A/N: Welcome back, lovely readers! In recent times, I have joined up with r/fanfiction on reddit, where I've been learning a great deal in regards to improving my writing, and hopefully making this a better, more enjoyable read for you guys! It's been a very humbling experience, and I hope that I continue to improve all the time!
Part of the reason as to why this subdivision is taking longer than expected. I am editing as I am going along, trying to improve the story and get rid of all those things which can shit readers off. With the exception of my... boring writing... which I'm certain already shits readers off, but apart from that! All the other little annoying arse things that I can actually improve. I think I will always be boring, regardless of whatever work I put into a piece :P
Got another update for you, guys! Feel free so as to have a read and I will hopefully catch you on the far side! As always, if you have any questions or things you would like to point out, feel entirely free to fling them my way. I have about as much bite as a toothless sloth, and as much energy to boot, so please don't ever feel frightened to pull me up :)
~X~
~Tuesday, April 9th - 2019~
The Grange Estate Nursing home - London Suburbia
You might be forgiven for believing that Aziraphale and Crowley had in fact lived in something of domestic bliss for the better part of so many human appropriate years.
They certainly bickered as such. A bickering of which Crowley's colleagues found to be incomparably romantic and took then to wondering just when they themselves would stumble upon that same loving and comfortable dynamic in their own lives.
"You're cutting those chunks of carrot far too big." Aziraphale, crunchy uniform beset by a Thomas the Tank engine themed apron, now fancied himself acquainted enough with the cooking process to cast aspersions on Crowley's lacklustre technique. He found it came up wanting, so far as his now keen eye was concerned.
"They're not too big! They're fine." Crowley, having boggarted the indisputably more desired Stepford-wife-esque pink apron with complimentary frills, was starting to regret his offer to rescue Aziraphale for what he estimated to have been the three-thousandth time from self-induced embarrassment.
Aziraphale, he had long since decided, was just like all chef's everywhere; bossy, pompous and demeaning. He was glad he had snatched the pink apron off of him now. In spite of Aziraphale's repeated insistences that he was the more practiced at 'wearing frills'. Well, this isn't the fifteen-hundreds any more, sir. And pink, like you said, really isn't your colour.
"You're going to end up choking these poor dears just like you do those innocent ducks at the park." Aziraphale looked the slightest bit squeamish, having just gouged some marks into the skin of a leg of lamb with an otherwise ineffectively dull knife. The lamb was to be prepared for the evenings meal, so time was rather the thankfully on his side.
He had already set down a layer of onions in the base of a baking paper lined oven tray and was currently rubbing a mixture of garlic, rosemary and salt and pepper into the stab marks. No, he could never cook his own food, he decided, swallowing back a gag that was almost about as meaty as the produce to which his rubber gloves were set. Preparing it was quite enough to sup him of whatever appetite he might otherwise have possessed.
"It's all just going to be boiled up and made soft anyway. Now stop nagging or I'll cut you."
Aziraphale paid this about as much mind as he might have done a knock from a Jehovah's witness. Though the Jehovah's witness was, by very definition of what they were, worlds more dangerous than Crowley could ever hope to be.
"Oh, you wouldn't."
"I bloody would." Said Crowley; grumpy, sullen, not even gesturing with the paring knife he held or being at all vaguely threatening with it.
They continued with their respective tasks in momentary silence. They were alone in the kitchen, Crowley having packed away all the groceries what had been earlier delivered and long since relieved of breakfast and washing duties. Appropriately enough, his set job for the day was to provide assistance to the cook; something of which his false credentials attributed to his being more than capable of doing. He had a food handling and health and hygiene certificate; both of which he had naturally miracled into being. He had sense at least to put on rubber gloves, which was about as far as his food preparation skill set naturally extended.
And, hey... not like there was anyone else was around to pass judgment on his very slow and very mediocre vegetable chopping methods. Other than Aziraphale. And Aziraphale was unequivocally just as crap at the task as he was.
Every once in a while one of the girls would see fit to drift in. They would pretend they were in there for some business or another. It was really just an excuse to snoop. Those who hadn't yet met 'Alex' used the opportunity to introduce themselves. Some were even polite enough to pretend as though a pairing what comprised the likes of Crowley and Aziraphale wasn't a visually jarring and seemingly unlikely prospect.
They all agreed that in spite of appearances, the couple were terribly romantic. Nothing said love quite like the threatening to slice someone from stem to stern whilst standing shoulder to shoulder over a leg of lamb and a medley of wilted sprouts and baby carrots.
Alice was very much looking forward to the staff parties. She hoped 'Anthony' would still be with them come Christmas time. 'Alex' would make a perfect Father Christmas for their Secret Santa.
"Baaa." Crowley broke the silence with a sudden, seemingly pointed bleat. Aziraphale's hands flew up off of the prospective roast as though the fires of Hell had suddenly expunged themselves from the exsanguinated creatures pores.
"Oh, would you please not do that! It wasn't funny the first time!"
