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There’s something about the quality of Crowley’s skin in the waning sunlight. Some residual shimmer from the stars he once held in his hands that grasps the last light of the day and casts it back out in golden iridescence. As many times as Aziraphale has been fortunate enough to see it, he finds it no less entrancing every time.
Crowley never seems to notice the radiance he holds, but he can hardly be blamed for the oversight, occupied as he usually is in these moments. Aziraphale takes in the sight of his lover beneath him and revels in the warm, golden glow of his body.
“My love, have I ever told you that you still hold the stars?”
Crowley looks back over his shoulder at Aziraphale, his goldenrod gaze perplexed, and raises an ever-expressive brow.
“Wot?”
Aziraphale moves one of his hands from where it has been holding Crowley up off the mattress since the demon’s legs gave out some time ago and runs it up the length of his spine. The gentle caress has Crowley arching like a cat and wiggling his arse where it rests flush against the cradle of Aziraphale’s hips.
“Angel, move.”
Aziraphale smirks and his touch between Crowley’s shoulders firms as he presses him down flat into the bed.
“I don’t believe I shall. I was telling you something. I think I should rather prefer it if you listen whilst I do.”
Another, more demanding wriggle of that delectable handful of a derriere, and then, a put-upon groan when the desired result of such temptation is not forthcoming. Aziraphale runs his other hand up Crowley’s side, making sure to count and caress each lovely valley between ribs as he does so, before grasping each of Crowley’s hands in his own, stretching the demon’s arms up and out to the sides and pinning his wrists.
“You.”
A gentle kiss to Crowley’s nape, where vermillion hair curls against Aziraphale’s lips as he slowly pulls away from the welcoming heat of Crowley’s body beneath him.
“Embody.”
When Aziraphale laves the side of Crowley’s neck with the drag of his tongue, he is rewarded with a barely audible whimper.
“The Heavens.”
He breathes this last into Crowley’s ear, his voice roughened with desire and restraint as he bears Crowley into the mattress with the inexorable force of his slow thrust. Aziraphale pauses, and breathes deeply once he is again fully seated, attempting to reign himself in as Crowley shudders deliciously against him. Another soft press of lips against the side of Crowley’s neck, just where one reddish-brown freckle lies in sharp relief against faintly luminous skin, tracing his tongue down to the sharp jut of a shoulder, ghosting hot breath down over Crowley’s deltoid.
“Shall I tell you then my love? Here, and here, and here…”
Down a taut and trembling bicep while Aziraphale rolls his hips. Sensuous punctuation for softly spoken words.
“ Cygnus , stamped into your skin, and what a beautiful swan you are for me. All long lines and effortless elegance.”
Crowley gasps as he feels Aziraphale map out the great Northern Cross against his skin. He tries to buck up into Aziraphale’s body, unmoored by the tender affection.
“Angel, hhhnngg, please .”
Aziraphale only tightens his grip on Crowley’s wrists.
“I mean to tell you how lovely you are this evening. You, my dear serpent, will let me.”
This last is emphasized with a sharp thrust that abruptly reminds Crowley of just how much caution Aziraphale exercises with him when they’re physically intimate. The realization, combined with the force and angle of that last salvo, leaves Crowley reeling.
“ Haaaaaa, ok, ok, fffuuuuu—”
Aziraphale continues his leisurely exploration of Crowley’s freckles, choosing his favorites from amongst the constellations limned into his lover’s corporation. He licks and nibbles and trails his mouth along every bit of skin he can reach, tasting stardust and damp earth and the unique, hot cardamom and spice that is so quintessentially Crowley .
“ Vulpecula , you wily and clever thing, full of tricks and mischief like the vulpine creature your glorious locks call to mind.”
Aziraphale’s mouth traces the right angle of The Fox from the thin skin behind his ear, down and over to the back of his neck, where he marks the daintily colored spot of skin that stands in for Anser with his teeth.
“ Serpens , smooth and quick, so very slinky . Just. Like. These. Hips.”
Crowley is lost in the feeling of Aziraphale’s mouth on his ribs, in the vulnerable space just below his arm as he defines the astronomical sign with tongue and lips. Aziraphale’s voice describing his erstwhile virtues in the language of the heavens. Aziraphale’s body inside his own, hot and full and impossibly hard. Pressing down and in, emphasizing the syllables and rhythm of each word. Lighting up his nerve endings like the very stars he is naming. Crowley feels his own cock throb in sympathy and whines, pressing his body down against the bed, searching for the relief of friction, some grounding sensation to bring him back to earth as he begins to shake apart. Ever attentive, Aziraphale releases his wrists to intertwine their fingers and lays part of the warm weight of his body along Crowley’s back.
“Shhhh my lovely, I have you. Breathe with me.”
