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It wasn’t necessary, but then again, it wasn’t strictly un necessary. After all, Crowley had never been so much more of a demon than a reluctantly fallen angel, where Hastur and Ligur had proven their uncreative depravity leagues beyond his mostly-only-but-gleefully spiteful tricks. There are only so many pounds one could glue to the streets of London before inevitably forgetting which ones were one’s own and which were free game. Adam, himself, had witnessed Crowley directly inconvenience himself by switching a ‘pull’ sign to a ‘push’ one. He'd slammed face-first into it not five minutes later.
Which is not to say Crowley lacks depth, intelligence, or a sense of straightforward self-awareness. They just all happen to point in one direction.
Adam knew, if he were to will Crowley’s glasses out of existence, as he had the sour dolmas and raisin cereal his parents had bought for their new and fashionable diet, that that direction would be ineffably trained on the one being at his 12th birthday party who had no idea anyone simply saw them as together . The one being, sadly enough, who had killed the dove up his sleeve (again) and not realized it yet.
Miracles were still under Adam’s purview. He revived the dove just in time for the trick. Cue the children’s groans. Aziraphale’s delight. Crowley loosed a long-suffering sigh in a collapse of his shoulders that spoke of decades of this same embarrassment. Adam had seen it in his mum whenever his dad mentioned fixing up the car, as if he possessed an ounce of mechanical talent in his body.
But marriage is like that. You sigh. Adam had witnessed at least eleven sighs and counting of Crowley’s since before he and Aziraphale had even stepped out of the Bentley. In condensed order,
- Aziraphale forgot to miracle his parents’ memories into believing them distant relatives, and they had shown up, unannounced, at a child's birthday party
- They had forgotten Adam’s present at the bookshop
- Crowley got pollen on his immaculate black coat while trying to sidle past Aziraphale hugging the children
- Aziraphale smiled at him
- Aziraphale smiled at him
- Aziraphale smudged a bit of icing on the corner of his mouth, swiped it off, and licked his finger slowly, savoring the thick sugar
It was honestly revolting. If Adam had known sin meant this , he’d never once have been inclined to cause the End of Days. The Continuation of Days, however, was not proving to be a revelation in any way to two of the only people on the planet who remembered what hadn’t happened. Adam had made sure they had a chance. He'd prodded them in the right direction, as far as he knew: made sure that bus was running, that the rest of the seats in it were filled or teeming with stains and trash. He had made sure that Crowley’s flat had in stock everything he knew adults did together. Evidently when he’d gotten home one afternoon to find his parents suspiciously smoothing out their clothes, they hadn’t been “baking brownies.” In fact, it probably hadn’t had anything to do with the vast amounts of sweets now inexplicably crammed into every nook of Crowley’s industrial chic (and once spotless) kitchen.
He motioned to Pepper, and he motioned to Brian, to Wensleydale. They adjourned to the gazebo while Aziraphale begged Crowley to pick a card. Crowley sighed.
“Look,” he gestured to all of them, meaning this was all of their responsibility, “we’ve got to solve the problem of my uncles.”
“I was going to ask,” Wensleydale piped up, “are they your uncle-uncles, or is one of them your uncle and the other became your uncle?”
Adam shook his head, and Brian interrupted,
“There should be a neuter for a wife if your wife is your husband. Do they just say ‘husband?’”
“That smacks of the patriarchy,” Pepper condemned him, “I think the skinny one identifies as non-binary. You look it up.”
“Guys, they’re not my uncles-uncles, but they should be. They’re more like… it’s like they’re friends with my parents, but not like they’re friends with each other. They’re not my uncles and they are, but they should be my uncles together.”
The Them murmured and concurred that this behavior was accurate. They noted the sighing. Pepper added a moment where Aziraphale had held Crowley by the waist to pass by him, complemented by Brian’s observation that Crowley had not moved from that spot for ten minutes, or made eye contact with anyone.
“You see?” Adam pleaded, “They’re made for each other,” he tried to explain, but couldn’t. When he’d reincorporated Aziraphale, he hadn’t intended for him not to put the body to use. Adults enjoyed gross things like kissing and hugging for too long, anyway. “I know that if they just had a push , next year, we might all be gathered here for a wedding.”
“That would overshadow your birthday, Adam. It’s very, magnanimous of you to give it up,” said Wensleydale.
