Aziraphale shuffled into a brisk walk to catch up with Crowley, who moved rather quickly down the dark, cavernous hallway. The dull thrum of music faded as he followed Crowley around corners and past several doors flanked by small tables and potted ferns.
"Wait, where are you—" Aziraphale called out as Crowley flung open a set of double doors and disappeared through them. He sped into a jog, one hand holding up his robe and the other keeping his halo from falling off.
Apparently Crowley had heard him approach and turned back towards him, because he made it through the door just in time for his face to collide with Crowley's all-too-bare chest.
"Oh, sorry!" Aziraphale cried out, startled and staggering over the hem of his robe as he jerked away. Crowley teetered on his heels, flailing and grabbing tightly to Aziraphale's forearms to regain his balance. When he straightened, his dark glasses were crooked and his cheeks were flushed.
Aziraphale's mind skipped like a warped record for a few moments as it tried to process that he'd touched Crowley's skin, and it had felt cold and warm all at once. "We really shouldn't be back here, you know, trespassing like this."
Crowley let go of his arms and stepped back, the ghost of a grin on his lips. "Well then, I suppose I really shouldn't raid their alcohol stash then, should I?"
"How do you know—" Aziraphale watched Crowley as he sauntered over to a large globe and cracked it open, extracting a sizeable bottle of amber liquor. But the words died on his tongue as his eyes adjusted to the dim light from the windows to finally process his surroundings.
There were books everywhere. So many books, shelves and shelves of them, with rolling wooden ladders on rails to reach volumes high up and a set of leather armchairs arranged near a gas fireplace. On the walls hung framed maps and antique sketches of machinery. (It was a library like he pictured belonging to Craven's manor house in The Secret Garden.)
Something nudged his hand, and he looked down to see a glass tumbler, half full of the liquor. "Here, it's better than that swill out in the punchbowl. That stuff'll give you a squint, if you're lucky."
"Crowley, we can't just take this! And besides, I don't drink!" He protested, conveniently ignoring that he'd that cup Heather had given him earlier and trying to hand the glass back. But Crowley just tapped his own glass against the rim in a toast and threw back a mouthful, wincing slightly at the burn.
"I don't think they'll mind, really. 'Sides, it's not drinking, 's an apology. For prying."
"You can't apologize with someone else's—"
"—izzit because of the religion thing? Why you're so—" Crowley interrupted, waving a hand at him. "—uptight?"
Aziraphale blinked and spluttered, caught off guard by the sudden pointedness of the conversation. "I am not uptight. I came here to help people, not, not fraternize and let loose." He looked down at the glass, swirling the amber liquid. A sadness sank into him at the realization that he'd probably revealed enough to lose Crowley's interest, if not actively drive him away. "I just...oh, never mind," he said, half to himself.
But to his surprise, instead of scoffing, Crowley pressed on. "No, hey, you told me you wanted some perspective, yeah? That's why you came all this way?"
Before he could reply, Crowley continued with a lazy wave of his hand. "'M not saying you have to drink or dance or, y'know, find a lady friend to debate scripture with or what have you," he said with a salacious waggle of his eyebrows, "But all those unwashed masses you're aiming to help are people. You can't pretend people aren't out there doing all those things, that alcohol and lust and whatall just, just don't exist." He tugged on the edge of one of Aziraphale's wings, not unkindly. "'S like, how can you know you're good if you've never had at least the opportunity not to be?"
Once, when he was younger, Aziraphale had stopped at the park on the way home from Bible study. There had been a group of children there playing, rough and tumble and carefree. He remembered thinking that they looked as happy as his father had told him the light of the Lord made the truly righteous feel. But in that moment, he thought they looked happier than he'd ever truly remembered feeling. He'd felt contentment, and familial love, and the comforting presence of God, but never that reckless abandonment of curiosity and joy at the vivid, fleeting pleasure of life.
Buried somewhere close to that memory was that kernel of truth he'd never spoken aloud to anyone, only hinted at to Anathema after the incident the other day. Maybe Crowley wouldn't care that he found the hard lines of the male form more attractive than soft, feminine curves. But time and again, the world around him had told him that he was sinful, that he was wrong. It was the other reason he'd fled home, hoping to find answers to—or at least come to peace with—the shame and guilt.