"Just think..." Crowley said; his voice pining and malodorous. "Few days ago, that poor little chap was loving life. Kicking his back hooves up amongst the clover and the dandelions, the sun on his cherubic face-"
"Please stop, I'm begging you!" It was barely ten o'clock in the morning and Aziraphale already felt like he needed a drink. He was ever the more tempted to appropriate that cupcake from the breakroom fridge and snaffle it down like a truffle hunting hog. Anything to take the edge off of the terrible glean of guilt he was currently experiencing.
"- next thing you know, steel rod to the frontal lob, bang, mama sheep going 'What happened to little Eduardo? Why he was here but naught a second ago.' And now one of his once carefree little back hoofs is being drenched in garlic and rosemary and tenderized by one of God's very own supposedly beneficent angels."
Aziraphale wrenched a tea towel with such violence from the handles of the oven that the door jolted open an inch and used said article to then deliver a stout smack to Crowley's backside. "I said-" He punctuated his words with another few good smacks that ratcheted off of Crowley's back, bottom and thighs alike. "- STOP THAT!"
"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the earth..." Crowley sang, raising both hands towards the ceiling as though inviting down a divine light. He got another series of ever the sharper cracks from the towel for his efforts.
"This is hard enough as it is, dealing with a deceased animal, cut down before its' time!" Aziraphale whipped the towel over his shoulder, trying to maintain a stern demeanour as Crowley glanced his palms off of every stinging body part with a triumphant smile. "Oh, it's enough to make me never want to order lamb again. Poor..." His bottom lip gave the slightest, sentimental tremble. "... poor little thing."
"Surprised you haven't tried to revive it yet." Crowley smirked, returning to his vegetable chopping duties with the look of one who was fully aware as to what dealing with a big hunk of meat was going to do to an angel. And had, of course, insisted on dealing with the vegetables anyway.
Hey, just because he was retired didn't mean he couldn't enjoy a bit of demonic bothering every once in a while. Keep the muscles toned and all of that.
"I feel it is perhaps a little beyond saving at this point." Aziraphale replied sarcastically, mustering some inner conviction and returning his hands to the lamb; a look on his face as though a ladle of bad wasabi had been slipped beneath his tongue. Crowley cast a, one might say, somewhat envious look at the piece of meat to which the angel's attentions were currently occupied.
"Don't see why you need to massage the thing. Bit of a moot point trying to relax it now."
Aziraphale twitched his head vaguely towards the cook book he had propped up in the corner of the meal prep station. He had found it beneath the kitchen bench, and though covered in grease stains, littered with dog ears what had splintered the paper and hailing from 1969, he still considered it more trustworthy than most any advice Crowley had been attempting to surreptitiously spoon feed him. "It's to make the skin crisp up or some nonsense."
"Feel like I'm the one that could make better use of your hands than a slab of dead meat." Crowley muttered, surprising himself just as much with the brazen words as Aziraphale. Aziraphale, who sighed in a way that set Crowley's heart to racing with panic and paused with his fingers slumped upon the rise of the lamb like a pair of swing dancing spiders having tapped out on the final set.
"Crowley-"
"Yeah. I'm hitting light speed, aren't I?" Crowley acknowledged, thinking that if nicking the tip off of one of his fingers might repair the faux paus, he would be willing to do so with only the slightest of ear drum shattering complaints.
"Rather." Aziraphale gave him a soft look; one hemmed by palpable apprehension. "I'm still... getting used to this. I'm on board, I'm just... I just need you to ease back a little. All right?"
"Of course. Sorry." Crowley felt almost faint with relief. It was still so terrifying; the thought that he might scare Aziraphale away for good. Might ruin yet that tentative progress what they had made so far. He needed to reign it in, or risk killing it on the vine. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Well... I mean, I did about the lamb, but not about the, uh-"
Aziraphale held up a hand temperately. "I know and it's all right. I'm sorry if I'm quashing your enthusiasm, in turn." He petted his fingers tenderly to the line of Crowley's jaw; a reassurance enough to send the demon to about melting from the inside out. "I will get there." He returned his focus to the lamb, which most certainly was not about to get cooked on its own. Thought for a moment of the considerations he had been mulling over both the previous night and this morning and decided to just go ahead and provide some further clarity concerns his feelings. Crowley was very likely in need of it, after all. "My dear, I was thinking... you know, I really think we ought to go on that trip. The one you mentioned before. See the world."
A piece of carrot was sent skittling along the floor; having slipped from beneath the edge of the parring knife. Crowley hadn't made the least attempt to prevent its escape. He was far too preoccupied with staring at Aziraphale with his maw gaping like a ceramic clown at a state fair.
"What... you mean it?"
"Well, we've been in London so long." It was hard not to smile, to see a demon who spent so many of his idle hours invested heartily in the assurance of his own 'coolness' appearing so childishly hopeful. "Times have changed. We could go anywhere. Paris for example. Visit the Louvre."
Crowley thought on this a moment and his brows lifted smartly away from the bridge of his glasses as equally an austere excursion came to the forefront of his brilliant mind.
"We could spit off of the top of the Eiffel Tower."
"Picnic at the Jardin du Luxembourg." Contributed Aziraphale, wrinkling his nose a little at Crowley's rather avante garde suggestion. Oh, he would go along for the ride, of course, if Crowley insisted on such a juvenile venture but he was hardly about to partake himself. Someone might get killed from that height.