The Them nodded. Adam didn’t correct the notion, but he wasn’t happy now that he realized the implication, either. With their minds assembled, they considered how best to start the conflagration of their newest Great Plan. Adam charged ahead,
“When they leave here together, we have to make sure they don’t go back to London.”
“What do you mean?” Brian mouthed around a popsicle. A solitary brown streak ran from the corner of his mouth.
“What if they went to a cottage together?” Wensleydale began, “My mother always says, that when she and father are lacking anything, it’s nice to go off together.”
“But they’re already leaving together!” Pepper insisted.
Wensleydale pushed up his glasses, “She says she gets sad when he doesn’t have time for her, and that it’s nice to get away together, to ‘just have tonight,’ she puts it.”
Adam sagely avoided confiding in any of the Them that, even when Crowley and Aziraphale did “just have tonight,” they still hadn’t taken advantage of the silk robes that had appeared in Crowley’s closet, which his Dad always praised his Mum for wearing “the morning after,” but only on some mornings. Whatever it meant, Adam knew that the next morning would have been the morning in their relationship.
“We’ll slash the tires! My aunt got me a Swiss army knife for my birthday.” Pepper proffered the knife and placed it on a table in a way that made the gazebo begin to resemble A War Room.
“Or put sugar in the gas tank, I saw it in a movie, and anyways, my mother said I'm not allowed to have sugar,” and on the table, Wensleydale primly placed several party favors of pixie dust.
Brian wiped his sticky mouth on his sleeve, which meant he was Thinking Very Hard Indeed. “I could spill chocolate all over Aziraphale.” The Them turned to him in some confusion, or, in Pepper’s case, vague disdain at having caused her confusion. “He’s not the type to, to wander about looking like that, he’ll definitely want to go change and shower, somewhere.”
With their arsenal gathered, Adam also ensured that all the drains in his house were clogged, the spare bedroom door broken, the local laundromat shut down, and every road from here to London impassable from holiday traffic. It was mischievous. It was evil. It was more diabolical than anything Crowley had done all year, and yet it wasn’t. Crowley would never understand the how or the why of this situation, in the very near future where the Bentley sputtered a death rattle and he cried in public over the gory slashes in his white-walled tires. Adam didn’t exactly think he would cry , although it was fun to watch Aziraphale shuffle, red-faced, and pretend his coat wasn’t two-hundred years old, and that Brian had put the first stains on it since the Crimean War.
To keep up appearances, they would have to walk to the nearest bus stop, plenty of time to miracle up an inviting sign for a recently-opened bed and breakfast hideaway that had now never been occupied by six generations of a family so boring, their immovability was the only thing of interest about them.
Adam tried, he really did, and now, he had to abide that it was all out of miraculous hands. He was wrong.
-
“Are you listening? Crowley. Crowley, it’s been two-hundred and twenty years, I swear, I’ve never even spilled a drop of wine on it,”
“Aye, angel, I heard ya.”
Still fussing over his jacket, but more slowly, now, Aziraphale darted his eyes up to gauge the sullen expression, the evidence of tear-tracks on sharp cheekbones. Crowley loved his car more than anything. More than coats, and wine, and little walks like this through a charming village that should be pleasant if only Aziraphale could stop whining . He came to realize he was now the worst part about this afternoon, ignoring Crowley’s suffering.
Tilting his head down sheepishly, he suggested,
“Well, it wasn’t all bad, dear boy, Adam was positively delighted to see you.”
“No, angel.”
“He was, he was absolutely thrilled,”
“He wasn’t.”
“Oh, but when we spoke--”
“He told me to leave .”
Aziraphale stopped walking. He pulled at a bit of lace peeking out from his cuff and pretended a smile so soft you almost couldn’t see the anxiety warping the edges. Crowley could.
“He said we should both leave. Even recommended a place to get washed up. We embarrassed him, Aziraphale."
He lifted his arm and gestured tiredly, randomly, at the road ahead. Or random as random could be, in a world now designed rather like a chessboard, with a cottage-shaped knight now cleverly deployed. Adam didn’t, of course, include the wine cellar, couples’ bath, or “sensual solitude” mentioned in the brochure that had magically appeared in a box at the start of the little stone path. Sometimes, even I intervene in more direct ways.
“Oh,” Aziraphale faked cheer, “just look at this. We can stop here, clean up, perhaps share a drink, and then back to the party, tickety-boo!”
