Chapter Text
When the bookshop’s doorbell sounded Aziraphale knew exactly who was responsible for it: no one but himself had called that person currently outside and established the time for their meeting.
Despite his control of the situation – his place, his pick of person and time –, he felt awfully nervous.
It’s not like he didn’t know how these things worked. Succumbing to nerves didn’t make any sense.
However, this time was different. It’s been a while.
He even made a list of pros and cons before taking the decision.
The cons were very stronger, mostly related to how annoying it was to interrupt the stretch of peaceful years he has been going through, build upon a routine in the bookshop, the small circle of good friends he saw consistently, his old clothes, cocoa and books.
He had been comfortable. Safe. Content. There were times he pondered if he had found his ideal existence.
And then he felt an itch.
It didn’t seem to have a specific trigger – all of a sudden, two or three weeks ago, he started earning for some human touch that was more intimate than friendly.
He didn’t want to act on it. In general, he dealt well with bolts of sexual desire – he was pretty good with his hands, new what made him tick and that lovely shop down the street provided him with toys that took care of a large array of interests.
This time nothing worked; thus, he started looking for other options.
He could simply go some place at night, throw some glances, flutter his eyelashes, have a bit of conversation. It was not hard: Aziraphale has been told many times he was handsome and cultured, intelligent and warm. He even heard he was charming in an old fashioned way. He was a master of light conversation and found out as an adult that he fit smoothly in the role of sweet middle aged gentleman.
He had in good confidence that he was attractive, too.
What a change from his teenager years!
Since he was very young Aziraphale felt different from other people his age. A collected child, not interested in other kids, perfectly content to play by himself for hours and hours. He didn’t crave physical contact, just tolerated it quite well when his always busy parents remembered they should, maybe, pay attention to their youngest child besides watching from a distance to be certain he was behaving well.
Learning to read intensified Aziraphale’s sense that he didn’t need real people around him. He could live as many lives as he wished to and experience strong emotions through fictional characters. Real people were unpredictable and unsafe, often said something when they meant another thing (even the complete opposite!) and he was way better without that nonsense, thank you very much.
As a teenager came the pressure to socialize. His good-natured character and 19th century style saved him from bullying – people loved or were creeped out by him, with no middle ground – and he was able to keep a distance from dating, current fashion and teen drama.
However, the pressure intensified until it worn him out and Aziraphale surrendered.
It didn’t take him much time to realize his family was not worried about his mental health when they set him up for social events. Their only goal was for him to show some normalcy (whatever it meant) while meeting the daughters of respectable people (whatever it meant) in their social class.
(Aziraphale was surprised that families wishing to arrange marriages for their heirs had not turned into a literary trope in this era. It was the 20th century, for God’s sake!)
Well, he was pretty smart. He managed on his own merits a spot in a prestigious university for a degree in English Literature to keep ‘too busy for anything else’. He even inserted himself in the lesser appalling groups he could find out in the undergraduate world and socialized with them as often as it was necessary to keep the façade that he enjoyed it.
Those experiences with groups of young adults free of their parents’ supervision, with money and the London night at their feet made Aziraphale realize two things.
First one: he was definitively not interested in women.
Second one: frequent and systematic physical contact, even with men, was overrated.
It didn’t matter that people liked being around him, that they often praised him for being pretty, nice and generous, that they said he could take his pick. It didn’t matter he was interesting to talk to – something that usually attracted other interesting people. Aziraphale Fell, wealthy young heir, more often than not, retreated when offered physical intimacy.
It was not new. He had spent his teenage years pretending he was not hearing the subtle criticisms by well-meant and/or ignorant people. His family was especially clear on their opinions: one thing was having standards; other, unacceptable, was being like Aziraphale.
He felt misunderstood and terribly lonely.
It was not that he disliked people or was disgusted by their bodies. He just didn’t feel engaged very often or very easily. He had some nice sexual experiences when young (he was attractive and could take his pick, after all), but nothing that made him crave for more.
Aziraphale’s first relationship that could be described as lust with feelings happened when he was close to his thirty’s, already living on his own in the bookshop. One of his close friends in the editorial business stayed the night and things happened.
Those things looked like something Aziraphale could identify, maybe, as romantic love.
It was fun and nice and lasted for some very entertaining months.
Then it fizzled because, if his partner was to be believed, Aziraphale was not really into it.
