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He’s impossible to take your eyes off of.
When he’s on stage, the world around you stops. Nothing could distract you from the sight.
What he does is so dangerous. Or, at least, it looks dangerous. Aziraphale knows that with the Cirque nothing is ever as it seems.
Crowley is a tall, stark figure in black and red, his bodysuit clinging to every sharp angle of his body. It opens at the front, a plunging v that bares his neck, chest, and navel - a shock of pale pink skin against all that dark fabric. His hair is as red as his gloves, as red as the flames he juggles so smoothly, making it look easy and terrifying at the same time.
He’s magic, that’s what he is.
“Aziraphale.” Gabriel’s hand is heavy and unwelcome on his shoulder. “What are you doing here? You’re in the way. Your act is over, go get changed.”
“I was just—” He remembers who he’s talking to just in time. Gabriel wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t know what he’s talking about. All Gabriel cares about is the money rolling in, he doesn’t understand what true magic is about. Aziraphale forces himself to smile. “I was just leaving, yes. Goodnight.”
Before he goes, he glances back one last time. Crowley’s just finished his number, he’s panting and sweating under the blinding lights while the crowd cheers and shouts. He’s holding one torch over his head and the other out to the left, and when he bows - he switches the torches behind his back.
The applause is deafening.
And yet Crowley doesn’t smile, he never smiles. Aziraphale supposes it would ruin his cool stage persona, with the slicked back hair, the smudged black eyeliner down his cheeks, the blotted red lipstick across his mouth.
Aziraphale is left to wonder, left to imagine, what the curve of his smile would look like. If there is anything in the Cirque that could draw it out of him.
His dressing room is little more than a swing of white fabric separating a series of others. Where the jugglers and the more modern clowns, far more acrobatic and energetic than him, are already seeing to their first layers of white paint. Instead of settling himself down in the chair, bringing a cloth and cream to his face for the hundredth time - instead he finds himself drifting past the tent altogether.
His act is done, no one will find any reason to call him back.
He hits the cool of open air, the tents out here a little more ragged with age and use. The closer he gets, the more he can smell the familiar sharp smoke and cedar of the fire artist that he will admit he’s become fascinated by. He can feel the heat of the torches that light the way, though even without them he’d be able to find Crowley’s small tent. It’s still half-open, the night air drifting in and the sweat-smoke of him drifting out. Aziraphale is not sure when the sight of him first made his heart give a pound in his chest. It feels like it was the first moment - but he’s old enough to know that love at first sight is a fairytale.
Crowley looks a little less like some otherworldly, unattainable creature here, sprawled in a rickety chair, glaring at his face in the mirror. The paint across one side is smudged into a canvas of grey. The impatient, aggressive swipes of cloth slowly revealing the pale reality of his face. It’s a strange vulnerability, a secret hidden thing that Aziraphale feels guilty for watching.
Unlike him, Crowley has a second act later, a spin and shower of fire once the sun has gone down. But the heat of his wands means that he’s forced to reapply rather than touch up.
Aziraphale watches him drag red paint from his narrow mouth in frustrated rubs, and he can’t help but imagine what would happen if he was brave enough to drift closer. If he had the courage to say Crowley’s name and gesture at his scattered tins of paint and lipstick and kohl pens. To offer his own steady hands for Crowley’s service.
Though perhaps it’s foolish of him to imagine that his hands would be steady.
“Watching without paying isn’t allowed, you should know that.” Crowley’s voice shakes him out of his thoughts. The man turns around suddenly and squints in his direction. “Aziraphale.”
Oh, Crowley knows his name. That’s - that’s honestly a surprise. They’ve met, of course, several times even, but always in a group setting... and they’ve never quite been introduced, never really talked, so he didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure.
“I wasn’t—I was —just passing by.”
“Quite far out from your usual spot, isn’t it?”
Aziraphale’s heart does something complicated in his chest when he realises Crowley knows what his usual spot even is.
“I’m done for the day, I fancied a walk.” He watches as Crowley removes the last of his make-up and pulls out his kit. He can’t help but notice those lipsticks are in terrible shape, as if someone’s been using them to draw on a wall… or very roughly across a face, day after day.
“Good for you. I’m up again in about an hour.” Aziraphale almost lets it slip that he knew that already. But he’s soon distracted by the way Crowley’s lips move when he scowls towards his make-up and sighs.
“I, um, I don’t mean to presume, but sometimes it’s useful to have someone else help with that. A mirror isn’t quite the same.”
