Chapter Text
The first things Az noticed when he opened the door were freckles. Lots and lots of freckles, all dotted across the face of a stranger like the many tiny brush strokes of a Monet. Az thought it was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and the feeling only grew when he noticed that the man had eyes the color of honey behind his gold-rimmed glasses. Unruly auburn curls were pulled backward, falling free in chunks from a loose bun. The stranger was tall, too; he was standing on the sidewalk, a few steps down from the door to Az’s shop, and his face was still at Az’s eye level.
It took several moments longer than it should have for Az to realize that the man wasn’t the only person at the door. A young woman with dark eyes and hair and skin was standing at his side, and she was grinning up at Az with one eyebrow raised.
“Hello,” Az said, having become uncomfortably aware that he’d been staring for a time that far exceeded polite standards. “May I help you?”
The man made a noise that sounded like all the consonant letters from the alphabet crushed together and said, “Scones.”
Az blinked at him. “Sorry?”
“Hi,” the woman said with a laugh, jabbing her elbow into her companion’s ribs. “I’m Anathema, and this is Crowley. We own the bakery down the street. We saw you moving around the place earlier and thought you might like a little welcome gift.”
The man – Crowley – cleared his throat and offered Az a shy smile before climbing the stairs and pushing a gingham cloth covered basket into Az’s hands.
“It’s scones,” mumbled Crowley, the skin of his cheeks beneath his freckles turning redder than his hair. “Ana put some jam and cream in there ‘s well.”
“Thank you.”
Crowley’s blush deepened, and he bounced forward onto the balls of his feet for a moment before sticking a (delightfully freckled) hand out. Az tucked the basket between his arm and his hip, freeing up a hand of his own and sliding it into Crowley’s.
Goodness, the man’s hand was warm.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” Crowley said. He gave Az’s hand a firm squeeze and a quick shake, and then he tucked both of his hands into the front pockets of his very tight dark jeans and slunk down the steps.
If Az’s voice was slightly shaky on his second “Thank you,” neither Crowley nor Anathema saw fit to point it out.
“Come by the shop sometime,” Anathema said cheerily. “Coffee’s on the house your first time in.”
“If the scones are any good, my dear, I’ll certainly be in on a fairly regular basis,” Az said, his brain finally having remembered how to make conversation outside of ‘thank you’. “I had a few favorite places in London, and I’m missing them already.”
“They’ll be good.” Crowley’s voice was dark and smoky, and Az had the sudden desire to taste the lips that were currently stretching into a cocky smirk.
“I think I’ll be the judge of that, thank you.”
Anathema snorted and bumped Crowley’s arm with her shoulder. “He’s a skeptic. I like him.”
“Shut it.”
“No, no, really.” Anathema grinned at Az again. “You’re welcome to come ‘round the shop any time, of course, but I’ll start giving you free biscuits if you keep having Crowley on about his baking skills. He’s got a big head. We all could use someone to talk him down from that seven-story horse he’s gotten used to riding around on.”
Crowley looked at Anathema like he was debating the merits of shoving her into oncoming traffic, so Az laughed and took pity on him.
“He might have earned that horse. We’ll have to see.”
“Thanks, mate,” Crowley said drily.
“Be nice, Crowley. He’s new – we want him to like us before he realizes that he should hate us.” Anathema looked up at Az and winked, and he smiled back at her.
“You’ve just told him that he should hate us,” Crowley pointed out. “Good going.”
“Fuck,” Anathema said. She pointed at Az. “Forget I said that.”
“It’s forgotten.” Az’s heart shouldn’t have jumped at the way Crowley’s smirk spread into a smile, but it had never been much good at following rules, so it jumped anyway.
“Good man,” Anathema said. “Deserving of scones, I’d say.”
The smile on Crowley’s face widened. His beautiful sharp cheekbones reddened again, and he looked straight at Az and said, “He might be. Guess I’ll be the judge of that.”
Fuck’s sake, those eyes.
“I guess you will,” Az said cheekily.
Crowley certainly hadn’t shivered at that. That wasn’t possible. Trick of the light, that was all.
“I like you,” Anathema said again. “Anyway. Welcome to Alton.”
“Enjoy the scones,” said Crowley. When he smiled again, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth, and the bones in Az’s legs turned to rubber.
“Thank you,” Az managed to say. “Goodnight.”
Az closed the door and made his way through the rows of empty shelves and cardboard boxes that were stacked up to the height of his shoulder, the basket of scones still tucked under his arm. He made his way up the creaky stairs to his flat, setting the basket down on the small table in his kitchen.
