“Well, I certainly won’t let you sleep on the ground now. I have standards.”
*
With the coachman paid and on his way back to Florence, they spend an hour or so wandering through the remains of the house, assessing the state of the place. They walk the length of the border wall, piecing together what the layout of the original garden might have looked like from the ruins. The plants here are all running riot; there’s a patch of wall near one of the bedrooms on the ground floor where honeysuckle spills through the window and over the remains of a stone bench nearby.
It takes them a while to pick their bedroom—several of the rooms with enough roof to qualify on the first night are occupied by sparrows, and Aziraphale hasn’t the heart to evict them today. But eventually they find a room that’s mostly intact and has a view onto the garden [footnote: And, by extension, a view onto the nearby road. Aziraphale may be confident, but he’s not naive.]. There’s a half-rotted bed frame in another room that can be easily convinced that it remembers what it was like in its glory days, so that’s where Aziraphale starts.
The mattress is a bit trickier. Anything that humans might have brought here is long since rotted or repurposed as nests. But there’s an abundance of moss in the garden, which is easy enough to miracle into the proper shape and cover with a sheet. And, just for the added comfort, he summons a coverlet from one of the rooms at the Lake—one that lay across their shared bed, once upon a time.
As the sun sets, he sits on the edge of this new bed with Crowley, plays his vihuela for a while. Just improvising little themes, occasionally mixing in a snatch of the millennia-old song he’s played for Crowley on a dozen other instruments by now. When the angel’s recovering stamina wears down, Aziraphale slips into bed beside him, gathers Crowley into his arms.
OKAY SO I assume we fast forward a couple weeks after this?
*
With the coachman paid and on his way back to Florence, they spend an hour or so wandering through the remains of the house, assessing the state of the place. They walk the length of the border wall, piecing together what the layout of the original garden might have looked like from the ruins. The plants here are all running riot; there’s a patch of wall near one of the bedrooms on the ground floor where honeysuckle spills through the window and over the remains of a stone bench nearby.
It takes them a while to pick their bedroom—several of the rooms with enough roof to qualify on the first night are occupied by sparrows, and Aziraphale hasn’t the heart to evict them today. But eventually they find a room that’s mostly intact and has a view onto the garden [footnote: And, by extension, a view onto the nearby road. Aziraphale may be confident, but he’s not naive.]. There’s a half-rotted bed frame in another room that can be easily convinced that it remembers what it was like in its glory days, so that’s where Aziraphale starts.
The mattress is a bit trickier. Anything that humans might have brought here is long since rotted or repurposed as nests. But there’s an abundance of moss in the garden, which is easy enough to miracle into the proper shape and cover with a sheet. And, just for the added comfort, he summons a coverlet from one of the rooms at the Lake—one that lay across their shared bed, once upon a time.
As the sun sets, he sits on the edge of this new bed with Crowley, plays his vihuela for a while. Just improvising little themes, occasionally mixing in a snatch of the millennia-old song he’s played for Crowley on a dozen other instruments by now. When the angel’s recovering stamina wears down, Aziraphale slips into bed beside him, gathers Crowley into his arms.
He doesn’t let go until Crowley’s awake again.