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"Mister Crowley?"
Crowley snapped out of his depressive reverie. He was sitting on the only bench in Whickber Street that hadn't been converted to one that was awful for everyone to sit on, solely for the purpose of making it awful for homeless people to sleep on. He didn't have the best view of the bookshop from here, which was just as well, since he was definitely not watching the bookshop, and hadn't been for the past two hours.
He looked up, dour expression unchanged. His only relief was that the person addressing him was someone he actually liked .
"Mrs. Sandwich."
She shifted her jogging suit-clad weight onto one leg, hand on cocked hip.
"It's been three months since we last saw you and Mister Fell."
Her tone was carefully accusatory, with just a dash of concern. He simply grunted in response, focusing his attention back on the bookshop.
"Look at that. Customers. They're actually selling the books."
Mrs. Sandwich raised an eyebrow. "Well, it is a bookshop."
To that, Crowley gave a high-pitched manic chuckle with a grin that didn't reach his glasses. Mrs. Sandwich huffed impatiently.
"Look, it's just that Mister Fell didn't say anything about the shop getting taken over, and everyone's been wondering where you two went off to after the, ahem, Traders and Shopkeeper's Association Meeting, and-"
"Us two?"
She blinked. "Well… yeah?"
Crowley sucked his teeth and leaned back, sprawling over the bench and sticking out his long legs. He swallowed the lump in his throat, taking a while to respond in order to unsuccessfully keep his voice from cracking.
"Nah," he said, shaking his head. "No 'us two', Mrs. Sandwich. Just him. He, ah. Went off . Got a fancy job offer and left,” Me. “The bookshop. Wouldn't expect him back, if I were you.”
“A job ? What job ?”
A non-descriptory wave. “Big honking shit company. Used to work for them myself. Dead set on bringing about the apocalypse.”
“Like Shell? Why ?”
“Close. He basically runs the place now. He thinks… he can change it from the inside.”
Mrs. Sandwich reeled with the information, and sat down beside him. “But that was his grandfather’s bookshop. He’s always been there.”
“Nothing lasts forever, Mrs. Sandwich.”
She went quiet next to him for a while. If he was honest, it felt nice to be around someone again. Crowley had been trying to sleep for the past month, trying to drown himself in liquor for the one before that, and for the month before that he’d been trying to drive as far as he could, only for the Bentley to take a corner and arrive back in London the moment his concentration slipped. He’s not spoken to anyone, not even his plants, the entire time. When he kissed Aziraphale a clot of acid had formed behind his ribcage, dissolving him with rage and misery, and nothing had been able to help.
“What about you?” Mrs. Sandwich asked delicately.
“What about me?” Crowley snapped, and she gave him a look like that was answer enough. Horrifyingly, she proceeded to reach out and pat him on the back . Even more horrifying, the small act of comfort actually worked to dilute the clot of acid, just a little bit. He allowed himself a moment to wallow, to be nakedly, openly miserable in front of her. Then he sniffed, worked his fingers beneath his sunglasses to rub at his eyes, and cocked his head to glance at her. An unhealthy idea formed.
“Got any blondes?”
Crowley had never partaken much in matters of sex. Sex made his job easy, as many humans could be convinced to do almost anything if they thought there was even the slightest possibility of having it. He’d made great men throw their lives away just by pointing out a great pair of tits to them. People killed for sex, died for sex, and made up all sorts of rules about what sorts of sex other people couldn’t have, just to make it more exciting for themselves to have exactly those sorts of sex. They begged each other for it, forced each other into it, wrote books and plays and films about it, and invented all sorts of ingenious contraptions to aid them in it.
He’d considered trying it, but the thought of having sex with a human was… Strange. The power imbalance of it made him uncomfortable- the age difference alone was enough to give pause. As such, he had just assumed the whole thing wasn’t for him .
That was, until 41 AD, Rome. Until he was sat across from Aziraphale at Petronius’ restaurant, watching him slurp down an oyster, sigh in ecstasy and smack his lips. He almost dropped the oyster he was holding himself, instead just keeping it near his mouth which had fallen slightly open.
