#she might be better known as miffy but here we are

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

everybody STOP what they're doing and look at nijntje at the tour de france

[iris-writes-things]

Two Guys and a Baby: Day 10

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This was why Crowley enthusiastically strode towards his front door and opened it, completely forgoing the peephole or any other means of identification of his visitor… s… “Crawly,” croaked an unfortunately familiar voice.

Or, anger, relief and other feelings.

Chapter 13 of 20 Ongoing 2375 words Romance/Humor

It was ten o'clock on Monday morning and Crowley was standing in his bathroom in his boxers and a well-worn A Day At The Races World Tour t-shirt*, his toothbrush dangling lazily from his mouth. He gently dried Adam’s hair with a soft towel as the boy sat on the edge of the sink. Adam had seemed especially reluctant about bath time this morning. However, once his rubber duckie got involved, the boy was on top of the world and there had been no further complications. After all, getting dressed before putting a baby in the bath would be terribly inefficient, and Crowley was nothing if not efficient.

(*Note for observant readers who may be noticing a pattern by now: while t-shirts don’t belong in the wardrobe of the epitome of fashion Crowley tries to be, he collects Queen tour t-shirts in his free time. His niece and sister frequently call him out on how weird it is that he wears his most prized collection to bed every night.)

“See? Sat wasn’t so bad, was it?” Crowley slurred around his toothbrush as he finished drying Adam and putting him in a diaper. There was knocking at the door and Crowley’s heart leapt. “That’ll be Ezra,” he mumbled, wrapping the towel around Adam, picking him up and spitting his toothbrush and adjacent toothpaste into the sink. “Wanna go see Ezra?” he asked Adam.

The boy’s face lit up at the sound of the shopkeeper’s name. Of course he wanted to go see Ezra. These last few days he must’ve come to associate that name with good food, stories, adventures and softness. What kind of child could object to that?

This was why Crowley enthusiastically strode towards his front door and opened it, completely forgoing the peephole or any other means of identification of his visitor… s… 

“Crawly,” croaked an unfortunately familiar voice.

Where Crowley previously felt his heart soar, he now felt it do a deep dive through five storeys worth of apartment building, the foundations below it, and several layers of the Earth’s crust, and his blood ran awfully cold. The smell of, among other things, tobacco filled his nostrils. And where a week ago that exact smell would have been very enticing to him, it had now lost its charm altogether. “Hastings, Liggett. I didn’t know creative made house calls nowadays. And… I have a phone, you know that.”

“Enough with the pleasantries. Where were you last week?” Hastings demanded.

“You were supposed to pitch to the board of directors in Ferguson’s absence,” Liggett added, in case Crowley had forgotten. He hadn’t.

The pitch had been on Wednesday and it was about an expansive direct marketing campaign that Hastings and Liggett had, to their credit, worked very hard on despite not really being ‘of the time’ anymore. And since the two combined had the charisma of approximately a single toad, Crowley had been selected by Lucy to pitch while she was away, as he was more on the level of a snake, to stick with the cold-blooded fauna motif. Once they caught him up to speed, he knew the presentation forwards and backwards and would be five steps ahead of each member of the board of directors and their hang ups at all times. The plan was foolproof. 

This was before the babysitter had flown to Cambodia.

After the whole my-babysitter-ran-off-to-south-east-Asia-to-rediscover-herself-after-a-particularly-bad-breakup-so-I’m-giving-you-time-off-to-look-after-my-baby debacle, they needed a solution, which presented itself as the intern known as Newton Pulsifer. His presentation skills understandably lagged behind Crowley’s and couldn’t begin to catch up with Lucy’s, but the main difference between interns, who are doing all this for the first time, and creatives who had been doing the same thing for thirty years and somehow still held their positions, was that you could still teach them a thing or two, and they would be eager to learn, too. So that fateful Friday afternoon, Lucy and Crowley had gone over the presentation with Newt for what felt like upwards of a hundred times. They gave him every note they had and hadn’t stopped until both of them were confident that the boy could successfully run the pitch by the board.

