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Aziraphale hated to admit it, but there were some things you simply couldn’t learn from books.
It was one thing to Make An Effort. It was quite another to know what to do with it. Academic knowledge was fine, but it was clear that this was something like playing a musical Instrument, which called for observation of the process and experimentation. There were bound to be some false starts. He told himself it was providential that he’d run across the box of old videotapes while taking in the mail next door, though he knew he’d made a point of looking, after the couple who bought the shop the year before had mentioned finding a trove of classics in the back room. Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle had been especially instructive and cheerful, though he failed to see how some of the activities depicted rated as exciting, and he wondered how the actress got into some of those positions. It didn’t seem to stop her from giving a vigourous performance.
If you’d asked him, he wouldn’t have been quite able to say why this had become a project. Part of it was a sense that, having broken with Heaven as Crowley had with Hell, it was time he understood more about the world he’d risked so much to save. He’d experienced most of the pleasures they’d invented, all, he thought, holy and good: wine, the joy of foods from simple bread to complex French dishes, the transcendence of music, the edifice of art. He’d neglected this, though, the one joy She’d built into Her mortal creation – keeping himself to himself, as angels were meant to do, or so he’d always assumed.
But he wasn’t alone, was he? There’d always been a companion, from the first days, however thoughtlessly – cruelly, he admitted to himself with a wince – he’d tried at times to pretend that wasn’t true. And he’d seen a certain longing, lingering quality in Crowley’s glance since the end of the world didn’t happen, as if he were considering… what, exactly? Aziraphale wasn’t sure, but he thought he had some notion. Even before the End Of The World That Wasn't, over the centuries, there had been moments of... well, almost flirtation, if it hadn't been complicated by a veneer that was equally composed of bravado and brittleness. It had been hard for him to know what that meant from a demon, but then: We could go off together. He hadn't been able to get those words out of his head, not least because of regretting the tone in which he'd answered them. We could go off together. Lovers said that to each other in novels. And lovers had… well, they often had something like he had, now. If he could figure out how to use it properly.
He had no idea where he would find the nerve to tell Crowley about it. But here he was just the same.
The tape he was rolling now was all–male and seemed to have a more specialized theme. Two men in slightly silly leather attire that covered nothing, really, were bracketing a completely naked man in a suppliant position. This had something to do with domination and submission, a theme that he’d noticed running through the shop. He wasn’t entirely sure how this would help him know how best to, well, direct his Efforts, but apparently it had a bearing. He shuffled through the rest of the tapes in the box, eyes only half on the screen, until something set off a slight alarm bell in the back of his head.
He paused the tape, frowned, wound it back. There was something all too familiar about the actor whose shoulder-length red hair was being pulled back by the man kneeling behind him, making it that much easier to see what he was doing to the cock of the man standing in front of him. It was fairly amazing, given the length of the thing, that he could get right down to the root of it like that. It made the angel cough a little, reflexively. Was he actually – unhinging his jaw to take the thing in? It looked like it. Bad lighting in the film, probably.
He hit the Pause button again and looked at the tape case more closely. The video was called Unlucky Pierre and seemed to be promising a front-row seat to what happens when a slave fails to please his two masters. Pleading, groveling master-and-slave action. Um. “Pierre has done everything he thought Marc and John wanted, but their standards are high. Now they take him to the dungeon and show him what awaits lazy slaves. But Pierre turns what’s meant as punishment into explosions of pleasure.”
The red-haired man on the screen was blindfolded, and his hands were tied behind him with the same sort of black silk scarf that covered his eyes, snugged under his flowing locks to leave them free. As the action resumed he swallowed the freakishly long cock completely again, then his body visibly tautened as the man behind him slid fingers between his arse cheeks. Aziraphale watched with a combination of fascination and horror, barely aware that his own recently manifested Effort had turned into an uncompromising, rigid erection mashed uncomfortably against the waistband of his trousers, or that his move to reposition it was turning into a slow, steady stroke against the head with the heel of his hand.
