Chapter Text
“Higher or lower?”
“Lower.”
Pht.
“Eight of hearts. Lower. Did you see them at dinner?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re going senile, Grace; dementia’s a cruel disease. Lower.”
David Peters, aged twenty four and a few months, is a half-decent servant for the Dowlings, and apart from that isn’t good for a lot of things.
One day, Grace had privately decided long before tonight, God must’ve come to the conclusion that humanity didn’t have enough to deal with, what with the wars and famine and all of that tame stuff, and helpfully created David as the next big humanitarian crisis. He is the most callous, unlikeable, smarmy man to ever strut the halls of Winfield House, with this look about him like he knows some big devastating secret about you and his infuriating knack of serving afternoon tea as if he’d personally reared the cows for the drop of milk in Mrs Dowling's tea himself.
However, he is the only other servant who knows how to play card games, and so Grace tolerates him in the way that one might tolerate a precocious child for ten pounds an hour.
“Really? You didn’t see them? Were you too busy trying to suck Mr Dowling’s boots to take any notice?” Pht. “Nine of hearts. Higher.”
David begrudgingly slides a coin across the table to join a small pile.
“I don’t know. Maybe I have enough going on in my life that I don’t have to resort to spying on some old biddy for entertainment.”
“So you were watching!”
“Shut up, Grace, do you want to wake up everyone in the house? We already shouldn’t be down here. Do you know what would happen to me if I was seen consorting with female staff at this time? Lower.”
A reluctant pht follows this as Grace puts down a card.
“Two of spades. Lower. I don’t know, you seem to get away with everything. They might give you a bloody medal if you ask nicely.”
David rolls his eyes and drags a coin back very deliberately across the grain of the weathered wooden kitchen table, smirking at the discomfort on Grace’s face at the unpleasant grating noise. It was a smirk perfected over many years, the kind of smirk that one develops after gaining consciousness of the fact that half the girls in the village end their bedtime prayers with, ‘and please let David shag me blind tomorrow, amen’.
“You're not big or clever.”
“Higher.”
Pht.
“Five of diamonds. Higher.”
Another coin makes its scraping way across the table.
“I think they’re having an affair.”
“Because you have nothing better to think about. One might actually call it perverted, you know? I could get you arrested for saying such indecent things about your elders. You’re lucky I’m a gentleman.” David’s eyes gleam with amusement in the flickering light of the candle between them, looking up at Grace through his eyelashes. The gently smouldering fire illuminates his silhouette from behind, painting the outline of his body gold and throwing shadows around the room of his bent figure. Grace breathes a soft laugh.
“But then who would you play illicit card games with at ten o’clock at night?”
David grins. “Who indeed? Higher.”
Pht.
“Three of clubs. Lower.” Grace watches David’s face closely as he lowers his head to move the coins. She smiles at him benignly as he comes back up.
“Fifty pounds says the gardener’s shagging the nanny.”
David’s right eyebrow raises so far that it nearly disappears into his hairline.
“Grace, doll, for fifty quid I’d probably shag the nanny.”
“Is that a no?”
David leans back in his chair, rubbing one hand up and down the back of his neck. He watches Grace with the kind of look you only ever see on cats wondering how fast a mouse can run, dim firelight casting shadows into his face, the faint crackling of logs peacefully disintegrating into ashes never louder than in his careful silence.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks eventually. “This isn’t poker. This is a lot of money.”
Grace’s mind goes back to watching the gardener and nanny pass in corridors, acknowledging each other with the deliberate professional politeness of two people with a shared secret.
“I’m sure. Scared?”
The nanny, walking into the gardens at god-knows-to-twelve at night, under the cloak of darkness and occasionally glancing back at the house to check for glowing windows.
David doesn’t move. He seems to be thinking very hard. Then, “I’m in. Lower.”
Pht.
The nanny, coming back from the gardens an hour later, looking about as dishevelled and yet simultaneously pleased with herself as one possibly can. Grace smiles.
“King. Pay up.”
A flight of stairs and a garden away, Crowley and Aziraphale sit in a small gamekeeper’s lodge that had been miraculously decorated to look exactly like an uptown London jazz lounge complete with cocktail bar and soft saxophone drifting on the night air. They, too, are playing cards. In Aziraphale’s mind when he’d designed the thing, they would be sipping martinis in blissed silence, occasionally pausing to declare something sophisticated sounding like “I’m all in,” or “Full house, dear,” before putting down the corresponding cards or pushing forward a small stack of gilded poker chips. To Aziraphale’s chagrin, it is Uno.
“Wily young thing, isn’t she?”
Aziraphale looked up for his hand full of yellows. “Who?”
“You know.” Crowley waves his hand about over his head in a decidedly unhelpful manner. “Tall. Upper lip like an army sergeant. Makes the tea well.” He stares at Aziraphale. “Did those tarts you liked so much that it was all I heard from you for about a week.”
“Oh!”
Aziraphale tuts and places down a yellow reverse, and then a yellow two, in close succession. “Grace. Yes, I know what you mean. She has a very close eye on you. Do you know, right when she first arrived I thought she might… suspect something. But then, what could she suspect?” He glances up at Crowley. “She can hardly make the case that two celestial beings are living in her employers’ house.”
“Yeah.” Crowley puts down a red two and Aziraphale looks down gloomily again at his hand. “Y’know, she asked me the other day if I was married.”
“Married?” Aziraphale feels a sudden jolt in his stomach. “Married? Why?”