So… Hastings and Liggett standing here, in the hallway of his apartment building, didn’t bode well. And Crowley quickly figured it wouldn’t be wise to tell them he spent that entire day reading Miffy books to Adam in his crush’s bookshop. Instead, he told them, “Yeah, we told you I wouldn’t be there because I’d be taking care of Adam. We told you Newton would cover for me, too. Hell, we even asked you if you’d rather present your pitch yourselves instead of having the intern do it. Whatever happened, it’s out of my hands.”

A frustrated grumble escaped Hasting’s throat. “We thought you might say something like that,” he said.

“Then why are you here?” Crowley asked.

“To take you back to the office with us, where you’ll explain to the board exactly what went wrong. Now, put on some pants,” Liggett commanded.

Crowley stepped back when a hand grabbed his arm. He shook himself free and Adam whined at the jostling. “I can’t,” Crowley insisted. “I won’t. I have to look after Adam.”

It was then, that Hastings stepped forward, glowering at Crowley and towering over him. Compared to Crowley who, himself, erred towards the taller side, Hastings was enormous. “I think you misunderstand, Crawly. We are your seniors. You are only an assistant and you will not disrespect us in this way.”  

The words oozed with venom and Crowley instinctively faced Adam away from them. It was bad enough that Lucy and Crowley had to deal with the pair of them on a regular basis. The less young Adam saw from them, the better, and the same went for Crowley, he reasoned. He took a deep breath and asked them with a boldness he had long forgotten he had, “And what have you lot ever done to earn my respect?”

“I suggest you choose your words wisely, Crawly,” Hastings said as he bowed down over Crowley, only inches away from his face.

“It’s Crowley,” he asserted. “And why should I respect a pair of out-of-touch, middle-aged creatives who always pull rank because they clearly have nothing else going for them? Who terrorize interns and intimidate assistants by showing up at their fff— bloody houses to call them names and make them take responsibility for something that wasn’t on them? Surely, I should be reporting you two to some kind of authority, but we all know that won’t do anything, so how about I make this easier on all of us and just announce that I quit.” He huffed, and without another thought he pushed the letter on the dresser by the door into their hands and promptly slammed his front door shut. That was about enough of them. “And newsflash, A-holes, unsolicited direct marketing** has barely worked on people under the age of thirty-five in, like, a decade, so your campaign was doomed to fail from the start. There’s some free fucking advice for you.”

(**read, the ones that get stuck in your spam filter and/or the ones that immediately go into the paper recycling.)

*

It wasn’t even an hour later by the time Ezra came knocking on the door. Crowley had only just finished getting dressed and he wasn’t proud of it; wearing the same t-shirt he slept in along with yesterday’s jeans and jacket as he opened the door. Meanwhile, Ezra’s outfit, worn as it was, was soft and pristine.

“Hey angel,” Crowley said.

“Good morning,” Ezra said softly, eyes flitting down to Crowley’s outfit.

Meanwhile, Crowley felt like he might as well have been naked. He coughed, bringing Ezra back from whatever fantasy he’d found himself in. 

“Run into any unsavory types on your way up?”

Ezra glanced around the hallway. “No. Was I supposed to?”

“No. Just… we don’t have to deliver the letter. They came to pick it up.”

“Came to pick it up?” Ezra frowned, almost protested as Crowley ushered him inside. “My dear, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Poltergeist, more like. Two of them,” Crowley said flippantly, but the hand he carded through his messy hair shook.

*

Now, Ezra wouldn’t say he enjoyed seeing Anthony as shaken as he obviously was. In fact, he didn’t enjoy that at all. The idea that two men from the office would come over to his home to intimidate him was appalling to him. It wasn’t right.

But.

But there was something about seeing Anthony like this. Seeing him less put-together. It was endearing. It made him, for lack of a better word, relatable. After all, it was reassuring to know that even the most perfectly beautiful man who always dressed sharp and snazzy, could look like a mess. Specifically, a mess he wouldn’t mind too much waking up to in the morning. 

Ezra made a point of it not to stare at him too much.