“Yes, well, everyone else is busy right now, so I’ll have to figure it out. Unless you’re offering.” The last few words are dripping with sarcasm, as if the thought of Aziraphale helping him is completely absurd.
“I wouldn’t mind,” he replies quietly. “I have no pressing need to be anywhere else at the moment.”
“Dressed like that?” Crowley looks him up and down. Aziraphale’s still in his pierrot costume, wide white pantaloons and blouse, frilled collaret and pointy hat. His face is still painted white, with black lips and a small diamond drawn under his eye, the apples of his cheeks perfectly pink and round. There are delicate little beads among his eyelashes. “Not afraid of a little grime?”
“No.” Aziraphale replies simply, with a little smile, and his stomach flutters when Crowley smiles back and gestures him in.
There’s only one chair, though perhaps it’s too generous to call it that. Crowley’s body is draped over its thin spars and high back, with an elegant sort of carelessness that Aziraphale can’t help but find terribly appealing. He moves a roll of black pens and a pair of dark gloves aside and perches on the wood of the table, blocking the mirror from view.
Crowley seems surprised, his rubbed-red mouth open just a little, one black-lined eyebrow lifting. Perhaps he’d expected Aziraphale to fuss after all, to give the air of something pristine and untouchable, forced to settle in the smoky interior of Crowley’s intimate space. It seems very silly when they can both smell the greasepaint, the smoke, and the sweat beneath each other’s clothes.
Aziraphale spends a moment pulling at the tips of his own black gloves and he doesn’t miss the way Crowley’s eyes drop to watch him slide them free. To reveal his soft hands with their perfectly trimmed nails. The fire artist looks at his tumbled collection of tins, pencils and tubes, as if imagining Aziraphale’s bare hands among them.
"Do you have a preference for cream, to treat your skin and set the underlayer?" Aziraphale asks.
Crowley frowns at him. "I sometimes use cold cream to take it off," he offers. "Doesn’t like the heat though. Mostly it just makes a mess."
Aziraphale can’t help but feel bad for Crowley’s poor skin, for the fascinating but hard-working lines of his face. So many applications a week without a chance to breathe. He slips a hand into the large hidden pocket of his pantaloons and removes a pot of his own.
"Do you mind if I use my own? The skin takes new paint better with it, I find."
Crowley’s eyes roam his face, taking in the clean lines of his painted skin. The perfect circles of red blush on his cheeks, the carefully drawn diamond beneath his eye, and his eyelashes, combed and coloured, and decorated with the smallest beads.
"Can’t argue with your face now, can I?" Crowley decides. There are words that threaten to come after, but he swallows them down. "You can’t do a worse job than I do on the regular," he says instead.
Aziraphale clears his throat and twists open the pot. He dips his fingers in and warms up the cream between his fingertips so that it’ll spread easily. “I rather thought it was intentional. That it was part of the look.”
Crowley makes a weird sort of noise, stuck somewhere between amusement, surprise, and obvious self-deprecation. “Nah. Never learned. Don’t need to either, it will all get ruined in no time with what I do.”
“Hmm.” That’s probably true. Still, he feels like Crowley’s face deserves better. Deserves to be treated and painted with care, a precious canvas rather than an uncooperative part of his body to be hidden away under layers of white and red and black.
He begins at the cheekbones, spreads the cream gently, making slow circles on his cheeks, letting it seep into the skin. Crowley’s face is both rougher and softer than he’d expected under his fingers, the surprising prickle of a barely-there stubble impossible to miss, the wrinkles around his eyes, lips, the signs on his forehead of a person who’s frowned too much in his life.
He finishes by running his fingers along the edge of his jaw, over the man’s beating pulse. Crowley has always felt more like a vision than an actual person, and yet here he is, warm against his hands. Aziraphale realises he’s forgotten to breathe.
“There, the base is set.” He hears his own voice, realises it’s much quieter and threadier than he intended it to be. He tries again. “What’s your foundation of choice?”
Crowley hands him a tube, and calling it a proper foundation is generous. But he can make it work. And maybe, one day, they can get out of here together, and he can show Crowley where to buy better products that’ll be gentler on his skin. If that's something he wants.
He shakes his head. He better focus, Crowley has a performance coming up and it won’t be Aziraphale’s hands ruining it.
Crowley is watching him, he can see the way his eyes hold on his face even as his own fingers are busy working the tube, preparing to apply the first smear of white to the vulnerable curve of Crowley’s eye socket, the skin so fine over the bone.