Halfway through the second of Crowley’s dozen scones (which, he had to admit, were some of the best things he’d ever eaten in his life), Az realized that he hadn’t introduced himself.
“‘I’m Az Fell,’” Az muttered to himself as he took an overly aggressive bite of jam-covered scone. “That isn’t a difficult thing to weave into a conversation. Now he d– now they don’t know your name, you completely and utterly besotted fool.”
Az had been doing the same nightly routine for as long as he could remember. He changed into his pyjamas, brewed himself a cup of tea, and settled down into bed with a book. Tonight it was John Milton. Paradise Lost, one of Az’s favorites. He’d taught an entire course on it at University College, and he’d reached for it on his first night in Alton almost on reflex. There was something comforting about knowing a story forward and backward and having favorite verses and stanzas on his mind’s back burner for whenever he wanted to revisit them. Paradise was a friend made of paper and ink, and Az had always been able to slip between the pages and walk through the Garden any time he liked.
Any time, apparently, but tonight.
Az had read the same page six times over, his thoughts stubbornly refusing to stay focused on the story. They were turned instead toward sharp cheekbones and freckles in dense clusters and amber-colored eyes, to rough voices and warm hands and tongue-touched grins. With a sigh, Az slipped a ribbon between the pages of his book and set it gently on the bedside table.
“Tomorrow, old friend,” Az whispered, patting its leather cover with a perfectly manicured hand. It seemed that Crowley was going to be a rather inconvenient thing.
*********
Anathema was leaning against the counter and batting her pretty eyelashes at a twiggy red-faced young man when Az walked into Bentley’s. She looked up at the tinkling of the bell, moving away from the boy she’d been shamelessly flirting with. The young man, Az noticed with a smile, looked a bit like someone had recently dropped an anvil on his head.
“Hey! Bookshop bloke. G’morning to you.”
“Good morning,” Az said. “And I do apologize, my dear – I was quite out of sorts the other day, you see, and it would appear that I forgot to introduce myself.”
“You did.”
“I’m Az Fell.” Az stuck out a hand, and Anathema took it.
“Interesting name.”
One of Az’s eyebrows jumped into an arch before he could think to stop it.
“Mine’s a family name,” Anathema explained. “Some great-great-great-grandmother of mine had a vision that she’d have a descendant named Anathema, and here I am.”
“Ana’s family is batshit,” said a disembodied voice. Dark-sounding, rough in all the right places. Crowley.
A messy pile of red curls came into view a few moments later, emerging through the doorway that Az could only assume connected the business part of the bakery to the actual baking part. The rest of Crowley followed in short order, clad in dark clothes that toed the line of obscenely tight.
“Hello,” Az said. Distantly, he wondered when his tongue had become too large for his mouth.
“Hiya.” Crowley grabbed a white waist apron off of a hook by the door, wrapping it around his slinky hips and tying it with deft fingers. “Didn’t catch your name, but I heard Ana telling you where hers came from, so I can only assume yours was said.”
“Az.” Single words only, then.
Crowley made his way over to a very expensive-looking silver espresso machine. He twisted his neck backwards to look at Az, something silver shining in his golden eyes again.
“Not a common name, that.”
“No,” said Az.
Anathema cleared her throat, drawing Az’s attention away from whatever Crowley’s beautiful hands were doing with those little metal cups.
“What can we do you for? Coffee’s free this time – we keep our promises – but you’ve got to order something to go with it.”
“Ah,” Az said eloquently, bending over to look into one of the glass display cases. “What do you recommend?”
“The scones are good.” Crowley had slipped over to stand next to Anathema, and he was peering through the glass at Az.
Az’s face turned a very violent shade of red in an alarmingly short amount of time. He made a series of less-than-confident noises before landing on “They were, yes. Possibly the best I’ve ever had.”
When Crowley laughed, the skin at the corner of his eyes folded into pretty creases. It made his freckles pinch up and come together in places, and Az was overcome by the vehement belief that Crowley really ought to wear sunglasses. Too distracting, those eyes.
“I told you,” Crowley said to Anathema, knocking his hip into her side as he walked.
Anathema groaned. “You realize that he’s going to be insufferable now, don’t you, Az? Honestly. I have to live with this man.”
The warm feeling that had started in Az’s gut and had been spreading through his body from there lost its heat source.
