded Crowley. “Not our every move. I’m sure there is plenty you don’t tell me.”
“That’s not the point,” Crowley said.
“Then what is the point?”
Crowley picked at a loose thread on the arm of the chair. “Was worried. Is all.”
“What?”
“Sickness everywhere. No word from you. Didn’t know what your side had got up to. Or my side. It’s been a while since I’ve had a communiqué.”
Aziraphale sat down in the chair across from Crowley’s rather heavily. It was touching to know that Crowley had worried for him. Often, Aziraphale felt like the only one of the two of them with any sense of self preservation.
“I wasn’t allowed to help,” he said softly. “There’s something going on about ‘germs theory’ or something. So I was told to stand down. In the meantime.” He sat down heavily in his own armchair across from Crowley. “And perhaps I should have stayed. I could have offered some comfort to the dying. It would have been good of me to do so.” He paused again. It was difficult to admit to it all. “But it was. It was dreadful.”
Crowley just stared at him for a moment with the tenderest look on his face. “I’m sorry, angel.”
Aziraphale cleared his throat and blinked his eyes a few times, hard. “Yes, well. Thank you.”
“Boy,” Crowley said, hesitantly, after a few fraught moments. “But if this place isn’t nicer than any other place we’ve ended up at together, eh? I should have conned my way into the Braybury family’s good graces ages ago.”
Aziraphale chuckled at Crowley’ deliberate crassness. “One does feel rather pampered here, doesn’t one?”
The conversation became easier after that, and they meandered their way into passing a pleasant evening together. An obliging decanter of brandy appeared on a little side table. Aziraphale had got used to having Crowley around in and amongst the books he had moved into his little London shop, and the setting of the country home’s library made a most suitable facsimile.
The trouble with most good nights that they had wandered their way into was, they eventually came to an end.
“In what room are you staying?” Aziraphale asked eventually, when Crowley looked like he might fall asleep sitting up. “Let me walk you there.” It had been some time, he reflected, since it was common to expect a shared bed. This country home was prepared to receive dozens of visitors, each with their own chambers. Terrifically modern, and terrifically upper class.
“What?” Crowley looked confused for a brief moment. “Oh. Uhm. Yeah. Room. In the north wing, I think. It’s got a painting of a lily next to the door.”
Aziraphale’s room was also in the north wing, next to a painting of a lily. So that was convenient.
“It’s so very extravagant, all this separate bedroom business, isn’t it,” said Aziraphale as they walked together.
“Oh, yes,” said Crowley. His dark glasses were back on his face, lest they run into any servants on their walk. Aziraphale couldn’t read his face or his tone.
“Not like it used to be, that’s for certain,” said Aziraphale.
“Right,” Crowley said.
Finally, they reached their rooms, which were right next door to one another. They stopped in the hallway and stared.
“It’s more hygienic, you know,” Aziraphale said. “Sleeping separately. And I’ve got it on good authority that hygiene will be terribly important, going forward. So it’s for the best.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Crowley agreed.
So that was just as well. If Crowley had been disappointed by the separate beds, that might have meant something. But everything was just as it should have been.
“Well. It was good of you to check up on me,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Yes,” Crowley said. He had been so quiet recently. Aziraphale hoped he was quite well. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
With one last look and a nod shared between them, they entered their rooms. Aziraphale undressed. While he did so, he did not think of Crowley undressing in the room next door. He didn’t think of Crowley in just his shirt, as he’d had the privilege to see him before, his fine neck and collarbones peeking through the white linen. Or would he be wearing cotton by now? Aziraphale wasn’t sure.
When Aziraphale got in bed and under the coverlets, he felt cold. But he did not think of taking Crowley in his arms again, or sharing a space like that, in any way. He didn’t think about any of that so very strongly that there wasn’t any room to think of anything else.
He fell asleep on his own, as he was used to doing in the flat above the bookshop, and he didn’t begrudge his host family for their extravagant quantity of rooms and beds, not a bit.
–
When Crowley woke up, he was cold.
There was no reason for him to be cold, as there were plenty of blankets on the bed and it was barely the end of August, but he still felt an unreasonable chill in his bones.
Just yesterday, his day had taken a dramatic turn. He had been on an assignment in Bristol, opened the morning paper, and read the news of the cholera outbreak in Soho. One hastily (messily) completed temptation later, he’d snapped himself over to Soho, and had been horrified to find the bookshop boarded up with no indication as to the location of its proprietor. He had gone barrelling off to look for Aziraphale, frantically sending out metaphysical tendrils through the ether just to find the angel.
When he finally found Aziraphale up north, it had been easy work to charm his way into the sizable party which had taken shape at the estate to escape the vile conditions in London.
He’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, that it was unlikely he’d also charm his way into Aziraphale’s bed. Entirely innocently, of course, he wasn’t about to repeat his mistake from the inn over a century ago. But once he had found Aziraphale, he had naturally begun to imagine the cosy intimacy which might follow in the night. It had been a bit of a blow to realise they would sleep apart.
He woke up in his own bed every day, of course. He had his own rooms. He knew better. But for some reason, waking up all by his lonesome this morning, he felt oddly bereft.
There was nothing for it, so he got up and dressed. He joined the breakfast table downstairs. Aziraphale was there, and he looked radiant.
Two Years After The End of the World
It had been a long time coming, but when the hired moving van pulled up to the little cottage by the coast, Crowley let out a satisfied sigh. The Bentley was parked already in the garage that had most graciously been found on the property, despite not having previously been present. Crowley had refused to use her to move everything down from London. The pocket in spacetime needed to fit all their boxes in the backseat would have played entirely too much havoc with her frame, he felt, and he wasn’t taking chances, not after All That Business some years since. So they’d hired a van which was barely bigger than the Bentley and fit in as many plants and books and clothes and furniture as they wanted into the back of it. The van could probably take that level of wobbliness. And if it couldn’t, Crowley was significantly less concerned.
They had originally neither of them had any intention of moving in and unpacking the human way, because it sounded like such a bore. But it was still easier to miracle things if you could see the place they were going to, so hauling them down semi-manually it was.
“Here we are, angel,” Crowley said, vibrating with nerves. It had felt unimaginable when Aziraphale suggested a place of their own, not too long after the world hadn’t ended. That had been a couple years ago as they had both considered the idea and bandied it about. After all that trouble, they had seen much more of each other than ever before, rarely going so much as a day without a meal or a walk or a conversation shared. They each kept their own space, but finally, they were friends. Proper friends, who didn’t need to worry about being seen in public, or being seen in public too often, or seeming to have prior acquaintanceship of one another if they were seen together in public.
It had all been sort of exhausting, the last two millennia with Aziraphale, not least of all because Aziraphale tended to vacillate wildly between letting his guard down and shoving Crowley away out of nerves. Crowley had tried not to take it personally. He hadn’t always succeeded.
No, the last several years had been much better.
And, yes, sometimes Crowley thought about, oh, holding Aziraphale’s hand. Or Aziraphale’s arm snug around his chest. Sometimes he even thought about hugging Aziraphale. He’d been so bold to think about what it might be like if the angel kissed him no more than half a dozen times or so.
But mostly he enjoyed the company and didn’t dwell on such thoughts. Casual touch, especially between men, had quite fallen out of fashion. Any physical contact was liable to be laden with meaning and Crowley would not go so far as to presume such meaning might be entirely welcome.
“Here we are indeed. Jolly good!” Aziraphale said, beaming at Crowley from the passenger seat. Crowley loved him so much. He said the stupidest things. Oh, he wanted to hold his hand.
As ever, he channelled it into saying something sort of inane, moving the conversation along.
“So…in we go?”
“Indeed,” Aziraphale breathed.
And then, they spent the day moving in, in their own way. They took a wander through the empty rooms, then started snapping.
Aziraphale set up the sitting room first, with the bookshop’s squashy sofa, a couple arm chairs, and soft lamps for reading. Crowley got the kitchen in order, arranging the pots and pans the way he liked them. He’d been getting into cooking recently, much to Aziraphale’s delight. They went around the house like that, snapping a painting into place there, a table there. Aziraphale set up a room to be his library, and Crowley sorted out the conservatory. Each of these last tasks rather swept them up into their own world, and by the time they emerged, bleary eyed and blinking at each other in the sitting room, it was just beginning to go dark outside.
“Right,” Crowley said, “So it’s just the bedroom situation and returning the van.” He lifted his finger to snap his bedroom to rights and return the moving van to the van hire it came from.
At the same exact moment, Aziraphale did the same. Well, Crowley hoped he’d only seen to his bedroom, and not fussed with the van as well. If he had, well, it was probably fine.
(Aziraphale had meant to take care of the van as well as his own bedroom, of course. The van in front of the house vanished discreetly, and via the force of two miracles, two vans showed up in the car park, some fifty-odd miles away. Both vans were rather confused, but not as confused as the young man who worked for the car hire place would be when he took inventory the next morning.)
“Job done!” Aziraphale said. He clapped Crowley on the shoulder awkwardly. Crowley’s shoulder felt warm where Aziraphale had touched it. He did not think about it.
As they were both feeling peckish, they went into town for a bite to eat. They found a delightful little spot which Aziraphale declared “sure to become a regular haunt of ours” to the waiter, who, bless them, listened and nodded along to Aziraphale’s litany of praise with a smile that was only slightly strained. The whole time, it kept occurring to Crowley how odd it was to be out of London together. They were used to being together in London, but rarely went on excursions together. And here they were, new town, new house, new shared life. He wasn’t really sure what to do with it yet.
As he drove them home from dinner, Crowley realised he’d developed an acute case of the willies. Rather than weaving his way through central London, it was round the winding country roads, with very little light to guide the way. He was driving them home, to theirhome. Not to Aziraphale’s bookshop, in for a nightcap, and back to his expensive flat. Home. It felt like he was pulling up to a holiday home, but he knew that once they got inside it would be full of both of their things.
In they went, hanging up their things in the entryway with their elbows knocking. Crowley could hardly breathe.
One of them made the customary noise about a bottle of wine to finish off the evening, and the familiarity somehow calmed Crowley to the point that he was lulled into what would eventually reveal itself to be a false sense of security. Their sitting room at the cottage was different of course, but Aziraphale’s armchair and Crowley’s settee were present. There was Aziraphale’s wine glass in his hand, there was a reliable bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape produced with a twinkle from Aziraphale, there was Aziraphale’s hair glinting in the soft light. Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale. Things were different, and they were the same.
And then it slowly became time for bed, and things took a turn.
Crowley made his way to bed first, and Aziraphale uncharacteristically offered to tidy away the wine glasses and bottle. Of the two of them, Crowley was the one most particular about tidiness. Perhaps Aziraphale was just showing a thoughtfulness of shared living spaces, Crowley mused as he wandered down the hall to his bedroom. He was sleepy enough, and the wine had helped, and he was bravely turning in for his first night in the new house with Aziraphale only just across the hall. He wasn’t even really that hung up on it. He was mostly thinking about the rest of his routine. The first order of business were his cosy black silk pyjamas.
