Archive of Our Own

"Nice," Aziraphale parroted back, calm in the face of Crowley's outburst. "I suppose you would know plenty about being nice, wouldn't you?" He asked it the same way he'd ask about the weather, like it was the kind of idle conversation one might hold while picking lint from one's tailored jacket.

"Wh—" Crowley didn't get a chance to finish because he suddenly moved at speeds categorically impossible to reach while standing still.

His breath left him before he could try again, pushed out of him when his back hit the wall with force. For one brief moment, he attempted to ponder how, exactly, his back had hit the wall, but then Aziraphale was very close.

Too close, really, and leaning closer. The cold, intense stare was incongruous with the warm line of his body, with his hands large and flat on Crowley's chest. "Now that you mention it, I find myself a bit weary of being nice. Perhaps this will be more to your liking," he concluded, and that was the only warning Crowley got.

Over the years, Crowley had thought, at length, about what Aziraphale knew about physical intimacy. There were plenty of different types of it, and Aziraphale was certainly a gourmand when it came to trying out human experiences.

As time had progressed, Aziraphale had made it obvious that he wasn't averse to physical contact when they could get away with it. A touch on the arm to stop them from walking into danger, or a supportive hand when one of them stumbled.

None of that compared to being pinned against the wall, Aziraphale's weight pressing against him from thigh to shoulder. Crowley's glasses had slipped down his nose, and maybe it was Aziraphale's holy aura or the physical pressure of his body or the sheer shocking intimidation of his stare, but reaching up to adjust them was out of the question.

"Do you remember Warlock's birthday? It was a Thursday, I believe," Aziraphale asked conversationally, and a jumble of every single one of Warlock's birthday parties crammed themselves into Crowley's brain all at once, and none of them had been "nice" by any definition. "You told me off very much like this."

Oh, that birthday.

Aziraphale had been so open, that day, smiling and fussing and giving him looks and calling him kind, and what was a self-respecting demon supposed to do with that? He couldn't do any of the things he wanted to do, or that he suspected Aziraphale wanted him to do, especially not in a Satanic convent in broad daylight. But he could always throw someone against a wall, snarl, intimidate. Aziraphale knew he wouldn't bite.

He supposed that this whole day so far had been a turnabout of their usual dynamic. Aziraphale was playing the bad cop, breaking the rules, pretending at a distance, while Crowley was trying to balance flying under their sides' radar and trying to game a smile out of his friend. And turnabout, as they say, is fair play.

So if Aziraphale wanted to play it like this, he'd play along.

"Go on then, Angel," Crowley said huskily around the catch in his throat. "You don't have to play at being nice for me."

"'Playing,' hmm?" Aziraphale's breath was hot against his ear. Neither of them needed to breathe. Both of them were doing it anyway, and the pressure of their chests against each other was shifting with every breath.

"'M a demon, after all. You can treat me like you've always wanted to. Nobody would believe a word I said even if I told them."

He knew it was cruel. He knew how Aziraphale really wanted to treat him. How they both wanted to care for each other. But, much like they both went on breathing when they didn't need to, they reached for what kept them going here, too.

Today, that was Aziraphale's teeth closing hard around his earlobe after he reminded Crowley, "There's no one to tell, anyway."

And there wasn't. There was only Aziraphale's teeth now scraping at his jaw, Aziraphale's blunt nails digging into his chest as he dragged them down, showing no care for the fabric in the way. Aziraphale's hips turning to pin Crowley even more thoroughly.

Crowley shifted against him, impatient, and got shoved again for his trouble, Aziraphale's hands heavy and undeniable when they pressed his shoulders to the wall. "It would be in your best interest, my dear," he murmured, the endearment more reflexive than heartfelt, "to stay where I put you."

For the first time in his life, Crowley did exactly what he was told without asking any questions. He knew the answers, after all, and if he asked them anyway Aziraphale would stop. There was more to be lost if he did than just the heat of his contact, the scrape of the edges Aziraphale so hated in himself against the few soft parts Crowley still retained after all these years. If he spooked Aziraphale now, Crowley thought, he might really never see him again.

And, yeah, he absolutely didn't want Aziraphale to stop, even if he was guaranteed not to spook. They might be all twisted up right now, the wrong side of the scripts, but he'd dreamed of it just the same. Aziraphale held him against the wall with all the casual strength of a Principality, the hand against Crowley's chest enough to compensate for his knees' dereliction of duty. The scrape of his teeth was followed by a gourmand's tongue, wet and hot and slow, tasting every pore. When Aziraphale bit down on the corner of his jaw, with just the right amount of pressure, Crowley felt much like a platter of ox ribs, laid out for Aziraphale to consume, to gorge himself on, even if he couldn't be savoured.

"M'yours," Crowley managed to murmur before another nip of Aziraphale's teeth tore a gasp out of him instead.

"Of course you are," Aziraphale growled against his throat, followed by a bite that Crowley was sure would leave a mark, even if only because he'd be damned if it didn't. "You have always been mine, haven't you? My hereditary enemy. My rival. My foe to vanquish. My responsibility to handle." Each label was ground out slowly and intensely, and each was accompanied by Aziraphale undoing a button of Crowley's shirt. There was so little space between them that the air didn't even feel cool against Crowley's slowly-revealed skin. It felt like the warmth of Aziraphale's body, and wherever Aziraphale's fingers brushed against his skin, it felt like fire.

And the fire burned until there was nothing else to be except Aziraphale's. The only apocalypse on Crowley's horizon now was the devastation Aziraphale would surely lead him to.

He might have done it slowly, once, somewhere, in another universe, but now—

Hot fingers skated past the navel he gave himself just for fun, skipping right past his waistband to feel out the shape of him (something else he was trying out for fun, and it was fun, almost unbearably sensitive, especially with Aziraphale's deep sound of interest and the firmer press of his palm).

"Whatever should I do with this?" Aziraphale asked, and if the question weren't already rhetorical, the way he licked his lips would be answer enough.

Crowley groaned and let his head thump back against the wall, which got him a sharp tug on his belt loops. It threatened to throw him off balance between the shock of friction and the usual unsteadiness of his legs, and he made no attempt to steady himself. Aziraphale would catch him or he would fall, and that was that.

"Eyes on me," Aziraphale commanded, and sank to his knees, leaving Crowley still unsure which it would be.

He didn't fall.

Aziraphale caught him, just as he always had, or at least always tried to. One steady arm—how was Aziraphale so steady now, so calm, when he was always so nervous? But then, he was always calmest under pressure, always managed the trick when it counted most—caught him around the back of his thighs, formed something like an impromptu seat, one of those things you see at bus stops in places where they get rid of benches because homeless people sleep on them.

Aziraphale just hated those weird not-bench things. Last time they'd been in Vegas, he'd complained about them extensively while Crowley perched up on one to be contrary. He'd thought about writing in to Hell and taking credit for them before he'd remembered that they were free.

No. That they had been free. Past perfect.

Crowley's glasses were on the very end of his nose now, threatening to fall off completely, and as he angled his head down to look at Aziraphale, they did. Aziraphale caught those, too.

"Did you think I wouldn't have you?"

Crowley tried to parse the question and all its meanings, but found that his quicksilver mind couldn't hold them all at once. Aziraphale had already set his sunglasses safely aside and was pressing his broad palm against Crowley's bare belly, urging him to lean back against the wall and drawing all his thoughts to that point of contact like a burning beacon. Crowley tried again to go through the possible meanings of Aziraphale's questions one by one, and this time hold just the answers in his mind. Each answer wound up being the same: Yes, of course Aziraphale had him. He always had, and always would.

"Eyes on me," Aziraphale reminded him, apparently not caring at all if Crowley managed to verbalise the answer he had struggled so hard to get.

Steadied for the moment—as much as he could ever be considered such—Crowley went where Aziraphale led. His posture an unwise hybrid between deliberate slouch and relaxed lean, there was nothing he could do but widen his stance to cling to what grounding he had. Between his planted feet and Aziraphale's hand, he frantically thought that he might just about survive the encounter.

