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Aziraphale was in heaven. That is, he was tucked in bed with a book open across his knees, ivory chemise slipping down his shoulders and reading glasses slipping down his nose, Crowley snugged against his side, fast asleep. It was mid-morning. They’d crawled directly in after returning home past midnight from what was now dubbed —sincerely by Aziraphale, a little smirkingly by Crowley— their Night Ministry.
In the months since Boris Johnson had cancelled Christmas, their neighbors’ loneliness had been causing the angel something akin to heartburn. This atop the already hazardous thrum of lockdown London’s anxiety and fear; his stomach was a wreck. Crowley, who badly wanted to bring Aziraphale pastries again, had suggested a course of treatment: on their nightly walks they would pause home by home (from the pavement: nothing intrusive of course) and address one unmet need per.
Often their work was so minor that it might go unnoticed: a replenished jar of honey, a good night’s sleep, a sauce saved from burning— but the miracle would leave a trace of love where it could be received. At other homes the need was greater, and the couple would stand for a time as if engrossed in conversation, to pick the burden of grief off a neighbor’s shoulders before laying it back down a little lighter. To ease the hold of fanatical thinking on the mind of an anti-masker. To increase the technological aptitude of an elderly neighbor living alone, and when necessary leave a gift-wrapped tablet on which to use their new skills. This in addition to their regular checks on the health, liquidity, and refrigerator contents of Soho at large. For the angel it worked a bit like antacid. As a bonus, when Crowley saw people sleeping rough he left nearby doors to empty rental properties invitingly ajar.
Together their Republic of Two excelled at creative good works. But while these nights left Aziraphale giddy and glowing they exhausted Crowley and sent him to his bed. Aziraphale fussed at first, but Crowley pointed out that napping was his second favorite passtime. So when he started to wane this evening, as he tended to after several hours of do-gooding, the angel simply slipped an arm around his waist and spirited him home.
Now Aziraphale was delectating his everyday copy of The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and thinking not for the first time that “the Caged Skylark” must have been composed for Crowley, however unwittingly. Crowley, who ran hot and had kicked off the coverlet. Crowley who had dropped down to ‘his own nest, wild nest,’ wearing only a pair of black briefs, and whose knee was hiked over a cushion like a wing over a clutch of eggs. This caused a rather shockingly fine view of the demon’s buttocks, Aziraphale couldn’t help but observe.
While reading he’d been absentmindedly stroking Crowley’s soft side with the back of his fingers, iambs mapping the terrain of ribs, but now he paused. There was a trace of lust in the air. It hadn’t been his. At first. Crowley sighed in his sleep and shifted his hips over the pillow, then settled. Aziraphale smiled and returned to the page, fingers drifting across smooth skin.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not…
Crowley moaned. Aziraphale closed his book and held it with both hands. He glanced over: Crowley’s face was hidden by his hair, but his hips were rubbing against the cushion. The same way a dreaming dog’s run is curbed in sleep, the movement of Crowley’s pelvis was constrained. It would be almost imperceptible to anyone without the full compliment of sense organs, love-honed over millennia, but to the angel it was unignorable. He looked away, closed his eyes, breathed again.
Then he felt it: Crowley made an Effort. Aziraphale could sense delicate lips, dark curls, a secret passage. It was as astonishing as it was tantalizing. The angel had never heard of a celestial being making an Effort in sleep. Sleep-Efforting. In point of fact, Crowley was the only celestial being known to him as a sleeper. This was a first. Miracle, sea salt, and arousal suffused the air. Aziraphale’s fingers had tightened around Hopkins in a way that felt frankly blasphemous. He put the cherished volume down and reached for a less pious text.
This battered paperback’s orange and white cover would be familiar to any Londoner who’d been conscious in the year 1960. The book fell open to a certain page, perhaps because the binding was cracked, perhaps because the book had guessed where this whole scene was headed.
And now in her heart the queer wonder of him was awakened. A man! The strange potency of manhood upon her! Her hands strayed over him, still a little afraid….
Not the most famous or obscene passage, but for Aziraphale the dearest, and most pulse-quickening.
…And now she touched him, and it was the sons of god with the daughters of men. How beautiful he felt, how pure in tissue! How lovely, how lovely, strong, and yet pure and delicate, such stillness of the sensitive body! Such utter stillness of potency and delicate flesh….