He opened the door to his bedroom and stopped short.
When he had set it up earlier, he’d miracled firm instructions for the large bed to set itself up with the white linen sheets and the charcoal grey duvet.
The large bed was there, but it had three times the usual amount of pillows, which had a distinct squashy quality rather than the firm one Crowley preferred. The colour scheme for the duvet was right on, but the pillows were all covered in Aziraphale’s signature tartan.
A terrible idea struck Crowley just then.
“Ngk,” he said.
He wandered further into the room. In the corner, Crowley’s devastatingly cool original Barcelona chair had a crocheted blanket thrown over the back of it, and an aggressively orange Chesterfield sat next to it, as if ready for easy conversation.
“Okay,” he said. He turned around. A gigantic wardrobe took up more of the wall than should have been possible: half of it was all clean lines and modern design, and the other half was dripping with wood carvings that would have pleased Victoria herself. He opened one of the doors tentatively.
His clothes and Aziraphale’s. In the same wardrobe.
“Angel!” he screeched, before he could think better of it.
Aziraphale called, “Coming, dear!” and as Crowley listened to his feet padding closer and closer, he wished he would have just kept his mouth shut. He could have just miracled his things to a different room. Perhaps there was still time…?
“Crowley? What are you doing in my…bed…room…” Aziraphale trailed off somewhat pathetically as he came through the door and surveyed the mutt-like interior decorating.
“So,” Crowley said, sitting down on their – their!? – bed weakly. “I, ah. I thought you would have preferred the one with the view of the garden. So I meant to take the one on this side.” He’d been pretty pleased with the idea of working in the garden, making it a beautiful paradise, all just so Aziraphale could admire it from his bedroom window.
Aziraphale was gazing around the room as Crowley had, taking in all the ways their belongings had joined up in a mish-mash.
“Oh, Crowley,” he said, half distracted still. “That was good of you, wasn’t it?”
Crowley usually didn’t let allegations of goodness get to him anymore, but being somewhat stressed as he was, it did poke at him a bit. “It’s just a bedroom view, ‘s nothing, really.”
“Of course, I wanted you to have the garden view,” Aziraphale said, wandering over and sitting in his squat little chair. “So I thought I’d take this room for myself.” He smiled wanly over at Crowley. “We both must have set our things up in this room in the very same instant. What a pickle.”
“Gosh,” said Crowley. It really was a pretty thoughtful gesture, the idea that Aziraphale wanted him to have a nicer view.
“We shall have to do something about it, of course,” Aziraphale said. “The wardrobes alone have merged in the most appalling way.” He clucked his tongue at them and there were two wardrobes sitting next to each other, rather than one particularly confused conglomerate.
“Well, you should have the garden view, of course,” Crowley said quickly. A sense memory of the warmth of Aziraphale pressed to him, and the abrupt loss of that warmth, filtered through his mind. He stuffed down such unhelpful thoughts.
“But my dear,” Aziraphale said. “I couldn’t think of depriving you. No, you must have the garden view.”
They stared at each other, squared off. They were both on the stubborn side. Crowley usually won out. Which meant separating their bedrooms and sending Aziraphale’s belongings across the hall. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to win this time, if that was what was on the table.
“We-ell,” he started, stretching the word unreasonably as he tried to sort out where he was going with this. “I did hope you’d want to see the garden. I had some ideas just for you, you know.”
Aziraphale softened a bit. “That’s ever so thoughtful of you. You know I love to admire your work.” Then he frowned. “But Crowley, I must insist!”
“Wasn’t quite through,” Crowley said, and his heart was pounding in his chest. “Because, you know, angel, how nice it is when you get your way.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows wrinkled in slight confusion. “Which is why you ought to have the nice view, yes.”
“Or…” Crowley trailed off. His throat felt so tight he could hardly get the words out. It took a minute to unstick it.
“Or…?” Aziraphale prompted. His eyebrows were raised now, and he had that dear soft “dawning comprehension” look that Crowley liked so much.
“Well, I’m thinking,” Crowley said. “If I want you to have the room overlooking the garden. And if you want me to have it. Suppose.” He swallowed and his throat clicked a little. “Suppose we both did.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed in what looked like utter delight. “Suppose we did. That would certainly solve that problem.” He peered at Crowley. “That is, if it is something you wanted?”
Crowley nodded, with his lips pressed together. He didn’t think he had any more words for the moment. He’d done a lot.
“We’ve shared a room before, of course,” Aziraphale said, really taking to the idea. “It will be just like old times’ sake. But for our time together, now.” He raised a hand to snap his fingers, but hesitated. “Of course, we could share a room without sharing a bed, you know. Two twins, or what have you. Is that still in fashion? I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”
“Can do whatever you want, angel,” Crowley told him. If Aziraphale didn’t want to share his bed anymore, that would be fine. He would get over it. The sense memory of being wrapped in Aziraphale’s arms in the middle of the night felt like it was taking over his brain. He wouldn’t get over it.
“I know it’s desperately important to you to keep up with the times,” Aziraphale said.
“Sleeping together,” blurted Crowley, interrupting whatever barely logical monologue had been on its way. “That’s what people do. Anymore. One bed. Nobody’s in the little beds. Sleeping together. Done thing.”
Before he could worry that he had unfairly pressured Aziraphale, Aziraphale’s face had been covered with one of his bright beaming grins.
“How perfectly lovely,” Aziraphale said. “That’s settled, then. We shall share the room overlooking the garden. May I?”
Crowley could hardly believe this turn of affairs. He nodded, quickly.
“Stand up, then.” When Crowley did as he was asked, Aziraphale stood up himself, snapped, and the bedroom sorted itself out across the hall. “Come along then, dear. Let’s go to bed.”
Crowley thought he could hear a faint ringing noise between his ears. Let’s go to bed. He hadn’t heard those words from Aziraphale in centuries. And here they were, walking to a shared bed.
A shared bed had not meant much, back in those days. Not like now. Now sharing a bed meant something; it wasn’t just what you did for warmth and practicality.
A shared bed in a shared bedroom was something for married people, these days. Or for people who may as well have been married, in any case.
It seemed as though Aziraphale did not know that? As though the implications of Crowley’s half-baked, impromptu plot had completely passed him by?
“Darling,” Aziraphale said. He was suddenly right in front of Crowley. Crowley looked at him, feeling like a startled cat.
Aziraphale reached a hand out and laid it on Crowley’s upper arm. “Please, will you come to bed? Unless doing so would make you unhappy?”
He shook his head. “Not unhappy. Very happy, me. This works out.” He started walking. Aziraphale’s hand dropped to his mid-back and stayed there as he ushered Crowley across the hall. Crowley felt it was a mark of accomplishment that he hadn’t started whistling like a teakettle, his nerves were so high. Aziraphale never touched him this much. They hadn’t touched really in centuries. Nobody touched anymore. Had kept up with the times, they had. But here they were.
The bedroom, set to rights on purpose this time, still featured a mix of their desired aesthetics, but in a more intentional way. Crowley noticed that tartan still seemed predominant. He wasn’t too nervous to note to himself that he might need to do a spot of redecorating, just to get the proportions right. But it was good enough for now.
“Let’s get into our pyjamas and then we’ll settle in for our first night in our home,” Aziraphale said, his voice all but caressing each word. He held Crowley’s eyes for a significant moment before scurrying off to his wardrobe to collect his night clothes.
Crowley’s back felt cold where Aziraphale’s hand had rested when he showed him across the hall.
Aziraphale undressed, and Crowley stared, rudely. Aziraphale was beautiful. His neck was beautiful, and it was a lot more visible now that his bowtie was gone and his collar was unbuttoned. His forearms and oh for someone or other’s sake his elbows were nice to look at, somehow? Those were on display too. Crowley hadn’t got to see his elbows when they’d shared a bed centuries ago. Those undershirts went down to the wrist. Not modern undershirts. Full frontal elbow.
Aziraphale undid his braces and let his trousers fall to the floor and Crowley squawked, there was no other word for it.
“Oh dear – are you quite alright?” Aziraphale asked, turning around to look at Crowley in just his undershirt and boxers and hanging his trousers up carefully.
“Married!” Crowley said, keeping his eyes on Aziraphale’s, away from his boxers, or his stomach, or his chest hair (!!), or his elbows.
“Sorry?” Aziraphale asked, looking troubled.
“You know that, right?” Crowley asked.
Aziraphale looked more troubled. “I know…what, exactly?”
“Married people buy a charming little cottage together,” Crowley said. Well done, Crowley.
“Well,” said Aziraphale, squirming a little. He just kept standing there in his boxers, as if he had no qualms being so underdressed. Maybe he wanted to kill Crowley and keep the bedroom to himself. “Often, yes. But friends buy houses together, sometimes.”
“Married people sleep in the same bed. In the same room. In the charming little cottage they bought together.”
Aziraphale’s face was unreadable. “I suppose…”
“Friends might buy a house together but I don't think they do that. Sleep in the same bed. Usually.”
Aziraphale frowned. “Some friends do, you know. They’ve got a name for it these days and all, queer something. Those were the nice girls who rented the flat next door. They did. Friends and all and commitment and – and in only the one bedroom. They were lovely people, you remember them, surely. So. It’s fine. It’s normal.”
“Sure it’s normal,” Crowley said. “It’s very, very normal. Beautiful. Very beautiful. Absolutely. The only thing is. Are we that? We can be that. We can. I just. Need to know?”
Aziraphale turned away from Crowley, but not before Crowley noticed the blush on his cheeks. He pulled on his pyjama trousers. “I don’t see why not,” he said. Crowley felt his stomach drop. If he was being terribly honest, that was not exactly what he had been hoping for. But it was Aziraphale. He would accept, whole heartedly and very gladly, whatever the angel would give him. It was already so much. He had perhaps been greedy, first with the house, and then pushing for the shared bed. Platonic life partners was already fulfilling. It was enough.
Aziraphale had not finished, though. “Of course we’re that. You’re important to me. I’m important to you.” He harrumphed – harrumphed! – and started fastening the buttons on his pyjama shirt, his once-again clothed elbows flapping about aggressively. “We can sleep in the same bed if we jolly well like to.”
This was characteristic of an Aziraphale Bluster. He never Blustered unless he was covering something up.
“Right,” Crowley said, a foolish hope coming over him and making him speak more freely than he had hitherto. “Right, we can do that, and it can be because we’re important to each other, right, but we can be important to each other because we’re very best friends and that’s all and that’s enough, or it could be different, we can be important to each other because we’re married.”
Aziraphale had not yet turned around. Crowley wished he would. He hoped he hadn’t miscalculated.
“Married people…” Aziraphale trailed off. “Married people often love each other. Romantically.”
“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “They do.”
“Can you…do that?” Aziraphale’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Yeah,” Crowley whispered back. “I can. …what about you?”