“O-oh?” That sounded desperate and disappointed and a whole bucketload of other words that served as proof that Az was pathetic. Pathetic and a fool, and all of that in public. Fuck.
“He’s my best friend. Nightmare to live with, really, but he makes good coffee and lets my boyfriend borrow his dressing gown.”
The scrawny bloke who had been blushing the color of a ripe tomato when Az had walked in made a squeaking sound. Az found that his body was quite warm again, the creeping cold feeling having vanished as quickly as it had come.
“Ah,” Az said. “Hello. I take it you’re the boyfriend.”
The bloke squeaked again, looking at Anathema with too-wide eyes.
“That’s Newt,” said Anathema. “He didn’t know he was my boyfriend, evidently.”
“It’s cool,” Newt mumbled. “That’s… good, yeah. You’re my– my girlfriend.”
Crowley leaned over the second glass display case and flicked Newt on the head. “Congrats, you’ve finally tuned into the right channel. Now get lost. You’re late for work.”
“Shit,” Newt said. He muttered something about having a nice day and it having been nice to make Az’s acquaintance as he sprinted for the door.
“You should buy him a watch for his birthday,” Crowley said to Anathema, reaching into the display case with a pair of tongs. He pulled out two scones (a plain one and one that looked to have some kind of dark-colored fruit mixed in) and placed them into a white paper bag, which he took over to the register.
“You should stop reminding him about when his shift starts and let him be late every once in a while.”
“Two pounds twenty,” Crowley said with a pointed glare at his best friend. “And look, if he’s going to be hanging around, he’s pitching in for groceries. Which means he needs money, which means he needs a job. So I’ll be his damn nanny, because you’re not exactly jumping at the opportunity.”
Anathema hopped onto her tip toes and pressed a chaste kiss to Crowley’s cheek.
“Thank you,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m getting more muffins.”
“Oi, wait– hold on, Ana, that was an invitation for you to be his child-minder, not me!” When the only reply was the sound of snorting laughter, Crowley sighed and turned back to the register.
“Sorry about that,” he said, giving Az a half-smile that did funny things to the organs beneath Az’s ribs. “Two pounds twenty.”
Az stared at him. “What?”
“Scones.” Crowley shoved the white bag across the counter.
“I didn’t order–”
“You said they were good. Gave you a blueberry one to try today. On the house, of course.”
“I– you–” Az spluttered. He spent a moment rifling through his growing mental list of questions before giving up and chucking them into the metaphorical bin. “Thank you.”
“Welcome.” Crowley looked at him expectantly “Ehm. Two pounds, twenty pence.”
“Right.” In a vain attempt to hide the embarrassed blush that was creeping over his cheeks, Az dropped his head and busied himself with digging through his pockets for his wallet.
“Thanks,” Crowley said, accepting the few crumpled up notes and a small assortment of coins that Az had managed to fumble his way into finding. “Staying in to eat, or going?”
“Er.” Staying meant staring at Crowley and probably doing something like dropping half of a perfectly good scone onto the floor or choking on air, so. “Going. Lots to do, you know. Setting up the shop.”
“I know.”
“Ah.”
Crowley nudged the pastry bag with a long finger. “Scones, Az.”
There was no hiding the blush this time. “Bother. Of course. Yes.”
“You okay?”
“Absolutely,” Az said, snatching the bag off of the counter. “Definitely. Thank you for the scones, Crowley.”
“Enjoy ‘em.”
And then Az opened his big mouth and said, “See you tomorrow,” and Crowley’s answering smile made the air in his lungs disappear.
He didn’t even make it halfway down the block when Crowley caught up to him.
“Coffee,” Crowley said. “You forgot it.”
Az Fell had never been a coffee drinker. It was terribly bitter and usually too hot, and he had always been of the belief that only psychopaths drank the stuff black. Az was the type of man to go to a coffee shop and order tea ten times out of ten. In fact, to the best of his recollection, the last time that a cup of coffee had been in his hand had been the first time he’d tried it.
And yet here he was, giving Crowley a soft smile and taking the cardboard cup from his hand.
“Thank you,” Az said again.
“See you tomorrow.”
When Az had said that, it had sounded like an accident because it had been one. It didn’t sound accidental when Crowley said it. It had finality, gravity. It became a certain thing, something to count on, and Az’s stupidly hopeful heart jumped into his throat.
“Tomorrow,” Az said to Crowley’s retreating back, far too softly for Crowley to hear.
The blueberry scone was even better than the plain one, which meant that Az was completely and utterly fucked.