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“The thing is, I don’t really wanna be with a fat old guy.”
Crowley wishes he was the type of person who still read newspapers, so he could be hiding behind one right now. His sunglasses do a piss-poor job of hiding his expression at the best of times, and this is most decidedly not a best of times.
“We’re the same age.” This is said from between gritted teeth, and Crowley bobs his head to himself, encouraged by the rage lurking in that voice. He keeps his gaze fixed on his phone but the scene plays out in his peripheral.
Gabriel—whether that’s his first or last name Crowley doesn’t know, it’s just the name he’s heard the baristas call out when handing over some butthole-clenchingly sweet concoction in a frigging bucket—sucks air through his teeth and Crowley catches his stupid head wobble.
“Yeaaaah, but there’s forty-six,” he says it like an insult, “and then there’s forty-six!”
Crowley chances a quick look over and—yep, the bastard’s got his arms spread like he’s the greatest offering in the cafe. All Crowley can see is the back of his head and his weirdly tanned neck, but when he looks past Gabriel, he gets a full-fledged idea of how Gabriel’s boyfriend is taking the situation.
“And then there’s, you know, the—” Gabriel flaps his hand like he’s trying to shake a nugget of shit from his finger—“weight thing.”
“Something that you’ve rather suddenly decided bothers you,” his boyfriend says, and Crowley is mentally hurling him gold medals for the steel in his tone, the steadiness to his words.
“Well, it’s not like I loved it,” Gabriel mutters.
“Nor me, despite what you told me.” Assistance—and Crowley really wishes he had just once caught the other man’s name, but it’s loud enough in a crowded café where he’s been more absorbed in his own shit than eavesdropping on coffee orders that he’s never properly heard it, all he knows is it begins with an A then stumbles over about five syllables—takes a moment to press a folded napkin to the corner of his mouth.
The whole café holds its breath while trying to look very consumed by standing in line or fighting to open a sugar packet. Crowley’s phone went to sleep two minutes ago.
“Look, I just needed to—”
Assassin raises a hand. “You’ve said your piece, now it’s my turn.” His expression hardens. “You brought me here to try to humiliate me in public, and trust me not to mind, or to talk back, for fear of embarrassing myself. But I have nothing to be embarrassed about.” A Simple Plan tugs at his bowtie, the pale blue one Crowley saw him wear once before and thought something poetic about that scrap of silk and the shade of Appleblossom’s eyes. He really should have written it down.
“I think we’re quite finished,” Anglican says, and he stands, looks down at Gabriel like he’s just crawled up from the sewage pipe. “I’ll get my things now and leave the key.”
“I just want something different,” Gabriel tells him.
“And I hope you find it in spades,” Allons-y replies stiffly. “May we both do.”
“Yeah, I mean, maybe you can find someone who likes books and, and, paper like you do,” Gabriel says, in a jovial tone that that suggests he’s doing a great favour.
“Or just someone who respects me,” Ashton Kutcher muses. He doesn’t so much as turn his head as he crosses the café.
“Hey! I’m the best you’ll ever have!” Gabriel calls after him. Everyone watches Amazon pause at the door. He turns and looks at Gabriel, and Crowley feels woozy from secondhand shame.
“No,” Angry Birds says. “The best I’ll ever have won’t treat me like you did.”
He walks out, and the café is silent. Everyone looks to Gabriel, whose gone red in the face and seems torn between getting up to leave or hiding in his bucket of sugary sludge.
“Mommy, why is that man so mean?”
The man at the table next to Crowley’s answers before the child’s mother can. “Some people are just fart heads.”
Every adult in the room hears the real four-letter F word he means. Gabriel looks closer to plunging face first in his drink, and Crowley makes a decision.
He bangs out of the café and frantically scans the street for any sign of Almond Paste. There! Just getting in a cab and shit, Crowley’s scrambling to catch up, he wants to talk to this man who so thoroughly handed another their own ass on a silver platter, share in the moment with him, it’s a victory as far as Crowley sees—
All thoughts stop when Anything Goes shuts the cab door not five feet from Crowley, who watches through the window separating them as Apricot’s face crumples and he brings both hands to cover his mouth.
The cab slips into traffic, catches a green light and is gone, and Crowley stares after it when its long since gone, the thought of Addendum crying in the back doing very unpleasant twisty things to his insides.
Crowley heads back towards the café with vague thoughts of collecting his jacket and getting the hell out of there when Gabriel suddenly bursts past him, fleeing from a child’s voice yelling “5 6 7 8, got no time for your hate!” from inside.
It’s not just the kid chanting, Crowley realizes, it’s just that he’s the loudest; the rest of the café patrons are chanting as well, and there’s a great cheer when someone sees Gabriel yank a ticket from the windshield of his car where it’s parked out front in the loading zone.