He didn’t understand, at first. Wasn’t that nice companionship and the existence of a sex life what constituted a relationship? What else was expected?
It took a while – and a new bunch of friends – for him to realize what people called romantic love required something more. A click, a sensation that you’ve found something different, something that filled a specific need and you would fight to keep it there forever. Even if it was difficult to nurture, gave you sorrow and could derail awfully, it was worth for the high of that feeling of familiarity and wholeness.
That’s when Aziraphale understood that he had never fallen in love. He had always believed that kind of thing just existed in the written world.
It explained why he had believed a good friendship with physical intimacy was what people looked for in a partner. The concept of a package of wild sex, maddening emotions and the willingness to sacrifice everything for someone else didn’t make any sense to him.
In fiction, surely. It was the base of beautiful stories.
But in real life? Not practical. Not logical. Didn’t feel like something he would ever be inclined to.
Aziraphale could be sexually aroused and he could enjoy someone’s company; however, if he was ever to put the effort for something more, he needed to find someone who could take him out of his ways, someone for whom he would want to do selfless things – not his day to day generosity, but some passionate foolishness that could only be justified by an encompassing feeling of adoration.
That was the point: to him, real love was about admiring someone so much you find it the most natural thing in the world to dedicate yourself to be happy and together.
Aziraphale was aware he wished the same thing most people wished, with the disadvantage that his own standards had never been reached. There was no way to know if they would ever be.
Unfortunately, it meant he didn’t have the will to invest time and energy forming romantic bonds but, once he enjoyed sex, when this itch came and not even the toys could appease it, he was obliged to do something.
He had his share of dark alleys and one-night stands when he was younger. Time and experience helped him adjust his own expectations and he developed strategies: go early to a bar, for example, to have time to pick someone for a conversation long enough to feel like they knew something about each other.
(Good looks, bold touching and pick-up lines alone were awfully boring to him.)
It worked for a while. However, the older he got, the less patience Aziraphale had to go over the process of pretending to know someone. He started going out less and less and was especially bothered when the conversations kept being cut off by overeager hands and tongues. When it happened, all ground covered was lost. Aziraphale was back to hesitating, not sure he still wanted to be there.
At that point most people gave up on him. Found him creepy. Who goes to a club, chats someone’s ear off and then acts as if he was too good to be touched?
He tried to explain himself. Some listened to him.
And excused themselves, too many times, saying he was nice but too slow.
Aziraphale carried it like the weight it had been since he was a teenager.
He was difficult. He was picky. He was a snob.
He was frustrating.
He was way past 30 when he had to stop and ask himself the most important question of all.
How can it be wrong if it’s how I truly feel?
Trying to conform to expectations had always been painful. So, before he was dragged into madness, he decided to live his life by his own terms.
He accepted he was a person of comforts – a hedonist that enjoyed good food and quality drinks, cozy nights in for reading and breezy afternoons in the park feeding the ducks – and that finding someone to be consistently snogged was not high in his list of priorities.
He didn’t expect it to be so liberating for himself and so terrifying to his family.
Aziraphale informed them that he now had boundaries. No more parties that involved meeting new acquaintances (the old hidden agenda of getting him to be more normal). No more questioning his life decisions (being a bookshop owner instead of a scholar). No more comments on his lifestyle (Really? SoHo?!).
They reverted to anger the moment he said no to them. They couldn’t understand what they called his choices.
They were not choices. They were the results of self-discovery.
He realized what a ball of nerves he had been until then. Without his relatives’ demands and expectations he finally had a chance to manage his anxiety and feel at peace with his existence.
It still was terribly lonely in the beginning, but Aziraphale had finally understood and accepted himself, and no pressure would make him back off.
The peaceful, comfortable existence he had carved for himself was only interrupted when an itch came. It got him aroused at random times like a teenager, libido high and not focused on anything specific. Physical need took over with a vengeance.
This time nothing seemed to placate the inconvenient bolt of lust.
Going to nightclubs was considered and quickly brushed aside. Just the thought of facing flashing lights and booming sound while trying to find someone attractive, approach, make his interest obvious and negotiating how things went was exhausting.
He subscribed to a popular “dating” app to try his luck. He was known by his unshakable faith in humanity, but each profile he visualized caused a small crisis of his faith.
He decided to try something different. He was going to hire someone for one night. It was safer, quicker and cleaner, with the profiles and data at his fingertips.
