Chapter Text
Tracy had said to focus his intention. Clear his mind and let the spell work. It was all rubbish and he knew it was rubbish but he also wanted it to work. Which was an intention on its own. It was really rather clever of her. If it didn’t work, he hadn’t done it right. If it did, well, she could take most of the credit! Most. She was generous enough to share, since he did need to be the one to actually do the work. She was just helping him get out of his rut.
What he had been doing simply wasn’t working. He’d met no one since moving here. Dating apps were clearly geared at a very different sort of person than he was interested in, when they yielded any matches at all. While there was a certain appeal in being wanted, in being desirable, it wasn’t what he actually wanted. That he was spending more time looking at the bathroom behind them for a hint of their personality rather than the goods on display made it rather clear they would be terrible matches. They were eager to offer but none of them had what he wanted.
Beyond that, it was a small enough town that it was lacking in the variety of events he’d been used to in London… not that those had yielded results either. If he wanted to settle down he might have to just settle too.
Were his standards just too high? No.
He put that thought right out of his head. If he was going to do this ritual he was going to focus on what he wanted as an ideal. This was a means of focusing. And he was terrible at that without something more concrete to contain it.
Tracy hadn’t said to write down what he wanted, but she hadn’t said not to either and writing was always an easier means of focusing his mind. He wasn’t going to be able to just sit still and focus on one thing for long, especially one so big and complicated that had eluded him for so long. Stillness and silence also made him faintly uncomfortable. He’d spent too many years being told to sit still, be quiet, think only the right thoughts. There were no more nuns rapping him across the knuckles for fidgeting, but he’d still felt the pressure to be the ‘right kind of person’ even among what should have been his own community. He mostly liked the way he looked, but it was also sometimes a prison to look respectable, sophisticated, and of high enough class that people had to listen when he spoke, even if they had not been his own words. They rarely had been what he really wanted to say. And that was what had eventually driven him out of London.
Most people moved to the city thinking they would finally be able to be themself, but they weren’t running a business in an terribly expensive neighborhood. When he’d started, the rent had been high but tolerable for the amount of foot traffic needed to run the type of shop he did. But prices had gone up and up and the overall character had changed.. He’d been part of the gentry and still been gentrified out after the…well. Best not to think about that.
If it had just been the money, he might have been able to weather it. But it was the people as well. He had become a tourist attraction of sorts but for people who wanted only the lovely, charming bits… and lovely charming Brits (™). He could be all those things but not for the hours and hours he needed to to make it work. Making himself small and palatable all the time had worn him down and somehow made his edges even rougher. And with the advent of online reviews… that was what had really done him in. Too many times when he could not bring himself to be Nice to someone that saw him as nothing more than a prop in their photos.
And then… then… he hadn’t been able to start over and squeeze himself back into that role once he’d been forced out of it.
But that way led to an evening of dark thoughts where he spent his time brooding over what he’d lost. He needed to focus on what he actually wanted. That’s why he’d tried to make a fresh start somewhere entirely new.
What he wanted was to be seen. He wanted someone to pull off his mask and smile at what they saw. Even if he was a bit of a bastard underneath.
His meandering thoughts had filled up half the tiny notebook already. Clearly it had done him some good to write it all down, but the point was to write down what he was looking for in a companion. Surely he had some idea? Afterall he’d filled out all those dating profiles about interests and whatnot. Shared interests were good. An ideal companion should share some of the same interests and perhaps he could learn to love some new ones along with the person who’d introduced them to him.
He should like fine dining and a bit of overindulgence. Nothing turned him off a man like one that said something about how he should do things in moderation. What was moderation for one was deprivation for another. If his companion could not recognize that Aziraphale knew his own needs and limits, then he was not worth taking on a second date. Aziraphale was sick to death of being told to make himself smaller.
He paused there for a moment and tried to picture what he was actually looking for. With the way he looked, soft and fussy, there was that expectation of smallness as well. Yet years lifting and moving books meant he had a lot more muscle than anyone would suspect. His outfits had been designed to make him look smaller, more refined. But did he want that? Did he want to look small and delicate next to a partner?
It was a rather wicked thought, to be so focused on looks, but why not? This was just a way to refine a fantasy so he could recognize the pieces he wanted when he saw it in the real world. So long as he understood the difference. He went back to writing. He wanted someone lean and delicate looking and just a little bit shorter than him. Someone that would look at him and never think he was small in any way, especially his personality.