In that moment, he was assaulted by a powerful vision of upheaving the table between them and jumping the angel, tearing all his clothes off and demanding he put his mouth on Crowley as if he were an oyster. Finally, he understood the humans. Right then, at that table, in that restaurant, he would throw his life away for it, kill and die for it, make up rules that nobody else could do it so he could be the only one on Earth to know such pleasure. He could beg Aziraphale for it. Forcing him didn’t enter his mind, because the main thing, the biggest part of his sudden all-encompassing desire, was that he wanted more than anything else for the angel to want him just as badly.
Aziraphale grinned at him and gave an encouraging gesture. “Try it, Crowley, I promise they’re divi- Uh, I mean. They’re delectable.”
Crowley blinked, cleared his throat, and frowned. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t rush me,” he sneered, but there was no bite behind it. How had Aziraphale done that? How had he grabbed him by the throat - oh, Hell, grab me by the throat, hold me down, pull my feathers - and flooded his mind with these thoughts? And most importantly, how could he make it stop?
Well, it wasn’t going to stop if Aziraphale kept looking at him in anticipation, so he ate the goddamned oyster.
“Shit. That’s really good.”
Aziraphale glowed with delight. Crowley spent the next two thousand-odd years pining for him.
The girl’s name was Barbara. She was the wrong kind of blonde, but Crowley felt that actually voicing how much that bothered him would be a step too far. He had been brought to her door and when he had been allowed in, she was sitting on the large bed that dominated the small, gaudy room. She wore nothing but a pair of heels and lingerie, a minty green lacy set that tried valiantly to show off as much of her cleavage as could be found. She gave him a very pretty smile, confident, inviting. He closed the door behind him and stood as if glued to it, face like stone.
“Mister Crowley, is it? You can come sit down, you know, I won’t bite,” she said in a soft, sultry voice, “yet.”
She winked at him.
Crowley stiffly made his way over to the bed and sat down, leaning back and resting on his elbows in a simulacrum of comfort. Barbara turned towards him and put a hand on his knee, letting it drift up the inside of his thigh, towards-
“Do you have a drink? Can I have a drink?” he spluttered. She raised her eyebrows, but remained unphased.
“Of course,” she said, taking her hand off his leg in a moment of remarkable emotional insight. Still, she waited a moment to get up, hesitating before saying: “You know, it’s alright to be a bit nervous. I see lots of men who’ve never been with a professional before.”
Crowley’s hidden eyes trained themselves firmly on the flowery duvet cover between them as he picked at it. “Anyone,” he muttered, nigh-inaudibly.
“Sorry?”
He felt incredibly silly in that moment- six thousand years, and he never even tried ? Of that, two thousand years of stubbornly refusing to see for himself what all the fuss was about, just on the off chance that he might convince the stupid love of his stupid life to try it with him.
Aziraphale had done it, he knew, had ‘satisfied his curiosity and experienced the joys of all sorts of human physical enjoyment’, he’d said on a drunken evening, unaware of how that simple phrase crystallised and shattered Crowley’s brain. For a moment, he had been genuinely afraid that he might discorporate himself by spontaneous combustion. He had lied, then, when the angel said ‘Haven’t you?’ and he replied with an exaggerated huff and an ‘Of course I have, you berk.’ If he had said, back then, what he had wanted to say, which was: ‘No, but why don’t we lock ourselves in this room for the next ten years and you can show me?’ maybe he wouldn’t have been in this mess now. Maybe, if their first kiss hadn’t been a desperate, violent disappointment, nothing but a failed attempt at saying goodbye and don’t go at the same time, Aziraphale wouldn’t have left.
But he did, and he’s never going to kiss him again, so there’s no point in saving himself for him. He hadn’t even realised that that was what he was doing.
He resolved not to be ashamed in front of the human, so he cleared his throat and repeated himself with challenging bravado: “Never been with anyone.”
Barbara’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she did a commendable job in keeping her professional demeanour.
“...Right. So, drink?”
“Please. Wine.”
She got up and turned toward the small drinks cabinet shoved into the corner of the room, in doing so revealing the angel wings tattooed on her back. A chuckle bubbled out from Crowley’s throat, and he couldn’t stop it before it turned into loud, hysterical laughter.
