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Aziraphale dons his dressing gown with a gesture and makes to rise, reverent in the quiet care of it, the slow unweaving of the morning tangle delicate in the stillness of the air, in the Love that hums sweet as fresh dew. Tender in the way the sun dances a warm caress across Crowley’s brow. What trail it takes lights his hair to flame, kisses freckles across his skin, sparks at the love-worn creases that deepen at the corners of his eyes as he curls inward on his side, presses his face further into the plush of his—their, now—pillow with a soft noise.
Their pillows, their sheets, their quilt, their bed. A beautiful blend of the both of them, various dressings of fabrics and textures, colors and patterns ranging from a merry gold tartan blanket bought at market in 2700 BC Xinjiang, to a silk sham pulled from the ether formed of color not seen since before Crowley first hung stars in the sky.
The bed they had picked out together, brand new mattress and frame both, and then not left its decadent warmth for two days.
Still haven’t, just yet.
It takes all the strength Aziraphale can muster to resolve to at last leave their bed, but as it turns out he needn’t have bothered, for no sooner has one foot touched the floor than Crowley is reaching out for him. At once Aziraphale is again supine. Crowley wraps himself around him with all the lengthy, lithesome grasping of the wily, sweet serpent he is, linking their legs together, slinging a thigh over Aziraphale’s hips and an arm across his chest.
There is a rumble muffled against his shoulder made more of feeling than word: “No.”
A verdant, quilted 15th century duvet flips itself to rights and covers them both to the waist for good measure.
“Oh, my dear, only a quick dart up for a cup. . .” Aziraphale pauses. His tongue wets his lips, unbidden. Distracted by the rolling of bare, pointed shoulders in his peripheral. Two days, he thinks in a haze. And still, he wants.
The snap of Crowley’s fingers is what one might magnanimously describe as perturbed. The heated brand of his grasp tightens around Aziraphale.
A steaming mug clinks rather aggressively into its paired saucer atop their bedside table.
“Ah.”
“Voilà,” Crowley drawls.
“Well. Thank you.”
“Nnhmm.”
Eyes darting to the side, Aziraphale says, delicately, “Though, you do know how I like to—”
“To make it the traditional way, yeah. You can bally well cope. Not leaving this bed.” The words are a harsh mutterance, petulant, stubborn and sour, but there is an unmistakable fragility underneath. His eyes are closed, still.
Aziraphale swallows around the lump of feeling that gathers at the base of his throat. He finds Crowley’s hand at his chest, squeezes his fingers clasped together against the cooling soothe of his gown.
“As you say, then.”
“Right.”
For a moment, he thinks to mention the bookshop, just downstairs—customers that may come calling. It is easy enough to brush the thought away. Crowley is his priority.
He asks after him as tenderly as he can. “Are you, Crowley?”
“Whassit?”
“Are you alright?”
The response is a sigh, leaden with brimstone and an absolute, deep-bred desire to tell him to take any notions of concern and Shove it.
Ah. A no, then. Though Crowley did hold himself back from giving voice to his inward snarl, a swerve may be in order. And it is, after all, perfectly understandable that Crowley might be feeling a touch vulnerable just now. Aziraphale himself is not unaffected by the enormity of their new status as lovers—Oh! The delight such a word brings!—and, compounded with this being Crowley’s first real foray into this particular realm of bodily pleasures, well, it’s no wonder he’s a bit edacious with his need for physical affections.
“I assure you, my dear, that I have neither want nor need to leave our bed, now that you have provided so consummately. It is only,” Aziraphale pauses in his assurances, making an effort to move up in demonstration, “that is, mm, if I am meant to drink it. . .”
Sure enough, Crowley refuses to budge. A fond laugh huffs out of Aziraphale. Oh, how darling.
“Crowley. I would very much like to actually enjoy what you have prepared.”
There is a soft noise of realization. Crowley rubs his forehead against Aziraphale. “Mmnf.”
Aziraphale pats his hand placatingly.
With another grumble, Crowley loosens his grip.
It is a perfectly, pleasantly, profound a thing, to sit back against the headboard of the bed procured together with one’s lover while enjoying a warm cocoa, while said lover rests his head in one’s lap. Hair fanned out across one thinly-clothed thigh. Golden eyes heavy, hooded, open just enough to cast beloved gaze on where Aziraphale plays his free hand over Crowley’s, the tender points and slopes of his knuckles, the slender elegance of his fingers. Their legs lie tangled still, Crowley only having shifted lower to permit Aziraphale upright.
Complaints about his preference for preparation in the practical way set aside, the drink itself is precisely how he takes it. Naturally, it would be. The temperature is warm, hot but not to burning; the flavor is a deep sweetness, rich without being cloyingly so; just enough spices to elevate but not overpower, the savory bite along the rim a welcome contrast.
It tastes, miraculously, of Love. Swirls of love throughout, blended to perfection in every miraculous sip.
Love, and also. . .
“Oh!” Aziraphale cannot help the delighted wiggle that flutters out of him. “Oh, you’ve done it with—is that a touch of caramel? How exquisite.”
Crowley brings Aziraphale’s hand to his gently smiling mouth, drops a kiss to his palm.
There is a softness to Crowley’s expression that again almost feels too open, too tender, too vulnerable; it tends to overwhelm, still, that Aziraphale is permitted to look so openly, now. Aziraphale sips at his mug, meets Crowley’s gaze openly from beneath his lashes. They need not look away.
Content as always to watch Azirpahale take pleasure in his drink, the curve of Crowley’s lip is one of utter satisfaction. Aziraphale presses his thumb gently against Crowley’s mouth. To ably feel that sweet curve for himself is another pleasure of the world Crowley has bestowed. Another millenia-long desire, realized.
Here in their room the haze of Love hangs heady. It drags along Aziraphale’s skin in waves. Thick in a way that calls to mind a sort of drunken or drugged state, though Aziraphale knows no such chemical intoxication has occurred.
The simple fact of it is only that they are two ethereal beings very much in love. And isn’t that a giddy thought!
Free to do so, his eyes leave Crowley’s to trace the curved canvas of him, painted with memory. The resplendence of his hair; the texture between his fingers known intimately at last. Aziraphale knows now the luminous songs born from his throat in the throes of ecstasy. He knows the precise rhythm of his breath hitching as Aziraphale traces along the ladder of his ribs. He knows how the jut of his hip fits in his palm. Knows from behind the spread of his scapula appear perfectly designed to frame the narrowing of him, knows the unique salt-sweat taste on his lips along the dip of Crowley’s lower back.
At this angle Aziraphale can just make out a hint of the rusted patch of hair on his chest. Hair he knows lies between two tight, ruddy nipples. More knowledge recently gained: He knows what they look like bitten and wet.
“Obol for your thoughts?”
The lilting tease sparks like lightning in a drought.
“Uh. Uhm.” Aziraphale barely manages a stutter.
Lazily, Crowley tilts his chin upward. Catches Aziraphale’s gaze.
Aziraphale knows the needful noises that fall from Crowley as he takes him in hand, in mouth; the high pleading moans as he breaches the tight clench of him, grinds his hips in slow rolls honed from a plethora of experience that now seems wholly for the purpose of bringing Crowley to peak, seeing him lose himself to bright, shattering overwhelm in ways Aziraphale has longed to share with him for centuries.
And oh, at long, long last he knows the feel of Crowley inside him. The transcendent fit and fill of his cock, sheathed within as if made for Aziraphale to have and hold until Time itself falls from favor.
Unsurprisingly, his own sex has begun to swell. Aziraphale’s face feels aflame.
“My, my. Can smell it on you.” Crowley’s voice is a low hum, playing at scandalized. “Angel. ”
Outside, birdsong trills as the morning light fully breaks. The dawn of the third day.
“Demon,” Aziraphale whispers. His voice catches at the sheer unburdened affection, the Love flowing from Crowley, and he makes damn sure to imbue the word with all the fondness, desire, and Love he can muster in return.
Which, given his (former) posting as an Angel of the Lord, and his evergolden inherent design as a Divine Being Made of Love, what he can muster in return is a whole lot of fondness, desire, and Love.