Aziraphale jotted down several more interests that he considered important. A companion could have some difference of opinion as to favorites, but he wanted someone that would genuinely enjoy spending time together in activities.
He also wrote down a few activities he definitely hated. He hoped a companion would introduce him to some new passions as well, but there were some things he had tried and tried to like and they simply were not for him. He would be unable to humor a suitor that wanted to spend hours on football or gossip about the royals. He made a slight amendment there. He did always like the corgis. Perhaps a dog might be nice?
Getting a dog with someone was just short of a marriage proposal so he’d never considered it as a conversational gambit. He made a note to ask about what kind of dog any potential suitor saw himself with. It might be very revealing.
He was nearly out of pages and yet he found himself doodling to try and focus. If he squinted at that one, it looked a bit like a snake wound back on itself. What had he been thinking?
Oh, yes, the rest of the ritual had involved silently repeating what he wanted as a focus. He’d said to Tracy then that he couldn’t do that and sit still as well, so she’d suggested he go for a walk somewhere new. Make a fresh path for his love to come into his life!
Rubbish, of course, but the point was getting out of his comfort zone so he had spent some time researching places he could take a more interesting walk. His current haunts hadn’t led to meeting anyone, so a new one might be just the thing. He’d found an older brochure about Tadfield Manner that mentioned a labyrinth walk but none of the new material did. A bit of internet sleuthing had shown it on a recent satellite photo, just beyond the miniature golf course. It had seemed fitting to go walk an abandoned labyrinth. He’d done quite a few when he was younger and trying to reconcile his faith with who he was and the movement had genuinely helped him work through his thoughts.
That he’d be sneaking around church grounds in search of a boyfriend seemed somehow fitting. He’d kissed many a boy in a churchyard. It would be back to form, when he was young and idealistic and thought he could make the world accept him rather than get beat down by it.
It was simple to sneak off during miniature golf. He timed it for a period of the day when there were plenty of youngsters screaming and waving about golf clubs. When one of them dropped their ice cream on the green and howled like the world was ending, the harried attendant had no time to pay attention to where Aziraphale was.
It was easy to slip off the course and through the tall grass. It wasn’t much of a barrier and he could see other people had done just that at various times. There were some other sculptures beyond the edge of the mini-golf that would have been irresistible to some people. Most of them had the look of having been pulled down off a ruined church somewhere, though he had the suspicion the sphinx may have genuinely been looted from Egypt.
The ones that had been banished to the shrubby area beyond the mowed section were generally in worse condition or just a bit disturbing looking. These he was less sure they’d come from a church as some of them seemed to have horns. Though he supposed that all the good figures needed evil ones to fight. They just were a bit more likely to scare children so were out here where they could scare teenagers looking for somewhere private. He quietly backed up as he found one such couple doing exactly that, the girl clinging to the young man after being spooked by a leering figure. Or at last pretending to have been so as to require someone to protect her. He was past those kinds of games, but he could give them their privacy while he walked towards where the satellite photo showed the labyrinth.
He spotted the hood of a car poking out of a rose bush and knew he must be near the right spot. The rusting hulk of a familiar vintage car next to what must be an old bomb crater had been easy to spot on the satellite view online. If he was a superstitious man, he’d take a Bentley with a rose bush growing out of it as some sort of omen. It must have been a beautiful car when it was new, but now it just served as a marker to point him towards his true objective.
The labyrinth was not what he’d expected. The old brochure had indicated it was built as an art installation a few decades ago from locally quarried stone. There had been no photo, so he’d expected something a bit more refined. It had looked like an overgrown circle on the grainysatellite photo. These stones were all rough-cut upright slabs, looking more like a small henge than a modern installation. But there was a plaque with the date and artist initials along with a winged skull, right at the “front”. It was circular so it was hard to tell where the front was anymore with the plants grown up and through the stones.
The plaque had the original pattern inscribed on it, a traditional Cretan style. An interesting choice for a once-religious institution when the Chartres style tended to be more common in churches. He looked it over and then at the circle of standing stones. He had a brief sense of unease as something flickered between the stones and he considered leaving. But it was just a butterfly casting strange shadows in the slanting afternoon light.