“I can,” said Aziraphale, so quietly Crowley could hardly hear. “And…do you?”
“Please could you turn around?” Crowley asked him. He had rather not say it to Aziraphale’s pyjama clad back.
Aziraphale turned around.
“I do,” Crowley said, feeling terrified and extremely brave all at once.
“I do too,” Aziraphale said back.
They stared at one another.
“May I kiss you?” Aziraphale asked.
“Yeah,” said Crowley.
They kissed and it was extremely satisfying. It was also a little awkward, as neither of them had done such a thing before, and it took some negotiating of nose positions, breathing, and so forth. But they sorted it out enough and were overcome by the sensations that they ended up in their bed, pressed up against each other with their clothes discarded all around, until things reached a natural peak, as it were.
Afterwards, the room felt incandescent, lit only by a very faint bedside lamp, bathed in a soft yellow glow. They laid in bed together, naked under the sheets together for the very first time, curled in facing each other. Aziraphale’s face enchanted Crowley, all soft and still with a little sweat dotting his hairline and with fine eyelashes framing his eyes which were smiling sweetly at Crowley.
“I love you,” Aziraphale whispered.
“I love you,” Crowley whispered back. It felt like maybe Crowley was dreaming, but he was almost certain he wasn’t. He committed it to memory, one way or the other.
“Do you know what,” Crowley said, a few moments of gazing and sweetness later.
“What, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.
“I think,” Crowley said, slowly and softly. “I am feeling sort of cold.”
Aziraphale grinned. “Perhaps we had better be pragmatic about that,” he said. “Turn around, if you’d be so kind.”
Crowley would. He was known for being kind, after all.
Aziraphale snapped the light off, and they were once again enclosed in darkness, just the two of them in bed together, but this time in their bed. Aziraphale’s arm closed over Crowley’s chest. Their bodies tucked together, skin pressed against skin. Crowley felt warm all over.
Aziraphale pressed a kiss to the back of Crowley’s ear, and Crowley shivered and gripped the arm Aziraphale had wrapped around him.
“Goodnight, my dear,” he said, pulling Crowley close.
“Goodnight, angel.”
All wrapped up in one another, they fell asleep.
Summary: Sharing a sleeping space used to be much more common, historically. It didn’t mean that Crowley and Aziraphale had (literally) slept together very often…but they had done so. By the middle of the 1800s or so that practice had fallen out of fashion, and it began to feel like a shocking sort of intimacy. Basically: five times Crowley and Aziraphale shared a bedtime before the Apocalypse, and the first time they shared a bedtime after.
Rating: T
CW: Mention of a historical public health outbreak in the section labelled "1854."
33
The young man had been dead for the last several hours or so. Night had fallen: true night, not the ineffable darkness that had covered the land that afternoon. The light of the oil lamp filled the little house that Aziraphale had rented in Jerusalem.
Aziraphale was a very practical sort of man (if you weren’t splitting hairs) and had brought dinner home, but he had not yet eaten it. He reclined at his table and stared at the dish of lentils and bread. The lentils in the dish had crusted over as they cooled right before his eyes.
He never skipped a meal. It felt silly to skip this one. But when he told his hand to reach out for a crust of bread, it didn’t move, so he just kept staring.
Public executions had never sat right with him, was all. He usually chalked such things up to the other side’s influence on humanity. But there had been rather more involvement from his side than he was used to, with this whole Jesus business.
Which only meant that all was well, and he should stop fretting and eat his dinner.
Just then, a small ruckus outside pulled him out of the slight stupor he’d found himself captive to. Perhaps someone needed help he was actually able to give. He was up on his feet before he could think, and hurried over to the cut-out window to twitch the curtain back and see what was going on.
He hadn’t expected to see a crumple of red hair and black linen sprawled in front of his very doorway.
“Crawley,” he hissed, feeling his stomach swoop about inside his body and intensely ignoring the sensation. “What are you doing here, you foolish thing?”
A pair of arresting yellow eyes turned up towards him. “Where else would I be?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Aziraphale said peevishly. He leaned further out of the window and looked this way and that up the street. “Wherever else you’ve been since this afternoon?”
“Anyway,” Crawley said as if Aziraphale hadn’t spoken, “It’s Crowley. Told you that earlier.”
“Right,” said Aziraphale. “Crowley. Can I help you find your way, or…?”
“Found my way already,” Crowley muttered, finally breaking eye contact. He fiddled with his shawl. “But no, sorry to bother you, just tripped on a sandal thong, you know how it goes. I’ll be out of your hair.”
Aziraphale felt that same swoop in his tummy at the thought that Crowley had sought him out. “Well you might as well come in,” he said, before he could think better of it.
Crowley stood up. There was a complicated look on his face. “I brought wine,” he said.
“Very good. In you come.” Aziraphale darted back inside, letting the curtain close, and opened the door before he could think better of it.
After that, neither of them spoke much. Neither of them made any reference to the crucifixion they’d witnessed earlier, or to any sort of plan, ineffable or otherwise. At one point, Aziraphale offered to share his cold dinner with Crowley, who said no thanks, he’d had a little something to nibble on when he’d made sure Mary and the other ladies had got some dinner. Aziraphale had said something like wasn’t that nice of him, and Crowley had gone as white as a sheet and quickly changed the subject. He’d needled Aziraphale into reheating the dish with a subtle miracle so Aziraphale would actually enjoy it.
Through it all they drank a good deal, because the wineskin Crowley had brought was of a very obliging sort and didn’t seem to wish to run out.
It was late, late, late, when Aziraphale noticed that Crowley had somehow got even more withdrawn and quiet. He was huddled up on a pile of mats, leaning back against the wall, and every few moments he would blink and his eyes would stay closed for just a moment before he jerked them open again.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, not sure where he was going even as he opened his mouth. He finally settled on, “Are you going to sleep?”
Crowley jerked his eyes open fully and he gave Aziraphale a very focused, forced glare. “No.”
“Oh, jolly good,” Aziraphale said. The room was quiet again for a few moments. Then, “You can, you know.”
Crowley’s eyes had fallen shut again in the meantime. “Isn’t that saintly of you,” he said.
Aziraphale had not missed the sullen, sour tone of his voice that had fallen away over the course of the evening, but seemed to be back in full force as Crowley got sleepier.
“It’s not saintly,” Aziraphale defended himself. “Or particularly angelic. But you’re falling asleep sitting up. Lie down, will you, and I’ll get you a blanket.”
“No blanket,” said Crowley, but his eyes remained closed and he laid himself down on the mat.
Aziraphale, who had stood to retrieve the blanket, stopped what he was doing and stared down at Crowley. As he fell more deeply into sleep, the harsh lines of his face smoothed out and he began to look quite peaceful.
What a funny night. What a funny day. Crowley had seemed quite upset with him out at Golgotha, and hadn’t seemed too friendly afterwards either.
But he’d sought out Aziraphale regardless.
Crowley looked rather small on the pile of mats he’d fallen asleep on. It was Aziraphale’s usual place for sleeping, when he slept, which he tended to do several times a week. There was an intimacy to seeing another where he usually bedded down by himself. It was uncommon to sleep alone, he knew that. He knew other families and friends shared a space to sleep in, but it happened that he was lodging by himself in Jerusalem and it had been several years since he’d shared sleeping quarters with anyone else.
Crowley’s hair was very red, and the curls had gone all tangly. Aziraphale’s fingers twitched with the desire to smooth them out.
That would be an imposition. He shook the thoughts away from his silly fingertips and gathered a blanket for himself, and one for Crowley, despite the demon’s earlier insistence. It was a cold night. A blanket should be close at hand.
He sat down at Crowley’s head, on the edge of the sleeping mats, and propped himself against the wall. He would sit up tonight, and protect Crowley. He had taken the crucifixion so hard today, the poor thing. Aziraphale was able to soothe himself with ideas about the Great Plan, but Crowley didn’t have such comforting thoughts to fall back on. It was very sweet that he had apparently turned to Aziraphale in the midst of his discomfort. It was the least Aziraphale could do, to sit up and watch over him.
Barely a few minutes had passed, when Crowley shivered slightly. Well, of course he did; he wouldn’t accept a blanket while he was awake.
Surely it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition. Aziraphale draped the second blanket across Crowley’s thin back. Crowley clutched at it and curled up tighter, but the shivering subsided.
Aziraphale smiled to himself a little. It felt good to take care of Crowley.
He sat there and kept watch, feeling the slight warmth coming off of Crowley’s prone form against his leg. Things felt somewhat more manageable somehow, knowing he was there.
Eventually, despite his best intentions, his own tiredness must have got the better of him, and he leaned his head back against the wall of his dwelling and fell asleep.
–
Crowley awoke in the morning with a terrifically awful taste in his mouth and a crick in his neck. His head was pillowed on something high and soft, which explained the crick. He blinked his eyes open and was met with an eyeful of thickly woven wool that he didn’t recognize. He looked up and saw a pale, soft throat, chin stretched up to face the ceiling. A halo of white blond hair was just visible behind the foreshortened throat and chin.
Aziraphale.
Moving very slowly both in deference to his hangover and the angel who he hoped was sound asleep, Crowley extracted himself from the angel’s lap and stood up, throwing off the blanket he’d been covered with. Through it all, the angel did not stir. He was sound asleep.
A night of drinking with the enemy. After which Crowley had all but climbed into the bastard’s lap to sleep. How wonderful.
The crick in his neck remained, but the side of his head, neck, and shoulder which had been pressed into Aziraphale’s body suddenly felt devastatingly cold. He was tempted to crawl up in that soft warmth again.
But that was stupid, just as stupid as coming here in the first place. Heaven was full of people who would hang you out to dry as soon as they’d look at you. As they’d demonstrated yesterday. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to be alone last night and he hadn’t wanted to be with humans and Aziraphale had been the only person he could think of. But with dawn’s light filtering through the semi-sheer curtain in the window, Crowley remembered what he’d been too exhausted and unhappy to remember last night.
The weak light played over Aziraphale’s face and he looked very beautiful for one heart-clenching second. Then Crowley left, shutting the door behind him to avoid waking the still-sleeping angel. He was done with Jerusalem.
1020
From across the other side of the Great Hall, there came a self-indulgent, dramatic, demanding sigh. It was the third such sigh in the last quarter of an hour. The other servants were obviously beginning to notice.
Crowley wrapped himself tighter in the thick wool cloak which was his only covering and stared up at the smokey ceiling of the hall. He wouldn’t go over to him and give him the satisfaction. If Aziraphale had listened to Crowley five hundred years ago, maybe Aziraphale wouldn’t even be in this draughty old hall. They could have compared notes and maybe Crowley could have taken this one, and Aziraphale could be cosy at home.