He thinks he’ll have to tell him to close his eyes, but Crowley does it instinctively, his lashes falling as he tilts his face up. The rising curve of Aziraphale’s other hand meets his jaw, holds it gently as he works paint into his skin, careful stripes and gentle half-circles. Even without the fire, Crowley’s cheek is warm beneath his fingers. A living, vibrant sort of heat that leaves the cold paint spreading obediently, over his cheek and nose, then the rasping curve of his jawline.
It’s a familiar enough routine to him, he’s painted his own face a thousand times. Though working on someone else makes it strange and new. He can’t feel the press of cool paint on his skin, the slippery, tightening cling of it, the smooth waxy reassurance of a mask firmly put into place.
Crowley’s eyes are open again by the time he’s drawing it across his upper lip and chin. Though there’s a softness to them, something curious that he can’t meet with his own gaze.
This is the closest Aziraphale has been to anyone for longer than he can remember. He can feel the soft flare of Crowley’s every breath against his face, can feel the slow roll of a swallow in the hand still curled beneath his jaw.
He makes himself concentrate on the motion, on the shapes beneath his fingers and how much paint and pressure they need, and not the intimacy of it.
He carefully finishes Crowley’s hairline, pulling colour to where the hair is stiff and darkened by flame resistant gel. Though a few wayward strands have fallen free to tickle the backs of his fingers.
Then suddenly there’s nothing left to paint, Crowley’s foundation is complete, the strange gold of his eyes the only vibrant spot of colour in his face.
"I think that’s your foundation done," Aziraphale says quietly.
Crowley hums agreement, the noise low and deep, and Aziraphale finds himself turning to hide the very real blush beneath his painted cheeks. He takes a moment to wipe his fingers on an oiled cloth, to remove the paint, while Crowley checks his appearance in the mirror.
"It looks good."
“Glad you think so.” Aziraphale gives Crowley’s pens and brushes a dubious look. He’d love to continue, to be honest, he’s finding out very quickly how easy it is to get carried away with this. He’s honest enough with himself to be painfully aware that all he wants to do is to keep touching Crowley, whatever the excuse. “What’s next?”
Crowley rummages through his make-up until he finds a black kohl pencil. Well, more of a stub at this point. Aziraphale swallows back his disappointment when the fire artist leans forward and lines his eyes by himself. Then again, he supposes putting a pointy object in an almost-stranger’s hand and letting them near his eyes crosses a line.
Crowley’s eyes are even more striking framed in black. They look bigger, wider, unnaturally yellow, stunningly beautiful. He seems to hesitate for a moment, tapping his fingers nervously against the chair before making a decision.
Aziraphale feels something being pushed into his hand. He looks down and it’s a lipstick, its smooth case black and gold.
“You want me to—” he begins to ask. Crowley nods, and Aziraphale quietly orders his hands not to shake. He wants to do this, he wants to do this with stunning intensity - he’s not sure he’s ever wanted anything with such sudden ferocity.
He examines the lipstick with more attention, and this time he has no qualms about Crowley’s choice. Surprisingly, this is a very expensive one. ‘Audace 58’, the cap says. He twists it open and watches the intense red colour of it bloom from the golden case.
He reaches for Crowley’s face again, lightly cupping his jaw, and his heart beats in his throat. He tries pressing the lipstick to his mouth, but the man is keeping his lips so tightly pressed together it’s impossible to do a good job of it.
“Could you…” He parts his own lips to show him, pushing them out slightly in a perfect ‘o’. “Like this. It’s much easier to apply lipstick.”
Unfortunately for him, Crowley follows his instructions without arguing, and now the lipstick glides along his lips easily, though Aziraphale has to lean closer to make sure he follows the lines of his mouth perfectly. Crowley’s hot breath ghosts on his fingers, and this has to be madness but oh, Aziraphale wants to ruin it. He wants to ruin everything, he wants to press forward and cup Crowley’s face in his hands, stain his fingers white, smear the red he’s just applied, hear Crowley gasp against his lips - it’s madness, it has to be.
He doesn’t go through with it, though the thought never leaves. It stays while he angles Crowley’s jaw upwards with a thumb, while he pulls that shocking line of red across the spare curve of his lower lip. Before lifting it and setting it to the upper, more careful there, just the slightest dash of colour, following the shape of it.