“Talk about karma,” says a satisfied voice next to him. Crowley startles and looks around, and then down, and Anathema is stood next to him, watching Gabriel with a smirk.
An idea strikes Crowley, and it’s a good one so he doesn’t even mind. “Anathema, what do you know about his boyfriend? Ex, I guess.”
“Aziraphale?” Anathema shrugs. “Best tipper I’ve ever had. Likes to argue with the sergeant. And he owns a bookstore.”
Crowley’s heart pounds.
“D’you know where?”
- - -
Crowley paces the sidewalks of Soho, a certain bookstore on the corner catching his eye at every turn. He’s been pacing for a quarter of an hour now, endlessly debating over many things, such as should he go in, and if he does, what should he say?
Hey, so you don’t know me but I’ve been watching you in the café—
Mm. No.
Hey cutie, saw you crying, where’d you get to?
Definitely not.
“A book!” he cries out loud triumphantly. He startles the teenager next to him waiting at the crosswalk. “I’ll say I’m buying a book.”
Crowley snaps his fingers at the teenaged being standing several inches further from him than before. “Oi, what’s a book?”
The stare he’s given is monumental in its disdain, disbelief, and quite a few other words with the prefix dis-. “What’s a book?” His question is repeated back to him in a wildly varying tone of hilarity and more dis-‘s, he’s sure.
Crowley rolls his eyes. “Not what is a book, but what’s a book? The name of it, the, the—” he flounders.
“The title?”
“Yes,” Crowley nods. The teen considers him.
“Three Musketeers.”
Crowley wrinkles his nose, in a way that a cool aging rock star would. “Three Muska-deers?”
The teen nods. “It’s by Alexander, dumbass.”
“Alright, alright,” Crowley says, stung. “We’re not all well-read.”
He crosses the street and fairly leaps into the bookstore before his nerve can fail him. In the end, it’s not his nerve that fails him but rather the force of his body, because he bounces back off the door and lands in a painful sprawl. He’s horrified and mortified to notice a small crack in the glass near the seam that definitely wasn’t there before he stunt-manned himself at the door.
Crowley scrambles to his feet and hobbles quickly out of sight, pretending he’s maintained a scarp of dignity through the whole thing.
“That was very d’Artagnan of you,” says his teenaged acquaintance as Crowley limps past.
“Shut up,” Crowley mutters, “or thanks,” he adds, in case it’s a compliment.
- - -
Crowley goes to the café every day for the next three in the hopes of running into Aziraphale. But Aziraphale never shows.
“He hasn’t been in all week,” Anathema tells him with a frown while she scrubs at a coffee ring on the counter. She nods at the brooding figure in the corner near the coffee beans. “Sarge is getting annoyed, not having anyone to argue with.” She cocks her head at Crowley. “So, you didn’t find his store?”
Crowley reddens and tells himself it’s from the milk steamer suddenly going off, twelve feet to his left. “No,” he says, and thank fuck he’s so good at lying.
Anathema purses her lips but not in a Gucci way. “I feel bad about the whole thing. He’s such a sweet guy, and that Gabriel jackass just, just—” she growls and attacks the stain.
“Has he been around?”
Anathema shoots him a disbelieving look. “Gabriel? I think he’d be shanked and gutted by the knitting club before he got within three feet of the counter if he showed his face here again.”
“Knitting club?”
“The group of blue hairs here every Sunday and Thursday. Aziraphale holds their yarn for them when he’s here at the same time.” Anathema grins and motions Crowley closer. “I’ve heard several very detailed plans concocted by Muriel and Kitty about knitting needles impaled through certain soft parts of a certain douchebag.”
Crowley nods, because he can get behind that, and he makes a mental note to be here one Sunday or Thursday to give a group of senior citizens the best tips on how to sand off fingerprints.
“Do you know him? Aziraphale?” Anathema asks, opening a box of wrapped straws and starting to stuff them by the handful in an empty holder.
Crowley shakes his head. “Just seen him here a few times.”
“Hmm. Well,” she shrugs, “I hope he comes back.”
Crowley sighs to himself and thinks of a cracked glass door, his shoulder still aching and says “me too.”
- - -
“Well, fuck me,” Crowley sighs loudly as his cab cruises past the sparsely populated bars and clubs of his neighbourhood. “Jammed tonight. S’pose I better go further afield.”
He sits in stupid amounts of traffic to get to the heart of Soho, and once he’s close enough he pays the driver and hops out. He just happens to be near a certain bookshop, windows dark, and the flat above lit with one undisturbed light.