"So what are you suggesting? Something like a rumspringa?" The furrow of Crowley's brow led him to explain, "It's where Amish youth leave home and go live among modern society. They have to decide if they're going to go back and become part of the faith for good, or leave everything they know behind."
"Now, that's a bit dramatic," Crowley drawled, taking the glass from Aziraphale's hand and downing its contents. "But, okay, yeah, bit like that. Just...live a little. However you want. Ah, that's a nice Scotch."
"'And malt does more than Milton can, To justify God's ways to man'," Aziraphale quoted with a small smile, his eyes darting up to Crowley's and away again.
"We-ell, I wouldn't have thought Housman your style! Bit cynical for someone studying theology, trying to do good and all that. Next you'll tell me you read Nietzsche in the bath."
In response to Aziraphale's expression of shock that Crowley was at least familiar with A Shropshire Lad, Crowley made an indignant noise. "I may be a reprobate, but I'm literate, thanks. In fact, I've read most of the books in this room. Except the law books, those are dull as dirt. Ugh, uhk, those old dusty tomes can stay dusty." He pulled a book from a nearby shelf at random, peered at it closely, then dropped it on a nearby table and took another swig of Scotch.
And then Aziraphale was embarrassed by how long it had taken his sudden realization to enter his brain. "Oh, oh! This is your house?!"
Crowley laughed and gave a mock bow, his hair falling over his face in curly waves that he pushed back as he straightened. "You really didn't know? Well, welcome to Chez Crowley. Photographs permitted, but no flash, please."
"I can't believe, all these books, they're yours?"
"Well, my dear old dad's, yeah. Although they may as well be mine, for all he's around." The mirth drained from him as he realized what he'd said, a hesitancy suddenly appearing in his posture that Aziraphale knew all too well. Aziraphale's heart gave a pang in his chest, and he cleared his throat.
"All right, hand it over," he said, holding out his hand for the bottle of Scotch.
"What? But you just said you don't drink!"
"I don't, but...well, legal drinking seems like the least soul-damaging earthly temptation at the moment."
"You really don't have to—" He broke off as Aziraphale, before he could think too much, snatched the bottle and took a swig. Two seconds later, his throat was on fire. His eyes watered as he coughed and choked, bending to rest his hands on his knees.
"It's like, paint thinner, and—old books." His wheezing turned into laughter at the ridiculousness of all of it, and an airy recklessness burned through him along with the alcohol.
Crowley thumped him on the back a few times with his free hand, chuckling quietly. "How d'you know what old books taste like?" Crowley replied, the shadows gone from his countenance.
"Oh, faff off," he replied, tears in his eyes from the laughter and the Scotch.
They sat in the library and talked about books, ones they'd read in school and read for fun. Aziraphale tended to prefer poetry, while Crowley, he discovered, was a fan of science fiction and had read his paperback copy of Brave New World so many times that its covers had to be taped back on. Aziraphale didn't have any more Scotch, but the warmth stayed in his core while they talked, and he forgot to be anxious about what Crowley would think of him.
Then, at the end of the library, a grandfather clock chimed one. "You feel up to facing the chaos again?" Crowley asked, when the loud reverberations had faded. "Your friends are probably looking for you."
"I suppose I should," Aziraphale replied with a sigh. "And I wouldn't want to keep you from your own party. You know, I can't believe your parents would let you have a party like this. It's like a war zone in there."
"Eh, as long as I don't break any windows or break out the really hard drugs, they don't really notice." Aziraphale couldn't tell if he was kidding. He tried to imagine Gabriel letting his children invite hoards of their friends over to blast music and drink unidentified alcohol and have sex in the dark corners. It would be easier to picture the Pope as a Hell's Angel. Something like pity thumped in his heart at the thought of Crowley wandering this big, empty house all alone.
"I'm sorry for earlier, by the way, when I snapped at you," he blurted out. "I was just...overwhelmed." By the grace of God, it seemed he hadn't completely mucked everything up.
"Nah, don't worry about it. I shouldn't have poked fun at you." They were standing awfully close now. Aziraphale could see his reflection in the lenses of Crowley's glasses, his own white-blond hair stark in the moonlight, as they looked at each other.
