Work Text:
It was a flimsy excuse. Aziraphale knew this, and knew it showed in his red cheeks and twisting hands and stammer, but he babbled it out anyway. Something about a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild he thought Crowley might have accidentally (or “accidentally”) taken back to his flat, when obviously they both knew Aziraphale had been the rightful purchaser two centuries back, and the newer vintages from that domaine just weren’t quite the same, were they? Anyway, would Crowley mind terribly if he popped round to his place to get it, wouldn’t take two shakes—
Crowley sniffed. “Course. We can have it there.”
And that was that. Three days later, Aziraphale stood squirming on the threshold of his hereditary enemy’s flat.
He’d only ever seen the place once, the day Armageddon hadn’t happened, and those had been quite extraordinarily extenuating circumstances. Now he had his bookshop back, good as new, and Crowley had resumed regular visits there, so Aziraphale had no reason to brighten a demon’s doorstep ever again.
Except that he itched to.
For months now, there’d been a restless churning pull inside his chest. They’d had the Ritz, yes, but then things had been largely the same as before, and Aziraphale felt, well... disappointed.
He’d taken to inventing increasingly silly reasons to meet up, and to prolonging those meetings even as they became more frequent, picking tipsy little tiffs he knew Crowley would react to so that the two of them could keep debating about otters’ social behaviour or the Franco-Prussian War for a few more hours. It just never felt like enough, somehow. He supposed he was lonely, without his work, missing the divine connection to Her that it represented—however twisted and bureaucratic that had become. He was unmoored, now, an angel at sea. He felt listless, and cold, and hungry in a way that no amount of French puff pastry could satisfy (try as he might).
He didn’t know exactly what he wanted. Except that he wanted more, and possibly closer, and definitely something to do with Crowley.
And so he found himself stepping inside the Mayfair flat for the second time in his long existence. He took it in differently now, no longer distracted by doomsday goings-on, and sank a little. With its relentless grey, its sharpened corners and near-complete lack of any material objects, the place looked as chilly and barren as he felt. He had a sudden urge to grab Crowley’s arm, as if otherwise he might float away into the blankness.
So it came as a relief when he spotted the glorious wall of green around the corner. He hadn’t forgotten the plants, of course—angels had excellent memories—it was just that he still found them rather surprising. In all the cool grey, they burst forth with as much life as the Earth-loving demon who tended them.
He hurried through the absurd revolving door toward a particularly verdant ficus. “Oh, aren’t your houseplants doing just marvellously!”
Behind him, Crowley hissed. “Don’t say that, they’ll get soft. Practically wilting already under your beneficent gaze.”
“Nonsense,” Aziraphale tutted, reaching out to pet a glossy leaf. “Everything thrives with a little care and love—"
Crowley, suddenly very close beside him, swatted his hand away. Aziraphale started at the proximity and the touch, but Crowley was busy inspecting the nearly-touched leaf, eyes narrowed, hand still up in threat or defense.
When he seemed satisfied, he turned back around. “Right,” he said, the last consonant sharpened to a point. “I’ll go look for that Lafite. Don’t touch anything.” He jabbed a finger and two glaring yellow eyes toward the plants. “And you lot, don’t even think about slacking off. I’ll know if you do.”
Aziraphale watched Crowley saunter off to locate the definitely-not-fabricated bottle of wine. Then he leaned in closer to the green leaves.
“You are marvelous,” he whispered. “And clearly very cared for, no matter what that devil says.”
The plants preened.
While he waited, Aziraphale looked around. Grey, grey, dazzling green, a long grey corridor, and... what was that at the end? He squinted into the dark space, trying to make out the jumble of shadows and shapes. Pale light shone on what looked like a wing.
He took a few steps toward it, letting his hand brush against the greenery, which gave a pleasant shiver.
Definitely a wing. Perhaps more than one—no, more than two wings, one pair arcing gracefully up to the ceiling and the other down to the floor. And among them, what looked like some rather tangled stone limbs. And a feeling, a familiar sense he couldn’t quite place, but he was sure something warm was radiating toward him, and it was coming from the end of that corridor—
“Angel.”
