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It was a lovely afternoon in London, or at least as lovely as an afternoon could get in the middle of a particularly damp and cloudy autumn. To someone waiting for the bus or trying to flag down a cabbie, 'lovely' may not be the word they chose to describe it. But to an angel and a demon who had recently realized there were more selections than the heaven/hell binary, there were many words they could find to describe the afternoon and its passing into evening, for them, too, 'lovely' was not a word they would affix to their current going-ons.
“What I'm saying,” the demon leaned over, nearly slamming his cup on the antique coffee table, “is that there are a lot of things should have known well before last week.”
The angel chuckled and steadied the demon's glass.
“'S not funny!” the demon sat back up with his glass and took another long drink.
“Of course there were!” the angel said as if were the most obvious thing in the universe, “Most things are only understood backwards, after all.”
“If we'd known them,” the demon took off his sunglasses, “do you think we'd still be here?”
“Oh, absolutely,” the angel looked so confident it bordered on pride, “It's in the Great Plan. Everything is.”
A wave of the demon's hand did nothing to dispell the angel's certainty, so he tried reason, “You're saying there is absolutely nothing even Satan himself could do that would defy God's Plan?”
“Nothing at all,” a nod, “Satan was an angel, too, and therefor a part of the Plan.”
“So there was absolutely nothing you could do wrong and derail it?” the demon challenged, “You've been worried about task completion and appearances when there was no reason to any of this?”
“I...” the angel faltered, “Well, no, more like....the Plan is a series of points we will reach no matter what choices we make.”
“You make it sound like there are no choices to be made, then,” the demon huffed, “Like you've never once questioned what your actual role in this was.”
“Well, no,” the angel looked affronted, “I trust in God's Plan. Questions were why Lucifer fell into Satan.”
“But you just said Satan...” the demon made a frustrated noise and ran his hands through his hair, “Okay, but look. In the end, it was humanity that overpowered the divine and all its forces on both sides, yeah?”
“What does that have to do with choices and knowing?” the angel puzzled.
“Even if God's Plan is always going to be followed to the letter, then whether we knew the Antichrist was going to be raised with only human influences and wind up making the human decisions doesn't matter,” the demon spelled out, “Which is pretty much exactly what you said in the beginning, wasn't it?”
“Crowley,” the angel beamed.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said flatly.
“So you see, then, why I am not terribly concerned with what we know when,” Aziraphale nodded.
“You've never once wanted to make a choice?” Crowley pushed.
“I've never let myself feel like I wasn't making a choice,” Aziraphale correctly, “Merely tried not to let the knowledge that the Plan would determine the ultimate outcome.”
“And yet you never thought we could be friends,” Crowley growled, “until a human rewrote the rules of the Apocalypse.”
“You,” Aziraphale pointed, “rewrote it. You're the one who asked after the ineffable plan. You are the one who sent our respective representatives away.”
“Like a child would know a world like ineffable,” Crowley sneered, “None of that would have mattered if he had restarted the apocalypse when he was told to.”
“Why does choice matter so much to you, dear?” Aziraphale tried to redirect the conversation away from what he knew was coming next – what was meant to be the total End for both of them.
“I fell, remember?” Crowley wasn't yelling, not quite, but not far from it, “I asked questions and made choices and I fell! I sent myself into enteral damnation because I made a choice.” There was a snarl to the last word that made the angel flinch.
Crowley tried to pretend like he wasn't gripping his glass so hard his knuckles were turning white. He put his sunglasses back on with a little more force than strictly needed. Aziraphale, on the other hand, found his features turning into saddened ones.
“Would you have made a different choice?” he tried to ask carefully, “If you knew what you knew now before the War?”
Crowley didn't respond for several long minutes, every muscle in his body coiled. He reminded Aziraphale of a snake ready to strike, the very essence of his nature shining through his human form.
Aziraphale stood to make himself a new cup of hot chocolate when Crowley finally said, “No.”
“Then why, Crowley,” Aziraphale pleaded as he sat back down, “does it matter whether we have choice, if we know things, if the result is going to be the same?”
“Nevermind,” Crowley hissed, not unfolding himself or relaxing, “We're on our side now, yeah?”
“Our side,” Aziraphale repeated.
Crowley frowned and turned his face towards the angel, his sunglassing obscuring where he was actually looking.
“You're still not sold on it, are you?” Crowley sounded disappointed.
