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crowitched!
Dec. 15th, 2008 08:01 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle ~ Something Sorely Missed
For ~ Crowitched
By ~b_c_draygon
Rating ~ PG
Pairing ~ Crowley/Aziraphale
Summary ~ Towards the end of the 19th Century, Aziraphale decides to visit Crowley and unwittingly disturbs his century of sleep...
Prompt ~ “Theological references! History settings! … Also please a get-together! Those are positively the best kind of fics out there. Some prompts: Parisean Café at the Post-Impressionists Era (I know Crowley said he slept though most of this century but this can still be done, right?)”
Notes ~ Thanks, Mods! The Varro mentioned near the end is the Roman 1st Century BC writer Varro Reatinus; the reference is to his De Re Rustica.
Crowley frowned as he surfaced unwillingly from the muggy pit of sleep. Someone was hammering on his door, insistently enough to wake him. Without opening his eyes, he felt around for a pillow; when he found one, he rolled over onto his side, curling into a ball and clamping the pillow firmly over his head to block out the interruption.
The knocking eventually subsided. Gingerly, Crowley risked removing the pillow from his head; the last think he wanted was to suffocate under his own bedding. Everything was silent. The demon relaxed, rolling onto his back and shoving the spare pillow away as he stretched languidly, eyes still closed. He had just made himself properly comfortable again when a mildly concerned voice called, “Crowley? Crowley, are you in there?”
Crowley groaned. He should have known. He opened his bleary eyes and sighed, then rolled groggily off the bed and onto his feet, taking the white cotton top sheet with him. He left the thicker, more cumbersome blanket where it had been kicked into a tangled lump at the foot of the bed.
The floor was icy beneath Crowley’s bare feet, and even with the sheet wrapped around him his skin prickled with cold. He stumbled across his darkened bedroom, somehow managing not to bruise his shins on the furniture, and wandered out into the hall. The sunlight streaming through the windows immediately assaulted his eyes and he hissed, narrowing them to slits. Blinking and clutching his sheet more closely about him, Crowley shuffled across to the front door.
Aziraphale was fidgeting on the doorstep. When Crowley pulled open the door, he looked up sharply, and then, as he took in Crowley’s appearance, his eyes widened in surprise. Crowley watched Aziraphale’s face as his manners fought with his evidently offended sense of propriety for control of his expression. His manners eventually won, and he forced an uncertain smile.
“Hello, Crowley,” he said cautiously. Crowley grunted at him, hitching a swathe of cloth up to cover his hip; he still wasn’t awake enough to be polite. Aziraphale’s smile faltered. “Am I interrupting?”
“Was asleep,” Crowley told him drowsily, raising a hand to run his fingers through his mussed hair. He was mildly surprised to find it longer than he remembered. After a moment, a thought surfaced in his half-awake mind and he frowned. “You woke me up!”
“Um.” Aziraphale shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable. “Well, my dear, it is almost noon...”
Crowley shrugged and turned back into the apartment, waving at the angel to follow him inside. He heard the door close behind him as he shuffled to the living room door; it was ajar, and through the gap he could see that the room was flooded with light. He glanced behind him to check that Aziraphale had come in, and once he was assured pushed open the door and wandered across to the dusty settee.
“What do you want, anyway?” he grumbled as he flopped onto it, dragging the bedsheet up onto the seat so that he could drape it more comfortably around his body. He was well aware that he looked grumpy and not-quite-awake, and was revealing more skin than Aziraphale was comfortable with, but at the moment he didn’t care. The angel had been determined to wake him up, and now he would have to suffer the consequences.
The angel in question was currently hovering in the doorway, looking somewhat anxious. This was probably due to the thick film of dust that covered the entire apartment. Crowley waved a hand at one of the armchairs in a silent invitation to sit down, and tried to stifle a yawn. Aziraphale hesitated, his eyes still flickering uncertainly into the dark corners of the room, but then he took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, walking over to the chair and perching on the very edge of the seat.
“When was the last time you... tidied?” he asked, casting a disapproving eye over the coffee table and probably resisting the urge to swipe a finger through its layer of dust just to see how bad the situation really was. Crowley saw him wince at the cobwebs that currently draped the ceiling and the dust-motes dancing in the shafts of sunlight. He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t currently covered in swathes of cloth.
“I told you,” Crowley interrupted, irritable but composed. “I’ve been asleep.”
“How long for, for things to get into this state?” the angel squawked, his delicate sensibilities evidently offended once again. Twice in as many minutes; that had to be a track record, even for Crowley. Oh, well, he thought; might as well add insult to injury.
“What year is it?”
“Oh, now, really, Crowley –”
“Don’t ‘oh, now, really’ me, angel,” Crowley yawned. He could not work up the ire to snap, although Aziraphale’s apparent inability to grasp what he had already told him was starting to grate on his nerves. “Yes, I really have been asleep for years. I could tell you exactly how many, but I’m not certain what decade this is, let alone what year.”
“1888,” Aziraphale replied coolly. “Have you been holed up in here since you left London?”
“No,” Crowley told him calmly; the best way to irritate Aziraphale, he had found, was by not reacting when he decided to be annoyingly righteous at him. Nothing got up an angel’s nose more than complete indifference to heavily applied righteousness, and Aziraphale was no exception. “Only this century. And besides, I got up for a while in ’32.”
“Did you do anything constructive?”
“Yes!” the demon informed him indignantly. Going to the bathroom was constructive, Crowley told himself. The angel did not look convinced, but then, they had radically different ideas of exactly what counted as constructive. He sniffed disdainfully and decided not to elaborate. Instead, he regarded Aziraphale in what he hoped was a haughty and aloof manner. “Anyway. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“Well, I thought you’d been rather quiet lately,” Aziraphale said, in a way that told Crowley that he still disapproved of sleeping for more than twelve hours straight, let alone for fifty-six years, “So I assumed you must be up to something. I thought I ought to, you know, thwart some of your demonic wiles before they got completely out of control and you turned Paris into a modern-day Gomorrah –”
“I’ve told you before, angel, Sodom and Gomorrah were nothing to do with me,” Crowley said firmly, interrupting Aziraphale’s flow. “I was in Greece, trying to keep my head down and not get noticed.”
The angel did not bother to grace his interruption with an answer. They had been through the argument before, and probably would again. Aziraphale just seemed unable to deal with the concept that there were, in fact, demons other than Crowley operating on the Earth, and that these other demons were far more likely candidates for spreading debauchery and merriment through the Cities on the Plain. At the time, Crowley had been far too busy sunning himself on a rock somewhere in the Mediterranean, enjoying the fact that causing Original Sin had got the Powers Down Below off his back for a couple of millennia.
Aziraphale folded his arms and regarded Crowley in a disapproving manner. “Anyway. Seems like I needn’t have bothered coming.”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry for giving you such an easy ride this past century,” Crowley replied, sarcasm dripping from every word. When this got no discernable reaction from the angel, he sighed and squirmed uncomfortably under his sheet. “Look. I thought you’d appreciate the chance to get in a few good deeds without me messing them up for you!”
“Yes, but you didn’t have to run off!” Aziraphale blurted, looking up at Crowley for the first time since he had walking in. “You just left, all of a sudden! The last I heard, you were hobnobbing with Louis XVI and the cream of France’s rich noblemen! And then I didn’t hear anything for years, and suddenly everyone was talking about the Revolution and I thought that maybe you had a meeting with Madame Guillotine because – you never so much as wrote, Crowley!”