Aziraphale spun around. “Yes?”
Crowley was stalking toward him. He was also, to Aziraphale’s complete surprise, holding two wine glasses and a bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. “I can tell when you’re being nice to my plants.”
“Oh! You found it!” He gave a little cough, trying to hide his amazement behind it. “Jolly good. Thanks. And, you know, a few kind words never hurt anyone.”
Crowley growled and thrust the bottle at him. “Just take this before you do any more damage, will you? Come on.” He strode away through the revolving door.
Aziraphale beamed, following him. “With great delight, my dear.”
Crowley’s wine glasses had black stems that reached up snakelike to curl around their bowls. Aziraphale poked at what looked like a slit-eyed head and tried to refocus on what he’d been saying.
“I’m,” he said. “I’m. I’m telling you.” The words came out thickly, having to muddle their way through twelve or so glasses of miraculously refilling red wine. “Heaven may not be innilibble. Infabble..”
“Nooooonononono.” Crowley raised a finger from where he sprawled across from Aziraphale on the plush white sofa the angel had insisted on conjuring. “I’ve had enough ineffability for several eternities—”
“Infallible,” Aziraphale finished around a small hiccup. “Heaven isn’t perfect, at least, not its... current agents. But we’re the side that’s meant to succeed, ultimmm... in the end. It’s nature—it’s natural. Good is everywhere.”
Crowley guffawed and fell back into the sofa, somehow sprawling even sprawlier, and sloshing wine that fortunately knew better than to exit its serpentine vessel. “You stepped outside lately, angel? Maybe read a newssspaper? They still make them on actual paper, y’know.”
“Of course they do,” Aziraphale said distractedly. “Just think about all the nice things, the selfless things, these humans do every day. People—people pull their legs in when they’re walking past and someone sits down.” He frowned. “No, wait—other way round. People pull in their... their seats, when they’re... anyway. Goodness is natural, because, well, it comes from nature. Take those dear little otters—”
Crowley groaned. “Not the bloody otters again, I swear to Satan—”
“They hold hands while they sleep so they don’t float away!” Aziraphale gestured with both of his own hands to emphasize this inarguable final blow. Unfortunately, he did so a little too enthusiastically for the wine in his glass to be able to stay put. He sat back more carefully, made a mental note to miracle away any stray drops he found on the sofa later, and then promptly forgot this. “My point... the point. The point of it all, is, it’s—love.” He took a smug sip. “And love is good. So good is everywhere, if you’re looking.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “So’s evil. Otherwise you wouldn’t’ve had a job, would you? Had—have a job. Before the... thing. That didn’t happen. You know. What I’m sssaying isss, it’s not all infernal influence, I mean, I’m basically retired now—”
“You are?”
“—and humans’re still winding each other up and blowing each other down. Up. Blowing each other—”
“But that’s just it,” Aziraphale said eagerly, pointing with his half-full wine glass and not noticing when it became decidedly emptier onto Crowley’s floor, nor when Crowley reached across to right the glass and wave away the mess.
“Blowing up?” Crowley refilled Aziraphale’s glass, frowning. “That’s the right direction, isn’t it?”
“Even before you, ah, retired,” Aziraphale continued. “You’ve aren’t—you’ve never been all—all irredeemably horrendous and... and arrrghhhh.” He put his hands up like claws, forgetting about the wine glass entirely.
Crowley snatched it out of the air (and briefly out of time) and handed it back to him, full again. “’M plenty horrendous, thankyouverymuch. And irredeemable by definition. Nothing in common at all with... with little water mammals that hold hands.” He slouched back into the sofa. “You can be an otter. I’d be a—a shark.” In demonstration, he bared pointed teeth. “Or a ssswan. One of th’ black ones, all neck and flappy wings and bad attitude.”
“You already have wings,” Aziraphale said hazily. “And those other things too, I daresay, but—” He sat upright like a shot. This time, his long-suffering wine poured directly onto the demon beside him. “The statue!”