"Take in a show at the Palais Garnier." Crowley suggested, and Aziraphale could tell, simply from the many years of association, that his eyes were brightening with excitement from behind his glasses. "Get well stewed trying to get through it without nodding off to sleep and snoring during the quiet sections."
"We could walk the Pont Alexandre III."
"Put a lock on that bridge; whatever it's called." Crowley snapped his fingers inconclusively. Somewhere off in the distance, the wires in Rhonda's computer had started to smoke suspiciously. "You know. The... bridge that people put... locks on."
"Oh, I think they stopped doing that."
"Did they?"
"Apparently the bridge was collapsing under the weight."
"Oh." Said Crowley thoughtfully. "... Well, that's sort of sweet. So much love it could sink a bridge. Poetic, really."
They shared a tentative, yet entirely appreciated romantic glance; perhaps both pondering just what six thousand years worth of love might weigh if put to the test. Crowley fancied it might very well be enough to sink whatever continent upon which the weighing was being conducted.
"We could visit the catacombs!" He interjected his own thoughts with another enthusiastic snap of the fingers. (A careful observer might yet take note of the small lick of flame erupting from the back of Rhonda's computer screen).
Aziraphale flinched at the reference, and with very good reason. Crowley had been instrumental in the design of the famous Catacombs of Paris; a design which, after his having shared the details with Aziraphale one chilly evening in 1773, had prompted the angel to devour two subsequent bottles of Gin (very popular at the time, much to his chagrin) in an effort to forget it.
Oh, Crowley had thought himself enormously clever with the whole garish affair, of course. He had even come up with the name Barriere d'Enfer for the gate from which the ossuary was constructed. 'Gate of Hell' (extraordinarily on the nose, so far as Aziraphale was concerned).
Much like the M25 London Orbital motorway (to which Crowley had received a glowing commendation) the Catacombs of Paris had been something of a cheeky nod to the Mesopotamian deity Ninnghishidda; a being what was sometimes evoked in ancient occult practices and by edgy teenagers with too much time on their hands and too much black nail polish, platform boots and liquid eyeliner for both theirs and anyone else's good.
What none of these otherwise well (or rather unwell) meaning individuals failed to appreciate however, was that it was Crowley who was in fact the aforementioned Ninnghishidda. It had been a nickname given to him by some boggle eyed locals who had caught him transmuting out of his snake form and then attempting to convert a buckskin of water into something far the more preferable for consumption. Mesopotamia, in its heyday, had nothing in the way of a nightlife and very limited means of entertainment at any hour of the day really. Crowley had spent a great deal of his time there, drinking whatever fermented juices he'd been able to lay his lips to. Simply as a means to efface the otherwise all consuming boredom.
The reverence of the primitive humans had been amusing at first and then, as the weeks had gone on and the trail of mystified persons behind him increased by the two to threefold, (to the fold so great he cared to stop counting it), ever the more irritating.
Admittedly, flipping a boulder at the otherwise well intentioned morons was a little below the belt. But he had been in a foul mood. He was tired, thirsty, his hair was full of knots and braids that some of the disparate clingers on had wended through when he hadn't been paying close enough attention and he was fairly certain Mercury was in retrograde, which always made him feel particularly niggly. And really; company other than Aziraphale's could barely be tolerated for much longer than a few hours, before making him wish there was good, tall cliff with nice pointy rocks at the base of which he might saunter off into.
The catacombs of Paris replicated in near perfect detail (in so far as Crowley's memory could be trusted) the path he had taken in his efforts to shirk his would-be wide-eyed admirers across Mesopotamia. There was no power behind it; not like the low grade evil circumvented by the googolplex of pissed off drivers forced to rumble their way about the M25 on a much begrudged daily basis. The design of the Catacombs had been simply something that rather had amused Crowley; a pointed poke at things having otherwise requiring a secret meaning which was somehow more poignant than the overall sum of its parts.
That had of course been long before the design of the M25 and its alliteration to the Dark Priesthood of Mu set up shop in his Machiavellian little mind. Perhaps he had lost something of his sense of irony as he had gotten older, who's to say?
"Oh, no. Really?" Aziraphale was groaning, having gone on a gleefully guided tour of the tombs in the times in which they were new and not finding it nearly so charming as Crowley seemed to insist that they were. It had smelt funny and it was dirty and cobwebby and... full of dead people. "Not those dreadful skull fringed catacombs, I fail to see just how you're so proud of that dreadful place."
"It's got an aesthetic." Crowley maintained; he himself having an appreciation of any aesthetic what comprised skulls, darkness, overall doom and gloom and clothing items what might be gleaned from a garage sale of a university student who had been a frequent purveyor of Hot Topic, in their teen years. "People love that sort of thing."
"It's spooky." Aziraphale contributed with a shudder. Crowley knew quite well just how Aziraphale felt about any place or locale that possessed so much as a snifter of 'spooky'. He had almost discorporated clean out of his skin whence attempting to navigate the Petrin Hill Mirror Maze in Prague, 1891 and that was simply from seeing his own reflection drastically contorted so that his eyes just about ballooned out of his skull. "I should think if we were going to Paris that we would potentially focus on traditionally not spooky things."