While doing his research on the internet he chose what looked like a more exclusive and expensive site. Aziraphale expected variety, but soon he noticed most escorts could be classified into two categories: on one side, the ones who were disturbingly young, who declared a preference for sugar daddies and exhibited a cute and childish appearance; on the other side, the ones who must invest all his time and money in the gym, if the Greek god-inspired bodies they showed off were to be believed.
Neither appealed to Aziraphale at all.
He liked his men close to his own age (middle age, in the case) and with at least a hint of depth.
He was aware of the hypocrisy of looking at men as if in a restaurant menu and judging them. In fact, if so many of them used those two specific strategies it meant they worked. There were a market and a consistent public for it.
The crux of the situation was that, like always, he didn’t relate to it.
Aziraphale was on his limit, considering the open “dating” apps again until last night.
Last night, when he had been browsing the site for escorts, getting annoyed with everything, and he saw it.
It being a cheeky ad with an intriguing shot of a man clad in black, red and dark gray, wearing sunglasses. He was obviously posing, his hands stuffed in the impressively small front pockets of his impressively tight jeans, leaning against a vintage car, a smirk in his face and a short text: I know what to do, and I do it with style.
Well, that was different.
The guy was surely close to 40, maybe a bit more.
The lean lines of his body were intriguing, not exposed but not totally hidden by the clothes and the pose.
He used innuendo without being crass.
Aziraphale was a well-read gentleman. He liked elegance. He had standards.
It looked like he had found the closest to an ideal situation that he would ever get and sent a message.
He was answered immediately, what startled him.
The few and necessary information was exchanged: yes, both were available for next night; yes, the man was very discreet about the clients’ personal data and would not ask any questions unrelated to the job; yes, he accepted going to the client’s home and Soho was more than ok; yes, he was a switch but preferred to top; yes, always safe sex. He demanded, for everybody’s safety and peace of mind, the deposit done as quickly as possible.
Aziraphale appreciated the objectiveness. There was no need to complicate things. They were both adults closing a business deal, after all.
Now his ideal situation was waiting at his doorstep and Aziraphale had to deal with those pesky nerves.
Brushing them off, he rightened his already right bowtie, adjusted his already perfect vest and went to open the door.
****
At the other side was the man of the shot, impressively similar to the looks in the ad: smart dark clothes, dark glasses and a charming smirk.
The pose was different, and Aziraphale found this even more interesting than the one he had previously seen: an arm lifted for a hand to support his weight on the wall; the other hand on the hip – a hip tilted to the side enough to make one suspect the laws of common biology didn’t work for that creature.
It was so obviously staged that it could be read as ironic.
Aziraphale liked that streak of rebellion.
(Besides, the man looked like the Tenth Doctor Who going through a Goth Phase, what was entertaining in itself.)
Aziraphale managed to take his eyes off the TV star posing at his porch and saw, to his surprise, that the vintage car was not a prop: it was parked right there, on the spot in front of his door.
(The spot that was never free but had been, so it seemed, miraculously free tonight.)
He focused on the man’s face again and offered his trademark cute greeting that melted everyone’s hearts immediately, ‘Hello’, then nodded into the general direction of the car, ‘You must be Crowley’.
Crowley seemed very happy that his car had been noticed and associated with him. The smirk even turned into a sincere happy smile before getting tamed into seductive-cool-studied-smirk again, ‘Yeah. Charmed, Angel Username’.
That got a snort from Aziraphale, ‘Please, come in’.
Aziraphale gave space for Crowley to enter and seized the opportunity to check the man’s backside.
The sway of his hips while he walked was kind of unnatural. Something like a snake moving upward, no rigid spine to keep him in a straight line. Crowley’s body seemed to get momentum from one side to move to the other, winning over a precarious balance at each step.
The slender torso and long legs helped the general serpentine impression.
He was wearing a coat, but the little that could be seen of his ass hinted at delicious perkiness.
V ery nice.
Aziraphale locked the door and approached the man standing in the middle of the main room of the bookshop, dark glasses in one hand, face in awe at the place.
It took Aziraphale a moment to speak. The shot hadn’t made justice to that beautiful mane of red hair.
Nor to the mesmerizing honeyed, almost yellow eyes.
Crowley was a pleasure to look at, and speaking to him demanded an effort.