The kneeling master on the screen was also rubbing his cock, shorter than the other man’s but alarmingly thick with a puffy plum-like head, up and down with what appeared to be hand lotion, then easing it between “Pierre’s” small but muscular buttocks. The standing man seemed to be admonishing him for losing his rhythm, and began to frankly pump his cock into the offered mouth. Choppy camera angles cut back and forth between both scenes of action. Suddenly “Pierre” pulled away, so that the spurt from he standing man’s cock caught him square in the chest, glistening in the sparse red hairs, and began to rock back against the man behind him, taking over the rhythm until his “master” was wailing helplessly. The camera cut away for the money shot there too, messy and copious,
“Well, Pierre,” one of the men said, “you enjoyed that a little too much.” And there followed a scene in which each of the men teased their slave nearly to climax over and over but ordered him not to come, until finally permission was granted and a milky gout pulsed over both men’s fisted hands as they took turns stroking him to completion. Then apparently they were friends again, all kissing each other in turn.
Aziraphale was lost in a vague haze and only registered dimly that the tape had run out. He’d managed to get his hand into his trousers but was terrified some kind of cascade like what he’d seen on screen would ruin the beige twill, or his furniture.
Worse, as the camera cut back and forth, he’d seen the serpentine tattoo peeping out from under the blindfold where it crossed “Pierre’s” right ear.
Starring Tony Crow, said the video case.
Of course it did.
The angel was not the duffer with computers that Crowley liked to think he was; just because he didn’t care to have an electronic nuisance bleeping in his pocket the livelong day didn’t mean he’d chosen to remain ignorant of the technological developments that had exploded in the past quarter-century. He’d never mentioned hunting for Adam Young online, and the slender laptop he’d bought only last year largely remained out of view, connected to the electrical supply via a surge-suppressor cable. He skimmed the wi-fi from the fetish store next door, by agreement, in return for keeping an eye on the premises when the owners closed up for vacation. It was how he’d happened on the cardboard box of VCR tapes behind the register. They had cheerfully invited him to watch anything he liked from the rental collection, but he didn’t have a disc player and the laptop lacked the requisite drive.
Now he kicked up the Internet, selected a secure VPN, and began searching on the name “Tony Crow.” It took longer than he expected, but not as long as he feared. It wasn’t an iconic name like others of the era, some of which he vaguely recognized because of the adult stores that had exploded in the surroundings then; but the actor had obviously catered to a specialized taste, and there were people with intense enough niche interests to catalog fetish stars by decade. Within an hour he’d found several stills and clips and one downloadable featurette. He was pretty sure he needed a drink for that, and got one, a snifter of Armagnac neat.
Madame Is Hard To Please featured a stern, unsmiling woman in a white brocade bustier outfit and stiletto boots who was shown on the initial still shot looking down at her suppliant slave, tapping a white leather paddle against her palm. Her hair was piled in a cluster of tight curls on top of her head, making her look disturbingly like Michael. The blindfold was there again, though instead of wrist ties there was a length of sparkling chain that allowed for at least some range of motion. Madame had apparently caught her slave stroking himself when he hadn’t been given permission, after having to scold him already for slacking on his household tasks. The actress had a nice touch, if you could call it that, at bringing down the paddle with a jolting smack at unexpected points in her dressing-down, asking now and again: “Do you know what this one is for?” And “Tony’s” refrain was always: I don’t know what I did wrong. Please tell me. I’ll be better, if you’ll only tell me. Aziraphale had to pause the video after the third repetition of similar lines. It was too painful, too real, a catch in the voice that was more genuine than the clumsy line-reading of the several tapes he’d sampled.