The angel stopped short, suddenly realising what he had just said. He was breathing a little too quickly, and looked fairly surprised at himself. It was enough to spread a slow grin across Crowley’s face.
“Were you worried about me, angel?”
“Of course not,” Aziraphale blustered, shifting around on the edge of his seat as if trying to make himself more comfortable while touching as little of the dusty fabric as possible. When Crowley raised his eyebrows the angel’s resolve appeared to crack a little. “Well. Maybe a little, but only in a professional capacity, you understand – I didn’t want to go upsetting the balance of Good and Evil, if you’d managed to get your head taken off and were having trouble getting a new corporeal form...”
He trailed off, apparently noticing Crowley’s hastily suppressed smirk.
“I’m surprised you didn’t come over sooner, if you were that concerned,” the demon said mildly, not convinced by Aziraphale’s blabbering. The angel glowered at him. Unperturbed, Crowley continued to smile in a self-satisfied manner and snuggled back into the couch. He wasn’t that surprised that Aziraphale worried about him. The angel was, by his own admission, soft; this was just another affirmation of something Crowley already knew. However, he was quite surprised by the warm glow kindled in his chest by this new evidence that Aziraphale cared.
“I’m actually surprised that you weren’t involved in some of the things that have been going on recently,” Aziraphale said coldly, opening up a new avenue of conversation while still managing to pile disdain on the old one. “I mean, I know wars aren’t really your thing, but you are rather good at stirring people up...”
“You are not pinning a Revolution on me,” Crowley told him firmly. Although he welcomed the change of subject, he wasn’t about to let Aziraphale blame him for this. If he crumbled, it would be Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. “I mean, yes, I was here – and yes, some of our people might have been involved – but I personally wasn’t.”
“Keeping your head down and trying not to be noticed again?” Aziraphale asked, parroting the demon’s earlier words. The tone he adopted was mildly sarcastic, but was smiling.
“Indeed,” Crowley muttered, raising a hand to run his fingers through his dishevelled hair. “It was a bloody nuisance; I just get used to the luxurious lifestyle when – bam! – the peasant classes start chopping people’s heads off. What sort of way to behave is that, anyway?”
Aziraphale carried on smiling at him, despite his grumbling. Crowley wriggled further under his sheet, scowling. The Revolution was partly the reason why he had decided to sleep through the Nineteenth Century. If the world was willing to allow such violent and needless bloodshed, he wanted no part in it. Yes, he was a demon, and hypothetically in favour of anarchy and the rising up of the masses against their oppressors, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed having to spend three months as a peasant until the heat was off and he could sneak back into his apartments without fear of being beheaded.
He shuddered despite himself, not sure if it was just the chill in the air that had caused the involuntary movement. He wished momentarily that he’d dragged more of his bedcovers with him when he went to answer the door.
“Cold, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, his smile still hovering around his lips but a small frown appearing between his brows. Crowley shrugged and glanced out of the window. Through the glass, he could see a bright, brittle blue; it was the kind of sky Crowley recognised as distinctly autumnal. He licked his lips and turned to Aziraphale.
“I know this café,” he said. The angel blinked at him, and Crowley suddenly realised how much of a non-sequitur his words had been. He cleared his throat. “Or, I did. It might have closed, or changed hands, or – well. There are other cafes.”
“Do you want to go out?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley rolled his eyes; as if it wasn’t obvious. Aziraphale gave him a concerned sort of look. “It’s just that going out will require clothes.”
“I’m well aware of that, angel,” Crowley replied tartly. He stood up and threw his sheet back onto the sofa with a flourish. Aziraphale quickly averted his eyes, blood rushing to colour his cheeks. Crowley smirked, and padded across to the windows to peer down into the street at the citizens going about their business.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale said suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“Deciding what to wear,” the demon replied simply, contemplating opening the window to get a better look at what style of clothing was in this season. Dark, subdued shades were prevalent, as were stark, masculine cuts. Crowley miracled himself a rather flashy black suit and a crisp white shirt, then added dark grey pinstripes as an afterthought. He looked critically down at himself.
“Why can’t you just wear what you already have?” Aziraphale asked.
“Because, unlike you, I have a sense of style,” Crowley replied bluntly, walking across to stand in front of him and straightening his tie. “I’d ask you what you think, but you’re hopeless at this sort of thing.”
Aziraphale, who had placed a hand over his eyes for the sake of propriety, peered out from between his fingers as if expecting Crowley to still be naked just to spite him. Once reassured that the demon was properly dressed, he adopted a hurt expression.
“Really, my dear, there’s no need to be like that,” he said reproachfully. Crowley tried not to shift uncomfortably under his gaze. After a moment, the angel stood up with a sigh and gestured towards the door. “Shall we go, then?”
Crowley nodded and wordlessly headed for the door.
Aziraphale had insisted on sitting at one of the cast-iron tables on the pavement to enjoy the October sunshine; Crowley had made the light but bitterly cold wind die down around their table. The angel had given him a Look, but hadn’t actually reproved him for it. Crowley very much doubted that he would, now; they were well into their fourth bottle of wine, and even five courses would have trouble soaking up that much alcohol.
“So, angel,” Crowley drawled, pouring them each another generous glass of the sweet dessert wine the waiter had brought over with their puddings. “What d’you think?”
Aziraphale looked down at the remains of his ice-cream, which was melting slowly on one side of his almost empty plate, and set down his spoon. He hiccoughed surreptitiously into his handkerchief, on the pretext of wiping his mouth. “Are there always five courses?”
“Prob’ly,” Crowley replied, pushing the last strawberry from his sherry trifle around the inside of the glass bowl until he worked up the appetite to eat it.
“Are they always so large?” the angel asked uncertainly.
“What’re you asking me for? I’ve been asleep for the past fifty years, remember?” Crowley reminded him, finally scooping the strawberry onto his spoon and eating it with relish. When he received no immediate answer, he looked up and felt concern settle in his chest. The angel looked pale and slightly nauseous.
He was fairly sure that Aziraphale wouldn’t actually throw up – especially not in public. It was the sort of behaviour he disapproved of, and for once Crowley found himself glad of the angel’s fusty sensibilities. However, if he was sick, he would probably blame it on Crowley for bringing him here in the first place. That, Crowley reflected, would be bloody typical.
The demon quickly decided that he was neither drunk nor sober enough to deal with Aziraphale being ill all over the place. He also didn’t particularly want to be sober while Aziraphale was stinking drunk, so he downed the rest of his glass of wine in one go then refilled it somewhat haphazardly.
Once he had returned the bottle to the table, he risked another glance at Aziraphale; the angel was still staring down at his plate with his mouth hanging slightly open. Crowley waved a waiter over, and the man obediently took empty dishes away without passing comment. Without a reminder of all the food he had eaten, Aziraphale’s condition seemed to improve slightly.
“Didn’t have to eat everything,” Crowley said, in a manner that was probably unnecessarily brusque. It was true, though; Aziraphale presumably knew his limits, and shouldn’t have pushed them.
“But it was good!” the angel protested, slurring slightly. He took a delicate sip of his wine. “You were right, my dear – they really have perf– perfo– perfected the art of cooking, here.”
Crowley smirked, leaning back in his chair. He couldn’t resist the chance to boast. “’S all thanks to yours truly – I made a few suggestions before I went to sssssleep.”