He had known, when Aziraphale had shown up posing as a servant “looking for work” the same week Crowley had a big assignment, that something like this would happen. Most of the household slept in the hall itself, paired off or in piles of three or more people, or even whole families all cuddled up together for warmth. Aziraphale had been insufferable that afternoon and Crowley had not been up for it. When it came time for bed, Crowley had waited until Aziraphale laid himself down, and headed to find a bit of floor on the opposite side of the hall. But it had been stupid of him to do so, because Aziraphale had generally been making a nuisance of himself since.
There came another sigh, this one punctuated by a truly pathetic (and very loud) sniffle.
“What’s with the new guy?” asked the fellow to Crowley’s left. “Has he never slept in a hall before, for heaven's sake?”
“Oh I’m sure he has, and almost certainly for Heaven’s sake,” Crowley said bitterly.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it. See you tomorrow.”
Crowley got up, grabbed his boots, and walked across the hall, picking his way through some people who were sleeping, some people who were trying to sleep if certain angels would stop complaining audibly, and some people who were definitively Not Sleeping. Crowley wished them the best, and noted that they at least had the good grace to keep the noise down in a communal sleeping situation.
He finally made it to Aziraphale (the huffing and puffing had desisted as soon as Crowley stood up, honestly) and prodded at him with a stocking foot. “Budge over, will you.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, sounding like the cat who had got the cream. “It is so good of you to join me. I’ve been feeling frightfully cold.”
“I’ll show you cold,” Crowley muttered, arranging some rushes underfoot to provide maximum cushion before he laid down next to Aziraphale.
“I don’t know why you went and slept over there, when I know you saw where I had laid down,” Aziraphale whispered as he curled up close to where Crowley had laid down. It was funny, Crowley thought, how he was actually able to whisper quietly, after the racket he’d been keeping up. “It’s good fun to sleep with a – well. With a colleague. As it were. It’s a shame we’re both here, but still, a bit of company’s no bad thing, is it?”
A thought occurred to Crowley. He could use this.
“You know,” Crowley said, curling over so he and Aziraphale were turned in to each other like two ‘Cs,’ “We both didn’t need to be here.”
Aziraphale wiggled a little, fussing with the long cloak around his shoulders. “Well, since we are both here, all I was saying is it is nice to see you.”
Crowley took a moment to feel a little flattered. He and Aziraphale had been seeing more and more of each other in recent centuries (although never before in quarters quite so close), and he was fond of the angel. Sometimes he wasn’t sure the feeling was mutual. So, annoying as it might have been, the attention was perhaps a little gratifying as well.
“Sure it is,” he agreed, sincerely enough. Still: as nice as it was to run into the angel, he’d rather be at home. And so would, he knew, Aziraphale. “All I’m saying is, you’ve heard my proposition. About an Arrangement we could come to. Would stop you needing to sleep in so many draughty old halls.”
“Or I’d need to sleep in more of them by myself,” Aziraphale countered. Crowley didn’t want to admit to himself that Aziraphale made a good point. “How much longer are you on assignment here, anyway?”
Crowley knew when to back off. Anyway, Aziraphale had just arrived. There was time yet. “I’m here at least through the end of the week, maybe longer than that. And yourself?”
“The meeting that’s meant to be on Friday? Yes, I’m here for the same, of course.” Aziraphale looked a little irritated. He was starting to show that he saw the merits of Crowley’s campaign of the last five-hundred-plus years to develop a mutually beneficial arrangement. It wouldn’t be long before he folded.
“Naturally,” Crowley said lightly, always careful not to oversell. Despite himself, he shivered a little. It was really cold in the draughty old hall.
“I told you it was cold,” Aziraphale said. “Why don’t we cuddle up, then? Share warmth. It’s beastly uncomfortable sleeping on rushes like this.”
Cuddling seemed somewhat dangerous, somehow. Not out of the realm of reason, considering how blasted cold it was, but there was a riskiness there, and not, Crowley thought, the fun kind.
The not-fun kind of riskiness tended to make Crowley tetchy. “I suppose the fine gentleman keeps his own bed, then,” Crowley said. “When he’s not on assignment as a lowly servant.” He neglected to mention his own nicely stuffed ticking back in the lodgings he kept in London.
“As if you don’t,” Aziraphale said sourly. Crowley thought about protesting, but Aziraphale was right after all. “Now are you willing to huddle up with me and be reasonable, or are you going to force me to make friends with my new coworkers very quickly and do away with the point of my calling you over here in the first place?”
He had a point. It was only practical.
Crowley scooted closer and there was an awkward negotiation of the way their corporations fit together. He supposed he had better hold Aziraphale, since Aziraphale had been the one to demand his attention in the first place. But when he held out his arms, Aziraphale said, “What are you doing, my dear? You’re ever so much slimmer than me. Let’s be pragmatic about this. Turn around and I’ll warm you up. You’ll keep me warm that way.”
Pragmatic it might have been, but the feeling of warm Aziraphale all up and down Crowley’s back nearly sent him right into a tizzy of the most embarrassing sort. He supposed it shouldn’t have been that big a deal. He’d slept very close to people before, in similar situations of deep and biting cold. Sometimes they’d even cuddled a bit – the better to fit closer together and to share warmth. Aziraphale’s corporation was exactly the ideal form for Crowley to be all enveloped by. His stomach pressed all against Crowley’s back, his soft thighs snugged up against Crowley’s skinny ones, and a lovely warm arm closed over Crowley’s chest.
“So much warmer,” Aziraphale said. “And better with you than any old human, you know.” His breath hissed out hot and insistent against Crowley’s ear. Crowley tried not to shiver again and mostly succeeded. Aziraphale could be so obtusely tender.
“Not too bad,” Crowley agreed. Completely unbidden, a memory of the time he woke up in Jerusalem nearly a thousand years ago sprang to mind. The sensation of warmth under his head and shoulder, gone as soon as he’d stood up and jerked away. That warmth was back.
“Sweet dreams, dear,” Aziraphale said.
“And to you, angel,” Crowley said. He tried to throw out the title in a cutting, formal way, like he was used to doing. But it sounded rather softer than usual.
Aziraphale dropped off to sleep behind him quickly, but Crowley laid awake for hours, mentally tracing and noting all the ways their bodies touched.
–
Aziraphale woke up with all the muscles in his corporation stiff and tender. He missed the soft mattress he had back in London. He had slept on the floor before, and had managed it plenty in centuries past, but he’d gotten out of the habit, as it was rather miserable.
Despite the ache echoing through his body – sleeping on rushes with a cloak for warmth, how abysmal – Aziraphale had to pause and register his situation. In the night, he had shifted to lay on his back, and his companion must have clung to him as he did so.
Crowley’s head was pillowed on his chest. Aziraphale had an arm around him, almost possessively. Aziraphale’s hand flexed, unbidden, pulling Crowley closer.
He hadn’t meant to do that. It was one thing to curl up together out of necessity, it was another to pull Crowley close in the morning. He should desist at once.
Instead, he just lay there for a minute. Crowley’s sweet face was all relaxed in sleep. The curve of Crowley’s waist felt good to hold in his band.
He made himself stop. He managed to gently encourage Crowley to roll away from him. The poor boy must have been tired, for he stayed asleep, and made a mournful little snuffling noise as he curled back up by himself. Aziraphale stood up regretfully. His bones somehow ached more without Crowley sprawled on his chest to distract him, and he shivered a little.
The day had begun. He pulled his shoes on, cleaned his clothes with a discrete miracle, and went to find some breakfast.
1534
“Aziraphale!”
Aziraphale stopped in the draughty castle hallway and looked around. He couldn’t see where the voice could possibly have come from.
“I’m behind the tapestry!” whispered the voice again. Aziraphale looked at one tapestry-covered wall, then the other. Neither of them seemed to hide a person behind them.
A long-fingered hand reached out and grabbed him around the wrist and pulled him into an area behind the tapestry which had previously been to his left.
“Sorry,” Crowley said quickly, for indeed it was the demon whose voice Aziraphale had heard. “Needed to talk to you. And I know you’ve been getting touchy about public appearances.”
“I’ve hardly been touchy,” Aziraphale said, smoothing down his doublet. “Just a bit cautious, is all.”
“Yes, yes,” Crowley agreed. “Whatever you say. Anyway. Good to see you. How’s things.”
“Well, they’ve been looking up, ever since Henry established the True Church,” Aziraphale said. “Just on a bit of a tricky stop nowadays to make sure he doesn’t take it too far.”
Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Right.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re up to the opposite?” Aziraphale challenged. “Why didn’t you tell me, anyway? Surely we’re not both needed. What with, our you-know-what, and all.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me you’d be here either,” Crowley pointed out. Aziraphale magnanimously ignored the pissy tone. “Anyway, I’m just here to keep my eyes on a few cardinals. And between you and me, I’m a little worried for Her Majesty, these days.”
Aziraphale felt a little uncomfortable, hearing that. He didn’t particularly feel reassured by the relations between Henry and Anne that he had seen, either.
“Well, here we both are,” Aziraphale said, determined to move the conversation forward. “Very good. I suppose we’ll just have to…pretend not to see each other. Or something.”
“We could pretend not to know each other,” Crowley said. “Easy.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, “That’s really not too bad, as ideas go. Certainly we can, my dear. Perhaps we can arrange a way to make each other’s acquaintance – we could make a jolly good time of it. I’ve only just arrived today.”
“Me too,” Crowley said. “I think we can make this work. But listen, I need a favour.”
“I suppose I owe you,” Aziraphale said gamely. “For the business at the monastery.”
“You do, don’t you?” Crowley said, looking innocent, which was rarely a good sign. “Anyway, this might make the ‘we’ve just met’ lark a little funny, but I really need you to be my bedfellow tonight. While we’re here, really.”
Aziraphale flushed, and he hoped it was dark enough in the concealed alcove that Crowley wouldn’t be able to tell. He had expected to be roomed with some visiting noble or other. He hadn’t given it much thought. There weren’t ever so many beds to go around, one did expect to share. He just hadn’t dreamed of sharing with Crowley.
He still thought sometimes of their week as servants back before sweet William had come across the sea. He’d slept with Crowley in his arms for five nights straight. The relative anonymity of their disguises as servants had meant it was as natural as anything. He was sure neither of them had meant anything by it, probably. And anyhow, it was a time before Gabriel had really started cracking down with the micro-managing. Crowley was a pleasant fellow to have in one’s bed. Or, he supposed a bed with Crowley in it would be nice. That week they’d only had the rushes on the floor.
“It’s just I happened to fall in with some second son or other on the way here and we were bedfellows in an inn last night and I think he’s thinking we’ll bunk up here too, and he was perfectly respectful last night but he snores and I can just feel that he’s going to be a handsy one. And if you’re here, well. When we were further south all those years ago it worked out alright. So why not now, again?”