‘My name is Aziraphale, in fact’.
Crowley’s head snapped at that, his eyes impacting Aziraphale with a new force now that they were on him, ‘Really? Not a… thing for the site? A fake?’
‘I’m afraid not’, he smiled, used to explain it, ‘I come from a very religious family who thought it would give me more chances in life if I was named after the Guardian Angel of the Eastern Gate’.
‘Ah, yeah, looked it up. Angel. Thought it was something about Eastern Europe. Poland, Russia, you know. Orthodox Church and all that’.
‘No, my dear’, Aziraphale chuckled, surprised about having his name looked up, ‘The Eastern Gate of the Garden of Eden’.
Crowley’s mouth opened in a perfect round O.
Aziraphale found the cartoonish expression endearing.
‘Adam and Eve Eden…’, Crowley sounded sympathetic, ‘Religious family, here, too. Something went wrong and everybody gave up believing when I was a kid. It was a change, but never had made any sense to me, anyway, the whole God thing. The garden – bit of an overreaction, if you ask me. First offence and everything’.
Aziraphale smiled, ‘I don’t think it’s our place to be asked by the Almighty what we think of the Ineffable Plan’.
‘Not very subtle of the Almighty, though. Fruit tree in the middle of the garden, with a Don’t touch sign. I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or on the moon?’, Crowley sneered, ‘Makes you wonder what God’s really planning’.
Aziraphale liked the refreshing seriousness of the reasoning. People in general didn’t engage in theological debates with such eagerness, and he enjoyed theological debates – especially because they were never allowed around his family, ‘That’s why they say God’s plan is ineffable’.
‘They do, but then what’s the point of Free Will, if everything is already written?’
‘Maybe it is not exactly written, but God already knows what we are going to choose. That’s why the Ineffable Plan is certain to succeed’.
‘So, God knew Adam and Eve would choose knowledge’.
‘I suppose the point was humanity deciding it wanted the choice between Good and Evil – something that angels and demons didn’t have’.
‘So, we humans are better than them’, Crowley grinned, ‘Quite blasphemous, coming from an angel’.
Aziraphale beamed.
He loved the teasing.
Crowley resumed speaking, ‘I’ll tell you what, if I was the one in charge it would not even be a choice. Picking between ignorance and knowledge? Knowledge, every day, every time, no regrets. You only are yourself with knowledge to take your own decisions, wrong or not. Big fan of knowledge, me’, he made a gesture to show their surroundings, ‘And I guess you are, too’.
‘When you put it like this…’, Aziraphale didn’t even try to hide his contentment. He knew it showed in a body wiggle people had told him was weird, ‘I believe it was worth the trouble. Humanity may have been thrown out of Paradise and its benefits taken away, but it was essential to thrive despite the harshness and build a world of its own’.
Crowley made a vague but expressive thing with his long arms to show he agreed, ‘Couple of wankers, humanity, but most people are decent’, he was now pacing while speaking, looking around at the shelves, eyes squinted and brow furrowed as if trying to decipher the titles, ‘It’s been worth it, yeah, even if I don’t think there had to be so much harshness. Some poor bastards don’t even get a chance’.
Aziraphale wondered if his guest was interested in the filing method. He has been told it was impossible to understand.
Crowley ended up circling him in his pacing.
He looked like an animal watching out his surroundings – typical pray behavior – while aware of a stationary being – typical predator behavior.
Was he just intrigued by the bookshop or there was an element of fear in there? Was he keeping eyes wide open because of bad experiences with clients? Should Aziraphale say something to reassure him?
Crowley hummed at a specific shelf, ‘It went down like a lead balloon’.
‘What?’
‘The apple tree business. Went down like a lead balloon. But worth all these’.
Aziraphale had his answer.
Definitively, intrigued.
It was exciting.
‘You seem interested in the books’, Aziraphale decided he wanted more conversation while he watched Crowley move around.
(Yes, his eyes were hovering on the man’s body. No sense in missing the opportunity to ogle. He was enjoying what he was seeing, after all.
However, Aziraphale felt there was a possibility of real interaction, there. He may be deluding himself, but he was going to try.)
‘Yeah, bit of a reader, me’, Crowley turned to him, ‘Not much fiction, or poetry. More into the Sciences’.
‘Oh! Is that so? Then let me tempt you to…’
The happy wiggle was back.