Aziraphale’s not home then, or he’s asleep. Crowley ponders as he walks down the sidewalk, eyeing the pubs and more risqué establishments lining the street.
“If I were a newly single mint chip, where would I be?” he asks himself as he wanders the street. He ducks into the next pub he passes, and is briefly grateful for the shock of white that is Aziraphale’s head, because it takes less than twenty seconds for Crowley to ascertain Aziraphale isn’t in this first pub.
Crowley has more than a dozen options in his immediate vicinity, and he takes them as they come, stepping in and out of crowded rooms, music pulsing in some, others cloaked in an almost oppressive sense that raises his hackles when he sees the few men and women sitting on black velvet couches turn to assess him, and after a moment the women turn away and the men straighten and smile at him.
Crowley is on the street in a hurry. There are too many places to find pleasure for a night, for an hour, and he’s too sober to pass through all of them unscathed. The next pub he stumbles into he finds a seat at the bar and orders a whisky.
He surveys the room while he waits for his drink. The floor between the bar and door is filled with gyrating bodies, indiscriminate genders clad in tight dresses and silk shirts, jaunty hats and pearl necklaces. Crowley isn’t alone in wearing dark glasses indoors, and for a moment he doesn’t know if he’s reassured by or wary of this development.
He’s just knocked back his drink in two deep swallows when he sees it: a flash of platinum blonde, bobbing across the dimly-lit dance floor, and his heart clenches and he unconsciously leans forward, because it’s Aziraphale crossing the room, heading towards a dark hall leading to the toilets and fire exit.
Crowley straightens up when he sees the man leading Aziraphale through the crowd, a tall fellow with swarthy features and a smarmy grin that makes Crowley tense. He leaves his glass on the bar and pushes his way through the crowd, and by the time he reaches the mouth of the hall they’ve disappeared.
There’s no reason to panic, Crowley tells himself as he hurries down the hall. He pushes against doors as he goes, sticking his head in unlit rooms when the door swings open, moving on when it doesn’t.
He’s just hooking up with someone at a bar, Crowley reminds himself as a quick look in the men’s room comes up fruitless.
There’s no reason to panic! Crowley thinks the voice in his head is lying at this point, and when he bursts out the fire exit into a dingy alley he knows he was right about it being a liar.
Aziraphale is pressed against a brick wall, nearly hidden by the man over him. His hair is a riotous mess, his shirt unbuttoned at the top, and— and here Crowley feels a flare of something dark rise in him— his bowtie lies on the ground, in filthy sludge.
“You like that, bitch?” the mountain of a man over top of Aziraphale growls out and Crowley’s sight narrows.
“Ohhh, fuck, yes,” and Aziraphale’s words are so slurred Crowley wonders how any of them even formed without a torrent of vomit behind them.
“Oi!” Crowley bellows over the moans when the man yanks Aziraphale’s shirt from his trousers and begins to work a hand down. They both slow to a stop and turn to him.
“Police?” Crowley offers.
Surprisingly that works, at least to Crowley’s end. The man rips away from Aziraphale, eyes wide.
“Piss off,” Crowley tells him, and he does, gone in a flash, leaving Crowley alone with a rumpled Aziraphale leaning against the wall like he’ll collapse without it.
“Are you a police officer?” Aziraphale asks, squinting at him, and oh, it’s the third time he’s spoken to Crowley directly besides a muttered “ridiculous” about a bitchy café customer to Crowley under his breath and that time he thanked Crowley for passing him a straw.
“No,” Crowley says. “I’m—” and how is he meant to end that? Hopelessly in love with you? Even if Aziraphale wasn’t absolutely sloshed that would be a terrible thing to say.
“Listen, are you alright?” Crowley asks, and Aziraphale sways and peers at him.
“If you aren’t the police then why’d you chase him off?” He pouts. “I was about to get lucky.”
Crowley winces and reaches to catch Aziraphale when he lists dangerously forward. “I wouldn’t call it lucky,” he says, hands around firm shoulders. Aziraphale swats at him.
“What do you know?” he squints at Crowley, and it takes a minute for his eyes to focus, then he smiles. “I know you,” he says warmly.
“Yeah?” Crowley asks a bit raspy, maybe stupidly hopeful. Love at first sight is always better when reciprocated, right?
“I’ve seen you, cappuccino,” Aziraphale says it fondly. Then he looks up at Crowley through his eyelashes, tugs him closer by the belt loops around his waist. “I’d like to see more of you.”
He says all this without pausing for the giant belch that escapes, and Crowley staggers under secondhand intoxication.
“Christ, did you drink an entire vineyard?” he asks, and Aziraphale full-out giggles and rests his forehead on Crowley’s shoulder.