He knew the words, learned over sixty years of late-night perusals, and through more recent, fervent enactment with his beloved demon. He held his breath as he read. Rarified minutes passed. He wouldn’t dream of touching a sleeping Crowley in a sexual manner unless Crowley had specifically asked him to before falling asleep, but his fingertips hummed with want— his own and Connie Chatterley’s. He remembered his own tentative advances, the first explorations the demon had permitted as Aziraphale finally allowed himself sex without Divine Purpose. Or sex unto its own divine purpose.
Crowley was sighing now, almost a snore, and pushing his hips mindlessly against the cushion. It caused his briefs to stretch across his flexing muscles. The pad of Aziraphale’s thumb was growing unbearably sensitive as it caressed the rough pulp page. He brought it to his mouth and bit it. The sharp pleasure focused his attention. He let a seed of knowledge travel in a bright line from his mind down the front of his body, to a vague, blank place between his thighs. It grew, a familiar but always shocking transformation: the itch of new skin and clamor of sensory input, softly cradled inside his panties at first, then swelling almost painfully against the silk confines as his Effort began to pick up and transmit waves of desire.
He wriggled a little to loose the fabric, then lay back to luxuriate in sensation. A cock was such an urgent kind of pleasure. Aziraphale often tended the other way these days, more an all-the-flowers-in-the-garden kind of lover than a prize-winning bloom. But just now he’d had a hankering for this fistful of himself. He’d wanted to tease himself as Connie teased Mellors. His cock was a worthy challenge to his patience. And should Crowley wake up and desire it, he hoped to fuck him as Mellors fucked Connie. A lazy and randy demon was a very special occasion.
But first he’d sit calmly and read. He turned back two pages to where a corner was folded over.
…He took her in his arms again and drew her to him, and suddenly she became small in his arms, small and nestling. It was gone, the resistance was gone…
Aziraphale savored the throb that accented certain words. His hand took its time finding its silky way along his chemise, the flesh of his waist, despite his cock’s urgent invitations.
…. and she began to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she melted small and wonderful in his arms, she became infinitely desirable to him….
He loosed the bow at his waist, ran his nails through white curls, delayed the inevitable for another sumptuous moment.
… all his blood-vessels seemed to scald with intense yet tender desire for her, for her softness, for the penetrating beauty of her in his arms, passing into his blood….
His fist wrapped around his cock, and his head dropped back against the headboard. He loved —loved— these moments when his corporation did its own bidding. He had not decided when to touch himself, his body had chosen the time. He felt cock swell against fingers, quite thick but not too terribly long, and he marveled at the flesh that bound his spirit. Now there was delicious friction. Was it the hand or the cock moving? Both. Perfect little joys. He turned back to the page.
…And softly, with that marvellous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire….
“Read it out loud.”
A dark voice spoke from under a fall of vermillion hair. Aziraphale froze for a moment in lifelong habit, then reminded himself that his hand belonged in the cookie jar. That Crowley wanted it there.
“Go on, Angel,” came muffled encouragement.
Aziraphale cleared his throat, waited for the rush of blood to leave his cheeks and return where it was needed, then began to read, timidly at first.
“…softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer and nearer to the very quick of her….”
“That’s good,” Crowley muttered as he slipped a hand between his legs. Anyone could have made out the movement of his hips now, andante con moto.
“…And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting in the flame. She let herself go.”
Crowley made an animal, affirmative sound. Aziraphale could see the twitching muscles in the demon’s forearm as he worked himself up, and tried briefly to match the tempo before relenting and falling behind.
“… She felt his penis risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion and she let herself go to him….” He was growing breathless, and the word ‘penis’ made his voice squeak slightly, but he persevered. “…She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him.”
Now Crowley was shifting across the bed, more of a slither than a crawl, never stopping the work of his fingers in his pants, vivace e con brio.
“…And oh, if he were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helplessss…” The last word died on Aziraphale’s lips as Crowley brushed his hand aside and swallowed his cock. Crowley liked to come with his mouth full. Aziraphale wanted Crowley to come. He could feel the trembling tension of Crowley’s arousal overriding his lax body. He stroked back the demon’s hair, traced his stretching lips with a thumb, then returned to the text as best he was able.