“Oi, angel, watch where you—” He paused mid-wave, looking at Aziraphale with eyes that were stumbling home from pleasantly bleary to mildly suspicious, with a lengthy detour through confusion along the way. “What statue?”
“That art piece I saw down the hall. It is a statue, isn’t it? With the wings. It’s like the otters—”
“Otters don’t have wings, got those hands you’ve been blathering on about—”
“—there’s something there. I could feel it.”
Crowley paused with his glass at his lips. “Feel what?”
“It’s... a feeling like...” He grasped for words through the alcohol blur. “It’s when you want... and then you, but you have to... oh, sod it.” Aziraphale gulped down the rest of his wine and grabbed Crowley’s entirely un-otter-like hand. “Here, I’ll show you.”
“What the—Aziraphale!” Crowley gangled along after him down the halls through the flat, all limbs and protests, still holding a glass of wine that by now was fairly desperate to spill. “This is my flat, you can’t just—angel!”
Aziraphale ignored all of this, dragging Crowley up to what was, indeed, a statue. In the darkness of the flat’s corridor, he still couldn’t make it out very well, but there was that feeling again. “Can’t you feel that? It’s practically oozing with innit, im—intimi—"
“Intimidation,” Crowley said, nodding and sipping his wine. “That’s why I picked it. Yep.”
“No, you silly old serpent!” Aziraphale took in a breath and screwed his eyes shut, concentrating until his formidable brain slowed its drunken spin. “It’s intimacy.”
Crowley choked. “Intim—angel, what statue are you looking at?”
“There’s a closeness,” Aziraphale insisted, swaying a little. He took a wobbly step forward, pulling Crowley, who was inexplicably still holding his hand. “Oh, my. Are these... angels?”
“Angel’n demon.” There was a shade of reluctance to Crowley’s usual drawl. “Duking it out.”
“They’re... wrestling? That’s not what I...” Aziraphale swallowed. “I mean to say, they may be engaged in something rather sporting, but look at their faces. They’re calm. Content. They—they trust each other. That must be what I sensed.”
Beside him, he heard Crowley make a noise between a scoff and a gulp. “Positively ridiculoussss. This is two enemies engaged in mortal—immortal—they’re fighting. And, I might add, my side’s winning. Well. My old side, you know—you know what I mean. Evil.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale murmured, “quite.”
Something was coming to him. Some sort of devilish, preposterous, wonderful idea. He supposed that was what happened when you fraternized long enough with a demon, including occasionally doing the demon’s job for him: it was inevitable that you started thinking in terms of temptation.
“Serves ’im right,” Crowley declared beside him, raising his glass to the statue in a toast. “Angel here’s probably a prat.”
“Only,” Aziraphale began. “Only.” He cleared his throat. “We both know Good would triumph, in this hypothetical test of strength.”
Because no matter what happened—an apocalypse, or the conspicuous absence thereof, or a strange new hunger he could almost but not fully name—if there was one thing Aziraphale could rely on in his long and storied life, it was arguing with Crowley.
Crowley turned to look at him, and seemed to finally realize he was still holding on to Aziraphale’s hand. He gaped at it and dropped it like a scalded thing. “Absolutely not. When demons fight, we fight dirty.”
This sparked a tiny something that Aziraphale hurriedly filed away for later, instead letting out a tittering laugh that surely sounded far too nervous. “Nonsense. Angels have divine justice! Holy wrath! God Herself is on our side.”
Crowley snorted. “As if that counts for a damn. Anyway, overconfidence is a sure way to lose, angel. What’s that they say about what pride goeth before, mm?”
“It’s only overconfidence if you do lose,” Aziraphale said politely. “Anyway, in my experience with demons, some of them wouldn’t hurt a fly. Some of them are really, secretly, as gentle as an—”
And that did it. Crowley pushed him up against the cool cement wall and pinned him there with one hand, long fingers splayed and pressing into Aziraphale’s chest. Aziraphale felt the warmth of it through his layers of clothing, watched the black-snake wine glass in Crowley’s other hand—not a drop spilled.