There’s a sensation in the room like the pop of a firework, a sharp snap down the spine of reality. Crowley closes his eyes with a shocked shout of a grunt and shivers, shudders himself into a gasping wail. Aziraphale has but a moment to think, frantic, Wha—before Crowley’s nails are digging into Aziraphale’s hand. Crowley’s winding legs clench around him, hips pumping once, twice, thrice against the bedspread and with a final wheezed, weak moan his whole body tightens and releases.
Seconds go by where all Aziraphale can do is watch Crowley’s throat bob as he swallows, eyebrows knit together in an almost pained expression.
“Oops,” Aziraphale squeaks.
The knuckles gripping his cocoa are a stark white match to his mug.
Crowley groans a laugh tinged with hysteria into the dip of Aziraphale’s thigh. The fabric of Aziraphale’s gown is clinging wet from Crowley’s mouth as he pants, harsh and open, like he’s gathering language back into his lungs.
“Don’t you ‘oops’ me! Nngh, ‘Oh, dear me, oopsy daisy, golly goodness, I didn’t know I could—’” Crowley cuts himself off with a thready sound not unlike a sputtering tea kettle. “Did you know you could do that?”
“What, mm, tell me, what exactly did—”
“You know what you did.”
Yes. He does. When his skipping brain finally catches up, Aziraphale himself nearly moans with it. He takes in the new looseness of Crowley’s limbs against him, the sweat at his temple; the blotchy flush to his cheeks spread down his chest in ruddy patches. Damp blooms warm against Aziraphale just below the curve of his knee, where their legs are tangled. The musk of Crowley, the salt-smoldering of his sex, already lingering in their room, sparks fresh.
“Oh, good Lord,” Aziraphale murmurs. His voice is unnaturally rough. He clears his throat, rumbling out the gravel. Attempts to dislodge the lust creeping up through his chest.
“Mm-huh. Shit.”
“Did you-did, did you really?”
Canting his head and rolling his eyes upward, Crowley holds Aziraphale’s gaze. He looks—well, he looks rather well-used. Ravished, thoroughly, and without Aziraphale so much as putting a single solitary fingertip to him. All it took was his, what was it, his words? His depth of feeling? Not intent, Aziraphale hadn’t intended to make Crowley come, he couldn’t have, not when he had no idea the thing could be done in such a way.
But now that he did, oh—This has potential, he thinks. The hunger in him sings. Readies a whole chorus, rather. Steady on.
“Nn. I—erm.”
“Keep your obol,” Crowley says, slyly. “Think I figured it out.”
Goodness.
“I apologize?” offers Aziraphale, at the same time Crowley says, “Do it again.”
The stunned silence stretches a second too long.
Crowley drops his eyes, face shuttering how he gets—How he would get, oh, love, no, we’re past that, aren’t we—when he thought he had overstepped. Wanted too much, too fiercely, too soon. Embarrassed and angry (with Aziraphale, he had thought; and yes, perhaps—but also with himself, for hoping.) Crowley had by habit hid his heart. And so often Azirphale would pretend he didn’t see, no matter the ache it wrought in him, because he would tell himself it was to protect him. Always to protect Crowley, always to save his beloved demon from destruction.
And it was true. In part.
But perhaps Crowley wasn’t the only one hiding.
Aziraphale turns Crowley to face him with two fingers at his chin.
“Crowley.”
The hard line of his mouth shifts, but Crowley stays silent.
“The thing is,” Aziraphale starts, feeling quite faint, actually, “I don’t, I, I didn’t know I could. . . do, ah, that. I don’t know how I did it. I am, you have to know, certainly not adverse to the sight of you at orgasm.”
“Yeah,” Crowley breathes, “yeah. Got that memo. Wrote it for hours. Notarized an’ all.”
“It only, well, it caught me off guard as well—” Crowley snorts at that, and Aziraphale smiles, soft and slow, the moment soothed. He brushes hair back from Crowley’s sweat-slick forehead, and then, wait: “Keep my obol?”
“Before. I asked—Nevermind.” Crowley rolls further onto his side and says, only slightly strained, “Funny start to the day, hey? What’s on next?”
Presumably Crowley asks the question expecting some sort of response, but Aziraphale is unsure how he expected any semblance of such when immediately after the question mark drops he turns fully into Aziraphale, face ducked between his thighs. The thin fabric of Aziraphale’s dressing gown does absolutely nothing to hide what the events that just transpired, what the sight of Crowley, what the heat of his breath does to his rapidly filling cock. And then Crowley doubles down and makes a spectacle of inhalation. He savors deep like Aziraphale is the only thing keeping him breathing.
Aziraphale by some minor miracle manages with shaking hands to clatter the mug safely into its well.
“Oh, Crowley.”
To his surprise, the answering groan is pained, and tinged with frustration. Low and rumbling. Crowley pushes his forehead between Aziraphale’s thighs, nuzzling at him in a way that reminds Aziraphale, concerningly, of how one wounded might seek comfort. Or, Aziraphale thinks, again considering the Love in the room, the comparison might be made to how one under the influence might press close, untethered and seeking familiar, solid ground in their compromised state.
But demons can’t—and it’s heartbreaking a thing, and Aziraphlae nearly whimpers even to think it, burning briefly with a righteous, Divine fury at the injustice of one so Good being cut off from God’s Light in the first place—but Crowley isn’t able to feel Love. Not in the way Aziraphale can. Not in the way of angels.
With a trembling hand Aziraphale strokes a thumb across Crowley’s ear, following the curve of it. Crowley turns his head into Aziraphale’s touch, eyes closed. There’s a wetness to his face that makes clear Aziraphale doesn’t have to wonder what he would see in his gaze should he open them.
“Oh, my love.” Aziraphale cups his cheek. “Do tell me. What has gotten into you? Are you sure you’re alright? You seem overcome. First, this morning, with, oh, not that it was unwelcome in the least. . .”
“Uh, the clingy thing?” Crowley asks. His voice is threadbare.
“Yes. The clingy thing.”
The noise Crowley makes is startling. The shuddering whimper nearly has Aziraphale snapping his fingers, standing straight up and demanding Crowley tell him, everything, right this instant.
Crowley freezes the frantic spin of him with a light smack on Aziraphale’s knee and a stern, “Stop that.”
Caring? Yes. How dare I. Aziraphale’s mouth falls to a pout.
“Angel. I can hear you thinking. You just about scrambled my brain a minute ago with your, Heavenly Orgasm Powers, can you just. . . mhnn. Don’t do the face, come on. I jusst know you’re doing the face.”
Every word sounds a struggle.
“I know you,” Aziraphale says. Not a little stern himself. “Talk. Or you’ll start me worrying.”
“Hah.”
A heavy silence.
Barely audible, Crowley says, “. . . c’n feel. . .”
“What’s that?”
“Said I can feel. It.”
Before Aziraphale has a chance to ask exactly what it is he can feel—surely he’s not in any discomfort, any pain, Heaven forbid, from last night—they had both taken such care—
Crowley sits up at Aziraphale’s side. His eyes are glossed with tears.
At first his voice is stilted, then gains strength and speed, building upon each word in turn as foundation.
“Oh, S—God.” Crowley grunts like it pains him. “Right. Took me a bit, but I figured it out. It-it’s the Love, angel. Your. . . nngh, I can feel it. You know, I’d forgotten what it was like? Being able to feel Love in the air. And even then, wasn't this.” The words fall heavy, pieced out like that makes it easier, like slowly disassembling a dam, brick by brick. “It wasn’t like this. Couldn’t be. Didn’t have you.”
Aziraphale stifles a sob behind his hand. Oh.
“Mnm. Didn’t have yours.”
There is an animal sound, a choked wail, rising from deep in Aziraphale’s chest. He swallows it down, gasps past the heartrending Impossible lodged in his throat. Through the roar in his ears he clings to Crowley’s words like Moses on Mount Horeb. Tangled like the brambles themselves: on fire, yet not consumed. His fingers are wet. He tastes salt. Impossible. Never. Never once did he dare to think such a reclamation attainable.
“I’ve been feeling it for days. It’s everything, everywhere, in every damned atom of me. It’s bright and it hurts and it’s soft and safe like a, a warm bath and it’s agony, it really is, beauty like the first stars bursting brand new. And I thought,” Crowley’s voice breaks wetly. He grunts past it. “I thought it was gone. Demons don’t deserve even the memory. ‘Course I knew you loved me, I promise I know it, desperately, embarrassingly in love, really, you. I feel it. In the human way. I always feel it. But big-L Love’s like. . . Well, the lack of it, rather, s’like you’re reaching for something, fighting sweating struggling to catch up and it’s forever outrunning you. Made so even when you’re standing still, you’re reaching for it. There’s always that want. That absence. Another thing lost in the Fall.”