Crowley looked amused.
‘I mean, it would be a pleasure to show you some of my collection. Any specific scientific branches in mind?’
‘Well, uh…’, he seemed to hesitate for a moment, then spoke with decision, ‘Astronomy. Studied for a while’.
‘How marvelous!’, Aziraphale extended an arm to charmingly point the right direction, ‘You’re welcome to take a look at the 4th shelf at your right. I have everything from antiques to the most recent publications’.
Crowley’s face transformed, ‘Really?!’
‘Of course! I’ll fetch something for us to drink. Are you a tea, wine or scotch man?’
‘Uh, wine and scotch, but I don’t drink at work…’, he shrugged apologetically, ‘Stuff can get tricky’.
‘I perfectly understand’, Aziraphale hurried to show he agreed, ‘Would coffee be of interest?’
‘Oh, yeah’.
‘Coffee it is!’
Crowley gave him a beautiful smile in response.
Their eyes met and Aziraphale felt the warmth of companionship between them.
Crowley may be there for a very specific and ephemeral reason, but if they felt good talking about books, what would stop them from fraternizing over them before the deed was done?
‘Well, make yourself at home’, Aziraphale wiggled again, giving up any pretense that he could hide his excitement, ‘I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!’
And with that he turned to the kitchen, ears pink.
(From the excitement, but from the fact that he had an apparent lack of ability to maintain a conversation for five minutes without using decades old idiomatic expressions, too.)
***
Aziraphale was aware that he was behaving as if showing off his books was more interesting than taking that beauty of a man to bed.
He was reflecting on it while he gathered the things to prepare coffee for his guest and tea for himself.
It was so rare to meet a man who was visually appealing to him and who enjoyed talking about his subjects of interest. A connection through mutual interests plus easy conversation plus a seductive shape had great chances to provide an intense experience to him.
He started filling the kettle under the faucet.
Maybe he should not get his hopes up. He must be projecting.
A good conversation didn’t mean anything.
Maybe this Crowley person was just acclimating himself to the bookshop and buttering up his very transparent client. He certainly was experienced enough to know how to do that.
That was it, then: an attentive professional; someone who believed, like him, that sex was better when it involved some degree of-
‘Oi, angel!’
Aziraphale closed the faucet smiling at the yelled nickname, ‘Yes, dear?’
‘Bring the wine. These are gorgeous!’
Aziraphale raised his brows.
What a delightful development!
***
He chose a Chateauneuf du Pape that had been waiting for some special occasion, picked two glasses and entered the main room curious to see which books his guest was so excited about.
Aziraphale had not been prepared for the scene in front of him.
Crowley was sitting on the floor, shoeless, half a dozen Astronomical books spread around: some on the closest sofa, others piled on the center table immediately in front of him.
Aziraphale noticed that no books were put on the floor or thrown carelessly, what gave him much satisfaction.
He noticed, too, that Crowley had chosen some modern books with plenty of colorful images taken by the most technological of space probes, but he also had with him some ancient preciosities that only someone with a certain level of knowledge in the field would recognize as relevant.
He was turning the pages with reverence, currently exploring a big book with shining pages filled with shots of swirling color and bright dots.
He read a bit, stared at the huge images and gawked like a little child.
Aziraphale found it adorable and it showed in his voice, ‘Enjoying what you’re seeing so far?’
‘Wow!’, Crowley, oblivious to the fascination he was stirring, turned the book upside-down on the table and moved it towards Aziraphale while pointing at an image emphatically, ‘Look! Isn’t this a beauty?!’
Aziraphale immediately wished that appreciation could extend to him.
He schooled his features, sat beside the books on the sofa and leaned closer, ‘I think I’ve seen it before. What is this one called?’
‘The Pillars of Creation. It’s a nebula. One of the most impactful images from Webb’s telescope’.
Crowley’s eyes were brighter than the stars on the page.
He was emitting some non-describable sounds that could, maybe, be named as joyful squeaks.
Aziraphale realized he was staring and moved to pour for both.
He offered Crowley one of the glasses of wine, ‘As long as you are careful with my books, you can peruse them as much as you wish’.
Crowley raised his eyes at him.
Beautiful yellow-hazel that showed he couldn’t quite believe his luck.
‘Ngk’, Crowley said, visibly moved, and accepted the wine with the utmost care.