Crowley had recalled the very same week! Aziraphale hadn’t imagined it had made an impact on the demon. Crowley was a capable man, he could easily miracle the other man each night to keep him subdued, or twist reality as necessary to get a different bed sharing arrangement. But then, Aziraphale didn’t particularly relish the thought of Crowley bunking up with someone else. He didn’t begrudge the dear fellow custom or the ability to stay warm, but if the opportunity presented itself –
“Would you mind giving me an answer, please, it’s embarrassing enough that I had to ask,” Crowley said, all in a rush. “You know I can handle it if you won’t, I can make do well enough, you can get me back for the monk’s habit some other time.”
“Oh!” Aziraphale said. He hadn’t realised he’d gone off in his own little world. “Ah, that is. If we can make it so that it looks like a bit of happenstance. I think we can just about handle it.”
“Fantastic,” said Crowley. “I’ll make a suggestion to the groom in charge of the guest apartments. I won’t use any miracles or anything. I’ll make it sound like we got to talking in the stables or something and took a liking to each other. There won’t be any trace. Don’t worry.”
“I never –” Aziraphale started, but Crowley had already swept out from behind the arras and Aziraphale could hear his footsteps rapidly heading away down the hall.
Another night – nights? – with Crowley. It was perfectly ordinary, of course. Plenty of people shared a bed. As had he and Crowley, before. Nothing untoward. He gave himself a little shake and exited the alcove as well.
–
“Good even, Sir Aziraphale,” one of the higher-class servants said to Aziraphale later, when he passed him in the hallway. “I’ve had your things packed into the guest apartments off the west gallery. Per Sir Crowley’s request.” Aziraphale could have sworn the man threw him a wink as he said that. “How pleasant you made each other’s acquaintance. I trust you will find your lodgings most comfortable.”
“Thank you, sir,” Aziraphale said. The man cast a look down to Aziraphale’s feet and back up to his head, and nodded, as if Aziraphale met with his approval.
The man hurried off. Aziraphale wondered what Crowley had told him to organise the room swap. He hoped it was all quite above board.
–
It was very late when Aziraphale and Crowley finally retired to their chamber. A masque that evening had provided plenty of delicious opportunities: for food, for wiling and thwarting respectively, for companionship.
They undressed quickly in deference to the cold which filled the room. There was one funny moment, at which Crowley had stopped undressing to simply stare at Aziraphale, who had shrugged out of his doublet and was standing in his shirt and stockings.
“Can I help you, my dear?” he asked. Crowley’s eyes, which had snagged on an area around the opening of his shirt, snapped up to meet Aziraphale’s.
“Nope,” Crowley said, and resumed undressing at double speed.
Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder if Crowley had been admiring his form. He knew it was a good one. A full, soft body which communicated satiety and means. Gentle sloping lines. He was rather partial to it, himself. Could it be that Crowley was too?
Such thoughts were silly, of course, and he turned them aside.
Both down to their shirts and stockings, they dove past the curtains into the four-poster which took up the bulk of the little guest apartment. A hot brick had previously been placed under the coverlet and the little enclosed space was quite toasty as a result.
Aziraphale thought of holding Crowley close that week in the eleventh century. The increase in luxury was considerable: from posing as servants, huddled in meagre cloaks on the rushes covering the floor, to sharing a fluffy bed kitted out with hangings on all sides as nobles. And yet, there was no reason to hold Crowley close in this warm little space. They had plentiful blankets, and their body heat was already filling the four walls made by the curtains around the bed.
They both laid quite still next to one another in the dark. Aziraphale’s arms ached to take Crowley in them. What a foolish notion.
“Angel?” Crowley’s voice broke the silence which had settled thick over top of them. “Thank you. For the favour.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. In a private, dark room, full of food and wine, lying with Crowley by his side, it was hard to feel as though the “favour” had been any such thing. “You’re most welcome, I’m sure, my dear.”
More silence. Aziraphale did not fall asleep. From the purposeful silence emanating from Crowley’s side of the bed, Crowley did not either.
Aziraphale wondered if he should check on Crowley. Surely Crowley would let Aziraphale know if there was anything Aziraphale needed to know.
Crowley did not say anything.
The silence was excruciating.
Finally, once again, Crowley spoke. “All right?”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said again. “Yes.”
Crowley said “Mm,” to that. He sounded disappointed.
Aziraphale did not wish to disappoint him.
“I’m perhaps,” Aziraphale started. “A bit.” He stopped again.
“...a bit?” Crowley prompted, after quite a formidable pause.
“Chilly,” Aziraphale landed on. “A bit chilly. If I’m being honest.”
Crowley propped himself up on one elbow. Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s eyes on his face as Crowley stared down at him. “You’re chilly.”
“Mm-hmm,” Aziraphale said, pressing his lips together and avoiding even the suggestion of eye contact with Crowley. He wished he would have thought of something cleverer.
Crowley flopped back down.
“Could be pragmatic again,” he suggested. His voice sounded very thin. “Seemed to help last time we were in a spot like this.” He turned to face away from Aziraphale and scooted closer to the middle of the bed.
The air trembled for a moment. And then Aziraphale reached out to Crowley.
It felt so terribly transgressive, this time, to reach out and take Crowley in his arms. Shivering on the floor of an airy, freezing great hall, one did what one had to do. And then sharing a bed was intimate, certainly, but not out of the realm of common acquaintanceship. But this: holding on to Crowley in this space which was already slightly over-warm. It felt close to an admission of something Aziraphale wasn’t sure he could articulate.
Just like the last time they slept together, Crowley’s body fit right against Aziraphale’s something like puzzle pieces. Where Aziraphale curved out, Crowley bowed in. Aziraphale tucked an arm over Crowley’s chest and Crowley snuggled in close.
“Feel better?” he asked, and for a moment Aziraphale couldn’t begin to think of what he meant.
“Yes,” he blurted out once he had realised it. “Much warmer, my dear. Such a thoughtful suggestion.”
“I was a little cold, too,” Crowley said.
Well. That explained it, then. Nothing to read into.
Regardless, Aziraphale felt soothed, holding Crowley in the quiet night.
After some time, Crowley made a noise like “mmprh,” moved slightly away from Aziraphale, and flopped down flat on his tummy. Aziraphale couldn’t help but smile at the sleepy ruckus. He laid down on his own stomach next to Crowley, settling down on the pillow and gazing over at his bedmate. Crowley made a noise of protest, though, and as if in his sleep reached out and scrabbled at Aziraphale’s closest hand. It seemed as though Crowley was requesting Aziraphale’s hand back over him, as it had been when they were on their sides.
And who was Aziraphale to deny him, really?
Crowley fell asleep with Aziraphale’s hand heavy on the small of his back, and Aziraphale followed not long after.
–
Crowley awoke in the middle of the night to a great loud sawing noise.
“Whaa?” he said, pushing himself upright.
It was so dark in the little bed he could hardly see anything, even with his eyes adjusted to the dark. But the loud grating noise came again, and he could just about make out Aziraphale, lying on his back next to Crowley, snoring away.
He flopped back down. Of course Aziraphale snored. Why would he think Aziraphale wouldn’t snore? He hadn’t that week back in the eleventh century, but perhaps that was a fluke, and he just snored sometimes. After all Crowley had done to avoid a bedmate who snored, look where it got him.
He laid on his side facing Aziraphale. His eyes traced the beautiful line of Aziraphale’s profile. Every so often, the picturesque, tender lines would be marred by another rumbly snorfle of breath through Aziraphale’s open mouth.
Crowley closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.
Acghghhghgh. Acghghhg. Achgghhghghghghghghhg.
Crowley opened his eyes.
“‘Ziraphale,” he said. “Aziraphale.” He prodded at Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Hey. Angel.”
“Hmm?” Aziraphale said blearily. He seemed hardly awake.
“What if you rolled over,” Crowley proposed sensibly.
It seemed that a sleepy Aziraphale was a suggestible one. Aziraphale did so immediately, and wrapped Crowley in his arms.
He had not been expecting that.
He thought perhaps they had better do something about this cuddling lark. It was nice, when it happened. But it wasn’t necessary here in bed where it was warm enough without the closeness of extra body heat.
But Aziraphale had asked for it. Crowley would never tell him no, not if he could help it.
It felt so good, too. Perhaps he might allow it. Just this once.
He turned around in Aziraphale’s arms until they were back to chest again. The snoring had abated. That was good.
He cuddled up closer to Aziraphale, and dropped back to sleep.
1742
Crowley was just finishing setting his things down in the room he’d been given at the inn, when there was a knock on the door.
“Hello, Mr. Crowley,” she said as he opened the door for her. “I know you requested a private room, but I’m sorry to say due to some new arrivals that is no longer possible.”
Crowley groaned through his teeth. He knew bed-sharing while travelling was a possibility, but it had been a long trip and he hadn’t been in the mood to put up with who knows who. He had just started to pull a bit of power up to rearrange things in a more favourable manner, when he caught sight of the head of white blond hair coming up the hallway behind the landlady. It couldn’t be –
“Mr. Fell will room with you this evening.” Behind the landlady’s shoulder, Aziraphale looked alarmed. He raised his eyebrows, lowered them into a scowl, shook his head, and got into a sort of charade of attempted communication. When the landlady sensed movement behind her and turned around, Aziraphale gave her a pleasant smile and a wave.
“Mr. Fell, this is Mr. Crowley who you’ll be rooming with. Mr. Crowley, Mr. Fell.”
“How good to meet you,” Crowley said, pretty sure that he had interpreted Aziraphale’s wild gesturing correctly.
“Likewise, I’m sure.” Aziraphale looked relieved.
“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The landlady went off down the hall, and Aziraphale rushed Crowley back inside his room and shut the door behind him.
“Dreadfully sorry, old thing,” Aziraphale said. “Awful spot of bother. I had no intention of landing here, you see, but I got waylaid as I set out and didn’t make it as far as I had hoped. Hello. Why are you here?”
Crowley had barely recovered from the Aziraphalean storm which had blown up unexpectedly and overswept him. “Hello yourself. I’m here because I’m nearly home but couldn’t make it the rest of the way before nightfall.”
“Well, we just about fooled the landlady,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. Crowley made no comment. “So no qualms there. It might be a bit of all right, do you think, to have another night together? It’s been some time since we have. We can catch up with no fear of prying eyes.”
“Right,” Crowley said. “Right.” He looked from Aziraphale to the bed, and back to Aziraphale. His stomach seemed to have vacated his body, if the feeling around his belly button was anything to go by. “Bedfellows again, then.”
Aziraphale’s face fell a little. “You don’t mind, do you?” Aziraphale said, wringing his hand. “I could try to swap with someone. Like a reverse of that time at Henry’s court. Hah hah.”
“Nooo no no,” Crowley said quickly. He didn’t want Aziraphale to feel badly. He didn’t want Aziraphale to rescind this unexpected offer of closeness. “It’ll be great. Don’t worry. Nice night for it.”
Nice night for it. Right. Smooth.
Aziraphale, it turned out, was feeling peckish, but said he didn’t want to go down and join the company if it could be helped. Crowley knew an invitation when he heard one, so he snapped up a few bowls of stew from what was on offer downstairs and they sat down to dinner on their own.