“It's easy for you,” Aziraphale said softly, “You have the luxury of imagination, of going as fast as you want with no consequences.”
“And you don't?” Crowley spat.
“You get to control when and how you spoke to your side. Mine followed my every move, showed up whenever they wanted without warning, screamed about pornography in front of who could have otherwise been paying customers,” Aziraphale went on.
Crowley held up a hand, “Wait, they what?” Despite his best efforts, he found himself laughing, “Oh, tell me it was one of the archangels, please.” Crowley was wheezing.
“Gabriel and Sandaphlon,” Aziraphale sighed.
“Do they even know what pornography is, I mean...” Crowley managed, “You lot, with your rules and regulations and sin.”
“Goodness, not sin,” Aziraphale corrected.
“So an I to believe porn is goodness?” Crowley laughed, “You still didn't answer my question, by the way.”
“Depends on the porn,” Aziraphale shrugged, “And it's not that I don't have those things, I just don't have the luxury of enacting them on my own.”
“So is that what you're using me for?” Crowley asked, “To go fast and imagine things and ask questions?”
“Using you?” Aziraphale clutched his chest, “Using you, dear Crowley?”
“Well,” Crowley deflated, “why else would you keep so close to me for six thousand years?”
“I, uh, well,” Aziraphale cleared his throat.
“Don't tell me you didn't have a choice,” Crowley re-crossed his arms, “That our invariable closeness and my bailing you out of danger was all a part of the Plan and it wouldn't have mattered how you felt about me or my demonic nature?”
Aziraphale sat, stunned, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he closed it firmly.
“Right,” Crowley sighed and looked away, “because humanity's becoming its own side in what's going to be the next war is also in the Plan, and we're just puppets with less supervision than normal, is that it?”
It was sudden to both entities, but the entire conversation caught up to Azriaphale in that exact moment, the implications hitting him not unlike a bicycle hitting a Bentley. Except there was no one to Miracle the broken things back into perfect working order. Even if there were, the brakes were there.
He saw pieces sliding into place he hadn't even realized existed. His existence was less linear and more a puzzle that formed an idea rather than a picture.
He realized, also, how the demon had always saved him rather than the other way around. How the demon kept him on his Godly track, whether he meant to or not. He realized, also, how everything he ever said or did orbited the demon, in the end.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley's voice brought him back to the moment, “Are you there? Alive?”
“Oh, give me a moment to answer,” Aziraphale dismissed him.
“You've had several minutes,” Crowley's earlier tension was gone, replaced by worry.
“...oh,” was all Aziraphale had to say for himself.
“What happened?” Crowley asked, his usual effortless charm forced back to the surface, “Get a call from the Almighty?”
“Not that I know of,” Aziraphale answered honestly, “Crowley, even I if I've suddenly been given choices, I wouldn't have made any of them differently.” Aziraphale took a deep breath, “You've been invaluable.”
“To the Plan,” Crowley grumbled.
“To me,” Aziraphale face went soft, “to what I've experienced on Earth.”
Crowley's jaw went slack for the briefest of moments before his hand flew to chin as if rubbing it.
“You've even turned on your own side to get me out of a tight spot,” Aziraphale chortled, “How could you not be?”
When Crowley didn't answer, Aziraphale asked, “Oh, this isn't about the Plan and Choice and knowing at all, is it? This is personal.”
Crowley brought his hands to his face. A muffled, “Angel, don't,” filtered through the tiny gaps between his fingers.
“This is about you wanting something to be a choice instead of something inescapable,” Aziraphale pressed on, “Because you've never been the one to get snappy during these conversations.”
“Angel,” Crowley managed to say a little louder, a warning seeping into each letter of the single word.
“This is a choice from before last week,” Aziraphale deducted, “A choice you want to choose your way out of.”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said as he took his hands down from his face, “don't.”
Aziraphale stared Crowley down in a way he'd never felt allowed to before. There was doubt in places confidence used to exist, and he didn't like that look on the demon at all.
“Let's say,” Aziraphale said as he cleared his throat, “You're right, and whether this entire time or just recently, I can choose for myself things without being stopped or punished if they're forbidden.”
Crowley moved his hands to his hair as if holding his head up. “Fine. How do you plan on going about testing this?”
“Oh, I don't know,” Aziraphale said lightly, “Tempt me.”