This was bad. They were still only four bottles in – and not even on an empty stomach – and already he was starting to hiss. Evidently he had lost some of his tolerance for alcohol. Then again, Aziraphale had just proved that his mouth wasn’t working properly, either, so that probably meant that they were even.
“What d’you mean, m’dear?” Aziraphale asked blearily.
“Told ‘em, didn’t I?” Crowley explained, waving the hand holding his wineglass and miraculously not tossing a significant amount of wine over a passing old lady. “All these ssschefs, suddenly out of work – and they’d have to be good, working for noblesss – I told ‘em. Sssomebody could make good …”
A deep frown wrinkled Aziraphale’s forehead as he took a large gulp of wine. “That’s not part- parti– particularlerly demonic behay– behaver–” The angel stopped, glared meaningfully at his wineglass as the source of all his problems, took a deep breath and tried again. “That’s not very demonic. Almost a public service! Not very good for your whatsit. Reputation.”
“Ah, but – but! That’s the beauty of it! More restaurantssss, better food – all encourages masssses of gluttony all over the place!” Crowley exclaimed loudly. A few of their fellow diners twisted in their seats to glare across at them disapprovingly. Crowley glowered back over Aziraphale’s shoulder until they turned around again. Then he placed his glass down with almost comic caution and waved both hands at Aziraphale, gesturing for him to come closer even as he leant across the table. The angel leant forwards to hear Crowley’s fervent whisper. “See, that’s where this is going. There’s too many people fr’it to be perssss’nal any more. You’ve got to think of – of – of spreading your effort.”
“Spreading my effort?” Aziraphale said slowly. He didn’t appear to be convinced.
“Mm!” Crowley told him through a mouthful of wine. He swallowed, and then continued, “See, tempting one soul at once – that’sss a lot of time. Lot of time. Saving one, too. And you’ve only got the one, at the end of it.”
“So, there’s no point to it?” Aziraphale asked, his frown deepening as his mind tried to grasp the concept.
“Nonononono!” Crowley exclaimed, waving his hands and knocking the wine bottle over the edge of the table. Instead of crashing to the floor and spraying wine over the next table, it rocked to a halt at eighty degrees then slowly righted itself, under the angel’s very concentrated gaze.
“Careful,” he said, grabbing the bottle and moving it closer to the middle of the table. He let his fingers almost slide off the neck, then changed his mind and lifted it again so that he could fill up his glass.
“Careful yourself,” Crowley replied, grabbing Aziraphale’s wrist and moving his arm a couple of inches to the right before he poured wine all over the table. “Anyway. There is a point. Point is. The point is...”
Crowley trailed off, his train of thought derailed by the angel’s interruption. Aziraphale blinked at him, then looked down at his wrist. Crowley followed his gaze, and found that – even though the angel had put down the bottle – his fingers were still curled around Aziraphale’s arm. He looked up.
“Sorry,” he said. He couldn’t seem to convey the idea of letting go to his hand. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to. It had been literally years since he had touched someone else and even though he had been unconscious for most of it, his body evidently craved physical contact.
Aziraphale shook his head mutely, dragging his eyes up from where Crowley’s hand lay against his own on the tablecloth. There was a long pause when their eyes met, then finally Crowley’s fingers uncurled from the angel’s wrist. Before he could withdraw them, Aziraphale’s other hand had clamped down over his knuckles, keeping his hand in place. Crowley stared into Aziraphale’s indefinable expression for a long moment.
“What was I talking about?” Crowley croaked, when it became clear that Aziraphale wasn’t for releasing him any time soon.
“Spreading our effort,” the angel replied.
“Oh. Yes! See, just tempting –”
“– or saving –”
“– one soul at a time, that’ssss – well, it’s bloody stupid, this day and age,” Crowley explained, going slowly so that Aziraphale would understand. “Too many of the buggers. Got to do a little bit to lots of different ones all at once. D’y’see?”
“Not really,” Aziraphale replied apologetically. Crowley narrowed his eyes at him.
“It’s like,” he started. Then his admittedly rather fuzzy brain caught up with his mouth, and realised that he was in no state to come up with an adequate metaphor. He thought for a minute, squinting into the air over Aziraphale’s shoulder in the hope that inspiration would strike.
“Shall we go back to your apartment?” Aziraphale asked after a while, patting the back of Crowley’s hand and smiling sympathetically. Crowley snatched the bottle of wine from the table and filled up his glass with what was left.
“When I’ve finished my drink,” he said solemnly, raising his glass. Aziraphale’s palm finally slid off Crowley’s hand so that he could pick up his drink; Crowley looked down at his hand, still resting over the angel’s, and smiled suddenly as he looked up again. Their glasses chinked as they met.
Crowley raided the drinks cabinet, and eventually emerged with a whoop of triumph, a very old and very cobwebby bottle clutched in his right hand. He staggered unsteadily over to the sofa and dropped onto it beside Aziraphale. He looked at the angel expectantly. “Glasses?”
“’M not sure that’s a good idea,” Aziraphale said uncertainly, staring at the bottle as if it might bite him. They had both sobered up slightly during their undignified stagger back to the apartment, mostly thanks to the bracing wind that had started whistling through Paris’ streets over the course of their meal. Crowley rolled his eyes and placed the bottle down on the coffee table.
“S’ppose you’d rather have tea,” he said bitterly. “Been ssssaving this and everything.”
Aziraphale blinked at him, surprised. “To share with me?”
The demon shrugged, slumping against the padded backrest and lifting first one heel and then the other up to rest on the edge of the coffee table, ankles crossed. He almost replied that he had no one else to share it with, but just before the words tumbled out of his mouth, he realised that Aziraphale might take them the wrong way. He paused, mouth hanging open, and tried to shift his brain into gear.
“Don’t know anyone else who deserves the last of my Falernian,” he said eventually.
That, at last, sparked some interest. Aziraphale looked up, eyebrows raised. “That’s not –”
“Yes,” Crowley told him, “It is. Fourth century. Top quality – matured for twenty yearsss, even before I got hold of it.”
“How on earth did you keep it?” Aziraphale asked, picking up the bottle reverentially and tilting it to examine the liquid inside. It only filled half the bottle, but considering that the wine had been made over fifteen-hundred years ago it was an impressive amount.
“With great difficulty,” Crowley grumbled. The effort was worth it, though. In its day, Falernian had been a wine for connoisseurs; it was the expensive sort of wine served at the dinner parties of old-money senators and nouveau riche freedmen alike in an effort to impress their guests with their wealth and good taste. More importantly, it actually deserved its status as the most renowned of all Roman wines. Crowley had filched a couple of large, freshly delivered amphorae from an army store-room sometime around the year 300; he still didn’t regret it.
He surged forwards until he was perched on the edge of his seat, and waved a cursory hand at the table. Immediately, two bulbous wineglasses appeared on the table. As an afterthought, he added a pitcher of water; Falernian, like all Roman wines, was designed to be watered down, after all. Besides, drinking wine without water had been a social faux-pas back in the day. Not that that had ever stopped Crowley. He had not, however, ever done so in front of Aziraphale and something told him that the angel would still disapprove if he tried it now.
Aziraphale, suddenly more enthusiastic, uncorked the bottle and sloshed a generous amount into the bottom of each glass before reaching for the jug. While he was occupied with watering down his own wine, Crowley helped himself to another splash of the amber liquid.