“Or something,” he slurs, and then his hands are sliding down Crowley’s back, hot and heavy, and come to a short-lived stop at the top of his ass. “Oh, bloody hell,” Aziraphale sighs and then his fingers are pushing beneath Crowley’s waistband and he yelps and steps back, pushing Aziraphale off.
“Literally any other time,” Crowley tells him, and Aziraphale leans back to frown at him.
“Why not now?” He tries to surge forward again but Crowley easily holds him back, hands once again on his shoulders.
“Because you’re hammered,” Crowley tells him.
“Derek didn’t care,” Aziraphale says, and manages to make it sound like an accusation.
“Because Derek is a greasy knob who doesn’t understand two syllable words like ‘consent’,” Crowley says, firmly tugging Aziraphale’s hands decidedly north.
“No, Derek was going to fuck me,” Aziraphale says, and he slaps at Crowley’s chest. “I want him to. Let go.”
“Listen, why don’t I take you home?”
Aziraphale beams at him and reaches out to clumsily grab Crowley’s hand. “Yes, please.”
“Not to—” Crowley breaks off. It would likely be easier to get Aziraphale home if he thought Crowley was taking him there to have sex with him. “Come on,” he says instead, and takes one of Aziraphale’s hands.
“On what?” Aziraphale asks as he’s led from the alley, and Crowley reddens and stammers but otherwise says nothing at all.
- - -
The walk back to the bookshop is a thankfully short one, but Aziraphale chatters the whole way, and Crowley is already sympathetic of the hangover he’ll have the next morning.
“It is Anathema’s ester—estub—esteban I’ve seen you,” he tells Crowley. “You always wear black and, and—” here he furrows his brow –“and glower. Like this,” he points to his face and Crowley can’t help but laugh at the pouted lip.
“I don’t think I glower. I brood,” Crowley decides. They come to a stop in front of the bookshop and he turns to ask after a key when Aziraphale’s fingers graze his cheek.
“Well, whatever you call it, you look very good doing it.”
It’s almost suave, endearing, something Crowley could look back on later, until Aziraphale vomits between them on the step. He gives Crowley a weak smile after.
“I don’t suppose that was in the least bit sexy.”
- - -
Crowley finds the single gold key tucked in Aziraphale’s outer vest pocket and lets them into the bookshop. After some tripping over stacked books and knees getting banged on shelves, they make their way to the staircase at the back of the shop that leads to a small flat upstairs.
“D’you want to get changed first?” Crowley asks, an arm slung around Aziraphale’s shoulders, keeping him close and upright.
Aziraphale straightens but keeps his eyes closed as he says, “I need to clean my teeth,” very slowly and clearly. Crowley bobs his head and casts about, figures the one door in the flat leads to the bathroom, and he leads Aziraphale across the room.
“Have a seat,” Crowley says, directing Aziraphale to sit on the closed toilet. He squirts some toothpaste onto the bristles of a yellow toothbrush and passes it to Aziraphale, who sticks it in his mouth and smiles and promptly begins fellating it.
“What?” he asks blearily when Crowley wrests the brush away from him. He winks with his left eye, then his right. “Jus’ a promise of what’s to come.”
“You’re going to choke,” Crowley mutters, and he rinses the brush off and drops it back in its cup. “Never mind that. You should go to bed.”
Aziraphale nods and wobbles to his feet, taking Crowley’s hand. “Yes, definitely.” He tugs Crowley into the bedroom, stopping in front of the bed.
“Am I wearing shoes?”
Crowley glances down. “Yep.”
Aziraphale drops to sit on the edge of the bed. “Would you help?” he asks, bright eyes locking with Crowley’s. Crowley swallows and nods, gets to his knees in front of the bed and pulls at thin laces, soft brown leather slipping through his fingers as easily as Aziraphale’s hand through his hair.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale breathes, and bends down to press a kiss to Crowley’s lips, overshooting horribly and kissing his right earlobe instead. “I also need help getting my trousers off,” he says overly loud into Crowley’s ear.
“I’ll help with your shirt,” Crowley tells him, because the room smells faintly of vomit and he can see the stain on the hem of Aziraphale’s shirt.
“Excellent,” Aziraphale says, and lifts his arms expectantly. Crowley steps forward and keeps his gaze averted as he tugs the shirt up, first by the sleeves, then fitting the collar around Aziraphale’s head.
As the shirt comes up so does Aziraphale, getting to his feet and pressing against Crowley, eyes dark pools of lust. He presses his nose to Crowley’s neck, and even as a jolt of pleasure runs through him Crowley is pushing him off.
“No,” he tells him. “Any other time, I swear to fuck, but not now.”
Aziraphale drops back to the bed and frowns up at him. “Why not?”
