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London was burning.
And Crowley was tired.
It wasn’t just his corporation; that he could fix. The muscles and sinews that held him together kept on doing so, and he had already knitted the couple of bones that had snapped or splintered. He’d lost his jacket at some point, and there were holes in his jeans, and he should probably fix those too, put himself back together…but he was tired. Tired in a way that miracles couldn’t fix. Tired in a way that made him feel small and…hollow, somehow. Crumpled and dirty and wrung-out, not in body but in spirit. What had once been burnished bright, fierce and flashing, was now tarnished and dented and worthless and old.
He felt, in fact, rather like the broken fob-watch in his pocket.
Aging had always mystified him—it was a scary thing, honestly, to sense the steady decay of human bodies even in their happiest and most vibrant moments. He’d never wanted to know what that felt like…but now he knew. Now the weight of the millennia made his spirit creak and groan, all the billions and billions of seconds crawled over his skin and nibbled at him with sharp, cold little teeth, weighing him down and tearing him apart bit by bit.
I’m old, he thought, and it didn’t depress him as much as he might have thought it would, so he tried out another thought, a funny human saying, this time aloud: “I’m too old for this shit.”
Huh. Felt kinda nice.
And what are you supposed to do, he wondered, dragging his scuffed shoes along the pavement and ignoring the ash and cinders that floated and whirled around him like hellish snowflakes. What do you do when the world’s on fire and your friends are gone and your enemies are on your tail but you’re just too damn old for this shit?
And wonder of wonders, his sad dented ancient heart spoke up with the answer:
I want to go home.
He stopped. His face crumpled. He half-collapsed to lean heavily on a postbox, shivering despite the awful heat that suffused the very air, because he knew now that his feet had been taking him there all along—he just hadn’t let himself notice, because to notice would be to Remember and remembering hurt and he was just too old to feel this much pain.
Well, he thought slowly, shoving himself away from the postbox and stumbling for a step or two before he remembered the rhythm of walking again, if this is it…and this is definitely it…there are worse places to end up.
He didn’t look up at the stately façade; he didn’t want to see whether the gold lettering had been seared away, the paint peeling and flaking and crumbling to dust. His feet knew the way and his hand knew the knob and his ears knew the bell, that stupid bloody bell, still in its place and singing its stupid little song like the last surviving chaffinch perched on the last trembling twig of the last tree on Earth. (It would have to be a chaffinch. No nightingales.)
London was burning. The rest would follow shortly.
And there was no one to greet him, no one humming tunelessly and bustling about among the stacks, no one to look up with a silly little ah! and say his name, speaking it like a blessing, like a—
“Crowley?”
Shit, he could almost hear it, that’s how strong the memories were. He could almost see a figure rising from the threadbare old armchair, eyes widening in shock behind dangling strands that had come free from a shining pale coiffure, a hand rising to touch lips half-hidden behind a neat silver beard, a tiny glint of gold from the ring on the little finger…
Crowley blinked. The apparition stubbornly remained.
“Oh,” he said stupidly. And then, “Hi,” which wasn’t any better.
They faced each other for a long moment, and wasn’t it funny, wasn’t it just annoyingly, gut-bustingly hilarious that merely a look, merely a presence could cast a long beam of thin winter sun onto the frost in his heart? Existence was one knee-slapper after another, all right.
“I, I thought you’d gone with the humans,” said the Supreme Archangel, fiddling with the broken chain-fob dangling from his singed waistcoat. “What are you doing here?”
Crowley fumbled numb fingers into his pocket and extracted the crushed watch. He’d found it, and had known it immediately, and the howling despair and fury that had filled him had spurred him to the heights of lunacy that had cleared London of humans, every last soul evacuated, and in the wake of that hurricane the frost had settled in. He held up the watch, seeing the angel’s eyes widen to recognize it, and tossed it to the surface of the desk between them. It clattered noisily, spinning in place several wobbly times before coming to rest.
Crowley blinked again. His eyes stung. He looked up, and around, and down, gathering the words, trying to marshal them like soldiers but he was too damn tired and so they just came crawling out, weary and defeated things.
“I’m old,” he said, and his shoulders slumped as he met that purple gaze again. “…And I just wanted to go home.”
The angel’s face creased, as fine and delicate as paper—not crisp new paper, but parchment left forgotten on a shelf for a long long time, so old and so thin that it feels like velvet and shreds at the lightest touch. The millennia piled up in his eyes and slipped down his cheeks drop by drop.
“Crowley,” he whispered, and then the coffee shop blew up.
They staggered. Crowley caught himself against the desk and then wrenched around to stare out the big front window. The coffee shop itself, it would seem, had chosen death—or, rather, the choice had been made for it, because he recognized the shapes that descended, silhouetted against the conflagration, their wings dripping with the light of holy wrath.
“Shit,” he said, “sorry, that’s for me” —in the exact same moment that the angel said “oh bother, they’ve found me.”
They stared at each other again. “Wait, what’ve you done?” asked Crowley.
“Ah,” said the angel, fiddling with the chain again as he glanced restlessly between Crowley and the Heavenly host assembling in the street. “I, ah, I may have done something rather silly.”
“How silly?”
“Ah hrrnhemmenuh hahhshahhhd.”
At that reluctant mumble, Crowley’s stare sharpened into a glare, and actually it felt pretty good. “You what?”
“I kidnapped the Christ-child!” said the angel, his voice cracking with strain, and wasn’t it funny how one sentence, just a few little words
(I gave it away)
(I did the thing with the halo)
could chase away the gloom and brighten the sun to a bloody supernova and melt the frost, all of it, in one brilliant flare of golden light?