Crowley considered his car, and the damage done to his car, and the paperwork of completely remodelling a busted engine with a snap of his fingers.
Aziraphale’s hand on his lower back was like an electric shock. Instead of a sigh, he hissed, and jumped, and turned on his heel to catch the hint of a smile on his friend’s face.
“Dear boy,” he gestured, smiling cryptically, “you’re all worked up. Let me make it better.”
-
Adam doesn’t care for romances. He ignores them in his favorite action movies, and drifts off in his own head when love scenes come on television and his mother refuses to change the channel. The way she sighs is the exact same as Crowley will, in the very near future: a way no demon has ever sighed before. And, while I love romance enough to watch the same show for 6,000 years, I think we know what happens, and can cut to the chase.
-
Aziraphale scented himself with all the little heart-shaped soaps, and used lavender shampoo, and perfumed himself with a favorite cologne not made in seventy years now innocuously occupying the pink counter in the one bathroom. When he exited, he thought to miracle himself some clothes, but he’d wanted to towel himself down, first (the towels looked especially soft and big) and he wanted to lie on the sheets, too, (they were real silk, he could feel it) but he hadn’t been expecting a half-drunk Crowley sprawled on the bed, nor the bottle dropping and Oh, Ssssatan that erupted from his serpentine throat.
Aziraphale had very little time to think, and most of his thoughts were tangled in the peek of chest hair over Crowley’s tanktop, and the way his arms flexed now that his jacket was on the floor. And, especially, the utterly open and flustered expression on his face now that he’d seen Aziraphale in his full glory, so to speak.
Now, angels simply don’t feel shame. It's a human-learned behavior. Gabriel does not feel shame. Neither does Aziraphale, at least, not about being naked. He loves his body. But being naked and being so thoroughly combed over by a man-sort-of-thing unable to hide his lust is another field entirely, and he took his shame, rallied against it, and tried to pass it off as nothing, as so many humans do when caught in the most compromising situations.
“My dear boy, there’s a towel right, er…”
Crowley was sitting on it. Crowley did not move. Aziraphale began fearfully to think he couldn’t.
“I’ll just… there’s a lad, now just scootch over, just a--”
Some things in this world end too soon. Lives are snuffed out by the millions, TV series cut short at their prime, sentences lost in a breath. One thing that did not end too soon was the evident standoff between Aziraphale and Crowley, one 6,000 years old and, at this point, rapidly dying a merciful death.
Aziraphale, A.Z. Fell, part-time rare book dealer and notorious nancy, fell onto Crowley with a small huff, which played out over Crowley’s lips and made the serpent writhe. Once he felt hands on his waist, he pressed their hips together and straddled the bed, pushing Crowley deeper into it, divesting him of his remaining shirt and trousers.
“Oh, Go--Sa-- angel ,” Crowley mewled in his ear like the most decadent curse, which made the tip of it glow red. He ground down into the same spot and Crowley tossed his head back, revealing a long, slender neck about to be kissed for the first time in millennia. He liked that Crowley shook under him and begged, he liked the taste of coffee and wine and Crowley ; he liked the feel of their legs intertwining, soft and hard and Crowley ; he liked and he liked Crowley , and the more Crowley bucked, sputtered, gasped, and heaved under him, the more he discovered he liked everything about it. And the more he berated himself for ever putting it off.
“My dear boy, you are stunning,” he wondered as he slid his hand down a squirming rib cage, marveling at the divots and freckles and moles so artfully crafted. Crowley must have wanted them there, to be discovered. He felt a sudden, unexpected twinge at the thought of anyone seeing them. It should also be said that angels don’t feel jealousy, but then again, Aziraphale was just barely more of an angel than Crowley, and both of them very far from being angelic in any way with their tongues doing what they were to each other.
“Have me,” Crowley arched under him, goading a rather deep, masculine groan from him, “waited, Go--sixty bloody centuries,”
“R, right then, I’ll just get the--”
“ No! ”
As soon as he rose up, he was miraculously transported beneath Crowley, which he very quickly thought he liked as much as the other way around.