Wordlessly, Aziraphale raised the glass and saluted Crowley with it while the demon added water to his wine. He watched almost nervously as the angel first inhaled the scent of the vintage, then took a delicate sip. When Aziraphale sighed contentedly and wrapped both hands around his glass, Crowley grinned and brought his own drink to his lips.
The wine was thick even though it had been watered down and sweet despite the alcoholic kick. Crowley hummed appreciatively; Varro was right, Falernian only improved with age. He looked regretfully at the bottle, which was now almost totally empty. He could always miracle himself another, but it wouldn’t be the same; nothing created out of thin air had the same quality as something created by human hands.
“This is good,” Aziraphale told him, nudging him gently with his elbow. Crowley looked up and smiled, glad to be distracted from the loss of his antique wine. The angel reached out and patted his knee in a companionable manner. “’S very kind of you to share it.”
Crowley shrugged, and tried not to pay attention to the fact that the angel’s palm was resting on his knee. “No fun in drinking the lassst of it on my own.”
Aziraphale hummed in agreement and took another, larger mouthful of wine. “Almost a shame to drink it, really. Since there’s no more.”
“It’s for drinking, angel,” Crowley pointed out, although inwardly he agreed. Aziraphale had no answer to that, and so they savoured their wine in amicable silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Crowley slumped back into the sofa, careful not to spill any of his drink, and stared up at the ceiling in silence. It was growing dark outside, and the cobwebs were now hidden in shadow, but Crowley pretended to scrutinise them anyway while watching Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye.
The angel was getting through his glass much more quickly than Crowley, the demon noticed. By the time Aziraphale had emptied half his glass, Crowley’s was still mostly full. “You in a hurry, angel?”
Aziraphale frowned at him. “No?”
Crowley nodded at his wineglass. “You’re getting through that fasssst.”
“Am I?” the angel asked, looking down at his drink quizzically. After a moment, he frowned. “So I am.”
Crowley watched as Aziraphale lifted the glass to his lips and drained the other half in one go, his head tilting further and further back and exposing the long line of his throat. He swallowed hard, aware that he was staring openly but unable to stop. He wondered if the angel would smite him, if he –
Aziraphale leant forward and put his glass down on the table, then turned and looked at the demon. His face was flushed thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol, and he was giving Crowley a quietly affectionate look that brought all his thought-processes to a stuttering halt. The hand on Crowley’s knee slid up his leg as Aziraphale leant closer, and finally stopped half way up his thigh. An undignified, strangled noise escaped from Crowley’s throat.
“I missed you, my dear,” Aziraphale told him gently. Aside from the hand on Crowley’s thigh, he wasn’t that far into the demon’s personal space – Crowley could think of plenty of times when they had been even closer than this – but the proximity was making it hard for Crowley to breathe. He swallowed again, clutching his wineglass like a lifeline and wondering if this was something to do with the wine. Then Aziraphale brought his other hand up, his fingers ghosting along the line of Crowley’s jaw, and he felt his heart clench.
“Aziraphale,” he said raggedly. He wanted to put his wineglass down. He was incredibly aware of the heavy pressure of Aziraphale’s hand on his thigh, the angel’s knee touching his own, the heel of Aziraphale’s hand brushing lightly against his jugular as his fingers curled around the back of his neck. The angel was closer now, and Crowley couldn’t quite work out when he had moved. He suddenly wished that he was sober. He licked his lips and tried again. “Aziraphale –”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale smiled, and leant into a kiss.
The demon gasped into Aziraphale’s mouth as the angel’s lips met his own, and he froze. Then Aziraphale’s fingers tightened insistently against his neck, and Crowley’s eyes flickered closed. The kiss was soft and, for the time being at least, chaste; Crowley was surprised to find Aziraphale actually knew what he was doing. He twisted around slightly, and managed to slide an arm around the angel’s waist. Aziraphale smiled into the kiss, and dared to part his lips.
After that, there was no question of turning back. Crowley tugged on the angel’s waistcoat, and Aziraphale obediently slid closer across the cushions. A moment later, the hand that had been resting on Crowley’s leg lifted and tangled instead in his hair. Crowley hissed as his head was pulled to a different angle, and retaliated by doing something complicated with his tongue that made the angel tremble.
Eventually, Crowley pulled away. Aziraphale made an unhappy noise and tried to pull him back, but Crowley held him at bay. The angel opened his eyes and frowned at Crowley as he pushed his hands away then leant across to place his wineglass down on the coffee table. After a long moment, Crowley sighed. “You’re drunk.”
“So are you,” Aziraphale countered.
“But I’m going to sober up,” Crowley told him decisively. “And I really think you should, too.”
Aziraphale gave him a worried look, but dismissed the alcohol from his blood stream only a moment after Crowley did. He cleared his throat and looked away, clearly embarrassed – just as Crowley had suspected. He sighed again. “Angel –”
“I did miss you,” Aziraphale blurted. Crowley blinked at him. He watched the angel carefully as he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to finger-comb it back into place. There was something beneath the words, a current that suggested to Crowley why the angel had come all the way to France and spent the better part of a day searching him out and hammering on his door until he finally decided to open it. When Aziraphale turned to look at him, his gaze dropped involuntarily to the angel’s lips. “I missed you, and I – I was drunk, yes, but –”
“Shut up, Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured, glancing up at the angel’s eyes before focusing again on his mouth. He heard Aziraphale’s breath catch as he brought a hand up to tangle in his hair and grinned suddenly as he pulled the angel closer. Against his lips, he breathed, “I missed you, too.”
This time, it was Aziraphale’s turn to gasp into the kiss, but instead of freezing as Crowley had, he brought up both his hands and curled them into Crowley’s hair, tugging insistently. Crowley chuckled low in his throat, his tongue curling around Aziraphale’s as the angel squirmed closer. Once again he coiled an arm around the angel’s waist, holding him close, and wondered how it had taken them almost six thousand years to get here.
Finally, they broke apart, gasping for breath. Aziraphale looked at him, eyes wide with amazement. Crowley snorted a laugh, then untangled himself from the angel’s embrace and stood up. For a moment, Aziraphale’s expression cracked into one of abject misery, and something inside Crowley twisted painfully as he realised that the angel thought he was being cruel – leading him on, and then laughing at him for believing it.
He held out a hand and, hesitantly, Aziraphale took it, hope dawning once again behind his eyes. He tugged the angel to his feet and pulled him close, kissing him thoroughly once again. Then he bent, not letting go of the angel in case he got the wrong idea again, and grabbed his glass of Falernian from the coffee table, draining it.
“I think,” he said, glancing out of the windows at the darkened sky, “That it’s long past my bedtime. Care to join me, angel?”
Aziraphale stared blankly at him for a moment, then realisation dawned and a blush flooded his cheeks as he looked away, embarrassed. Crowley caught his hands as he tried to pull back, squeezing them reassuringly and trying to catch a glimpse of the angel’s face to read his expression. He heard Aziraphale take a deep breath, and a moment later the angel raised his head and pressed a light kiss to Crowley’s lips.
“Lead the way.”
Happy Holidays,crowitched, from your Secret Author!
For ~ Crowitched
By ~
b_c_draygonRating ~ PG
Pairing ~ Crowley/Aziraphale
Summary ~ Towards the end of the 19th Century, Aziraphale decides to visit Crowley and unwittingly disturbs his century of sleep...
Prompt ~ “Theological references! History settings! … Also please a get-together! Those are positively the best kind of fics out there. Some prompts: Parisean Café at the Post-Impressionists Era (I know Crowley said he slept though most of this century but this can still be done, right?)”