Crowley’s eyes are so vivid in his face that Aziraphale finds himself pausing to catch a glance of them. The blackness of the rims lends his irises a strange depth. Is this what people mean when they talk of drowning in someone’s eyes? That irresistible pull to keep looking until every secret of your own is exposed?
It’s not a long task, no matter how much Aziraphale wishes otherwise. He’s too familiar with the process to pretend, to keep Crowley in his hands for longer than necessary.
His mouth is perfect in less than a minute.
He leans back out of the other man’s space, carefully capping what he suspects is a precious piece of Crowley’s kit rather than a throwaway thing bought cheap. For a second Crowley remains where he’d left him, his face tilted upwards, his red mouth still slightly open, eyes lazy and endless and beautiful. But then he sinks against the back of the chair, considering Aziraphale with a worrying sort of intensity.
"You’re all done," Aziraphale tells him. His voice is somehow perfectly steady. Even when Crowley’s black eyebrow lifts in his direction, before he leans in to consider himself in the mirror.
"Look at that, not a smudge." Crowley lifts a hand, as if to touch it, before seemingly thinking better of it and slowly gathering his pots and pens together instead. "I appreciate the help, angel."
Aziraphale blinks at him, certain he’s misheard. "I’m sorry?"
Crowley smirks, the new redness of his mouth making the expression a vivid, enticing thing.
"You’re sitting in front of the spotlight. You have something of a halo."
Aziraphale ignores the urge to turn and look and instead enjoys the way Crowley’s eyes drift across his face, the soft balls on his cap, the curls of his hair escaping from the brim. He feels it all and he can’t hold the smile, feeling the pull in his own painted face.
"You’re quite welcome. It’s easier to do myself, but we do occasionally help each other when time is short."
"You mean you help out the others?" Crowley decides. "Can’t imagine you ever being late for anything."
“Tell that to Gabriel.” He sighs with an exasperated smile. “I’m always late. Or in the way. Or—well. No matter, I didn’t mean to start complaining.”
“People come to see you, you know.” Crowley stretches and stands up and suddenly the tent feels much smaller. “Your number kicks off the entire thing.”
Crowley takes a step in his direction and Aziraphale feels, at the same time, trapped in the corner and exactly where he wants to be. The other man isn’t much taller than him, can’t be more than two or three inches at most, and yet his presence fills and dominates the entire space. Perhaps it has something to do with how lanky he is, and how his skin-tight bodysuit enhances it, and the way he moves, as if his joints were liquid, as if he were a reptile of some sort.
Crowley hesitates for a brief moment and then bends at the waist, leaning into his space. Aziraphale isn’t sure what he’s trying to do until he feels the barely-there tickle of soft heat against his cheek.
A kiss, given in the dubious privacy of the tent. Something that’s absolutely forbidden between artists of the Cirque, and yet it happens sometimes, they’re just human after all.
Crowley pulls back, cringing, as if he just realised exactly what he’s done, as if he’s unsure whether it was welcome.
“I—I should go. It’s about time.”
“I’ll be watching,” Aziraphale tells him, and isn’t sure what his face is even doing anymore. Whatever it is, Crowley smiles at the sight.
“If my face melts, it’ll be your fault.”
He leaves and Aziraphale stays behind, clutching his hands to his chest, his cheeks on fire.
Oh, this spells trouble.
Oh, he can’t even bring himself to care.
Try as he might, Crowley cannot recreate the face that Aziraphale gave to him.
He can’t remember ever feeling so confident when he strode into the lights. His mask had been perfect, the dark slash of his eyes sharp and clean. He hadn’t worried that his mouth would smudge, he’d still half felt Aziraphale’s fingers on his jaw, the steady pull of lipstick, the edge of a thumb marking the boundary of his lip. At the time he’d barely been able to think of anything else but turning his head, opening his mouth and drawing it inside.
He has no idea what had drawn that perfect pierrot to his tent in the first place. Or what had pushed him to help - possibly Crowley’s own incompetence. Aziraphale had been quiet and nervous and kind, but every soft touch had felt like a seduction. Every look from beneath his decorated lashes had been both coy and distant. The way he’d pulled on his black gloves after, hands disappearing without a smudge of red or black or white to mark them.
Crowley hadn’t wanted him to leave.
It was why he’d leaned in, left a shocking print of red against one perfect painted cheek. He thought he’d pushed too far, but he’d seen the flush of red in the light, not blush but the honesty of warm blood beneath the skin. The way he’d looked at Crowley from beneath his lashes.