Something like a third of ethereal and occult existence lies in the power of words; the magic of metaphor, the strength of a story. Water made Holy. Invitation only bookshops. A boy changing his parentage by sheer prepubescent will.
Crowley and Aziraphale had engaged in many a challenging, complicated conversation regarding the importance of allowing each other, and giving themselves permission, to feel. The grueling work of communication and at long last, millennia past, Finally. We can let our guards down.
The consummation that followed. The declarations, the vows, the sheer powerful miracle of them. Two halves made whole. One soul knit to another.
Crowley continues.
“But you got it back. You did. We did. Us. Because bully to God’s Plan as always, right? Tell me: How am I meant to go on feeling this? Wave after wave crashing across the shore. I’m the Rock of bloody Gibraltar reduced to sand, and every second of every day since all I want is to fall to my knees and ask to be formed anew by your hands. All I want is to be held. I’m floating around unmoored. It’s—Nigh unbearable. Is this what you feel from me? It can’t be. Can it? Does my Love feel like this to you?”
Voice breaking fresh on his last question, he truly looks at Aziraphale for the first time since starting: the both of them are a mess. Aziraphale imagines his face is a mirror of Crowley’s own, red and tear-streaked. Crowley’s eyes are wide, almost manic. Jaw clenching and unclenching rhythmically.
When they take a breath, together, the wet sound echoes in the quiet.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale gasps. “Yes.”
And he’s saying: Yes, to the victory of it all, to you being able to feel my Love. Yes, to God not being able to take this from you. Rather, yes, to taking back what is rightfully yours. Yes, to us, and there is nothing we can’t do, together. Yes, you deserve it. Yes, my love burns the same, yes, oh, yes, that is exactly what I feel for you, every day. It is glorious, isn’t it? The Divine itself, here on Earth. A perfect, purely human blessing.
“You brought the stars back, angel.”
With trembling hands Aziraphale pulls Crowley in, gathers him in his arms, holds him, bare as birth and rattling with revelation the likes of which would destroy a lesser demon, but not Crowley. His Crowley, wily old serpent made of courageous, recalcitrant imagination. Ever the optimist, in his way. He always did believe in them. No matter Aziraphale’s own doubts. Crowley believed.
Aziraphale tells him so.
“It is you that has done this. My love. My love, oh, it is you that embraced me, wholly as I am, even when I dared not. Remember the miracle of us! What is possible when we are one. I think—well, I cannot know for sure, but whenever we come together, truly unprecedented, magnificent things do tend to happen, don’t they?”
Crowley murmurs an affirmation, sounding dazed.
Aziraphale cards fingers through the sweet, sweat-puffed halo of hair atop Crowley’s head, his other hand curled at his trim waist. They mold together splendidly. All Crowley’s long, sharp angles and Aziraphale’s stout softness.
“Whenever we come together, too, turns out,” Crowley punches out in a wheeze.
Still managing cheek just fine.
Before Aziraphale can respond, he continues, “Ha, no, wait. No. M’being serious. What if, you—when you, uh.” Teeth press against Aziraphale’s neck. Crowley breathes in, steady and warm. His hands sneak inside Aziraphale’s gown before continuing, “You know. First time I felt you come in me, that rush, s’like—what is it humans say—seeing the face of God?”
Sputtering, Aziraphale admonishes, “Crowley!”
The demon snickers, weakly but wicked, tongue flicking out to taste the flush of his skin.
After the moment Aziraphale feels, dutifully obliged, to let hang in order to register his disapproval, he says, tentatively, “You might be onto something.”
Crowley pulls back to look at him incredulously.
“Not that I think, uhm, I’m not saying. . .” Aziraphale purses his lips to stop the rambling. Gathers his thoughts into a straight line.
Idly, Crowley’s hands squeeze up Aziraphale’s sides. One palm rests just above his heart. The shifting of Crowley gathered in Aziraphale’s lap brings renewed attention to the fact that he is still blessedly, scrumptiously nude. The weight, the heat of Crowley, sat between his thighs, and Crowley’s hands, wandering confidently. Aziraphale has always so loved Crowley’s hands; long, elegant fingers and deceptively delicate, slim wrists. Thready veins standing starkly ridged through thin, freckled skin.
And there is little Aziraphale’s dressing gown can do to hide his own leisurely renewing interest; the wrap seems to have come undone at some point during their embrace, hanging together by memory of where a bow once was tied.
“What was I saying?” Aziraphale murmurs, mostly to himself.
An indulgent, breathtakingly fond grin spreads slowly across Crowley’s face. His eyes flick to Aziraphale’s mouth and back up, entirely (and no doubt deliberately) without any attempt at subtly. His hands roam Aziraphale’s shoulders, trace down his back, curl round the plush hills of his hips, the lightly furred valley of his chest.
Crowley shrugs in response to his question, unblinking, and rubs his thumb—his wet thumb, when did he—over Aziraphale’s nipple. As casual as can be.
“Ah, you—”
Crowley leans in, licks Aziraphale’s bottom lip. “Yeah?”
“You devil,” Aziraphale says, with utmost affection.
“Mm, that’s me.”
“What I was saying—this development, oh, this is so wonderful, I just can’t believe—! I never thought to hope. More fool I.”
“My fool. Been saying it centuries.”
Aziraphale feels Crowley’s smile against his ear, and he cannot help the shimmy of his shoulders as delight courses through him. He finds one scoundrel hand of Crowley’s and twines their fingers together, his palm over his.
The two of them are mere breathes apart. When Aziraphale speaks, softly as a secret, surely Crowley can feel the words warm his mouth.
“What I was saying, er, trying to say, was that the act is called making love, after all! Isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that just exhilarating that language, that evolution of the etymology, would lead us here? ‘Make’ meaning to—to give form, to bring into existence, to construct, to be the author of! And I believe that it was you who first specifically used the phrmmh—”
Fair enough, Crowley kisses him. Uncoordinated and open-mouthed, not an unwelcome tinge of desperation still in the way he grips Aziraphale, his hand in his clinging fiercely, his free hand moving to wrap around Aziraphale’s shoulders, clutching as ink to manuscript. Every movement of his lips, every twitch of his hips and kneading of his fingers another line noted, another page of their story made entirely their own.
Crowley bites against Aziraphale’s chin, groans, says, “What if I need, hnn, re-upping? Fill me with your Holiness regular-like.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale’s voice pitches higher; delight a twinkling, weightless thing. Crowley shivers in his arms. “I don’t think you have to worry about the consistency of my attentions. I intend to be quite thorough.”
Licking into Crowley’s mouth, Aziraphale grips the hair at the base of his neck in a loose fist.
“Gn, good. Good,” Crowley manages between sloppy, spit-slick kisses, before sucking on Aziraphale’s tongue with a gluttonous fervor that would make the Sins themselves blush.
The cradle of Aziraphale’s not-entirely-steady hand seems to be the only thing keeping Crowley upright as he moans and twists in his lap. Aziraphale answers in kind, an echoing cry breaking into Crowley’s mouth when he feels Crowley’s rigid sex dapple wet against his abdomen.
“I do think it’s more likely permanent,” Aziraphale will say, later. “And I want to reassure you that the intensity, it will—oh, not fade, exactly, but. . .”
“Don’t want it to fade. Can’t imagine we’ll get much done otherwise, though.”
“It’ll settle.”
“I’ll stop feeling like I’m going mad?”
“I don’t know about that,” Aziraphale will tease, and brush a hand through Crowley’s mussed hair. “Much of human history speaks of love as akin to madness, doesn’t it? This seems par for the course.”
Crowley will sigh in a weak imitation of one beset by great trials in the name of one’s beloved. He will roll his amber eyes skyward. He will smile, content.
“A period of adjustment is what we need. This—this dam breaking, it’s new, it’s natural for it to overwhelm. After all,” Aziraphale will pause, and tap lightly at Crowley’s cheek. “I’ve been feeling your Love this whole time, haven’t I?”