“Oh, not that he’s a child,” Aziraphale was twittering, “thirty-three is quite adult in human years, but you know what I mean. Joshua. I, I stole him from Heaven.”
Crowley smiled. It had been a while since he’d tried it, and his lips stuttered a bit over the motion, but he smiled at the angel…and the angel smiled back.
“Well,” said Crowley, hoarse and slightly shrill, “where the hell is he??”
“AZIRAPHALE,” came a commanding bellow from the street.
“Oh,” said the angel, “not here. Safe, though. Squirreled away.”
“Squirrziraphale.” Crowley’s incredulous infant of a smile widened all at once into the biggest, stupidest grin he’d ever grinned, those atrophied muscles stretching painfully.
Aziraphale groaned, even as he crossed the floor to the window. “Raccrowley,” he shot back, and then actually shook a finger through the glass at the ranks of linen-clad soldiers. “You’ll not get in!” he shouted. “It’s miracled with all the authority of my rank!”
Crowley’s smile faltered. “Angel, I walked right in.”
“Yes. Well.” Aziraphale straightened his waistcoat, giving the Heavenly host a final perturbed glance as he turned. “I, I told you once that the door would always be open to you. And I meant it.”
But that was a step too far, and Crowley’s grin tumbled back into a scowl. “Oi,” he said, advancing a few steps, “you know I had to look after the place, right?”
“Yes, I know,” said Aziraphale quietly.
“The kid’s got a good heart but they’re absolute rubbish at—… Wait, you knew?”
“The, ah, the, well the job, the ranking, the authority of my, my position, well, it did afford me certain…privileges.”
Crowley stared.
“You know.”
Crowley stared.
“…Surveillance-wise.”
“You were watching me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale with some heat, all pink in the ears and cheeks, “did I somehow give the impression that I was thrilled to leave Earth? Just perfectly delighted, all’s right in the world, precisely what I always wanted?”
“But you did leave.”
“I had to!”
“You left me.”
“Crowley, I couldn’t just stand by and allow Heaven to perpetrate whatever—”
“Nope.” Crowley’s indignation was in full swing now. He hadn’t been sure he’d be able to muster the strength to get this worked up about it again, but damn if the angel’s presence hadn’t rejuvenated that, too. “I bloody well kissed you,” he growled through gritted teeth, “and you just forgave me and fucked right off!”
“AZIRAPHALE.” Uriel’s voice, damn her. …Well, not literally, or she’d become at least partially Crowley’s problem, and he did not need that. They both ignored her.
“Well, what did you expect?” Aziraphale threw his arms in the air, his cheeks now quite flushed behind the beard. (The beard was new, and that was jarring, but…not in a bad way. Like, at all.) “You grabbed me!”
Crowley could feel his own face reddening. Stupid traitorous corporation. “I was trying to—”
“Oh, I know what you were trying to do.” Aziraphale was in a full-on hissy fit now, but the glint in those weird purple eyes didn’t faze Crowley one bit. He wasn’t scared of the angel who took bloody forever to cross a park on a rainy day because he just had to stop for every earthworm on the pavement and move it out of harm’s way.
“Oh do you?” Crowley snarked. “Please, enlighten me, O Supreme Archangel with your natty Supreme Archangel suit and your fancy Supreme Archangel hairdo and your pompous Supreme Archangel beard.”
This seemed to throw Aziraphale; he put a few fingers to his chin, his brow puckering. “You don’t like the beard?”
Startled out of the rhythm of the argument, Crowley folded his arms. “…Didn’t say that,” he muttered.
“AZIRAPHALE!”
“Oh, shut up!!” they both yelled back, heads whipping toward the window in perfect unison.
Someone smote the building.
Crowley didn’t see who, but it didn’t really matter when the street was full of Seraphs and Archangels. The walls rattled, the floor shook, books tumbled from shelves, and the front window blew in with a massive spray of glass and flame, peppering the two of them as they shrank away from that assault.
“Okay, put a pin in this,” said Crowley, grabbing the edge of the desk. “We’ve got bigger problems. Come on, help me flip.”
“Put a pin in— Oh, absolutely not.” But Aziraphale grabbed the other end of the desk even as he protested, his lips stuck out in that stupid little pout he did when he was well and truly determined to get his way. “It’s been long enough. We are hashing this out right now.”
With a grunt, Crowley lifted his edge—mirrored by the angel—and they laid down the desk on its side to crouch behind it. This put them quite close together, and Crowley could see now how the white bow tie hung askew, how the dignified, slicked-back waves of Aziraphale’s hair were mussed and rumpled as though he’d been running his hands restlessly through it, how the hem of the pale waistcoat was already beginning to fray from the constant fretting of anxious hands.
“You can’t stay in there forever!” —Michael now, sounding positively gleeful.
And what did Aziraphale see, when looking at Crowley? His own hair was longer now and unkempt, his glasses gone—smashed in the kerfuffle of the evacuation—all dirty and disheveled and drowning, fucking drowning in the pointlessness of it all, long since frosted over but shivering now in the sudden thaw, brought back to life all at once because there was only one being in all of existence who could see right through him, reach right past all of the bullshit and touch the very core of him with warmth and light…
“Crowley?”
Great, Shax was here too. Perfect. “Really not a good time,” he hissed at Aziraphale, rising up on his knees to peek over their flimsy barricade. “Shax!” he yelled, with his best attempt at joviality. “Come to join the party?”
