Chapter Text
“No, Crowley, I don’t think so – not tonight. I know you fancy your thriller films with the car chases and those entirely excessive exchanges of gunfire, but it’ll just jangle my nerves. It’s been an utter beast of a week.”
“You always get like this when Gabriel gives you a bollocking.”
“There was absolutely no reason for him to make such a fuss of the miracle budget. I’ve been quite thrifty. If I exceeded one month’s allotment in a moment of obvious need – well, I think it’s time for a bit of port and the sort of reading that soothes your spirit. Some narrative of society by the Victorians, the kind of immersive thing that takes one out of oneself.”
“Wot, Dickens? Or that Trollop bloke? Or –”
“Trollope . You do that to be irritating, you know.”
“Sort of thing where everyone spends six hundred pages talkin’ to one another about inheritances and relatives? And finally at the end, there’s a hand kiss and the heroine says ‘Oh, Mr. Plumperley, I will be honoured to become your wife, though l wonder that you can accept me, poverty-stricken as I am –”
“Mock on, fiend.”
“Right, maybe I should see if there’s anything in it. Recommendations?”
“The second shelf in that glass-fronted case over there. With the globe on top.” Aziraphale snapped to unlock the doors.
“The Parson’s Vow – sounds like a page-turner, that – Aberforth Hall – The Foreign Minister – right, this one. Shorter than the rest.” Crowley tucked a small volume into his jacket. “Knock this one out tonight, if it doesn’t put me to sleep.”
“When you have read it, then you may disparage it,” sniffed Aziraphale, not looking up from his accounts book (the Heavenly one, not the bookshop’s). “Which you will doubtless do. Shall we say Simpson’s tomorrow evening? They have a new menu. You may tell me over sole piccata how dreadfully dull it was, and what an absolute duffer I am.”
“Look forward to it. Ta.”
The bell on the double door jingled as Crowley let himself out.
A bit of crap telly, a bit of whisky. Have a look, all right. Crowley opened the battered paperboard cover to the foxed, browned title page.
The Rake
A Novel Of Transgression
By Chasten Angell
Published In A Limited Edition Of Two Hundred And Fifty Impressions
By The Portland Place Press
February, 1888
With Pen And Ink Illustrations
Commissioned By The Author
A quick riffle of the first pages confirmed that the illustrations were sketchy line drawings, nothing like the detailed crosshatch Crowley remembered from the Strand back in the day. He turned back to the opening chapter.
Alastair Fellowes, in the spring of eighteen-eighty-one, had reached his twenty-ninth year without manifesting anything perceptible in the way of direction. In appearance he was fair-haired and fair-skinned, bordering on stout; a painter of reputation had once sought him as a model for a series of edifying works based in Hellenic myth. He was always delicately groomed, but dressed in the fashion of past years, for, while careful of his appearance, he was frugal; nonetheless, his elegant manners and talent for dancing made him much sought-after among matrons with daughters of marriageable age, yet he never made a match.
He doted upon his books, cherishing a collection which his modest inheritance allowed him to assemble and store in a smart townhouse in one of the quieter districts of the capital. He had several clubs, but more often than not spent his evenings in his own library, a decanter at his elbow, or playing the pianoforte, on which he had achieved no small virtuosity; afternoons saw him strolling in Pall Mall…
“Right, there’ll be a quiz,” said Crowley, reaching for the decanter at his own elbow (more precisely, it was a bottle of Talisker Port Ruighe) and skipping through the first pages. A restlessness that his courtly manner and affable conversation concealed… accepted an invitation to the salon of Lady Isabel Weatherley-Stokes, of whom it was whispered that she had been an adventuress in her time and kept questionable company… Well, that looked more intriguing, but apparently Lady Weatherly-Stokes was now in her sixties and a suffragist who kept a lady’s companion.