“Have you?” Crowley’s unblinking gaze will go wide. In his astonishment he will look, startlingly, younger than he ever has.
“So unfailingly I’m afraid I rather took it for granted. I didn’t know—I couldn’t let myself know. Yet still it became a part of me. I would notice more when it wasn’t, when you weren’t with me. It did hurt much the same, I imagine, the rawness of your affection, and then it, well, settled, and it felt safe. I grew accustomed, and dared not venture for more. Like standing in the eye of a wild storm.”
Aziraphale will smooth his fingers over the worry crease between Crowley’s brows.
“Nn, well. Got there in the end,” Crowley will say, eyelashes fluttering.
“That we did. All I needed was a firm grip, a certain serpent to drag me out into the rain.”
Later.
Now there is only the desperate, dazzling pull and feverish triumph of their embrace.
Crowley’s hands wind round Aziraphale. His long fingers spread wide, a firm grasping heat at Aziraphale’s back, and up through his curls, tugging him closer still.
A wet growl rumbles against his lips as Aziraphale opens his mouth again under his. He grips Crowley’s jaw, with gentle and practiced hands maneuvering him in just the way he knows to make Crowley’s knees buckle and his hips kick. As he has been so recently blessed to learn.
Sure enough a sound crests, high and tight, a crackling ember set to spark, as Crowley arches against him.
The long grip of Crowley’s legs wind vise-like around Aziraphale’s waist, the twitching roll of him as he rocks a sublime pressure; his cock at one moment a tease atop Aziraphale’s own and the next dipping into the plush give of Aziraphale’s middle, darkening the sparse trail of hair with the damp smear of his want.
Aziraphale rests a palm on the delectable dip of Crowley’s lower back, plays his fingers over the knobs of his spine, dancing lower.
“Ngkhn. Angel. Angel.”
With effort, Crowley pulls back. Just enough.
Oh, what a sight. Every breath visible as he pants, the rise and fall of hitching breaths, narrow chest flushed crimson. Aziraphale reaches out instinctually, an open hand perfectly fit to the strain of ribs, heart singing out against his palm.
Crowley squirms on his lap. His throat bobs once, twice as he swallows, chokes back a groan. Mouth wet and red, bitten.
“What do you need?” Aziraphale asks. His throat clicks audibly as he swallows. “Anything.”
As Aziraphale speaks, he bends to Crowley, his face to the wiry thatch in the center of his chest, and kisses, mouth open, around one delicious little nipple. A gratifying hiss rains from above.
“Can’t ask that, can’t, ah.”
Aziraphale’s voice is tight as he says, “Go on.”
“You,” bites Crowley. “Want you. Obvious. Beyond that, I—”
A glance downward shows Crowley’s glorious cockstand at the height of attention, quivering along with the rest of him, engorged, purpled head shining, surrounding rust-red hair matted. Mouth-watering a sight as there ever was.
“I could suck you,” Aziraphale starts, and has to steady Crowley as his hips jolt.
Crowley shudders. His mouth falls open and he pants, flushed and wanton. His eyes stare blankly, sclera entirely overtaken by shining gold, irises blown wide. The way heightened emotion disrupts certain demonic glamours of his has been a most charming discovery.
Channeling a role honed throughout the 1800s, Aziraphale continues, lets the thrill of the play rush over him, unrelenting: “Hah, my, my dear. If you’re amenable. I must say, the sheer heft of you in my mouth, the flavor of you upon my palate is one taste I do not see myself growing satiated with, no; I think I shall be contented to—rather, I think I need to have your delicious cock quite regularly—”
The wail that rips from Crowley is as sharp as the hands digging into Aziraphale’s shoulder. The musk of desire thickens as Aziraphale feels Crowley twist and smear a generous dollop of pre-come against his belly. It takes not a little of his considerable Will to refrain from taking Crowley in hand. But that isn’t the play just now. Instead, he holds him at his hip, pets at the quivering of his neck.
“Or! Oh, there are any number of delights, I—I know how you like being of service: seeing to me, as it were. And you’ve taken to it in this fashion quite well. You do always take such proper care of me.”
Occult smolders in the air. Crowley curses under his breath.
“I cannot choose: The fit of you upon my tongue or the fit of you, moving inside me. Crowley. Crowley. Tell me. I am made whole by your touch. Does the clutch of my body around you feel like coming home to you, as it does for me?”
Aziraphale rocks into Crowley, allowing himself one sweet moment of relief in the pressure of his hardness against a slender, taut thigh. He drags short, neat fingernails across Crowley’s collarbones, wets the pads of his fingers with the sweat gathered there, in the hollow of his throat.
“Or you could ride me, mm? Would you like that, dear boy?”
“Stop,” Crowley whimpers, a desperate plea, “stop talking, angel, I—I can’t, fuck. You have to. Please.”
“Anything you ask of me,” Aziraphale repeats. “Everything.”
Aziraphale has worked very hard to keep his voice light. Playfully firm. He can hear the need threatening to shake free. The fraying at the edges of each word would need only the slightest tug to come unraveled.
Pleasures of the flesh are not new to him as they are Crowley, but Crowley, oh, he is an entirely new wonder to behold. And there is no denying the stark evidence of Aziraphale’s appreciation for such a sight. Nevermind the sweat beading across his own swollen lip, the flush he can feel heating him down to his toes; his own dressing robe now fully askew, serving only to frame his own straining want, no doubt Crowley can see he has found himself in much a similar state, dripping with eagerness matching his own.
Sure enough, as Aziraphale shifts, so do two golden eyes catch the movement, dart down and back up. A tongue—is that a slight fork at the end, oh—steals out to lick his lips.
“Where did you learn to, hnn, to talk like that?” Crowley slurs. “Filthy thing you are, whoever would’ve guesssed, what kind of wild partiess—”
“Wilde parties, indeed.”
“Not that m’not apprecss, appreciative.”
“Answer my question, please,” Aziraphale murmurs, mouth to Crowley’s jaw.
“Quesstion?”
Aziraphale tastes the skin at the base of Crowley’s neck. Feels the vibration when Crowley hums, head tipping back. “What do you need? Let me hear you, love.”
A soft garbled sound gusts out of Crowley, accompanied by a slow, dragging thrust that has Aziraphale settling his teeth to skin in a teasing nip.
“F-firsss,” Crowley starts. Cuts himself off.
For a moment the pause hangs. Aziraphale breaths Crowley in, rubs at his side in encouragement.
“I know what I want,” says Crowley, voice slow, careful with each word, lest they get away from him. “But first. Take the edge off. First. . .”
“First?”
“Do it again.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows make a bid for his hairline.
The words do, in fact, get away from him. In a rush, Crowley says, “S s till like I’m drunk. But no putting the Love back in the bottle.” A laugh huffs. “It, it’s still so thick, angel. A blanket of you, of us, and I can’t ssstop thinking about—well lotsa things, but—nngnn. Your new party trick.”
“O-oh?”
Crowley nods. A wobbly twitch of a motion.
Best make sure. “You mean. . .?”
“Name me,” Crowley growls. He shuts his eyes, frustration clear. The asking part remains a struggle. Aziraphale is so proud of him. With patience and grace accepted, he continues, resolved: “Name me. Love me. And I—I think sssomething about you s-saying what I am, when you ssaid, hhnn. You sssaid demon.”
Aziraphale catches the shattered word in a kiss. A grateful noise scrapes out of Crowley as he crowds close, squeezes the back of Aziraphale’s neck. Whole body tense like a coiled spring.
“Do it again,” Crowley repeats; low, demanding, biting at his mouth, “Do it again do it do it—“
“Hush, there. Dearheart. I have you,” Aziraphale soothes. And for good measure: “Demon mine.”
He thinks, I have had love for you since you showed yourself to me in the Garden. I love you beyond any boundaries or conditions. I am by design meant to hold space for love for all God’s creatures, yet from the start my love for you was entirely something else. I love you not in spite of your nature but because of it: I love you creative, and questioning, and brave and kind and wickedly clever. Though we barely knew one another when first you called forth the galaxies, there are moments where I think I have loved you, in some way, you and your beautiful questions, since before time itself.
Every thought he’s kept hidden, every bit of Love he has in him, Aziraphale puts to feeling.