“And it was absolute rubbish, anyway!” Aziraphale glowered up at him, clearly not to be deterred.
“It’s over, Crowley,” called Shax. “You can’t possibly withstand a combined onslaught for long.”
“Ooh, onslaught, someone’s been enjoying that thesaurus I sent! —What are you on about?” he added in a rather harassed aside to Aziraphale. “What was rubbish?”
Aziraphale huffed. (Only he would be able to genuinely huff at a time like this.) “The kiss!”
A brick, miraculously on fire, was lobbed through the window and bounced off of the desk; Crowley had to duck sharply to avoid it. “Angel, now is really not the time.”
Aziraphale reached over the desk to seize the burning brick with his bare hand, rearing up and winging it right back through the opening, where it dented the head of the physical manifestation of some Cherub Crowley didn’t recognize. “Well, it wasn’t at all how I’ve seen the humans do it,” he said, dusting his hands.
Crowley glared at him wildly. “Oi, it’s not as though I’d had any practice!”
For whatever reason, this seemed to perk Aziraphale up a bit. “You…hadn’t? Not ever?”
“Where are the humans, Crowley?” Shax again.
“Forget the humans, WHERE IS THE RUDDY SAVIOR?” Annnnd Uriel.
“Seriously, can we discuss this later??” Crowley popped up onto his knees again, putting both hands to his face to shout. “Not here, and I haven’t a fucking clue, in that order!” Then he slumped again, leaning his shoulder against the bottom of the desk. “…Obviously never, who the bloody hell else would I ever have kissed?”
Aziraphale looked quite flustered. “Well I’m sure I don’t know! You weren’t around all the time, how would I know what shenanigans you got up to?”
“AZIRAPHALE!” —several angels shouting together.
“Well, I hadn’t,” said Crowley shortly.
“Fine.”
“Right.” There was an awkward pause as they glared at each other. “…Had you?”
“N-no!” Aziraphale was blushing in earnest now, and somehow the combination of that with the stately beard had Crowley feeling much warmer than even the fires and the stress could account for. “Of course not!”
“Then how would you even know if it was rubbish??”
“AZIRAPHALE!”
“Oh, put a sock in it!” the angel bellowed toward the window, making Crowley jump. “Well, it…it wasn’t even romantic!”
Crowley gaped, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment before he could even croak out any words. “Well excuuuuuuuse me, I happened to be under a little pressure at the—”
Another mighty smite struck the building, which was clearly doing its best to hold together under the command of Aziraphale’s miracles, but Shax—loath as Crowley was to admit it—had been right, that it couldn’t hold out forever. As plaster fell in powdery crumbles from the ceiling, they shrank down reflexively, huddling together…and as Aziraphale’s hand closed on Crowley’s forearm, Crowley gripped the angel’s arm, up close to his shoulder. Their knees bumped together. Their foreheads touched.
Aziraphale opened his eyes, close enough now that Crowley could feel the warmth of his breath. The little ninny always had enjoyed breathing. “…This isn’t very romantic, either,” he said softly.
Crowley felt hypnotized. He was tired and stressed and thoroughly annoyed, and yet…and yet… “Nope,” he muttered. “Not at all.”
“…And I’m still very angry with you.”
“Right. Right. Same. Very.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
Aziraphale winced as a beam above their heads cracked ominously. “…I suppose we might not get another chance, though.”
Somehow Crowley’s eyes had made their way down to Aziraphale’s lips, watching the shape and flex and glisten of them as they formed the words. “No, yeah, this is…pretty dire.”
Aziraphale’s grip on Crowley’s arm shifted, sliding an inch or two toward his elbow. “So…perhaps if, if you wanted…you could…”
“AZIRAPHALE,” bawled Michael again, sounding royally pissed off. “Give us Joshua, and you’ll be allowed to leave the Earth. I’ve got clearance from the Metatron himself.”
“Oh, fuck the Meta-twat,” Crowley fired back. “Fuck all of you wankers! Fuck the whole bloody war! And…and fuck you,” he added, looking right into Aziraphale’s freaky purple eyes.
Aziraphale’s nostrils flared. His shoulders rolled back. His lips parted, and his fingers tightened around Crowley’s arm. “Well, the same to you,” he hissed.
A shiver coursed through Crowley’s entire corporation; Aziraphale glanced at the demon’s chest, clearly feeling it. “…Say that again,” Crowley growled.
Aziraphale leaned in, touching their foreheads together once more, his eyes boring into Crowley’s at this very small distance. Very, very softly, with delicately exaggerated enunciation that draaaagged out the word Crowley had never heard leave those perfect lips until this moment, he said: “Ffffuh-kuh…you.”
They stared, teeth slightly bared and chests heaving.
“You left me,” Crowley muttered, slowly sliding his hand to the back of the angel’s neck.
“I know.”
“You left me.”
“But I’m here now. And I left the door open for you, Crowley. Only for you.”
“Why?”
Aziraphale snorted quietly. “…Do you remember back in Uz, when you shamelessly tempted me into trying the ox rib? And once I had…I just couldn’t stop?”
Crowley would nod, except their foreheads were still pressed together and not even the hordes of enemies outside the window could convince him to willingly break off that contact. “Hard to forget a thing like that. They coined the word insatiable because of you.”
Aziraphale smiled, and even though his eyes were purple and his mouth was framed by that beard…the way that the skin beside those eyes crinkled, the way that the cheeks bunched, the light that seemed to shimmer in his very pores—it was just the same. The very same smile that had sent Crowley’s heart crashing down to his bare toes as he’d stood on top of a wall, long ago and far away.