Crowley feels Aziraphale’s chest expand against his back and his own body releases an explosive breath in response. He sucks a desperate, heaving, lungful of air in, wallowing in the sensation of Aziraphale filling his nose and trickling over his palate as he opens his mouth to more fully taste the notes of bergamot, vanillin, aged leather and line-dried linen that comprise the angel’s scent.
“Breathe, dear heart. Out now.”
And Crowley feels his corporation liquify into the bed under the heady influence of the soporific warmth of Aziraphale’s body blanketing his own.
“In, with me.”
Robin’s egg blue button-down shirts fluttering on a clothesline in the summer sun. Ink acid on old vellum from the book press. Aziraphale’s good braces, soft and supple, the same color as newly turned dirt. Fresh brewed Earl Grey tea…
Crowley is calm, he is held, he is whole. Warm and safe and cherished. He lets out the next breath on a content sigh, his pleasure is no longer an all-consuming inferno, but a balmy and swelling tide bearing him inevitably forward and gently under. Aziraphale feels the lithe form under his own go loose and pliant and bends his head to place a soft kiss on Crowley’s sweat-streaked temple.
“There we are, so very good for me.”
Aziraphale feels Crowley’s breath hitch on the affirmation and smiles against damp skin. He pulls his fingers free of Crowley’s and bands one arm across his chest and shoulders, pulling him flush against his own body and up into his lap as he sits back on his heels. Aziraphale guides Crowley’s hands up to his arm and tilts Crowley’s head back to rest against his shoulder, baring the lovely length of his neck and exposing the lean lines of his torso and thighs.
“Yes, that’s right dearest, hold on to me now. Oh…just look at the sight of you, my love.”
Crowley’s chest is flushed red and sweat runs in rivulets down his twitching abdomen to where his cock juts up from between his hips, hard and leaking. Aziraphale delights in the smooth glide of his hand over sweat-slickened skin and through coarse, damp hair as he runs his palm across the planes of Crowley’s chest and takes a pebbled nipple between his fingers, tugging gently.
“More beautiful than anything in the heavens, the altar at which I worship, see it here, laid ready before me, Ara .”
Aziraphale’s fingers dance across the scattered marks on Crowley’s clavicles and down his body, shaping that celestial shrine, until he, finally , wraps his elegantly manicured hand around Crowley’s aching cock. Aziraphale sweeps his thumb over the head, gathering the beaded moisture and stroking his hand down the length with a deft twist. Crowley gasps open-mouthed into the side of Aziraphale’s neck and clenches where the angel is buried to the hilt inside of him.
“Angel. Mon divin cartographe.”
This time, it is Aziraphale who falters. Groaning, he thrusts up hard into the welcoming, velvet heat of Crowley’s body as the arm around Crowley’s chest flexes and brings him down to meet Aziraphale’s hips. The unstoppable force that is the tide of their combined pleasure has met the immovable object of Aziraphale’s will and that bulwark has at last begun to crumble.
“Crowley… ah …darling, I can’t…I’m not… please . Let me? Ah, let me… ”
Aziraphale is shaking with the effort to hold himself back, near incoherent and struggling desperately to still himself where they are tightly joined, even as he continues to stroke Crowley with a firm, unhurried grip. Aziraphale feels teeth in the grin Crowley presses against his jaw and the hissed benediction that slides into his ear may be the sweetest song he has ever heard.
“Yeeeesssssss.”
Aziraphale is falling up, up, up into the gravity well of Crowley’s bright heat and slick skin and damp breath. Chasing the collapse of the building pressure between them at a ruthless pace. It feels as though every atom in his body is hurtling towards an event horizon at the speed of light and standing still all at once. He feels Crowley’s entire body grow taut and clench around him in pulsing waves as his sinuous spine bows outward and he heaves against the arm Aziraphale has clamped like a vise around him with the force of his release. The moment he hears his name leave Crowley’s lips in a guttural cry of completion, Aziraphale is gone, slipping into the incandescent nothingness of the singularity. There is no sound, no finite sense of self, only an overwhelming tide of satisfied delight so infinitely brilliant it almost burns as the world bursts outward in fractured shards of light.
Crowley is being pulled down, further and further under the surface into a deep well of bliss, a crushing free-fall dive of pleasure until the point of catastrophic failure is reached. Everything in his body draws to a white-hot point. Pinpricks of light in the darkness behind his eyelids, he is distantly aware of his body straining against something inviolable, and then…an implosion. Crowley can feel himself grow hoarse with the effort of his vocal cords, but a primordial lassitude is already spreading through his limbs, and he can’t manage to find the strength to care. He knows only that he is safe, warmed inside and out, securely cradled as he floats in the inky void.