"We would have a little bit of spooky, surely." Crowley grumbled, kicking the hunk of discarded carrot beneath the baseboard of the bench and returning to its mostly eviscerated companions upon the chopping board. "You got me going off to bloody picnic's and theatre shows, there's got to be room for something I would enjoy doing. It can't just all be about you."
"We could have dinner at Le Meurice." Aziraphale suggested, with a look which said he considered this quite enough of a concession. He had that self-same expression of dilated pupils and rosy cheeks that he reverted to whenever the thought of 'crepes' entered his little flock-haired noggin. "Dance at Le Carmen."
Crowley gave an amused snort as he piled not-so carefully divided hunks of carrot into a small saucepan. "Don't know if the gavotte would really take off at Le Carmen somehow, angel."
"Well... we'll plan ahead. Go in a couple of months. ... you could... teach me, by then." Aziraphale cast a little look Crowley's way. A visual appeal to interpret that 'could' as rather a more earnest 'please.' 'Please teach me. And please don't believe me when I make half... bottomed excuses as to why it would be a silly idea. Just persist. Please.'
Crowley was attempting to carve a wedge of pumpkin into smaller, more manageable pieces. It was a dicey (no pun intended) endeavour and so he had missed the appealing expression on Aziraphale's face. Which was a shame, because he would have undoubtedly melted like butter whence left on the kitchen bench all day by an inattentive husband.
"To ballroom dance?" The demon scoffed and then jerked back from the bench with a sharp hiss, having narrowly avoided bringing the knife down on his fingers as the pumpkin leapt violently from one side to the other. "Not so flash myself, truth be told, angel."
"But you know the steps." Aziraphale persisted, aware as he was, that most demons danced with a skill what was most readily rivalled by drunk Caucasian women attempting to make their way down a narrow hallway to the club lavatory. What demons lacked in rhythm however, they more than made up for in obnoxious enthusiasm; such that it was a rare for a demon, even the more supposedly reposed of them, to find a means to resist in getting down to boogie.
Crowley was far from an exception. Aziraphale had once, much to his own horror, observed Crowley dancing to the point of actually giving himself a cardiac arrest in the 1970's. Unlike most of the humans who had been surrounding him at the disco, Crowley had not in fact taken any illicit substances (his last little foray in the 1960's being quite as much fun as he cared for) but had simply been up and dancing for over eight hours straight.
He had done something similar in 1518 in France; transferring his own infectious energy to an entire village in Strasbourg and keeping the collective lot of them jiving for days on end. Quite a few people had died; Crowley very nearly being one of them. Aziraphale had been forced to restart his heart no less than three times. To which the stupid idiot got up and continued dancing in spite of Aziraphale's progressively hysterical entreaties to stop, just STOP, YOU STUPID DEMON!
Crowley had not been able to walk for some weeks afterwards. Even after Aziraphale had healed his feet and spent hours on end massaging the cramps out of his shins, calves and thighs alike. He'd had to piggyback him to the next village over, so that he was able to access the portal what at the time was able to return him to Hell.
And all for want of hearing a particularly 'jiffy' jingle on a Lira da Braccio.
"Nnhgh... yeah, I can do a box step, all right." Crowley conceded after a moments contemplation on the matter. Whether the box step was any more than a traditional Glasgow drunken two-step was up for debate. "Simple fox trot. Probably work that in somewhere." He paused a moment, chewed the corner of his lip. "... where else, you think?"
"In the world, you mean?" After Crowley gave a small nod of affirmation, Aziraphale got to thinking himself. "Well... anywhere. America. Japan. Australia."
Crowley perked up a little. He had lived in Australia a very short stint back in the early 1900's and was summarily called back to England as a result of his own observations detailing that Australian's 'really didn't need any help' from their side. Not from either side, truth be told. The Australian's seemed a quaint, unrivalled exception in which good and bad were equally balanced. In other words, a considerable waste of time in so far as sending earth based agents to otherwise meddle.
Australian's loved their creature comforts; they loved to fight and to swear and to drink and to party and to eat and to toast themselves underneath the metaphorical surface of the sun. They had 'mateship' and 'knife fights' and as much love for their neighbour as hate for their neighbour. Made sense when you considered much of the continent had been occupied by the descendants of England's cast off criminals.
Crowley rather liked the place. He'd enjoyed his handful of years spent there, but was honestly relieved to return to England with his liver intact. His one attempt at instilling some meagre level of malaise amongst the populace was contributing to the recipe base for Vegemite. Turns out that the ineffably whacky Australian's had surprised him yet again by actually taking both proudly and patriotically to the repugnant muck. It had been the rest of the world what suffered when confronted with it. American's in particular, to which Crowley could only report feeling an inexorable sense of pride in a bad job done well.
He had received a commendation for this one, too.
"I could feed a kangaroo." He'd never had an opportunity, his previous visit. There'd been too much tempting to get done. All his own temptations had been forced to go by the wayside. Including visits to the wildlife parks, for which he still maintained a sense of deep and erstwhile regret and resentment. "They've got those little paws."
