Chapter Text
“Just help the neighbours a little,” Gabriel had said. “Catch the heifer, charm the girl, nothing big,” he’d said.
Well, Aziraphale had technically caught the heifer. He was also muddy, drenched in freezing swamp water, and hadn’t charmed anyone except possibly the young cow whose resting place he had almost stumbled over in the misty forest.
The young lady in question—a wealthy heiress of the neighbouring estate—had, of course, been politely grateful for the search party who had brought her runaway heifer home safe, but had turned up her nose and stepped back at the sight of Aziraphale’s filthy appearance, refusing to even shake his hand.
Blackbirds sang in the trees as Aziraphale returned home filthy and chilled to the bone, but at least without the burden of a lady’s interest. To be quite honest, Aziraphale was relieved, though he hadn’t believed in his chances in the first place; he’s known Hilda since they were children, and while this disgust was new, she’s never graced Aziraphale with more than polite indifference.
Unfortunately, Gabriel has never backed down from a challenge.
“How did it go?” he asked the moment Aziraphale stepped into the main house. Gabriel sat on a swing chair by the large bread oven, having guessed his little brother would try to sneak in through the servant’s entrance.
“How does it look like?” Aziraphale muttered, lamenting that the big oven isn’t heated in the summer. He suppressed a yawn, knowing it would only annoy Gabriel more.
“Did you get an invitation for dinner?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh? Well, no matter, no matter. I know just the thing: girls are weak for letters. You should write!”
“I don’t think—”
“You should thank her for her kind words, and maybe—oh, this is perfect. Say something nice about her eyes! Are they blue? Or grey?”
Aziraphale grimaced. He’s never had any eye for feminine beauty. Even the heifer’s long, dark lashes had been much more memorable to him. It was of a rare breed and stuck out from the local, reddish-brown cattle with its pearly white coat and black accents on the tips of its ears, and around the big, solemn eyes. Pretty eyes or no, Aziraphale was just as excited about marrying the heifer as any girls Gabriel tried to push onto him.
“Aziraphale? Are you listening? I don’t think you understand—”
“Master Gabriel, I think that can wait.” A familiar voice interrupted the tirade before it could gain much steam, as Agnes Nutterdotter bustled into the room. “Master Aziraphale needs a wash, warm drink, ‘n a good night’s sleep, or he’ll catch his death!”
The housekeeper was probably the only person in the household who had the skill to shut Gabriel up. Well, apart from Gabriel’s wife Bengta, but she’d never stand up for Aziraphale. On the contrary, she probably agreed with Gabriel about how disappointing it was that, at the age of twenty-eight, Aziraphale was still unmarried and not pulling his weight in the family’s plans to increase their influence in their county.
Gabriel shrugged. “He can go to the sauna. It must still be warm.”
A silence fell over the room, only broken by the suddenly rather loud ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner. It was already almost midnight.
Agnes squinted. “It’s the tonttu’s hour already. He’ll not like his time to be intruded, and the lads are already heating water at the side house. Aziraphale can—”
“Nonsense,” Gabriel scoffed. “Those superstitions don’t have a room in a Christian household. Aziraphale and the farmhands will go to the sauna, and that’s that.”
Aziraphale glanced at Agnes, knowing she took the old faiths seriously, but the thought of washing himself in the warm embrace of a sauna was too lovely to resist. He was fascinated with the old gods and deities, but he was sure all the creatures and spirits would avoid their lands. They were proper, God-fearing Christians, after all. Sometimes, Aziraphale wondered how it would be if that wasn’t the case, but right now, he wanted nothing more than to get warm and clean again. And then sleep for a day.
The farmhands, despite being equally filthy due to their search operation, refused to come with him this late, so he walked through the yard and past the gates alone, squeezing the handle of a lantern in his hand. It wasn’t dark enough for him to need its light outside, but the sauna would be pitch dark without it, and Aziraphale had to admit its presence was comforting. While he knew every twist and turn of the meandering footpath—the sauna had been built further away from the enclosed yard for obvious reasons—the white nights of the north held some ancient magic that made it difficult to dismiss Agnes’s warnings.
His woven, birch-bark slippers made his footsteps almost inaudible, and even the usual blackbirds and robins were eerily silent. The mist that had made it so hard to find the heifer—and avoid the wettest spots of the bog—had settled above the ground like a white blanket, and apart from the low hum that was the sound of the forest breathing around him, everything was deeply quiet. Aziraphale’s heart thudded in his chest, and he wondered if he was making a mistake after all. Where were all the birds?
Then, a nightingale started its lively concert on a birch somewhere right above him, and their old sauna came into view. Aziraphale chuckled, berating himself for letting his imagination run wild, and grabbed the familiar, wooden door handle, shaking his head.
***
Crowley lounged on the wooden benches, enjoying the heat that still radiated from the stones even though the fire had been snuffed out long ago. One of the family's servants had left him bread and milk, and he had collected fresh birch twigs with young leaves to make a soft vihta for himself. Right now, the lush bouquet was acting as a pillow under his head, and he closed his eyes, drawing in the invigorating and heady scent of birch into his lungs.
It was perfect.
Most of the tonttu circles were rather indignant about the spread of the faith of one god, his son, and the holy something, but Crowley had chosen his current sauna from the list of those unwanted job locations on purpose and couldn’t be happier about his choice.
Crowley isn’t a particularly hard-working saunatonttu. Technically, he should've been doing some skinning-alive or at least scheming to scare Master Gabriel off now and then for his insistence on not believing in tonttus. However, Crowley couldn’t be arsed to do any of that. None of his tonttu colleagues grasped how easy it is to work in the sauna of a non-believer. After all, if the family doesn’t believe he exists, they can hardly expect any good deeds from him! Crowley didn’t bother them, and they didn’t bother him, and the family servants still made sure he got treats now and then. What more could a lazy tonttu want?