It was painful, too, to realize how aroused he was: at the exposed, vulnerable nakedness, at the intensity in the shaking voice, at the sight of the hefty bulge in the glossy black thong briefs which were all the actor wore, other than the chains connecting his wrists to each other and a black leather collar. He imagined stroking his knuckles up that bulge and heard himself moan without realizing he was doing it, the stiffness inside his own trousers now spreading into an ache that came and went in waves low in his belly. Heaven, had he really chosen to set himself up for this? He knew what to do about it, the films had made that obvious, it was what they were created for, but he’d not expected the feeling of wanting something to stop and never end at the same time, of being unable to put two thoughts together, and the faint horror of knowing he felt that way because of the stylized charades he’d seen on screen. He closed his hand on the aching erection through the twill cloth, willing it to be – well, less urgent, less overwhelming. But all that happened was that he found his hips moving of their own volition, rocking into his grip. It was a pleasant torture not allowing himself to touch it directly. He closed his eyes and felt his breath coming in irregular little sips.
Possibly it was the blood roaring in his ears – after all, the tinny soundtrack was turned down fairly low – that kept him from noticing the door chime downstairs, or any sound of movement at all until bounding, two-at-a-time footsteps covered the last half dozen of the spiral stairs. He’d left the door to his rooms ajar; there was never any reason to latch it. And only one person could ignore the wards he’d put on the door of the shop. Aziraphale felt the remarkable sensation of utter weightlessness and what seemed like the beginnings of an out-of-body experience – no more of those, thank you – as he fumbled at the mousepad and succeeded only at freezing the screen during an especially intense scene involving a cock ring. At least the startle reflex completely deflated the erection that had been about to take over from his brain.
“Angel? Hey, rain’s cleared off, what’d you say to a midnight – “
Crowley never merely walked through a door, he always seemed to alter its contours to admit arms and legs whose angularity suggested extra-spatial dimensions. He had a brown sack of a characteristic shape in one hand and hung onto it with a visible effort as he froze in the doorway, which the laptop screen, by miserable happenstance, faced directly.
“ – drive in the Bentley,” he finished in a strangled voice.
“It was meant to be a surprise,” said Aziraphale, after slopping what he thought was probably far too much of the good Scotch Crowley'd brought into one of his Waterford tumblers and setting a glass of ice-filled water down beside it, forgetting for the moment how Crowley disliked cold things. The demon was still glancing in disbelief and what was probably horror from the laptop screen to the cardboard file-box full of videotapes and the case still lying beside the videotape player.
“You got that right,” he said, drinking off half the glass neat. Aziraphale sighed and topped it up. Crowley surprised him by taking up the glass of iced water instead and putting it to his forehead.
“When were you going to tell me? Spring it on me all at once? Hey, I know something about you! Busted! Angel, I already Fell once –” Aziraphale realized that Crowley wasn’t just angry, he was struggling with tears. He finally got to the laptop and unceremoniously hit the shutdown button. Fix things later.
He needed to fix this now.
“You just been going through the whole catalog before you were going to decide what to do with me? Miss any titles? I could give you a list.”
“Crowley, it wasn’t like that – “
“What was it like? Watching me do all that, what was it like? Sickening? Filthy? Sort’ve thing Gabriel’d make you do a hundred lines for?”
“I didn’t go looking for it.”
Aziraphale considered sitting down next to him, felt don’t-touch-don’t-look vibrations radiating off the demon like a heat haze, and settled carefully onto the worn carpet, leaning an elbow onto the remotest arm of the couch. Crowley looked into his glass instead of at him when he finally spoke.
“I didn’t think those things were still in circulation. Great Somebody, I didn’t even think anyone had a working VCR any more.”
“I got it out of the closet when I found those tapes next door. They’re away for the week. Lucky chance it still worked.”
“Lucky,” Crowley huffed a breath out through his nostrils, looked pointedly away, so that the snake tattoo faced the angel directly. “I didn’t know you watched that kind of thing.”
“I didn’t. I mean, up till this evening. I – well, everything’s changed. I thought of trying new things.”