Notes ~ Thanks, Mods! The Varro mentioned near the end is the Roman 1st Century BC writer Varro Reatinus; the reference is to his De Re Rustica.
Crowley frowned as he surfaced unwillingly from the muggy pit of sleep. Someone was hammering on his door, insistently enough to wake him. Without opening his eyes, he felt around for a pillow; when he found one, he rolled over onto his side, curling into a ball and clamping the pillow firmly over his head to block out the interruption.
The knocking eventually subsided. Gingerly, Crowley risked removing the pillow from his head; the last think he wanted was to suffocate under his own bedding. Everything was silent. The demon relaxed, rolling onto his back and shoving the spare pillow away as he stretched languidly, eyes still closed. He had just made himself properly comfortable again when a mildly concerned voice called, “Crowley? Crowley, are you in there?”
Crowley groaned. He should have known. He opened his bleary eyes and sighed, then rolled groggily off the bed and onto his feet, taking the white cotton top sheet with him. He left the thicker, more cumbersome blanket where it had been kicked into a tangled lump at the foot of the bed.
The floor was icy beneath Crowley’s bare feet, and even with the sheet wrapped around him his skin prickled with cold. He stumbled across his darkened bedroom, somehow managing not to bruise his shins on the furniture, and wandered out into the hall. The sunlight streaming through the windows immediately assaulted his eyes and he hissed, narrowing them to slits. Blinking and clutching his sheet more closely about him, Crowley shuffled across to the front door.
Aziraphale was fidgeting on the doorstep. When Crowley pulled open the door, he looked up sharply, and then, as he took in Crowley’s appearance, his eyes widened in surprise. Crowley watched Aziraphale’s face as his manners fought with his evidently offended sense of propriety for control of his expression. His manners eventually won, and he forced an uncertain smile.
“Hello, Crowley,” he said cautiously. Crowley grunted at him, hitching a swathe of cloth up to cover his hip; he still wasn’t awake enough to be polite. Aziraphale’s smile faltered. “Am I interrupting?”
“Was asleep,” Crowley told him drowsily, raising a hand to run his fingers through his mussed hair. He was mildly surprised to find it longer than he remembered. After a moment, a thought surfaced in his half-awake mind and he frowned. “You woke me up!”
“Um.” Aziraphale shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable. “Well, my dear, it is almost noon...”
Crowley shrugged and turned back into the apartment, waving at the angel to follow him inside. He heard the door close behind him as he shuffled to the living room door; it was ajar, and through the gap he could see that the room was flooded with light. He glanced behind him to check that Aziraphale had come in, and once he was assured pushed open the door and wandered across to the dusty settee.
“What do you want, anyway?” he grumbled as he flopped onto it, dragging the bedsheet up onto the seat so that he could drape it more comfortably around his body. He was well aware that he looked grumpy and not-quite-awake, and was revealing more skin than Aziraphale was comfortable with, but at the moment he didn’t care. The angel had been determined to wake him up, and now he would have to suffer the consequences.
The angel in question was currently hovering in the doorway, looking somewhat anxious. This was probably due to the thick film of dust that covered the entire apartment. Crowley waved a hand at one of the armchairs in a silent invitation to sit down, and tried to stifle a yawn. Aziraphale hesitated, his eyes still flickering uncertainly into the dark corners of the room, but then he took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, walking over to the chair and perching on the very edge of the seat.
“When was the last time you... tidied?” he asked, casting a disapproving eye over the coffee table and probably resisting the urge to swipe a finger through its layer of dust just to see how bad the situation really was. Crowley saw him wince at the cobwebs that currently draped the ceiling and the dust-motes dancing in the shafts of sunlight. He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t currently covered in swathes of cloth.
“I told you,” Crowley interrupted, irritable but composed. “I’ve been asleep.”
“How long for, for things to get into this state?” the angel squawked, his delicate sensibilities evidently offended once again. Twice in as many minutes; that had to be a track record, even for Crowley. Oh, well, he thought; might as well add insult to injury.
“What year is it?”
“Oh, now, really, Crowley –”
“Don’t ‘oh, now, really’ me, angel,” Crowley yawned. He could not work up the ire to snap, although Aziraphale’s apparent inability to grasp what he had already told him was starting to grate on his nerves. “Yes, I really have been asleep for years. I could tell you exactly how many, but I’m not certain what decade this is, let alone what year.”
“1888,” Aziraphale replied coolly. “Have you been holed up in here since you left London?”
“No,” Crowley told him calmly; the best way to irritate Aziraphale, he had found, was by not reacting when he decided to be annoyingly righteous at him. Nothing got up an angel’s nose more than complete indifference to heavily applied righteousness, and Aziraphale was no exception. “Only this century. And besides, I got up for a while in ’32.”
“Did you do anything constructive?”
“Yes!” the demon informed him indignantly. Going to the bathroom was constructive, Crowley told himself. The angel did not look convinced, but then, they had radically different ideas of exactly what counted as constructive. He sniffed disdainfully and decided not to elaborate. Instead, he regarded Aziraphale in what he hoped was a haughty and aloof manner. “Anyway. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“Well, I thought you’d been rather quiet lately,” Aziraphale said, in a way that told Crowley that he still disapproved of sleeping for more than twelve hours straight, let alone for fifty-six years, “So I assumed you must be up to something. I thought I ought to, you know, thwart some of your demonic wiles before they got completely out of control and you turned Paris into a modern-day Gomorrah –”
“I’ve told you before, angel, Sodom and Gomorrah were nothing to do with me,” Crowley said firmly, interrupting Aziraphale’s flow. “I was in Greece, trying to keep my head down and not get noticed.”
The angel did not bother to grace his interruption with an answer. They had been through the argument before, and probably would again. Aziraphale just seemed unable to deal with the concept that there were, in fact, demons other than Crowley operating on the Earth, and that these other demons were far more likely candidates for spreading debauchery and merriment through the Cities on the Plain. At the time, Crowley had been far too busy sunning himself on a rock somewhere in the Mediterranean, enjoying the fact that causing Original Sin had got the Powers Down Below off his back for a couple of millennia.
Aziraphale folded his arms and regarded Crowley in a disapproving manner. “Anyway. Seems like I needn’t have bothered coming.”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry for giving you such an easy ride this past century,” Crowley replied, sarcasm dripping from every word. When this got no discernable reaction from the angel, he sighed and squirmed uncomfortably under his sheet. “Look. I thought you’d appreciate the chance to get in a few good deeds without me messing them up for you!”
“Yes, but you didn’t have to run off!” Aziraphale blurted, looking up at Crowley for the first time since he had walking in. “You just left, all of a sudden! The last I heard, you were hobnobbing with Louis XVI and the cream of France’s rich noblemen! And then I didn’t hear anything for years, and suddenly everyone was talking about the Revolution and I thought that maybe you had a meeting with Madame Guillotine because – you never so much as wrote, Crowley!”
The angel stopped short, suddenly realising what he had just said. He was breathing a little too quickly, and looked fairly surprised at himself. It was enough to spread a slow grin across Crowley’s face.
“Were you worried about me, angel?”
“Of course not,” Aziraphale blustered, shifting around on the edge of his seat as if trying to make himself more comfortable while touching as little of the dusty fabric as possible. When Crowley raised his eyebrows the angel’s resolve appeared to crack a little. “Well. Maybe a little, but only in a professional capacity, you understand – I didn’t want to go upsetting the balance of Good and Evil, if you’d managed to get your head taken off and were having trouble getting a new corporeal form...”