Then Crowley broke the silence. "Since you didn't like the Scotch, why don't you grab a book to take with you? With all our rehearsals the last few weeks, I haven't had much time for reading lately." He manhandled Aziraphale with cold hands over to a shelf near where he'd grabbed the Housman volume, ignoring his protestations.
Crowley set down the bottle and crouched as much as his leather pants allowed, thin fingers skimming the spines for a few moments. "Here, how about...ahrm, hmm, ah! This one! Yes!"
With a brilliantly illustrated leather cover, adorned with golden metallic leaf, the edition of Ovid's The Metamorphoses thrust into his hands had to be worth a small fortune. It had been years since he'd read the myths of Greek gods and heroes.
"It's beautiful...thank you," he said, stunned. "I'll take good care of it, I promise."
"'Course you will, angel," Crowley replied, standing to run a hand through his hair before reaching up in a stretch that made Aziraphale's mouth go dry at the shift of muscles in his lean, angular torso. He sidled over to a desk, rummaged through it for a few minutes, and extracted pen and paper to jot something down.
"Here," he said, voice holding the ghost of hesitation. "I know you have phones in those closets you call dorm rooms. Ah, er, you can, uh, call me when you finish the book?"
"Oh! Of course, thank you," Aziraphale replied, taking the paper and tucking it just inside the book's cover.
"All right, c'mon, I'll help you find Brian." Crowley spun 'round and strode for the far door, and Aziraphale trotted to keep up, book tucked protectively close to his chest like the rarest treasure.
He did his best not to let his eyes wander too much to Crowley's leather-clad backside.
The raging headache he'd woken up with the next morning was every bit as awful as he'd imagined drinking too much would feel like. He slogged through the morning, leaving Brian to his own devices and ignoring most of his homework to instead hide in a dark, quiet corner of the library with a thermos of tea and cookies pilfered from the dining hall.
"High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind, The God a clearer space for Heav'n design'd; Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow; Purg'd from the pondrous dregs of Earth below," he read from the book Crowley had loaned him, embracing the hazy fugue of the grey, chilly day outside and his lingering hangover as he settled into the large, squashy armchair Anathema had probably placed here.
He'd had a soft spot for Perseus, Ovid's comical slayer of Medusa and monsters. Though the hero's basic plotline was quite routine, the author managed to make him a vehicle for the reader to travel the more interesting world around him. Stealing the eye of the Graeae, the witches with only one eye passed between them like a hot potato, the drama that continued even after his battles were won when a riot broke out at his wedding...even amidst the other tales of vengefully, petty gods and goddesses of ancient Greek mythology, for some reason Aziraphale was drawn to mortal Perseus.
When he takes a break to stretch and pour himself more tea, he finds his eyes wandering to the steady pattern of rain outside, slicking the sidewalks and the orange-leafed trees on the mostly abandoned lawn. Despite the new, looming threat of exams coming up in barely a month, this was always his favorite time of year, when the world turned inward and quiet.
And now, the orange of the leaves reminded him of the flaming tangle of Crowley's hair. Their conversation the night before had been utterly unexpected, and he sifted through the new information he'd learned, slotting it into his picture of Crowley. To find out the talented, utterly attractive musician he'd met only a handful of times shared, at the very least, his own appetite for the written word had thrown a wrench into Aziraphale's carefully constructed mental picture of someone who he could admire from afar, their worlds too different to overlap much despite his desire to the contrary.
Crowley read books and cared for plants...and cared that he'd upset Aziraphale, despite his witty, mercurial temper. More than an attractive face (oh my, that body) he was an enigma, and even after only meeting him a handful of times, Aziraphale felt drawn to him like a star, like the sun. He'd never felt like this.
He sighed and took a deep sip of tea. Did he dare hope that perhaps Crowley was thinking of him? Wondering about him, interested in knowing more about him, interested in spending more time with him? He couldn't bring himself to believe that Crowley felt the same (terrifying but exhilarating) yearning for something more, but…
And then he remembered, and opened the front of the book to the piece of paper there. He read the number and note, jotted down in thin, spiky handwriting:
"The phone number of Anthony J. Crowley, for Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, who had better not skip the Pierides vs. the Muse because that's the best part."
With a grin, he set the note and his tea aside, consulted the table of contents, and flipped to "The Song of the Pierides".