They had a quiet night in, catching up with each other. Aziraphale told Crowley that he’d been starting to think of getting rather serious about perhaps investing in a bookshop. Big moves for the angel. Crowley was feeling good about some correspondence work he’d picked up over in the colonies.
After their meal, Aziraphale banished the dishes back to the kitchen before yawning theatrically. “I’d say it’s just about bedtime, wouldn’t you, dear boy?” he asked. It was barely eight o’ clock.
But Crowley said wouldn’t you know he was feeling tired too, before he knew it they were once again tucked away in the dark cloth walls of a four-poster.
“Hello,” he whispered up at the canopy, lying flat on his back. He felt sort of like an idiot. They’d both stayed at court for nearly a month two hundred years ago, and had bunked together the whole time. They had got into an easy rhythm by the end of it. They hadn’t always tucked up close together, but they knew how to share the space. After more than two hundred years’ distance, Crowley was less sure.
“Hello,” Aziraphale whispered back.
Crowley wondered why Aziraphale had been in such a rush to get to bed. Neither of them had anything to say. Neither of them were touching the other.
For one wild moment, Crowley wondered if Aziraphale had thought of something like sex. It hadn’t come up when they’d shared a bed (or a bit of floor) before. And they’d been pressed close enough on more than one occasion that Crowley was pretty sure that something would have (if you’d excuse the vulgarity) quite literally come up.
Crowley had not partaken in such activities, himself. He thought he might one day. If he ever got around to it. It didn’t seem like much of a priority, though. Was it something Aziraphale felt was a priority? Maybe he did. Maybe tonight was the night. They had been friends for so long, helped each other out of binds. Why not try something new?
“Have you ever had sex?” Crowley asked, before he could think better of it.
Aziraphale physically pulled to the edge of the bed and Crowley winced. Why had he said that?? This was surely a breach of etiquette. Asking another person if they’d had sex while they were lying barely a foot away. Oh no. He’d read the room very, very wrongly.
“No,” Aziraphale said, after an excruciating pause.
“No me neither,” Crowley said, trying desperately to find a way forward. “I mean, I don’t know if I ever would, either, really.”
Aziraphale’s form in the dark relaxed a little. “Oh.” A quiet moment. “Never?”
Crowley didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t know. Never say never.”
“Quite so,” said Aziraphale.
He did not say anything else.
Crowley felt mortified. Why had he brought it up in the first place!?
It was warm and cosy within the hangings of the bed, but Crowley wished for the easy closeness they had had when they had shared a bed in the past. But Aziraphale was still clear on the opposite side of the bed, and Crowley had all but come on to him like some kind of brute. He couldn’t exactly take his bottom and press it up against Aziraphale in the kind of cuddle he’d found so pleasant before. Aziraphale might think he had Ideas. And it wasn’t that he definitely had Ideas, but it also wasn’t that he had absolutely no Ideas ever, so it was especially awkward.
After several long moments, despite the way his heart pinched, he could feel his eyes drooping. It had been a long day of travelling. “Good night, angel,” Crowley whispered.
“Good night, my dear.”
Before he dropped off entirely, he reached out, just a little, sending his hand out to the empty space in between them. He was tired from his journey and embarrassed by Aziraphale’s reaction to his earlier question and possibly not thinking straight. As his hand reached the middle of the space between them, he began to think better of it. He couldn’t reach out to Aziraphale after putting him on the spot like that.
But before he could pull his hand back, he found Aziraphale’s hand, stretched out as if he had been reaching for Crowley too. Their pinky fingers just barely touched, then wrapped around each other.
Soothed by the slight contact, Crowley fell asleep.
–
The next morning, Aziraphale woke feeling suffused with dread. Crowley was still on the opposite side of the bed from him and it felt as if they were leagues apart.
He sat up and stared at Crowley for a long moment. His cheekbones were so sharp, and his skin looked so soft.
He got up and dressed quickly, troubled the cook for a packed breakfast of bread, fruit, and cheese, and was off to his assignment barely moments after dawn. It was dreadful cowardice, is what it was, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Aziraphale didn’t know what had prompted him to turn in so early last night. Well. Unless, perhaps, he did. But then, when Crowley had asked about…coitus, Aziraphale had been shocked, although if he forced himself to be quite honest, it had been on his mind too.
He felt guilty for rejecting Crowley so roundly, and yet faced with the reality of another body – of Crowley’s body – suddenly in his space, so close to him, Aziraphale had not been able to respond in any other way.
He had laid awake for some time, considering Crowley’s question. Considering possibly doing something about Crowley’s question. He’d got a little hot and bothered, even. He never had had sex, and it wasn’t on the top of his list of things to experience, but. He wasn’t sure. One day, possibly. With a partner who felt…right, somehow. Probably a romantic idea. Oh well.
It was a little thrilling, though, to think that Crowley had brought up the idea. To think that Crowley seemed similarly interested and disinterested. He probably would have felt disappointed, if Crowley was some sort of…sex fiend. Or if Crowley was entirely opposed to the idea. It felt reassuring, somehow, to suppose they held the same level of interest in carnal activities.
But why should it be reassuring? He and Crowley would never. Could never.
And anyhow, he thought to himself, you’re the one who rode off at dawn after the merest suggestion.
Aziraphale tore at the loaf of bread the cook had packed for him with his teeth. He had work and travel to focus on. Not…any of that.
1854
“Crowley, what the devil are you doing here?” Aziraphale hissed, shutting the door to the library behind them. Crowley had arrived at the country house Aziraphale was staying at just before dinner, which had quickly become an exceedingly strained affair and rather put off Aziraphale’s appetite.
“I was coming to make sure you were safe,” Crowley said, slumping into an armchair and taking his glasses off. He looked pinched and tired, as if he’d had a dreadful shock.
“Why wouldn’t I be safe?” Aziraphale asked.
“Broad Street, Aziraphale?” Crowley said, as if Aziraphale was being obtuse on purpose. “I heard about the fuss in Soho and came to find you. Imagine my shock to find the bookshop closed with no sign or note or anything!”
Aziraphale’s heart twisted uncomfortably. He did not relish the reminder of the outbreak in London he had travelled to escape. Some of his wealthier neighbours had invited him to come with them to their family’s country home after it had become clear just how deadly the cholera outbreak was becoming, and he had hastily accepted.
“People were dying, Crowley,” he said. “I had to – people were either staying, and dying, or they were leaving.”
“Were you worried about getting sick? We don’t do things like that. You would have been fine. Didn’t you want to stay and help? Don’t you have some noble principality thoughts about protecting your neighbours or something? Why would you leave in the middle of a crisis? Without telling me?”
Aziraphale did not appreciate the flurry of questions. He breathed in and out through his nose, slowly. Perhaps his nostrils flared a little as he did so. He was sure he couldn’t say.
“I’m not beholden to you, you know,” he said.
Crowley looked terribly hurt for a moment. “The arrangement,” he said, very softly.
Aziraphale felt another twinge of guilt. He stuffed it down. “The arrangement covers tasks which we might be able to consolidate,” he reminded Crowley. “Not our every move. I’m sure there is plenty you don’t tell me.”
“That’s not the point,” Crowley said.
“Then what is the point?”
Crowley picked at a loose thread on the arm of the chair. “Was worried. Is all.”
“What?”
“Sickness everywhere. No word from you. Didn’t know what your side had got up to. Or my side. It’s been a while since I’ve had a communiqué.”
Aziraphale sat down in the chair across from Crowley’s rather heavily. It was touching to know that Crowley had worried for him. Often, Aziraphale felt like the only one of the two of them with any sense of self preservation.
“I wasn’t allowed to help,” he said softly. “There’s something going on about ‘germs theory’ or something. So I was told to stand down. In the meantime.” He sat down heavily in his own armchair across from Crowley. “And perhaps I should have stayed. I could have offered some comfort to the dying. It would have been good of me to do so.” He paused again. It was difficult to admit to it all. “But it was. It was dreadful.”
Crowley just stared at him for a moment with the tenderest look on his face. “I’m sorry, angel.”
Aziraphale cleared his throat and blinked his eyes a few times, hard. “Yes, well. Thank you.”
“Boy,” Crowley said, hesitantly, after a few fraught moments. “But if this place isn’t nicer than any other place we’ve ended up at together, eh? I should have conned my way into the Braybury family’s good graces ages ago.”
Aziraphale chuckled at Crowley’ deliberate crassness. “One does feel rather pampered here, doesn’t one?”
The conversation became easier after that, and they meandered their way into passing a pleasant evening together. An obliging decanter of brandy appeared on a little side table. Aziraphale had got used to having Crowley around in and amongst the books he had moved into his little London shop, and the setting of the country home’s library made a most suitable facsimile.
The trouble with most good nights that they had wandered their way into was, they eventually came to an end.
“In what room are you staying?” Aziraphale asked eventually, when Crowley looked like he might fall asleep sitting up. “Let me walk you there.” It had been some time, he reflected, since it was common to expect a shared bed. This country home was prepared to receive dozens of visitors, each with their own chambers. Terrifically modern, and terrifically upper class.
“What?” Crowley looked confused for a brief moment. “Oh. Uhm. Yeah. Room. In the north wing, I think. It’s got a painting of a lily next to the door.”
Aziraphale’s room was also in the north wing, next to a painting of a lily. So that was convenient.
“It’s so very extravagant, all this separate bedroom business, isn’t it,” said Aziraphale as they walked together.
“Oh, yes,” said Crowley. His dark glasses were back on his face, lest they run into any servants on their walk. Aziraphale couldn’t read his face or his tone.
“Not like it used to be, that’s for certain,” said Aziraphale.
“Right,” Crowley said.
Finally, they reached their rooms, which were right next door to one another. They stopped in the hallway and stared.
“It’s more hygienic, you know,” Aziraphale said. “Sleeping separately. And I’ve got it on good authority that hygiene will be terribly important, going forward. So it’s for the best.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Crowley agreed.
So that was just as well. If Crowley had been disappointed by the separate beds, that might have meant something. But everything was just as it should have been.
“Well. It was good of you to check up on me,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Yes,” Crowley said. He had been so quiet recently. Aziraphale hoped he was quite well. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
With one last look and a nod shared between them, they entered their rooms. Aziraphale undressed. While he did so, he did not think of Crowley undressing in the room next door. He didn’t think of Crowley in just his shirt, as he’d had the privilege to see him before, his fine neck and collarbones peeking through the white linen. Or would he be wearing cotton by now? Aziraphale wasn’t sure.
When Aziraphale got in bed and under the coverlets, he felt cold. But he did not think of taking Crowley in his arms again, or sharing a space like that, in any way. He didn’t think about any of that so very strongly that there wasn’t any room to think of anything else.
He fell asleep on his own, as he was used to doing in the flat above the bookshop, and he didn’t begrudge his host family for their extravagant quantity of rooms and beds, not a bit.
–
When Crowley woke up, he was cold.