He suppressed a smirk of satisfaction. This was a game they were both familiar with, a dance they knew all the steps to, together-and-not-together. Aziraphale was prepared to dance it all night.
Crowley didn’t move, just held Aziraphale there with a pressure whose delicacy belied the fire in his eyes. “If you so much as think the word otter right now...”
“You’ll best me in immortal combat?” Aziraphale met his gaze evenly, swallowing down prickled nerves that had nothing to do with fear, and raising his chin ever so slightly. “Go on, then.”
“Go...” Crowley blinked, and then leaned in, pressing the tips of his fingers a little more firmly into Aziraphale’s chest. His index crept up toward Aziraphale’s throat. “Don’t try me, angel. I’m slightly too drunk to hold back, you know. Sssomeone might get hurt.”
“Well,” Aziraphale said, keeping his voice as steady as he could while his heart did a swooping kind of ballet. Crowley’s hips were very close to his, unnecessarily close, in a way his own body was eagerly welcoming. “I could concede defeat before any, er, injury. Not that I would need to, of course. But... I could. If you wanted to, that is.”
“If I wanted to what?” Crowley breathed. Their foreheads were nearly touching.
Aziraphale met his eyes. “End up on top.”
Crowley surged forward and crashed his lips against Aziraphale’s. And oh, there was that warmth Aziraphale hardly knew he’d been waiting for, the heat of a demon ready to pounce at the barest of excuses. Aziraphale pulled him in bodily, distantly registering the sound of a snake-stemmed wine glass shattering against a concrete floor. Then Crowley’s tongue was pressing into his mouth, and it was hellfire, it was the most delicious sin, it was everything—
Crowley broke away and took a heaving breath. His hand cupped Aziraphale’s jawline, a touch that felt half-affectionate, half-possessive. “Is this what you want, angel?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale gasped, drawing exploratory fingers up into Crowley’s hair and watching him shiver. “Oh heaven, yes.”
Crowley’s mouth found his neck and immediately sucked a bruise there. “Is this—intimacy? Is this...is it...”
“It’s you, my dear. And I’ll take—” Aziraphale turned his head to kiss the tattoo on Crowley’s cheek— “anything you want to give me. With utmost pleasure.”
Crowley groaned. “Satan, Aziraphale, you can’t just say things like that—” His leg brushed Aziraphale’s. Tucked against that leg was an obvious bulge.
Aziraphale thrilled. “What will you do if I do?”
With a low hiss, Crowley spun Aziraphale around to face the wall, pinning both of Aziraphale’s hands with one of his own. “Terrible things, angel.” His other hand traced a whispering line down from Aziraphale’s hairline, skating down temple, cheekbone, chin. “Things only a demon would do.”
Aziraphale’s legs trembled, but his hands where Crowley held them were remarkably still. “Tell me.”
Crowley’s finger continued its languid journey. “Dangerous things.” Down Aziraphale’s neck, maddeningly slowly across the expanse of antique-clothinged back, circling around to ribs and full stomach, landing finally at the top of his waistband. “Things you—” the low voice caught—"can’t take back.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed.
Crowley’s hand on Aziraphale’s trousers remained still. “And you’ll like it.” Warm breath hit Aziraphale’s neck, surprisingly soft. “Won’t you.”
Aziraphale heard the question underneath the words. He blinked and tilted his head. “Crowley...”
Crowley tightened his grip on Aziraphale’s hands. “Sssshhh. You’ll beg me to... to...”
“Crowley.” There was a hint of sternness in his voice; he softened it, carefully. “Dear.”
“A...Aziraphale.”
Out of the corner of one observing eye, Aziraphale caught the bob of an Adam’s apple. He turned, gently, back around to face Crowley, who didn’t resist now. “Is this what you want?”
Crowley groaned and dropped his head to Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Hell and all its godforsaken devils, it’s you, angel. I’ll do anything. Anything you like, anything you can imagine, just tell me what to do and I’ll—” He bit off the rest of the sentence, dropping his arms and Aziraphale’s hands with them.