“Hmph. If you ask me, I think she’s a bit too watchful. I don’t like how she’s so interested in my personal life, it puts me on edge. Your turn.”
Aziraphale begins to pick up cards from the stack in the middle.
“You don’t think she’s… interested, do you?”
Crowley doesn’t even look up. “No.”
“How can you be so sure?” Finally, he puts down a red five.
“Well, for one thing she’s barely out of training bras.” He purses his dark lipstick lined lips. “Children are there to corrupt for the forces of hell, not to sleep with. And for another,” he puts down a yellow five, to Aziraphale’s delight, “she thinks we’re together. Uno.”
Aziraphale’s world, for a moment, drops out from underneath his wellies.
“Together? I mean! Well! Goodness! What a… what a thing!” He chances a glance at Crowley for a reaction, but receives only an indifferent nose scrunch.
“In her defence, angel,” Crowley muses, and this time Aziraphale’s world begins to swirl around him, “you are the only one around here who I haven’t threatened to curse with eternal damnation at some point in the last fortnight. I suppose by my standards it must seem like I’m writing you poetry and doodling my first name in front of your last.”
Crowley puts down his last card while Aziraphale tries his best to come up with a remotely suitable response to anything Crowley has just said.
“How silly,” is the best thing he can come up with, given the time pressure. Crowley yawns.
“Not half as silly as most of the stuff the other morons living here come out with. Monopoly?”
This is another distinctly tough one for Aziraphale to wrap his head around. He decides not to even bother trying.
“Monopoly sounds… combative.”
“Have it your way.” Crowley starts shuffling the Uno deck again, amidst Aziraphale cursing himself for not managing to bring up poker in time, when suddenly a window lights up in the house. Then it snuffs, and another window glimmers with light. Then another, and Aziraphale gives a sigh of realisation.
“Speak of the dev… er, I mean, it’s her.”
“Her?” Crowley squints up at the house. His expression clears. “Ooh, don’t tell me.” He stands and stares for a moment at the pathway of light travelling through the house. “Tart girl…”
“You really shouldn’t call her ‘tart girl’. Gives the wrong impression.”
“Sorry.” He waves a hand. “Grace. Grace, and…”
“And?” Aziraphale stands too.
“Yes, too much whatsit. Shadow. Grace and someone else. Bad girl.”
This is all too exciting. Aziraphale racks his brains furiously.
“You don’t think…?”
“No, I don’t.” Crowley gets on his tiptoes and Aziraphale flushes.
“You don't even know what I was going to say!”
“Not true. You’re dying for scandal. You’re dying for it to be the lord almighty himself. The other one, I mean. Employer. Well, other employer.”
“No I was not!” Aziraphale lies, very embarrassed at being sussed out so quickly. “I mean… I meant, just a gentleman caller! I would never imply that… That is a horrible thing to say!”
Crowley shrugs, continuing to glare at the house as the light drops down, down… “Oh, save it for the archangels. I don’t care.”
Another minute or so, and then the light flickers out. Crowley sags in disappointment.
“Oh, well. Game over.” He sits again and goes back to shuffling the Uno deck without any real conviction. “Bollocks to this for a game of soldiers. Why’d you think it’s her, anyway?”
Aziraphale’s eyes alight at once with the excitement of solving a mystery. He leans in close, and then immediately finds he regrets it. Crowley has taken to wearing this expensive perfume recently for his role as the nanny (Aziraphale doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he realistically wouldn’t be able to buy it with a months worth of wages) that makes him smell like jasmine and cardamom and pure sex, and it is taking all of Aziraphale’s divine power recently to not even tempt in thoughts that the perfume enticingly thrusts in his direction. Crowley’s eyes, gazing upwards with a question in the artfully dimmed light of the lodge are also not helping.
“I…” he clears his throat, finding his mouth drier than when he last checked in on it. “I mean, it’s simple. I’ve caught her twice in the last fortnight sneaking back up from the kitchens when she should be in bed. And both times she’s weaselled out of it, like a weaselly thing, with some excuse about hearing noises or needing a warm cup of milk to be able to sleep, and she always just looks so pitiful I can’t challenge it!” He sucks in a breath. “If she’s down there, with someone else, cavorting about like goodness knows what, I will be most unimpressed!”
Crowley looks amused.
“Cavorting, eh? One should be so lucky in this house. That Mrs Hutchinson is a scary thing and I wouldn’t fancy bumping into her if I was having a good old cavort in her kitchen. She puts the brisket on at two or three in the morning, sometimes.” He strokes the side of his jaw in mock thoughtfulness. “Somebody should warn our dear friend Grace about the trouble she could get into if someone less understanding catches her.” His eyes fall back on Aziraphale. “Interested, angel?”
“What!” Aziraphale thinks about it for a moment. “I mean… if it were only helpful advice, to prevent her from straying any further…”
“That’s the spirit.” Crowley claps him on the back and stands again, Uno forgotten. “Tomorrow night, we will obstruct her. Just so happen to be hanging around in the corridor up from the kitchen, er…” he frowns. “We thought we heard strange noises. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t burglars. Yes, that’s it!”
Aziraphale decides against pointing out that this is probably doing the exact binary opposite of convincing Grace that they are not stepping out together, for the sake of his own sanity. He smiles at Crowley.
“Very well. Tomorrow night, around midnight?”
“Done. We’ll find out who’s really doing the cavorting around here.”
“Yes.” Aziraphale raises his gaze to the heavens. “Who indeed?”