Chapter Text
Paris, 1793
Crowley ambled alongside Aziraphale, attempting to enjoy the spring sunshine, despite the furtive, anxious glances of the Parisians they passed. He wasn’t sure why Aziraphale was optimistic enough to think that a luxury like crêpes would be freely available in Paris while heads were being removed from shoulders like bloody bare necks were the next major fashion statement.
Honestly, was the angel deliberately trying to get into trouble? Turning up across the Channel wearing fancy lace and silk slippers in the middle of a revolution against the aristocracy. Was it ignorance, or was he trying to force Crowley to…do what exactly? He wasn’t sure, but it left a peculiar feeling in his stomach.
What he did know was that the image of Aziraphale all decked out in frills and pastels like a fancy cake, wearing iron manacles and tossing a coy pout in Crowley’s direction was going to be imprinted on his brain until the universe was snuffed out of existence. Did the angel know what kind of effect he had? Of course not. If he did know, he wouldn’t do that kind of stupid thing. Crowley felt a surge of annoyance at the effort that he wished he hadn’t manifested today.
“Ah, here we are,” Aziraphale said, stopping them in front of a picturesque hole-in-the-wall stall, staffed by a woman who looked mildly surprised to be there. Crowley was quite certain she had been doing something entirely different only moments ago.
“Ah, my favourite little crêperie is still here. Diex vous sait, mademoiselle!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “Err…une crêpes citron sucre, je vous prie!”
“Deux bols de cidre,” Crowley added.
As they settled down at a small wooden table, Crowley propped his elbow on the side and peered at Aziraphale over the top of his glasses. “What’s with your French?”
The angel fiddled with the cuff of his jacket, evidently displeased with the tailoring of his revolutionary clothing. “What do you mean?”
Despite the paranoia and anxiety he could feel radiating off the general populace, Crowley smirked. He still struggled to reliably tell when the angel was playing dumb and, despite himself, couldn’t help but bite. “Why do you sound like you just popped over from the trial of Jeanne d’Arc in 1431?”
Aziraphale gave up on worrying at his hems and frowned. “Oh, is it so out of date? I haven’t been over here in a while and I’ve always found French a little challenging.”
“Angel, they’re ransacking churches and you’re greeting them like you’re Bishop Pierre Cauchon.”
“Please don’t compare me to that awful man,” Aziraphale grumbled, pursing his lips and throwing a disapproving glance towards Crowley. “Well, perhaps I should take some classes to acquaint myself with the modern vernacular.”
Crowley quietly snorted, still not quite sure whether this was all part of an elaborate joke. “Maybe when this craze for mass murder is over, yeah?”
“Ah, here comes lunch now! Doesn’t it smell spectacular?” Aziraphale wiggled with delight as a plate of hot crêpes drizzled with fragrant lemon and sprinkled with sugar arrived, alongside two bowls of hot cider.
The angel cut off a hefty mouthful and wrapped his lips around it, groaning heartily. Crowley narrowed his eyes and crossed his legs, sliding down in his seat and trying not to smirk as the woman manning the crêpe stall stopped to stare at the vocal display of appreciation.
“Would you like to try some, my dear? They simply don’t make anything that even comes close to this back in London.”
Crowley shook his head and took a long sip of cider, drinking in the opulent vision laid out before him. Although he wished Aziraphale hadn’t had to change out of the gorgeous, ridiculous white lace, the sight of his angel indulging in the things that brought him joy was far more nourishing for Crowley than any human food. “You go ahead. You enjoy it more than I do.”
It was a balm to be back in Aziraphale’s presence. Crowley had been flitting back and forth between England and the continent for almost two hundred years, spending a large share of his time in Italy on various demonic assignments since 1603. His time with Aziraphale, which had been steadily becoming more and more frequent up until that point, had been suddenly cut in half. He had worn the angel down with centuries of the most nuanced temptation and finally got him to agree to an informal arrangement, where they would help each other out with their assignments where they could. They both got to work less hard, while also having more free time to meet for a drink or take in a show together.
Whenever they were apart for longer stretches, Crowley mourned the light that Aziraphale carried with him. The angel loved humanity, their creations and their food. Without Aziraphale’s warming influence, Crowley had a tendency to become maudlin and overly introspective. So when he’d felt the angel’s ethereal presence travelling across the Channel, he’d been unable to resist tracking him down like a bloodhound.
Aziraphale devoured his crêpes, each new bite going down with just as much vocal enthusiasm as the last. When he was done, they sat together and sipped at their miraculously still-hot bowls of cider, making idle chit-chat. Crowley could feel the tightly wound thing in his chest unspooling with every obliging smile that was thrown across the table, garnished with the warm glow that would appear on the apples of his angel’s cheeks. He knew he was pathetic, but he needed this. He’d needed this for a while.