He’d said something stupid, he remembers, something about his face melting off.
It’s been two weeks and Crowley’s barely seen him, save for the stolen glimpse of him behind a curtain, juggling wands, pulling sparkling gold and silver scarves from places they couldn’t possibly have been, to the delight of the crowd.
But Aziraphale always heads back to his own small tent alone. He visits no one else. Though he seems on friendly terms with the fortune teller, Anathema.
Crowley has tried to recreate what Aziraphale did, but his own movements are too hasty, his paint too smudged, or too overworked, his frustrated annoyance showing through. He tries to take his time, memories of soft bare fingers cupped beneath his jaw, a thumb to the beat of his pulse as paint was spread across the canvas of his face.
He’d eventually given up in disgust, settled for his own smeared and smudged wildness, daring anyone to comment.
But something in him yearns for another visit.
Perhaps he will have to take the initiative, it’s only fair.
It finally happens on a night when the show goes terribly - not that the crowd would know. Most of them, luckily for the performers, only came this once, and don’t have anything to compare the show to. But one of the main lights malfunctions throughout, the numbers aren’t lit right, then one of the ballerinas stumbles and has to be carried off stage with what is probably a broken nose. It’s pissing down outside, it’s a cold, miserable day, and half the technical crew is out with a stomach flu. Crowley’s so off his rhythm he almost singes an eyebrow off.
Some nights he feels like a god, his movements fast and flawless. Some nights, like tonight, it’s torture to get from the start to the end of his act. When he’s finally finished he goes straight to find Aziraphale. He needs something good tonight, he needs something to go right.
He only hesitates once he arrives at the pierrot’s little tent. How does he even know Aziraphale is alone? And what if he starts saying stupid things again, since he seems to have no control over his big mouth when Aziraphale’s around? It’d be polite to knock, and he can’t even do that on a tent. This is all very frustrating for him.
“Hey.” He calls out at last, standing outside in the cold. “You forgot something.”
After a few moments Aziraphale’s face, still painted in white, peeks out of the tent, and the way he beams when he realises it’s Crowley could blind a man. “Oh. Hello.” He blinks, apparently processing what he’s just heard. “Forget? What did I forget?”
“To teach me how to take it off. I know you must have…” he makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Some fancy technique to remove the paint. You never taught me. Can’t have me rubbing my face raw every night, can we?”
He’s almost sure Aziraphale has caught him, that he understands Crowley’s making shit up just to spend time with him. He feels seen right through.
“Of course.” Aziraphale smiles. “Come inside, it’s a little warmer.”
Crowley would follow him in if it was an igloo, but he’s smart enough not to mention that.
He’s surprised to discover that Aziraphale’s tent is not half as bare as he’d imagined. There are boxes and cases and drawers in every free space, some already open to display the contents, scarves and caps and gloves, wands for juggling, rings and a selection of card boxes. A sewing kit is out on one side, and a fold-out shelf is filled to bursting with tins, tubes and palettes of colour.
Crowley has to wonder why Aziraphale has so many when he’s only ever seen him in black and white. When he’d said that he sometimes painted the others it had felt like a throwaway line, but the idea that other people came to him to have their faces done - Crowley can’t help but be jealous. The fact that others might sit for him all the time and think nothing of it, when Crowley has been able to think of almost nothing else.
A stack of books is piled neat but high next to the tidily made bed, their spines look old, a brief skim revealing them to be a varied mismatch of magical history, musical theory, serious literature and poetry.
He tries to take it all in without it seeming obvious that he’s looking while Aziraphale clears off a second chair.
"Not the best of days today," he offers gently. Which sounds more like a commiseration than a comment on Crowley’s own performance.
"Punters didn’t seem to notice, thank God."
Aziraphale hums agreement. A small gesture with those black gloves has Crowley sitting, and he realises that what he’d taken for a table actually has a mirror laying flat to the surface, which Aziraphale tilts up. Crowley is confronted abruptly with his own face, the white paint smeared thin, red bleeding from the edges of his mouth, the black lining of his eyes looks like the end of a weeping session.
He looks like hell. If he’d known he looked so bloody awful he might never have come.
"Aziraphale -"
"I like this brand of cold cream." Aziraphale settles in front of him, close enough that Crowley can smell the paint on him, and the faint lingering scent of his cologne. "It’s thicker than the cheaper versions but it’s very soothing, it doesn’t make taking my make-up off a chore." He holds the tube up so Crowley can see.