Until a giggle startles out of him as the realization comes. He thinks, Old habits, then says, “Wait! Oh, forgive me—let me—”
And so Aziraphale speaks his love aloud. He talks. He tells him! He gives voice to all the myriad of ways Crowley is loved.
Oh, but that sets Crowley to sob. Dear man. It is as if the waves of Love are a tangible thing, they move him so. Besieged by broken, shuddering breaths as he bends in on himself. Hands clenched at his sides and head bowed, his breathing beats a heated pulse against Aziraphale’s throat. His hips pump the air and he spills his seed outward onto Aziraphale, paints his chest in a blooming, baptismal warmth.
“Oh, oh, my darling. Let me tell you how I love you: not in the way an angel of the Lord loves all things, but in the way of men.” Aziraphale breathes out, wonder-struck. “I love you as only one man can love another.”
Aziraphale pets slowly, firmly but gently, through the hair curling at the back of Crowley’s neck. Holding him as an anchor as he shudders through the storm. Rocks him in a steady embrace.
“And I do not feel shame.”
Hiccuping kisses land sloppy, wet and open on Aziraphale’s shoulder.
Days ago, now, Crowley had said: I love you and I can’t remember a time not loving you and Six thousand years it feels like and, his own Love in bloom around Aziraphale bursting with such profound delight that the birth of a galaxy paled in comparison, Lovemaking, they call it, eh? Sshow me, won’t you? C’mon, angel. Make love with me—
And they had. They did.
Crowley is murmuring nonsense against Aziraphale, something tender and tremulously blasphemous. The last pull of orgasm is wrung from him in a whimper and Aziraphale just catches the fiercely victorious, “ssserpent and Her preciouss guardian took it back” as Crowley reaches for him, wraps him up tight in his arms. The two of them keep on for minutes, just like that; Crowley in Aziraphale’s arms, Crowley slumped, boneless, peppering kisses across Aziraphale’s skin while Aziraphale strokes his hair.
“The beauty of you at peak,” Aziraphale breathes. “What a gift it is, to bear witness. What a blessing to feel you come apart against me.”
A muffled garbled noise sounds at Aziraphale’s temple. Crowley kisses him there, a firm and unhurried press.
“I beg of you: Peace.”
Crowley’s voice is wrecked.
Aziraphale hums, as if deeply considering. All he wants to do until the end of the stars themselves (upon which time, naturally, they would make more) is to dote upon this demon of his, this wonderful man at last claimed for his own. They rewrote the world; they rewrote Love itself. And centuries, millenia even, Crowley had given of himself—it is only right that Aziraphale, now free to acknowledge his appreciation, do so. Aziraphale has lifetimes of praise built up, bubbling over like Veuve Clicquot.
There is no quelling his desire to speak of his love, and certainly not once he knows the impact it has. The thrill of Crowley brought to crisis. Though perhaps a reprieve.
They breathe as one. Peace.
Crowley’s kisses move to Aziraphale’s mouth. He slots them together, a continued lazy pressure of his lips, open and warm. Aziraphale tastes the laugh lines at the corner of his lips. Licks at the fresh salt of tears upon his Cupid’s bow.
“Alright then,” Crowley murmurs against him.
“Mm?”
Aziraphale opens his eyes and meets Crowley’s own. Red-lined, now, worn from strain, yet still completely yellowed, and accompanied with a determination and defiance joined in the set of his jaw, locked in the arch of his brow. Face ruddy and shining; hair a wildfire. Oh, the sheer beauty of him. All together, Crowley looks rather like a man who has made up his mind about something of the utmost import. Something wicked and lascivious in nature, at that.
“O-oh, my—Crowley?”
Always more of action than words, his dear demon.
Crowley’s kisses travel downwards; as he goes, he spares a moment to snap himself clean, and waves Aziraphale’s dressing gown away (hangs it neatly by the door, the dear) without a glance. Aziraphale shivers delightedly as all of him is bared to open air.
“Haven’t stopped thinking of thiss,” Crowley says, grinning into Aziraphale’s chest. “S’like my body’s made new s-sensesss jusst for you.”
The flat of his tongue licks, then, swirling over the rounding of Aziraphale, taking his nipple between his lips and breathing in blissful like he’s the one being pleasured.
Aziraphale sucks in a breath. His hands flutter at his sides.
“Gnn, I. How do humans sstand it? How do you stand it? Why didn’t you tell me it—no. Would’ve lost my damned mind. Didn’t want anyone elsse, not really, and I couldn’t have you, couldn’t. . .”
As he talks, Crowley lowers himself down, still smiling in wonderment, like he hasn’t a care, trailing kisses and little licks as he goes. He anoints one nipple, then the other, then just below his breast, then the rounded middle of him. A bite at his navel, a sucking kiss at the outward bend of him.
“Oh, I know, love,” Aziraphale whispers, “I know. I do.” His hips twist, his cock leaking in earnest, pitiful anticipation as Crowley lavishes his attentions everywhere but his frightfully rigid shaft. His thighs fall open in wanton display. The very idea, the mere concept of Crowley’s mouth on him, of Crowley taking him in such a way, threatens the last shred of Aziraphale’s composure. Such as it is. His thoughts spiral, a wild swirl of tenderness. The love—the trust—of—
“Has—has your sweat always ssmelled this good? I mean, haa, ngk, yes, actually, knew that,” Crowley says with a choked-off laugh, “but getting to taste. Hell’s ssake.”
Flat on his stomach now.
Aziraphale shimmies himself to slouching further, and shakes with holding himself still. Mercy, but Crowley’s mouth is so close.
Devilish smirk only slightly watery, Crowley bends, and without any further who, licks a long stripe up Aziraphale, base to tip.
The whisper of a wail creaks out of Aziraphale and his cock gives a desperate, pained twitch as his hips lift of their own accord to follow Crowley’s ruby-red mouth as he pulls away.
“The ox rib.”
“Pah—ahm. Pardon?”
“You’re the ox,” Crowley murmurs, head canting sideways up at him, “rib. You know.” His hands squeeze into the plush of Aziraphale’s thighs.
“I—”
Aziraphale giggles outright. Quite deliriously happy.
He remembers a belly full beyond the biologic and the cloying, churning within as he sat with newfound craving, knowledge of what it meant to feast unleashed like a wild thing inside of him. Like the animal itself had twisted round, reformed, knocking at Aziraphale’s ribs in turn: eat of the fat, drink of the sweet. Oh, the honor to partake in the splendor of Her creation. Worship grown teeth. Entirely at the mercy of the havoc of compulsion, and where should have lain sickness stood the resplendent thrill that was feeling his body put to work in such an untried way; the satisfied satiation found in instinctual surrender to a hunger he hadn’t known he held.
And years later, he supposes he himself did find comparison between his first taste of flesh and his first foray into, to use the colloquialism, pleasures of the flesh.
Not to mention the excessive indulgences of their coupling. Foremost, of course, is the fact that they have spent days in bed. (And to that point, for all intents and purposes said coupling is still ongoing.)
Yes. Crowley draws a fair comparison.
How long ago that was! How far they’re come! How remarkable, their shared history. How exciting, to know their story spans millennia and still there is no end to the new experiences they may explore with one another.
“Shut up,” hushes Crowley in a tone that says I love you, too. He lays on the sibilants: “There’ss a certain ssimilitude an’ don’t deny it. What the temptress you turned out to be. Honestly, angel.”
“Oh, Crowley.”
The demon before him smiles softly in answer. He takes Aziraphale’s sex in hand.
All whispers of mirth breathe back sudden and sharp into Aziraphale’s chest.
In his most desperate, frantic fantasies, Aziraphale had found himself wondering, guilt a solid, crushing weight, what it would be like to find himself within the heat of Crowley’s mouth. More often than not such thoughts were followed with furious, mournful tears; it has felt a betrayal, to want so. The only real occasion, once he’d settled into his human appetites, that Aziraphale had found himself ashamed of his desires. The realization that Crowley might imagine in kind was akin to Revelation.
Crowley’s mouth is scalding as he lowers down over him. Around him. Like he's immediately trying to take in as much of him as he can manage.
“Oh—you don’t,” Aziraphale whines as though it pains him but he can’t help the tender concern; Crowley is new to this, he needs to pace himself.