The afternoon had worn on to evening as they sipped at their seemingly bottomless bowls of cider, when Crowley sensed that Aziraphale was about to make his excuses to leave. He always got a bit of a nervous rabbit look about him at these times, glancing over his shoulder and wringing his hands together in front of his belly. Crowley didn’t want the evening to end. He needed just a little bit more.
So, quickly and casually, he tossed out the mildest of temptations. “Feel like an evening stroll by the Seine? It’s a gorgeous night for it.”
Because it was. It was just a smidge warmer than was typical at this time of year, and the sunset washed the sky in shades of rich apricot and tangerine.
Aziraphale frowned, fiddling with his cuffs for a few moments. Then he looked up and around them, seemingly taking in their surroundings properly for the first time in hours.
“Oh yes, very well—a short stroll. But after that, I really should be popping along.”
They followed the riverside path to the Pont Neuf, which they crossed side by side, watching the boats drift along the sunset-dappled river. Although Crowley could still feel the background hum of anxiety across the city, the longer they walked, the more Aziraphale seemed to relax. His shoulders crept down from around his ears and he clasped his hands behind his back as crow’s feet crinkled around his eyes. Crowley sauntered alongside, basking in the glow of the only being he’d never been able to take his eyes off.
When they were half way across the bridge, he leaned in close to point out the newly opened Musée du Louvre on the right bank of the Seine. Crowley suggested, in the most offhand and casual tone he could muster, that they might want to have a wander through the collection some day to chuckle at the historical inaccuracies together.
Aziraphale beamed. “That would be a delightful outing, wouldn’t it? We could make a whole day of it.”
“Maybe we could get galettes next time. I saw some in Brittany made with egg, cheese and ham…and I’m sure you could convince one of the local chefs that they know how to make it,” Crowley drawled.
“Oh, that does sound delightful. Although I wonder when we’ll next have a chance to cross paths in Paris again,” Aziraphale replied, sounding a touch melancholy.
“Whenever we want, really,” Crowley said, although he knew it wasn’t entirely true. Even though he was fairly confident no one was watching, Aziraphale still needed the protection of plausible deniability. “How about I give you a heads up next time Hell sends me here. Y’could turn up to thwart me.”
“Oh, would you?” Aziraphale looked positively tickled by the idea. His cheeks were flushed and his blue-green eyes shone in the dying light of the evening. Crowley had never seen anything more beautiful in all his long life. He ached with it.
“Course,” he said offhandedly as they meandered their way up a secluded path away from the river.
“You know, I have to wonder how you knew exactly where to find me in the Bastille,” Aziraphale said with a secretive smile. “And just in the nick of time, too.”
“And I have to wonder how you could turn up in the middle of a revolution dressed like a frilly aristocratic teacake and think they wouldn’t try to chop your head off.” Crowley smirked. This was the game they played. The steps were easy and familiar. As long as no one said the silent part out loud, they were treading safe ground.
Aziraphale suddenly stopped short, a troubled expression pulling down at the corners of his mouth. “Crowley…I know it was a bit silly of me to come here, but do you think…”
Crowley paused, turning to face him. “Do I think what?”
The angel shook his head and sighed. “Oh, nothing. Nevermind.”
“Something bothering you, angel?”
“It’s nothing. I’m being silly.”
Crowley couldn’t help but push. “It’s not nothing if it’s bothering you. Go on. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to spoil a lovely evening,” Aziraphale replied with a wry smile. “I really should be getting along.”
“Don’t,” Crowley said, voice coming out harsher than he intended. He knew he should leave well enough alone, but he’d never been able to help himself when it came to this angel. He pulled off his dark glasses and took a step towards Aziraphale, who retreated in turn, his back bumping up against a stone wall.
Suddenly, they were face to face, barely a breath apart. Night had fallen and they were all alone on the banks of the Seine.
“Crowley…” Aziraphale breathed, pupils blown wide in sea glass eyes.
Crowley felt himself leaning in, as if drawn by an inevitable gravity. He had always been guided by the pull of Aziraphale’s orbit, even when he tried to resist. The longer they stood there, looking into each other’s eyes, the more pleasantly warm and fuzzy around the edges everything had begun to feel. And Aziraphale was just there, with his perfect, pink lips parted slightly. If they both tipped forward just a little…
“Please…don’t do anything we’ll both regret,” Aziraphale whispered, abruptly turning his head away.
Crowley stumbled backwards like he’d been struck. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He felt like he’d just been doused with a bucket of ice water.
“Crowley, wait…” Aziraphale began anxiously as he reached out one hand, but Crowley was already shoving his glasses back on and shaking his head.