"I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of it." The moment Crowley says it he realises that it’s true. He’s never seen the pierrot bare-faced, hasn’t the slightest idea what he looks like beneath the make-up. Some of the artists are like that, they prepare early in the morning before leaving their tents and keep their costume on all day, as if they don’t want to be seen without.
“That’s impossible,” Aziraphale replies immediately, with a smile that invites no further questions on the subject. Crowley doesn’t want to do anything that might threaten this tremulous, precious friendship they have, so he doesn’t insist. “Now, using this, in no time at all you won’t have a trace of paint left on your face.”
Aziraphale squeezes the cream out onto a clean cloth, spreading it on the fabric. “May I?”
Crowley nods.
The cloth glides slowly across his face, and it’s hard not to think of it as a caress. It would be, without the fabric in the way. Aziraphale is gentle and slow, starting at his temples and working down his cheeks, towards his nose, over his lips. He switches at some point, gets something less thick than the cream and a different piece of cloth to clean his eyes. Crowley flinches automatically, this always stings when he does it - but whatever Aziraphale is using doesn’t hurt at all, the cold liquid feels fresh and soothing over his dry, tired eyes.
When the eyes are done, Aziraphale goes back to the cream, and this process lasts several minutes, because he has to catch every bit of paint Crowley threw haphazardly across his face, all the way into his hairline. Not that Crowley minds at all, he closes his eyes and drifts in it, lets the pierrot take care of him, allows himself to relax for the first time since… since…
He can’t even remember.
The whole process is over far too soon.
“There you go. See, you just needed the right products - and to be a little gentler - and it’s all done tickety-boo.”
“Tickety—”
“Maybe one day I could show you. Where to get them, that is. How to choose.” Aziraphale seems to regret the words as soon as they leave his mouth. “Oh, don’t listen to me, I’m a silly old clown. You can look after yourself, I’m sure.”
“I’d like to,” Crowley offers quickly, before Aziraphale can talk himself out of it. “You started me on this stuff. It’s only fair if you show me where I can get it by myself.”
Aziraphale gives a little chuckle despite his preposterously offended expression. “Oh, you menace. I hope nobody’s eavesdropping.”
“Tonight? No way. Everyone’s back in their tents. It’s too cold to be wandering around.”
“And yet you did,” Aziraphale says with a flutter of eyelashes that leaves Crowley without anything to retort.
“Since I’m here,” he hurries to say, changing the subject. “You want help with yours?” He asks, and hopes he doesn’t sound half as eager as he feels. He’s just too curious to see who’s hiding behind all that perfect paint, those rosy cheeks and long black lashes.
"Mine?" Aziraphale’s bare hands, still holding the cream between them, fidget in his lap. "You want to help me with my face?"
He says it as if he’s not sure whether Crowley is serious or not. The offer hangs awkwardly between them while Crowley struggles not to feel hurt. Until he catches the uncertainty in Aziraphale’s expression, the lingering warmth on his cheeks, and realises that the question isn’t meant to be a judgment on his own skills. Aziraphale genuinely didn’t expect the offer from him.
"Yes, yours, what, you help everyone else coming and going but no one pitches in for you? Doesn’t sound very fair."
"I understand how busy everyone is," Aziraphale says, and it sounds so much like an excuse.
"I’ve seen you practising just as hard," Crowley points out, only for the pierrot’s eyes to fix on him with a soft sort of surprise. It hadn’t felt like anything incriminating to admit to, but it suddenly feels exposing. I’ve watched you, I feel like I’m always watching you. The faces you make when you pull scarves from nowhere, your coin tricks that you always fail at just to make the audience laugh. The way you dance in the spotlight while the trapeze artists are climbing. It all suddenly feels like so much. He tries to drag the words back, realises he can’t, and decides to live with them. "Other people should lend a hand, I’m just offering is all."
Aziraphale stares at him for a moment, the pot turning slowly in his fingers. Then he reaches over and offers it to Crowley.
"The small one is for around the eyes, the clean cloths are behind you in the drawer."
Crowley doesn’t fumble while retrieving one, though he’s not sure how. The two small pots look the same, though one cream seems more inclined to stand up in stiff peaks.