All words fail, however, when Crowley flexes his fingers at the base of him and outright growls around him in response. The vibration and the wet give of Crowley’s cheek as swallows, suckles ever so slightly, pulls a fresh keen from deep within Aziraphale, sparks a pulse of precome across Crowley’s tongue.
Crowley grunts, and poor dear, he does choke a bit—but, though his eyes are closed, he's got that obstinate, dedicated look upon his brow that Aziraphale recognises well. Determined to see to his task.
Vision swimming and body near shivering with keeping still, Aziraphale watches as Crowley gathers himself, backs off slightly before bobbing his head, slower this time in his descent. Inching down, little sounds of effort leading the way.
It dawns quickly on Aziraphale that he should have known better than to doubt the Serpent.
“Beautiful,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Easy, now.”
Rapt, Aziraphale cannot look away from Crowley’s throat, the flex of his jaw as he swallows, as he takes Aziraphale in careful, concentrated increments. His world narrows to the wet heat of Crowley’s mouth, the plump of his tongue upon his cockhead, the vision of his shaft swollen to an aching, passionate red shining smeared with a mingling of Aziraphale’s eagerness and Crowley’s spit as he is consumed, entirely.
A small bead of slick escapes the corner of Crowley’s lips, trails down his chin.
Aziraphale moans, bites his own lips at the sight. His mouth feels suddenly over-wet, glands behind his tongue coming alive with a sympathetic craving.
With a soft hiss of satisfaction, Crowley’s nose touches Aziraphale’s pelvis. He settles, unmoving. He breathes softly; a balmy caress to overheated skin. The modestly trimmed pale curls between Aziraphale’s thighs do little to hide the vision that is Crowley with his lips stretched thin around the width of his cock.
“Look at you,” Aziraphale whispers, voice fragile as spider web in sunlight. “You,” he swallows on a gasp, “oh, you—just, just you. My love.”
Crowley hums a sigh around him. He has not moved. His fingers curl in the sheets, loose. Unhurried and at peace in his resting.
“You’re doing so well. H-holding me. Crowley. Do you, do you want to stay? Like this? Do y-you want me to—” Show you. Guide you. Move you. Touch you. Anything.
And Aziraphale is suddenly painfully aware of his hands. He has not touched him. My, but Aziraphale wants to touch Crowley. Desperately he needs it. As if suddenly sparked with life, there is a growing tremor in his fingers. Quick, jerking movements shake forward towards the crown of Crowley’s flame of hair before he draws back in fists. As if afraid. As if the moment could be shattered like so much glass.
The Love brings tears to his eyes. It’s too much. And the look on Crowley’s face is as peaceful as Aziraphale has ever seen him—the pure, smooth bliss of his brow, the relaxed, gentle hold of his jaw. He looks without a doubt like he would be content to stay just like this, Aziraphale kept warm in his mouth. What a wonder.
Aziraphale covers his face. His lips part in a sob before he can quell it.
Suddenly, the air is almost stinging his cock, bereft without Crowley’s embrace. Crowley pulls off with a regretful hiss, breath stuttering.
“Ah—Ah’z.” Crowley coughs. Aziraphale can hear his voice, wet and worn; can hear how he turns the huff into an easy laugh as he says, “Aziraphale. Hey. Look at me.”
Of course. His eyes snap open. His own breath stutters in turn: Crowley, with the gorgeous yellow of his eyes wide and luminous and boiling with molten fire akin to the stars themselves. Crowley’s heartbeat pounding beneath his panting breast. His lips made as red as his hair, roughened plump and shining.
Crowley’s hand returns to the base of Aziraphale, squeezing slowly over the slick width. His other pets at his quivering middle, fingers through the sparse hair circling his navel.
“Angel,” Crowley says, softly. “Hold me, nnn, my hair. Know you want to.” He ducks his head towards Aziraphale in a manner almost bashful. “Sweetheart. Go on.”
“I-I couldn’t bear it, if,” with a pause, Aziraphale waves a shaking hand, gathering himself. “If it was too much; if my Love really, truly hurt you. Crowley.”
“Days we’ve been at it,” Crowley says, “and days it’s been too much and I keep coming back for more. I like—I love you like this, angel, just like this. I’d stay like this for days more if you were amenable.”
“Oh, I very much am. You like—?”
At Aziraphale’s vague gesture, motioning down to where Crowley has him in hand, stroking idly up, and back, and Crowley’s mouth, glistening, Crowley’s eyes droop and his hips twist, grind into the bed.
“Mm, the ssstretch of you,” Crowley hisses. “S’like it sslot ss-something perfect into place in my brain.
Ah. Aziraphale knows the feeling. “I’m glad.”
“Bet you are,” teases Crowley, and Aziraphale starts to tsk; that’s not what he—
But Crowley only smiles, and kisses the inside of his thigh.
“Though,” he adds, and whispers against heated skin: “even I’m getting a bit peckish, mind.”
Aziraphale hums. Yes. And eventually, he supposed, they will have to keep up appearances. The Closed. Indefinitely. sign will only ward people away for so long. He wouldn’t want them to worry.
“In future, I could keep you like this, and, and, mhn, you could. . . read or, or do your books. I would wait for you, I can be patient, keep you. . . keep you wet and, and ready, and ssafe for me.”
Sighing, Crowley bends, tongues at the slit of him, laps up the fresh slick drooling out of him, lascivious, reverent. He peppers little sucking kisses to the exposed glans, licks flat at his swollen cockhead and Aziraphale whimpers, knees drawing up, heels flexing.
“Ss-so many new experiences for us ahead, yeah?” Crowley murmurs, lips a caress, another dancing kiss along the throbbing ache of him.
“Yes.”
“And out in the world, maybe—maybe we could have that picnic?”
“Oh, Crowley. Just name the day, darling.” There is nothing he would like more, truly, with all that he is. Except, just this second, he needs, “Hah, you mouth. My dear, please. I need your mouth on me, I. . .”
Words drop to a low moan as Crowley, as ever, obliges him, and Aziraphale sinks back into the furnace of Crowley’s palate.
Crowley whimpers, gulps as his throat works rapidly for a moment, fitting Aziraphale again inside him, before he shifts an arm under Aziraphale’s thigh, hefts a heavy leg over his shoulder. Better to spread Aziraphale wider, take his due: an offering, freely given, at the altar of eros. His hamstrings strain with it, a gorgeous reminder of their efforts, of the recent exertion of muscle not set upon for far too long. There is nothing like it, to be held in such a way.
When Crowley returns to his resting place at Aziraphale’s quivering abdomen, slowly, with careful reverence, Aziraphale at last reaches out. Brushes his hand across Crowley’s crown as if in blessing. Slides his other palm across his sweat-damp neck before shaking hands finally settle in the lustrous red of his hair.
“Sublime,” Aziraphale chokes out. “Beyond compare, you are. The touch of you, oh, Crowley, even in my most wild of imaginings did I think, I—I didn’t, the way you feel,” and he has to stop, his voice breaks on a cry.
With a breathy grunt, Crowley shuffles up on his knees; the motion pushes him further down Aziraphale’s cock, nuzzles his head into Aziraphale’s hands. Now free to open air, his own sex bobs heavy and swollen, dripping a damp spot on the bed between his legs.
“There are so many—so many wonderful things I want to show you,” Aziraphale gasps.
And then Crowley moves, and Aziraphale is keenly aware he’ll not last long.
Crowley dives like a man starved millenia—which he has all but told him he very well may be, Aziraphale realizes—and engulfs him in heat again and again, takes him to the root and back with molten, sodden pulls of his mouth. His chin soaking, slick with them both. The complete lack of any self-conscious care given over to stark desire. The sight of Crowley’s thin back, taking the weight of him like nothing. His own need cast aside for the moment in order to see to him, to bring him pleasure.
Gasping, Aziraphale revels in the sheer mess of them: the dampness at his brow, pooling on his chest, in the folds of his stomach. Crowley’s palm upon his middle, fingers indenting in the plush give of him. The wet sounds of their coupling loud in the room.
“Crowley.” Fresh pinpricks of sweat breaking out like gooseflesh as he climbs to his peak. “You need—need to know, oh I’m nearly—”
As an acknowledgment, Crowley moans, makes a show of it. He sucks, hard, makes a veritable feast of him, unabashed. His hand returns to squeeze and twist at the base of him, dancing down to play at his bollocks, slides through slick to tease and pull and break new, aching noises from Aziraphale’s chest.