There was no reason for him to be cold, as there were plenty of blankets on the bed and it was barely the end of August, but he still felt an unreasonable chill in his bones.
Just yesterday, his day had taken a dramatic turn. He had been on an assignment in Bristol, opened the morning paper, and read the news of the cholera outbreak in Soho. One hastily (messily) completed temptation later, he’d snapped himself over to Soho, and had been horrified to find the bookshop boarded up with no indication as to the location of its proprietor. He had gone barrelling off to look for Aziraphale, frantically sending out metaphysical tendrils through the ether just to find the angel.
When he finally found Aziraphale up north, it had been easy work to charm his way into the sizable party which had taken shape at the estate to escape the vile conditions in London.
He’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, that it was unlikely he’d also charm his way into Aziraphale’s bed. Entirely innocently, of course, he wasn’t about to repeat his mistake from the inn over a century ago. But once he had found Aziraphale, he had naturally begun to imagine the cosy intimacy which might follow in the night. It had been a bit of a blow to realise they would sleep apart.
He woke up in his own bed every day, of course. He had his own rooms. He knew better. But for some reason, waking up all by his lonesome this morning, he felt oddly bereft.
There was nothing for it, so he got up and dressed. He joined the breakfast table downstairs. Aziraphale was there, and he looked radiant.
Two Years After The End of the World
It had been a long time coming, but when the hired moving van pulled up to the little cottage by the coast, Crowley let out a satisfied sigh. The Bentley was parked already in the garage that had most graciously been found on the property, despite not having previously been present. Crowley had refused to use her to move everything down from London. The pocket in spacetime needed to fit all their boxes in the backseat would have played entirely too much havoc with her frame, he felt, and he wasn’t taking chances, not after All That Business some years since. So they’d hired a van which was barely bigger than the Bentley and fit in as many plants and books and clothes and furniture as they wanted into the back of it. The van could probably take that level of wobbliness. And if it couldn’t, Crowley was significantly less concerned.
They had originally neither of them had any intention of moving in and unpacking the human way, because it sounded like such a bore. But it was still easier to miracle things if you could see the place they were going to, so hauling them down semi-manually it was.
“Here we are, angel,” Crowley said, vibrating with nerves. It had felt unimaginable when Aziraphale suggested a place of their own, not too long after the world hadn’t ended. That had been a couple years ago as they had both considered the idea and bandied it about. After all that trouble, they had seen much more of each other than ever before, rarely going so much as a day without a meal or a walk or a conversation shared. They each kept their own space, but finally, they were friends. Proper friends, who didn’t need to worry about being seen in public, or being seen in public too often, or seeming to have prior acquaintanceship of one another if they were seen together in public.
It had all been sort of exhausting, the last two millennia with Aziraphale, not least of all because Aziraphale tended to vacillate wildly between letting his guard down and shoving Crowley away out of nerves. Crowley had tried not to take it personally. He hadn’t always succeeded.
No, the last several years had been much better.
And, yes, sometimes Crowley thought about, oh, holding Aziraphale’s hand. Or Aziraphale’s arm snug around his chest. Sometimes he even thought about hugging Aziraphale. He’d been so bold to think about what it might be like if the angel kissed him no more than half a dozen times or so.
But mostly he enjoyed the company and didn’t dwell on such thoughts. Casual touch, especially between men, had quite fallen out of fashion. Any physical contact was liable to be laden with meaning and Crowley would not go so far as to presume such meaning might be entirely welcome.
“Here we are indeed. Jolly good!” Aziraphale said, beaming at Crowley from the passenger seat. Crowley loved him so much. He said the stupidest things. Oh, he wanted to hold his hand.
As ever, he channelled it into saying something sort of inane, moving the conversation along.
“So…in we go?”
“Indeed,” Aziraphale breathed.
And then, they spent the day moving in, in their own way. They took a wander through the empty rooms, then started snapping.
Aziraphale set up the sitting room first, with the bookshop’s squashy sofa, a couple arm chairs, and soft lamps for reading. Crowley got the kitchen in order, arranging the pots and pans the way he liked them. He’d been getting into cooking recently, much to Aziraphale’s delight. They went around the house like that, snapping a painting into place there, a table there. Aziraphale set up a room to be his library, and Crowley sorted out the conservatory. Each of these last tasks rather swept them up into their own world, and by the time they emerged, bleary eyed and blinking at each other in the sitting room, it was just beginning to go dark outside.
“Right,” Crowley said, “So it’s just the bedroom situation and returning the van.” He lifted his finger to snap his bedroom to rights and return the moving van to the van hire it came from.
At the same exact moment, Aziraphale did the same. Well, Crowley hoped he’d only seen to his bedroom, and not fussed with the van as well. If he had, well, it was probably fine.
(Aziraphale had meant to take care of the van as well as his own bedroom, of course. The van in front of the house vanished discreetly, and via the force of two miracles, two vans showed up in the car park, some fifty-odd miles away. Both vans were rather confused, but not as confused as the young man who worked for the car hire place would be when he took inventory the next morning.)
“Job done!” Aziraphale said. He clapped Crowley on the shoulder awkwardly. Crowley’s shoulder felt warm where Aziraphale had touched it. He did not think about it.
As they were both feeling peckish, they went into town for a bite to eat. They found a delightful little spot which Aziraphale declared “sure to become a regular haunt of ours” to the waiter, who, bless them, listened and nodded along to Aziraphale’s litany of praise with a smile that was only slightly strained. The whole time, it kept occurring to Crowley how odd it was to be out of London together. They were used to being together in London, but rarely went on excursions together. And here they were, new town, new house, new shared life. He wasn’t really sure what to do with it yet.
As he drove them home from dinner, Crowley realised he’d developed an acute case of the willies. Rather than weaving his way through central London, it was round the winding country roads, with very little light to guide the way. He was driving them home, to theirhome. Not to Aziraphale’s bookshop, in for a nightcap, and back to his expensive flat. Home. It felt like he was pulling up to a holiday home, but he knew that once they got inside it would be full of both of their things.
In they went, hanging up their things in the entryway with their elbows knocking. Crowley could hardly breathe.
One of them made the customary noise about a bottle of wine to finish off the evening, and the familiarity somehow calmed Crowley to the point that he was lulled into what would eventually reveal itself to be a false sense of security. Their sitting room at the cottage was different of course, but Aziraphale’s armchair and Crowley’s settee were present. There was Aziraphale’s wine glass in his hand, there was a reliable bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape produced with a twinkle from Aziraphale, there was Aziraphale’s hair glinting in the soft light. Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale. Things were different, and they were the same.
And then it slowly became time for bed, and things took a turn.
Crowley made his way to bed first, and Aziraphale uncharacteristically offered to tidy away the wine glasses and bottle. Of the two of them, Crowley was the one most particular about tidiness. Perhaps Aziraphale was just showing a thoughtfulness of shared living spaces, Crowley mused as he wandered down the hall to his bedroom. He was sleepy enough, and the wine had helped, and he was bravely turning in for his first night in the new house with Aziraphale only just across the hall. He wasn’t even really that hung up on it. He was mostly thinking about the rest of his routine. The first order of business were his cosy black silk pyjamas.
He opened the door to his bedroom and stopped short.
When he had set it up earlier, he’d miracled firm instructions for the large bed to set itself up with the white linen sheets and the charcoal grey duvet.
The large bed was there, but it had three times the usual amount of pillows, which had a distinct squashy quality rather than the firm one Crowley preferred. The colour scheme for the duvet was right on, but the pillows were all covered in Aziraphale’s signature tartan.
A terrible idea struck Crowley just then.
“Ngk,” he said.
He wandered further into the room. In the corner, Crowley’s devastatingly cool original Barcelona chair had a crocheted blanket thrown over the back of it, and an aggressively orange Chesterfield sat next to it, as if ready for easy conversation.
“Okay,” he said. He turned around. A gigantic wardrobe took up more of the wall than should have been possible: half of it was all clean lines and modern design, and the other half was dripping with wood carvings that would have pleased Victoria herself. He opened one of the doors tentatively.
His clothes and Aziraphale’s. In the same wardrobe.
“Angel!” he screeched, before he could think better of it.
Aziraphale called, “Coming, dear!” and as Crowley listened to his feet padding closer and closer, he wished he would have just kept his mouth shut. He could have just miracled his things to a different room. Perhaps there was still time…?
“Crowley? What are you doing in my…bed…room…” Aziraphale trailed off somewhat pathetically as he came through the door and surveyed the mutt-like interior decorating.
“So,” Crowley said, sitting down on their – their!? – bed weakly. “I, ah. I thought you would have preferred the one with the view of the garden. So I meant to take the one on this side.” He’d been pretty pleased with the idea of working in the garden, making it a beautiful paradise, all just so Aziraphale could admire it from his bedroom window.
Aziraphale was gazing around the room as Crowley had, taking in all the ways their belongings had joined up in a mish-mash.
“Oh, Crowley,” he said, half distracted still. “That was good of you, wasn’t it?”
Crowley usually didn’t let allegations of goodness get to him anymore, but being somewhat stressed as he was, it did poke at him a bit. “It’s just a bedroom view, ‘s nothing, really.”
“Of course, I wanted you to have the garden view,” Aziraphale said, wandering over and sitting in his squat little chair. “So I thought I’d take this room for myself.” He smiled wanly over at Crowley. “We both must have set our things up in this room in the very same instant. What a pickle.”
“Gosh,” said Crowley. It really was a pretty thoughtful gesture, the idea that Aziraphale wanted him to have a nicer view.
“We shall have to do something about it, of course,” Aziraphale said. “The wardrobes alone have merged in the most appalling way.” He clucked his tongue at them and there were two wardrobes sitting next to each other, rather than one particularly confused conglomerate.
“Well, you should have the garden view, of course,” Crowley said quickly. A sense memory of the warmth of Aziraphale pressed to him, and the abrupt loss of that warmth, filtered through his mind. He stuffed down such unhelpful thoughts.
“But my dear,” Aziraphale said. “I couldn’t think of depriving you. No, you must have the garden view.”
They stared at each other, squared off. They were both on the stubborn side. Crowley usually won out. Which meant separating their bedrooms and sending Aziraphale’s belongings across the hall. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to win this time, if that was what was on the table.
“We-ell,” he started, stretching the word unreasonably as he tried to sort out where he was going with this. “I did hope you’d want to see the garden. I had some ideas just for you, you know.”
Aziraphale softened a bit. “That’s ever so thoughtful of you. You know I love to admire your work.” Then he frowned. “But Crowley, I must insist!”
“Wasn’t quite through,” Crowley said, and his heart was pounding in his chest. “Because, you know, angel, how nice it is when you get your way.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows wrinkled in slight confusion. “Which is why you ought to have the nice view, yes.”
“Or…” Crowley trailed off. His throat felt so tight he could hardly get the words out. It took a minute to unstick it.
“Or…?” Aziraphale prompted. His eyebrows were raised now, and he had that dear soft “dawning comprehension” look that Crowley liked so much.