"They do have those little paws."
"And a pocket. Keep loose change in." Crowley stood up straighter, wearing an expression almost identical to that which Aziraphale donned whence thinking about crepes. "I could hold a koala. Try not to catch chlamydia. Swim in the Great barrier Reef. Try not to get manhandled by an octopus. And stung by jellyfish. ...And eaten by Great white sharks." He furrowed a brow, thinking on this in rather the more abject terms. "...Should we really be going to Australia? I think our risk of discorporation is potentially higher. Plus... Australian sun. Hotter than Hell over there." He drew back his lips from his teeth, glancing at Aziraphale's perpetually pale and ever so typically English (though he was not and had never actually been in fact, English) skin. "And you get burned so easily."
"Not all parts of Australia are hot." Said Aziraphale, looking slightly the more abashed by his being in possession of a complexion what rivalled that of Devonshire clotted cream. "And I've heard they have a lot of very good wines down south."
"That Shiraz we like comes from Australia." The Barossa valley Shiraz was a particularly nifty bouquet they often had on stock in the back room of the bookshop. Give Australian's their due, they bloody knew how to drink.
"It does. Plus they produce some very nice Sauvignon Blanc's and cheeses in the southernmost island." Aziraphale was starting to sound as though he might have swallowed a travel agencies catalogue and was currently burping up select portions of it. "The weather's a bit more clement too. Sort of like here, they say."
"Be worth a look. Good wine is definitely worth the risk of getting killed and eaten by most... everything." He gave up on the pumpkin for the moment, turning the entirety of his attention now to Aziraphale. "You're um... sure that you're...?"
Aziraphale gave him a supportive smile, pouring some boiling water into the base of the oven tray from the nearby jug. "Quite sure, yes. I'd have to close up the bookshop a while. You can take some time off from here I'm sure; if you give plenty of notice." He stretched tin-foil over the lamb, ensuring all the sides were tucked in; just as the book had told him. "I know they've come to depend on you awfully, but-"
"They'd be fine if I was dead." Crowley interjected so quickly that he embarrassed himself a little with his enthusiasm. He was happy though, and it seemed a rather okay thing; to permit himself that happiness, give himself over to it. Even if it made him look weak; exposed his belly. "So, we're uh... we're really doing this?"
He wanted it. Oh, so much. To go away. To be with Aziraphale and Aziraphale alone; looking out over the world they had watched grow old beneath the passing of their feet. To take stock of all the myriad changes; the shifting of the mountains, the stretching and rising of the seas, the saplings what had transcended into trees so high they seemed to scrape the very underside of the clouds towards which they eternally reached.
To walk amongst the bustling of the busy cities. Eat at a thousand expensive, snooty and even the more romantic candle sundered restaurants. Hold hands in the streets, lean into one another whilst passing through the busy herds of humans otherwise going about their business. Flutter at the casino's, clear out the buffets, wrap arms about shoulders whilst staring out over ever changing and morphing views. Whether it was buildings, lakes, mountains, oceans, pines, beaches, whatever.
And the nights... when the darkness crept in and encapsulated all corners of whatever rooms they might then find themselves in, then perhaps...
Perhaps then your hands. Your hands upon and wended about my own. Pressed to the bare lines of my chest. The waylay of one another's curves and otherwise secret, untranslated spaces. Knowing and finding one another deeper still than even the softest spoken words might transgress...
Pants caught in ceiling fans, neighbours pounding on the walls, fingers clenched so tightly about elegantly carved bedheads that knuckles near about split the skin from beneath which they peaked...
Soft heady moans, fingertips tracing lines what beads of sweat had only just traversed, nails lending themselves to keening red trails along ribcages, hips and buttocks, kisses scented of red wine and champagne...
The feeling of you inside of me...
"You said it best yourself." Aziraphale was saying and Crowley shook himself forcefully out of a fantasy so raunchy he thought it might have put the Marquis de Sade to blushing. "The world owes us a favour. High time we cashed in."
He smiled and was somewhat shocked as to witness the delicate look upon the demon's features; similar to that which he had seen less than an hour earlier in the break room. As though he were about to take to weeping at any given moment and Aziraphale could not imagine, for the eternal life of him, what he had said what might give cause to such dramatic a reaction.
"Are you all right?" He murmured, sliding the lamb into the oven, closing the door and setting the timer. He took the oven mitts off and set them aside, all so as to ensure there was no barrier between his bare hands and Crowley's when he took them up in his grasp and squeezed them. A loving gesture what just made it all the more difficult for Crowley to get his feelings under control.
"Yeah. Um." He put his head down, taking a few deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. It would simply not do to go to pieces so soon after having spectacularly dropping his bundle earlier. He did however make use of the breaths which to sniff for any lingering presences before leaning a little closer and lowering his voice so that the words he next spoke sounded all too appropriately snakey. "I uh... I really want to kissss you right now but I know what you said earlier about... easing up a bit."