“I hear,” said Mrs. Dalton (as she was known, although no one had ever confirmed the existence of a Mister Dalton), “that he is fantastically wicked and says the most outrageous things.” Alastair felt a strange sensation at this overheard fragment of conversation, and began to wish that he had stopped at home…
Crowley turned the page and his eyebrows lifted.
Aziraphale rose and stretched, closing the accounts-book and debating for a moment between cocoa and a good red before deciding on a well aged Montrachet.
Crowley was right about the bollocking, of course. Gabriel was quite unreasonable, and Aziraphale’s mind kept going back to their conversation as he turned the pages of his book, realizing gloomily after twenty minutes that what was playing in his head was not the well-worn dialogue of Trollope but Gabriel’s completely unwarranted reading-out, and the retorts he’d smothered or thought of later, and – well, there was one thing that took him to another place when he started ruminating like this.
No, he mouthed resolutely, and returned to The Claverings.
Crowe sauntered leisurely into the parlour, propping himself against the pianoforte in an insouciant pose that brought out the snug fit of his fashionable black trousers and the slimness of his waist. Alastair Fellowes was not one to follow the society pages, but the man's reputation as a rake, a danger to ingenue and youth alike, had not escaped him.
"You play divinely, Mr. Fellowes," he said in a low, resonant voice that woke a strange feeling in the pit of Alastair's stomach. "I am very fond of the Ballades of Chopin. Allow me to turn the pages for you." An agreeable scent of the evening's port, and pomade, and something that could only be uniquely Crowe himself, flickered in Alastair's nostrils and was gone again as Crowe reached for the sheet music.
The line drawing on the facing page showed a slender man dressed in the fashions of the eighteen-eighties, standing hipshot in a doorway with a champagne flute in his hand.
He was wearing dark spectacles.
Dammit. All right.
Aziraphale rose and poked through the twin of the bookcase Crowley had opened – the one with the strongest wards on it. He reached for a high shelf, frowned, pulled the books out one by one, surely I put it back.
It would turn up. Perhaps upstairs.
"I am aware of you, Mr. Crowe, as someone who questions the strictures and mores which are the bedrock of this society. Who has bent the rules and shown no repentance.”
"And you, Mr. Fellowes?" The chandeliers beyond the French doors outlined Crowe's silhouette fitfully, the scent of honeysuckle drifting between them on the night breeze. "What is your opinion of those strictures and morals?”
“You will only mock,” said Alastair. “But there is a stability in the virtues you flout, to which I have devoted my life.”
“Yes, yes, I have heard,” said Crowe, “a little life, encircled by sameness, never crossing lines. The eligible pursue you, and Mr. Hallward paints you, and your name is coupled with no one’s. Shall we walk in our hostess’s fine garden, and debate the subject of virtues?”
Alastair opened his lips to say “You must excuse me;” half turned to go back into the parlour, to call for his coat and stick; felt Crowe’s hand on his sleeve, and found himself saying: “I shall walk with you.”
The Talisker was half gone. Crowley hadn’t touched the bottle in half an hour.
Alastair Fellowes had accepted an invitation to the townhouse of Adrian Crowe. The servants had been dismissed.
His eyes burned pale gold in the low light; the vivid red of his hair rivalled any painting by Morris or Rossetti. His voice was the voice of Mankind’s first tempter, both dulcet and dark. “Your beauty,” he said, as his thin lips brushed Alastair’s, “surpasses the beauty of women. I desire you as I could desire no woman. Come, my perfection, for I think you hunger for me as I hunger for you.”
Alastair trembled, unable to move, as Crowe's clever fingers loosed the buttons of his trousers and drew him to a great cock-stand, the nectar of his longing spreading under a broad thumb.
"If you think it is wrong, I will stop," whispered Crowe. "But surely what your body wants so desperately cannot be a sin? Does your heart call this a crime? Our bodies were given to us to enjoy. To rut and relish, and cry out in the moment of the little death, which is the fountain of life.”