He didn’t say a single word in response as he turned around and stalked away, face burning. He felt pathetic. He felt betrayed. He was painfully aroused and his heart was so full of longing that it might well have burst. And so he left.
Crowley wasn’t about to return to London. He needed to put some distance between himself and the angel for the sake of his own sanity. So he spent the next month making his way from Paris to Rome by horse-drawn carriage and, when no one would take him any further, he walked. He walked in the pouring rain and the burning midday sun. He tried to let the unfeeling elements cleanse the horrible, churning thing inside of him, but it did little good.
By the time he reached Rome, the emotional inferno in his breast had finally subsided to a smoulder. He had gotten control of it, even if he had not been able to douse it entirely. What he needed was a place that was all his own. No humans, no demons, and certainly no beautiful angels with pleading cerulean eyes and lips with a distractingly perfect Cupid’s bow.
And so he headed to his flat in Rome.
In the last two hundred years, Crowley had gone from having no permanent residence to having two of them. One was located in Mayfair, London, which had recently transformed from fields of non-descript mud puddles into a hub for hobnobbing aristocrats. He had convinced his superiors that a base was necessary to keep a close eye on the enemy’s stronghold in Soho, so Hell had provided a floor in a grand, three-storey neoclassical building all painted in shades of dark slate.
Crowley’s other residence in Rome was all his own. Hell didn’t even seem to be aware of it. While he could have snapped his fingers and had his pick of the finest mansions, he had chosen a small, unobtrusive appartamento on the fourth floor of a tenement in Trevi, near a large, ornate fountain that had been finished in the last few decades at the junction of three roads. The flat had room for a small cot bed and not much else due to the vast number of canvases stacked up against every wall. In front of its enormous south-facing window, Crowley had set up his easel and his paints. No one had ever entered this place but him.
He had purchased the flat in 1603, when he had been sent to Rome to tempt the painter Caravaggio. Crowley had arrived and quickly realised the man was already well on his way to Hell without any external influence. And yet, he was a truly talented, revolutionary painter. Crowley stuck to the sidelines, watching and learning.
One of the benefits of an immortal life was the infinite time that could be spent developing skills and talents. And Crowley would have never admitted to anyone, not even Aziraphale, but he liked to paint. And he had practiced for centuries. Yet he felt he had learned more from immersing himself in the world of chiaroscuro painters than he had for a staggeringly long time. He hadn’t learned so much about painting since he had befriended Leonardo back in the late 1400s.
When Crowley wasn’t busy skiving off work, he could have a surprisingly singular focus. He didn’t need to eat or sleep, so he painted. Then Caravaggio had died and his reason for being in Rome had also vanished.
And yet, with no further assignments from Hell for a time, he stayed. For several decades, he had lived as a penniless painter in Rome. He had even sold a few of his own paintings, just to prove that he could. Not that there was much of a market for his art—it was always a bit too…something. Because Crowley was a demon, there was a subtle temptation woven into each and every one. It made people uncomfortable, even if they weren’t always sure why.
The problems came when he locked himself away and no one else saw his artworks. When that happened, Aziraphale’s face seemed to appear more and more frequently, and the only person Crowley ended up tempting was himself.
The flat was exactly as he remembered — small and dingy, but clean and uniquely his own. Without thinking, Crowley drew up a miracle from down below and changed his clothing into the dark linens he had worn in this place long ago. Although years had passed, his oil paints were still as fresh as the day he had bought them. He pulled out a fresh canvas, placed it on the easel, and began to paint. He hadn’t exactly planned to paint Aziraphale, but it wasn’t the first time that the angel’s face had appeared unbidden beneath his brush.
As day turned to night, then night to day once again, the scene revealed itself to Crowley. Aziraphale, in all his ridiculous aristocratic frippery, sitting in the Bastille, wrists clapped in irons. His pure radiance contrasted so perfectly with the darkness of the dungeon. His beautiful cerulean eyes were hooded as he stared out from the canvas, lips curved into an enticing pout. It was exactly as Crowley remembered. It made him ache.
The background wasn’t quite complete, but the moment Crowley finished the last wispy curl of Aziraphale’s white-blond hair, he threw his paintbrush and palette on the wooden floor and angrily pulled down his breeches.
Blood thrummed in his ears and his extremities tingled. He hadn’t felt this pent up in a long time. He hadn’t been able to think clearly since that damn moment by the Seine. He could still feel Aziraphale’s breath on his cheek. He could still feel the inexorable pull of those pink, parted lips. A few quick strokes and he was painting the canvas with thick, white ropes of come that dripped down the still-wet paint, smearing it almost beyond recognition.
Physically and emotionally spent, Crowley dragged his tired, emptied husk of body across the room and threw himself into his narrow cot bed. Within moments, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.