Aziraphale's eyes were even brighter with the tint of his glasses now gone, and Crowley tracked them taking in the sight of his thighs spreading. The hand on his belly moved ever so slowly downward until Aziraphale's pinky teased at his waistband, fingernail scratching against the fabric with a satisfyingly heavy sensation. When the nail slipped (deliberately, judging by Aziraphale's expectant left eyebrow) and scratched against Crowley's skin instead, he exhaled all the breath he'd been holding to keep a whimper at bay.

And then that finger dipped in, his fly open by some miracle or sleight of hand, and the pad of Aziraphale's thumb brushed against the delicate tissue between Crowley's thighs.

"Did you grow this yourself?" he asked, voice so low that Crowley had to strain to hear it over the buzzing in his mind that had begun at that first touch. "The human way?"

How he was supposed to answer with the faintest repetitive strokes up and down the shaft showing no sign of stopping, he wasn't sure.

Crowley must have let out a noise that satisfied Aziraphale, although Crowley had no way of guessing how Aziraphale had parsed it into being an answer—if he had at all.

"You know, I have always appreciated things done the slow way." Aziraphale's tone was maddeningly conversational, or maybe the maddening part was the softness of his touches. "There is something to be said for the process of craftsmanship. You understand, don't you? You have always enjoyed watching things progress."

Crowley's hips bucked in search of firmer contact, and Aziraphale paused in his touches, spreading his fingers to push Crowley's hips back against the wall. "I'll tell you if I want you to move. Now we'll have to start from scratch."

Aziraphale licked a stripe along Crowley's belly that left him shivering. Crowley tried to squirm under the attention, but Aziraphale's palm was a firm weight against his pelvis, keeping him pinned to the wall. When Aziraphale bit down on the sharp crest of Crowley's hip bone, Crowley realised Aziraphale was repeating exactly what he'd done to his neck and jaw, just a few feet lower.

The message was clear: If Crowley didn't behave according to Aziraphale's specifications, this achingly slow teasing would be drawn out even longer.

Aziraphale's reminder about liking things the slow way came across almost as a request: draw it out. Make him stay right where he was. And Crowley never had found anything more satisfying than satisfying Aziraphale. But he couldn't move his hips so much as an inch; even at his full strength, if Aziraphale wanted to keep him there, he would be kept, and they both knew it.

He needed another kind of compliant non-compliance to aim for, then, and the answer didn't take long to come. Crowley sank into the comforting certainty of Aziraphale's hands and slid one of his own into those soft curls just to rest there.

"I see." Aziraphale's verbal response came just too late to cover his pleased sigh. He always had liked Crowley's hands in his hair. The last time—

No sense in it.

This time, Aziraphale swiped a tongue up the inside of Crowley's thigh, dangerously and tantalisingly close to where Crowley was on the verge of desperate for him. His teeth followed soon after, not quite gentle but not too far off.

"Angel," he half-whispered, broken in the middle like an apple snapped in half to feed two hungry mouths.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, his register deeper than the casual tone of just moments ago. It was nearly automatic and yet layered with everything that it meant. Their little call-and-response game, you say potato and I say excellent. It meant, more than anything, "I'm here, and so are you."

It also meant Aziraphale's hot breath right on his cock, all the thousands of nerves standing on end in frenzied anticipation, as Aziraphale continued to gnaw on his inner thigh like duck confit, tongue and teeth and breathy noises of appreciation that Crowley was never sure he wasn't at least half-imagining.

Crowley strained to keep looking down, to do what Aziraphale wanted him to, like he always did if he could. Even like this, Aziraphale looked every bit the angel he always tried to be. The weak autumn sun straining through the window caught his hair and lit it up from the inside, the sterile white suit he was wearing softened by the barely-there blur of diffuse light around him, as though reality itself was fighting to make him to seem approachable.

He watched, rapturous, as Aziraphale's tongue finally made contact exactly where Crowley wanted it most.

Melting sweet heat blossomed inside him and he bared his teeth, neck rigid, fighting the urge to throw his head back.

He wasn't good at compliance, wasn't built for it. Too many questions, too many thoughts tangled in themselves, in their twining nest.

Eyes on me. Draw it out.

They were commands, but when had he ever not watched Aziraphale, not drawn out the moment however he could? (Have another sweet, here's mine, more wine?) It was the only patience he had.

He bit his lip around a groan as the angel drew a slow, curling tongue over his cock. His cool grey eyes gazing steadily at Crowley as he held him fast, trying to make him come apart. Make him do everything Aziraphale wanted.

His heart cracked a little even as a fiery coil twisted through it.

Eyes? Eyes he could do. He puffed out a slow breath and gazed down at Aziraphale where he knelt there in that abominable suit. His thoughts stilled as he gave the angel all of his focus. Let out the adoration always hidden safely behind lenses.

And heard a gasp as that glorious tongue stuttered.

Crowley did everything he could to focus his stare on Aziraphale's cold grey eyes looking up at him. Aziraphale licked his rosy lips and breathed deeply before lowering them to the tip of Crowley's cock, pressing the sweetest kiss he could to the head.

Crowley was not good at letting himself be pampered and appreciated. Letting himself be cared for and loved. But trapped between the cold wall and Aziraphale's heated hands there was little he could do to wriggle out of it.

Aziraphale peppered kisses around Crowley's cock like he worshipped it. He pressed his lips firmly to one side of the base of it and lingered there before pulling back to kiss the other side, the pressure of it shifting the loose skin of the hood against the delicate shaft.

Crowley groaned and threw his head against the wall, keeping his eyes open and fixed on Aziraphale even as the impact cracked the plaster behind him.

Aziraphale brushed his thumb against Crowley's hip bone. The gesture was perhaps intended to be soothing—it would be so like Aziraphale to be concerned about Crowley hurting himself—but to Crowley, the touch burned as fiercely as if he were writing his true name in fire.

Crowley's fingers flexed roughly against Aziraphale's scalp. It required conscious effort he could barely sustain to keep his touch as gentle as Aziraphale deserved. If Aziraphale was playing at not being nice, Crowley knew his role was to play the opposite: the one deserving of reprimand and command, not the one inflicting any kind of pain, not even a sweet one. More important, though, was the fact that Crowley would never willingly let Aziraphale come to any pain at all. When Crowley had been the one to shove Aziraphale back against a wall, he had made every effort to cushion the blow; Crowley didn't mind cracking the plaster with his own head, but he could never do the same to Aziraphale, no matter how well the Principality might claim he was able to withstand pain.

Crowley had always thought he was pretty good at withstanding pain too, but as Aziraphale's tongue laved over his dick and his thumb made another fiery pass over his hip bone, he was starting to have very serious doubts about his ability to withstand pleasure.

And Aziraphale seemed determined to put it to the test. His tongue worked for a moment longer, making its way up the short shaft and back down the other side, and then pressed flat for half a scorching, agonising second over the too-sensitive head, and then his soft lips followed, sealing over the entirety of it and beginning to suck gently.

So gently, but with the same sense of underlying threat that had been in his hands and his voice all afternoon. It was not a threat that would ever be leveraged against Crowley, but the hint of potential was enough to ratchet the sensations up further until Crowley was gripping at Aziraphale's hair with both hands. His fingers tangled and stuttered in the curls, and the pattern of his breathing was just as precarious, and he was going to fall, going to fly, and the wet sound of Aziraphale pulling away almost wasn't enough to stop him.

The angel's lips were a filthy sight, shining and red, and he sat back to lick them clean. "You're a perfect mouthful for me like this," he confided.

At the very thought of being perfect for him in any way, of succeeding at it fully for once, for once, Crowley's fingers ached to clench tighter. He couldn't do that without pulling—couldn't give into the growing urge to let his claws out, not against Aziraphale's scalp—so he moved one to the wall instead where his fingers couldn't damage anything but the dingy paint and cheap drywall.