“She quivered again…oh!… at the potent inexorable… entry… inside her —YES dear— so strange and terrible. That’s perfect, darling….It might come with the… THRUST… of a sword, oh dear…in her softly-opened body...” Here he almost dropped the book. “And …that …would be… death.”
Crowley’s face was buried in Aziraphale’s lap, his hips pumping on the mattress. His sounds were astonishing. The angel’s cock was merely a happy witness to the lust that moved through Crowley. Aziraphale couldn’t see the demon’s hand, but he could feel its frenzied rhythm jolting their joined bodies. He buried his fingers in Crowley’s hair and picked up the book again, aware that now it was no longer meaning but sound that served to drive his lover on.
“She clung…oh!… in a sudden anguish of terror. But it came…”He read through Crowley’s sudden climax, though the tightening throat on his cock made it ever so difficult.
“…with a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning. And her terror subsided in her breast, her breast dared to be gone in peace, she held nothing.” As Crowley’s shaking subsided, Aziraphale slowed down, smoothed out his voice til he was just reading a bedtime story, stroking his lover’s hair.
Crowley popped off his cock and fell back on the bed with a grin, eyes still shut against the late morning sun.
“Nice one, Angel.”
His hand was still tucked inside his pants, fingers moving adagio now. Aziraphale watched hungrily. If he hadn’t made the Effort, he could watch Crowley tease his quim forever, like the holy spectacle it was. In fact, some days he prefered to observe and savor the sights and sounds rather than to participate. But the cock he’d brought into being was asserting itself with silent, amazing force, and he longed for a very specific kind of pleasure now. It was still wet from Crowley’s mouth, and the mild currents in the air teased him terribly. He knew if he touched himself it would be quite difficult to stop.
Instead he put the book down and spread a palm across the demon’s flat chest, fingers brushing across taut little nipples. Crowley gave a happy shiver.
“Darling.”
“Hmm?” One golden eye opened reluctantly.
“I wonder if I might…make love to you?”
“You mean fuck? Should hope so.” Eyes shut with a Cheshire grin. “On the corner?” Crowley was already wriggling down to the magical place they’d discovered at the edge of the bed. Aziraphale chuckled. Crowley flopped over and slid his legs off on either side of the corner of the mattress so that his feet found the floor and his belly lay flat to the sheets. He was boneless, could have been asleep except the steady twitch of the fingers that were still tucked between his legs.
Anticipation made Aziraphale moderate his pace. He undressed with care and folded his delicates, set them on the nightstand. He walked slowly around the bed, running his hand along Crowley’s flank like you might a horse. Finally he squared up behind him and took in the panoramic view, from sunlit hair like spools of copper, along flexuous spine to firm, warm buttocks clad in black cotton pants, a damp spot spreading darker, the fiddly movement underneath. He gripped Crowley’s slender hips, hooking his fingers under the waistband and tugging roughly down.
“Yeah, that’s right,” came Crowley’s murmur.
Now Aziraphale could finally see Crowley’s quim, his naughty fingers slipping wetly between swollen lips. His mouth watered in sympathy, but rather than kneel to have a taste, he let his cock rub against slick red curls, nudge forward. Crowley was generous in his response, each snug inch more profane and heartfelt.
“Yeah, yes, yeah, that’s it, sodding YES, Angel, fuck, Angel, fuck.”
Crowley was spread open and braced as Aziraphale pushed to his depth: this was the magic of the corner. At the moment the angel filled the demon’s quim completely, they fell silent. Crowley fingers sped up and tickled Aziraphale’s balls. He was chasing another climax, and Aziraphale helped him along with short, rolling thrusts. It took only a moment to tip him over; Crowley would come again and again in these little increments before the big one. Aziraphale slowed down to catch his breath.
“Hey Aziraphale.”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Read some more?”
“Ah, of course,” he strained across the demon’s back to grab the book off rumpled sheets. “What would you like to hear?”
“The part where the gamekeeper fucks her in the arse.”
Somehow Aziraphale could be balls-deep in Crowley and still blush with modesty.