“Well, how did you like this one?” The demon surprised him again by pulling off his dark glasses and slinging them almost carelessly onto the end table. “Four stars? Needs work? One for your collection?”
“It was – a little upsetting.”
“A little upsetting,” repeated Crowley mockingly. “And here I put so much of myself – “ He tried to laugh and ended up covering the golden, reflective eyes with one hand.
“Crowley, I feel very strongly that you need to tell me how this came about.”
“Oh do I.”
“Yes. You do.”
Another half-laugh without any humor in it.
“And you said I went too fast.”
“It was after that, actually,” the demon said, still not looking directly at him. “After you gave me the Holy Water. I thought, this is it, this is the moment he’s going to – “ He broke off. ”And you just. Sawed me off at the knees.”
“I didn’t realize – “
“Oh, I went out of my way to keep you from realising. When I wasn’t trying to think of a way to tell you. I came for you in the Bastille, in the Blitz, because I couldn’t have done anything else, but every time I wanted you to –” Softer, into his hand. “ I wanted to –” He looked down into the tumbler. “A little more of this.”
Aziraphale thought of suggesting that he slow down a little on the whisky, and decided it was the worst possible comment at this point.
“I mean, I’d Fallen already, but, you know, got used to it after a while, right? But every time we – you – I came close and then didn’t, it was like Falling all over again. No welcome. No forgiveness.”
“Crowley, I didn’t know – “ It was all slotting, awfully, into place. He’d been as blind as “Tony Crow” with the scarf around his eyes.
“And I hated Heaven. All of them so pompous and condescending and pitying and pure. But you were different. You were kind. You enjoyed things. I don’t remember when I started wanting one of those things to be me. But I knew I was too damned and damaged for you… Only that night I started to hope and then – I went too fast.”
Aziraphale did reach to cover his hand then. Crowley didn’t shake him off.
“I ended up going to a few of these clubs. You hear about them. Part of my line of business. Management circular, here’s where vice is off the charts, right? Never did get it, Downstairs, there’s more damnation in one traffic backup than in all the sex clubs in London…” He was still looking for someplace for his eyes to light, anywhere but on Aziraphale. “Anyway there were these two blokes who wanted to make movies. What else did I have going on? I wrote the script outlines, mostly. Told them I had an eye problem and I couldn’t handle the bright set lights, so I’d have to always work in a blindfold, my one condition. Hell, jumped at that.”
“Crowley, if I’d known – “
“I’d made sure to be there whenever you needed me. I’d done everything but pull out my heart and throw it at your feet, and left you enough space to – I didn’t know what I’d done wrong but I just wanted to forget about it, only I remembered it every time we put another scene on film – “
“I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m sorry,” Aziraphale quoted tonelessly.
“Yeah.” Crowley’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he drank. “Seemed like I’d been saying that in my mind for six thousand years – to Her, at first. But after you gave me the water and then just left, to you. Didn’t know what I’d done wrong. And there was at least a way to have someone hear me say that and then forgive me, even if it was just a game, a fiction. We did 'em for a year or two, good run, moved on. Like they do.” He set down the glass. “I suppose you think I’m disgusting now. I’ll go.”
The angel had seen Crowley angry, and pleading, and scornful, and blazing with what in any other being might have been called righteous wrath, but he had never seen him completely shattered like this. The one constant was that the demon was a creature of passion. He wondered how he had failed to appreciate before how utterly that defined him. Angels pride themselves on feeling an abstract love. Crowley had all the immediacy of fire, even when it was turned in on himself and burning him.
“Crowley, I’m not sure why you’re so upset about this. It seems like a perfectly demonic thing to have done.”
“But not something you’d want your demon to have done, is it? Never gave up hope of being, you know, that. Your demon. Makes you laugh to hear it out loud, doesn’t it? Silly old Anthony Crowley. Well, we saved the world, it was a ride to remember. Thought you were gone for good, you came back, ought to be enough for me, right?”