Long after they moved on from this meeting place and found a new one, it might remember they were here. It will look like nothing more than the aftermath of a fight, and maybe they will remember it that way, too, by then.

But Crowley wanted to remember this instead, Aziraphale reaching down to adjust his own trousers while looking up directly into Crowley's eyes with all the warmth he'd tried to hide before.

Aziraphale licked his lips in a long, luxurious moment, like Crowley was a fine vintage he was letting settle over his palate.

It was just enough time for Crowley to catch his breath, to tip his head back against the wall again, gently. It was just enough time for Crowley to back away from the cliffs of overwhelming pleasure, from the mix of flying falling freeing fucking that Aziraphale had been pushing him towards like dueling fencers. Every look from Aziraphale had been a riposte, every uttered command an attack, every stuttering breath a backwards tilt of Crowley ceding his ground.

All of it, anyways, was to get to this point. This moment in which, even though Crowley knew he was pinned to the wall, he had the chance to run away, to retreat, to escape in the nick of time and live to fight another day.

Crowley was so tired of fighting.

He met Aziraphale's eyes and whimpered with need.

"I'm so glad you asked," Aziraphale said with a mysterious, impish—dare Crowley say it?—devilish smile. The statement was calm and just a bit bright, as though Crowley had asked whether Aziraphale wanted the white or the red wine with lunch.

Aziraphale's answer was to lap at Crowley's core like he was trying to get the last drops of wine out of the bottle after a long meal, white or red or rosé be damned.

Asked? Had Crowley said a thing? —But perhaps he had. After all, Aziraphale spoke every language but French, and Crowley knew, far too intimately, that that included every noise he made. Their own language, in which so little could be said in words and yet so much could be conveyed, was something they had built up over millennia.

As far as their own private language went, a whimper was as clear as a word.

Crowley dug his claws into the plaster as Aziraphale devoured him with the single-minded focus of one who wasn't certain if he would be able to taste this dish again, and his gasping moan was as evocative as a sonnet.

"Aziraphale—" Getting his full name out was a struggle, but one Crowley would always find the strength for. "I can't— You're—" Even being pinned to the wall as he was, the feeling of Aziraphale relentlessly lapping across his dick was making his hips quiver. His legs were doing little to support his weight as compared to Aziraphale's broad hand, and for all that his eyes were locked onto Aziraphale, keeping them in focus was becoming more of a challenge.

Crowley dug into the wall deeper with his claws, desperate not to disappoint. If Aziraphale was to tear him apart like this, he hoped that inside of him he might find a jewel.

Because what was the point, otherwise? What was the point of a demon, crawling up to earth, making trouble, watching an angel fidget and taste and smile.

What was the point of him if not to be the shell for a millennia of pressure? Taking in all the sighs and wants and hurts and longing, to crystallise to something solid. Something pretty in the angel's hand.

He'd dig his fingers into his own ribcage right now, pull it apart, expose the useless meat to dig at the treasure inside.

But it didn't work that way, did it (he tried, oh he'd tried).

It was the angel's to find, to mine, to reach out and grasp.

And Aziraphale did reach out. The loss of the comforting weight of his hand had Crowley shouting his dismay to the ceiling. Dismay and something giddy and hysterical as his instinctive attempt to follow the warmth amounted to nothing but bucking against Aziraphale's face.

He slammed the other hand to the wall, too, leaving a second set of deep punctures in its surface.

Aziraphale's hands found their way back to him, one holding the back of Crowley's thigh so tightly that Crowley might as well have been so much crumbling drywall himself and the other brushing against the opening just below his cock.

And surely another lover would press inside, would fill Crowley while fulfilling him, but this was Aziraphale, and all he did was brush the backs of his knuckles there, once and then twice more, and it was all Crowley needed.

When the routes for offhand suggestions were closed, it always came down to demands between them, and this was no exception. He looked at Aziraphale when he shouted that time, accusatory joy and a release of pressure as he used his new leverage to press forward, asking for more in the only way he could.

Aziraphale pulled off Crowley's cock with a pop, and that release of pressure almost made Crowley sob. He had been getting so close.

Still, his interrupted pleasure leaked out of him, wetness spreading from his aching core.

"Ah ah ah," Aziraphale admonished. "I didn't say you could move." He pinned Crowley with an arch look that kept him in place as well as Aziraphale's entire arm had earlier.

As if he was simply offering Crowley a biscuit, Aziraphale continued, "Now we'll have to start all over. Don't you agree?"

Bastard.

As if Crowley hadn't been beyond words ages ago. Before Crowley can even attempt to go flailing for something resembling a word, amidst the rolling waves of pleasure and pressure and insensible sensation he finds himself rolling in, Aziraphale made his move.

Crowley felt all of Aziraphale's touch retreat at once, only to be replaced by the pressure of a miracle wrapping itself around Crowley.

In the next moment, Crowley is tumbling backwards onto a leather couch, surrounded by the distinctly Aziraphale scent of Earl Grey. He hadn't even realised he missed that scent.

A moment later. Aziraphale filled his vision, covered head to toe in pristine white, including his beard, but looking distinctly rumpled.

Crowley realised that his own appearance had shifted, too, to a version that smelled less of brimstone and defeat. He was all buttoned up again, but the way Aziraphale was looking at him sprawled out on the couch implied that might not be the case for long.

His gaze was as visceral as a touch, and Crowley shivered in its wake—the wake of Aziraphale's hunger.

He's not sure if this really is the bookshop or just a simulacrum, at first. Theoretically, it could be either. But if it was a simulacrum, even one conjured from Aziraphale's meticulous cataloguing mind, the throw blanket on the old Chesterfield wouldn't have that one wonky corner pressing against the back of his neck, and the shelves behind Aziraphale's head wouldn't sag just so under the weight of their books.

They were in London, in Soho, in the bookshop, and Aziraphale was standing over him.

"Very nice," he said, pursing his lips in that way he did to indicate a critical eye, passing judgement, and Crowley squirmed. "Very nice indeed."

Crowley bit back his objections—I'm a demon, I'm not nice, nice is a four-letter word, nice isn't something I can be—and let Aziraphale approach without shifting too much, still trying to earn this, to drag it out. He wouldn't be done until Aziraphale decided they were done. He could be patient, for Aziraphale. Only for Aziraphale.

As Aziraphale knelt down next to the couch, Crowley was sure he knew what would come next. Some rebuke, or order, or maybe a hand back on his aching cock.

He didn't expect soft lips to meet his, wiry hairs scraping gently on his chin and cheek.

Crowley stiffened in surprise, and then relaxed bit by bit as Aziraphale continued his meandering nibbles around Crowley's mouth. Experimentally, Crowley tried sucking on Aziraphale's tongue. He was rewarded with a near purr in response.

"That's a good lad," Aziraphale murmured. "Just let me give you this."

And oh, Crowley remembered that he is a demon, he is lustful, he is greedy, and so he sank into the kissing. He drank down every stroke of Aziraphale's tongue, let his lips linger where they pressed against the angel's own.

Crowley was tempted to reach up and run his hands through Aziraphale's curls, but by sheer force of will, he clenched around the tartan blanket beneath him instead.

Aziraphale pulled back at a natural pause in their lazy rhythm and wiped the sweat off Crowley's forehead.

"It is your turn to resist temptation my dear, and my turn to give in," he said. Meanwhile, his other hand, the one not stroking Crowley's hair, was unbuttoning Crowley's shirt, starting from the bottom.

Once a button or two was undone, just enough room, Aziraphale brushed his hand back and forth over Crowley's stomach, grazing his knuckles along Crowley's happy trail leading down from his navel.

All of it, the kissing, the stroking, the whispering, had Crowley caught in this place between agony and bliss. His arousal had cooled, but it still simmered just below the surface, where Aziraphale could stoke it to a fiery inferno if he just moved his hand an inch....