Time passes and he becomes aware of mottled light seeping through his hazy consciousness. Crowley cracks an eye open and sees that they have somehow made it safely to horizontal, legs still tangled together. Aziraphale is behind him, arm still loosely held around Crowley’s body. He cranes his neck a bit to see that the angel’s chest is rising and falling like a bellows and that the blown pupils of his wide eyes are fixed sightlessly on the ceiling, tears making tracks through the salt sweat on his face. Crowley reaches up and runs a gentle thumb over the damp swell of a beloved cheek.
“Angel?”
Crowley’s voice cracks and he grimaces a bit as he clears his throat and rolls over to gather Aziraphale into his arms before trying again.
“Hey, sweetheart, you with me? Y’alright there?”
He gives Aziraphale a gentle squeeze and watches curiously, a bit concerned while the angel’s breathing begins to slow and his eyelashes flutter as he comes back to the world.
If that’s what it looks like when he separates my essence from my corporation, it’s no wonder he’s always so damned fussy after.
Crowley arranges them a bit more snugly together and runs his fingers through Aziraphale’s (currently overgrown) blond curls, gently detangling some of the wild disarray. Aziraphale blinks once, twice, and rolls his head to the side to nuzzle their noses together. Crowley smirks at him while quietly breathing a sigh of relief.
“Welcome back.”
Aziraphale huffs, whether in amusement or mild irritation Crowley isn’t actually sure, but he pulls Crowley impossibly closer and lays his head on Crowley’s chest, tucked securely under his chin. Crowley is a bit out of his element. While things can occasionally be a bit… intense between the two of them, he rarely sees Aziraphale so discombobulated— ugh, I did not just think that word —afterwards. So he goes with his instincts and cinches his arms a bit tighter, rubbing his cheek into Aziraphale’s curls.
“Are you, though? Alright, I mean. Didn’t break the only decent angel out the of the lot, did I?”
Aziraphale chuckles a bit wetly where his face is resolutely pressed into Crowley’s chest.
“Now don’t discount Muriel so, you know for a fact they’re a lovely individual.”
“Pedant.”
“Scoundrel.”
Aziraphale lets out a heavy sigh and tries to sort his thoughts into something that resembles coherence. For himself as much as Crowley.
“Dearest, did you know that sometimes, if you catch the light just right of an evening, you, um, well, you glow, darling.”
Crowley blinks slowly. That is…not what he expected. At all.
“I. What?”
Aziraphale traces aimless patterns on Crowley’s skin as he attempts to find language for the complex knot of emotions and thoughts he needs to articulate.
“The first few times I thought it was a trick of the light, or that maybe you were playing a prank, or trying some new look with cosmetics. But then, you just never seemed aware of it, not in the slightest. You truly are among the loveliest of all creations. Here, amongst the heavens, anywhere really.”
Crowley preens a bit at that, then shakes his head in fond exasperation and nudges Aziraphale with his chin.
“You’re biased. Anyway, out with it. The glowworm routine isn’t what’s got your knickers twisted.”
Aziraphale snorts indelicately at the euphemism and slaps at Crowley’s abdomen in admonition.
“Perhaps, but I’m not wrong. Anyway. It’s just that in those moments, I am reminded of all you’ve seen and done and created. I think of the splendor and grandeur that you have held between your fingers, of how the very stars above are writ into the fabric of you, and I wonder sometimes if I might dare too greatly. If I am reaching for something above my station or beyond my worth. I’ve made so many mistakes Crowley. With humanity, Heaven, you. I am quite simply in awe of you and find myself feeling more than a little as if I’m a thief who’s made off with something that isn’t meant to be his.”
“Oh, angel…”
Crowley scooches them both up a tad against the headboard so that they can sit up a bit while they talk. He tilts Aziraphale’s chin up and kisses his upturned nose before catching and holding his gaze.
“You don’t think you deserve to have what you want.”
Crowley posits it as a statement, not a question, and he’s honestly surprised this hasn’t come up sooner. For all that Aziraphale never skips ordering dessert and has his bespoke wardrobe and dragon’s hoard of literature and baubles, the angel adheres to his own brand of asceticism. It’s less to do with piety and more to do with guilt and Crowley dearly wants to strangle every single person, human or otherwise, that made Aziraphale feel like he failed some test of worth or worthiness and that he doesn’t ever deserve to have a full measure of joy as a result. Someone only knows that the both of them have their issues, but Crowley will be damned (again) if he doesn’t set the record straight on this particular matter right this instant.
“Aziraphale, you don’t earn happiness.”
“I’m not sure I follow, dear.”
“Do you think that a child has any less right to find joy in…I dunno, stomping in puddles if they got into trouble the day before?”
Aziraphale blinks at him owlishly before responding.
“I don’t suppose so?”