Barbara turned on her heel, face flushed and eyes wide. “What? What’s so funny? I won’t be mocked, you know, if you-”
Crowley had collapsed backwards onto the bed, convulsing with laughter. Oh, God fucking hated him, didn’t She?
“No, it’s not- ha! - Fuck, I’m sorry, love, oh,” he tried to explain himself through wheezes. He let out the last air of the laughing fit in a deep sigh as he sat up and tried to grin placatingly at the girl. “No, listen, it’s just- I’m here to,” he started, mind racing as he looked up at this half-naked woman ready to kick him out of the room. He had never been nervous around humans before. He had always had the upper hand in every interaction with one, and this was no exception. He was paying for this, and, like she said, the girl’s a professional. And Mrs. Sandwich promised nothing if not discretion. What was he here for if not to let it all out to someone who didn’t give a shit about him outside these four walls?
Get over yourself, you git .
“Barbara. I’m sorry. I am here,” he explained, “To forget about someone. Someone I wanted to be with very, very badly. But he left, and he won’t be back. And he had angel wings too.” He started laughing again, trying to get her to laugh along. She did, for a moment, but her eyes went all sad and pitying. “Oh,” she murmured softly. “I’m sorry.”
He sneered, making a frustrated noise. “Ah, don’t be. Couldn’t have known.”
A long moment of silence stretched between them. She poured the wine, and he willed it to be a finer vintage rather than the bottle of second-least-expensive corner-shop piss she had pulled out.
He got up from the bed and stalked over to her, taking the wine and downing it in one gulp. He let his eyes rake over her body, pale and soft-looking, with a scar on her belly that could have meant the removal of either a baby or an appendix. He got in her space, setting down the glass on the cart behind her.
“Can I touch you?” Crowley asked, voice croaking just a little.
She smiled, amused. “That is rather the point of this whole transaction, Mister Crowley.”
“Just Crowley, please.”
Slowly, he lowered his forehead to her shoulder. She smelled like skin, hair, soap and perfumed creams. His hands came up to rest at her hips, and he leaned his body forward to plaster it against hers and soak up her warmth. The snake in him basked in the heat. He had been cold for thousands of years. Crowley knew warmth only in moments that were quick to pass, coiled up on a sunny windowsill in the bookshop, seeing his angel smile, watching him discover new and exciting desserts…
“... Ow. Sorry, can you just-” Barbara interrupts him, awkwardly moving her shoulder away from his face.
“Shit, what- what’s wrong?”
She grimaces. “It’s nothing, just, uh, the sunglasses were just kind of digging in. Can you… Is it okay if I take them off?”
Of course, the fucking sunglasses. He hesitated, but figured that he was going to let go, he might as well actually show himself. A quick miracle, something to make her more susceptible to accept what she would see, and he nodded.
“...Yeah. Got a, uh, eye condition, though. Don’t be weird about it.”
She reached up and delicately slid the glasses off. They were carefully placed next to the empty wine glass, and she looked him in the eye. There was a moment of confusion, but it was glossed over, and she smiled up at him. “That’s better. Hello,” she said.
She was brighter now. Removing the barrier did nothing for his nerves.
“I… I don’t rightly know what to do, now,” he admitted. Her hands slid up his arms and over his shoulders to rest on his jawline, fingers in his hair. It felt very nice.
“Just tell me what you want,” she said, as if it were easy.
“I want…” he looked away, bringing up the courage to admit it even to himself. He couldn’t look her in the eye to say it, so he buried his face in the crook of her neck again. He could hear and smell her blood racing through her body, carrying oxygen to her brain, maintaining her form for as long as she could. No matter what he said here, it would only be another sixty or seventy years before she would be too dead to tell anyone about it, and that was if she was lucky .
“I wanted to tell him I loved him. And I wanted him to want me. So, can we… can I…” He moved his hands to her back and squeezed her tighter. “Can I pretend to love you, and you pretend to want me?”
He hadn’t wanted his voice to be so small when he said it. He felt pathetic. But at least she was probably experienced with pathetic people, and she wouldn’t laugh at him. He felt her fingers move through his hair, long painted nails lightly scratching his scalp in a way that made him shudder as she moved his head up, so she could whisper in his ear:
“I want you, Crowley.”