But for a moment, Crowley didn't want that. Crowley wanted Aziraphale to go back to kissing him, to take even more time, to be his hedonist self and luxuriate in the act of kissing Crowley. Because it occurred to Crowley, for just a moment, that Aziraphale, kneeling here, leaning over him and kissing him deeply, was worshipping Crowley.

More easily than he remembered his own role, he remembered Aziraphale's in sudden, sharp focus: the angel might take a half-measures approach to his work, but he always goes above and beyond with things he enjoys.

And he was enjoying Crowley, clearly, every single inch of him, every pathetic sound and weak attempt to reciprocate.

Resist temptation. Let me give you this. How can they both be true when the greatest temptation is to let Aziraphale give him anything he wants to give?

And he wants— He knew he needed to sink into it. This gift that was also a wall. The angel commanding what he might not be given freely. My foe to vanquish.

He tilted his head back, exposing his throat, opening up to him. And the angel hummed contentment, pressing in, tracing his way down with the smooth press of lips and the blunt slide of teeth. Slow nipping and sucking, speeding heat down Crowley's spine. It was delicious, and he shivered as that hand wanders again, down his chest, and down...

But he wants, he wants— He reached out his hand, pushing on that delicate boundary, and threaded his fingers through the white curls, pulling back again in a slow caress.

Storm eyes met his own, and stared, hands stilled, through this small gesture of dissent.

He let the angel see him looking, exposing what cannot be safely coerced. And let his hand wander down to brush his thumb so lightly over Aziraphale's bottom lip before resuming his grip on the blanket.

"Silly demon," Aziraphale said, catching the tips of Crowley's fingers with his lips before they could bury themselves in the blanket like the 6000 years of buried glances, moments, and desires that came before this moment.

Crowley's breath caught, and tears sprang to his eyes.

Aziraphale gave his fingers a caressing suck, and then said, "It seems I was neglecting something." He tsked, and Crowley's cock throbbed at the same time that his core clenched around nothing. Together, they insisted that Crowley's pelvis was what Aziraphale was most sorely neglecting.

Crowley could only pant.

"Step one of demon thwarting," Aziraphale said, "Go for the hands." And then he easily clasped both of Crowley's wrists in one of his own hands, pinning Crowley's arms up above his head.

Crowley was left even more defenceless, even more vulnerable, even more laid out like a feast for Aziraphale and Aziraphale alone.

Crowley sobbed as the choice was blessedly taken from him. He could squirm, but that was its own form of giving in, wasn't it?

Aziraphale rose then, holding Crowley down easily as he swung one leg over him. Still fully clothed, he bracketed Crowley, hovering over him, his arousal evident through the paper-thin fabric that formed his new Heavenly trousers—but they did not touch, the only point of contact that place above Crowley's head where their dreams of hand-holding on this couch someday twisted around themselves.

The eye contact was almost unbearable. Poets say the eyes are the window to the soul, and if that is true, then Aziraphale's soul was filled to the brim with conflict. His time in Heaven hadn't been good to him. Crowley had been trying not to notice the bags under Aziraphale's eyes, the grey pallor cast over his skin, telling himself it was the sickly lighting of home office playing tricks. Here, so close, in the familiar light of his home, it was undeniable.

"Aziraphale," he whispered, because he couldn't not call out, had to let Aziraphale know that he saw him, and when they widened with a flicker of something Crowley couldn't bear to believe was hope, he couldn't handle it a second longer. He closed his eyes against the tears he felt gathering in the corners.

Gently, far more gently than Crowley deserved, Aziraphale kissed the tears away.

"Aziraphale, stop," Crowley said, and he hated himself as he said the words, as he saw the glimpse of absolute hurt in Aziraphale's eyes flash before it got expertly tucked away.

Crowley heaved a breath with all the weight of Heaven pressing down on him.

He forced out the next words, slithered out of his snake-like self in a way that felt more revealing than when he took a bath in sulphur.

"I want you, Aziraphale. I want...... us."

Time stood still. Crowley's hands flexed around nothing.

Crowley watched Aziraphale's gaze. Slowly, like he was whacking branches out of his way in the Garden of Eden, Aziraphale returned to himself. Returned to Crowley.

And then, Crowley's breath rushed out in a huge "Oof" or "Hrgk" or "Ngk" (he's not sure which) as all of the weight of Aziraphale collapsed onto him.

This is a hug.

This is a hug, Crowley's mind kept repeating, as he slithered his legs around Aziraphale, to keep him here, now that they were finally together.

Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale, holding the base of his neck while the other hand stroked his back. Carefully drawing meaningless shapes and letters against his back. Only maybe spelling out words he wished he could say out loud.

"A-angel," was all that Crowley managed.

Aziraphale shuddered as he breathed deeply against Crowley's neck, burying his head into the crook between Crowley's neck and shoulder, sliding his arms under Crowley's back, and twisting their legs together. Crowley thought there wasn't a single inch of them that wasn't touching. That maybe they could lay just like this forever, until they melded into one being.

"My, darling," Aziraphale spoke quietly, muffled by Crowley's shirt still hanging around his shoulders. "I want that too. I want," he admitted, punctuating his meaning with a love bite to Crowley's sensitive neck.

Crowley gripped and released Aziraphale's curls several times, testing out how it felt to hold on out of security, instead of desperation. "I..." he choked out, "I know." Crowley had known Aziraphale was a being practically built of want and desire ever since the ox ribs. He had enjoyed helping Aziraphale fulfil those wants of his with every glass of wine shared, with every twist of the Arrangement, every playbill for Hamlet he handed out. Crowley knew what Aziraphale meant when he said he wanted "that," but part of Crowley, really, all of Crowley, needed to hear the exact words. I want you, Crowley. "You can have me," Crowley said, fighting in vain to make it sound off-handed, and not utterly wrecked.

That's them, alright. Aziraphale wants, and Crowley gives, even if Crowley can't be everything that Aziraphale wants. Isn't that why he went off to Heaven, anyways?

But that was then. It's an old hurt by now, though relatively fresh in the grand scheme of their lifespans. Besides, Aziraphale can never be everything Crowley wants, either, because more than anything, Crowley wants him to be free.

But they're back where they started now, aren't they? Yours and of course you are in an endless loop they can't quite close. Want pulls them together and keeps them stable in equal measure, a path of orbital decay that should have reached its conclusion a hundred times over and might have if not for the tendency of the universe to throw supermassive cosmic wrenches their way. There is always some larger body that commands them in the end.

Not tonight. "You can." He stopped to swallow. "C'n treat me the way you've always wanted to," he repeated, and it must sound as different in the bookshop as he hoped it would because Aziraphale kissed him even more tenderly than before.

And Crowley let him.

Crowley whined as Aziraphale pushed into him, licking at Crowley's lips which immediately parted, allowing Aziraphale to taste and explore.

Crowley returned the kiss and trailed his hands up and down Aziraphale's back. Exploring slowly, taking his time to learn every dip and swell and commit each one to memory.

Aziraphale leaned back for a breath he didn't need to take and looked into Crowley's eyes, yellow from edge to edge, a stark contrast to the blush high on his cheeks.

"Can I show you?" Aziraphale whispered.

"What?" Crowley asked, the words he had spoken already forgotten in his mind.

"How I wish to treat you. How I will treat you, if you'd let me."

He took in a shuddering breath. "Like...?"

Aziraphale slipped a hand behind his nape and levered him up, still balancing on his lap, so that they are sitting chest to chest.

"Like this," he said, rubbing his bottom lip gently over Crowley's as delicate fingers slid onto his shoulders, under his shirt, slipping his shirt and jacket together down his arms, then off and away. The same silky hands palmed his waist, then slid back up carefully, reverently.

"Like this," he breathed, and bent to trace a flicking tongue over Crowley's nipple, then licked and sucked it into a hard nub while a thumb rubbed the other in slow circles.