***
Four and a half hours and many glasses of wine later, Crowley was perched on the arm of the sofa, socked feet on the seat, one arm on its back and the other moving around while he spoke.
‘M telling you: they should’ve looked into the deflector, angel! ‘k, the mirror was the propt-protg-main thing, but if you can’t get over the launch, what does it matter the mirror?!’
‘It’s the vanity of big minds’, Aziraphale was slumped on his favorite armchair, ‘Like Narcisus. They see a mirror and forget anything else’.
‘You get it, angel!’
There was the wine he had consumed, sure, impairing his capacity to follow completely Crowley’s arguments on NASA’s proceedings on the last telescope – a topic Aziraphale was not terribly familiar with but could make educated guesses –, but he was having a hard time focusing completely on the conversation for other reasons, too.
The most distracting things were happening in the room.
First of all, his mind was busy trying to understand how it was physically possible that Crowley could sustain a position like that. Aziraphale was pretty sure those angles didn’t belong to a human body.
Thanks to a trick of light (the warm low light he had put on once Crowley took the books away when his focus turned from them to chatting), the wine slouching in the other’s glass looked like it was not spilling all around because of some kind of miracle. Crowley would move his arms in large gestures and the deep red liquid danced along with his enthusiasm while still contained.
The whole scene – Crowley’s colors, shapes, angles and movements among his books and drinking his wine – was assaulting Aziraphale’s senses in a delicious way.
He couldn’t even remember what had triggered the flow of conversation. Their increasingly complex statements (complex for two beings who had imbibed extraordinary amounts of alcohol, anyway) got too… well, flowy to keep track of as the night progressed.
When they remembered that conversation, much later in the future, only the highlights would remain.
Like the debate over Shakespeare’s funny and gloomy ones.
They had been discussing literary works that could interest an astrophysicist. Aziraphale mentioned Shakespeare (an unquestionable classic), Crowley declared it impossible for him to enjoy anything but the comedies because the tragedies were basically family infighting, murder and revenge, and Aziraphale’s answer was that seeing family trouble on stage was a sure way to help you deal with it in real life.
To what Crowley declared, snorting, You’re mixing up Theater and Therapy, angel.
Aziraphale laughed, conceded him the point and proceed to mockingly suggest an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with The Therapist as a character replacing Friar John.
Both laughed until they cried creating more and more absurd changes in the plot thanks to everyone stopping to consult with The Therapist before taking any important decisions.
So, what began as Crowley enjoying Aziraphale’s Astronomy books while sipping good wine and explaining what the pretty images were about strayed from that to impressive amounts of fun with subject entropy.
It was nice to exchange ideas and tease each other, but Crowley’s enthusiasm for space and his cleverness in general made Aziraphale want to sit there and just watch him being happy.
A handsome man with a fascinating mind, beautiful like a work of Art, who looked like a force of Nature made of red hair and yellow eyes among the black and gray of his clothes, shaped in unexpected angles and elegant moves, conjuring the most interesting things through words and gestures.
He made Aziraphale think of snakes. Hypnotizing. Hard to predict. With strong colors.
Strangely sexy.
An unexpected plus was that Crowley had mental energy to be company to Aziraphale’s alcoholic orgy while keeping his mind clear enough to share all kinds of creative ideas.
It was a delight to watch him spread around as much as he wanted, at ease as if he had known the bookshop since the beginning of time and fitted there seamlessly.
‘That’s the point!’, Crowley was throwing his arms around, ‘The unexplored ocean! Whales! Dolphins! Brain cities, them!’
‘Yes… What?’, Aziraphale blinked some times in order to organize his thoughts, ‘We’re still talking again about the satellite-mirror-thing, yes?’
Crowley nodded excitedly, ‘People say Science wants to go to space and can’t even reach the bottom of the ocean’.
‘Oh. I see’, Aziraphale managed a connection between the subjects, ‘Two very different things’.
‘Exactly! Why bother the poor beasts, anyway?’
‘We may even wake the Kraken, one of these days’, Aziraphale rubbed at his eyes, ‘Big, big bugger, that’.
Crowley opened his mouth to answer, but a noise startled them.
It was nothing to worry about – something fell outside and a cat meowed loudly in offense.
When the commotion stopped they looked at each other and both thought of the same thing.
Crowley found the answer first (looking at a wristwatch was a lot quicker than reaching for a clock in your pocket, especially when the two people wanting to find out what time it was were way past tipsy), ‘Two and a half’.