“Look at me, Crowley.”
Crowley swiped his hand over his eyes, reached for the glasses.
“No. Really look at me. Without those. Let me see you.”
Aziraphale let a hard little edge of command creep into his voice. He was, after all, a Principality, even if on a sort of indefinite administrative leave.
“You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Ever. Not Before. Not since. There is nothing to be sorry for.”
The demon met his gaze, but it was an obvious struggle.
“If there isn’t, why did you leave me there? Like that? And then not until – until –”
“Because I was afraid. Afraid for both of us. And weak, too weak to stand up to the fear. I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness. But I think I'm through with being afraid. That’s why – I was going to tell you – “
The situation was rapidly moving past the power of language. Aziraphale levered himself partway up, so that he was on one knee in front of Crowley, as if about to accept a knighthood; raised a hand to his face, stroked a lock of the scorch-red hair back from his cheek, cupped his other hand against the angular jaw and leaned forward to brush his lips across Crowley’s, so lightly he could barely feel the warmth there.
“I should have done that decades ago. Centuries.”
The silence was thick. It was hard to know whether to move, to speak, to wait.
The angel realized that was one thing that the films couldn’t show him. How to kiss another being, not in benediction or greeting, but as a lover. He didn’t dare get this wrong. He touched his lips to Crowley’s again, a little more firmly, smelling spice and sweat and something woody that reminded him of Eden, then said almost inaudibly, “Show me. I don’ t know how to do this.”
The yellow eyes were brimming. “I don’t deserve this,” said Crowley huskily, though even his scent, a cant of body, a tremor in speech made it clear how very, very much he wanted it. He leaned in, leading gently, his tongue – slightly forked, it flickered in a way that made the heat come blooming back below the angel’s beltline – worshiping the little Cupid’s bow of Aziraphale’s upper lip and coaxing his mouth open.
“You deserve everything,” the angel said quietly after the kiss broke off from sheer intensity of feeling, mapping Crowley's face out with his lips. He might have dreamed of something like this once, a dozen times, on the rare occasions that he slept, and forgotten it on waking, or told himself as much. “You – you know, I saw all of it. At least what there was for me to see. And it didn’t make me think less ... It… excited me. Not in a bad way, I think.” He took the demon’s hand again then. “Even if it flayed me to hear what you said and know what it meant. You see, I actually had something special for you… my first…”
He guided the unresisting hand to the hard ridge in the front of his trousers, felt the demon’s whole body grow taut on an intake of breath.
He couldn’t have said what directed him then, but it was some instinct beyond the cool detachment with which Heaven expected one to do everything. He was done with that.
“Crowley, I have years to make up to you. And you have years to make up to me. Stand up.”
His mouth was dry but his voice was steady, the voice of someone who'd been a power in Heaven. He took the demon’s hands in his own, pushed them to the small of his back so that the angel’s arms encircled him, and trapped both wrists together in an unyielding grip.
“Kiss me again. Until I say you can stop.”
Crowley did. The warm, dry lips traveled over his cheeks, the shivery indentation at the angle of his jaw, brushed his eyelashes; returned to open against his mouth, tongue exploring, claiming. He could feel the demon reflexively trying to break free, to embrace him, and clamped the narrow wrists harder. When he lifted his head for a moment Aziraphale said quietly but commandingly: “I didn’t say you could stop yet.” This time he returned the deep probing of tongue, tasting whisky and salt.
“Are you hard?” he asked. “Like you were for them?”
Crowley’s eyes looked unfocused. He gave a silent, shaken-looking nod.
“Show me.”
Aziraphale released his wrists and Crowley mirrored his gesture of a moment ago, bringing his hand to the inside of the tight trouser leg where the stiff cock was trapped against his narrow thigh. Rubbing knuckles along it provoked a pulse. “Angel, you’re –”
“Ssh. I didn’t say you could speak yet.”