“Angel,” Crowley hissed, “Which sin do you care to be tempted towards?” The demon rose to his feet and took half a step forward. His knee hit the coffee table and he considered walking through the damned thing before he let it stop his movement.
“Hmm,” Aziraphale hummed, “What is the opposite of love?”
“Lust,” Crowley said automatically, “Why?”
“Well, it's simple,” Aziraphale smiled, “Love is the most divine thing there is, so to be tempted with the opposite and neither fall nor be interrupted, then I'll be willing to give this choice thing of yours a try.”
“Oh, angel,” Crowley shook his head, “I won't harm you.”
Aziraphale tried to imagine the puzzle that was his existence he saw earlier, tried to bring the pieces he was still missing into focus.
What Crowley was saying, he realized, that that the demon wasn't willing to violate his ability to choose, nor was he willing to entertain lust for the sake of testing a hypothesis.
When he refocused on the demon, he saw it clearly for the first time: Love.
A demon capable of love. It made sense, that Crowley would posess the more capabilities other demons didn't have beyond imagination, but if love was the second one, Aziraphale guessed there were more he hadn't been aware of.
“What if,” Aziraphale bit his lower lip, “What if you didn't have to tempt me into that?”
Crowley let out a laugh that sounded more like a pained wheeze. He bent at the waist, one arm across his stomach and the other stabilizing him on the table.
“Angel,” was all Crowley said, “you're serious.”
The angel nodded so slightly that Crowley almost missed it.
“Did you want me to pick a different sin?” the angel asked.
“Oh, no, no,” Crowley's words were hurried, “There's a difference between tempting someone to lust and forcing yourself on someone, and it feels that, given the hypothesis, we need to stick to the former part of that division.”
Aziraphale stood, leaned over, and kissed Crowley gently on the lips. It should have been a chaste thing, but the force behind it froze Crowley in place.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said quietly.
“You don't have to tempt me,” the angel repeated.
Crowley let a primal growl loose, before bounding over the table to pin the angel to his chair.
“Let me, ah, close shop and get us somewhere with fewer breakables,” the angel managed.
“We can fix anything we break,” the demon rolled his eyes, “Wait, this is my flat.”
“Fewer things to break,” the angel repeated.
“Now, where were we?” the demon took off his sunglasses.
“Skipping the temptation part?” the angel pushed Crowley back onto his own bed with more force than the demon had expected.
“Ah, yes,” Crowley managed, eyes locked with Aziraphale's.
“Unless this isn't...” Aziraphale hesitated and lessened the pressure he was putting on Crowley.
“Oh is this ever what I want,” Crowley purred, “Just can't say I was expecting it.”
Aziraphale smiled, a fond thing, before kissing Crowley again. This time, Crowley returned the kiss, deepening it, all teeth and pressure and need.
“Our clothes,” Crowley, “they need to go.” Aziraphale nodded and Crowley wouldn't have been able to tell anyone who both had enough knowledge of the proceedings and a complete lack of desire to keep living which of them made their clothes disappear.
Crowley felt dizzy, out of control, but not like he was falling again. This was a new lack of control, and he wasn't afraid of what happened once his world stopped spinning. He could feel Aziraphale's erection against his own, a pulsing heat expanding outward, enveloping the room.
“How long?” Aziraphale asked.
“Hamlet,” Crowley bit out, his hands finding the angel's waist.
“Oh,” Azriaphale said softly.
“You?” Crowley asked.
“France,” Azriaphale answered.
“And to think we got crepes instead,” Crowley managed.
“Crepes are delicious,” the angel defended the confectionary.
“You are delicious,” Crowley informed Aziraphale, now move, will you?”
“Move?” Aziraphale teased, “How ever would you want me to move?” As he asked this question, though, he managed to lower his hips despite Crowley's grip, managing to graze the demon's hip bones with his own.
“Hnnnng,” Crowley thrust mindlessly, “Angel,” he didn't whine, oh no, that would be unbecoming of a demon, especially one of his caliber. What his words were doing, however, he was unsure.
“Crowley,” the angel used his name.
“Aziraphale,” the demon exhaled.
Aziraphale managed to get a hand around Crowley's erection. He squeezed ever so slightly and the demon let out what he was running out of words to pin to besides a whine.
“Well fuck me,” Crowley knew he was babbling, “Where did you learn that?”
“Is that how you're asking?” Aziraphale teased, “And call it a hunch.”
“Should I ask a different way?” Crowley heard himself say.