He had come this far, he might as well do it at this point. It would be embarrassing to tell Tracy he’d thought better of the whole thing. He could take hold of his life and be brave and a little reckless and do this whole ritual thing. It was still all rubbish but it would make a good story at least and he loved those. What kind of story had the protagonist turn back at this point? He very much wanted to be the protagonist for once.
He straightened up and took the little notebook of what he wanted in a companion out of his waistcoat and flipped through it again. He was faintly embarrassed at how meandering it was. This was supposed to be a way to visualize what he wanted in a relationship so he could pursue it. Or at the very least talk about it with Tracy and she’d set him up with someone. That was a far more likely outcome than him somehow bumping into someone after all this time. He must have met, or at least been seen by, most of the people in town by now.
He bit his lip looking at the section where he’d written down what he found aesthetically pleasing in a man. It really was embarrassing. Like he was ordering up a man from a catalog somewhere. He flipped to where he’d written down shared interests and those weren’t mortifying at least. Art, music, books, the sorts of things that held civilization and people together. He’d focus on those while he did the walk. Those were much more important for a long term thing. Still… he did like beautiful things and he could hope for someone that made his heart race when he set eyes on him the first time.
He looked at the map one last time and then started on his traverse through the labyrinth, softly repeating the list of things he was looking for. There was a faint depression in the grass even though it was clear no one had walked through this in quite some time. He wasn’t really making a new path, just revealing an old one. It worked well for what he was doing. He couldn’t entirely remake himself and he didn’t want to either. He’d spent a lifetime becoming him. He liked himself for the most part. The parts he most disliked were the ones he needed to maintain to keep himself safe and nonthreatening. He had to shrink to fit into the world that didn’t want to know him.
He bumped his arm against one of the stones and realized he’d made too big a gesture while talking to himself. Even now he needed to stay focused. He wanted to be more, have more, but there was still that danger there. This wasn’t London. This was a village. He was probably safe at night. Probably. But still, he needed to be a little cautious, a little reserved. He couldn’t let everyone see into him, not until he knew they were safe. He needed to keep some of his secrets inside himself, hidden behind layers and endless turns.
Then he realized he’d missed a turn somewhere. He stared at the stones trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He stepped between two stones to get back to where he should be. There, that was the center. Now just walk back out properly and he could go laugh about it with Tracy, that he’d somehow managed to wander off course while walking a clearly defined pattern. It truly fit with his personality, so it shouldn’t surprise him at this point. He was always a little off the ‘right’ path so far as everyone else was concerned.
He smiled to himself and tried to focus on the task but his path out terminated on the wrong side, in front of a stone with a slanted top. He went to step around it and out and realized there was writing on it. He stepped closer to look at it, expecting some sort of artist statement. He pulled his reading glasses out to better focus on the rough, moss covered surface and realized that this stone had not been quarried with the rest. This one was older and had a partial name and date on it. There was a lot of decorative carving that had nearly weathered away. The top of the stone had snapped off and left only the first name showing.
Aziraphale looked at the other stones, which all clearly were much newer and an entirely a different color. None of the rest had writing on them. Had it been moved last minute or had the labyrinth been built around it? He peered around the back and saw a piece of stone peeking out of the earth that might be a match for the missing piece of the gravestone.
“Sorry-” he looked at the name “- Anthony, seems rather disrespectful that someone built this on top of you. I wonder what on the earth the artist was thinking?”
And then he remembered the winged skull on the plaque and he had the feeling that perhaps he hadn’t gotten lost at all, he’d been meant to end up standing on a grave. It was probably meant to be gloomy and morbid, but in the sunlight and with the plants and butterflies about, it was all rather lovely.
“Just my luck to only meet dead men.” He ran his hands over the carvings on the stone, trying to figure out what they were. He pulled out his notebook and the golf pencil and rubbed it over the carvings. It showed a serpent crawling between roses. It looked like there might even have been bees carved on the flowers as well. What an odd choice for a gravestone so far from a churchyard.
“This is lovely. Someone must have loved you a lot to spend so much time on it. Too bad this is the only way I get to meet you.”
He stepped around the stone and went out. He might not have done what he’d planned on, but it had given him some insight into what he wanted. He just wanted a new perspective on his life. It was a good life overall and it would be nice to have someone to share it with. It was a simple wish afterall.