He stretched his legs and spread his toes before curling into a comfortable ball like a cat. The sauna was dark and quiet, and the forest around it was tranquil. Crowley fell asleep.
The next moment, he was rudely awakened by a nightingale who was too horny to keep its beak shut. Crowley was just about to curse its existence when he realised it wasn’t a broadcast of horny thoughts. It was a warning call, and he barely managed to dive into the darkness behind the stove before the door was yanked open and someone stepped into the room.
Aziraphale could have sworn he heard a rustling noise from the benches when he stepped into the darkness of the sauna. However, he saw nothing out of the ordinary in the lantern’s light. There was a vihta lying haphazardly on the floor. One of the servants must’ve made it recently, since it was so fresh and soft. Maybe it had made the sound when falling down the bench?
The small window by the washing area brought in the dim light of the dusk outside, but that didn’t reach up to where the benches were. Aziraphale placed the lantern on a hook by the door and opened its latch to lit a shingle from the lantern’s fire before clamping the piece of burning wood to a stand to add more light by the stairs so he wouldn’t stumble on his way up.
Removing his clothes had never felt so good as he peeled the cold and filthy fabric off his skin and let the sauna’s gentle after-warmth caress him. It was no longer the proper, strong heat of a freshly heated sauna, but it was warm enough that Aziraphale’s soul started to return to his body.
He took his time scrubbing his skin and hair with lukewarm water before climbing up to the benches with the vihta, determined to enjoy the moment and forget everything about cows, girls, and family obligations. He was all too aware God had created him with a body that yearned for a man’s touch instead of a woman's warmth; it was a secret that condemned him to a life with the lonely company of his own hand and shameful daydreams.
Aziraphale was happy to find out that the stones on the stove were still hot enough for the water to hiss into a fountain of steam as he threw a scoopful on them, and he couldn’t suppress a moan of pleasure as the hot löyly fell down on his skin. His limbs grew heavy, and he leaned his elbows on his knees, letting his head hang down between his shoulders. He took in the healing, invigorating steam, and thought of nothing.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself staring down into a single, golden eye with a slitted pupil.
The next thing he noticed were the sharp, gleaming teeth as a human shaped creature crawled up from under the bench Aziraphale was sitting on, hissing like nothing he had ever heard before.
Aziraphale’s body grew taut like the string of a violin and heart leaped up his throat, but he was unable to move a muscle as the creature came closer.
He—at least it most definitely looked like a male—had flaming-red hair and a long, coppery beard that continued down his flat chest and wiry arms. Aziraphale spotted the shapes of two perky nipples and a shadow of a belly button before the creature spoke.
“Who daresssss to tresssspasssss my realm?” it demanded, the nails—more like talons—digging into Aziraphale’s pale, sweaty thighs so hard, it punched a terrified squeak out of him.
“I—I—” Aziraphale’s tongue didn’t work. The stare of the flaming eye made his brain stumble somewhere between fight and flight, ending up paralyzed. Every hair of his naked body suddenly stood up, gooseflesh breaking out despite the heat surrounding him.
“Looking for trouble?” the creature continued, hissing without sibilants, and he was closer, so much closer, climbing on Aziraphale’s lap, a bony knee slotting between Aziraphale’s legs and hand cupping his cheek. The creature’s skin was hot like stones in the sun as he practically straddled Aziaphale’s thigh, pinning him down with otherworldly force. One talon pressed into his lower lip to part them; for one, panicked moment, Aziraphale thought he was about to be kissed.
“You hear me, pale one?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale yelped, breathing shallow and fast through his nose.
“Get the fuck out.”
“Yes.”
Easier said than done though. Aziraphale couldn’t move. It was a tonttu—a proper saunatonttu—and those were (at least in the stories) notoriously bad-tempered if treated wrong. Skinning alive had been mentioned! Old wives threatened unruly children with those stories so they would behave in the sauna and not hurt themselves on the scorching stones or boiling water.
Somehow that cautionary tale was now sitting naked on Aziraphale’s lap.
He gasped for air. Something bubbled in his chest, and he wasn’t sure if it was laughter, a sob, or a full-blown scream.
The tonttu blinked, so close that Aziraphale thought it would kiss him after all. Then, it drew breath, face-to-face so their noses almost touched.
“OUT!” he snarled, so loud that Aziraphale’s ears didn’t stop ringing until the sound was replaced with the thrumming of his blood, as he bolted through the forest barefoot and lungs burning, only a flaxen towel haphazardly wrapped around his body.
He didn’t stop before he reached the gates, and barely even then, so he almost ran over Agnes, who sat outside on the stone stairs of the servants’ entrance.
There was movement down at her feet as two grass snakes slithered away towards the cracks of the stone stairs. She had tamed them by feeding them, and she believed they had powers to protect the house and especially the cattle. The snakes were elusive creatures, and Aziraphale had only ever caught glimpses of them despite knowing where they nested. Now one of them stopped to give him a look before slowly vanishing into the darkness.
“You didn’t go after all?” she asked, eyebrows high in her hairline.
“Wha–what?”
“To the sauna,” she elaborated, but that was no longer a question. She looked at Aziraphale's barely clothed form from head to toe, and she shook her head slowly. “The snakes know things,” she continued in her mysterious way.
Aziraphale opened his mouth to ask, but no words came out. It was late. He was tired. He must’ve imagined things.
When he stepped into the kitchen, the old grandfather clock rang twelve times, as if Aziraphale hadn’t been away at all.