Crowley had invented sin, albeit without putting much thought into its consequences, but he was the inspiration behind seduction, itself. Now, all angels can Fall. The fact that Aziraphale had been subjected to 6,000 years of what was supposed to be the most tempting being in Creation and not yet Fallen was, to some, an achievement. This is presupposing that Aziraphale was at all aware of what Crowley was actually tempting him toward, something he didn't realize until a leather strap slid into his hands in the remains of a bombed-out church during the Blitz. Even then, the Almighty struggled to make it Clear to him.
The funny thing about Aziraphale's relationship with Crowley, however, was that Crowley had very rarely been the most successful seducteur. Whether this upends the idea of Original Sin with the idea of Original Stupidity, Original Denseness, or even Original Ignoring-What-You-Want-Until-Everyone's-Safe is not our concern, this particular evening in Tadfield. What mattered, amid the background noise of Crowley's increasingly desperate attempts to lure Aziraphale, was that the angel in question finally acknowledged two things. One of them, that nothing was more seductive than the next words to come out of Crowley's mouth,
“Azzziraphale,” he breathed, “I’ve loved you for sssix thousand yearsss, and if you don’t make an effort this very sssecond I will discorporate you and then myssself.”
Belatedly, Aziraphale realized Crowley’s underthings no longer existed. Certain other things were also missing, things Aziraphale would never in his right mind admit to missing.
“It’sss easier, this way, Angel, come to me!”
Crowley pulled his hand under him, and his fingers gently unfolded the soft, slick skin. Red hair and a red face fell to his shoulder, a nip on his ear as he pressed inside the soft entrance. He prodded along the cleft and rubbed where he’d once seen The First Adam rub. Crowley stiffened, shuddered, laved at his neck. Aziraphale decided to do it again with his thumb, sinking the rest of his fingers past the trembling folds and gulping at the warmth that welcomed him.
“My dear,” he began, unsure of where he was going. Discreet though they were, the gentlemen’s clubs of his past had in no way prepared him for this .
“ Insssside , angel ,” Crowley panted, grinding down on his fingers and another spot that felt quite nice, “Please, I need you. I love you.” Crowley's sloppy kisses along his throat, the graze of demonic teeth over his collarbone, were really quite convincing. He spread the tempting folds and pulled his fingers back, stroking the slit as Crowley bucked and whined into his neck. When the teasing became too much, his pants disappeared, and Crowley's eyes glowed a dangerous yellow Aziraphale had always secretly admired. He positioned himself over the angel's very valiant Effort, and sunk down with a strangled noise. That was it for Aziraphale's restraint.
"Oh, Crowley, I--" at that moment, his lover slid up, and fell back down with a long, low groan. Aziraphale wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close, gently thrusting up and daring to close his eyes.
"Look at me."
There were claws against his cheek, tilting his head up, but ever so carefully. They avoided breaking the skin. Aziraphale smiled a mysterious smile, then took the open palm and kissed it. Crowley collapsed against him, grinding down. So much for sauntering. He was flailing headfirst into corrupting the Angel of the Eastern Gate.
"Dear boy," Aziraphale murmured with utmost control in his voice as he hesitantly increased the force of his thrusts, until Crowley's movement against him was more of a bounce. He couldn't close his mouth.
"That--there--hooww--
"We were made for each other, darling, of that, I'm sure."
They were, in case anyone was still wondering.
"Enough!" Crowley growled, rearing back and finally dragging Aziraphale with him in unsuspecting compliance. He sank in further and Crowley's brow drew up pitifully. He opened his legs with a creak, slinking around the angel's form until they could barely move. He burrowed his head in a soft, white shoulder.
Aziraphale got the message, remembered a few tricks from Casanova, and pulled back until the tip of his cock rubbed little circles over Crowley's dripping entrance. The demon thrashed as if doused in holy water,
"Inssside., insside, ssstop playing gamesss, I've had enough of your--"
"Say 'please,'" Aziraphale whispered to him, a dark look shadowing his eyes, the eyes of a Bastard worth loving. Crowley melted into the sheets, hands falling limp beside his head as his hips pushed up against the immense effort of Aziraphale's straining, flushed cock.
" Pleassse ."
"Hmm, and what else is on your mind?" He delved in a little bit, still driving in those tiny circles that made Crowley soften against him, preparing him for what was to come.
Tear-filled eyes locked on him, their black slits wide as could be.