“Because you’re plastered,” Crowley says, and sits on the floor in front of the bed. Aziraphale scoffs at him.
“I know what I want. I want to get fucked, and I had someone willing to do that, and, and,” his voice raises as he grows indignant, “you rooster blocked me.”
“Oh, fucking hell, do you mean cock blocked?” Crowley asks fondly.
Aziraphale gets to his feet, nearly standing on Crowley’s hand. “If you aren’t going to sleep with me then I’m going to leave, and find someone who will.”
“Would you stop?” Crowley stands as well. He is most definitely not qualified to be the reasonable one in most situations, and this is no different. “I don’t want you doing something you’ll regret.”
“I wouldn’t regret sex. Or a blow job,” Aziraphale says, hands on his hips. Crowley tries a different tact.
“What if it were me, right here, right now, absolutely on my tits, asking you to have sex with me? Would you do it?”
Aziraphale gives him a onceover disguised as a double take. “Well, you are very fit, and lovely to look at, cappuccino, but,” he shakes his head, “if you were drunk, I’d send you home.”
“There you go,” Crowley says. “Same for me. I saw you at the bar, looking like you didn’t even know your own name—”
“Azipper,” Aziraphale says.
“—going with some giant bloke to a secluded alley and what was I supposed to do?”
“Let him fuck me. I finally found someone who would and you ruined it.” He glares at Crowley. “I forgot I was mad at you.”
Crowley scrubs at his face. “Okay, look, maybe it was a bit presumptuous of me to step in like that, but,” he looks up at Aziraphale, “that’s not you.”
“You don’t know me,” Aziraphale says. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m cappuccino. Or, Crowley, that also works. I’ve seen you at Anathema’s. You and Gab—” he cuts himself off and Aziraphale’s expression darkens. “Er, yeah. Crowley.”
“So because you’ve seen me at a café you think you know me?”
“Well,” Crowley says, because spelled out like that it does seem silly. “I just didn’t think you were the sort of man who’d get frisky in an alley.”
“What sort of man would?” Aziraphale demands. “Perhaps a slender willow branch like yourself? Hmm? A handsome man who has multiple partners at his beck and call, who has passionate sex instead of pity—”
And with that Aziraphale bursts into tears.
“Oh,” Crowley says, and he uselessly flaps his hands in the air around Aziraphale’s shoulders before giving in and wrapping him in a hug. “Don’t cry,” he says helplessly.
“Is it just that I’m disgusting?” Aziraphale asks between heaving sobs. “I can’t help my age, or how I look.” He leans away from Crowley, face splotchy. “I like how I look.”
“As you should,” Crowley tells him firmly. “Best thing you can do, love yourself.”
“But I’m—" Aziraphale’s mouth twists around ugly words that Crowley is determined to deny life.
“You’re beautiful. You are unforgivably good-looking. I’ve always thought so,” Crowley says, and his pounding heart is shrieking at him that he doesn’t even have the excuse of alcohol to blame on his babble.
“You’re just saying that to be nice,” Aziraphale mutters, but the tips of his ears have flushed.
“I’m not nice,” Crowley tells him. “But I do tell the truth, and the truth is—” he takes a deep breath –“I’ve been waiting for a chance with you since the first time I saw you.”
Aziraphale frowns. “But you’re so… and I’m so…”
“Gay?” Crowley offers. Aziraphale rolls his eyes and looks like he regrets it immediately.
“You’re the most attractive man I’ve seen—” he hiccups and it’s unbearably adorable.
Crowley flushes but ignores it, knowing better than to take the word of a soused man at face value. “Look, I don’t do genuine emotion or whatever if I can help it, but I was glad when you dumped shit-for-brains.”
“I didn’t end things, he did,” Aziraphale mutters, swaying precariously forward again. Crowley gently leads him to sit on the bed and, after a moment’s hesitation, sits next to him.
“That’s not how I saw it. He said shitty things to you then you turned it around on him and flounced out with more grace and verve than—than—” he takes a chance that it was a compliment –“d’Artagnan!”
“The Three Muskrats,” Aziraphale hiccups again and beams at Crowley. “Dumbass.”
Crowley sniffs. “I’m not the one calling them muskrats,” he points out, but privately worries that he might actually have to read this book, because it seems like a bigger faux pas than he would have thought to have not.
“I wish you wouldn’t spin so,” Aziraphale tells him. He’s fallen back on the mattress and is observing Crowley through half-lidded eyes. “Doing my head in,” he sighs, and closes his eyes.
Crowley is resolute in his decision not to have any Thoughts about Aziraphale on the bed like that, looking unbelievably warm and inviting and still smelling a bit like puke. He tugs a thick yellow quilt folded under Aziraphale’s legs free and stands to cover him.