“Oh, my dear. You truly... well.” Resisting the impulse to rub his newly freed wrists, Aziraphale instead took one of Crowley’s hands in his own. “Crowley, look at me. Please.”
Crowley raised his head, blown-gold eyes meeting Aziraphale’s.
“All this malevolent being nonsense, it’s not...” Aziraphale searched for words. This wasn’t the choreography he knew, centuries of push and pull in well-worn tracks. This, he would have to make up on his own; the idea was a little terrifying and more than a little exhilarating. “What I mean is—you’re a demon, yes, but that’s only the start of it, isn’t it? After all this time, after everything we... you’re not just the serpent in the garden. To me. To the world we helped save.”
Crowley looked like he might cry, or burst into flames, or both.
Aziraphale glanced up at the statue, at the stone-carved demon’s face so placid next to his thumping heart. “You can be that for me, if it’s what you want.” He gripped the hand in his, all bones and sinew and tense skin, lightly but firmly. “But you don’t need to.”
“A-Angel—nghn.” Crowley made a noise like he was swallowing his own tongue. His eyes kept darting downward, and he licked his lips once, twice. “Are you sure? Whole demonic temptation thing gives you a bit of plausible deniability, you know, in case—"
“They’re not coming for us, Crowley.” Aziraphale kept his gaze steady on those lemon drop eyes. “And I believe I’m thoroughly tired of playing it safe. Safe is... lonely.”
Finally, Crowley’s eyes focused back—wide and staring, but still. “Could’ve told you that.”
Aziraphale pressed his free hand to Crowley’s cheek, fingerpads on the little snake there. “I believe you did.”
Crowley exhaled, air puffing against Aziraphale’s wrist. He licked his lips again, this time with a tongue that looked distinctly longer and pointier than before. Something flickered up in his eyes. “You ought to know that swans...mate for life.”
Aziraphale smiled his most radiant, beatific smile—the one reserved for Crowley and particularly delectable macarons. “So do otters.”
He pulled Crowley’s mouth to his own. Gently, this time, as though the demon were a precious thing, a sweet and trembling being, a treat to be lavished and savoured. He coaxed his way between Crowley’s lips, into the softly wet heat of him, and oh, there was that tongue, forked and waiting, with the promise of so much more.
Aziraphale’s hands found Crowley’s hips and drew him in close. He felt Crowley gasp into his mouth as the undeniable hardness in those absurdly tight jeans pressed against Aziraphale’s thigh. Long fingers twined in the curls at his nape, urging him closer and deeper, hungrier, more, angel, can’t get enough of you. Sharp teeth grazed his bottom lip, then nipped, the little dots of pain sending a shiver down his spine and straight to the growing ache between his legs. It was as easy as breathing to slot together with Crowley, to let Crowley rock against him again and again. Aziraphale was becoming hard to the point of pain, the friction not quite enough, when Crowley’s breath turned ragged at the edges like an unravelling tapestry.
“Angel, you feel—I can’t—"
“Shh,” Aziraphale said, wrapping both arms around him. “It’s alright, my darling. I have you.”
Crowley’s movements began to stutter. His legs were trembling under him and his voice came out low and sibilant. “Yesss... tell me—”
“I have you,” Aziraphale repeated quickly. “And I won’t let you go.”
With a strangled cry, Crowley pressed himself into Aziraphale hard enough to flatten him against the concrete wall. Aziraphale felt one last shuddering thrust into the crook of his leg, and then Crowley slumped against his shoulder, breathing heavily.
“Christ on Earth.” Crowley’s voice came out muffled by Aziraphale’s vest. “That was embarrassing.”
Aziraphale kissed the top of his flame-haired head and stroked his back lightly, momentarily ignoring his own pounding need. “Nonsense. It was highly flattering.”
Crowley sank to his knees and began undoing Aziraphale’s flies. “Show you flattering.”