"I love you. I've loved you, loved you since the Garden, itself. Now if you don't get in me this instant--"
Aziraphale knitted his hands in red hair and yanked back, exposing Crowley for the debauched creature he is, and savoring the moan like a particularly silky slice of chocolate torte. He bit at the long, pale throat and thrust in all at once, rearing back and plowing forward. The air punched out of Crowley's lungs. He forgot to breathe for a whole two minutes, barely holding on as Aziraphale assaulted a spot inside him that made his broken halo burst with Heavenly pleasure. He shut his eyes and willed himself open, until the pain of having his cervix pummeled gave him enough energy to grip and never let go.
"Oohhh, just like that, my dear," Aziraphale kept biting, a black chain around Crowley's neck in possession that not even Satan could deny. Crowley was his and always had been. He had never been a soldier, neither of them had. They were the only two lovers in ethereal existence, with the whole of Creation pointing toward their joining.
"Again, again, again," Crowley whimpered when he felt Aziraphale pant and come inside him, and within thirty seconds of unrestrained grinding, the angel accommodated, and continued driving against Crowley's shivering walls.
They made love for six days, Crowley barely thinking about the Bentley, Aziraphale entirely forgetting about his customers, and on the seventh day, Crowley flopped back onto the comforter, thoroughly fucked, thoroughly undisturbed by the rain of violets and roses sliding in rivulets of petals down the window panes.
They were still connected, this time Crowley's drained effort soaked in Aziraphale's miracled lube, and Aziraphale still inside him, still coming, the slight swell in his belly a comfort to his reptilian brain.
"Come," he whispered, voice hoarse but shrill, like grinding an ax. Despite their current circumstances, Aziraphale disconnected with a slight wince, overstimulated and the stickiest he'd been in sixty centuries. He fell back next to the demon and pulled him into his arms, smiling wearily when legs instinctively wrapped around him, Crowley's leaking entrance tight against his thigh.
He petted through the soft red hair, now long as it had been those many years ago. Crowley grunted as much as he could grunt, and dived into the crook of the angel's neck, full of his scent.
"Tell me, dear, what are you thinking?"
" Nrgh, " Crowley groaned, shifting and wincing at the massive ache in his hips, the now-cooling wetness between his thighs as he leaked and leaked.
"Crowley," Aziraphale whispered into his hair, kissing his scalp, running a comforting hand down his shoulder blade. Demons are all angles, but now Crowley rather felt like a very smooth pudding, or a collapsed flan.
"Wish we'd done this in Mesopotamia," he sighed. Aziraphale hummed,
"I thought for sure it wasn't until we wound up in London together that you'd, well,"
Crowley slithered over him, scales flaring and settling along his spine where his wings would emerge. It was too tempting to pet him, to treat him as preciously as possible.
"Wanted it forever. Never thought…"
There was no silence to follow him. There was the whistle of birds at dawn, the slow rise and fall off Aziraphale's chest and the rustle of his hair, the beat of an angelic heart. Crowley could sleep for a century like this. As soon as the thought came, he began to slip under.
Arms folded tighter around him and he adjusted until he was practically smothering his lover, but Aziraphale only continued to pet him, to lay small kisses on his head and slow strokes up and down his spine. Crowley shivered as sleep called to him, assured of pleasant dreams.
"Whatever you like best, my dear. I'll wake you when it's time for breakfast. A nice tea. Black coffee for you, of course. Poached eggs. A little ham, too." Aziraphale's thoughts drifted to the meal and he licked his lips, still tasty with the remains of Crowley's slick, where he'd buried himself for a good 36 hours, combined. There was time, now. There was time enough for sushi, for dinners at the Ritz, wine in his parlor and Beethoven playing softly in the other room. There was time for tea, and duck feeding, and performing miracles without the constraint of Gabriel's orders, or Beelzebub's threats. There was time to watch Adam grow, and learn more about humanity than he'd ever known before, as he curled himself around the one being that mattered more than Heaven, itself.
"My dear, you'll never know to its entirety, but I'll try very hard to teach you."
It was only when the sun had risen, and Crowley burrowed his face in the soft column of his neck that he realized the demon's cheeks were wet. He smiled brightly at the thought of Crowley thinking of him so lovingly, and all the daisies in the garden bloomed. His own eyes wet, he nearly said the three words he thought Crowley needed to hear most, but as he opened his mouth, he was beaten to the punch,
"The Bentley," Crowley clutched at his chest, crying openly, now, "but why the Bentley?"