Aziraphale, awash with quite as much love as he had ever known, raised Crowley's hands and pressed his lips to each of of his thumbs and then to his fingers. In that moment, he did not feel at all conflicted in what it was that he wanted to do. Desire, it seemed, worked effortlessly in conjunction with love. Giving it a solid leg up where required.
Aziraphale lent his kiss to the ridges of Crowley's knuckles, the backs of his fingers, the vein lines branching across his hands like overzealous spiders webs. He kissed his wrist, felt Crowley's palm canopy his cheek, gliding his thumb so close to his eye that it brushed the lashes. The demon watched, his own eyes bright and anticipatory. Impatient.
Their breaths were heavy when they came together; each uttering a contrarily soft, near identical murmur at the meeting of their lips. To Aziraphale the pain felt more the simple to ignore with each kiss that they shared. He focused instead on the pleasure; the wondrous closeness, the ease of simplicity what came with the sharing of an otherwise primitive act. Crowley once more appeared to be shrinking down into his shoe protectors. His palms had been forming somewhat distracted shapes to each of Aziraphale's shoulder blades.
"You're going to be the discorporation of me." He murmured, clearing his throat and managing to ease himself up and out of Aziraphale's embrace. With a smile, he returned his attentions to the vegetables, just about shearing off half of his fingernails with the knife before getting himself under control. "So, um... maybe we can start planning after my shift? Go to a travel agent or two. Get some ideas, ya know?"
"Sounds like a fine idea." Aziraphale said, amused. He felt still a little flustered himself, but Crowley seemed surprisingly bashful, even by comparison. He reminded himself that the demon had spent a great many years perfecting a, for the most part, unshakeable level of emotional control. Letting his guards down and allowing himself to be vulnerable was obviously difficult.
They glanced over at the sound of someone's knuckles striking the wood frame of the kitchen entryway. Rita was leaning in, her face giving nothing away.
"Could I get you to pop into the office for a moment, Anthony?" She made a prim gesture towards Aziraphale. "Alex, you can come along too."
Crowley waited until Rita had disappeared back across the hall and into the warren of her office before offloading a whistle what most working class persons would recognize as being a foreboder of troubling seas ahead.
"Uh-oh."
"Oh, I knew it." Aziraphale groaned, wiping down the bench top and wrenching the squeegee so hard that he simply expunged all the filth he had just sopped up back from whence it came. "Now I've gone and gotten you in trouble."
Crowley, untying his apron from about his midsection looked distracted. "Relax, she couldn't see anything from the office. Neither could the residents, we're in the kitchen." He hung up the apron and then quickly assisted with untying Aziraphale's, all but taking his head off with the neck strap in his anxious efforts to free it. "No one else is in here. Must be news about Gretchen."
He darted out through the kitchen entryway and Aziraphale, already so far accustomed to this, hurried to catch up. They stepped into Rita's office and she did in fact swish out from behind her desk to close the door behind them.
Rita's office was not, in all fairness of the description, very much of an office. More like a converted broom cupboard that she had attempted to spruce up by hanging pictures of seascapes and beaches from lands quite obviously not of England along the walls. Because nothing said Aruba quite like English suburbia.
She had quite a few photographs standing vigil on her desk. None of which contained cats, Crowley was surprised to find. Actual other human beings. Rita was smiling in some of them. Apparently, it was only his company with which she found to be rather frown inducing.
"I've just received some very sad news." Rita said, crossing back over to press her rather wide bottom to the side of her desk. She pressed her hands together, glanced down a moment and then looked up with such abruptness that Crowley knew, from so many years of interpreting facial expressions, that something bad was coming. "It seems as though Gretchen suffered a complication whilst under observation. The staff at the hospital did their best, but unfortunately, they were not able to bring her back."
In the year 1924, Crowley had been staying a short stint in Canada. He could not quite recall as to what reason. But there had been a lake there; somewhere off nestled between the mountains as though they were the green capped confines of a picturesque tea cup.
The silence in that place had been absolute. He had been able to hear clearly, a small bird glancing their beak across the surface of the water in a bid to pick up an insect. When he had thrown a stone into the water, the sound seemed to resonate through the mountains as though it had been in fact a boulder shattering the crystal clean surface of a mirror. He remembered thinking Aziraphale would have loved it there, and made a vow so as to somehow trick him into hopping across the pond one day for a little sight seeing tour.
The silence what penetrated Crowley's mind following Rita's words was quite as all consuming as this mountain beset lake had been. He might yet have heard the scraping of that tiny birds beak, should it have dipped itself into Rita's long since abandoned water glass.
Not able to bring her back...
Doesn't make any sense. I was talking with her just yesterday. She seemed fine. Old, but fine. She always seemed fine. Not talking funny, not complaining about anything, no more frail than usual. Still fierce and feisty and fighting fit.
Gone?
Just like... that?
"So, um..." Crowley shook his head, frowned. It seemed very much as though the water from that distant lake was swiftly filling his skull. His thoughts felt dim and numb and... heavy. He was barely aware of Aziraphale's hand finding place of purchase upon his arm. "Gretchen, she's uh... she-she died?"