“It was an absolute rubbish first kiss, you know,” the angel murmured. “But…what the ox rib did to me…is nothing. Nothing whatsoever…compared to what you have done to me with but a single kiss.”
Crowley felt dizzy. The room seemed to spin around them, and only clutching Aziraphale as tightly as he could kept him from toppling over. “F-…fucking hell,” he wheezed.
“Quite.” Aziraphale’s head moved—not separating their foreheads, just turning gently to rub the tip of his nose, his precious flawless gorgeous nose, over Crowley’s. “You know, all of these sensuous pleasures…none of it is anything that angels were ever meant to feel. Much less to…experience.”
Crowley’s eyelids felt heavy as just the very ends of that silvery mustache brushed over his lips. “So…so you’re…”
“…an absolute rubbish angel,” Aziraphale finished for him, still smiling.
“AZIRAPHALE! CROWLEY!” —More wankers spouting their fool heads off outside, but neither of the building’s occupants paid them any heed whatsoever.
“You really are the worst,” Crowley agreed, feeling quite drunk now as he returned the smile.
“I know.”
“And since I mucked it all up last time… If you really want to do it again, then you do it.”
Aziraphale giggled…but Crowley saw a hint of the pink tongue between those teeth, and wondered if it would be possible to discorporate from sheer embarrassment if the legions outside were to break through the defenses and catch him with a massive erection. “Are you tempting me?” asked the angel, in a simper at delicious odds with his regal appearance. “You foul fiend.”
Crowley shivered again. “You think…you think I’m tempting you? When you just show up, looking like that?”
“Looking like…” Aziraphale glanced down at himself. “Crowley, this is perfectly suitable attire for the Supreme Archangel.”
“Yeah, and it’s got you looking like a whooooole snacc.” Crowley deliberately pronounced the double-c in his mind. He’d invented that slang, after all.
Aziraphale blinked, now looking torn between desire and genuine confusion. “A…a snack? Good lord, Crowley, I was suggesting we engage in sexual congress! What on earth are you insinuating??”
Crowley grinned, teasing his fingers over the back of Aziraphale’s collar to find the warmth of his neck beneath the curling ends of his pale hair. “We’re insinuating the same thing, angel.”
“Oh.”
“Be delighted to eat…you…up.” He popped the final pah, just for emphasis.
“Oh.” Aziraphale giggled again—truly the best and loveliest and most comforting sound in the whole damn universe. “Well…good. That would be…perfectly acceptable.”
Crowley sat back just enough to take the angel’s hands in his own, bringing them to the chest of his tattered shirt. London was burning and the bookshop was surrounded by a combined force of angels and demons, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care about anything but this. The world may have been ending…but Aziraphale was here, right here in his arms, looking at him with open, unabashed, unequivocal lust, so how could anything else possibly matter? “The first was rubbish,” said Crowley, slowly lowering his hands to rest on Aziraphale’s knees as they crouched, “so show me how it’s done.”
The fire in Aziraphale’s eyes was far brighter and hotter and more deadly than the pitiful flames consuming the streets of London. Rather than seizing the shirt in his fists—as Crowley had rather expected, as a return for last time—he smoooothed his hands over Crowley’s chest, adorably prim even as desire simmered in his gaze. “Well,” he said slowly. “For starters, a proper kiss requires slightly more romance than just grabbing and yanking. It ought to be…gentle. Unhurried. A gradual exploration of sensations. Had I been given the opportunity—in my own damn time, mind you—I would have kissed you…” (he leaned nearer, raising his chin) “…rather like…” (his lips touched Crowley’s but didn’t yet press in, lingering there, a far more powerful temptation than any stupid fruit) “…this.”
They melted together. There could be no better way to describe it. Crowley felt the old fear and hope and desperation of last time fluttering madly in his chest, but this time Aziraphale wasn’t rigid and terrified…he was soft, so soft, his hands were soft on Crowley’s arm and chest and his beard was soft against Crowley’s cheek and his mouth was soft and warm and willing, he wasn’t fighting, he was leaning into this kiss and tilting his head for a nicer angle and making tiny noises in his throat, noises of enjoyment and of wanting and of terrible, ancient sorrow.
And Crowley softened, too. With every second of Aziraphale not pulling away but only pushing in closer, with every little whimper and every gentle tentative touch, the desperation began to melt.
He didn’t realize he was crying until Aziraphale was tutting under his breath and wiping at Crowley’s cheeks with gentle fingers. “You great silly thing,” the angel whispered.
“Shut up.” Crowley sniffed. “Shut up and do it again.”
And now Aziraphale’s arm slid around his neck, now Crowley’s hand slid over Aziraphale’s waist beneath the natty suit-jacket, now they were shifting nearer and there was no way Aziraphale didn’t feel the dig of Crowley’s cock against his thigh but he didn’t shy away, he fucking moaned directly into Crowley’s mouth and Crowley’s hips jerked involuntarily, scooting him forward to fully straddle the incredible fullness of that thigh, the very thigh he had stared at for Bentley-only-knew how many hours altogether over the centuries of time they’d spent together.
A few more bricks tumbled through the window, thankfully not on fire this time. “LAST CHANCE,” someone yelled—didn’t matter who.
“Right,” gasped Crowley. A steel spike had been driven into his groin and it burned, and it was very much time to make a decision. “A gradual exploration of sensations sounds absolutely smashing, angel, but…”
“But there’s no time,” agreed Aziraphale, with pointed emphasis. “Crowley…oh my darling, can’t you perhaps…? Just a little pause?”