“Did you ever decide to not bless someone who really needed it because they hadn’t been a perfect saint their whole life?”
“Well…no. I should think that would have been counterproductive.”
“Should a student who doesn’t have perfect marks be failed altogether?”
“Well now you’re just being ridiculous, Crowley, of course not.”
“Alright then, answer me this. If perfection isn’t necessary to have accomplishment, forgiveness, or joy, then what, exactly, is the cost for being allowed to have those things?”
Aziraphale opens his mouth to respond, closes it, opens it again and sits there for a moment as his brows begin to knit together. Crowley glances down and sees that he has twisted his hands together so tightly that the skin is beginning to blanche. He gently takes Aziraphale’s abused digits into his own hands and holds them away from each other after sweetly kissing the fingertips.
“What’s going on in there, angel? Wanna tell me about it?”
Aziraphale feels as if he is standing on the edge of an understanding that somewhat resembles a cliff. He is not certain if he will fall, or fly. He cannot see past the clouds below to know if the view is worth the peril of being so near the precipice. He knows only that the way he sees his existence and himself will change irrevocably and that there is a better than passing chance he will be very upset about some things as a result.
“I just…I don’t know that I, personally, deserve…”
“No.”
“What?”
“S’not a quid pro quo sort of a thing.”
“Crowley, forgive me, but I’m failing to grasp what it is you’re attempting to get at.”
Crowley let out a frustrated groan as his head thunked back against the headboard. Words were Aziraphale’s gig, but he desperately wanted to get this right. He absentmindedly rubbed his thumbs between the knuckles of Aziraphale’s hands where he held them as he thought, satisfying both the need to fidget and to reassure as Aziraphale waited patiently for him to sort his thoughts.
“It’s not a carrot versus a stick sort of a situation.”
A blond eyebrow quirks upward in a minor fit of pique.
“Oh?”
“Ugh. Words. Alright…rejection’s not the penance for bollocksing things up sometimes. And acceptance isn’t the shiny trophy you win for meeting some arbitrary set of standards. It’s not supposed to be all about punishment and reward. It’s not all or nothing. You can make mistakes and still deserve to be happy. You can screw up an’ still have joy. Love isn’t transactional, angel. ‘Least it’s not s’posed to be.”
“Love isn’t…?”
There are very few times in Aziraphale’s existence where he has “drawn a blank” as it were. This is one of them. As he holds Crowley’s words in his mind and turns them this way and that, examining every angle and nuance, he feels himself step towards that precipice, tilting as he looks over the edge.
“Love isn’t transactional, angel. ‘Least it’s not s’posed to be.”
It’s not supposed to be.
Crowley feels Aziraphale stiffen in his arms as the words seem to finally come to rest somewhere in that labyrinthian mind and watches the angel’s face closely as millennia of memories and experiences are upended in the space of a few heartbeats. Eyes the color of the sea at sunrise meet his own and what Crowley sees there both breaks his heart and gives him hope. Aziraphale is hurt, and he is confused, but he is also angry. Crowley sees that wounded and righteous indignation building like a coming storm in those eyes and he pulls Aziraphale’s head to his shoulder and wraps his arms around him before it can break.
“I know, I know. I’m so sorry.”
There is a great shuddering inhale and then a broken sob as Aziraphale comes to terms with this new and fundamental truth. Crowley continues to hold him as a world that was drastically different than the one of a few hours before settles into place around them.
Aziraphale is sorting through the memories of his long existence, wrestling with how they fit into this new paradigm. Much like the books that line the shelves of his shop, his thoughts are long overdue for an organizational shakeup, and as he gazes upon a sharp and beloved profile, the shape of that order begins to take place.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
Aziraphale’s voice is soft and reverent, and the fingers he trails across Crowley’s cheek are even more so.
“It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
Over a high brow to ease the furrowed anxiety that is permanently etched into his lover’s countenance.
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Down to cup the shape of a jaw that Aziraphale knows better than his own, so that he can draw Crowley into a kiss. One that is made more of breath than lips, more of promise than passion. It is at once a benediction and a plea, an act of worship and of welcome.
“Crowley, my love, please know when I tell you that you are lovely and beloved and precious to me above all other things, that it is an immutable truth. I love all that you are, have been, and shall be. Thank you for sharing the gift of yourself with me.”
Crowley leans his cheek into Aziraphale’s warm palm as he tips their foreheads together.
“Y’r’ welcome, angel. No one else I’d rather share me with. I love you too. Not despite who you are, or any mistakes you’ve made, but because of them. I love the whole of you. Every single fussy, imperfect, absolutely incredible bit. And that’s not changing. We’re neither of us perfect, an’ we don’t have to be.”
“No,” Aziraphale notes with something like wonder in his voice, “we don’t.”