He trailed off, apparently noticing Crowley’s hastily suppressed smirk.
“I’m surprised you didn’t come over sooner, if you were that concerned,” the demon said mildly, not convinced by Aziraphale’s blabbering. The angel glowered at him. Unperturbed, Crowley continued to smile in a self-satisfied manner and snuggled back into the couch. He wasn’t that surprised that Aziraphale worried about him. The angel was, by his own admission, soft; this was just another affirmation of something Crowley already knew. However, he was quite surprised by the warm glow kindled in his chest by this new evidence that Aziraphale cared.
“I’m actually surprised that you weren’t involved in some of the things that have been going on recently,” Aziraphale said coldly, opening up a new avenue of conversation while still managing to pile disdain on the old one. “I mean, I know wars aren’t really your thing, but you are rather good at stirring people up...”
“You are not pinning a Revolution on me,” Crowley told him firmly. Although he welcomed the change of subject, he wasn’t about to let Aziraphale blame him for this. If he crumbled, it would be Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. “I mean, yes, I was here – and yes, some of our people might have been involved – but I personally wasn’t.”
“Keeping your head down and trying not to be noticed again?” Aziraphale asked, parroting the demon’s earlier words. The tone he adopted was mildly sarcastic, but was smiling.
“Indeed,” Crowley muttered, raising a hand to run his fingers through his dishevelled hair. “It was a bloody nuisance; I just get used to the luxurious lifestyle when – bam! – the peasant classes start chopping people’s heads off. What sort of way to behave is that, anyway?”
Aziraphale carried on smiling at him, despite his grumbling. Crowley wriggled further under his sheet, scowling. The Revolution was partly the reason why he had decided to sleep through the Nineteenth Century. If the world was willing to allow such violent and needless bloodshed, he wanted no part in it. Yes, he was a demon, and hypothetically in favour of anarchy and the rising up of the masses against their oppressors, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed having to spend three months as a peasant until the heat was off and he could sneak back into his apartments without fear of being beheaded.
He shuddered despite himself, not sure if it was just the chill in the air that had caused the involuntary movement. He wished momentarily that he’d dragged more of his bedcovers with him when he went to answer the door.
“Cold, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, his smile still hovering around his lips but a small frown appearing between his brows. Crowley shrugged and glanced out of the window. Through the glass, he could see a bright, brittle blue; it was the kind of sky Crowley recognised as distinctly autumnal. He licked his lips and turned to Aziraphale.
“I know this café,” he said. The angel blinked at him, and Crowley suddenly realised how much of a non-sequitur his words had been. He cleared his throat. “Or, I did. It might have closed, or changed hands, or – well. There are other cafes.”
“Do you want to go out?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley rolled his eyes; as if it wasn’t obvious. Aziraphale gave him a concerned sort of look. “It’s just that going out will require clothes.”
“I’m well aware of that, angel,” Crowley replied tartly. He stood up and threw his sheet back onto the sofa with a flourish. Aziraphale quickly averted his eyes, blood rushing to colour his cheeks. Crowley smirked, and padded across to the windows to peer down into the street at the citizens going about their business.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale said suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“Deciding what to wear,” the demon replied simply, contemplating opening the window to get a better look at what style of clothing was in this season. Dark, subdued shades were prevalent, as were stark, masculine cuts. Crowley miracled himself a rather flashy black suit and a crisp white shirt, then added dark grey pinstripes as an afterthought. He looked critically down at himself.
“Why can’t you just wear what you already have?” Aziraphale asked.
“Because, unlike you, I have a sense of style,” Crowley replied bluntly, walking across to stand in front of him and straightening his tie. “I’d ask you what you think, but you’re hopeless at this sort of thing.”
Aziraphale, who had placed a hand over his eyes for the sake of propriety, peered out from between his fingers as if expecting Crowley to still be naked just to spite him. Once reassured that the demon was properly dressed, he adopted a hurt expression.
“Really, my dear, there’s no need to be like that,” he said reproachfully. Crowley tried not to shift uncomfortably under his gaze. After a moment, the angel stood up with a sigh and gestured towards the door. “Shall we go, then?”
Crowley nodded and wordlessly headed for the door.
Aziraphale had insisted on sitting at one of the cast-iron tables on the pavement to enjoy the October sunshine; Crowley had made the light but bitterly cold wind die down around their table. The angel had given him a Look, but hadn’t actually reproved him for it. Crowley very much doubted that he would, now; they were well into their fourth bottle of wine, and even five courses would have trouble soaking up that much alcohol.
“So, angel,” Crowley drawled, pouring them each another generous glass of the sweet dessert wine the waiter had brought over with their puddings. “What d’you think?”
Aziraphale looked down at the remains of his ice-cream, which was melting slowly on one side of his almost empty plate, and set down his spoon. He hiccoughed surreptitiously into his handkerchief, on the pretext of wiping his mouth. “Are there always five courses?”
“Prob’ly,” Crowley replied, pushing the last strawberry from his sherry trifle around the inside of the glass bowl until he worked up the appetite to eat it.
“Are they always so large?” the angel asked uncertainly.
“What’re you asking me for? I’ve been asleep for the past fifty years, remember?” Crowley reminded him, finally scooping the strawberry onto his spoon and eating it with relish. When he received no immediate answer, he looked up and felt concern settle in his chest. The angel looked pale and slightly nauseous.
He was fairly sure that Aziraphale wouldn’t actually throw up – especially not in public. It was the sort of behaviour he disapproved of, and for once Crowley found himself glad of the angel’s fusty sensibilities. However, if he was sick, he would probably blame it on Crowley for bringing him here in the first place. That, Crowley reflected, would be bloody typical.
The demon quickly decided that he was neither drunk nor sober enough to deal with Aziraphale being ill all over the place. He also didn’t particularly want to be sober while Aziraphale was stinking drunk, so he downed the rest of his glass of wine in one go then refilled it somewhat haphazardly.
Once he had returned the bottle to the table, he risked another glance at Aziraphale; the angel was still staring down at his plate with his mouth hanging slightly open. Crowley waved a waiter over, and the man obediently took empty dishes away without passing comment. Without a reminder of all the food he had eaten, Aziraphale’s condition seemed to improve slightly.
“Didn’t have to eat everything,” Crowley said, in a manner that was probably unnecessarily brusque. It was true, though; Aziraphale presumably knew his limits, and shouldn’t have pushed them.
“But it was good!” the angel protested, slurring slightly. He took a delicate sip of his wine. “You were right, my dear – they really have perf– perfo– perfected the art of cooking, here.”
Crowley smirked, leaning back in his chair. He couldn’t resist the chance to boast. “’S all thanks to yours truly – I made a few suggestions before I went to sssssleep.”
This was bad. They were still only four bottles in – and not even on an empty stomach – and already he was starting to hiss. Evidently he had lost some of his tolerance for alcohol. Then again, Aziraphale had just proved that his mouth wasn’t working properly, either, so that probably meant that they were even.
“What d’you mean, m’dear?” Aziraphale asked blearily.