“Oof.” Crowley ducked his head to push his nose against the skin of Aziraphale’s throat, loving the croon that poured from the lips now beside his ear, the hand that wandered to his waist to slide over his hip and beneath the cinch of his belt, the knees that sliiiiid apart, drawing him in closer to feel the shocking enormity of the angel’s own arousal. “…Won’t be able to hold it for long.”
“Trust me,” murmured Aziraphale, with his mouth buried in Crowley’s hair, “this won’t take long.”
“Fffffffuck.” Crowley shuddered, rolling his hips to grind up on the angel’s thigh. “Okay. Okay. Gimme a minute.”
“I’m afraid we haven’t really got a minute, dear.”
“I’m a little distracted.”
“Oh, are you?” And with a positively wicked smile, Aziraphale pulled his hand out from beneath Crowley’s belt and reached lower, wedging his fingers against his own thigh to cup the trembling bulge at the front of Crowley’s jeans.
“BloodybleedingBentley,” spat Crowley.
Aziraphale giggled again. “Well, pull yourself together! Hang on, I’ll buy us a moment or two.” He pushed up on his knees—holding Crowley very firmly against him, his cock now pressing against Crowley’s hip—and shouted, “All right, all right! I’ll just fetch the young man and send him on out!”
A ragged chorus of cheers came from the army in the street. Behind the desk again, Aziraphale kissed Crowley with heat and urgency, rocking his thigh up and down as they moved together…and when Crowley reached, his fingers found dampness on Aziraphale’s trousers where the plump head of his cock was very clearly outlined against the pale wool. He obviously wasn’t wearing any pants at all—and, as it happened, neither was Crowley.
“Now would be the time,” said Aziraphale, his voice somewhat muffled as he shoved his face against Crowley’s neck, and as soon as the words were out his lips fastened there, massaging and sucking as his tongue flicked against the skin.
Crowley’s hands were nothing but claws, one raking over Aziraphale’s back and the other pulling at the breathtaking solidity of the angel’s fully-erect cock through the trousers. “Need to,” he wheezed. “Fuh-…fuh-hocus, need to…focus…”
“Oh yes, indeed. How rude of me.”
And Aziraphale pushed away in the space of a second, disentangling himself and falling back onto his ample rear end. But he was smiling, and his eyes shone like twin suns as he let his knees droop wide, a vision of such debauched and glorious invitation that it was, quite frankly, a blatant home-grown miracle that Crowley didn’t fall upon him on the instant.
“Focus, dear,” whispered the angel. “So that you can focus on me.”
Crowley closed his eyes. He squeezed them shut just as hard as he could, and scrunched up his hands in his hair, his shoulders hunching as he tried to ignore the pulsing throb of his cock and the liquid fire of desperate lust that coursed through him, tried to find his point of focus, generate a radius of influence, reach out with his mind and seize the very stars in the vault of the sky above and halt them in their eternal dance, stop them, hold them steady and still. He hit pause on this moment on this street in Soho, and the motion and noise all around them ceased.
“Shit,” said Crowley thickly, wiping at a dribble of blood from his left nostril. “This isn’t easy, you know.”
“Then hurry.” Aziraphale’s voice—low and sultry and needing—snapped him back to reality. “Hurry hurry hurry. Oh Crowley, if this is the end…”
Crowley opened his eyes and grinned. “Then let’s go out with a bang?”
Aziraphale laughed—not a real laugh, but the half-stifled, deeply chagrined laugh he had always seemed to reserve for Crowley’s most atrocious puns. But his shoes were off now, and his belt buckle undone, and he reached out with the arm that wasn’t bracing him. “Come to me, you idiot.”
“Hey,” said Crowley as he crawled, pushing his knees up against those glorious thighs and leaning in to rub his nose through the silver beard. “You left me to begin with, so who’s really the idiot here?”
“Are you really going to insult me…at a time like this?” Aziraphale’s deft fingers worked at Crowley’s belt, and then the button and the zipper, shoving at the denim to take his cock in a grip that was nothing short of greedy.
“Not!” spat Crowley, bracing his forehead against the angel’s broad chest. It was awfully difficult to form coherent sentences at the moment, feeling the angel’s fingers—his angel’s fingers—squeezing and stroking him with such dexterous ease. “Not…an insult if it’s…ahhhhhmygorgeouspissingBentley…if it’s objectively tr-true.”
Aziraphale pushed the jeans further and lay fully on his back, reaching down with his other hand to crook his fingers around the lean, tense swell of Crowley’s left arsecheek. “Such a statement might call your objectivity into question,” he murmured in a voice like silk, like velvet, headier than the finest wine in human history.
Crowley groaned, gritting his teeth hard, and had to stop fumbling with Aziraphale’s belt to wipe at his nose again. “Now,” he said. “Now now now, it’s gotta be now or I’m not gonna make it.”
“Right, right. We’ll get into the foreplay next time.” Aziraphale pushed at his own trousers, and Bentley the way he wiggled beneath Crowley to shimmy them off and kick them away…
And there he was. Beneath the waistcoat and the hem of the shirt, a trail of downy hair as fine and pale as ice crystals flowed down the sweet rolling hill of his belly to pool at the crux of his legs. And from the center of that pool rose a tower, far lovelier and more graceful than anything any stupid architect had ever designed. Thickly buttressed at the base, slightly fluted as it rose but swelling again into a belvedere of unparalleled magnificence.
