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Aziraphale checked his watch. Eight minutes past midnight, and everyone ought to be in bed by now.
He was doing an absolutely marvelous job of being discrete, he thought to himself smugly, as he crept down the dark and silent hallway towards Crowley’s — Nanny Ashtoreth’s — room. He glanced furtively behind him every few steps, and poked his head around each corner most stealthily before turning.
It was such fun, all these disguises and secret little rendezvous, and knowing glances exchanged through bushes and over the tops of shrubbery. Like one of those Bond films Crowley was so fond of.
As he passed the wing where most of the live-in staff stayed, he made sure to keep his footfalls extra light. Though if someone, say, the second-newest maid, a girl from the Ukraine called Katrin, had stepped out for a late night cigarette, they would have spotted him immediately, raised an eyebrow, decided that interfering was not worth getting oneself murdered, and continued on their way.
Luck of the Devil indeed.
Aziraphale made it to Crowley’s room without incident. It was up in the main wing of the house, with a connecting door to the nursery.
He wouldn’t have risked their cover by coming, only that they had planned to meet that afternoon during the baby’s nap to compare notes. Crowley had never arrived. Aziraphale had waited nearly an hour at the little coffeehouse he’d taken to thinking of as theirs. Two cocoas later, he’d given up, glued the mutton chops back on, and went to tend to the azaleas. They were looking, he saw, rather droopy. “I know how you feel,” he’d confided, patting a wilting leaf.
And so, here he was, creeping through the solemn and slumbering house, like, well, a creep.
Sneaking through the estate had seemed rather fun and dashing on a whim. He had even haphazardly shoved a nice bottle of vidal blac from his own cottage into his coat pocket as a last minute impulse. He’d had a clear mental picture of Crowley apologizing profusely for standing him up, blaming the baby, and inviting Aziraphale in to share the bottle and compare those notes.
On the threshold of the room, Aziraphale felt suddenly foolish. Now that he’d thought about it, he was sure Crowley had only had a difficult time getting Warlock to sleep, and wouldn’t have missed their meeting intentionally. There wasn’t even anything for Crowley to apologize for. Aziraphale was being ridiculous, coming out at this hour. He should go home.
Dim light shone from beneath the door, and Aziraphale could hear muted music from somewhere inside.
He knocked softly. “Crowley?” he asked, in a stage whisper that would have been audible from the back row of a crowded theatre.
There was no response. Well, Crowley was clearly awake and — he tried the handle — the door was open. There was no harm in seeing what his demonic counterpart was up to, he thought, feeling reckless. He stepped inside, into the warm, soft darkness. The lights in the bedroom were off, but a dim glow from the window and the open hall door illuminated enough for Aziraphale to see the layout of the room.
There was bed, simple wood and clean lines, with the fluffiest duvet Aziraphale had ever seen. Another wool blanket — tartan, he noted smugly—thrown across the foot. The sheets were rumpled and unmade, one side thrown across the other as the owner — Crowley — had thrown them aside to get up. He wondered if Crowley had simply not made the bed this morning, or had tried to sleep tonight and failed.
The dresser matched the bed, simple and unadorned. He counted several mysterious little glass bottles and tubs, and a dish of hair pins, a brush and a comb. A mirror attached, with a scarf or two thrown over it. The urge came to him, strong and entirely unwanted, to walk further in, touch the bottles and tubs of makeup, smell the perfume, pick up the brush and put it down.
A Persian rug, thrown over the hardwood, softened his footsteps as he crept deeper inside. The niggling feeling that he was truly intruding became difficult to brush aside. No one ever came to Nanny’s room—she tended her charge in his nursery, or the vast playroom on the second floor, or outside. No visitors came to her here—all business with the family was discussed in public spaces. This space was Crowley’s in a way that Aziraphale had never seen before. This was very unlike Crowley’s fashionable and spare Mayfair flat. Even there, there was pretense, a desire to seem cool, fashionable, and above-it-all. Here, Crowley lived the human way. Slept, picked out clothes from the modestly sized closet. Brushed and styled his hair just so. Carefully traced the shape of his lips with color. Aziraphale swallowed.
He should go.
He took a step forward.
He could tell now that the light he’d seen from the hall poured out from the halfway open door to the ensuite bathroom. The smell that enveloped him was almost overwhelming. The warm, humid air carried citrus and floral and herbs. He breathed in deeply—he’d caught this smell very faintly before, or something similar, as Crowley brushed past him in the hall, or the breeze carried it across the lawn while he trimmed the privet. The music was louder here as well, and he recognized it faintly. An old Irving Berlin tune, about all the things that just don’t quite measure up to the thrill of dancing cheek to cheek.