He rubbed the bulge with a hard pressure.
“Kneel,” he said. “Take these trousers down. Let me show you what I have for you. Careful, these are my favourites.”
“Sssss.” Crowley was remembering not to speak, but couldn’t seem to contain a hiss. He snapped his fingers and the trousers, along with most of Aziraphale's other clothing, were folded tidily on the back of the couch.
“Did I say you could use a miracle?”
The angel hooked fingers in the messy red hair and tightened his grip, just enough to pull at the scalp. Crowley shuddered again, breath hitching.
“Take me in your mouth. I saw how you can do that. I want to know how it feels.”
He was already taut and leaking, and the warmth and wetness were like nothing he could have imagined, the flush of sensation as he bottomed out against Crowley’s throat enough to make him stagger. He was dimly aware of a low keening that was coming from his own lips. He willed himself not to reach the edge his body was longing for, trying to think cool, distant thoughts, his fingers still caught loosely in the shock of tangled hair. Every time the sensation threatened to run away with him he pulled back on Crowley's head, breathing shallowly, waiting until the urgency faded back before letting him start again, until the ache built unbearably. He pulled away, gasping a little as the tongue flicked along his length; lowered himself so that they were face to face again. He fumbled at the front of Crowley's jeans, but his fingers were clumsy, and Crowley had to help work them down, springing himself free.
“Now I want you to -- be inside me. Like I saw them do to you. I want to feel that. You can do that, can’t you?”
Crowley all but groaned, "Oh, Satan, I want to. But – if you’ve never – it’s maybe – “ His voice didn’t even sound like his own.
“Too much? I'm sure I can manage it, my dear, if you’ll help me.” He tugged the elflocks at Crowley’s nape again. “You seem to think that was a request. I'm telling you.”
He softened it by slipping his arms around Crowley, pressing lips to lips again, the first proper lover’s embrace they’d shared. The demon held him tightly, trapping their heat between them, and he rocked his hips in an on-and-off rhythm, wanting to stay at this pitch, not wanting to finish.
Crowley loosened his embrace, moved around behind him, coaxing him to lean forward and rest his weight on the couch cushions.
“You need to be ready for this.”
“I know you won’t fail me, dear.”
“Butter in the fridge? Oil in the bath?”
“Yes to all. I am in your hands.”
He heard a soft snap of fingers again, and decided not to say anything about the miracle that brought whatever Crowley had chosen to him without his needing to move away.
Knowing, slick fingers stroked up his thighs, almost tickling, raising goosebumps on his back. The other hand squeezed his cushiony bum, fingers digging in, strayed to the small of his back. "You have dimples here, d'ye know?" Lips brushed him there, briefly. "You're so beautiful."
At first the touch was only a whisper around the tight opening at his root, then a firmer stroke.
“Nice thing about these, everyone’s got one whether they need it or not,” said Crowley as his fingertip teased, pressing, withdrawing. “Gotta think She had something in mind, there. Consolation prize?” The finger sank to the first knuckle, and Aziraphale felt a little warm gout from the tip of his cock. Remarkable, the things it did. The clever fingers probed, stroking in deeper, one at first and then a second. The angel’s breath became more ragged.
“I’ll go slowly. You have to tell me if it hurts.”
“I don’t think I care if it hurts.”
It did, for a moment. But only a moment. The clench of muscles resisted the larger intrusion, then relaxed as the swollen flare at the head of the demon’s cock rocked inside and withdrew again, dragging little eruptions of sensation behind it, over and over until he was aching to take it in deeper. He pushed back, as he’d seen Crowley do, and heard the choked cry behind him as their bodies pressed together. Something in the path of that stroke had sent a fireburst of pleasure through him, and he pulled forward again, looking for it.