A finger slides under him, trails behind, over his puckered entrance in a tease. Crowley bends a thumb to apply the lightest pressure and Aziraphale’s eyes roll back, whining high and thready. His hands clench dangerously in Crowley’s hair.
The pressure builds. Crowley moans, hungry, possessive, as he presses harder, as Aziraphale bucks against his touch. The Love crests.
He releases Crowley. His hands fly behind him to the headboard as he arches, crying out.
A resounding crack shouts, sudden.
Oh, Hell, Aziraphale thinks, distantly, before he registers the orgasm seizing him.
He holds himself as still as he can, shaking with effort as his hips are taken by tremors. His hand finds Crowley’s on his chest and he twists their fingers together, gasps as he empties himself down his lover’s throat.
And Crowley digs his grip in and holds, grunts and takes as much he can before pulling off, coughing.
“Crowley—!” Aziraphale starts, shrill, all concern.
A million blasphemes bloom and fizzle out on Aziraphale’s tongue.
The skies could open up, all the Grace in Heaven could bear down upon him, the Lord Herself could at last deign to show Herself, speak to Aziraphale, and he would, without any hesitation, shush Her for the sight of Crowley as he savors his spoils of their carnality. His jaw works in a way reminiscent of one at a tasting, moving the morsel around one’s mouth to test, or relish, the sample. His lips have been made raw and red and slack, connected by a thread of seed to the tip of Aziraphale’s flagging sex.
He swallows thickly, laughing as Aziraphale moans and another pulse of come hits his chin, adds to the mess of him.
With a decidedly smug expression, he mends the break in the bed with an idle wave.
An unwieldy moan taking him, Aziraphale hauls Crowley up into a kiss. Finds himself licking at his chin, mouthing him clean and sucking on his tongue, tang of his own spend mixed with Crowley’s taste a heavy ambrosia to his palate.
“Good f-for, good for you, too, hey?” Crowley stutters. Hoarsely. The tongue that flicks out to lap at his lips is forked.
Aziraphale gets a hand round him. “You have no idea,” he gasps. “You’re so good, so good to me.”
The wet of his cock is sopping, gliding through Aziraphale’s grip smooth, Crowley anointing his palm, his fingers, his wrist.
“Aziraphale,” he begs, mouth upturned. An offering, his desperation raw, wild, and they both shake when Aziraphale bends to him, answers his plea with a consuming kiss.
There is no word for the noise that comes out of Crowley, then; a sound that’s been in the back of his throat for six thousand years. Aziraphale grips his hair with his free hand, opens his mouth and licks into him, squeezes around the handsome cock in his hand with a twist.
“We’ll go on that picnic. Sit on a park bench and break our fast together, like we have countless times, only this time with your hand held in mine, perhaps,” Aziraphale says against his lips, petting down Crowley’s flank. “You could even sleep, a bit; I would watch over you.”
He swirls at the slit of Crowley’s sex with the pad of his thumb, rubbing the glob of slick gathered there. He paints the head until it shines, red and desperate and leaking.
Crowley keens, stutters his hips into Aziraphale’s hands, squirms his face deeper into the crook of his neck.
“I could read to you,” continues Aziraphale. “The two of us in the daylight, in front of humanity and the wide open sky, oh. . .”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“I have.” The hunger in his own voice is a ravenous animal knocking behind his ribs.
Aziraphale snaps his fingers behind Crowley’s back and a container drops to the bedspread. Crowley’s eyes flick to it and back, and he smiles against Aziraphale’s mouth.
With a tilt of his head, Crowley kisses Aziraphale across his shoulder, nips playfully at the flesh of his upper arm before rising to capture his mouth, murmuring soft against his lips: “That how you want me?”
“Oh, yes, please,” Aziraphale breathes.
“Insatiable.”
“Only for you.”
Crowley snorts.
“Only you,” he repeats, fiercely.
“If the lads at the Club could—could, hng, s-see you now.”
“Hush.”
With a wince, Crowley shifts away from Aziraphale’s hand. He gets his grip under him and drags him, in one fluid, staggering show of strength, onto his lap.
Breath escapes Aziraphale in a high gasp. His legs fall open. “B-Brunch at the British Museum.”
“Mmnh, grab some delectable little morsels at the market jus-just as ssun, sets,” Crowley hisses. The cap of the container pops. One slick finger nudges inside Aziraphale’s entrance.
Aziraphale brings a trembling palm to rest at Crowley’s back, trailing to the dip at his waist and applying delicate, insistent pressure, urging him closer. Time treads slow. The damp of the oil steadily grows as Crowley continues his ministrations.
“Walk together through the wild meadows of Wimbledon Common. Summer boating on the Serpentine,” Aziraphale murmurs, pausing as his mouth falls open, as Crowley grinds into him. “For, ah, for a more f-formal affair, the Belvedere. And we could go on a drive down—”
Two fingers, now, deep and twisting deeper inside the core of him, the sounds of Crowley’s thrusting a fortissimo of the unpracticed over-use of slick reverberant in the quiet of the room. It makes the matter all the more wondrous, really, the altogether mortal mess of it. The feel of excess wetting his skin, the smooth press of a warm palm, fingers crooked just so. Crowley lighting up Aziraphale like the night sky, the two of them together, just as they flared those stars to life all those millenia ago.
“Hmm?”
“Down to, ah, we, we can revisit with new eyes, certainly—it’s been ages since we’ve been to Cardiff Castle, yes? The resplendent banqueting hall! The murals, as I recall, have some familiar f-facesnngh, faster, just like that, Crowley, yes—!”
“If, hngk’re in the area, could watch the sun rise on Devil’sss Bridge,” Crowley grunts, and Aziraphale arches as Crowley crooks his fingers inside him just right.
“Keep—keep on—”
“Angel. I have you. I’d drive anywhere with you. An-anywhere you want to go. I’ll get you there.”
“You do,” Azirpahale laughs. “Oh, you will. You are.”
“In our car.”
“In our car.” The words come out in a high, thready moan, and Crowley grinds just so, in a way that makes Aziraphale scrape nails light down his back.
Another twist of clever digits at his prostate.
“Dine at the Ritz. We already do but I could introduce you as my, my—”
“Gentleman caller—”
“Sweetheart, suitor—”
“Beau—”
“Inamorato—”
“Your y-young man—”
It’s an attempt at cheek, but any measure of control is betrayed by the stuttering of Crowley’s tongue, the tremors of him, the way he has to pause his thrusts.
“That sounds lovely,” Aziraphale groans, wraps a leg around Crowley at the waist, relishing the stretch, the slip of skin on skin, the hiss of the growl born low in Crowley’s throat. It is transfixing, the bob as he swallows thick. The teeth at his lip, the desperate way he clenches his eyes shut.
The sharp pinch Aziraphale feels from his fingertips.
“Claws! Claws, Crowley!”
With a yelp, Crowley’s touch retreats from inside him, “Shit, sorry sorrysorry,” he gasps, wild panic on his face. Aziraphale bites back a hurt sound as his body clenches reflexibly against nothing, focusing on Crowley as his dear demon shakes his hand out, as the points and the black stain fade from his nails.
“No harm done.”
A matter dealt with, over in seconds, and while Aziraphale would chuckle and move on, play up a petulant pout at the loss of him, Crowley looks awful, face fallen, brows knit close as he moves to speak—apologize—
Aziraphale surges up, grabs Crowley just under his ears, twines fingers up in the flickering flame of his hair and pulls him down to meet him in a kiss. No time to waste, he moans into his mouth, licks him open with fervor and gets a hand round the handsome length of him. Hardness starting to wane, and that won’t do; Aziraphale palms at the furrowed skin at the crown, thumbs at his exposed glans, spreading slick in a twist over the clammy wet, coaxing him back to readiness.
Sure enough, Crowley bucks into his hand. His voice comes out in a whine. “Hehh, Hell’s Below—you’re okay? S-ssure?”
“Mm, more than ever, you lovely thing. If you think your loss of control is anything but the most, most attractive. . .”