“Certainly. But, ah— would you prefer if I were to….” He passed a hand across Crowley’s pert cheeks to signify the words that were difficult to speak just now.
“S’okay, just read it for now, Angel.”
Here Aziraphale encountered a little logistical difficulty. He was holding a demonic hip with one hand, a pornographic novel with the other, but he could see the need for a helping hand, as it were, or two. He paused in his thrusts and turned his inward eye to the seams where the corporeal joined the sublime. Here were the limbs and sense organs and nerve endings that were most often a nuisance —and sometimes a horror— on this plane of existence. Today, though, just the thing.
Two hands now gripped Crowley’s hips, pulled him flush and tight on Aziraphale’s cock. A hand held the Lawrence and another flipped to the other cracked-spine pages. Aziraphale began again to fuck.
“He jerked his head swiftly to indicate the candle burning on the table. She took it obediently, and he watched the full curve of her hips as she went up the first stairs.”
The passage reminded him of his patience, of anticipation. He slowed his thrusts, caressed the demon’s sides.
“It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled and almost unwilling: yet pierced again with piercing thrills of sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than the thrills of tenderness, but…”
“Ok, maybe a finger.”
“Here?”
“Mm-hmm.” Another angelic hand was made manifest whose fingers brought wetness north from the tropics of Crowley’s quim to anoint his arsehole.
“Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless sensuality…” Aziraphale’s fingertip entered Crowley’s tender ring and set off another minor orgasm. The angel was silently quite impressed with his own reading performance. His voice took on an oratory quality as he sped up his hips. “It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to tinder. Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places.”
Another hand appeared to wipe sweat from his forehead, though not before a drop (or several) fell onto Crowley’s undulating back. More fingers ran his hair back, then pushed his glasses up his nose. Crowley was making an urgent sound so low Aziraphale could feel it more than hear it. He skipped ahead a little, fucking faster.
“The same thing, a thousand…oh!… years ago: ten thousand years ago! The same on the Greek vases, everywhere! The refinements of passion… yes, Crowley… the extravagances of sensuality! And NECESSARY…unh… forever necessary, to burn out false shames… and smelt out the… heaviest ore of the… body into purity. With the… fire… of… sheer…oh Lord, Crowley… sensuality….”
Aziraphale managed to put the book down and take his glasses off before collapsing on Crowley’s hot back and thrusting helplessly to his release. Crowley’s fingers plucked the last few notes from his clit with which he finally resolved into climax. The big one. Aziraphale felt like an elevator falling a floor. His mouth was breathing humid affection onto the back of Crowley’s neck. His arms had returned to an ordinary quantity. He could feel Crowley’s fingers still idly circling wet lips, and by extention, his softening cock.
“Would you like another one, my darling?” He affected a can-do tone, though it seemed presently difficult to can-do anything.
“Naah. Thawuz plenny, angel.”
It seemed Crowley was dozing again already. Aziraphale roused himself and peeled them apart so Crowley could slither back up the bed, which he did with somnolent grace. As he landed facedown and threw a leg over the cushion again Aziraphale heard him mumble, “You woulda made one hell of an incubus.”
Aziraphale, who had been melting down toward the bed, was suddenly bolt upright and spluttering with outrage.
“Pardon me? Incubus? Incredible! Just incredible. Crowley, it was your Effort….”
“Kidding, angel, kidding. Relax, come to bed.” A hand snaked out and patted the sheet. Aziraphale allowed himself to be mollified, climbed in beside Crowley and fussed a bit with the coverlet before settling. He returned to Lady Chatterley’s Lover with a general, rather than a specific, interest. In his calm frame of mind the passage in which "the gamekeeper fucks her in the arse” landed quite differently.
In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep Organic shame, the old, old physical fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself. She felt, now, she had come to the real bed-rock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how oneself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.
And what a reckless devil the man was! really like a devil! One had to be strong to bear him. But it took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallus alone could explore it. And how he had pressed in on her!
Crowley had grown as motionless as a hibernating snake beside him, but finally Aziraphale heard him mutter against the pillow again.
“Takes one to know one is all I’m saying.”
Aziraphale leaned over to kiss Crowley’s head.
“I’m so sorry, my love. Of course you’re right. I would have made an excellent incubus.”