Crowley hissed at the bolt of pleasure, arching a little into the touch, but stilled his impulse to move, to reach. There was no coercion left, no command to be still, but Crowley did so anyway, letting the angel speak his wordless worship.

"Like this," he said, kissing his way down Crowley's sternum, fingertips tracing his rib cage firmly but gently, like he's an old book or a bottle of wine, something that he wanted to open up but never break.

"Like this," Aziraphale breathed into his stomach, the place from whence all worst desires came, kissing the belly button Crowley had put on for a lark, tasting his way down to desire.

"Like this," he said against Crowley's cunt, and closed his mouth around his cock once again, to sweetly suck on it.

In such moments, Crowley thought that if his greatest accomplishment was that he had given Aziraphale a space in which to be soft, then he had lived a worthwhile life.

He only hoped that Aziraphale knew he'd done the same, that he was aware of the way that every tender kiss was permission and benediction. Maybe that's why he lit up again so easily, the silent blessing like a holy flame rising from the banked fire within him.

He kept his hands where they'd been guided, twisting them together above his head to avoid puncturing the sofa. Gouges in his hands would heal in an instant, but Aziraphale would always know that the couch had been torn if he had to fix it himself.

His back arched, driving him down toward Aziraphale's wet, soft mouth and making his neck stretch and strain. He wanted to beg Aziraphale not to stop, but the words wouldn't come, and the opportunity passed as Aziraphale moved down to his bruised and reddened thigh.

"Like this. Every part of you," he said between swipes of his tongue and painfully light presses of his lips. How could this ache more than the rougher treatment Aziraphale had shown him earlier?

That mouth reached the inside of his knee, and Crowley felt his entire being sag, no longer straining but waiting instead.

The tight fabric of Crowley's trousers made Aziraphale's already soft touches feel feather-light, his skin tingling under each brush of Aziraphale's lips and relaxing under the wet heat of his tongue against the cloth.

Aziraphale curled his hand firmly around Crowley's calf as he moved down further, his confident grasp a counterpoint to the tender brushes of his lips and the accompanying rustle of his beard against the fabric. Crowley let his eyes slip closed for a long moment and took in a slow breath, unused to being able to simply enjoy the sensations that were happening to him. In Aziraphale's hands, however, he knew every one of them would be wonderful. It was gentle bliss to give in and accept whatever Aziraphale was giving him, without concern and without judgement.

Crowley opened his eyes again, just a sliver, to watch as Aziraphale treasured his clothed leg as if every inch of it had been crafted by hand. From this angle, most of Crowley's view was taken up by Aziraphale's curls. He had never truly gotten to appreciate them from this angle before, and now he felt committed to memorising the direction of every whorl.

Aziraphale's kisses trailed further down Crowley's leg and his firm hand followed, and Crowley's loose muscles suddenly jerked in surprise as Aziraphale's hand slid from the fabric of his trousers to curl around his bare ankle. Having Aziraphale's mouth on his cock had been one transgression that he'd already had to come to terms with, but having an angel touch his bare scales felt like quite another.

But then, Aziraphale kept touching Crowley's scales, his hands wrapping around each of Crowley's patent black crocodile skin feet, simply to hold them.

Aziraphale's thumb brushed over his right foot in circles, the calloused pad of it etching a soothing warmth into Crowley's very being as steadily as a tide washed sandcastles away from the shore.

Crowley let himself be soothed by the ever so human touch of it, that was still uniquely them for how it had come about.

As he relaxed into the sofa again, Aziraphale caught his gaze from where he now kneeled at Crowley's feet. Aziraphale held Crowley's gaze as he then started to kiss Crowley's snakey, demony, reviled feet. Crowley had to bite his fist to keep from sobbing as Aziraphale bent to wash his feet with his tongue.

As he finished one foot, he trailed his fingers up along the toes of the other, then over the top, tracing individual scales as they made their way up to his ankles. Then Aziraphale's hands encircled his shins, pushing the cuffs of his jeans up.

He caught Crowley's gaze. "May I?"

He never needed to ask, but he did, and hadn't that sent some sort of signal to the rest of his skin to pay attention.

"Anything, angel," he managed to choke out on the third try. Slowly then, gently, the angel's hands moved up his shins, fingers still lingering on the scales that lived there, that he could never suppress.

The miracled material of his jeans slowly dissolved under Aziraphale's hands as they flowed upwards. Aziraphale chuckled, soft breath huffing on his skin. "I'd always wondered how to tackle those infernal trousers."

And then the angel bent his head to lick and scrape his teeth along the exposed flesh, following his hands upwards, shooting bolts of heat straight to the demon's core. Lighting a trail up his calves. Past his knees. Then fingers spread wide, claiming, thumbs trailing in the most sensitive part of his inner thigh. Moving slowly, inexorably, towards centre.

Crowley bit his lip harshly, trying to control his body's reactions. His scales were springing up wherever Aziraphale kissed, like this part of him that he'd long tried to bury was leaping up to meet Aziraphale's caress now that it had been accepted for what it was. For all that he bristled that he was proud of being a demon, it had never been as simple as that. It was an indelible mark that he carried as a result of the choices he had made. Fair or not, accepted willingly or not, they were unchangeable, and so he either had to take them as a mark of pride or dissolve into self-loathing with regret for them.

Perhaps he had done both. Some demons never hid their marks at all.

Now, though, the scales that had come with the commandment to crawl beneath Heaven forever kept rising up at every kiss. They speckled his calves, his knees, and his thighs like a trail that traced the line of Aziraphale's devotion. Crowley bit his lip until it bled as he tried to bring his body under control. How was it reasonable that he could be reacting with such unfettered confidence in Aziraphale's radical acceptance when his words during their last meeting in this room had sounded like anything but?

Except, of course, that the straightforward meaning of words had never been their truest form of communication.

Crowley released his bloodied lip with a gasp as Aziraphale's breath teased across his wet heat. Whatever his body decided to do now, it was clearly no longer within his control.

If this was Heaven, if Aziraphale embodied Heaven, then Crowley would gladly crawl below for all eternity. That would be no hardship. Crawl on his belly or writhe on his back.

Aziraphale looked up sharply at the sound of his gasp and tutted at the sight. He was level with Crowley again in a flash, healing his worried lip with a kiss.

Aziraphale's was the only flavour Crowley had sampled that didn't taste of dust.

Then he did go to his belly for him, just to hear the pleased hum and to feel those broad hands slide down his back, calling up more scales in their wake.

In the back of his mind, he began to realise that he was stalling. He didn't know what would happen when they finished here, but he had a good feeling that he could count on Aziraphale's drive to see an indulgence through to its completion. Whether that saw Crowley to his completion no longer felt like something that mattered.

He should have anticipated it by now, with all the careful, gentle attention Aziraphale had given him so far, but the gentle, feather-light kiss to the base of his neck was still a surprise. Aziraphale spoke something into it, or at least exhaled while moving his lips, before laying his hands across Crowley's shoulder blades, thumbs rubbing circles into the place where his wings would connect if they were summoned. His hands trailed gently up and down Crowley's back, exploring, wondering, followed by light kisses to scars and freckles and bones.

Down Crowley's spine, Aziraphale drew something that felt intentional, reverent, secret, and Crowley felt scales follow his touch, revealing it only in the private language of Aziraphale's trust and affection, sealed with a kiss at the dip that marked the curvature of his spine, where Crowley's went wonky compared to the humans he mimicked. As Aziraphale's hands spanned his waist, Crowley realised—

It was his name. Not Aziraphael as he had been known before the War, nor Aziraphale as he became known after, nor Mr. A. Z. Fell, gentleman bookseller as he liked to have humans call him, but the secret name given to him by God at his creation.

It was a seal.

Aziraphale's most holy name, inscribed in Crowley's most demonic flesh.

"Like this," Aziraphale said, skating his fingertips back over the imprint and sending shivers throughout all of Crowley's body.

Crowley felt Aziraphale pull back, sit up, and drag Crowley's legs over his lap like a blanket.