“Perhaps,” Aziraphale teased, “but I suppose I can overlook the lack of actual question.”
“Then get on with it, then, angel,” Crowley growled and then added, “please,” for good measure.
Aziraphale decided further words were wasting time, despite time being something they had more than enough of. He Miracled Crowley's arsehole ready, bottoming out in one thrust in. Crowley keened and Azriaphale let out a moan.
“Good?” the angel managed.
“Perfect,” the demon purred, “Now move, angel!”
Aziraphale muscled Crowley's legs to they were resting on his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around each of Crowley's thighs and dug his knees in to steady himself.
Aziraphale began thrusting, slowly and rhythmically at first, trying to memorize how the demon felt inside and out, etching the faces he was making with each thrust.
Crowley managed to sit up on one elbow and grab his cock with the other. He kept time with the angel's thrusts, threw his head back, closed his eyes, and let out a groan that sounded more like a growl.
Aziraphale picked up his pace, grunting each time he bottomed out in Crowley. The grunts came faster and faster until there was almost no time between them. Crowley, meanwhile, had given up trying to jack himself off in time with the angel and had taken to supporting himself on both elbows. His shoulders dipped, his control over what his human form was doing slipping.
“Crowley,” the angel managed, “I have to say, I'm not sure what happens...”
“You've never done this?” Crowley's words were incredibly clear, “Well, try not to ejaculate holy water and I think we'll be fine.”
Aziraphale laughed and slapped Crowley's thigh playfully. Crowley grunted and managed to put his head up long enough for the angel to read his expression clearly.
“Oh, you would like that,” Aziraphale laughed, rhythm faltering.
“Like you,” Crowley managed.
“As I quite like you,” Aziraphale assured him before picking up his rhythm again.
“Angel,” Crowley's cadence was rushed, like if he'd said any more words they would have all sounded like one word anyways.
“Try not to ejaculate demon fire and I think we'll be fine,” the angel teased.
“Nope,” Crowley managed, “body functions like a human one, for most intents and purposes.”
“Small blessings,” Aziraphale muttered.
“Nothing small about this,” Crowley laughed as his elbows gave out, langing him on his back again.
Aziraphale took that window of opportunity to slide Crowley up further so he could bury himself deeper in the demon. Crowley managed to slip his legs from the angel's grip to wrap them around his waist. The angel responded by toppling forward. They both cried out, a mix of pain and pleasure flooding any sense they had left.
“Crowley, I -” was all the angel managed before his orgasm cut off his thought process. He scrambled to keep his balance, but fell forward the rest of the way with his head landing on Crowley's chest. He let out a series of 'ah-ah-ah's as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His body spasmed as a few short, involuntary thrusts into the demon marked the end of the orgasm.
“Angel,” Crowley purred as he came and covered both of them. He could feel his load spreading between their bodies, so tightly pressed together they acted like an improvised sheath.
“Crowley,” the angel muttered.
“Didn't have to tempt you,” Crowley repeated.
“I wanted you before I loved you,” Aziraphale admitted.
“I thought you loved all God's creatures,” Crowley tried to tease.
“Not in the way I love you,” the angel's voice was so quiet he almost missed it. He slid out of the demon and crawled to lay next to him. They were both short of breath.
“The church,” Aziraphale said, “It was when you saved the books for me.”
“The holy water,” Crowley said, “that was it, for me.”
“Love?” Aziraphale hadn't expected his earlier suspicions to be confirmed so quickly.
Crowley sighed something heavy, a tension the angel hadn't realized the demon was still holding slipping away from them.
“It had to be a choice,” Crowley explained, “because a God cruel enough to let a fallen angel retain any ability to love was too cruel for me to believe my side was the evil one.”
Aziraphale felt something else break at the end of the demon's confession.
“It's our side, now,” was all Aziraphale could say.
“Yes,” Crowley nodded, “though I suppose it always has been, hasn't it?”
“It may well have been,” Aziraphale conceded.
Crowley drifted off to sleep while Aziraphale realized a few more things.
One, the love was why Crowley was always so quick to remind him what demons did and didn't do. Two, Crowley had been searching for valediction for his falling despite not wanting to. And three, that perhaps it didn't matter what they knew beforehand or what they did and didn't get to choose, because as long as Crowley was on his side, things would work out.
So while neither angel nor demon present would have called the afternoon-turned-evening a lovely one there were many, many words the angel could affix to it now.