He’s not expecting Aziraphale to reach up, to carefully remove the pins holding his hat in place before lifting it from a wealth of half-flattened and half-curling hair, the black pompoms bouncing a little. A hand lifts to tousles his hair, almost nervously, into slightly less of a mess. Crowley is surprised to discover that the curling flicks at the front and side are not kept in place with product, but seem to be naturally exuberant. He should probably hate how perfect he finds that. But he finds so many things about this man perfect, it seems easier to just surrender to it.
Aziraphale reaches behind his neck and unties his collaret, leaving it over a nearby stack of books. Then he lifts his face, trusting Crowley to rest a hand beneath his soft chin, to feel the warmth of his skin and the beat of his pulse. Trusting him to work off the make-up he’d so carefully applied, undoing his creation. Revealing the bare face he’s never seen beneath, and isn’t that intimacy for them? To take off the perfect masks they wear and be real for each other?
Rather than think too much about that he busies himself working cream into the cloth, a soft thing that feels expensive under his fingers.
He takes a deep, steadying breath before he begins uncovering Aziraphale’s cheekbones. It feels like a good, safe place to start. The skin under the paint is paler than he’d expected, softer too. All of Aziraphale seems to be so delicate now, from his pale curls to his manicured nails to the small, upturned tip of his nose. He tries to treat him accordingly, telling his big hands to try and be gentle for once. Hands that are used to throwing, catching, getting burned all the time, and now they have to learn how to slowly swipe the cloth along the pierrot’s cheek, over his chin, over his forehead, over his nose.
It’s a cold night but Crowley is sweating in his costume, and with every inch of pink he reveals with a stroke of his hand he finds himself leaning imperceptibly closer, sucking in his lips as he focuses entirely on Aziraphale’s face.
He remembers just in time to switch cloth and product for the eyes. Here he’s even gentler, he would be loath to break off a single lash. But Aziraphale chuckles quietly and, after a moment, reaches up to pluck away a string of fake eyelashes with all their little beads, and Crowley can only blink at that and be amazed it hadn’t even occurred to him they might be fake. The pierrot’s natural eyelashes, underneath, are just as long and very pale.
“Tricks of the trade,” Aziraphale says with a sheepish smile, as if he were a little embarrassed. But Crowley is stunned - there are so many secrets he doesn’t know, so many things he wouldn’t even imagine. He should hang around Aziraphale more often, learn from him. He’d like to.
Eventually the pierrot’s face and eyes are done, and there is only one thing left for him to do: rub the lipstick off Aziraphale’s mouth. Right. Easy. A simple task, and yet it makes him suddenly nervous. He swallows through a knot in his throat and holds his breath, an entire flock of butterflies fluttering in his stomach.
Aziraphale, as usual, is perfect, he keeps his lips parted to allows him to get all of it off, revealing a soft, pink mouth Crowley has never had a chance to see before, and immediately fixates on. He tries not to stare, but he’s helpless. All in all he does pretty well, he thinks - he doesn’t say any of the stupid things that cross his mind, doesn’t even take a moment to swipe his thumb across that plush bottom lip. He only does what he’s supposed to, very meticulously getting rid of the stubborn black lipstick until there’s nothing left.
And then Aziraphale does the worst thing he could possibly do - he smiles at him.
Crowley is still holding his face, a curl of narrow callused fingers on Aziraphale’s soft jaw. The other hand, with the cloth, is still half resting against one perfect cheek.
He thinks he should let him go, it’s already been far too long, there is no more paint to wipe clean. But he worries that if he lets him go then he’ll never get to touch him again, never get to hold him like this while he smiles. Crowley finds himself reaching for an excuse, any excuse, to touch the stretch of his mouth, to press its plush middle, to watch it laugh and close just enough that Crowley could lean in and lay his own against it.
But he knows he could never be happy with once, he knows that he’d fall into him over and over.
"I’ve finished," he hears himself breathe, though he still hasn’t let go. If anything his fingers have spread, cradling his whole face, the tips daring their way into his hair.
Aziraphale blinks up at him, his bare eyelashes looking so strange and so vulnerable. Crowley had worried, briefly and foolishly, whether Aziraphale’s face would be ordinary underneath, revealing that Crowley had fallen for the mask and not the man.
But he’s perfect.
"Not a speck of paint left," he offers, through a dry throat.
"Not a smudge," the pierrot says simply. But he makes no move out of Crowley’s hands either. His smile remains, in a way that looks charmed and content and perhaps a little expectant.
As if he wants Crowley to kiss him.