The words shot through him like a bolt of lightning. His knees went weak, and the acid in his chest hurt, hurt worse than ever, but this time he indulged it. He let the hurt warm him from the inside. The heat spread downwards to where he’d made an effort. He brought his head back, looked her in the eye, and pretended as hard as he could.
“I love you,” he says for the first time.
He kissed her. Barbara was pliant and enthusiastic under him, and he couldn’t make her body and mouth feel like Aziraphale’s but it was thrilling to kiss someone for pleasure, not desperation. She was good at it. It felt good. She pulled his hair a little bit, which made his brain feel funny and his body feel hot and urgent.
Her fingers, devastatingly, left his hair to push at his jacket and undo the buttons of his waistcoat. He felt like he ought to do something of the same genre, and started fiddling with the clasp of her bra. By the time she’d finished with the buttons, he’d gotten no further and had started cursing himself for ever inspiring Mark Twain to invent the blasted things. She broke the kiss and swatted his hands away to do it herself, giving him the opportunity to bare his upper half as well. She wiggled out of her knickers and kicked off her heels, giving him another four inches on her.
There was a naked human woman in front of him. He’d seen plenty of them before, had been around for the first one in fact, but he had never been expected to do anything about it.
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, going through everything he wished he had said to Aziraphale in his head. “I’ve loved you since the beginning of the world.”
Barbara, not knowing not to mistake reality for poetry, blushed. She came towards him and grabbed him by the belt, walking him backwards until the back of his knees hit the bed and he fell backwards onto it. He had the foresight to toe off his boots as she opened his belt and trousers and stripped him of his last defences. “You’re so fucking hot,” she said- a good effort, not something he would say, but she wasn’t him. It made him laugh, in any case.
He hadn’t expected to be hard so soon, hadn’t expected any of this to actually work. She got on the bed and kneeled over him, going in for another kiss before leaning forward to grab one of the condoms lying ready on the nightstand. The motion put her breasts directly in his face and Crowley, in the spirit of going with it, put his mouth and hands on them, massaging gently and teasing at a sensitive nipple. He didn’t know what he was doing, but it was something he had desperately wanted to do- just because it was with the wrong person didn’t make the act not pleasurable, and Barbara seemed to like it in any case.
She then sat up on his lap and looked down at him with lights dancing dangerous, predatory in her eyes. They looked like eyes he saw sometimes in paintings of angels slaying their foul demonic adversaries, the ones that made him and Aziraphale joke amongst themselves but that still sometimes made him feel a certain way . In some of his more daring fantasies, the angel was in his full regalia, flaming sword and wings and everything, his foot shoving down right in the centre of the naked demon’s back between his black wings.
Barbara saw it in him, this urge he had, and she put her hand on his face, pushing it down and shoving a thumb in his mouth, forcing it open for no reason other than to assert her dominance in this moment. Crowley exhaled in sheer bliss.
“I want your cock, Crowley,” she said sweetly. “I need it. You’re so big and perfect for me, baby, you’ll give it to me, right?”
He nodded vigorously, and she grinned. She took her hand back and ripped open the condom packet, expertly rolling it onto him in one smooth motion that made Crowley realise that she hadn’t actually touched his cock yet. He bucked in her hand and groaned, squeezed her hip to ground himself. “Let me take care of you, love… You’re so good…”
Crowley’s face went as red as his hair. Now that was something Aziraphale would say, words that he’d reserved for fantasies at his loneliest times. The warmth had spread and was now at its strongest in the pit of his belly. “Please,” he begged. “Anything, anything you want, angel, fuck- ”
She must have known that wasn’t her endearment, but she graciously ignored it. She worked his cock and watched until he gasped for breath- the fact that she was watching him struggle made him believe it, actually believe that there was someone in the universe that thought he was worth looking at.
And then she led him to her entrance and enveloped him fully.
“ Oh. ”
So that's what it was all about, two people joining in ecstasy and intense sensation. It was the warmth of her that made him gasp for breath. She began to move, rocking her hips on top of him, and he made an embarrassing noise about it.