Too heavy on the metaphor, Crowley admonished himself. It’s a dick. Penis. Prick. Johnson. Todger. Member, if you wanna get all weird and proper about it. …Which he probably will.
Crowley sniffed back some more blood, finally shaking free of the hypnosis of the sight before him. “Wait. Next time?”
Aziraphale giggled up at him, all pink and blushing and completely bloody beautiful. “Get us out of this, and there will be a next time. And a time after that…and after that…and on and on and on, every day and night of our existences until the heat death of the universe. …And we’ll probably keep on going even after that.” His eyes widened in mock-innocence. “Don’t you think?”
Crowley laughed without breath, skimming a hand down the pale expanse of Aziraphale’s thigh to brush one thumb upward along the trembling length of the angel’s extremely hard cock, which was already dribbling gently and quivered under his touch. There was no time, no time for the awe and delight and tender adoration that he had always envisioned. They were in their own little world but Crowley couldn’t hold the time-bubble for long—already it was pulling at him like a horse straining at the reins, and if he was going to have any hope at all of seeing this thing through, they’d have to skip the sweetness and get down to business immediately.
And yet…
“You’ve wanted this, too,” he said in a rasping whisper.
“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, as he hooked his heels around Crowley’s thighs to draw him forward. “Always, my darling. Always.”
“Ahhhhh fuck.” Crowley was actually shaking with the sheer force of his wanting. Okay, he thought, we can do this. Easy. Sure seems easy. The humans make it look easy. Self-explanatory, right? Puzzle-pieces. One fits into the other.
But then a Thought occurred to him. “We, we haven’t got any… I mean, won't it hurt?” Crowley glanced around frantically even as Aziraphale guided him, nudging his hips so that the head of Crowley’s cock bumped against the spot, just the right spot, the very place it had rabidly desired to plunge for such a long, long, long count of years.
“At this point, it really doesn’t matter.” Aziraphale put one hand over Crowley’s on his own cock, pressing it against the lower slope of his spectacular belly beneath the shoved-up shirt and waistcoat. “It has to be now. And I want you now, Crowley. Now.”
With a strangled cry that was very close to a squeal, Crowley pressed forward.
And an angel welcomed him in.
Oh fuck, Aziraphale had been very right, this wasn’t going to take long at all. Crowley’s jeans were still bunched around his thighs and so he had to stretch out his legs behind him, leaning heavily on one arm; the long strands of his hair dangled around the angel’s face, whipping back and forth with the force of his motion because once he’d begun, there was noooo stopping, and the whole deal really was pretty self-explanatory after all. It was a tight fit—because they’d never done this before, he supposed, which made it all even hotter—and the pressure of the squeeze was very nearly painful even on Crowley’s end, but Aziraphale did not seem to mind at all, his head rolling on the floorboards and his open mouth gasping, one hand clutching the back of Crowley’s neck and the fingers of the other all twisted into the fabric of Crowley’s shirt at the waist to pull. He pulled hard along with the frantic rhythm, his face flushed crimson and dewy with sweat.
“Yesss,” keened the angel, rolling his own hips in perfect time to thrust into Crowley’s hand. “Yes yes yes, loveyou needyou wantyou, Crowley I’ve wanted you…so long, for soooo lonnnng…”
Funny old world, thought Crowley, as he deliberately smeared the drippings from Aziraphale’s cock across his palm to act as a lube and Aziraphale moaned, holding onto him so hard. One minute you’re wandering the streets, empty and old and just wanting to go home…and the next minute you’re realizing that ‘home’ means ‘balls-deep in the back-door of the angel you’ve been staring at for six thousand years.’ Home is the desperate wonder in that angel’s face as he gazes up at you. Home is the hands that hold you, the lips that gasp your name, the body that rocks along so easily and naturally that it feels like you’ve done this a million times before.
Home isn’t the bookshop. The bookshop just feels like home because it feels like HIM, because HE is written on every page of every book, he haunts every shadow and every corner, the floorboards echo his feet and the quilt on the sofa still holds his scent and the air remembers his breath and the very ticking of the clock whispers his name.
I wanted to go home…and here I am.
“Love you,” he whispered. No time for long walks and gentle touches and carefully-crafted confessions, all of the do-overs he had imagined in the long lonely hours of every night since his angel had left. This was happening, everything was happening right now, so he just had to blurt it out while the moment lasted. “Love you, I love you, I’ve always loved you, loved you since—bloody—Eden…”
“I know.” Aziraphale put a hand to Crowley’s cheek. “Oh darling, I know.”
“You—know??”
“Does that really surprise you?” Aziraphale wrinkled his nose in a grin even as he gasped for air. “Oh, because you’re…you’re so, so…subtle.”
Crowley finally managed to wrench one knee free of his jeans and used that new leverage to shove forward, eliciting a beautiful wail from the angel writhing beneath him. “How’s this for subtle?”
But Aziraphale only pulled him in harder, holding Crowley still for an unbearable, agonizing moment, both of them trembling and aching. “You…have been doing precisely this…with only your eyes…for ages, my love.”
Well, no arguing that, but Crowley was far more distracted by those precious final words. He lowered himself so that his abdomen pressed down upon his own hand, in which Aziraphale’s cock—fuck, had he miracled one so thick and long especially for the occasion? or had he just been walking around like this? for how many years??—was twitching gently. “Am I your love?” he whispered, not teasing now, just asking. Asking with every last little bit of his bruised and battered heart.
