Under The Weather And Digging - Crowley/Nanny Ashtoreth, Good Omens, NB(?)
[Here it is, the promised Nanny Ashtoreth fic - uh, just so you know Crowley’s pronouns do switch in this because I am of the belief that Crowley just hoards All Of The Genders so…
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, it’s not my best work but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and no one else was doing it. I don’t own anything, Nei/ Gai//man, please don’t kinkshame me.]
It was one of those days where Nanny Ashtoreth wished she had picked something much less severe for her signature outfit.
Oh sure, the stiff, fitted suit jacket, long pencil skirt and sharp heels in her favoured red-and-black combo looked every bit the part of his Demon Nanny From Hell aesthetique but the aching that she awoken with was deep in her bones and growing with every passing moment. Taking care of a rambunctious child saw to that.
Ashtoreth also wished she had selected something warmer.
Being a snake, Ashtoreth was well used to feeling the chill a little more than average but the shivering that usually plagued her was definitely easier to hide than this. Something was amiss.
Ashtoreth, now watching her budding little Antichrist gaze upon a frog in Aziraphale’s hands with all the wonder that only small children can muster, took another sip of tea, hoping it would settle the itch in her throat – itch? Crowley frowned. That was new. She suppressed another shudder and set the cup down.
She knew exactly what was amiss.
Nanny Ashtoreth was never a woman for small talk, everyone knew that. If it wasn’t about the job (Warlock) she wasn’t speaking, however even Warlock was left a little short when she tucked him into bed that night, only listening to him talk about the kinds of frogs Brother Francis had taught him about and declining to read him a story about The Boy Who Ended The World (himself).
“Goodnight, child.” Crowley whispered, not trusting his voice to last even two more words.
Closing his door behind her, Nanny Ashtoreth let out a breath she had been holding and allowed her shoulders to slump for a microsecond before picking herself back up and stalking to her room, peeling off her day clothes the moment she was inside. Heels, off. Makeup, off. Hair, down.
The demon Crowley was himself again, and he was miserable.
Truth be told he genuinely enjoyed being Nanny Ashtoreth. He loved the way heels made his arse look and the way they click-clacked authoritatively on the floor but today was -
Well today he wanted to be in his pyjamas. And maybe a woolly jumper. A proper one, not the stylish off-the-shoulder, distressed, impractical ones he favoured.
Aziraphale has woolly jumpers. Hideous but…practical.
Crowley stood in the middle of his room in the ruby-red silk robe he bought simply because he thought it’s the sort of thing Nanny Ashtoreth would wear and not because he thought it looked very sexy on him.
Crowley never could hold back sneezes. His nose would not allow it. One way or another, he would sneeze and when he did it would come roaring out as it so often did but he’d be damned (ha) if he was going to wake the entire Dowling household with an itch in his sinuses, he -
“Hih - !” Oh no, “Hih-iiih! Hah, ah - !” Shit it was coming faster than he thought. Jamming two fingers beneath his nose, hard.
Satan. Repressing them was painful.
Brother Francis’ cottage was at the bottom of the garden, far, far beyond the house (the grounds were massive) and Crowley definitely hadn’t thought it all the way through when he chose to hop over the ground barefoot and robe clad. In his memory the cottage had been much closer to the main house.
Crowley rapped hurriedly on Brother Francis’ door.
“Oh, I’ll, er, be out in just a moment!” he heard from inside in that stupid accent Aziraphale insisted on giving the gardener.
“It’s me!” Crowley hissed back.
“Oh!” the angel responded, opening the door to let his friend in, “Come for a nightcap?”
“Not quite.” Crowley muttered, hating how his voice was turning, “We have a problem.”
“Oh?” concern tinged the angel’s voice, “Well, I’d better put these away.” He cleared away the bottles and glasses he had clearly been hoping to use tonight. “Is it Downstairs? Upstairs? The Antichrist?”
“No, none of them, I - “ Crowley braced himself on the wooden table as he felt a sharp prickle in the back of his nose.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale prompted. Crowley did not respond. His head reared back, the hooked arch of his nose looking more present than it usually did as his nostrils flared outward, lip curling upwards, inhaling air through his mouth.
Aziraphale’s breath caught as the silk robe fell open at the chest slightly, revealing Crowley’s lithe chest and watching the silky glint of his flaming hair loosely tied in a messy bun at the back. God, how could this man be a demon when he looked so, so -
Crowley’s sneeze shocked Aziraphale out of his reverie and he clutched at his chest in surprise as Crowley snapped forward unsteadily from the force of it. Crowley had always been a violent sneezer, Aziraphale knew well, but it never scared to, well, frighten the living shit out of him if he wasn’t expecting it.
“My goodness, Crowley, ble - “
He was halted by a warning glare and a finger. Aziraphale remembered himself.
“Well under and digging.”