"Good?" she asked. "Gnnrerk ," he replied. His skin was tingling everywhere it wasn't being touched, so he sat up, catching her with one arm around her back, grabbing the soft flesh of her arse. She met him in another deep, frantic kiss, and moaned when he started to move with her, trying to find a rhythm that worked.
If it all had been different, if everything had gone the way he wanted it, he wouldn’t be here. He’d be in the bookshop with Aziraphale, golden light and noise from the open window warming their skin and reminding them of the busy world outside as they languished together, reveling in each other. Taking their time. There would have been so much time.
Something was bubbling up inside of him, hot and strong and overwhelming. He took hold of Barbara and flipped their positions so he was knelt between her legs, face under her chin, moving however he could to chase that feeling. He could barely hear her moans rising in volume, instead closing his eyes tightly and thinking about his angel’s eyes, his smell, his lips on his, the feel of his hands on his back…
“Fuck, Aziraphale- ”
His hips stuttered as the feeling spilled over and he came, a facsimile of stars projected on the back of his eyelids. It was, all in all, a pretty amazing feeling. He kissed the dip of skin under Barbara’s collarbone in thanks. “Did you…” he started. “Don’t worry about it”, came the response above his head. He nodded, and moved to take himself out of her, but stayed where he was otherwise. He couldn’t bring himself to lift his head to look at her.
So, that was it. He had had sex, and it had been very nice, all in all.
Crowley wondered why Barbara’s skin was wet before he realised he was crying. His whole body shivered and collapsed, and she wrapped her arms around his back, holding his head, turning him sideways so he could lie down and cling to her with his head on her chest. He made noises he’d never admit to even being able to make, his entire body wracked with sobs in a painful but necessary release.
“Don’t leave me,” he whimpered. Barbara rubbed his back, and he felt absolutely mortified but he was too far gone to stop. “Don’t leave me, you bastard…”
Some time passed before he ran out of steam and became able to collect himself a little bit. He knew it was time to go when he felt the warmth leech out of him again, and the acid returned, even if it felt slightly more bearable now. His breathing evened out.
Slowly, he extricated himself from the embrace. He sat up on the bed and swung his legs over the side, very pointedly turning his back and not looking at the naked woman who had just seen him at his worst. He discarded the condom, which was distinctly unpleasant. Wearing it hadn’t been necessary, of course, but try explaining that to a woman who had heard every excuse under the sun. ‘Oh, I don’t have to because I’m a demon from Hell and my body isn’t technically real’ probably wouldn’t fly.
He cleared his throat to try and break the tension.
“Uh… Sorry. About that.” He aimed for off the cuff, but his voice was still rough and blubbery.
“Not at all,” Barbara replied. “Long as it helped.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. “...It did. I think. Maybe. Thank you.”
At the moment, he felt he was between sucking it up and moving on and spending some quality time with a cement block at the bottom of the Thames, but if he were honest with himself the first option was looking a bit more bearable now. It would be miserable, but if he really tried, he could maybe figure something out.
He got off the bed to sheepishly put his clothes back on, starting with the sunglasses. Once all his barriers were back in place, he was able to look back at her. While he was wallowing in his thoughts, she had been able to conjure up a soft blue dressing gown from somewhere. She looked at him expectantly, the ‘Anything else?’ implied.
“Right,” he concluded. “So, do I…” he made an awkward flourish with his hands.
“At the front desk, with Mrs. Sandwich. No cards.”
“Uh huh. You’re, ah. Good. At your job.”
“Thank you, Mr. Crowley. Until next time?”
All he had in response to that was a strangled noise in the back of his throat that he tried to form into a ‘bye’, all but running for the door.
He was able to sleep after that- not very long, and not very peacefully, but at least he got some rest. The acid clot in his centre sloshed around as always, but the pain became familiar. He yelled at his plants some, mostly because he felt they were judging him, and spent some time as a snake amongst the ones that required the most sun.
The next time he returned to Whickber Street, it was with only one resolution in mind:
Aziraphale would never (might never, a treacherously hopeful corner of his mind supplied) return. But the shop was all he had left of him, and he’d be damned all over again before he let Muriel sell any more books.