“Told ‘em, didn’t I?” Crowley explained, waving the hand holding his wineglass and miraculously not tossing a significant amount of wine over a passing old lady. “All these ssschefs, suddenly out of work – and they’d have to be good, working for noblesss – I told ‘em. Sssomebody could make good …”
A deep frown wrinkled Aziraphale’s forehead as he took a large gulp of wine. “That’s not part- parti– particularlerly demonic behay– behaver–” The angel stopped, glared meaningfully at his wineglass as the source of all his problems, took a deep breath and tried again. “That’s not very demonic. Almost a public service! Not very good for your whatsit. Reputation.”
“Ah, but – but! That’s the beauty of it! More restaurantssss, better food – all encourages masssses of gluttony all over the place!” Crowley exclaimed loudly. A few of their fellow diners twisted in their seats to glare across at them disapprovingly. Crowley glowered back over Aziraphale’s shoulder until they turned around again. Then he placed his glass down with almost comic caution and waved both hands at Aziraphale, gesturing for him to come closer even as he leant across the table. The angel leant forwards to hear Crowley’s fervent whisper. “See, that’s where this is going. There’s too many people fr’it to be perssss’nal any more. You’ve got to think of – of – of spreading your effort.”
“Spreading my effort?” Aziraphale said slowly. He didn’t appear to be convinced.
“Mm!” Crowley told him through a mouthful of wine. He swallowed, and then continued, “See, tempting one soul at once – that’sss a lot of time. Lot of time. Saving one, too. And you’ve only got the one, at the end of it.”
“So, there’s no point to it?” Aziraphale asked, his frown deepening as his mind tried to grasp the concept.
“Nonononono!” Crowley exclaimed, waving his hands and knocking the wine bottle over the edge of the table. Instead of crashing to the floor and spraying wine over the next table, it rocked to a halt at eighty degrees then slowly righted itself, under the angel’s very concentrated gaze.
“Careful,” he said, grabbing the bottle and moving it closer to the middle of the table. He let his fingers almost slide off the neck, then changed his mind and lifted it again so that he could fill up his glass.
“Careful yourself,” Crowley replied, grabbing Aziraphale’s wrist and moving his arm a couple of inches to the right before he poured wine all over the table. “Anyway. There is a point. Point is. The point is...”
Crowley trailed off, his train of thought derailed by the angel’s interruption. Aziraphale blinked at him, then looked down at his wrist. Crowley followed his gaze, and found that – even though the angel had put down the bottle – his fingers were still curled around Aziraphale’s arm. He looked up.
“Sorry,” he said. He couldn’t seem to convey the idea of letting go to his hand. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to. It had been literally years since he had touched someone else and even though he had been unconscious for most of it, his body evidently craved physical contact.
Aziraphale shook his head mutely, dragging his eyes up from where Crowley’s hand lay against his own on the tablecloth. There was a long pause when their eyes met, then finally Crowley’s fingers uncurled from the angel’s wrist. Before he could withdraw them, Aziraphale’s other hand had clamped down over his knuckles, keeping his hand in place. Crowley stared into Aziraphale’s indefinable expression for a long moment.
“What was I talking about?” Crowley croaked, when it became clear that Aziraphale wasn’t for releasing him any time soon.
“Spreading our effort,” the angel replied.
“Oh. Yes! See, just tempting –”
“– or saving –”
“– one soul at a time, that’ssss – well, it’s bloody stupid, this day and age,” Crowley explained, going slowly so that Aziraphale would understand. “Too many of the buggers. Got to do a little bit to lots of different ones all at once. D’y’see?”
“Not really,” Aziraphale replied apologetically. Crowley narrowed his eyes at him.
“It’s like,” he started. Then his admittedly rather fuzzy brain caught up with his mouth, and realised that he was in no state to come up with an adequate metaphor. He thought for a minute, squinting into the air over Aziraphale’s shoulder in the hope that inspiration would strike.
“Shall we go back to your apartment?” Aziraphale asked after a while, patting the back of Crowley’s hand and smiling sympathetically. Crowley snatched the bottle of wine from the table and filled up his glass with what was left.
“When I’ve finished my drink,” he said solemnly, raising his glass. Aziraphale’s palm finally slid off Crowley’s hand so that he could pick up his drink; Crowley looked down at his hand, still resting over the angel’s, and smiled suddenly as he looked up again. Their glasses chinked as they met.
Crowley raided the drinks cabinet, and eventually emerged with a whoop of triumph, a very old and very cobwebby bottle clutched in his right hand. He staggered unsteadily over to the sofa and dropped onto it beside Aziraphale. He looked at the angel expectantly. “Glasses?”
“’M not sure that’s a good idea,” Aziraphale said uncertainly, staring at the bottle as if it might bite him. They had both sobered up slightly during their undignified stagger back to the apartment, mostly thanks to the bracing wind that had started whistling through Paris’ streets over the course of their meal. Crowley rolled his eyes and placed the bottle down on the coffee table.
“S’ppose you’d rather have tea,” he said bitterly. “Been ssssaving this and everything.”
Aziraphale blinked at him, surprised. “To share with me?”
The demon shrugged, slumping against the padded backrest and lifting first one heel and then the other up to rest on the edge of the coffee table, ankles crossed. He almost replied that he had no one else to share it with, but just before the words tumbled out of his mouth, he realised that Aziraphale might take them the wrong way. He paused, mouth hanging open, and tried to shift his brain into gear.
“Don’t know anyone else who deserves the last of my Falernian,” he said eventually.
That, at last, sparked some interest. Aziraphale looked up, eyebrows raised. “That’s not –”
“Yes,” Crowley told him, “It is. Fourth century. Top quality – matured for twenty yearsss, even before I got hold of it.”
“How on earth did you keep it?” Aziraphale asked, picking up the bottle reverentially and tilting it to examine the liquid inside. It only filled half the bottle, but considering that the wine had been made over fifteen-hundred years ago it was an impressive amount.
“With great difficulty,” Crowley grumbled. The effort was worth it, though. In its day, Falernian had been a wine for connoisseurs; it was the expensive sort of wine served at the dinner parties of old-money senators and nouveau riche freedmen alike in an effort to impress their guests with their wealth and good taste. More importantly, it actually deserved its status as the most renowned of all Roman wines. Crowley had filched a couple of large, freshly delivered amphorae from an army store-room sometime around the year 300; he still didn’t regret it.
He surged forwards until he was perched on the edge of his seat, and waved a cursory hand at the table. Immediately, two bulbous wineglasses appeared on the table. As an afterthought, he added a pitcher of water; Falernian, like all Roman wines, was designed to be watered down, after all. Besides, drinking wine without water had been a social faux-pas back in the day. Not that that had ever stopped Crowley. He had not, however, ever done so in front of Aziraphale and something told him that the angel would still disapprove if he tried it now.
Aziraphale, suddenly more enthusiastic, uncorked the bottle and sloshed a generous amount into the bottom of each glass before reaching for the jug. While he was occupied with watering down his own wine, Crowley helped himself to another splash of the amber liquid.
Wordlessly, Aziraphale raised the glass and saluted Crowley with it while the demon added water to his wine. He watched almost nervously as the angel first inhaled the scent of the vintage, then took a delicate sip. When Aziraphale sighed contentedly and wrapped both hands around his glass, Crowley grinned and brought his own drink to his lips.
The wine was thick even though it had been watered down and sweet despite the alcoholic kick. Crowley hummed appreciatively; Varro was right, Falernian only improved with age. He looked regretfully at the bottle, which was now almost totally empty. He could always miracle himself another, but it wouldn’t be the same; nothing created out of thin air had the same quality as something created by human hands.