“This is pathetic!” Crowley whined, throwing himself into a chair, “How am I supposed to instill evil and havoc into the child when I’m snivelling like a…like a…gah! I’m supposed to be his role model! I’m supposed to teach him to grind the weak into the dirt! And right now that – that’s meeeh, eeeehhh – EEEEHHT'CHHUUH!”
“We are supposed to be raising him to be normal, Crowley.” Aziraphale reminded, passing the demon a handkerchief.
“Yes! By balancing out good and evil! It’s not balanced if I’m incapacitated, is it?” Crowley blew his nose and let out an exhausted moan.
“Crowley, it’ll be a few days. A week at most. In the grand scheme of things that’s not a lot of time at all. Now. I suggest you get yourself to bed, dearest, you do sound awful and you’ll need all your strength.”
“If I can even sleep like this.”
“Maybe we should have started on the wine after all.”
The next morning wasn’t much better. In fact, it was much worse and Ashtoreth was beginning to hope the Antichrist would just want to sit and play quietly in his room today but, as it were with little boys, they never do what you want them to.
Concealing the redness of her nose today was going to take a lot of concealer. And demonic miracles.
Brother Francis was the only person in the house that Nanny Ashtoreth would speak more than a few words to, even Mrs Dowling. Maybe it was because he was the only one who wasn’t put off by her terrifying presence. Maybe it was because she liked the flower cuttings he would occasionally give her. Maybe, unlikely, but maybe it was because she had a tiny soft spot for the gardening monk.
But…it was unusual for the gardener to be inside the house.
Aziraphale didn’t need to sense how Crowley was feeling to know his friend was feeling wretched. It was all in the subtleties that one comes to look for in six thousand years of knowing someone. The stoic lack of speaking, avoiding eye contact even behind sunglasses, often angling himself so that whoever he was speaking to couldn’t see his face and thus notice he was breathing through his mouth.
But the day had ploughed on and it was becoming more and more obvious, the mask was slipping and Nanny Ashtoreth pitched forward with a powerful – and horribly repressed – sneeze that left her dazed. She and Warlock had settled themselves in the conservatory where Brother Francis had a view of them through the glass.
Even repressed and through double-glazed windows, Aziraphale could still hear the sneeze. Nanny Ashtoreth looked utterly spent, as if sneezing itself became a draining act akin to chasing her mischievous charge around in heels. The shivering hadn’t abated much since last night and the flush on her cheeks matching her nose suggests a fever.
A break is most definitely needed, the angel decided.
He stepped into the conservatory just as Warlock looked up from his Lego to demand his nanny’s attention.
“Nanny! Nanny! Nanny, I made a village! Nanny!”
Ashtoreth’s eyes slid open beneath her glasses, Satan, she was in slow-motion.
It was at this point the good gardener decided to intervene, placing a hand on Warlock’s shoulder.
“We must be gentle with Nanny today, young Warlock, she’s not feeling very well.”
Ashtoreth placed her hand on Warlock’s other shoulder, “You were made to – to cruttsssccczzzhh! Urgh. Crush the weak under your heel.”
Warlock looked between Brother Francis and his nanny. It hadn’t occurred to him that grown-ups could get sick but looking at Nanny now…hm. Maybe he should listen to Brother Francis. After all, he cared about Nanny and no matter what she said, he didn’t want to crush her.
But Nanny said he had to wreak havoc and destruction.
This was a problem. How does one go about pleasing both his favourite adults?
“I’m gonna be a giant dinosaur and destroy the village!” he announced with all the boyish enthusiasm he could muster. He turned to his nanny, dropping his voice to a gentler tone and pats her arm with the same care one would use when petting a small animal, “But I’ll do it outside, Nanny, so you can rest.”
And it was said, on the Dowling Estate, that the Crowley’s small heart grew three times that -
No, I’m joking obviously, but something in Ashtoreth did melt and pool out warmly within her. Or maybe that was just the mucus that had been clogging up her head. She blew her nose productively as Warlock scampered outside, feeling Brother Francis slip something into her pocket.
“Spare key to the cottage,” he muttered to her, “go and snuggle down there. I’ll be in and out to check in on you.”
“Thanks.” the demon mumbled, stalking off down the garden.
“Put that on.” Aziraphale tossed Crowley a thick sweater from the wardrobe, “You’ll rattle yourself right off the couch if you shiver anymore.”
Crowley would make a show of how unstylish it was but the angel knew he didn’t mean it. Watching the demon sink into the soft material as if he were lowering himself into a hot bath brought a smile to the angel’s face. Paired with the flannel bottoms, messy bun and nose practically glowing with abuse, Aziraphale found himself, not for the first time, oddly charmed by his demon’s sickly form and couldn’t resist smoothing some stray hairs from the other’s forehead as he felt the heat of his skin beneath his hand.
Crowley spent the rest of the week in that cottage, burning away the fever, sipping on hot toddies brewed by Aziraphale and laughing weakly at Golden Girls reruns on the small television.
And if Brother Francis didn’t seem entirely well when he next greeted Nanny Ashtoreth as she walked Warlock through the park, well,
How that happened if anyone’s guess.