And Aziraphale Saw him. Terrifying to be fully Seen—scarier even than going for the kiss. But this angel, by far the purest and holiest and loveliest creature ever given the gift of life, took Crowley’s face in his soft hands, clammy with sweat but caressing with tenderness and with joy. He shook his head slightly—not in denial, but in quiet disbelief. “How could you ever doubt it?” he murmured, every syllable sweeter than a drop of honey. “Crowley, you are the other half of my soul. Want me, need me, love me, because nothing shall ever part us again. I will accept destruction rather than leave your side. Oh my darling, you…you’re bleeding again.”
Crowley’s arms shook. “‘M’okay,” he muttered through a constricted throat. “I’m okay. Everything’s okay now. …I’m home.”
“Home.” Aziraphale hoisted one ankle to Crowley’s shoulder to gently push him upright, bracing his other foot against the bottom of the desk-top for leverage to lift his hips. “We’re home now, and nothing will ever part us again. My love, my darling, the only one who has ever truly cared for me…it’s time. It’s time.”
“Right. Yes.” Crowley hugged that thigh to his chest and pressed his lips to the shin, letting the soft hairs there tickle over his lips. He edged his knees forward beneath that shatteringly sublime arse, but there wasn’t even time to properly appreciate the way that flesh ensconced his thighs, or the dance of fiery light over the slick and glistening lines of the angel’s full, flushed cock. Time was up, in more ways than one.
He looked into those purple eyes…and saw the whole damn world.
“My angel,” he breathed.
Aziraphale slowwwwly lifted his arms, reaching above his head to take hold of the legs of the armchair behind him but never taking his eyes from Crowley’s. “My demon. Mine. The very heart of me. Quickly now, Crowley…oh, be quick…”
Easy enough.
Slow at first but building fast, prickles of fire and ice dancing along the entire line of Crowley’s spine as he moved, as he took what he wanted so badly to take (and ohhhh bloody hell from this higher angle he could actually watch the angel’s opening taking him in, darker and pinker than the surrounding skin and so much like a greedy grasping mouth that Crowley couldn’t look away, completely mesmerized) and gave what he wanted so badly to give (Aziraphale’s cock sliding easily through his hand, the angel shuddering and moaning and whimpering with delight when Crowley increased that pressure). Everything was hot and slick and wet now; not only were they both sweating from the exertion and from the heat pouring inward from the time-stopped flames in the street, their clothes all rucked and rumpled…but by now Aziraphale had loosened, still puckered around Crowley’s cock (flexing, twinging, grabbing) but no longer so pinchingly taut.
And Aziraphale was smiling. They were full-on fucking on the bookshop floor in a time-bubble with their enemies all around and the world set to end…but Aziraphale was smiling. Bare-arsed and stuffed to the brim with demonic dick and smiling.
Crowley had a fleeting mental glimpse of himself standing on that wall in Eden and gazing with shock and admiration at the pretty pale angel who had given away his Heaven-requisitioned sword to the fallen humans. Never had a chance, he thought, and would have laughed if he could. Total goner from the get-go. But…if I had to fall again…at least this time he’s here to catch me.
“Together,” panted Aziraphale, still smiling. “Together…Crowley, just as we…as we were always meant to be…”
“Always.”
“Us.”
Crowley heaved a sob even as his hips rolled and a drop of acrid blood from his nose slipped into the corner of his mouth. “Us. Us.”
He couldn’t see the glare of the flames anymore, or the grain of the wood floor beneath Aziraphale, or the shadowy shelves of the bookshop. He forgot about the hosts and hordes in the street, the humans, and the reborn Christ (wherever the hell he’d been sent). He gripped Aziraphale’s thighs, one to his chest and the other against his side, throwing back his head and bucking his hips again and again, fast and so hard, lost in the deliciously physical sound of the slapping-together of moist flesh accompanied by the heavenly music of his angel’s cries. Something was rising within him: a fearsome wind that stole his breath, trapped within the borders of his body but steadily gaining strength and building pressure, pressure, terrible awesome pressure that was going to split him right open, but he wanted it, he wanted to be rent to pieces by this howling typhoon of sheer ecstatic joy, he ran to it with arms wide open and was flung into a whirlwind of sensory rapture too intense even to bear…
And Aziraphale was there to catch him.
Again.
A gasping, growling shout was wrenched from Crowley’s throat, and Aziraphale’s voice joined his in magnificent chorus as something dark and hot poured forth from Crowley into his angel and something bright and cold gushed over Crowley’s hand, both more beautiful and far more primal than mere human emissions—pulsing sprays of formess materium, drops of limitless potentiality, the seeds of galaxies and universes and entire dimensions…shared freely between them, given with love and received with joy.
Look at them. Aren’t they gorgeous?
You know, even the highest-ranking angels are pitifully uninformed about sex. Just completely ignorant. After all, it’s a very physical thing and even those of them who have the clearance to test out a physical corporation have rarely dared—or bothered—to leave the safety of Heaven and try it out. As for Hell, well, sex was My idea in the first place, and though demons have been known to twist the idea of it to Hellish purposes, the act itself, especially for pleasure, is a thing I’m known to endorse and they avoid it on principle.
The fact is that no angel or demon had ever actually experienced orgasm until this moment, much less while joined together. And as it turns out, powerful eternal beings performing an act so intimate and vital and sacrificial—a giving-over of themselves, body AND spirit, each to the other—has rather broader consequences than either of them could have anticipated.