Does he? The question becomes unbearable, Crowley finds himself unable to ask but equally unable to let the moment pass him by without knowing for sure. He’s not going to know peace until he knows if there’s the slightest chance. He’d kissed him once before, on the cheek, and it had felt like madness.
They’re so close, and Aziraphale hasn’t pulled away. If anything he’s leaning a little closer, a sigh rushing out of him.
Crowley lets himself fall, his mouth pressing down against Aziraphale’s perfect bare one. There’s a hum of delighted relief, something shivery that’s accompanied by the slightest part of lips. Crowley drops the cloth, hands pushing up into Aziraphale’s hair.
He realises distantly that he must be ruining the pierrot’s little curls and his spotless white costume, probably leaving grease streaks all over, but Aziraphale makes a soft noise of pleasure into his mouth and Crowley realises he can’t stop himself, not now, maybe not ever. His entire body is awake and ringing with the joy of touching and being touched back - like it hasn’t in years and years.
There is a very stark contrast between the fleeting, immaculate pierrot image Crowley had in his mind and the very real man that’s enthusiastically kissing him back. Now Crowley knows that Aziraphale has lines around his eyes that crinkle delightfully when he smiles, and the tiniest moon-shaped scar on his chin, and a hint of purple across his temple where a vein runs under the skin, and all the other wonderful, minuscule things that make a body real. And with all that, he still looks like an angel, maybe even more so.
Aziraphale’s fingers are playing with the short hair at the nape of Crowley’s neck in a way that makes his spine feel like jelly, and his knees aren’t much better. He’s grateful to be sitting down, although at this point he’s shifted so much towards Aziraphale he’s about to slip right out of his seat.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that his fingers are shaking and that someone might see them and that he’s making small, pitiful sounds as Aziraphale takes the lead and deepens the kiss, fearless and hungry as if he’s been thinking about nothing else for weeks. Maybe he has.
God, what if he has?
Eventually Crowley does stand up from his chair, because Aziraphale’s hands have grabbed his costume where it splits on the chest and are dragging him forward, closer, and oh, he does want to be closer, he wants it with every fiber of his being. He ends up with a knee on Aziraphale’s chair, between his thighs, curled over him so that they don’t have to stop kissing for a moment.
If it was Crowley’s choice they wouldn’t, and he realises that the thought is madness, but he’s never been so certain of his feelings before.
In the end it’s the sound of conversation that breaks them apart. A trio of workers carrying equipment, starting the long process of packing up for the night.
They don’t look into the tent, they don’t see Crowley still half leaning into Aziraphale’s body, the voluminous white fabric of his outfit crushed beneath Crowley’s long smoke-stained fingers. One side of his own bodysuit is threatening to slide off his shoulder. He can feel Aziraphale’s hand half underneath it, pressed to his bare skin, can see the soft-wet redness of his mouth and knows that his own must look equally incriminating.
Aziraphale looks dazed and beautiful, eyes roaming Crowley’s face. He makes no move to step back, or let him go. Crowley’s not sure there is any letting go for him now. He feels as if he’s fallen from a great height.
Crowley realises suddenly that he doesn’t want to tell anyone about this, and not just because it’s forbidden. He’s not ashamed, not that, never that - it's because this is the first time he’s had a secret thing of his own, something precious, something just for him.
"Oh, I’ve thought about you kissing me for so long."
The soft confession could have been his own, but Aziraphale is the one who voices it.
"You didn’t come back," Crowley says, the roughness of his voice making it sound like an accusation when he intends nothing of the sort. Though perhaps that’s better than the wounded vulnerability of it. "I mean, I wanted you to come back, but you didn’t." Crowley can’t resist lifting a hand, pressing a thumb to Aziraphale’s chin, then his mouth. "I wanted to see you again."
Aziraphale breathes a quiet ’oh’ of surprise and pleasure, and Crowley feels the vibration of it against the fingers he can’t convince to leave the man’s face.
"I felt I’d been rather forward," Aziraphale admits. "But I wanted to see you again too."
He should have done, Crowley’s tent has always been open to him. He would have stripped himself bare and let the man paint him anew. But perhaps that’s a little too much to confess before Crowley has even taken him to dinner. That’s what people do. He thinks it would be nice.
"We should," Crowley says, his fingers finally falling away. He searches for Aziraphale’s own small, soft hand, threads their fingers together. The resulting squeeze makes him brave. "See each other. I’ll take you out to dinner. Anywhere you want to go, angel."
Aziraphale smiles at the endearment, and Crowley thinks he might never call him anything else.