Rita gave one of those very 'altogether' nods which came more from the chin then it did her neck "I'm afraid so. According to what I was told, it was very quick." She tiled her head at him and this much at least, seemed a genuinely remorseful gesture. "I am sorry. I know that you were fond of her. I've been letting staff know one at a time. Since you were the only one able to properly speak with her, I thought it would only be right to let you know first."
Crowley had ceased listening to the rationale of her reasoning some time back. He was feeling very strange, sort of vague and disconnected from his body. The pressure of Aziraphale's hand was moving up and down on the same patch of his arm and he focused on this, trying to use it as some anchor to bring the wayward ship that was his mind back to port.
He was aware of Aziraphale leading him to sit down in one of the chairs squeezed determinedly into the modest space of Rita's office. Aziraphale sat in the one opposite, taking Crowley's hand between his own and providing a gentle caress as Rita busied herself at the small tea station in the back corner. Crowley had not even been aware of having asked for tea. He supposed it was what the English knew best to do whenever a crisis struck; have a cup of tea and calm the fuck down.
"What about her... belongings?" He asked, suddenly. Rita glanced up from pouring hot water into a cup that might have once possessed a beautiful gold inlay, but had since faded so dramatically it left nothing but the flecked borders.
"Her belongings?"
"She didn't have any family. What happens to her stuff?"
Rita considered this a moment before turning back to tea pouring duties, offering only the slightest, inconsequential twitch of her lower lip. "Donated, where possible."
"Her photos... she had so many photo's..." Crowley murmured, staring back through the keyhole of his memory. He had gone through Gretchen's photographs with her on more than the one occasion. Discussed them at length; spoke of the adventures that she and her husband had had before he had passed. A whole life's worth of memories, just to be... discarded? "Do they just get thrown out? Into a landfill somewhere?"
"Don't worry about any of that right now." There was ever so slight an edge to Rita's tone. She whipped it out of back corner when she perceived a staff member to be giving themselves over to unsightly emotion. Crowley had yet to be a recipient. "Nothing's going anywhere anytime soon."
"She still at the hospital?" Of course, Crowley persisted. It was what he was known for, after all. It was what had seen him right on through to damnation and ever further onward, it seemed.
"Yes."
"What will happen to her?"
"She'll be picked up by the funeral home. They'll arrange for a casket and a burial."
"No funeral?" Crowley heard his voice starting to crack and attempted to clear it. It didn't help much. "She won't even have a funeral?"
Rita might not have had Crowley's six thousand years of lived experience but she was incontestably more adept at compartmentalizing her emotions than even this ageless demon. "We'll have a viewing and wake on her behalf, but there really are no funds with which to cover a funeral. She had no savings, no life insurance. She never placed much emphasis on that sort of thing." She handed Crowley a cup of tea; much too milky for his tastes and reeking suspiciously of English breakfast. His least favourite tea bag. "Here."
"I could..." Crowley's mind continued racing. Better then letting it slow down. Letting it feel. It had been... like with Aziraphale... better to do something. Drown it. "I mean, I uh... I have some money... could I pay? For the funeral, I mean."
Rita and Aziraphale looked at him with near matching expressions of pure, undiluted astonishment. For rather the different reasons but the shock registered the same on the emotional Richter scale.
"That would not be at all appropriate." Rita said after a moment, leaning back on the corner of her desk and folding her hands just over the rise of her crooked thigh. Her voice was not harsh, but eminently practical. "And besides, the costs would be exorbitant."
"I don't give a hootenanny about appropriate." Crowley said. Aziraphale was more often the stubborn one out of the two of them but it seemed Crowley could be just as pig headed when he wanted to be. "And I have an exorbitant amount of money. Please."
Two months he had taken care of Gretchen.
Two months.
Two months in which she had been better understood than the however many years she'd been shelved away in this stuffy old nursing home; subjected to a simple one or two word greeting and meeting of base needs.
Where did duty of care start and end?
Did it end there at the hospital? When she died alone?
'I've got nothing else. Might as well fuss over you.'
Crowley felt a pain in his chest. The feeling that he had failed. Failed, failed, FAILED.
The bookshop on fire. Aziraphale gone.
All that he loved just... gone.
It could all be... gone. Just like trying to grip onto a handful of sand. It slipped free, leaving only granules behind. Memories. Nothing tangible.
Gone.
"I would be happy," He heard a voice say and realized that it was Aziraphale. Aziraphale forming words in a silence into which Crowley had been permitting himself to drown whilst otherwise staring in bung eyed absolution into his cup of too weak tea. "-to facilitate the cost and workings of the funeral. As a private citizen. That should absolve... Anthony of any boundary related issues."
"We couldn't ask that." Rita was saying and then Aziraphale replied that he was offering, that he and Crowley (we) were offering. That Gretchen deserved the dignity of a decent funeral. And Crowley was staring at him, grateful, touched and more in love with his kindness and his warmth and his goodness by the moment and wanting to just hold him; disappear into him, curl up and let those arms enclose him on all sides.
Rita gave Aziraphale a card. It was the contact information of the funeral service the Grange Estate used. Rita suggested that if Aziraphale wished to do something out of his own pocket that he get in touch with them to make arrangements.