This had gone on far enough, Aziraphale told himself sternly. This venture may have started as an attempt to reschedule a missed meeting, but it had turned into something else entirely. If Aziraphale had truly wanted to speak to Crowley, there had been nothing at all to stop him from announcing himself again at any point. He’d been there too long. He’d crossed some kind of barrier, breached some kind of trust. Every scrap of sensory information he’s gleaned from his silent observation of Crowley’s space was stolen information. (He would keep it, covetously. Hoard the knowledge of the fluffy duvet, and the scented air, and the bottles of rouge and perfume and soft music, and moonlight creeping through the window—)
He would turn around and go.
But what could Crowley be doing in there?
Aziraphale tiptoed deeper into the humid warmth, allowed the heady smell of oranges and lavender to draw him in. Peered into the gap made by the open door.
It was a long, narrow room, ceiling sloping low, with a little window cut into it. There were plush woven mats strewn across the floor, in front of the sink and the tub. A pot in the corner held a lush green plant, too big for the space and reaching oddly shaped leaves toward the tiny window. Monstera, he thought desperately. He recalled Crowley telling him once, at the botanical gardens, in Devon. In their native tropics, they bore lovely fruit. Indoors, cramped by their pots, they rarely flowered.
A candle flickered, perched on the edge of the large, claw foot tub, another on the sink. Lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus. The vanity lights around the mirror added only a little to the illumination, and the moonlight still poured through the tiny open window. The light was warm and soft, dreamlike. A warm breeze rustled the plant’s leaves.
A record player, the kind mass produced in the 1950’s, set into suitcases for easy portability, sat (more precariously than Aziraphale would have liked) on the lid of the toilet. Ella Fitzgerald crooned “the cares that hung around me through the week, seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak—“
And Aziraphale nearly gasped aloud to hear Crowley singing softly along with her.
And that, unfortunately, brought Aziraphale’s attention to the demon.
Crowley sat on the side of the tub, humming softly, occasionally joining the record to sing along with the words— “When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek—“
Crowley’s curls, dark with water, hung loose around his shoulders. Shoulders, which Aziraphale observed, were currently being caressed by a midnight black kimono-style bath robe. It had a subtle and delicate pattern of muted peonies up the sides. It whispered against his skin each time he moved. It clung. It seemed to be the only thing he was wearing.
Aziraphale’s heart hammered in his chest so loud he was sure Crowley would hear and catch him spying.
But he was safe for now, it seemed.
Well. To a point.
Crowley had one leg on the ground, bracing himself, and the other up on the lip of the tub. He’d almost finished shaving this one when Aziraphale arrived, just in time to see him sweep an old-fashioned safety razor —but in rose gold, really?— up the length of his leg, followed closely by deft fingers, smoothing skin and checking for spots missed. He rinsed the razor in the bath, water cloudy with dissolved bubbles and fragrant with oil, gone quite cool by now— only to repeat the process a few more times. Aziraphale followed the path of the razor with his eyes. Saw how the sharp metal cast away foamy lather and revealed pale unblemished skin.
Crowley set the razor down on the side of the tub, switched his position, and began again.
Aziraphale stared, rapt and uneasy, as the blade rasped against Crowley’s skin. Something unnameable coiled in the pit of his stomach, dark and ravenous. It was like the urge to touch Crowley’s things, out in the bedroom, but multiplied a thousandfold. He had never seen this expression on Crowley’s face, soft, calm. Unguarded. Those unveiled yellow eyes held no tension. Aziraphale wanted to scream. He wanted — this was not for him to see. This wasn’t for anybody—He had passed the bounds of reasonable conduct the moment he’d crept into Crowley’s room unbidden, and every second he delayed would only make matters worse when he was discovered. He would leave now, and deal with the immensity of his desire by bottling it up, as God intended.
He could not tear his eyes from Crowley’s face. All the hard lines that he knew were smooth, and he seemed, for the moment, utterly relaxed. Despite the kimono, Aziraphale felt as dirty as if he’d walked in on Crowley completely naked.
Desperate thoughts came to him, almost too quickly to parse. How dare you be this —this— this lovely! Here, in the Dowling’s house. How dare you, when you abandoned me this afternoon? How dare a blasted—bubble bath — make you feel happier than I ever could?
A drop of water rolled from Crowley’s hair down his cheek —If he could only be that drop of water, caressing his face— and Aziraphale felt the inexplicable urge to smite the foul demon that he hadn’t felt since the First Crusade.
Crowley finished shaving, and pressed a generous dollop of oil into his hands from a dark glass bottle next to the candle. He slowly, languidly, applied the oil, still singing softly.
“But I don't enjoy it half as much as dancing cheek to cheek.”
As Crowley massaged the oil onto newly smooth legs, Aziraphale allowed himself a moment to imagine himself, kneeling in front of the tub, his own hands slick with oil, running them down Crowley’s legs, soothing his skin, planting a kiss on the inside of his knee—
He must have shifted somehow, overcome, and the bottle of wine he’d wedged into his coat slipped free and hit the ground with a deafening thunk. It rolled loudly across the hardwood, lost to the undiscovered country under the dresser.
“I want my arm about you, the charm about you, will carry me through to H—“
Crowley looked up, mouth parted in a gasp—