"It's not quite a wing," he said, like he had forgotten to buy the Italian Shiraz Crowley liked. Like Crowley could be disappointed in this moment.

Like Aziraphale had not just given away the very last of God's gifts given to him, and given it to Crowley, no less.

And no, Aziraphale had not given it to Crowley out of pity. He didn't need it in the way Adam and Eve had needed the flaming sword to survive the desert.

No, Aziraphale had given Crowley his seal because he had wanted to.

Aziraphale was claiming Crowley.

He was protecting Crowley, rescuing him before Crowley even needed to be rescued.

And he was doing it all with an apology already on his lips.

"When they come back, I won't be able to use my wings to— to shelter you, but this way you'll still—"

Crowley writhes with the speed of a rattlesnake to shut Aziraphale up with a kiss.

It wasn't the gentle, sweet, rose-coloured kiss that Crowley had daydreamed about for millennia, but then, he'd already smashed that daydream to bits on the day that doesn't bear thinking about.

He got the angle wrong as he struck, bumping noses just slightly, but Aziraphale corrected it, a gentle but firm hand on his cheek guiding him.

His hands shook as he tried to undo Aziraphale's bow tie, an impossible white-on-white tartan. He gave it up as a bad job when Aziraphale steadied him with a sure palm at the curve of his back, the place where he'd lain the seal.

Instead, he let himself clutch at the hand Aziraphale had rested on his face.

After an eternity, he pulled back from Aziraphale's lips, just barely enough to turn his head 'round to kiss the magnificent, selfless, clever, stupid martyrdom-seeking bastard's wrist, palm, fingertips. Aziraphale flipped it over in his grip, intertwining their fingers, and Crowley clutched it to his chest.

For saints have hands that pilgrim's hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.

"Angel," he choked out, and couldn't finish. He leaned back in, their entwined hands between them as he kissed Aziraphale again.

For a long time they simply kissed, each trying to pour themselves into the other.

During these kisses, Aziraphale's hand slid around to cup the back of Crowley's neck and sink reassuringly into Crowley's gleaming red locks. With that hand, Aziraphale pulled Crowley's head back to break the kiss, only to a moment later push Crowley into burying his face in Aziraphale's neck.

Crowley inhaled the scent of Aziraphale, strong even through a whiff of Heaven's ozone-like detergent. Crowley took in the bergamot and old books and hint of pain au chocolat, and melted into Aziraphale.

For an even longer time, the two simply held onto each other, on their couch, in their bookshop.

Eventually, Crowley felt the hand that Aziraphale had laid heavy over the seal on his back move downwards, to where Crowley was spread, straddling Aziraphale's lap.

Lazily, the tips of Aziraphale's fingers started to brush against Crowley's folds. They danced in a pattern as gentle as a butterfly's kiss, and it made Crowley wet.

"Aziraphale," Crowley attempted to scold.

"Mmm," Aziraphale replied innocently.

"Can we finally drop the act?"

"What act?" Aziraphale pulled back a fraction, a flicker of concern in his eyes for where this might go.

Crowley shut that concern up immediately by putting a hand to the back of Aziraphale's head and pulling him in for another bruising kiss. He growled softly against Aziraphale's lips as the kiss broke. "Let's stop pretending I don't want you just as much as you want me."

If it hadn't been for Aziraphale's brief spark of fear, Crowley might not have had the guts to say it—to claim out loud that Aziraphale truly wanted him—but the shocked look in Aziraphale's eyes was worth it. The shock shifted quickly to a look of almost overwhelming fondness followed by a delightfully embarrassed blush, and then Crowley didn't see where it went from there because he was leaning in to pepper kisses along Aziraphale's jawline, delighting as Aziraphale tilted his head back to give Crowley more room to work.

Yes, it was ridiculous to think this angel could want him, but perhaps ridiculousness was in Aziraphale's very nature. How could Crowley deny it when Aziraphale had just spent so long commanding him to look at him with his bare reptilian eyes and drawing patterns of eternal devotion onto his skin in demonic scales? Who was coaxing him back to wetness, on their couch, in his lap, with no concern for what it might stain?

Crowley rubbed his thumb across the bow of Aziraphale's tie, whose knot had bested him so completely a few minutes ago. One of his claws brushed lightly against Aziraphale's throat as he did, the barest whisper of a touch that didn't leave a mark but made Aziraphale hiss in surprise and pull Crowley closer. Crowley chuckled softly and caressed the bleached white bow tie again. "Do you know how long I've been wanting to unwrap you?"

"How long?" Aziraphale asked.

"Hmm," Crowley pressed his face against Aziraphale's neck and left a string of kisses leading to his bow tie. "When did you start wearing all these infernal layers?"

Aziraphale's chuckle turned into a sigh as Crowley's delicate fingers drifted up his chest and began teasing the edges of the bow tie he had worn for so long. Always keeping him put together and held secure in Heaven, a memory of the indulgences he would partake in on Earth.

The knot fell apart in Crowley's hands and for a moment Aziraphale was reminded of an old story he read and worried his head would come toppling off after being held up by that bow tie for so, so long.

Crowley's fingers undid the first two buttons of Aziraphale's starched white shirt and parted the fabric to press more kisses against Aziraphale's soft chest.

He might have hesitated if it had been Aziraphale's real outfit, the one with the velvet he'd itched to spread his fingers on, the softest linens to tuck his hands under. The angel's crutch, his armour, as impenetrable as any emblazoned plate.

Not this, this simulacrum with its hidden hint of rebellion (white on white tartan? nice touch), this heavenly cage. He wanted it off, off, gone, gone now.

But too fast had gripped his every gesture for decades now. So he just kept kissing, and his fingers kept gently sliding down buttons, going to work on the waistcoat.

Already being able to touch this much angel was unchaining his tongue along with his scales. "Soooo long..." he murmured into his jaw, down into his neck.

He'd peel away all these terrible layers that weren't even cloth but some loathsome spun firmament and then—

Aziraphale pulled back, just a little. "C-Crowley?"

The uncertainty stilled him instantly. "Angel?"

"You don't— it doesn't mean— don't need to—" Aziraphale's storm eyes were wide.

He placed a palm flat on the angel's chest, anchoring. "Need to ssseee you. Touch you." He took a long breath and offered everything through his eyes, again. "Pleassse?"

A beat, two, then a tiny quick nod, half eagerness half nerves.

He reached up with both hands to cradle his angel's face. Proud of you.

Then he released his wings into the calm air of the bookshop. Curled them around, close, cocooning them both. "There. Sssafe?"

And the angel nodded again.

Under the cover of Crowley's wings, Aziraphale knocked Crowley's hands away from his buttons.

Crowley froze, but he found himself wrapped in the look of pure trust in Aziraphale's gaze.

With far more grace and efficiency than Crowley could have mustered, Aziraphale unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt, and slipped them off of his shoulders. When finished, he leaned back, right onto Crowley's wings.

And oh, at the meeting of skin and feathers, a wave of pure warmth and desire tore through Crowley. His face flushed deeply as his core throbbed in response.

This must be Aziraphale's love for him, flowing freely now that there was nothing between their touch.

"Now, I believe we were in the middle of something," Aziraphale said, with a voice like cream cake melting on Crowley's tongue.

Crowley was hit with a pang of regret that he didn't indulge more sooner, didn't actually take bites of the desserts Aziraphale had offered him over the years, didn't let himself believe he could have the temptation that had been paraded before him since the time of Eden.

But he didn't have time to dwell on his regrets as Aziraphale started caressing his wet, aching cock, holding his serpentine gaze, not a flicker of 'bastard' in sight.

Crowley gasped, and Aziraphale placed his thumb on Crowley's tongue, starting to stroke there too, in painfully gentle counterpoint rhythm.

Crowley pushed aside his regrets and took the moment to indulge now on the dessert offered to him. He sucked on Aziraphale's thumb, determined to memorise its sweetness.