“Well, I’m thinking,” Crowley said. “If I want you to have the room overlooking the garden. And if you want me to have it. Suppose.” He swallowed and his throat clicked a little. “Suppose we both did.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed in what looked like utter delight. “Suppose we did. That would certainly solve that problem.” He peered at Crowley. “That is, if it is something you wanted?”
Crowley nodded, with his lips pressed together. He didn’t think he had any more words for the moment. He’d done a lot.
“We’ve shared a room before, of course,” Aziraphale said, really taking to the idea. “It will be just like old times’ sake. But for our time together, now.” He raised a hand to snap his fingers, but hesitated. “Of course, we could share a room without sharing a bed, you know. Two twins, or what have you. Is that still in fashion? I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”
“Can do whatever you want, angel,” Crowley told him. If Aziraphale didn’t want to share his bed anymore, that would be fine. He would get over it. The sense memory of being wrapped in Aziraphale’s arms in the middle of the night felt like it was taking over his brain. He wouldn’t get over it.
“I know it’s desperately important to you to keep up with the times,” Aziraphale said.
“Sleeping together,” blurted Crowley, interrupting whatever barely logical monologue had been on its way. “That’s what people do. Anymore. One bed. Nobody’s in the little beds. Sleeping together. Done thing.”
Before he could worry that he had unfairly pressured Aziraphale, Aziraphale’s face had been covered with one of his bright beaming grins.
“How perfectly lovely,” Aziraphale said. “That’s settled, then. We shall share the room overlooking the garden. May I?”
Crowley could hardly believe this turn of affairs. He nodded, quickly.
“Stand up, then.” When Crowley did as he was asked, Aziraphale stood up himself, snapped, and the bedroom sorted itself out across the hall. “Come along then, dear. Let’s go to bed.”
Crowley thought he could hear a faint ringing noise between his ears. Let’s go to bed. He hadn’t heard those words from Aziraphale in centuries. And here they were, walking to a shared bed.
A shared bed had not meant much, back in those days. Not like now. Now sharing a bed meant something; it wasn’t just what you did for warmth and practicality.
A shared bed in a shared bedroom was something for married people, these days. Or for people who may as well have been married, in any case.
It seemed as though Aziraphale did not know that? As though the implications of Crowley’s half-baked, impromptu plot had completely passed him by?
“Darling,” Aziraphale said. He was suddenly right in front of Crowley. Crowley looked at him, feeling like a startled cat.
Aziraphale reached a hand out and laid it on Crowley’s upper arm. “Please, will you come to bed? Unless doing so would make you unhappy?”
He shook his head. “Not unhappy. Very happy, me. This works out.” He started walking. Aziraphale’s hand dropped to his mid-back and stayed there as he ushered Crowley across the hall. Crowley felt it was a mark of accomplishment that he hadn’t started whistling like a teakettle, his nerves were so high. Aziraphale never touched him this much. They hadn’t touched really in centuries. Nobody touched anymore. Had kept up with the times, they had. But here they were.
The bedroom, set to rights on purpose this time, still featured a mix of their desired aesthetics, but in a more intentional way. Crowley noticed that tartan still seemed predominant. He wasn’t too nervous to note to himself that he might need to do a spot of redecorating, just to get the proportions right. But it was good enough for now.
“Let’s get into our pyjamas and then we’ll settle in for our first night in our home,” Aziraphale said, his voice all but caressing each word. He held Crowley’s eyes for a significant moment before scurrying off to his wardrobe to collect his night clothes.
Crowley’s back felt cold where Aziraphale’s hand had rested when he showed him across the hall.
Aziraphale undressed, and Crowley stared, rudely. Aziraphale was beautiful. His neck was beautiful, and it was a lot more visible now that his bowtie was gone and his collar was unbuttoned. His forearms and oh for someone or other’s sake his elbows were nice to look at, somehow? Those were on display too. Crowley hadn’t got to see his elbows when they’d shared a bed centuries ago. Those undershirts went down to the wrist. Not modern undershirts. Full frontal elbow.
Aziraphale undid his braces and let his trousers fall to the floor and Crowley squawked, there was no other word for it.
“Oh dear – are you quite alright?” Aziraphale asked, turning around to look at Crowley in just his undershirt and boxers and hanging his trousers up carefully.
“Married!” Crowley said, keeping his eyes on Aziraphale’s, away from his boxers, or his stomach, or his chest hair (!!), or his elbows.
“Sorry?” Aziraphale asked, looking troubled.
“You know that, right?” Crowley asked.
Aziraphale looked more troubled. “I know…what, exactly?”
“Married people buy a charming little cottage together,” Crowley said. Well done, Crowley.
“Well,” said Aziraphale, squirming a little. He just kept standing there in his boxers, as if he had no qualms being so underdressed. Maybe he wanted to kill Crowley and keep the bedroom to himself. “Often, yes. But friends buy houses together, sometimes.”
“Married people sleep in the same bed. In the same room. In the charming little cottage they bought together.”
Aziraphale’s face was unreadable. “I suppose…”
“Friends might buy a house together but I don't think they do that. Sleep in the same bed. Usually.”
Aziraphale frowned. “Some friends do, you know. They’ve got a name for it these days and all, queer something. Those were the nice girls who rented the flat next door. They did. Friends and all and commitment and – and in only the one bedroom. They were lovely people, you remember them, surely. So. It’s fine. It’s normal.”
“Sure it’s normal,” Crowley said. “It’s very, very normal. Beautiful. Very beautiful. Absolutely. The only thing is. Are we that? We can be that. We can. I just. Need to know?”
Aziraphale turned away from Crowley, but not before Crowley noticed the blush on his cheeks. He pulled on his pyjama trousers. “I don’t see why not,” he said. Crowley felt his stomach drop. If he was being terribly honest, that was not exactly what he had been hoping for. But it was Aziraphale. He would accept, whole heartedly and very gladly, whatever the angel would give him. It was already so much. He had perhaps been greedy, first with the house, and then pushing for the shared bed. Platonic life partners was already fulfilling. It was enough.
Aziraphale had not finished, though. “Of course we’re that. You’re important to me. I’m important to you.” He harrumphed – harrumphed! – and started fastening the buttons on his pyjama shirt, his once-again clothed elbows flapping about aggressively. “We can sleep in the same bed if we jolly well like to.”
This was characteristic of an Aziraphale Bluster. He never Blustered unless he was covering something up.
“Right,” Crowley said, a foolish hope coming over him and making him speak more freely than he had hitherto. “Right, we can do that, and it can be because we’re important to each other, right, but we can be important to each other because we’re very best friends and that’s all and that’s enough, or it could be different, we can be important to each other because we’re married.”
Aziraphale had not yet turned around. Crowley wished he would. He hoped he hadn’t miscalculated.
“Married people…” Aziraphale trailed off. “Married people often love each other. Romantically.”
“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “They do.”
“Can you…do that?” Aziraphale’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Yeah,” Crowley whispered back. “I can. …what about you?”
“I can,” said Aziraphale, so quietly Crowley could hardly hear. “And…do you?”
“Please could you turn around?” Crowley asked him. He had rather not say it to Aziraphale’s pyjama clad back.
Aziraphale turned around.
“I do,” Crowley said, feeling terrified and extremely brave all at once.
“I do too,” Aziraphale said back.
They stared at one another.
“May I kiss you?” Aziraphale asked.
“Yeah,” said Crowley.
They kissed and it was extremely satisfying. It was also a little awkward, as neither of them had done such a thing before, and it took some negotiating of nose positions, breathing, and so forth. But they sorted it out enough and were overcome by the sensations that they ended up in their bed, pressed up against each other with their clothes discarded all around, until things reached a natural peak, as it were.
Afterwards, the room felt incandescent, lit only by a very faint bedside lamp, bathed in a soft yellow glow. They laid in bed together, naked under the sheets together for the very first time, curled in facing each other. Aziraphale’s face enchanted Crowley, all soft and still with a little sweat dotting his hairline and with fine eyelashes framing his eyes which were smiling sweetly at Crowley.
“I love you,” Aziraphale whispered.
“I love you,” Crowley whispered back. It felt like maybe Crowley was dreaming, but he was almost certain he wasn’t. He committed it to memory, one way or the other.
“Do you know what,” Crowley said, a few moments of gazing and sweetness later.
“What, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.
“I think,” Crowley said, slowly and softly. “I am feeling sort of cold.”
Aziraphale grinned. “Perhaps we had better be pragmatic about that,” he said. “Turn around, if you’d be so kind.”
Crowley would. He was known for being kind, after all.
Aziraphale snapped the light off, and they were once again enclosed in darkness, just the two of them in bed together, but this time in their bed. Aziraphale’s arm closed over Crowley’s chest. Their bodies tucked together, skin pressed against skin. Crowley felt warm all over.
Aziraphale pressed a kiss to the back of Crowley’s ear, and Crowley shivered and gripped the arm Aziraphale had wrapped around him.
“Goodnight, my dear,” he said, pulling Crowley close.
“Goodnight, angel.”
All wrapped up in one another, they fell asleep.
AAAAAAAAAAAH <3 <3 <3
Date: 2022-12-14 11:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-15 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-15 05:29 am (UTC)well done. such sweetness.
Wonderful
Date: 2022-12-15 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-17 05:51 am (UTC)“But he’d sought out Aziraphale regardless.” I love this aspect of love. The pain and anger and grief in the first scene, but the love underlying it on even still, is written so well! And the imagery, “The weak light played over Aziraphale’s face and he looked very beautiful for one heart-clenching second.” <3
““Oh I’m sure he has, and almost certainly for Heaven’s sake,” Crowley said bitterly.” HA
Oh my god ‘obtusely tender’ is EXACTLY the right description for Aziraphale!
In the 1500s, Aziraphale just completely phasing out of existence when Crowley asks if they can share a bed. Excellent. Relatable. And their little pathetic conversation when they want to hold each other but can’t find a reason why. UGH so good.
“Crowley had barely recovered from the Aziraphalean storm which had blown up unexpectedly and overswept him.” Love this phrase
Omg are they snapping all their things into place a la Mary Poppins!?
They both tried to give each other the garden view DX
“Crowley felt it was a mark of accomplishment that he hadn’t started whistling like a teakettle, his nerves were so high” Fantastic
““Married people buy a charming little cottage together,” Crowley said. Well done, Crowley.” WELL DONE, CROWLEY!
“Maybe he wanted to kill Crowley and keep the bedroom to himself.” Lmao
“He was known for being kind, after all.” frick
I don’t usually seek out ‘there was only one bed’ fics because they seem a bit implausible, BUT the historical aspect of this makes it work so well!
All the little things they do, the ways they move when they’re half asleep and don’t stop themselves, it’s all written well and it’s adorable :)
I can’t wait for you to post this on ao3 (if you do, I hope so!) so I can bookmark it, this was wonderful :)