Alastair found his voice at last. "I care not," he said, "what is right and wrong any longer! I am in your power, Adrian! God forgive me, I am yours; take me as you will!"
It wasn’t in the bedtable, or the dresser drawers. Aziraphale went through the locking bookcase again, turfing up yellowing issues of The Oyster that had been tucked for safekeeping between the pages of The Phoenix of Sodom or My Secret Life. “Bother,” he muttered, and then an awful thought struck him.
He turned to the other case, the crammed first editions of Wilkie Collins and Mrs. Gaskell and George Eliot. Crammed, except for the slender gap where Crowley’d removed a single volume.
The shop revolved briefly around him, and he found himself sitting on the carpet with his back against the open shelves.
“Oh, Lord,” he said.
“These are the buds of Love – tenderer and more delicate than any woman’s. Let me suck them to sweetness, and play upon them with my tongue.”
The line drawings were growing steadily more explicit than Crowley’s quick ruffle of the earlier pages had made plain.
“Your tongue is a magician,” said Alastair, “for I have never felt such things, nor knew they could be felt. Oh, Adrian, pleasure has made me your slave, only do not leave me yearning! I ache for the fulfilment of this cruel desire!”
The rest of the Montrachet did nothing to calm his nerves. Every volume in both cases was stacked on the floor. Aziraphale was lying on the carpet between the piles, wondering if it were possible to discorporate from sheer chagrin.
“This is not the aperture of shame,” said Crowe behind his ear, parting the soft cleft of his fundament with a wicked finger, “but the place where the God Of Love may enter; and here is the oil with which He anoints. Open for me, my darling.” Alastair felt himself probed in that most secret of orifices, and lavished with an unction warm and slick; and then that naughty finger passed the gates of his chastity, making him cry out with longing.
“Hush, hush, little mouse, you have felt nothing yet,” said Crowe. “I mean to take you, and you have seen what I shall take you with, and touched it; and you shall cry my name, as I shall cry yours, for I am besotted upon you. Feel, how it is hot to be within you, and to what a stand you bring me.”
“I cannot hold back,” sobbed Alastair, “I shall reach the crisis.”
“And have you reached the crisis before, little mouse? Alone, in your nightshirt, with your exploring hand? When it has always been this you desire, has it not? I knew when I beheld you.” The rigid majesty of Crowe’s prick lodged itself against him, and eased in by degrees, for it was a great girth breaching a virgin arse, and Alastair wept in pain and pleasure mingled as it found its way home.
“Now, my beloved – I am filled with the nectar of Cupid, and it shall all be yours – do not hold back, for I wish to feel the grasp of your sweet arse as you spend – yes, spend, my love, let the God take you, for this madness is the only true divinity, and your arse is my religion. Oh! oh, my darling, let me feel the heat of your juices, like milk and honey, now, now, my dearest, I die!”
Ah, Crowley, I wondered if you’d had a look at that yet…
No. Perhaps:
Crowley! Sorry to bother you – if I could trouble you to bring back that volume, I was holding it for a collector – you know there are people who fancy that sort of silly thing –
Nope.
I’ve changed my mind – I really would enjoy one of those spy films after all, the louder the better –
Except the cinemas were all closed by now.
“Fuck,” said Aziraphale feelingly.
The lovers had met now clandestinely again and again – sometimes in St. James’ Park, where an assignation would be set; sometimes exchanging correspondence in a code that was theirs alone; sometimes at concerts or performances, whence they would share a hansom to Adrian’s townhouse in Mayfair, with its manicured garden and capacious bed.
“Ah, God, Adrian,” cried Alastair, “no man can endure ecstasy so prolonged; I shall perish of pleasure.” Adrian could not answer, for his mouth was filled with Alastair’s stiff prick; already having once coaxed from him the effusions of Venus, he had sucked him relentlessly once more to a stand, as if nothing would serve but that his bollocks be emptied of their riches. “Ah, beloved, your mouth is eloquent yet silent; it speaks to me of a Love I never dared imagine. The heat of your lips upon me, the dance of your tongue, this must be forbidden, yet I am indentured to your attentions. What can you not do with that wicked tongue?”