Drool began to build in Crowley's mouth as his tongue rolled over Aziraphale's thumb. It began to drip from his lips and onto Aziraphale's palm as he moved his thumb carefully over Crowley's twisting tongue.

He could feel Aziraphale's gaze as his eyes almost fluttered shut and he rocked his hips gently into Aziraphale’s hand. His feathers grazed Aziraphale’s back with every sway of his hips, feeling every shuttering breath Aziraphale took watching him. He dripped drool from his mouth and wetness spread down his legs, and Aziraphale gazed with pure want, like he longed to taste both again. To taste Crowley in his entirety and swallow him whole if he could.

Crowley opened his eyes. "You may be the better tempter between us," he said, walking closer on his knees until he was straddling Aziraphale properly, back straight and tall with his hips resting on one broad thigh. "But I always did have more fun with it, didn't I?" This he asked against Aziraphale's ear, shifting to give Aziraphale a sense of how else his shape had changed. Where there had been one cock rising to attention, there are two now, and if he'd been sensitive before—

The slick slide against the fabric paired with the knowledge that he was soaking through Aziraphale's Heavenly uniform trousers made him shudder.

He snagged the discarded bow tie with one claw, settled it around his own neck, and miracled it secure. Might as well keep something he can see, too.

Aziraphale reached up and touched the bow tie with a finger still glistening with Crowley's slick. He felt the slight buzz of a miracle and knew, without looking, that it was now the angel's own, true tartan.

Aziraphale continued to thumb over the tartan, and it occurred to Crowley that he had just collared himself.

He watched as Aziraphale's eyes grew wide and dark with desire, and the angel whispered, "Mine."

Crowley shuddered, and moaned guilelessly. He felt a new warmth fill the space between his thighs, where Aziraphale's hand was nestled in Crowley's core.

Aziraphale's eyes grew even wider as if in surprise. "Crowley, did you just—?"

Warmth flooded Crowley's face too, where he must have been flushing a scarlet red. Crowley blinked lazily, feeling his eyes switch to their fully golden snake form. He should have been more self-conscious about that fact but at the moment his mind was hazy with love and lust and pleasure.

"Beautiful," Aziraphale whispered, stroking Crowley's hemipenes, drawing out his shudders and moans into a nearly overstimulated symphony.

His first orgasm was barely over before Aziraphale worked him into another one, and another, and another. For an eternity, the whole world was just Aziraphale's hand working against his cocks, Aziraphale's tongue in his mouth, Aziraphale's warm, sturdy, steady closeness enveloping him as he rocked through the erotic pleasure Aziraphale brought him like a wave in the stormy sea.

In another universe, perhaps he could have ridden that wave forever. His kit didn't have a refractory period and neither he nor Aziraphale could grow tired from physical exertion, except when they forgot that they couldn't, and their corporations adjusted accordingly. In this universe, however, eventually the buzzing storm of Crowley's satisfaction slowed enough that he was able to recall that he'd had a point, actually, that all these delicious highs were derailing him from.

"Aziraphale," he said hoarsely, which did not exactly encourage Aziraphale to stop. "Angel," he gasped as Aziraphale continued to stroke his dicks and began to suck a long kiss from his pulse point.

Crowley unsteadily moved his hands from where they clutched at Aziraphale's hair and deliciously soft back to Aziraphale's fly, his white patent leather belt (no: firmament bespelled to look like white leather) a seemingly impossible obstacle to navigate.

"My turn, angel," he managed to whisper into Aziraphale's ear.

Aziraphale shivered at the brush of Crowley's breath against his ear. "Getting to see you like this is enough for me."

"Yeah?" Crowley nipped at his ear. "Is this what you were thinking of when you gave me all those appraising looks over the years?"

Crowley was pressed close enough he could feel Aziraphale's cheek warm with a blush. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't go shy on me now, angel." Crowley kissed down Aziraphale's bare neck—how many centuries had it been since he'd seen even that much uncovered?—and concentrated on working the faux-leather belt through its faux-metal buckle. "Don't get greedy, either." Crowley finally pulled the belt free of its loops and dropped it on the floor.

Aziraphale arched his back as Crowley sucked on his neck, his shoulders pressing back against Crowley's wings where they were curled around him. "You, ah... You make it sound like I'm holding out on you."

Crowley rested his hands on the bare skin of Aziraphale's sides, his fingers curling to nestle into the soft, warm creases that were accentuated by how Aziraphale was squirming under his touch. "Let me indulge you."

Aziraphale met Crowley's eye and gave a short, almost uncertain nod. He was still holding himself back, seemingly afraid to want too much.

Crowley pressed a soft kiss to Aziraphale's forehead and slid his hands from Aziraphale's sides to the now gaping crotch of his pants. Crowley took his time, fingers pressing into the golden stretch marks that spiderwebbed across Aziraphale's abdomen in the same way he'd watched Aziraphale drag a finger through dollops of whipped cream atop countless decadent sweets over the millennia.

When he reached between Aziraphale's thighs, Crowley stopped short. Aziraphale had not made an Effort.

He pulled back mere centimetres and his shoulders slouched. "Angel?" he asked. "It's... alright if you are not ready...."

Aziraphale shook his head to cut Crowley off. "It's not like that at all! It's just... corporations can be so... messy," he said, apologetically, his lips twisting into an anxious pout.

Crowley sat back a touch, not far enough to break their cocoon, and took in his ridiculous angel. Despite the years, the same wild hunger lived in Aziraphale's eyes as when Crowley watched him devour an ox in Uz.

Oh.

Crowley leaned in, reaching towards Aziraphale's crotch, and stroked, letting his touch push past the corporeal. He let his very being blur, gently, and pushed two caressing fingers into the chocolate mousse that awaited him on the other side of reality.

Aziraphale tipped his head back and groaned sinfully, as if he had just swallowed a bite of that chocolate mousse.

When Crowley repeated the caress, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley's skinny frame and clung to him.

If touching earthly corporations had been too much to ask over the long centuries, melding ethereal essences had not even been contemplated. He hadn't been sure, entirely, that his form wouldn't blaze off in angelic essence, his demonic impurity scoured away like he'd been scoured from the Host.

He still felt the divinity, buzzing a warm gold, a thrill reaching into his own ethereal body, a burn of bliss long forgotten— But he shied away from that thought and instead contemplated the corporeal angel wrapped around his human form, head tilted back and gasping in delight.

And carefully unravelled his own ethereal coils, to snake up and around the impossibly spinning golden rings and endless eyes, every point of contact a sweet surge of astral fire.

Aziraphale was burnished copper and holy fire and still soft against Crowley's confident seeking squeezes. Crowley had worn that form not so long ago. Taking the appearance of each other's corporations would never have been enough. But he hadn't felt the life within it. They couldn't have dared then. Now, there was so much less to lose—or maybe so much more to lose that the risk couldn't possibly be measured and has been therefore deemed irrelevant.

Crowley himself was hard armour plates and infinite inky oil-slick loops. He'd had a delicate underbelly when he was created, but it's had time to develop a protective callus. It was there all along nearly the whole length of him, and it must be rough where it brushed against Aziraphale.

But the angel only exulted in it, moulding his own shape to better fill Crowley's grasp, and he couldn't sing holy holy holy, not to Crowley, but he was doing something very close to it indeed.

And for all that he'd shifted his consciousness to chase Aziraphale's pleasure, it was almost too much for Crowley to realise that he bore Aziraphale's mark in this form as well. Of course he did.

Aziraphale's wings formed a shield over each of the few remaining vulnerable places on Crowley's massive infernal form, and it shook him all over to know that Aziraphale placed them there himself, that he saw the weak, defenceless parts of Crowley that handful of years ago, and that he saw fit to protect them when he could have pushed his advantage.

Crowley squeezed him ever more tightly.