The force of these combined essences is like the PLUNK of a stone of impossible size into the pool of reality itself. Shockwaves burst outward from a bookshop in Soho. In the sheer stupefying, unprecedented FORCE of its passage, the flames that have been steadily eating away at the city are extinguished, and the beings who had been hefting weapons (and claws, and teeth) in the streets of Soho are swept away, as easily as a cat will bat small figures from the surface of a table. The Earth itself gives a JOLT not unlike a single gargantuan hiccup…and then all is still.
Mine is a pretty lonely gig, all things considered. I don’t have anyone to smile at…but I smile anyway.
Took them long enough, didn’t it?
On the bookshop floor, an angel lifted the tail of his very wrinkled jacket to wipe tenderly at the bloody nose of a demon, who lay at rest in his arms.
“Mmf,” said the demon.
“Mm-hm,” agreed the angel and pressed a long kiss to the demon’s forehead. “You did splendidly, my love.”
Crowley stirred, but didn’t yet open his eyes. His head was pillowed on Aziraphale’s shoulder and he felt like he could easily sleep for a century or two just like this. “D’you mean the time thing, or the sex?”
“Both.” Aziraphale stroked the top of Crowley’s foot with his stockinged toes—they’d never gotten around to removing their socks. “…I could be wrong, but the siege appears to have been lifted.”
That made Crowley’s head pop up; he blinked blearily in the direction of the window. The evening air was heavily suffused with smoke, but no one was shouting or throwing bricks, which made for a nice change. He let his head drop back to its cozy cushion. “Chased ‘em off, did we?”
“Well…” Aziraphale traced long, lazy circles over Crowley’s shoulder, which even through the shirt made the demon shiver with pleasure. “As we learned with Jim, a joint miracle performed by the two of us appears to be particularly potent. And what we just did…was rather more than a mere miracle.”
“Mere mir-a-cle,” Crowley repeated. He felt good. Really good. Two-whole-bottles-of-very-fine-champagne good. “Please tell me we just saved the world with sex.”
Aziraphale giggled (which made his whole body jiggle—which, as Crowley was currently draped all over that body, made Crowley jiggle too—which was probably the loveliest thing he’d ever felt, ever) and rubbed his nose over Crowley’s. “Honestly, I think we did. Can you feel it?”
“Well, not yet, but I’m up for another round if you are.” Crowley nudged a knee against the angel’s rather sloppy groin. Bentley, were the two of them a mess. Could always miracle themselves clean…but a shower sounded a lot more fun. Were the pipes working, at this point? Worth a shot. Could always miracle the pipes.
“Cheek.” But Aziraphale gave him an extra little squeeze. “Around the planet. Can you feel it?”
Crowley mmmmmed in his throat and kissed the angel’s chin, but also cast his awareness up and out, streeeeetching and reaching…and how about that. There it was, a big ol’ bubble encasing the Earth like a shield. He sighed, smiling. “Bet it’ll be real pretty in the daylight.”
“They won’t give it up, you know.”
“Course not. But now we’ve got a safe base of operations. Rally the humans.”
“You want to lead an army?”
“Dunno. Could be fun. And I wouldn’t be alone…right?”
“Never alone. Not ever again.”
“Then we’re good. …Kinda wish I could pop back in time, like around the Job thing or so, and tell my past self that one day I’d fuck the Supreme Archangel.”
“You would have thought that you meant Gabriel.”
“Exactly. Can you imagine my face?”
“Yes, actually. Darling, could we shift over a bit?”
“Sure. You okay?”
“Well, I’ve been lying on a paperweight the entire time.”
“What?? Angel, for fuck’s sake.”
“I didn’t want to kill the vibe.”
“Where did you learn that phrasing?”
“From young Joshua, actually. He’s very hip to all the modern lingo.”
“Come on, up you get.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Now Aziraphale, be honest…did you adopt the son of God?”
“…I may have done. He’s really very sweet, Crowley, I’m sure you’ll like him. I’ve told him all about you.”
“Wait, when?”
“The whole time. I really didn’t have anyone else to confide in, and I was missing you terribly.”
“Ah.”
“You haven’t any room to tut—”
“Oi, I did not tut!”
“—seeing as you’ve clearly adopted that little Inspector Constable.”
“…Ha, yeah.”
“Are they safe?”
“They are now. Sent ‘em with the humans. Your kid safe?”
“Oh yes. He’s off in Siberia, I left him with this lovely family. Just temporarily, you see. We should probably fetch him.”
“Sure, sure. …Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow. Come along, darling, and we’ll get all cleaned up and have some tea.”
“Or liquor?”
“Both.”
“Goody.”
“And then we’ll have a proper lay in a proper bed.”
“Lay?”
“Sex, Crowley.”
“I’m questioning your terminology, not your intent.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“…Yeah.”
“Come here.”
They stood at the foot of the spiral staircase, Aziraphale’s luscious backside hanging out in the ashy breeze and Crowley’s jeans still dragging from one ankle, and Aziraphale draped his arms over Crowley’s shoulders and Crowley snaked his arms around Aziraphale’s waist; they ignored the dried blood on Crowley’s face and the glutinous smooshing of their nethers and just kissed, long and slow and deep.
“Home,” whispered Crowley against his angel’s lips.
“Home,” agreed Aziraphale, with stars in his eyes. “Let’s enjoy tonight, my treasure…and kick some arse tomorrow.”
Crowley giggled. (Some things were contagious, it seemed.) “Sounds like a plan.”
[ fin]
NOW with a bonus illustration by AO3 user @froschfrollein! 😁