“Get your head up on the pillow,” Crowley says, because he’s still got his legs hanging off the bed and there’s no way he’d win a fight with gravity tonight. Aziraphale obligingly shuffles up, burying his face under the pillow and grappling with it til Crowley sorts him out.
There’s a moment, when Aziraphale looks up at him, resting comfortably on the pillow, where Crowley imagines sinking down. He can see all the places he would fit, and then he sees something that does not fit.
On the left of Aziraphale’s neck is a red mark, just above where his shoulder spreads out, and Crowley remembers the brute over him in the alley.
“What’sa matter,” Aziraphale says, as Crowley frowns and glares, irritated with himself.
You were too late, a voice tells him harshly.
“Nothing,” Crowley says to Aziraphale. “Go to sleep. Try not to puke on your pillows.”
“Are you staying?”
Crowley flinches, because it’s the question he’s avoided asking himself for the last half hour.
“Nice if you would,” Aziraphale mutters, then his head turns to the left and goes to sleep.
“I’m not nice, though,” Crowley says. He tucks the quilt up over Aziraphale and stands for a minute, watching him relaxed in sleep, the steady breaths, and he forces himself away. He sits at the table in the small kitchen, spinning his phone around and looking about idly. It could be a very boring night if he were to waste it sitting in a kitchen.
Crowley decides to be useful. He pokes around the small flat, careful of his steps and creaky cupboard doors, and finds a bucket and long-handled scrub brush. He fills the bucket with hot water and dish soap, and after checking Aziraphale is still asleep and breathing, goes downstairs and cleans the vomit from the front steps outside.
Back upstairs, he checks on Aziraphale again, and after washing his hands looks through the kitchen cupboards. He finds aspirin, three different brands, and lines them up on the bedside table, caps twisted off. He fills a glass with water and puts it next to the bottles, because he knows the discomfort of ice-cold water on a stomach roiling with liquor and nausea.
He puts Aziraphale’s shirt in the washing machine but doesn’t start it. Aziraphale sleeps like the dead, which must be a lot like the very, very drunk.
Crowley surveys the empty wine and liquor bottles neatly stacked in the recycling. He makes another circle of the flat, already knowing where the creaky floorboards are. He chews his last piece of gum, and when he goes to toss the package in the bin he sees fragments of paper, glossy fronts like—
Pictures. He can see bits of Aziraphale, hair, a leg, and more of Gabriel, his teeth gleaming even in print. Crowley drops his garbage in and shuts the lid.
- - -
Two hours later finds Crowley sat in the armchair at the head of the bed, under a window. He’s alternating between mindless scrolling on his phone, watching the streets below empty, and watching Aziraphale. He’s begun nodding off, sat here, and he has half a mind to set an alarm, half an hour from now, just in case he—
And he’s asleep.
- - -
Crowley comes to to the sound of retching, and he shoots up, neck twinging as it straightens for the first time in who knows how long, though there’s sunlight shining its way in the room.
“Aziraphale?” he calls, standing to protests from his whole body. The toilet flushes and the tap runs, and then the bathroom door is pulled wide and Aziraphale stands there, hunched, dressed in a black sweater.
“Pardon me if this comes across as rude but why are you in my flat?” He’s pale and sounds like crap, and Crowley does the verbal equivalent of flinging himself at a locked door.
“I was here all night.”
Aziraphale has gone green. “Hold that thought, if you please,” and he retreats.
Crowley wrinkles his nose sympathetically. If he wasn’t unsure of where they stood at this moment, he’d be in the bathroom in an instant, with a wet cloth, maybe holding flyaway hairs back—
Crowley shakes back to awareness when Aziraphale comes back out and makes his way to the kitchen table. He makes it look very painful, the business of putting one foot in front of the other.
“I don’t know your name,” Aziraphale says once he’s sat down. His eyes are closed and he’s frowning, then startles when he opens them and sees Crowley in front of him, offering the aspirin and water.
“Crowley. Anthony Crowley. We did cover this last night.” He sits on the opposite side of the table and nods at the pill bottles. “Not really supposed to take those on an empty stomach, but if you’re desperate enough.”
Aziraphale makes no move for the bottles or water. “You’ll understand if I’m a little wary at waking up to you in my flat.” It’s then that Crowley notices how tense he is, holding himself carefully in a way that has nothing to do with nausea.
“Oh, shit, I,” Crowley stands and backs away, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I just, I guess you really don’t remember anything?”
Aziraphale looks guarded but he’s relaxed a miniscule amount at the safe distance between them. “No, I don’t think I do. Flashes, maybe, but some of it feels like a dream.”