With a harsh breath, Azirpahale moves his free hand to stroke himself, once, squeezing at just under the head. His own erection nearly returned. Spurred on, in fact, and mightily so, but such clear otherworldly evidence of Crowley’s desire. He bites at his plump lip, wiggles his shoulders back into their bed, makes a show in reveling in the pleasure. A right hedonist. When he releases Crowley’s cockstand, he cannot help but bring his fingers to his mouth to taste.
“Do carry on,” he says.
Crowley, his own mouth chewed red, blinks, brings a hand to carefully trace back to his handiwork, smears the slick of him, caresses the stretched puff of his rim. Knuckle resting at his perineum.
“Greedy.”
Any counter fades from his mind as Crowley takes himself in hand—Aziraphale sees him stroke himself once, shake himself bodily—before he nudges the thick tip of himself to Aziraphale’s entrance, a pressure over the flutter of him. Aziraphale’s hips shudder, and Crowley flows closer on his knees with a whimper of his own. Unnaturally smooth in his movements, just a fraction of the occult creeps into the air. Aziraphale sees him blink once, twice rapidly, scales flickering across a sharp cheekbone.
“Stay with me,” Aziraphale bids, bearing down on the heat of him, squirming against the palm at his thigh in eagerness. “I—I’m ready, I need you—”
The initial touch of him is near scalding. Wave after wave of Love as he inches inside.
Aziraphale clings him closer, spreads himself obscenely wide to welcome Crowley, bring Crowley’s trembling whipcord thighs bracketed inside his own softness. The sight of him, his sharpness, the prominent hipbones held amidst Azirpahale’s bulk, makes him moan, loud and low. Right where he’s meant to be.
“Crowley. Crowley. Crowley.”
“R-right.” He is frozen. Panting, high and tight.
Aziraphale traces his ribs with one hand, brushes back his fringe with the other. “Oh, love.”
Eyes overtaken by a stunning amber, wide, feral and animal, Crowley’s voice comes out with a tinge of hysteria, “y-y-you—” like a skipping record. “Angel.”
Like the night before, their first, that first breach of him inside Aziraphale, when Crowley had choked out “I love you,” again and again, “I love you,” a dam shattering, like it was painful, like he couldn’t stop, all clenched teeth and tremulous, “I love you, I love you, since the Garden I’ve loved you, Aziraphale.”
And Aziraphale was all grasping limbs, slipping as he clutched at him, sweat slick, “Oh! No, y-you—you haven’t—”
“I think. . . In some way. Yess. You sssur-surprised me, the s-sword, and-and you were kind to me. Sheltering me. No matter what had come before, I was sstill,” he had shuddered, “Demon. At the beginning of the world. And you sheltered me from the rain.”
“Always. Always,” Aziraphale had said. “They’ll not touch you again,” he’d proclaimed, eyes blinking across his skin, the ghost of wings sprouting from every surface, and Crowley had broken against him with a wail, wedging himself closer to Aziraphale even as he softened, fitting himself to that warm clench of him, and Aziraphale had cooed and kissed him and held him and kissed him and kissed him until he’d readied anew. Until he slid inside, mere minutes later—the thrilling benefits of the ethereal—smoothed by slick and his own spend.
And they had made Love.
Now, Aziraphale says, “I need you inside me. Mhm, my—my dear man,” and rolls his hips. Crowley slips against him, and Aziraphale forces himself not to chase it. Let Crowley pace himself. Let him drive the dance, as it were. The Love in the air is so thick the room shimmers with it. Their coupling is an entirely new experience now, he realizes, with Crowley able to feel his Love so keenly in turn.
Aziraphale’s hand trails from his ribs, nails petting at the sparse hair on his chest, thumb catching at a nipple.
With a sound low in his throat, Crowley cups his backside, lifts; Aziraphale’s face heats at the wildness, the deliciousness of such base desire as Crowley pulls at him, holds him open by the thigh to look at where they’re only just joined. The stretch of him around the fat head of Crowley’s cock. His own cock, heavy, smears at his stomach. The angle he’s held open adds to the obscene pull at his rim, sensitive flesh fluttering, beckoning Crowley inside further.
Crowley looks a man bespelled. Transfixed.
“Az’phhahl, an-angel, I can’t, the Love, it’s. . .”
“I know, I—but you can,” Aziraphale says, patiently, though every inch of him feels like one long wail. He clenches around Crowley, a being of pure instinct. “I’m right here, my love. I f-feel it too.”
With a shudder, Crowley bows his head. Sweat drips down his nose; Aziraphale feels a drop fall against his collarbone. His looks fit to discorporate, wrecked in the best of ways, skin gone ruddy, uneven patches of flush on his cheeks, his neck, the center of his sternum. Aziraphale can practically see his heart rabbiting.
The waves of affection undulate like coils, like Aziraphale can feel the serpentine form of him contained only just, the barrier between his corporations at risk of dissolve.
Crowley’s voice is high, reedy, and he doesn’t look away from their joining: “What were we talking about?”
“New experiences,” Aziraphale says fiercely, hands clutching at his back, clinging to the shifting scales under his palms.
“Want to do right by you.”
“You are, Crowley, oh, oh, please, I cannot stand this waiting, I must be full of you this instant. To make love with both of us feeling it, our Love for one another, I had only dreamed—ah, and Crowley, all the restaurants I’ve been meaning to try, and, you, just there—”
Crowley’s hips twitch closer, he slides in further than before.
The indent of his abdomen cupping Aziraphale’s cock is holier comfort than the Divine itself. Aziraphale cannot help but grind against the solid weight, the bristles of hair that trail Crowley’s middle against the head of him streaked with wet as he leaks in wanton fête.
“Ah, and, and all the books I’ve never read and all the plays I’ve never seen and the records I’ve never listened to, all with you, all, oh, my God,” he gasps, blasphemy and a prayer both, and then rapidly makes a mental note on how it makes Crowley moan and rut into him. Oh. What a delight.
When Crowley slides inside him whole, at last, he curses in a tongue that, were it not for Aziraphale’s own inherent angelic wards, would have set the curtains alight. There is the now familiar frisson of the Infernal down his spine as they are joined; he wonders what it feels like, for Crowley to feel his own Ethereal essence as well. Fresh tears well in his eyes, echoed in Crowley’s own.
“To share with you, all, all the tastes and sights and sounds of the world. I want them all.”
Crowley sighs, rests his hips flush to him, and says against his ear, “Let’s have breakfast first, angel.”
All Aziraphale can do is nod. Thrice, quick, his head shakes his assent and Crowley draws out of him, grinds back inside with a slicked ease. The pressure inside, heated length of him fit just so, lighting up his entire corporation, his whole body sparking like nebulas bursting. He has never felt so full.
His arms clutch Crowley’s shoulders, drag over his back and through his hair as Crowley pumps his hips, agonizingly slow but firm, the sound of their joining growing louder, the smacking wet of flesh reverberating.
“We’ve had breakfast together, yeah, but not here.” Crowley drops a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to Aziraphale’s knee.
Whatever words Aziraphale had fracture to groans as his leg is pushed to his chest, as Crowley shuffles closer, bends him to his will.
“Not in our bookshop,” he continues. “Not after daah-days in our bed, not after the two of us lit-literally made Love. Nng, iss this alright?” The ask comes sudden. His hips snap forward.
Aziraphale twists under him, pants openly when Crowley finds the angle that makes his vision go white and hot and his cock drool an anticipatory pulse between them.
“Angel. Is this—am I—?”
“You’re perfect,” he coos, bearing down on him.
Keeping his eyes open upon such an onslaught of sensation, pleasure singing to his every atom, is a miracle itself, but it is worth it to watch Crowley’s golden gaze turns positively glittering, as he sparkles in pride with the sheer suffusion of joy that his praise brings him, that their mingled Love bestows. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles, beatific, in what Aziraphale is sure is a mirror of his own tender expression.
“Breakfast,” adds Aziraphale, with a breathy sigh. “Oh, yes. That’ll be just the thing, I think.”
And how splendid, to have all of time spread out before them to explore. To see with new eyes all of Earth’s delights, all the world’s natural little miracles theirs to discover, to explore unhindered, at their leisure. Both outside their room, and inside it. Free to love in the way of men. At last. The Love between them—the Love they can both feel, oh—is a wrap of pleasure; of promise; of the security and surety of their commitment to the world and to each other. A blessing brought forth by form, by nature shaped by will; a weighted anchor. An awning to shelter.