“I’m sorry this happened, Anthony. I wish I’d come by sooner, I might have been able to— to—” Truthfully, he didn’t know what he would have done. But he knew he would have done something. It wasn’t right, coming to someone’s house to tell them off for something they didn’t do, and Ezra was nothing if not righteous.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Ezra, but I’m fine,” Anthony sighed. “And so is Adam, I think.”

“Did they…?” Ezra trailed off.

“Who? Adam? Didn’t lay a finger on him. I’ll give them that, at least.”

“Then, did they…?”

Anthony shrugged. “Grabbed my arm, that’s it.”

That’s it?

*

There was a fire in Ezra’s eyes that Crowley hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t sure if he should be terrified or flattered.

“But even that is unacceptable!” Ezra said when he spoke again. “They still trespassed on your home, on the one place you’re meant to feel safe, on you, and that should never have happened.” He took Crowley’s hand and looked at him with angry, watery eyes.

“I’m fine angel, I swear. Moreso now that my knight in shining armor is here.” Crowley ran a hand through his hair in a way he hoped Ezra would experience as tenderly. Like in an out of body experience, he felt himself bend down to kiss him, but caught himself just as he realized what was happening.

That was, until he felt the lapels of of his jacket pull him downward and a pair of soft lips pressed against his own.

Oh.

*

"You care about me…" Anthony said a few hours later at brunch, as if the idea still felt alien inside his head.

Adam watched them from his high chair like a tennis match.

Ezra laid down his menu and tried not to sigh as he looked up at his friend. "Of course," he said. "One might go so far as to say that I quite fancy you."

This seemed to make Anthony choke on the breath he was taking. "Well yes, but since when?" he asked with an urgency there was really no need for. The wait staff had already picked up on the cues at their table and were avoiding it like the plague until the air around it cleared.

Now, if Ezra were about to admit his own superficiality, he would have said 'From the moment you set foot in the bookshop,' but he wasn't, so he didn't. Instead, he said "Ten years, give or take?" which meant pretty much the same thing and shrugged his shoulders.

"And it never occurred to you to tell me?"

"Did it to you?"

"Every day," Anthony squeaked. "For the last ten years and a few months."

Ezra blinked hard. The choice of words did not escape him. He wanted very much not to be so surprised, after all, Anathema had told him so outright, but to hear it from the man himself, the implication was all that was needed to send him reeling.

"Anathema told you, didn't she?" Anthony asked, finally breaking the silence.

Ezra nodded.

"She told me at dinner last Friday." Anthony let out a breathy laugh. "I swear, that girl is going to be the death of me."

"And me," Ezra said. Anthony smiled at him brilliantly and Ezra averted his gaze as a feeling of shame washed over him. "I'm sorry, by the way. About running out on you that night at that cafe."

"Angel, that was two years ago."

"I know! I just… we were both drunk, I didn't want you to get the wrong idea. I didn't want you to regret it."

Anthony choked on his orange juice and slammed the glass down on the table. "Regret it?! Are you joking? We could have been going out for years and you thought I would regret it?"

"Well, it was more like I didn't want you to think I was taking advantage of you."

"But… Ezra, I started it…" Anthony said, gesturing wildly.

“Well, you could have said something, too!”

A groan escaped Anthony, his face buried in his hands, fingers tangled in his hair. “In conclusion, we’re both cowards and we’ve been miserable for much longer than strictly necessary?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say miserable…”

“Okay, so maybe that was just me, but at least we both haven’t been as happy as we could have been.”

“I would agree with that…” Ezra mumbled. He glanced at the menu but he wasn’t sure he was all that hungry anymore.

Anthony followed his gaze and smiled that snake-like smile of his, that only looked charming on him. “Go on,” he said. “My treat.”

That second, Ezra decided he was famished.

*

A weight had fallen from Crowley’s shoulders. It had been replaced with the slightly less hefty weight of having to figure out their relationship anew, but it had to count for something. For these first few hours, Crowley found very little had changed between them at all. He still stole glances at Ezra as they ate. They still talked unreservedly and laughed at each other’s jokes. They fed Adam who, at this point, was ravenous for everything his little fingers could grasp on to.

What Crowley also found, was the pleasant heft of a warm hand in his.