“This is good,” Aziraphale told him, nudging him gently with his elbow. Crowley looked up and smiled, glad to be distracted from the loss of his antique wine. The angel reached out and patted his knee in a companionable manner. “’S very kind of you to share it.”
Crowley shrugged, and tried not to pay attention to the fact that the angel’s palm was resting on his knee. “No fun in drinking the lassst of it on my own.”
Aziraphale hummed in agreement and took another, larger mouthful of wine. “Almost a shame to drink it, really. Since there’s no more.”
“It’s for drinking, angel,” Crowley pointed out, although inwardly he agreed. Aziraphale had no answer to that, and so they savoured their wine in amicable silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Crowley slumped back into the sofa, careful not to spill any of his drink, and stared up at the ceiling in silence. It was growing dark outside, and the cobwebs were now hidden in shadow, but Crowley pretended to scrutinise them anyway while watching Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye.
The angel was getting through his glass much more quickly than Crowley, the demon noticed. By the time Aziraphale had emptied half his glass, Crowley’s was still mostly full. “You in a hurry, angel?”
Aziraphale frowned at him. “No?”
Crowley nodded at his wineglass. “You’re getting through that fasssst.”
“Am I?” the angel asked, looking down at his drink quizzically. After a moment, he frowned. “So I am.”
Crowley watched as Aziraphale lifted the glass to his lips and drained the other half in one go, his head tilting further and further back and exposing the long line of his throat. He swallowed hard, aware that he was staring openly but unable to stop. He wondered if the angel would smite him, if he –
Aziraphale leant forward and put his glass down on the table, then turned and looked at the demon. His face was flushed thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol, and he was giving Crowley a quietly affectionate look that brought all his thought-processes to a stuttering halt. The hand on Crowley’s knee slid up his leg as Aziraphale leant closer, and finally stopped half way up his thigh. An undignified, strangled noise escaped from Crowley’s throat.
“I missed you, my dear,” Aziraphale told him gently. Aside from the hand on Crowley’s thigh, he wasn’t that far into the demon’s personal space – Crowley could think of plenty of times when they had been even closer than this – but the proximity was making it hard for Crowley to breathe. He swallowed again, clutching his wineglass like a lifeline and wondering if this was something to do with the wine. Then Aziraphale brought his other hand up, his fingers ghosting along the line of Crowley’s jaw, and he felt his heart clench.
“Aziraphale,” he said raggedly. He wanted to put his wineglass down. He was incredibly aware of the heavy pressure of Aziraphale’s hand on his thigh, the angel’s knee touching his own, the heel of Aziraphale’s hand brushing lightly against his jugular as his fingers curled around the back of his neck. The angel was closer now, and Crowley couldn’t quite work out when he had moved. He suddenly wished that he was sober. He licked his lips and tried again. “Aziraphale –”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale smiled, and leant into a kiss.
The demon gasped into Aziraphale’s mouth as the angel’s lips met his own, and he froze. Then Aziraphale’s fingers tightened insistently against his neck, and Crowley’s eyes flickered closed. The kiss was soft and, for the time being at least, chaste; Crowley was surprised to find Aziraphale actually knew what he was doing. He twisted around slightly, and managed to slide an arm around the angel’s waist. Aziraphale smiled into the kiss, and dared to part his lips.
After that, there was no question of turning back. Crowley tugged on the angel’s waistcoat, and Aziraphale obediently slid closer across the cushions. A moment later, the hand that had been resting on Crowley’s leg lifted and tangled instead in his hair. Crowley hissed as his head was pulled to a different angle, and retaliated by doing something complicated with his tongue that made the angel tremble.
Eventually, Crowley pulled away. Aziraphale made an unhappy noise and tried to pull him back, but Crowley held him at bay. The angel opened his eyes and frowned at Crowley as he pushed his hands away then leant across to place his wineglass down on the coffee table. After a long moment, Crowley sighed. “You’re drunk.”
“So are you,” Aziraphale countered.
“But I’m going to sober up,” Crowley told him decisively. “And I really think you should, too.”
Aziraphale gave him a worried look, but dismissed the alcohol from his blood stream only a moment after Crowley did. He cleared his throat and looked away, clearly embarrassed – just as Crowley had suspected. He sighed again. “Angel –”
“I did miss you,” Aziraphale blurted. Crowley blinked at him. He watched the angel carefully as he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to finger-comb it back into place. There was something beneath the words, a current that suggested to Crowley why the angel had come all the way to France and spent the better part of a day searching him out and hammering on his door until he finally decided to open it. When Aziraphale turned to look at him, his gaze dropped involuntarily to the angel’s lips. “I missed you, and I – I was drunk, yes, but –”
“Shut up, Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured, glancing up at the angel’s eyes before focusing again on his mouth. He heard Aziraphale’s breath catch as he brought a hand up to tangle in his hair and grinned suddenly as he pulled the angel closer. Against his lips, he breathed, “I missed you, too.”
This time, it was Aziraphale’s turn to gasp into the kiss, but instead of freezing as Crowley had, he brought up both his hands and curled them into Crowley’s hair, tugging insistently. Crowley chuckled low in his throat, his tongue curling around Aziraphale’s as the angel squirmed closer. Once again he coiled an arm around the angel’s waist, holding him close, and wondered how it had taken them almost six thousand years to get here.
Finally, they broke apart, gasping for breath. Aziraphale looked at him, eyes wide with amazement. Crowley snorted a laugh, then untangled himself from the angel’s embrace and stood up. For a moment, Aziraphale’s expression cracked into one of abject misery, and something inside Crowley twisted painfully as he realised that the angel thought he was being cruel – leading him on, and then laughing at him for believing it.
He held out a hand and, hesitantly, Aziraphale took it, hope dawning once again behind his eyes. He tugged the angel to his feet and pulled him close, kissing him thoroughly once again. Then he bent, not letting go of the angel in case he got the wrong idea again, and grabbed his glass of Falernian from the coffee table, draining it.
“I think,” he said, glancing out of the windows at the darkened sky, “That it’s long past my bedtime. Care to join me, angel?”
Aziraphale stared blankly at him for a moment, then realisation dawned and a blush flooded his cheeks as he looked away, embarrassed. Crowley caught his hands as he tried to pull back, squeezing them reassuringly and trying to catch a glimpse of the angel’s face to read his expression. He heard Aziraphale take a deep breath, and a moment later the angel raised his head and pressed a light kiss to Crowley’s lips.
“Lead the way.”
Happy Holidays,
crowitched, from your Secret Author!
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-16 06:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:06 am (UTC):D! yes!
Date: 2008-12-16 09:24 am (UTC)Thank you so so so much!! ;_;
Re: :D! yes!
Date: 2008-12-17 10:01 am (UTC)You're dead on about Aziraphale's lacking sense of fashion, I just giggled so hard at that part.
Re: :D! yes!
Date: 2008-12-20 03:08 am (UTC)"You're dead on about Aziraphale's lacking sense of fashion, I just giggled so hard at that part." -- He likes tartan. That says it all, really. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-16 11:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-16 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-16 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-17 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-12-17 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:12 am (UTC)too much, so I'm glad you think it works. (I find the image of barely-awake!Crowley strangely adorable. :D) Phew, I got the interaction right! Yay! That's one of the things I'm always worried about ... Thanks for the lovely comment!(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 08:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 03:14 am (UTC)