“Right, well, tl;dr: I was out at the same pub as you last night, just pure chance, really, and uh—” what’s the best way to say I suffer from white knight complex without embarrassing them both?
“You were pretty out of it,” Crowley offers lamely. Aziraphale reddens and fiddles with the hem of his shirt.
“Yes, I may have indulged a bit,” he allows, which is the understatement of the century. “It’s Anathema’s I’ve seen you, yes? ‘Left to Our Own Device’?”
Crowley nods. “Seen you, too,” he offers. “Couple times.” There have been eleven separate occasions where Crowley has been in the café at the same time as Aziraphale, had been able to look his fill from under his dark glasses, memorize a bright smile, easily given. Three times he’d been on his own, reading a book or sniping back and forth with the sergeant and Crowley had tortured himself with thoughts of walking over and asking to sit with him, just for some company, see…
“I remember you,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley ridiculously feels his cheeks heat. “You favour cappuccinos, if my memory serves me.” He rubs his hands over his face and nods at the chair across from him. “Sit down, if you care to. I’m fairly convinced now you aren’t going to bludgeon me and make off with my silver.”
“Ooh, the false sense of security, right on time,” Crowley grins as he crosses to sit again. Aziraphale blinks, and allows a small smile.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to ask: are you a writer?”
Crowley snorts until he realizes Aziraphale is serious.
“Only I’ve seen you very intent on your laptop in the café some days and wondered.”
You wondered about me? Crowley doesn’t dare ask it. “I review films. Professionally, not just on some sad little blog.”
“So, yes, you write.”
“Nothing like what you’d put on your shelves, though.”
Aziraphale smiles again, and Crowley drinks it in, a flower turning to the sun. He clears his throat. “I was wanting to ask, could you just tell me if I made a complete ass of myself last night? Just so I know if there’s anywhere I can’t show my face for a while, you understand.”
“No, nothing like that,” Crowley says, and wonders again how to broach the small matter of the steamy alley make-out session.
“Well, small favours, I suppose. I couldn’t really stand to lose another— well.” Aziraphale shifts and pulls at his collar. Crowley catches sight of the bite mark and can’t help his frown.
“Lose another what?” Crowley asks, and then he remembers Anathema saying he hasn’t been in all week. “You mean Device’s?”
Aziraphale keeps his gaze fixed on the table and says nothing.
“You have no reason not to go back there,” Crowley tells him. “It’s— you’re the talk of the shop.”
He’s surprised when Aziraphale turns a miserable expression on him. “Yes, well, that’s what happens when someone yells about the fat old man sitting with them.”
“No,” Crowley says, “no, you’ve got it wrong, everyone is on your side. It’s all they’re talking about, you handing that dickhead his dignity in a rat trap. I’ve heard there’s plans to stab him with knitting needles should he dare to set foot there again.”
Aziraphale is looking at him like he’s grown two heads. “I don’t…they aren’t la—” he breaks off.
“No one is laughing at you,” Crowley tells him gently. He thinks of Aziraphale in the back of the cab, coming home to an empty flat, thinking he had reason to be ashamed, to deny himself something he took pleasure in and stay away from the café, nights alone, getting lonely, culminating in last night when it all got the better of him. He finds he has to restrain himself from going over and wrapping Aziraphale in his arms.
“I know Shadwell is barking at anyone who looks in his direction,” Crowley says casually, giving Aziraphale time to compose himself. “He needs someone who can give as good as they get.”
“Oh, he’s poisonous,” Aziraphale says thickly, but he’s got a little smile on. “I suppose it wouldn’t do to let him run rampant. How did you come to spend the night here?” he adds, a bit nervously.
“Uh, well, like I said, met you in a bar, and then I helped you home, and you—” propositioned me –“asked me to stay, so I did.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and he looks torn between embarrassed and pleased. “Well, you didn’t have to stay but, I am grateful you were good enough to.” He makes a couple of false starts, eyes darting to and from Crowley, before he seems to steel himself.
“What about this?” and he tugs his collar from his neck, the red mark standing out on the pale skin.
It’s Crowley’s turn to look away. “Something happened, before I found you. You were with someone, some really tall bloke, and he was getting, um, friendly.” He glances at Aziraphale. “I stopped him and brought you home.”
Aziraphale has a faraway look in his eyes, and one hand absently comes to cover the mark on his neck. “I remembered something on me, someone kissing— I thought,” and he glances at Crowley, flushes and looks away again.
“Oh,” Crowley says as he realizes what Aziraphale means. “No, fuck no, I would never.”
For some reason, Aziraphale’s face falls, and he looks away, clearing his throat. “I should—” he says and then evidently has no idea how to finish. He waves around the room and stands.