Aziraphale might have put the card into his wallet but doing so would have meant taking a hand away from Crowley to retrieve it. He contented himself with simply holding onto it for the time being. It was a small thing. But a small thing which meant everything so far as Crowley was concerned. Further evidence still of the angel's enduring generosity and thoughtfulness.
"Now, on a more personal level," Rita eased herself forward so that she was closer to Crowley. Her tone was far the more temperate and genuine then he'd ever heard it and it made him feel as though he'd been a little unfair to keyhole her as being a particularly taciturn nurse ratchet type upon first impressions. "I want to make sure that you're all right, pet." She squeezed his shoulder and Crowley could tell that it was not her first time trotting out this particular talk. And not for want of it seeming practiced, but rather because she handled it such as she handled all tasks of which she undertook; authentically and professionally. "Death is an unfortunate occupational hazard in this industry. But it certainly doesn't make it any easier knowing it. What may help however is to know that Gretchen lived herself a long and happy life. She made the most of every opportunity. And I can see that you gave her some real joy in her final few months on earth. I'm sure she was grateful for your care and support."
"Support... yeah..." Crowley mused, watching the not yet dissolved white strains of milk drifting obsoletely across the surface of his tea. He became aware of another card being passed over to Aziraphale; his being the patently more 'pulled together' of the pair.
"Our staff do have six free sessions with the Macintyre's counselling service. Anthony," He jerked his chin briefly at the sound of his ascribed name. "If you do feel as though you're not coping with things, just give them a call and you can see someone free of charge. Your partner can go along, if that helps."
He nodded, taking a sip of tea. It was much too weak. But what did that matter?
He'd enjoyed his little smoke breaks with Gretchen.
She'd been a good confidante. Kept shit real. Understood him in a way that not many, save Aziraphale, could. And Gretchen had only had the two months with which to acclimatize herself to Crowley's particular brand of strangeness.
Gone.
Like a stone sinking beneath the crystal clear surface of a silent lake.
Like ...burning parchment.
"Thanks." He murmured, his tone just desolate sounding enough to rouse a wrist rub from Rita. She looked genuinely upset herself and Crowley remembered that she, of course, had known Gretchen far longer than he had. Rita too was mourning but doing her utmost to put the feelings of her staff first. His respect for her shot up more the higher for this. It certainly put the entirety of Hell's bureaucracy to shame by comparison.
"Why don't you head home for the day, mate? Give yourself some time?"
"Oh... no, no. It'll be okay." Crowley said, dismissively. Going home would be a bad idea. Especially now that Aziraphale was stuck here for the next how many hours labouring over a piece of meat he'd likely just as much burn as... well, burn. "You're understaffed today."
"We can always manage."
"You got lunch time meds. And the meals. Everyone else..."
"Tell you what," Rita it seemed was steadfast in her conviction to send Crowley packing and just as stubborn as he himself could be when she got it in her mind to do something. "How's about you just finish whatever duties you've been assigned and head off when your partner finishes at two?" She nodded her head towards Aziraphale, as though there was some question as to who said 'partner' was. "But if you feel as though you aren't coping, just let one of the staff know and head out early. Can you promise me that?"
"Yeah." Crowley took another sip of over milky tea. He knew full well that he wasn't about to go and head out early; not with Aziraphale still holding fort in the kitchen. It just seemed easier to agree with Rita now, rather than argue the rub.
"I'll keep an eye on him." Said the angel, a firm palm glancing up over the curve of Crowley's spine and then cupping to the back of his neck. He caressed him tenderly and Crowley once more fought the inappropriately undemonic urge to just collapse into him like a toppled tree. Well, not only was it undemonic but it was also unprofessional.
"Thank you. I'll let you sit for a moment. I need to let the rest of the staff know."
Rita stepped on past and out through the office door, closing it behind her. Crowley took another sip of tea. Wasn't at all sure why he bothered. It was something to do, he supposed.
"Oh, my dear," Aziraphale murmured, his thumb rubbing circles into the soft ridge below Crowley's hairline. "I... I don't really know what to say."
"You don't need to say anything." Crowley put the tea up on the desk and reached out with his now free hand. He took up the one Aziraphale had set to his lap, wound their fingers together. "... sit with me a bit, yeah?"
Gone.
You're... gone.
"Of course." Aziraphale was saying, his arm dropped down to cosset Crowley's shoulders and pull him over to lean against him. Crowley let himself go, for it was easier than the pretence of not wanting to do so and set his cheek to Aziraphale's shoulder. He squeezed his hand tighter and took a deep breath in from his neck. He could smell his cologne and deeper still, that natural clean, new and wholesome scent what was ever so intrinsically Aziraphale. His hand was warm and he felt too the slight shifting of his fingers; the bones, the rising and flexing of the knuckles. The breaths in and out, of lungs that did not require oxygen but were put to practice all the same.
He was here. He was still here.
Not gone.
Not gone.
~X~
A/N: Thanks for reading, everyone! If you ever have any thoughts on the piece, or any questions, I encourage you to ask away. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves during this crazy time we're all going through!
All my love,
~MadamMortis~ xxx ooo