“You shall see,” said Adrian, lifting his head at last and replacing his mouth with clever fingers, with which he had already shown he could frig his lover to the pinnacle. “Lift up, grant me the freedom of your bounteous arse.” Alastair gasped as the tongue which had lavished his prick now searched his secret core, flinching not to taste him in that most sweet and hidden place.
“Ah, darling – ah, ahh, I cannot hold back, this is witchery, you will unmake me.” Adrian’s name was on his lips as Alastair once again reached the extremity, bedewing them both with the vintage of rapture. “You are my own, dearer to me than my soul, you are my very heart.”
“And you are mine, my angel, my only,” said Adrian. “You are mine.”
There was nothing for it. He knew the way to Crowley’s flat; had never been let in, but a small miracle would manage security codes and such modern nonsense, and perhaps it wasn’t too late. If only he hadn’t this inconvenient stitch in his side. Perhaps Gabriel was right, and he ought to take more exercise.
“And now,” said Alastair, “I shall tax you with pleasure as you have taxed me, and wring from you the sweet juices of Aphrodite. Though it be forbidden, here in the Paradise that is this bed, this Eden of love, I shall be your pupil in the secrets of venery, and practise every proscribed joy upon your perfect form.”
Aziraphale steeled himself and pressed the lift button.
The pages turned almost of themselves, the bottle long forgotten. Passage after passage of passion had left Crowley in a state as tumescent as the lovers in the book, and now they were exchanging pleas in the gazebo of Adrian’s garden:
Adrian’s hands were hot on him, filling Alastair with longing even as he protested. “Why, Alastair? Is ours not a love as holy as any? Are our pleasures not as blessed as those that stutter and stammer within the bounds of licensed matrimony? Why should we not declare our bond to the heavens, and hold up our heads before God and man?”
“You know not of what you speak, Adrian – for far less than such defiance, men have been driven to acts of desperation that imperil even their immortal souls. My heart quails at the thought you might come to harm.”
“Then let us at least plight our troth, here, in secret – in this garden pleasance smiled on by the Moon and all the Graces – here, give me that signet upon your small finger, and take this one, worked in the shape of a serpent, Mankind’s first teacher – you shall be my husband, and I yours, and my wedding gift shall be these cunningly carved instruments of Venus, with which we shall pursue unthought-of ecstasies –”
Crowley came out of a stunned haze. His jeans were around his thighs and his hand was in his underpants.
Someone was knocking at the door.
“Crowley – Crowley – I know you’re in there, I need you to answer the door, please, please, it’s important – ooof!”
Aziraphale all but collapsed over the threshold.
“Angel? Angel, are you all right? What happened? You never –”
“I know, I’m sorry, only I – I remembered that – well, I promised a volume to a customer, and when I looked on the shelf – it must have been the very one you took, and – and I really couldn’t get outside of myself just reading Trolley, I mean Trollope, perhaps we could find a midnight film or watch something on the Interwebs and –”
“You were going to sell a book?”
“Well, sometimes to a dedicated collector – there are people who silly those fancy things and – did you read very far in it?”
“Read? Ah – no, no, angel, first few pages, dull as ditchwater, fell asleep and –”
“You’ve still got your finger in it.”
In what? thought Crowley frantically, and then looked down to see that he still held the slim volume in his left hand, his forefinger holding a place near the end.
“Oh dear, Crowley –” Aziraphale steadied himself against the doorframe.
“Well, all right. Not. Uh. Dull. All that stuff about Paradise, and serpents, and, ah – Chasten Angell? ” Crowley blurted before he could stop himself.
Aziraphale covered his eyes with his hand.
