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A steady, sullen rain falls cold and dreary outside the dusty windows of Aziraphale’s bookshop. The golden lamplight of the backroom casts long shadows into corners, but it’s warm and dry and smells of books and old wine stains, something that isn’t quite, but could be, home. Crowley drowses while Aziraphale reads, sprawled out along the sofa and listening to Aziraphale’s steady breaths, the patter of the rain outside, the soft rasp of pages turning.
It could equally be hours or days later that Aziraphale’s low voice drifts across the room to twine round Crowley’s ear. “Crowley?” the angel murmurs. “Why don’t we get you upstairs, darling? You’ll be much more comfortable in a bed.” There’s a rustle of motion, footsteps, and then Aziraphale’s hands are on Crowley’s face, brushing a lock of hair off of his forehead.
The words wend their way slowly through Crowley’s awareness, an inexorable slide like partially crystalized honey. “You have a bed?” Crowley says, opening bleary eyes to see Aziraphale knelt down beside the sofa, fingers still carding idly through Crowley’s hair. His faint surprise is subsumed briefly by a wellspring of fondness for the angel, his gentle touch, his lovely face. “Why do you have a bed?”
Aziraphale goes faintly pink. “Never you mind that now,” he says. He lays a palm against Crowley’s cheek, cupping his face, and then he stands, extending a hand to help Crowley up. Crowley takes it, lets Aziraphale pull him up and then usher him toward the stairs in the back of the room. His hand lingers on the small of Crowley’s back, as much a caress as a guide.
The bedroom is small, cozy in a comfortable, old-fashioned sort of way, like a particularly nice countryside bed and breakfast from the fifties. The bed is covered with an embroidered duvet and far too many pillows, and there’s a white wicker vanity and matching dresser along one delicately flower-printed wall. It’s exactly how Crowley might have expected Aziraphale’s bedroom to look, had he ever thought to consider that Aziraphale might have a bedroom.
“Is this new?” Crowley says, lingering in the doorway. He makes a vague gesture at the room, at the bed. “I thought you didn’t sleep.”
“I don’t,” Aziraphale says. He bustles around the little room, straightening an already perfectly straight watercolor painting of a duck before moving to turn down the bedclothes. “It’s just… just in case.”
Crowley’s throat is suddenly a little tight, something soft blooming warm within him. “Just in case, huh?” He steps into the room properly now, looking it over. On the wall behind the door, just next to the bed, there’s a painting that doesn’t quite match the rest of the decor. It’s a portrait, a pale woman with her face turned to one side, scarlet hair pinned to the crown of her head. She’s dressed in a dark gown, one strap slipping down her shoulder.
“How long have you had this?” Crowley says, moving toward the painting to inspect it further.
Aziraphale comes up beside him. “I managed to track it down in the early 20’s. It’s a beautiful piece, don’t you agree?”
Crowley reaches up to touch the painting, to brush his fingertips along the lithe form of the woman’s bare arm, down the curve of her hip. He hums noncommittally.
“You looked so lovely that day,” Aziraphale says, slipping an arm around Crowley’s waist and leaning his head against Crowley’s shoulder. Warmth seeps into Crowley everywhere they touch. “Of course, I always think you’re lovely.”
“Even like this?” Crowley says, inclining his head toward the painting. “I thought you were… that you preferred…” Men, Crowley doesn’t say. Angels and demons both are genderless, but he sees how Aziraphale presents himself, how his leans into others’ assumptions and perceptions. Aziraphale’s human dalliances, and there have been a few over the millennia, have all been the same basic type, a type Crowley tends towards sometimes but not always.
Aziraphale huffs out a little laugh, fond and a bit indulgent. “I prefer you, Crowley,” he says simply, like this is a basic tenet of being, a truth on which the whole universe is built. “However you choose to look. It’s you, darling.”
Crowley’s not sure what to say to that. They lapse into silence, and Crowley gazes at the painting, remembering. The artist had approached him - or rather, her, at the time - and Crowley, being a creature naturally inclined to vanity, had agreed readily. The resulting scandal had been very good for business, tempting Paris's salon-goers to a whole host of vices, but mostly, Crowley remembers the cool slide of the silk gown against his legs, remembers how Sargent had gazed at him like he was something precious, something beautiful.
“You could dress that way again, you know,” Aziraphale says. “If you like.”
Crowley’s eyes linger on the cinched waist of the woman in the painting before settling on the elegant sweep of her neck, the plunging neckline. “Would you like?”
Aziraphale hums appreciatively. “I like you any way you are,” he says, “but there is a certain appeal to this particular look. You’re so covered up these days, and I do so love the dip of your collarbone.”
“My collarbone, huh?” Crowley teases, so full of love that it must be visible to Heaven itself. “You sound like one of your old Victorian novels. Will you catch me if I swoon?” He presses his hand to his forehead, eyes rolling back dramatically, a playful smile on his lips.
Aziraphale leans up to press a kiss to his cheek. “Always, my dear.”