The tighter Crowley squeezed, the brighter Aziraphale burned, his flames a green-white-blue-octarine as his core pulsed. The burn was sweet, like caramelised sugar sounds, like a child's laughter tastes; the flames were harmless to Crowley, warming him like the primordial sword warmed the first boy and girl to have had a very bad day on Earth.

Aziraphale's pulses expanded and contracted within his rings, and Crowley soon slithered within them too, his roughened belly along Aziraphale's smooth, featureless interior. Aziraphale sang, a wordless song of love love love, and Crowley answered, as he always had, by dancing to Aziraphale's chosen beat, steps long memorised forgotten as they finally synchronise in this most authentic of songs. As he and Aziraphale spun and slithered in unison, pulses sped up, intensifying, until the last.

LOVE LOVE LOVE, sang Aziraphale as his fire exceeded his rings, engulfing Crowley in his holy flame.

The sensation of Aziraphale surrounding him entirely as he exalted and praised in the height of passion was something Crowley would, when trying to talk about it with Aziraphale later, find to be something beyond understanding and incapable of being put into words. He would vehemently object to, but ultimately accept, Aziraphale's smug suggestion of the adjective "ineffable."

Time had no meaning in this place, and yet it still passed so that one thing could come after another, and eventually the fire ebbed back to comfortable flickers as Crowley endlessly wound himself around Aziraphale's endlessly spinning wheels. There was peace, like that; comfort in the rasp of calluses against metal, of gifted wings shifting along with each sinuous turn. Crowley could meditate on it forever.

Aziraphale adjusted the angle of his rings and Crowley became aware of being at the focus of his infinitely-faceted vision again. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" His voice still sounded like the ringing of bells, fit to sing glory to welcome the celestial dawn.

Crowley stretched himself out languidly, every part of him warm and comfortable. He would be perfectly content to sleep basking in the afterglow, or keep winding around Aziraphale forever. "Never felt better." He nuzzled against one of Aziraphale's rings with his reptilian nose and was rewarded with a laugh that sounded like church bells.

It was easier that way. He almost hated that it was easier that way, that the deepest and most secret parts of him felt like they had more of a right—more of a duty—to press close to Aziraphale than he'd ever felt in his corporation.

He didn't want to leave. Some part of him never would; traces of him would be left behind on Aziraphale's shape, seared onto him permanently in the multi-dimensional shape of a name only one Being had ever spoken.

Those remnants, minute as they were in the scheme of things, might even be enough for him to shift his consciousness to wherever Aziraphale was. He hoped he would never have to try.

But he did have to pull away. Aziraphale never would, now that he'd started. Crowley reared back to look at Aziraphale in his many eyes, to watch his rings sluggishly begin their rotation anew. Scorch marks in seemingly random patches appeared now and then, and Crowley understood, in that moment, the purpose of pride. He knew they would align to show the claim he'd staked. To anyone else, they'd look like battle scars, no different from the scratches he'd left on that anonymous wall hours-moments-eternities ago.

"Look good like that, angel," he murmured, drawn back in to press his snout against one of the spectral burns as they passed. "Should've dressed you up sooner. Didn't hurt?" he checked, too late for it to matter for anything but shame. Not guilt; never guilt if it protected him in the long run.

"Not in the least," was Aziraphale's answer, satisfied and wondering, the chimes low and even as the hourly carillon, licks of flame occasionally springing out of his fiery core to graze the new burn marks inside his rings. "I quite agree with you."

"Come on then, Aziraphale," Crowley said, unwinding himself, separating those things they had instead of hearts and souls once more. "Time, I think, to go home."

Without checking to see if Aziraphale followed him, Crowley edged himself back sideways, into the corporation that sat in an odd little bookshop in England. He returned to the container that he had occupied so long he had developed a habit of thinking of it as himself, with its gangling limbs and window eyes and tendency to change colours when exposed too long to the sun.

Crowley, newly returned to his corporation, also returned to human sensations. His body had been nude and unmoving for some time, and Aziraphale's body under him was still chilled with vacancy, and he was cold. And sticky.

Crowley carefully refastened the buttons on Aziraphale's trousers, because of course Aziraphale remained perfectly clean. He glanced over at Aziraphale's discarded shirt— no, discarded bit of bespelled firmament, and then reached for the gaudy yellow blanket thrown over the back of the couch instead. He gently tucked the blanket around Aziraphale's torso to help him warm up faster, hiding away with it the dark marks that now offset the golden streaks along his belly.

Crowley sensed the return of Aziraphale's essence first, and then the sensation of being observed, and then finally Aziraphale's corporeal eyes fluttered open. Crowley forced himself to sit back on his heels, bare in every sense of the word. "Alright, angel?"

Aziraphale blinked and sighed, sitting up slowly. "I'm fine." Then he reached out to lightly touch Crowley's knee where he still perched over the angel's legs. "Oh, my dearest, you're so cold!"

"It-t's n-nothing, angel," Crowley denied out of sheer habit, but his corporation chose that moment to betray him by shivering.

"Nonsense," and he felt a miracle flow around him and settle over now-clean skin into a set of warm flannel pyjamas. Tartan pyjamas.

There was a limit— he glared and the pyjamas turned black. The suddenly-recalled bow tie he'd left untouched, however. He unravelled it from around his neck and held it out. "I suppose I should return this to you," he said, with just a little lilt at the end, so that it could be taken as a question. If it was wanted to be one.

"I think you should keep it," Aziraphale replied, as he became covered in a tartan monstrosity as well. "I do have plenty of my own."

Crowley stared as his mind veered into a loop, imagining a game of stealing (and wearing) bow ties stretching into the future. But that dissolved quickly into uncertainty.

He swept his wings back into the ether, allowing the angel to shift to sit comfortably on his end of the couch. "You came back," he said. "You brought us back, here." He slid into a boneless sprawl in the middle of the couch, facing him, not willing to cede any more distance between them just yet.

"Yes, well, it seemed the right moment," Aziraphale said, looking away.

He reached out and cupped the angel's cheek, pulling his gaze back to him. "Angel, that was amazing. Wonderful. Everything. Yes?"

Aziraphale's eyes glistened.

Looking at Aziraphale, Crowley felt his stomach sink like something heavier than a lead balloon. The last time the angel had worn such an expression, what had followed had been the worst heartbreak Crowley had ever felt, which was quite the miracle for a being that didn't even have a heart to begin with.

Were Aziraphale to pull away now, after the two of them had entwined their very essences of being, it would tear Crowley in two. Most likely literally.

Crowley tried to swallow around the lump in his throat the size of a rat. He drummed his fingers erratically on his thigh, any little thing to drown the voice in the back of his mind that whispered Alpha Centauri….

Tears streamed down the apples of Aziraphale's cheeks as he nodded. "Yes, yes, but I never— I never thought we could—"

Crowley raised a questioning eyebrow. A patient eyebrow. An indulgent eyebrow.

What they had done was not sex, not truly, in the way any human would understand it.

Nor could such a human concept as "exchanging vows" encapsulate all that had occurred.

Aziraphale's voice cracked as he said, "I had never thought we could… become us."

And that was it, wasn't it? In this, the seventh eon, they had, ineffably, become them.

What they had Created was something entirely new, something far more than the mere sharing, side by side, of eternity, that had previously been Crowley's wildest fantasies.

All the air rushed out of Crowley as Aziraphale looked over at him. Hope, trembling and quaking with fear, filled Aziraphale's eyes.

"And now...?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale smiled shakily. "Now I know how to stop the Second Coming. How we can stop the Second Coming."

Crowley clung to the way Aziraphale had said 'we,' how it had chimed like a tuning fork finding exactly the right frequency. "How are we going to do that?" Crowley asked.

Relief flooded Aziraphale's eyes even as a wicked grin bloomed across his lips. "We are going to break into the Garden of Eden. For the good of all Creation."

Crowley reached across to pull Aziraphale close. He pressed their foreheads together.

"Our side," Aziraphale whispered.

"To Creation," Crowley replied.

They kissed.

It was, in a word, nice.