Crowley knew what he was doing. Gripping the angel’s hips, he slid back, rocked forward again, right over that incredible fountain of sensation. Everything between the angel’s legs tightened like a cramp. “There,” he gasped, “There, there, there, there, don’t you dare stop, don’t you dare finish – “
“Oh, no,” Crowley purred in his ear, then closed teeth on the back of his neck. A jolt of sensation went down his spine. The demon pressed into him, palpably holding back, reaching around his belly to stroke his own slickness down his cock, slow and tight. He couldn’t hold it in much longer, he began to commandeer the rhythm and rock back against the intrusion, feeling completely breached, completely opened. “Now, now, I’m going to – do it with me – “ Crowley exploded on a final thrust, the angel carried along with him, in a messy, sweaty clutch that jolted the couch noisily over three inches to the side. Aziraphale dimly remembered worrying about upholstery. He couldn’t remember why he’d cared. To be fair, he couldn't remember much of anything else, either.
Crowley’s gangling length pressed him against the cushions. The floor was hard under his knees, but he didn’t really want to move.
After a moment something struck him as, of all things, funny, and he turned his head slightly to say “Tony Crow? Really?”
Crowley’s voice was hoarse, warm. “It made sense at the time. Something short and punchy.”
“I don’t notice anything short here.”
“Mmmmff. Best in the business at topping from the bottom. Actual review.”
“You?”
“Mmm-hm. I think you may have an edge on me, though. You’re a natural.”
“Only for you, I think.”
The demon snaked an arm around his soft waist with infinite tenderness, as if he didn't quite believe that it was really Aziraphale and they were really touching.
“Don’t you have a bed?”
Later – clean, dry, a couple of rug burns on Crowley’s knees healed by angelic intervention – Aziraphale spooned his demon in the soft sheets that were definitely a better place to be close, warming him against the evening chill, tucking the coverlet up over his shoulder. A lingering, heavy sense of arousal filled his new, astonished cock a little, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. Maybe in the morning. The still closeness meant too much.
Crowley drifted in and out of sleep, wriggling against him every so often as if to prove to himself that his length was surrounded by authentic angel. Presently he seemed to wake more completely, reaching for Aziraphale’s hand and holding it against his narrow chest, fingers twined.
“Was that all right?” said the angel. “’For a beginner? It's all rather new.”
“Couldn’t you tell?”
“Well, there’s little to compare it to…”
“Quick study." Crowley kissed the thick knuckles and held the hand with both of his this time. "You'll pick it up as we go."
“I wasn’t sure if… I thought you might like what – ah –– you know, I couldn’t have brought myself to do something that actually hurt you.”
“Nnff. Think I worked all that off, back then. I – well – I did like…” He trailed off.
"I must do more for you next time. I'm afraid I was dreadfully greedy."
"Avaritia. Terrible, terrible angel."
"Now you're teasing."
"Mmmhmm. Demon." He burrowed his head into the pillow.
“Back in Eden… I saw a few times how they were with each other. They knew they were made for pleasure, and joy. She must have meant to make us the same way.”
“I don’t know, Angel. We haven’t exactly spoken in a long time." Crowley turned then, facing him in the dim light from the streetlamps, the city glare that never left the Soho windows. “But I’ve got you, haven’t I?”
“Yes. You do.”
Aziraphale extricated his hands, cinched them lightly around the demon’s wrists, raised them above his head and leaned in to kiss him softly, tightening his grip as he did.
“Don’t imagine I’ll be letting you go any time soon.”
Crowley chuckled. It undid the angel to see him this easy, this happy. It had been such a close thing.
“See. Told you, you’re just enough of a bastard to be worth --”
"Sssh." Aziraphale let him go then, kissed the eyelids, too, as they fluttered closed.
“Does the light ever bother them?”
“Not now,” said the demon. His arm went over his angel.
“I love you,” said Aziraphale. But Crowley was asleep. He said it again, just to hear it.
It would still be true in the morning.
finis