‘Oh, Good Lord’, Aziraphale groaned, drinking the last drops of wine from his glass gracelessly and making the effort needed to deposit it safely on the center table, ‘We better retire. I’ll show you the way to my bedroom’.
Crowley emitted a noise that sounded very much like a giggle, ‘I’m honored by your confidence in me, angel, but I don’t think I can do much after all this wine’.
‘Uhm?’, Aziraphale, who had managed to get on his feet through a new (now herculean) effort and possibly some minor miracles, needed a moment to understand what Crowley had said, ‘Oh. Not that, you silly man. I meant going to bed to sleep this off’.
‘Neeeeh’, Crowley answered, stretching leisurely on the sofa, ‘Neeeeeeh’, he stopped and looked surprised, ‘Do I sound like a goat? Neeeeeeeh!’
‘The most adorable goat ever’, Aziraphale chuckled, ‘Now give me that’, he reached for the other’s glass.
‘No. My wine. Well, yours. But you gave it to me’.
‘You lost the rights to it when you failed to articulate one complete idea’.
‘Uh?’
Aziraphale took the glass and drank the last of its contents too, putting it beside its sibling on the table.
‘Not fair’, Crowley scrunched his nose.
‘What is not fair, my dear?’, Aziraphale analyzed the tangle of limbs and decided that whatever he could get a grip on would have to suffice, ‘Tell me your thoughts’.
‘Can’t say no to you’, Crowley pouted, accepting Aziraphale’s hands and help in the ordeal of transferring from the arm of the sofa to its seat, ‘You own the place…’, his feet reached the floor, he got up and freed a hand to make a counting gesture with his fingers that almost brought him back to the sofa; luckily, Aziraphale circled his waist in time, ‘It’s the best place in town…’, the counting went on, ‘…books-’
‘With pretty nebulae’.
‘Oi! You know your words!’
‘You’ll find I am a fast leaner’.
‘Nice’, they found a rhythm that permitted them to turn and walk towards the stairs that led to the second floor, ‘You’re too much, angel’.
‘I may try to be less, then’.
‘Less what? Angel?’, Crowley snickered, ‘You can’t not be what you are… what you’ve been…’, he frowned, ‘Did it make sense?’
‘Not sure’, Aziraphale stopped for a moment at the foot of the stairs to think, forehead frowned and all, ‘It sounded like a good thing, though’.
‘It was’.
They looked at each other, exchanging smiles.
‘You’re drunk too’, Crowley said.
‘Yes’.
That agreed, they resumed moving, silent this time because using correctly the stairs took a lot of focus and coordination and they didn’t have much to start with.
On the second floor they separated for a moment and grinned at each other, congratulating themselves for the success in navigating that challenge.
Aziraphale pointed at his bedroom’s door.
‘Hey’, Crowley raised a finger as if he had just remembered something important, ‘My car’.
‘Where?’, Aziraphale looked at Crowley up and down, as if expecting the car to come from one of his ridiculously small pockets.
Impossibly large and apparently random steps took Crowley to the general vicinity of the window in the end of the corridor, ‘Outside’.
Aziraphale went after him, hands reaching out to prevent any collision, once the other man was insistently pointing at the street through the glass, ‘I guess it is’.
‘I could drive home. Should I drive home? Neh, don’t think so. ‘M staying’, Crowley reached the decision and lowered his pointing hand, turning to the wall opposite Aziraphale, ‘Where are you?!’
‘I’m here! I’m here’, Aziraphale’s hovering hands grabbed Crowley by the waist again, this time to turn him back, ‘Bed is closer than car’, he added, taking Crowley’s hand to pull him along the rest of the way to the bedroom, ‘You surely are not driving now’.
‘’K’.
It would be fuzzy in the morning, but they helped each other with most of their clothes, giggling at how complicated it was (too many layers on Aziraphale and everything too tight on Crowley) and climbed on the bed wearing only their underthings.
There was a struggle of arms and legs and a brief debate on who would be the big spoon.
(Snuggling was the obvious way to go, apparently.)
Aziraphale won by saying he was not wearing his pajamas while Crowley had none to wear, what meant he had the duty to take care of his guest.
It made sense for the two of them at the time, and soon Crowley was peacefully asleep in Aziraphale’s arms.