Crowley gets to his feet as well, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing, just still a bit out of sorts, thank you for everything, I really hope it wasn’t too much of a bother—” Aziraphale speaks rapidly, hands clasped in front of him, worrying the small ring on his last finger.
Crowley spends a moment handing himself a fair number of awards and commendations for cluing in so fast, then says, “when I said I would never, I meant it as I would never kiss you when you were drunk.”
Aziraphale had visibly deflated until the last bit. “…what do you mean by that?” He’s hopeful but trying not to be, and Crowley thinks it a brave thing to ask.
“I mean, I would very much like to kiss you at any other time.” He makes a show of glancing at his watch. “I mean, 10:13 seems as good a time as any.”
Aziraphale’s hands have stilled, and he is watching Crowley like one would a raccoon that’s stumbled into their picnic.
Oh, angel, he thinks to himself, surprised at his own heartache. There’s no punchline here.
“But you’re so…” Aziraphale says in an echo of last night. Crowley steps in before he can finish.
“In love with you? Yes,” and he takes a step closer, and Aziraphale holds his ground. “Since the first time I saw you at Device’s.”
Aziraphale breathes out a nervous chuckle. “But you don’t know me,” he says in a small voice. He looks up as Crowley moves in, relaxes slowly under the hand Crowley lays on his shoulder.
“But my heart does,” he tells Aziraphale, and he pulls him close and holds him. Aziraphale lifts his arms after a moment’s hesitation and Crowley feels warm hands on his back. He remembers them last night, trailing enticingly down, and decides he likes them on him in any fashion.
“I was going to kiss you,” Crowley breaks the silence after a minute, “only your breath smells very much like vomit.”
Aziraphale lets out a watery chuckle and makes to pull back but Crowley keeps him close to kiss his forehead before stepping away. He keeps a hold of Aziraphale’s hand.
“Perhaps I’ll,” Aziraphale clears his throat and looks from their hands to Crowley, “go clean my teeth.”
Those words have no sense being seductive, but they set Crowley’s heart racing.
“Please do,” he says, and lets go of Aziraphale’s hand. He sits at the kitchen table while he waits, tapping his fingers and wiping his suddenly sweating palms on his jeans.
The bathroom door opens and Aziraphale steps out. He’s brushed his hair, but it still sticks out in odd places, and he’s licking a drop of water off his bottom lip when Crowley sweeps him up in his arms and kisses him.
Aziraphale is knocked back a step, bumping against the doorjamb, Crowley’s hand under his head to cushion the impact, fingers buried in slightly stiff strands.
“Sorry,” Crowley says against his mouth, and pulls back an inch. “This is okay, yeah? I should’ve—”
Aziraphale looks at him like he’s just said the Earth is round. His fingers are twisted in Crowley’s collar, tight, holding him close and away at the same time, in control.
“Stupid question,” Crowley guesses, and then it’s Aziraphale leaning forward, pressing his hands flat on Crowley’s chest at the same time their lips meet, and through the contact Crowley tries to tell him love.
By the way Aziraphale holds him closer, he thinks his message is received.
- - -
Four days later, Crowley saunters down the sidewalk, making for his new North star when he passes a very familiar teenager.
“Oi,” they say when they draw level at the crosswalk. “Ever read, dumbass?”
Crowley pauses and turns with a smirk. “Right, I’m the moron who reads books when there are film adaptations.”
He walks away feeling very much the victor, and stops when he sees Aziraphale stood out front of the shop, running a finger over the crack in the glass on the door. A bit guiltily, Crowley slinks up the steps and Aziraphale turns and smiles warmly at him.
“Hello, love,” he says, and Crowley allows himself a kiss before coming clean.
“Um, that crack—” Crowley nods at the front door, and Aziraphale looks and sighs.
“Oh yes, that was just the other day, the oddest thing—”
“See, I only meant to—”
“I mean the size of the bird that did that, I can’t imagine what there would be in London. I never found it. I hope that means it’s all right.”
Crowley blinks behind his glasses. “The…bird?”
“Yes, it must have just collided head-on with the window, the poor thing.”
“Lots of dozy ducks around,” Crowley offers faintly after a minute.
“Well, anyway, I suppose I’d better get it replaced before it can break.”
“I can do it for you, angel,” Crowley offers.
Aziraphale brightens. “My, you are very handy, aren’t you?”
Crowley grins and steps close, one hand resting on Aziraphale’s waist. “Why don’t I give you a demonstration?”
To his credit, Aziraphale doesn’t laugh at him when, after suffering, absolutely suffering under the ministrations of a skilled tongue and held in an achingly soft, warm mouth, Crowley stutters out “Assyria!” at the culmination.
Much.