“Oh—” His need, and a significantly more tangible body part, rose abruptly at the image below him: the demon kneeling like a supplicant, an unmistakable dark spot blooming on his trouser leg. It twitched again at each brushing touch as Crowley’s quick fingers worked him free of his clothing. “Don’t you—would you like a, er, breather?”
“Are you out of your ethereal mind?” With one final tug, Aziraphale’s cock hung thick and heavy in the air, an inch away from Crowley’s parted lips. “Been waiting six millennia for this.” He flashed a wicked smile and swallowed Aziraphale to the root.
Aziraphale gasped at the sudden warmth. Crowley took him in like he belonged there, like Crowley had not only been waiting for this for six thousand years, but had spent each of those years imagining exactly how he would do it. Perhaps he had. The thought filled Aziraphale with wonder and delight and something fairly more heated, and he gripped a handful of red hair and pushed in a fraction further.
Crowley’s hand flew up to join his, pressing it in place there. An inhumanly long tongue licked up the underside of his length, making him shudder and thrust more deliberately into that waiting mouth. He saw Crowley’s face spasm with pleasure and purpose.
“Look at you,” he whispered. “So lovely.”
Crowley groaned around Aziraphale’s cock, the vibration making Aziraphale shudder. Pleasure was building within him, hot sensation gathering to a pinpoint. He felt the tip of himself nudge the back of Crowley’s throat, caress the tight muscle there, then felt the hot space relax to take him deeper. “Oh, that’s just—marvelous. Mmm—darling, if you keep doing that, I’m going to—oh!”
Crowley had placed both hands on Aziraphale’s backside and shoved Aziraphale bodily toward him, pushing him into his mouth and ensuring Aziraphale couldn’t pull out even an inch. Crowley’s gemlike eyes were open, glittering up at Aziraphale with focused intensity while his tongue worked furiously along Aziraphale’s shaft, and Aziraphale knew those eyes, loved those eyes—
The wave hit him all at once, cresting into a scalding pleasure that swept up every molecule of his bursting body. Crowley’s eyes never left his, as if begging to take in every moment and every drop as Aziraphale spilled and spilled and spilled into that ravenous mouth.
As the aftershocks settled, Aziraphale sank against the wall. “Well. Goodness me.”
Crowley leaned forward and kissed him, lightly, so Aziraphale could only barely taste the bitter musk on his lips.
With a contented sigh and a little wave, Aziraphale summoned a set of tartan cushions underneath them.
“What—did it have to be tartan?” Crowley’s face was scrunched up like a prune.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, pulling him close despite a protesting groan. “Just like it had to be you, my diabolical delight.”
“They’re not staying. The minute you’re out of here—the nanosecond—I’m sending those to a corner of the universe they’ll never be seen again.”
Aziraphale stroked his hair. Belying his words, Crowley was limp and pliant in his arms. “Would that be the same corner from which one can summon a bottle of ’69 Lafite on request?”
A smile twitched against his neck. “Yeah. All kinds of good stuff there. Dead useful spot.”
Aziraphale chuckled. His eye caught the stone-still wings of the statue above them, impassive as ever, quietly radiating its aura—a bouquet he could now recognize as intimate companionship, heady lust, and yes, that was most definitely love. He gave it a silent nod of thanks, and then gestured a pair of tartan pyjamas onto the demon in his lap.
“Angel!”
“Were you planning to stay sticky all night?”
“I match these cushions. Blend right in, look, I’m disappearing into them like a stick bug in a tree. You’ll never see me again.”
“Goodness, well, we can’t have that.” Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s lean form, holding him tightly. “I understand demons mate for life. I’d hate to lose mine.”
“They don’t—angel.” Crowley looked up at him. “D’you mean it?”
“Of course I do, dear.” He wriggled his shoulders, letting white wings unfurl and close softly around them, and dropped a kiss onto Crowley’s lips. “So do angels.”
“Hrm.” Crowley’s eyes were drifting shut. “Not so different, maybe.”
“Demons and angels?”
“’n otters. Hold my hand.”
Aziraphale obliged.