“Oh, Crowley, what you must think of me,” he moaned. “I didn’t mean to write it –”
“It just happened?
“Well, publish it – I’m afraid I’ve –”
“Angel. Sit down, you’re white as a sheet.”
“You have to understand, it was when I had that club in Portland Place – they kept a library and – well, you can’t imagine how crudely written some of it was, I fancied I could do better – and you know, you use characters you can draw from life –”
“Which characters?”
“Oh, Crowley, you needn’t think of sparing my feelings. I feel such a numpty – it was a great liberty, I know, but – I can see how far you’ve got in it. I simply copied the conventions of the time. There were ample exemplars at the club, and – one night things got rather spirited – I don’t mean I ever did anything with any of them, or with anyone really, I only said I could write something more elegant than – well, they dared me to show them, and I thought, why not publish -- ”
Aziraphale’s eyes darted downward, then averted themselves. “Crowley, your trousers are open.”
“Er.”
They were not only open, but even in the low light, you could discern the condition of the underpants beneath. Maybe. Crowley cringed and sorted things with a snap.
“You know how it is, just like to loosen the tight clothes after a long day –”
“You never loosen your clothing.”
“Erm. Um.”
“I think you’d better give that back to me now.”
Crowley was silent for several seconds.
He closed his eyes briefly. It was now or never.
“Shan’t,” he said.
“What do you – it is my book, Crowley.”
“Yeppers. Your book, angel. Chasten. Angell. And I want to finish it.”
“Even if I told you that I never meant you to read it? Crowley, I said you would mock, but I – I expected better of you. It is – cheap of you to want to make me squirm like an – an insect on a pin. To store up matter you can use to jeer at me – and – and to satisfy yourself – give it back –” Aziraphale grabbed for the book, and Crowley snatched it out of the way.
Aziraphale rose. “I should go,” he said.
“Angel – wait, no –”
Aziraphale stared. “Why? Am I to watch as you finish? To complete my humiliation? It’s not as if I’ve ever said – I never had any intention – why cannot you simply return what is mine – ” Aziraphale made another futile lunge for the book.
“Because I want to know how it ends.”
“Hah?”
For once, Aziraphale seemed to have lost the power of speech. The half-formed syllable that tumbled out left his mouth hanging open, like a door that some careless person’s forgot to shut.
“How does it end? After Adrian says we are bonded as one soul and Alastair says you are the only owner of my heart and they pledge themselves to each other and then – with that ivory – ah – sex. Thingy.”
Aziraphale turned an alarming shade of scarlet and squeezed his eyes shut. “Crowley, please.”
“I mean, do they live happy ever after? Go buy a country house, shag themselves silly where the neighbours can’t hear – angel, are you crying? Oh fuck, oh fuck oh fuck – whisky, here –”
Aziraphale dashed his eyes with the back of his hand, hitched a breath. “No, they – you see, people of their sort so often feared the blackmailer or the magistrate and – it wasn’t unusual for the books to reflect that and – Adrian wants to declare their love and defy Society, and Alastair hasn’t – hasn’t the courage, and he throws himself into the arms of the Church, where he – he promises to use any influence he can gain to make the world a more forgiving place for men who love the way he and Adrian do. But Adrian can’t forgive, and n-never sees him again, it was a convention, Crowley, it was how de-debauched stories often ended and I feel such a fool, please just give it back –”
“Hey, hey.”
Crowley laid a hand on Aziraphale’s sleeve.
The blue eyes, pink-rimmed now, met his. Crowley held up the book.
“What about – writing another ending?”
“What? Now?”
“One where they don’t quarrel. Where they protect each other, and keep each other safe, and one day there’s that place in the country. They deserve it, don’t they?”
“After all this time?”
“Yes. Exactly. After all this time.”
There was a little pause.
“I don’t know how I’d even start –”
“Like this,” Crowley said, his heart hammering, and kissed him.